A few pictures from the Alaska road trip last month. Lots of pictures of road and snow. I would’ve taken more, but I drove the majority of the trip, so there are huge stretches of time without shots.

Day 1: Just across the border into Canada on the way to Prince George, sweet bus. Day 2: The roads were in great shape still. 185 km to Dawson Creek (and the start of the Alaska Highway), on the way to Fort Nelson.

The open road in British Columbia. Our first really steep grade of the trip (right picture), though it’s tough to tell from the photo. Overall, day two was by far the easiest day of driving we had. Nice weather, clear roads.

The 4-Runner and trailer (with overloaded front end that I had no part of loading) at a frozen gas station in BC. Day 3: Into the Canadian Rockies west of Fort Nelson. This was one of the prettier stretches of road, and exciting on the icy sections without guardrails.

Finally some wildlife, elk on the side of the road. See, I told you I’d get some blurry pictures of animals. And some gas station known for its boring hat collection. I walked in to take a picture of the boring hats and the lady at the counter give me the evil eye, so I pretended to look at their crappy souvenirs instead. Outside, some crows flew up and landed on the light post above the car, crowing gutturally at me until I fed them Wheat Thin crumbs.

Traffic had already been sparse, but it was really empty now, maybe one car every 10-15 minutes coming the opposite direction. Muncho Lake.

“This Means Watch for Wildlife Use Caution!” Well hey, the sign was right. Those tiny brown dots up on the hill are bison, I promise.

Okay, now you can see them a little better. Our guidebook gave us an Extreme Caution! warning about bison on this stretch of road and they were spot on. Bison everywhere, just lounging right next to the highway. The guy I was driving with had some gigantic lens for his camera and we stopped the car right in the middle of the highway (again, still no traffic) so he could zoom in for the picture on the right.

Definitely icy now, though in the daylight neither of seemed to be too concerned with zipping along at 55.

Welcome to Yukon! Look at that sign, classy. To be fair the highway crosses over the BC-Yukon border like six times in a twenty mile stretch, so maybe the Yukon Dept of Transportation doesn’t have the budget for a bunch of sweet signs. Yet another gas station, and it already looks like it’s getting dark out at 1 pm. Much of the rest of this day, the after dark portion at least, was spent whiteknuckling it though a blinding blizzard. If I hadn’t been driving the whole way, I would’ve shot some video for you. Oh well, next time.

I’ll get the last few trip pictures from the Whitehorse-Anchorage section up in my next post.

Well, it’s been a good run. When I started this site five years ago it was kind of on a whim to play around a little with web design that jived with my aesthetics, organize my photos, and write about nothing. I suppose could’ve had a free Blogspot page and connected it to a free picture-hosting site, but I liked having the total control of my content.

At first I didn’t have much to write about, but over the next couple years it was fun to be able to document trips and the great Oregon adventure. I thought a couple of time about stopping the site, but then Washington came a-calling and the site became a really good way to keep people back home updated on our new west coast life. Out here every weekend seemed to bring something gorgeous to share.

Now that’s all kind of winding down though. And lately I’ve also started to feel a little different about this Internet space. Maybe it’s the whole inane-detail-sharing Facebook movement that got me thinking, “wait, is that what I sound like?” I’m sure an undercurrent of narcissism is pretty normal in any self-story, but I finding just off-putting enough in myself that I wouldn’t mind pulling back for a while.

So, this will probably be the last month of slipperyamoeba.com (four more weeks or so). At least for a while. The last three years of playing in the mountains have got me completely hooked, so I’m sure there will continue to be adventures and I’ll probably keep something going offline. Maybe in a year or two, I’ll come on back and backdate some good stories and some better pictures. It’s been fun.

Mary bought me a surfboard off Craigslist to replace the broken one that I sold a few months ago. Merry Christmas! It’s a 6’3″ Superfish and should be a great board for the sloppy Lake Michigan waves (assuming I can make the transition from relative competence on an 8′ board to relative competence on a 6’3″ that’s supposed to catch water better than its size might lead you to believe). I doubt it’ll get any Michigan use until after the spring thaw, but it’s nice to have a board in my pocket again in case of spontaneous road trip.

So the next month or so will pretty much decide whether my life heads down one of two possible paths.

Option 1: 2010 rolls around, my work contract runs out, and I get laid off from my current job. I begin collecting unemployment immediately and most likely continue collecting (while looking for nonexistent jobs in GR) for the next 79 weeks (at which point the money runs out).

Pros: I seize this potentially once in a lifetime opportunity to get paid while not working and chase down every adventure I can afford. National parks visited, mountains climbed, circuits hiked, Michigan winters avoided, roads trips with dog heads hanging out the windows. At least one legitimate surfari (Baja?) or maybe just a few weeks straight at one surf spot: grungy, weather beaten, and thoroughly copacetic. Maybe take the time to learn another foreign language. When unemployed you’re supposed to available and ready to work while collecting, so foreign trips might not be the best idea, but I suppose I could afford to pause the unemployment for a couple weeks while traveling. Time for reading, video games, and sleeping in. Every idealized life of leisure scenario suddenly seems possible.

Cons: You can really only go down after a year and a half of this, so the rest of my life might be a bit of a drag. It’s tough to find people to go on adventures with, so I might get dominated by a bear/shark/falling boulder while soloing in the wild. The bank account would take a hit, but maybe not too badly with the Michigan cost of living (and I travel on the cheap, there’s no shame in sleeping in the car). Potential future financial hit as future employers question massive resume gap. Mary one day snapping and pummeling the relaxed dopey grin off my face after months of working, attending school, and taking care of a husband-abandoned house.

Or…

Option 2: My soon-to-be interview for a Biologist job (same company I’m at now, but different office) goes successfully. You, sir, are hired. 2010 rolls around and it’s back to the 40 hour work week.

Pros: Lateral career move into a field that I would undoubtedly enjoy more than my current work. Interesting field work. Financial security, potentially long-term. Once company-paid education benefits return (thanks a lot Bin Laden for ruining the world), I could snag a Master’s degree. Future employment options (CO, CA, yes?). Biologist is a much easier job to describe to people than Environmental Planner following everyone’s favorite “So, what do you do?” question.

Cons: Job interviews are stressful (especially when pushing the fringes of the job qualifications). Starting a new job can be stressful (especially with the lateral move learning curve). Adventures are postponed until they never happen. Fewer surfaris and more time shivering in Lake Michigan in sloppy blown out conditions. Button-down husband with briefcase scenarios suddenly seem possible.

I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me… but it’s hard to stay mad, when there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst… And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can’t feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life…

-Lester Burnham, American Beauty

My legs always feel different when I pull on a pair of running shoes, peppy and anticipatory, like the slight change in pronation has triggered some happy electrical impulse in my calf muscles. Wake up legs, let’s fly. Sometimes that feeling only lasts a few steps (replaced by knee creaks or shin complaints). More often it lasts a mile or so. I don’t run enough anymore to really feel sharp for longer distances. If I really push the pace, I’ll often get a secondary runner’s high buzz at some point, but I generally don’t push the pace.

In high school, during cross season, my legs would jitter and bounce underneath my desk every afternoon before school let out, ready for the miles. The feeling was magic back then. There were days when it seemed my feet were only just flicking the ground and I knew if I could just go a little faster that they wouldn’t be touching at all.

Those Icarus days are gone, but on the few days a month I still get out, I now love the way running connects me to me. I feel the aches and the fatigue and the burning lungs and the cold on my ears, but those aches also make me aware of parts of my body that I often take for granted and they’re my pains and a part of a life that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Running adds dimension to the world around me. There’s a tactileness, a thickness, to the breeze as it slides across my skin. Temperatures are sharper. The sun warmed just for me or the cold trying to swallow me up.

I went for a run in a cold drizzling rain tonight and let it all flow through me. I ran on gravel and bike lanes with car headlights reflecting off the pavement. Then up into the hills where Thanksgiving warmth radiated through homes with large picture windows and fireplace smoke tickled my lungs. At the top I stopped and looked out over the foggy valley, pricked with light, and breathed in the mist. The cool air nipping at my cheeks and my heart full of gratitude for my stupid little life.