Food for winter cycling expeditions: DIY

In general food is important, but on extended wilderness trips the desire for it seems to occupy every minute of waking consciousness. It usually starts a few days into a trip, when your metabolism finally faces the reality of your energy demands. With physical activity taking up most of the day, ones stomach starts to feel like a furnace with no damper. Such an increase in caloric demand poses a challenge for the unsupported traveler, as this extra weight needs to be carried. So here we will answer one of our most frequently encountered questions:

‘What do you eat?’

The basic criteria for the food that we bring is that it is high in calories, compact, healthy, and easy to prepare. Common cultural assumptions of food fit for backcountry travel are, that it is inherently expensive, engineered with the latest technology, wrapped in special packaging, branded with an outdoor marketing strategy, or otherwise something that you would never eat on a regular day. Many instant meals designed for campers may be very lightweight, but they are often insufficient in calories and nutrients, especially considering how much they cost. From personal experience, they usually give me stomach upset, gas, and irregular bowels - not good while living in a small tent. Rarely in life will you ever appreciate food this much. Don’t ruin it by eating crap.

Ultimately our diets consist of very simple ingredients which I will share here, but we have also come up with a handful of special recipes and food preparations that have yielded great results. We begin preparing our trip food months before we embark. Our methods take extra care and time, but our food tastes great, fills us up, keeps us healthy, and our grocery bill doesn’t break the budget.

While on the trail, we cook hot breakfast and dinner along with a hot drink, often on a fire. This is also when we melt our drinking water. This year we are excited to be cooking on our Titanium Goat wood stove. During the day, stopping for lunch can be time consuming; using up precious daylight hours. Instead, we carry an arsenal of snackable foods and eat periodically when our body demands it. Feeling cold? Eat something. Tiered? East something. Mechanical difficulty? First, eat something. Cranky, discouraged, upset, or unsure about what to do? You got it. Food  is crucial to maintaining a level head as well as your physical condition. Having it on hand makes it easy to keep up with your body's demand and ultimately helps you retain heat, feel good and enjoy yourself.

Almost everything we bring can be found in a regular grocery store, but ideally you can find a lot of this stuff in bulk and save some money. After purchasing our food, we ration it out into vacuum packs or freezer zip-lock bags and ship it to post offices along our route.

Breakfast

For breakfast we almost always eat cream-of-wheat. Oats would substitute fine, we both just like cream-of-wheat more. Both the oats and the wheat mostly serve as a vessel for the higher calorie ingredients including butter or coconut oil, brown sugar, powdered milk, dried fruit, and nuts. We also drink tea or cowboy coffee. This year we will experiment with our coffee by grinding it extremely fine in an effort to imitate those instant espresso packs. Either way, just skip on the last gulp.

Lunch

Our daytime food includes dried salmon, dried fruit, nuts, trail mix, cheese, our homemade bars or store bought bars. I don’t have a preferred store bought bar, though Luna bars are one of my favorites. I like Cliff bars, but they are the consistency of a brick when frozen, so I stopped bringing them in the winter. Snickers bars have a lot of calories, but I don’t go with them exclusively because the sugar overdose is more than I can handle. We usually bring some kind of candy, and always chocolate, but overdoing the sugar has brought me to the verge of system failure on more than one trip. As with regular life, I recommend moderation.

Dried salmon is our best food. It is loaded with fat, protein and nutrients, is easy to eat anytime but can also be cooked with a meal. We catch it and process it ourselves. It has been a staple food for native people across the northern half of the continent for thousands of years, and has a proven credibility. Last July we caught our red (sockeye) salmon from the Kenai River with a dipnet. This is a wild salmon run and the fish are large and delicious. We fillet the fish and pack it in vacuum-sealed bags, and freeze it for storage. During the months before a trip we thaw and dry strips, in batches. Something that we want to experiment with is pemmican, which is a fat and nutrient dense food historically used in polar expeditions and is made from dried meat, melted fat, and dried fruit.  

We dry most of our own fruit, usually pears, apples and bananas. It’s a great way to utilize over-ripe or mealy fruit that would otherwise be thrown out. We buy cranberries, cherries and dates, and get shipments of tropical treats from Bjorn’s family’s farm in Kona. Fruit isn’t super packed with calories, but bringing fruit is important to me because it keeps things working, if you know what I mean.

Dinner

We believe in cooking delicious dinners and mix up the ingredients every night, to keep it interesting. For the base we usually cook polenta, orzo, pasta-tini, quinoa, or spaghetti. These cook fast, expand greatly, and again, serve as a vessel for all the other goods. For flavor and salts we use bouillon cubes, powdered milk, nutritional yeast, powdered sauces and gravies of various sorts. Generous amounts of cheese (sharp cheddar and gorgonzola are our favorites), butter, and/or coconut oil are key for providing the fat that your body needs. We also add veggies that we dry ourselves and may put in any combination of tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, mushrooms, broccoli, kale, onions, or cabbage. Dried salmon can be added as well and re-constitutes nicely. A very helpful trick we have learned is to bring instant mashed potatoes and add them at the end to make your meal the right consistency. Most backcountry travelers have experienced soupy dinners; this is an easy way to avoid that problem. For drinks, a cup of hot chocolate is a nice end of the day treat, herbal tea, or miso soup with a pad of butter is also delicious.

For cookware we share a titanium pot and each have a titanium mug, a spoon or spork, and a 64 oz. thermos. I carry a fixed handle Buck knife that I love and use for many things, including food. Bjorn brings a leatherman, again for many uses, but the pliers are great for handling the hot pot and it has a knife. On many trips we also bring a steel bowl that fits inside the pot, but this winter we are forgoing it to save weight and space. We either pass the pot back and forth, or dole food into a mug.

Especial emphasis on hydration is required for winter travelers. You need to drink a lot of water to stay warm, prevent frostbite, and keep from getting cramps. We bring Emergen-C and drink it during the day, in attempt to maintain proper electrolyte balance. Remember, you’re asking a lot of you body, so give it what it needs. Drinking water seems simple enough, but the time and fuel required to melt water makes it tempting to go with less and the cold temperatures don’t make it particularly enjoyable. But the truth is that your metabolism requires water to function and keep you warm. So drink up. The best metric to understand if you are properly hydrated is the color of your urine. If it’s clear, you are hydrated. If it’s dark yellow, you need to drink more.

One trick we employ is to start the day with a full 64oz thermos of boiling or near boiling water. When we stop to drink, we add snow to our mug and melt it with the hot water. This is an easy way to stretch a smaller volume of water. It is also preferred to drink water as close to body temperature as possible, when it is cold, and boiling water mixed with snow is an easy way to achieve the desired temperature.

I encourage anyone who reads this to experiment with your own strategy. Everyone’s body is unique and trying things out is the best way to come up with a diet that works for you. I have personally learned that a lot of fat is really good for me, but that I need to get it from multiple sources (not just butter), that I have a threshold for sugar that should not be crossed, and that balancing my diet with fruit and veggies improves my performance.  I would have never learned these things without trial, and yeah, a little discomfort. Hopefully this advice will streamline your experience.

Kim & Bjørn

Kim's footwear for cold weather cycling

Kim has written a blog post about cold weather footwear.

Frostbite is unacceptable and toes are of special concern for winter cyclists. Considering the negative consequences, I have put a lot of thought and trial into my footwear system to be used in conjunction with platform pedals. I have tested this system in temperatures as low as -30º and it works.

The concept behind my set up is a thick layer of insulation that is water proofed inside and out. Waterproofing protects your insulated layers from getting soaked from your sweat and water from outside. The insulation will sustain its heat retaining ability for prolonged days on the trail.

The first layer that goes on the foot is a ‘sacrificial’ wool liner sock. This sock is thin and ends up getting wet from your sweat, and basically serves for comfort. On top of the liner goes a vapor barrier sock. Bjørn and I use Sephenson Warmlite, and had our VBL (Vapor Barrier Liner) socks customized to be tall, as to fit with our tall outer boots. Over the vapor barrier goes a warm, thick sock.

The VBL sock is a brilliant idea and can be applied to any footwear system. The purpose of this sock is to protect your insulation from your own sweat.

Unlike other parts of your body, it is impossible to temperature regulate your feet to keep them from sweating while on the go. Your foot will sweat until it is saturated. Without the vapor barrier, the insulation from your thick sock and your boot will wick sweat away from your foot, and your foot will continue sweating until your insulation is saturated. Sweat wicking is advertised in outdoor clothing as an advantage. But in cold temperatures, water wicked into the clothing doesn’t evaporate and disappear - it freezes. Clothes can become ruined until you get a chance to dry them out.

With the vapor barrier on, your foot will sweat until the liner sock is wet, then it will stop. Your insulative layers are safe.

On top of my three socks, I wear two boots. The first is a high-top Loben. This is a soft-soled felt boot that is very warm. This is the most debatable component of my set up, and I may experiment with something else in the future. The Loben is, in my opinion, not a very good boot standing alone. The sole is unsupportive, and the felt provides no protection from water or wind. But worn with this combination, it provides a lot of insulation and warmth.

On top of the Loben I wear an insulated Neo over-boot. This boot provides more insulation, a sole with excellent traction, and waterproofing against the outside elements. The kind that I have has a fold out gaiter that reaches to the knee. Mine are not studded, because that would be annoying on my bike pedals and add weight. The sole is pretty good on ice as is. There is room to put a chemical heat pack inside during extreme cold.

With all this on my feet, I feel like a storm trooper. But overall I can ride my bike and walk in comfort, without feeling cold. While I have more limited range of motion and agility, the sacrifice is completely worth it to me.

If you are considering a similar set up, my recommendation would be to get boots that fit well; not too small and not too big. If they are too small you will be compressing the insulation and losing heat. If they are too big, your foot will slip around inside the boot and it will decrease your efficiency, waste energy and maybe drive you a little crazy. My Lobens are a size too big and it is regretful. I took measures to fit them to my foot, but could have avoided it by getting a better fitting boot.

Kim McNett

Fatbike to the Arctic: How to Prepare

Winter cycling in Alaska began in the 19th century — before the automobile, trains and even roads. In 1898, gold hungry men followed the frozen Yukon River from Dawson and rode to Nome on “wheels.” These hardy souls were known as “wheelmen” and they began a tradition that is alive in Alaska, over 100 years later.

Vast improvements have been made in all things winter cycling over the last 100 years, but none more important than the wheel itself. Four- and even five-inch tires open a world of possibilities for the winter cyclist.

Read more here: http://www.adventurecycling.org/resources/blog/fatbike-to-the-arctic-how-to-prepare/

Titanium Goat Retrofit

Long winter expeditions present many challenges. Keeping clothing, sleeping bags and gear dry while underway are a very big concern when the option to come inside and dry out is not available for weeks at a time. Over the years I have employed many techniques to keep moisture to a minimum but none will be as effective as having a small wood-burning stove in the shelter.

Titanium Goat makes very lightweight (2 pounds), collapsible and efficient, cylinder, wood burning stoves. For our upcoming adventure to the arctic we will be carrying the 22-inch long version in our retrofitted pyramid shelter.

We decided to use Ground Truth Trekking’s old Mountain Laurel, silnylon, mid shelter, which we and Hig and Erin have used many times in the past. This may be the last hurrah for the shelter so we figured it would be a good one to experiment on. I also theorize that since much of the waterproof coating of this shelter has worn out, moisture may have a better chance of escaping through the fabric. 

Our first task was deciding where in the shelter we wanted the stove and where the stovepipe should come out. We settled on having the stove in the middle with each of us sleeping on separate sides of the stove and center pole – allowing us equal access to heat. The stovepipe coming out of the upper, side triangle made the most sense.

Once the location for the stovepipe was settled on I cut a piece of fireproof fabric into the triangle pattern of the shelter and cut out a hole for the pipe, leaving the circle un-cut at the bottom. Leaving the material hanging means we could cover the hole if we decide not to use the stove and it also acts as flashing for the stovepipe. Once the fireproof fabric was cut I pined it onto the shelter and sewed it on, using cotton thread and then cut out the silnylon.

With that, the retrofit was complete and it was time for a test. Kim and I loaded our bikes and headed into the Caribou Hills for an overnighter. For a single night out we couldn’t have asked for better weather to run our trial under – we experienced coldish (10º) temps in the night and woke to a snow storm.

After pitching the shelter we set up the stove together. Kim stayed inside and lit the fire while I harvested wood. When cutting wood, I was trying to anticipate how much we would need for both the evening and again in the morning. I ended up estimating fairly well but imagine on our trip we will require a little more as we will need to fill two 64oz thermoses, dinner, hot drinks and breakfast each day. It’s hard to quantify this into volume but I would say three full armloads of burning wood and a supply of kindling seems about right.

First impressions are all positive. The stove only has one setting – on. There is no damper and the door does not allow for closing down. In a shelter that does not retain heat this seems fine and melting snow into water means you want the most heat as possible. Stoking is fairly constant, at least with the dry spruce branches we were using. Moisture from our clothing was soon dissipating out the top vent and partially opened door. Within an hour we both had full mugs of hot chocolate, dinner and damp clothing was dry. Before bed we melted another 50 or so ounces of water and let the fire go out.

The next morning was warmer and snowing. The falling snow created a unique problem – it melted onto the shelter and once we let the fire go out this turned to ice.  I believe the solution in this scenario will be to go out before the heat is gone and wipe or scrape the moisture from the shelter before it has a chance to freeze. Overall this is not too big of an issue as the next nights fire will dissipate the ice but it does make the shelter heavier and bulkier to carry.

Setting up the stove currently takes me around 5 minutes but I believe with familiarity we will be able to shave time.

Our model for the trip will be to alternate morning tasks. Every other morning one of us will wake up two or so hours before the other, light the fire and begin melting snow for the day’s water – a casual but persistent chore. This will also help dissipate moisture from sleeping bags and frost from the tent. We plan to alternate evening chores as well. One night one person cuts wood while the other prepares dinner and drinks. Both tasks keep you warm but the alternating keeps us fresh and in the past this kind of chore swapping has proved to be good for overall moral.

We have yet to experience strong winds with this setup but from what we have gleaned from others the stove seems to still work fine. The stovepipe outlet is well above the shelter and we saw no sign of rogue cinders coming back to melt holes. That said, I have little doubt that after six weeks on the trail our shelter will be pretty or hole free.

I also experimented with a lightweight bow saw that I made from a commercial blade and three pieces of thin, flat aluminum. Although the saw performed well enough for this trial run, I have my doubts. There is currently not enough tension on the blade and it wants to bend. We may end up bringing small folding handsaws. The jury is still in deliberation on this topic.

We are planning to rely solely on the wood stove for our trip and not bring a fuel stove. We will however leave my trusty MSR Whisper-Lite with Hig to send to us if need be. I imagine some camps will be harder than others to harvest enough wood but on all past trips I have found that as you go, people are generous with trail information. As is the case with all trips – you never know until you go.

DIY Beaver Mittens

I have had for many years a pair of seal mitts that have performed amazingly well for winter cycling. Many people prefer to use pogies for cold weather riding and I too often find them useful, but on extended cold weather cycling expeditions actual cycling only accounts for some of the time and chore list. Setting up and breaking down camp typically happens during the coldest time of day. Warm mittens are needed throughout and with all things bike expedition, why carry two of something if one will suffice.

My very close family friend, who I consider an aunt, made my seal mittens - anana Umara.  She is Siberian Yupik and grew up on St. Lawrence Island learning to sew skins from her mother.

My mitts are made of fur seal and the fur is facing out on the top, thumb and underside of the forearm. The palms were originally made of tanned moose hide. With a few years of serious use the moose hide palms began to deteriorate. After debating options I decided to replace the palms with Cordura. This modern fabric is waterproof and tough. After two years, the repair has proven successful. As an aside, I enjoy the aesthetic – modern primitive.

My partner Kim has been without fur mitts and on previous winter expeditions her hands have suffered as a result. For this winters expedition we decided to amend her deficiency and bought a beaver pelt to sew into mittens. Beaver has coarse guard hairs but very dense ‘down hair’, making it warm and soft and a good choice for mittens.

My seal mitts were made of four individual pieces, hand stitched together with dental floss. I used this pattern and tried to mimic, as close as possible, the workmanship for Kim’s pair.

Step one was laying out the pelt, tanned side up, and tracing a pattern. Once the layout was complete I used a razor knife and cut out the pieces of hide, making sure to only cut the hide and not the fur. I then moved to the cordura and cut out the palm piece.

Sewing fur has many tricks and I have much to learn, but one technique I picked up along the way was to sew through the hide, tanned side first. The other direction causes the needle and thread to bind with the fur and pull it through the stitch. This is time consuming and messy looking.

I sewed the palm to the top piece of hide inside out until I reached the thumb and wrist intersection and stopped. I then turned the mitten right side out and attached the thumb piece with a few pins. Keeping the mitten right side out, I sewed the thumb on using a baseball stitch.

At this point I had three unfinished intersections - two at the thumb and one at the wrist. I then pined the final piece, the bottom of the forearm, and continued to sew with the baseball stitch right side out. Once all the seams were done on the bottom forearm, I turned the mitten inside out and finished the intersections.

The mitten looked done at this point but there were a few steps remaining. A band of trim is needed at the opening, a tethering system and lastly I used a conservative amount of seam seal on the stitches.

For the trim I used a strip of one-inch cordura, overlapped the opening and hand stitched through the three layers. This piece of trim serves to protect the fur, is an attachment point for the tether and has a nice aesthetic.

The tether I use is based on images I have seen from turn of the century polar explorers. I use one inch webbing and sew four pieces together at right angles making a rectangle shape, big enough to easily fit over your head with hat(s) and hood on. I then sew either webbing or chord to the middle of the ends of the rectangle slightly longer than shoulder to wrist and attach the other end to the cuff/trim of the mitten. The tether should be long enough that your range of motion is never restricted but not too long as to become a nuisance. These mittens are loose fitting and it is ideal to be able to shake them off when dexterity is required and then easily slip them back on.

Layering is the key to this kind of mitten.  Temperatures can fluctuate wildly on long winter trips. Being able to regulate is very important. The outer layer should be too big to be worn with nothing else but supple enough to work with only a thin liner glove. The liner glove is the first layer but all subsequent layers are mitts. I typically carry two home made fleece liner mittens - one thin and snug fitting the other thick and loose enough to fit over the liner glove and liner mitt. They should all fit together without constriction. For cold weather, tight fitting and constricting gloves and footwear are to be avoided at all cost, as this leads to poor circulation and eventually frostbite.

Many people have strong ethics and feelings against using natural furs for clothing. For me, this is a complicated issue. On the one hand I am against unnecessary cruelty and believe fur farms are often a terrible idea. On the other hand fur trapping is a small part of Alaska’s sustainable economy and there is no doubt that indigenous people figured out what works best against the cold. Every item we use in life has some hidden, external cost associated with it. I personally try my best to be ethical in my purchases and weigh out the pros and cons. For me, this beaver is sacred. I can only hope that it lived a fruitful life, had offspring and died without unnecessary pain. It will now live on and provide warmth to another being who is greatly appreciative. 

Beyond the mittens I also sewed seat covers for our bike saddles, using two pieces of hide and a tube of cordura around the bottom perimeter, with a chord to tighten the cover onto the saddle. In the past we have used sheepskin saddle covers with great results. I believe the beaver saddle covers will be an improvement over the sheepskin.

Next blog post will be about retrofitting a floorless mid shelter to work with a wood stove.

Circling The Sound In Homemade Kayak

In the summer of 2010, Kim and I attempted a circumnavigation of Prince William Sound in our handmade kayak. Familiar scenes of surfacing whales, calving tidewater glaciers, and winding watery mazes lay in wait. But in addition to our desire to witness this beauty, we sought insight into the ongoing transformations that distinguish the region.

Read more full article here:

Circling The Sound

The Only Way Out Is Onward

Article I wrote, published by Bicycle Times, about a fatbike/packraft trip from Cook Inlet to Bristol Bay - summer 2013.

'Due to the high volume tires, fatbikes float. In general this is a good thing. If your raft sinks you still have floatation. If your bike falls overboard, all is not lost. There is however, a downside. Traversing the eastern portion of the north shore of Lake Iliamna meant riding in the water, a lot. When the water was knee deep or less it was fun and technically challenging but when the water became handlebar deep the challenge became keeping the tires down. The slightest bump on the lake bottom would cause the front tire to lift. If you were not decisive and quick, the tire floated up like a bucking bull, and you would be thrown from the saddle. For the next two days Brent and I became aquatic cyclists. From morning until bed we were wet from the neck down, laughing ourselves to sleep each night recalling the days ‘ride’.'

Read full story here:

The Only Way Out Is Onward

Hitchhike Alaska

This is a piece I wrote two summers ago about a particularly bad hitchhiking experience.  

Hitchhiking isn't what it used to be, or maybe it is and I have forgotten. There exists in my mind a romantic notion about Alaskan hospitality regarding hitchhiking. I have many childhood memories of my dad picking exotic people from the side of the road and hearing for the first time strange accents, and stories from unknown origins about unimagined lands from somewhere, obviously east of Tok, which was where the known world ended for me then. Some of these strangers stayed on our homestead for protracted periods of time and became friends, others got off at Carlson Creek pointed their thumbs and were never seen again, leaving only their mystery and good impressions on my formative brain.

As an adult I have hitchhiked somewhere between quite a bit and a lot. My late teens and early twenties were full of long distance road trips, seeing America, Mexico, and Alaska through the windshields of strangers vehicles. I am proud of some of these adventures and often cite them with more reverence than other more physically challenging human powered trips. Like the time I caught a ride out of Chitna in a Super Cub, or having my first real(ish) conversation in spanish with a patient Mexican truck driver on the road to Guatemala. An encapsulation of my feelings could be expressed by saying, that what's so great about hitchhiking is that you never know what to expect and often it turns out better than you could have imagined.

These days most of my hitchhiking comes in the form of finishing a wilderness trip that deposits me on to a road system and then thumbing it back to the car. Even though these trips are often short I have made many friends this way. More often, it is a great opportunity to hear a point of view from someone that I otherwise may have never met.

As a philosophy, I believe everyone should hitchhike some, regardless of weather you have a vehicle or not. At the very least it teaches you empathy for the poor soul who you passed by that night it was raining hard, but the Phil Collins song you were playing just reached the crescendo where the drums really kick in and you didn't want some stranger blowing it, so you pretended to look at something off to the left as you sprayed them with a puddle and commenced to rock out. Beyond empathy, is the mystery of the unknown. Rarely if ever is this a dangerous proposition. Topics of conversation in the past have enlightened me to a breadth of issues - pertaining to but not limited to: U.F.O's, reptiles controlling the united states government, international jet liners spraying an assortment of chemicals on the hapless populace, the Mayan Calendar and what it says about 2012, crop circles, the John Birch society, marriage, fishing, children, the environment, the World Trade Organization.... But often the conversations are less hectic and in general quite neighborly.

As a part time hitchhiker I have discovered some patterns. There are certain types of drivers that almost never pick up roadside travelers regardless of weather, time of day, distance of travel and appearance. In Alaska it can be summed up into one group - tourists. People driving R.V.'s, rental cars, and almost anyone towing a trailer with a boat. This seems to be an oversight on the part of the tourist for an obvious reason - if you pick up a local for the low low price of free you can have a tour guide to help get insight into the state. I have heard stories of people arriving in Glenallen, looking out to Mount Drum and asking locals if what they were looking at was Denali, only to be told that they were on the wrong road and looking east toward the Wrangle Mountains. This and other oversights could easily be avoided with mutual aid. If we could get the Chamber of Commerce on this issue we could be on our way to becoming a greener state with no capital investment required.

Two days ago my partner and I rode with friends from our home in Homer to the Kenai River. Our friends live in Anchorage and we all wanted to packraft the Kenai Canyon. The plan was for us all to paddle together, hike the trail from Skilak Lake back to the highway and then Kim and I would thumb it back. The day was amazing and the canyon did not disappoint.  We split ways around 9:00 pm which would seem late but in the month of July there are still many hours of direct sun light. 

Our first ride deposited us in Soldotna, and then we got two more rides in short order that brought us as far a Happy Valley - still roughly 40 miles shy of home. And then the rides stopped. As it got darker we realized our chances were becoming slimmer and slimmer. 'What kind of person would be hitchhiking at this hour?' people must be thinking. 'Maybe crack addicts or rapists'. It is hard to convince people that you are a good person in a few fleeting seconds even in good light, but nearly impossible in the dark. It was time for plan B. We decided to "camp" through the dark time and resume thumbing once it became light again in a few hours. We had not left home with intentions of camping and were very limited in our bivouac equipment. Inflated packrafts make great sleeping pads, but damp dry suits are a poor substitute for sleeping bags. As the dark time became darker a light offshore breeze picked up and it became apparent that sleep would not come. Plan C. was to build a fire. We must have looked even more cracked to the few mid-night highway cruisers. "Why didn't you call me?" a chipper friend asked. A. because it would be rude, B. because I can't stand to loose faith in my society I told him.

8:00 am the next morning we wearily walked our down our boardwalk to home and bed. We were both loopy from lack of sleep and felt a little rattled by our misfortune. Why in the hell did it take us 11 hours to get to Homer from Cooper Landing? I don't want to be afraid to hitchhike in the future for fear that it may take some absurd amount of time. I don't want to view society as selfish fear motivated isolationists. I don't want Alaska to travel further down the path of assimilation. We are a unique state with eccentricities that we should celebrate and hitchhiking is a great opportunity for drivers and riders alike to show theirs off.  I pick up people all the time and always will. Please don't be afraid to do the same. 

Spread the word.

Bjørn