We made it!

I'm back from Alaska, and it is slowly sinking in how amazing last week was. During the trip, I was preoccupied by trying to avoid the following: getting lost, falling down cliffs, surprising a bear, and cow parsnip slaps to the face (AK's version of poison ivy). It turns out that hiking 4 out of 7 days without a trail in Alaska is difficult! But well worth it when you don't run into another person for four days. I was constantly in awe of the scenery but in an "oh, I should look up for a moment and appreciate how freaking awesome this is" kind of way, but rarely had time to just sit and take it all in. Occasionally my awe turned into, "what the crap, we're supposed to go over/through that??"
Now that I have had a few days to appreciate showers, dry clothes, and food, I wish we were still on the trail. Chris took 700 pictures, and we narrowed those down to 200 last night. One of my priorities in the next few days will be to post just a few of these and share some more of our adventures. So check back later!

Pre-Alaska backpack trip: T-5 days!

Wow, planning for this trip is a lot of work. Especially since so much of it is being done last minute. Saturday night we spent several hours grocery shopping. It was fun looking for foods with the most calories and fat. Our food will mostly consist of granola or oatmeal for breakfast; summer sausage and cheese for lunch; trail mix, dried fruit, and bars for snacks; and dehydrated dinners. Last night was the real challenge, we spent almost 5 hours getting together all of our gear and agonizing over how to fit all of our food into a ~100 cubic inch canister ("designed to carry 6-person days of food"). There were a couple of things that we kind of skimped on because of space. I think we have enough food but I don't think I will ever feel full. If you know me at all, you know I like to eat, so this will be a challenge. The bear vault is frustrating because normally I wouldn't mind at all carrying extra weight in food. But that's not an option unless you want to lug around another heavy, bulky canister that you won't even need after the first two days. You aren't required to use bear vaults in the Chugach, but it seems pretty necessary since I think treeline is pretty low up there.

Tonight we went to Jax and bought some mosquito netting, liner gloves, and bear bells. Actually the mosquito netting we bought is made for bee keepers. It is very stylish and I'm sure we'll have some great pictures.

Chris just stressed me out because he thinks we have less than 1700 calories per person per day. I am pretty sure this is how much I burn in a day when I sit on my ass. So I'm going to go and reanalyze this food situation.

According to: http://jwbasecamp.com/Articles/Weight_Loss/Weight_Loss.html
Basal calories = 1392
+ Calories burned in 6 hours of backpacking: 3672
= 5064 calories.
Also apparently you burn 10% of the calories you consume just digesting it.
And if you burn 3500 more calories than you eat, you lose 1 pound. Usually I would be super excited to lose some weight, especially since it will probably be fat as we'll be building muscle as we hike. But ... 5000-1700 is almost 3500 calorie defecit each day. I could potentially lose 7 pounds in one week and this does not seem very conducive to my half ironman training/racing. That is why I am a little stressed about it. I've been trying really hard all summer to take care of myself, and this might negate some of it. Then again, coming back from Alaska leaner might make me faster. Who knows. All of this talk is making me hungry though, so I have to go eat.

Where the heck is my brain???

Any spare minute this weekend, all I could think was, "Wow, I should do some work, I have SOOO much to do!" So now it's finally Monday and I have hours to do nothing but work, and guess what?? I can't focus at all. Ridiculous! My brain is strewn around several places ... anchorage, half ironman in 4 weeks, my bed (I got less than 5 hrs of sleep last night which is never good). I am partly focused on work but just can't get into it.

Also my attempt to not drink coffee leading up to Alaska failed miserably. I am just not getting enough sleep and training to much to go without it. Also tomorrow night I'm seeing *a movie* (that which must not be named) at 12:04 AM, so I will definitely be having coffee Wed. So what's the point.

I have a lot to say but might actually be getting the productivity bug. Actually I am just hoping 12:00 gets here soon so I can eat lunch - I'm hungry!!

Some pictures

Well our servers are being EXTREMELY uncooperative today, so I can't really get much work done (although I really need to organize my desk but that can wait). So I'm just going to put up a couple of pictures from the last few weeks. The first 2 are from an absolutely amazing storm that passed through Fort Collins a few weeks ago. There was a ton of cloud-ground lightening near my house that lasted for over 1.5 hours. I've never seen such an amazing storm, and luckily for our garden we only got rain (we only got about half an inch but some places nearby got up to 3 inches in about 1 hour!) and no hail. The last is of me hiking when I went to Mt Spalding near Bierstadt. Here you go!
From our back yard:

From the front yard:

Hiking:

Welcome summer!

I am a little behind the rest of the world on this one, but I would like to welcome summer to my life. Sure, the season began a few weeks ago but I'm talking about the kind of summer where you can leave work at work and enjoy the beautiful weather and good times with friends as much as possible.

Yesterday was a great start - I slept until 10!!! Wow, I didn't even know that was still possible! Then I cleaned the kitchen (Ok, it's not all fun and games), and then ran a million errands, but all on my bike. I was worried it would be really hot but some clouds rolled in so the weather was perfect. My longest stop was at the CSU library. Chris and I are going on a roadtrip this weekend and have decided to not use the internet for planning it. So we've been gathering information from this paper things called maps and then from these stacks of paper called books. Did you know that the library has guide books for travel, and tons of maps, including some trails illustrated maps and USGS topo maps for the whole country??? It took me almost 2 hours to find everything I wanted, but I think we are set. Plus, I got 6 topo maps for Alaska, which Chris and I are going to pour over this weekend. And, to top it all off, I got a "roadside geology of wyoming" book, so I know it's going to be a good weekend. :)

I also went to the Bean Cycle. I really love that place. It's a good place to work but also has a book store in it, so yesterday I went just to browse through the books, and finally decided on Memoirs of a Geisha. It was used and so only $5, sweet. I ran a few more errands, including a trip to the grocery store, so by the time I got home the bike-a-boose was completely loaded down and I was exhausted!

I had two big workouts I was hoping to do yesterday but realized when I got home that I am almost as burnt out from training as I am from work. So I skipped them, hahaha! I am glad I have the next few days off because I will need to get a lot of training in the next 2 weeks before leaving for Alaska. But one thing you definitely learn from training for something is when to listen to your body when it's saying, "Stop, please!! I'm tired!" The rest is worthwhile and will make the training afterward more effective.

Speaking of training, there is a pretty big workout I need to do today and so should get going. 2:15 bike and a 45 minute run! Yikes .... Happy fourth of july!

Observations

I have now officially decided that 4 days between turning in the written and having the oral exam is not enough time, especially if you take 1 day off to recuperate and then spend another day in a zombie-like state because you hiked too much on your day off.

Also tomorrow I will test the "imposter hypothesis" - which is basically when I find out if my committee finds out I am faking it or if they think I am actually smart.

Finally the helicopter is about to land on the building again so I better go.