Posts tagged #utlandsboende

Chena River to Ridge

 

Adventure Tuesday

It takes a community to raise a child?

    As I have mentioned many times before, the community in Fairbanks is very supportive and everyone believes in you. There are many races in and around Fairbanks, by foot, bike, and ski, come summer come winter. Every summer there is this marathon called the Equinox. It's very famous in Fairbanks and everyone participates in one way or another. If you are not in the race, you are very likely to stand by the side of the trail watching it, handing drinks, baked goods or alike to the runners. There is another race in the winter time called "White mountains 100". Basically a 100 mile ski race in the white mountains. That is pretty hardcore. We went to see the start one year and it was so much fun to see everyone prepare before they departed. We have several friends who participate in this race almost every year. Such great spirit.

 
 

Ski Commute

    When W moved away from Alaska we had spent one winter in the new cabin. I actually can't remember how we transported us to work that winter. I do know for sure that the rest of the winters my main transportation was by ski. Biking works too, but the bike path by our cabin doesn't get plowed regularly and if you have ever biked through deep snow with a mountain bike you definitely know that it takes up all of your energy. Also, if you don't winterize the bike with this "winter fluid" and the temperatures drop to 40 below, the pedals wont catch and they just go around and around and you are standing still.

 
 

Ski training

    Sometime during the start of one winter I decided to sign up for a ski race. I thought it would be a cool thing to do, especially this one. It's basically up a ridge, along the ridge and then switchback turns to get back down in the end...on cross-country skis. They recommend that you have some type of expertise in cross-country skiing before you sign up. To increase my milage before the race I mostly skied during lunch break and also to and from work. In the evenings, instead of skiing straight home, I skied on all the various trails we have to add up the mileage. The actual ski race was in mid March, and after Christmas happened you could definitely tell that the afternoons and evenings got lighter and lighter, to my advantage because as you might know, I am terrified of the moose. I also skied with a backpack, after all, I am a newbie and I want to bring an extra down jacket, base layers socks...and my camera. This race is completely unsupported, well aside from one aid station at mile 14 (22km).

 
 

Racing?

    My goal for this race was not to win, obviously, but to make it. I can ski fast, well not that fast but a pretty decent pace. But I rather ski less fast, so I don't sweat, and I love to take pictures. So not surprisingly, I was the last person to finish the 25 mile race, but that is ok, because at least I made it, and that was my goal. After the fact I also realized that hey, I just did my first marathon, ever, but on skis. I haven't even run a marathon. 

 
 

Race day

    When I woke up the  morning of the race the first thing I did was to check the temperatures. And it was not looking good, well i had already checked the weather forecast and waxed my skis accordingly. Come race day the temperature read -26F, that is -32C. Great. But I am used to skiing in cold weather so in reality it wasn't really a big deal. 

 
 

The ridge

    As the sun rose it casted its warm rays on my face and I forgot about how cold it was. These trails are snowmachine trails, so not really the type of ski trails that you might encounter in a more "normal" ski race. I think i smiled the whole way, well, until the end. I accidentally took a wrong turn and wasted some extra time trying to figure out where to go next, the downside of skiing solo in a small race, you are on your own. Overall the skiing was pretty good. Once you got up on the ridge the views were amazing, and you definitely understood why they want you to have done some technical skiing before hand. And yes, the switch back turns they talked about, yeah they were definitely 90 degree turns going down. It was fast and if you didn't turn, well, hopefully a tree would catch you before falling down the side of the ridge.

 
 

    Have you ever done something that felt out of your league?

Posted on March 21, 2017 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Alaska, Adventure Tuesday and tagged Alaska White Mountains Mountains Chena River to Ridge Ridge Skiing Ski race Ski ski commute skitrail snow Winter Winter Adventures skidor skidåkning utlandsboende utlandssvensk 2017 Wintertime Life in Alaska.

In the Rearview Mirror pt.4

 

Flashback Friday

    My flashback Friday kind of disappeared last week, mostly because I was upset on so many different levels because of what is currently going on in the US. I'll talk more about that in another post, but if you are interested in some of my posts and my views you can check them out below: 

 
 

    Even though we started off on pretty good terms with the fall season by attending yet another wedding (in Florida none the least), fall quickly turned into a pretty dark ordeal for me. There were certainly many good times, but also my mom passed away in November, so we went to Sweden. What happened afterwards is apparently pretty common when someone close to you die, families tear apart a bit, and without going into more detail our family is not as close as we once were. Either way, Christmas came along and we had a wonderful time in Bozeman, MT. It's weird because I had been thinking about maybe, just maybe going back to Sweden for Christmas, I know that mom really wanted us to, but we didn't. We finished off December by going on a pretty adventurous cabin trip and also a trip to Yellowstone. 

October

    October started off good, but the temperatures, can we talk about the temperatures. 66F in October, incredible! You could definitely see some color changes on the trees though, it appears that fall in Wisconsin is very beautiful too. Im learning to appreciate our neighborhood, and there are these super pretty streets all around town, and sometimes you see pretty unexpected things, like the picture of Greta Garbo, just like that, hanging on a wall along one of the streets. When we went to Florida we actually went through 6 different states, including Wisconsin and Florida. We drove to Chicago which is in Illinois, and took the plane to New Orleans in Louisiana. Then drove through Mississippi, and Alabama before we finally reached Florida. Of course we tried fried alligator in New Orleans. Then Halloween happened and all of a sudden October was over. 

 
 

November

    November was pretty warm too, I mean compared to Fairbanks :) We had some beautiful mornings and evenings with magical light. When mom died I received so many cards, and flowers from people and W was doing his best to keep me from falling apart. He made sushi for me, we had mussels, twice in a week! I kept myself busy at work, and we went hiking. At the end of November we traveled to Sweden and had some wonderful days there too, even though parts of the trip was completely horrible. Dad took us to the opera to see the Swedish take on the Nutcracker, and it was the first time W got to spend time in the same lounge area as the king and queen usually does, he was impressed! 

    A family friend wrote this beautiful text about my mom, in Swedish:

Du, min vän i livet.
Du var en av de som såg mig, som tog till sig av saker jag sa.
En av de som gav mig trygghet. 
En av de som alltid ställde upp.
En av de som alltid svarade i telefonen när som helst.
Du har lyssnat när jag sjungit,
Du har läst mina dikter,
Du har berömt mig när jag ritat och skissat,
Jag har varit vaken sent på kvällar då vi setts och suttit och pratat om ditt och datt, om allt möjligt. 
När jag var hos dig som yngre fick jag alltid oboy, det var innan jag började dricka kaffe. 
Senast vi sågs drack jag vin, man kan säga att tiden gått sen jag var liten.
Jag vet att du alltid trott på mig, 
De har du även visat.
På midsommar ett år utnämnde jag dig som "extramamma", den titeln har stått kvar sedan dess.
Vi har skrattat, vi har gråtit, vi har haft många fina stunder.
Nu är det minnen, 
Minnen jag bär med mig för resten av livet,
Det kommer bli tungt utan både dig och bullpojken,
Idag både nynnar och sjunger jag
"Här Rosemarie, syns blåa Nämdöfjärden",
En av de sånger jag minns och tänker på dig. 
Jag älskar dig Rosie❤️

 
 

December

    Moms funeral was December 2nd, and after that I had yet another week in Stockholm. My mom used to work at the open air museum Skansen before she retired, and we went there with dad. After W left I was cleaning out all my boxes I still had at home, old boxes with lots of memories from the best of friends. Then I flew back to my new home, over here in the US. There are still so many things I have at home in Sweden, and I have no clue how I am suppose to get everything over here, time will tell. Madison got really cold in December, we had quite a few days of below 0 F. We left for Bozeman on Christmas day, and had a great time there. Skiing, skiing, skiing. We also went to Yellowstone, of course, and did some skiing there as well. 

 
 

    How was the last quarter of the year for you?

Posted on February 3, 2017 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under Flashback Friday, Rearview Mirror and tagged rearviewmirror2016 Stockholm Skansen Florida New Orleans memories happy memories cold ice cold Bozeman Montana utlandssvensk utlandsboende utlandet Sverige Yellowstone Yellowstone National Park Homestake Pass Madison Wisconsin2 2017 Sweden rearviewmirror.

In The Rearview Mirror pt.2

 

Flashback Friday

    In regular fashion Alaska showed it's rollercoaster climate in 2016. We went with no snow, yes NO NEW SNOW from late December to March, a whole 105 days, until we received 4 inches early April, that of course disappeared by the end of the day. The 2015/2016 winter season was pretty mild, because we didn't really dip down to -40 that regularly, we stayed around -4 to -22 F (-20 to -30 C), which was welcoming. I think I was kind of done with cold winters in Alaska by this point, even though I miss it so bad now. 

April

    I received my green card, which actually went pretty fast! Life went on at the cabin, water chores, wood chopping but no shoveling...Just kidding, then we got snow, but it melted pretty quickly! I went out to into the field with the mega super large truck, that literally probably is twice my size. Ice was still on the rivers, thick ice. April also mean longer days. In the wintertime you loose up to 7 minutes a day, so come spring that is what you gain, every day. By April 22 you could see the sunset after 9.30 pm, and it would still be light out at 10pm at the end of the month. As always April turns into a wet and muddy ordeal as snowmelt starts, once you get passed the cold temperatures and new snow that is. We experienced the earliest bud burst in history, a whole week before the usual green-up. April also brought the first mosquitos...

 
 

May

    All of a sudden May had arrived, with a record breaking pollen outburst. Rain showers mixed with pollenshowers. A friend of mine and I decided to go to Denali for one last hurrah before both of us moved out of the state. This was also the first time I went biking in Denali without running into a bear, the only animal we saw was the distinct ptarmigan. Had my last day in the field and at the end of May W arrived, and I packed the red Subi and life went on, and on for 4157 miles...6690 km. We drove through Alaska, then Canada, and Canada and Canada. The journey through Canada was the longest, we drove about 1962 miles (3157 km) give or take, through Canada. From Bozeman we drove via Yellowstone and Cody all the way to Madison, a journey about 1360 miles (2189 km). Through Canada we camped until we approached the Canada/American border. I had a sandwich we made from our own stuff, with turkey on it in Banff, that had gone bad and got food poisoning by the time we passed Calgary, thank god we had already decided to stay at a motel that night. Then on to Bozeman and Yellowstone for some fieldwork before our journey continued.

 
 

June

    June 1st was our last day on the road and we finally landed in Madison by the evening, after 12 days on the road. One of the first things we did was to buy an air conditioner, which is how I survived all summer. Madison is so far south, it is actually on the same latitude as southern France so it gets very hot in the summertime, too hot for me, and for long haired cats. Everything is so green and lush in Wisconsin, and I went to the Botanical gardens on one of the hottest days. One day we were driving back from some errands and discovered one of the bike races in Madison, namely a naked bike race, looks extremely dangerous if you ask me. W went back to Yellowstone for more fieldwork and I explored Madison. I also received the very last package from mom around this time, didn't know back then that it would be the last one I would get from her. 

 
Posted on January 13, 2017 by Ann Rumbleinthearctic and filed under The great wide open, Flashback Friday, Rearview Mirror and tagged Alaska Alcan Canada Canadaland Wisconsin Yellowstone National Park Yellowstone Montana Home New Home roadtrip road trip fieldseason utlandssvensk utlandsboende Denali Denali National Park Spring pollen Budburst National Park rearviewmirror2016 2017 Summer Adventures Spring Adventures Fieldwork rearviewmirror Life in Alaska.