Wanderings: Spring Tanacross, 2013

(sorry the formatting is pretty messed up on this one, the blogger is acting up and I don't have the time or bandwidth to fix it)

We returned to Anchorage May 8th, after spending a few days in Maui to attend one of Cara's Cousins Wedding.

We were greeted by unusually cold weather and remnants of a late snow storm that had recently passed through. We spent about 2 weeks in and around Anchorage, taking care of personal items, visiting with friends and chipping away at the laundry list of projects I have in mind for the Donkey to make our future trips a little more comfortable.

I added a small generator and a nice 3 stage 35 amp battery charger, installed an LED voltmeter for the house battery, got a warranty replacement for the house battery that wasn't holding a charge, mounted some lights, redid some wiring, installed a louder horn, and installed a larger fuel tank for the heater. In classic Ken fashion, when replacing the house battery I hooked the dang thing up backwards and did a very small amount of welding. I sure thought those terminals were on the other side, but I guess they mark them for a reason. I didn't appear to do any significant damage to anything, although the radio stopped working at that point and hasn't fixed itself yet. We've been using a small rechargeable Goal Zero speaker set and an old ipod for tunes, it works pretty good but when Cara want's to watch a movie on the big screen Ken's gonna be in trouble.

On a side note, the new battery will run my Edgestar fridge for at least 5 days now, the longest we've gone so far was 3 days and we were still at 12.3v. Much better than 11.9v after 12 hours.

About 5 days into our trip it snowed in Anchorage. Mid May. May is supposed to be sunny and warm. The year I leave Hawaii it sets records for the latest snowfall and lowest temps. Cara is hating it, she's freezing.

Our 2 weeks in Anchorage dissapear at a startling rate, before we know what's happening (which seems to happen with amazing regularity) Memorial day weekend is upon us and it's time for the next stage of the trip, Tanacross.

For those that don't know, Tanacross is a small Alaskan Native village on the Yukon river, about 12 miles by highway northeast of Tok, Alaska. Yes, the town is called Tok. Pronounced Toke. But my story is not about Tok (not pronounced tock), nor is it about Tanacross. My story is about the Alaska Sports Car Club and the auto racing weekend they put together that is held at the Tanacross airfield, about a mile East of the village of Tanacross. I started going somewhere around ten years ago, about 2003. Since then, I only missed 1 Tanacross (the race, not the village) fall of 2012 because I was living in Hawaii. I'm sure the event was a catastrophic failure due to my absence, and this assumption has been supported by an unfortunate lack of stories about drunk people stumbling around. But wait, this isn't a story about me, this is Tanacross.

That reminds me of something completely different. Instead of telling a story about Tanacross, I'm going to share a story about a little girl. She suffered a terrifying incident,and will likely cry whenever she see's a clown for the rest of her life. I don't know this girl,and she doesn't know me. Our paths will likely never cross again, but once, unbeknownst to her, they did. And this is how I made a girl hate clowns....

So I'm minding my own business, surfing the internet and texting while driving the Donkey across town (anchorage) for Dinner. I'm on a 4 lane highway passing though Russian Jack Park, and I notice a year old moose trotting out of the woods towards the road, as often happens in Anchorage. Well, no one wants to hit a moose with their car, and none of the moose I know want to be hit by cars, even if it's the Blue Donkey. I honk my horn, hoping to send the moose back into the woods and away from harm. The moose jumps, as much as a moose can jump, and starts running towards the road. What? Apparently my newly installed Hella Supper tone horns are effective at calling moose. A tip for all the hunters out there. I'm close enough that I'm not worried about hitting the thing, but I'm not so sure about the car behind me... I watch in my mirror as the moose gets to the sidewalk about to run into the street full of cars, but instead it makes an abrupt right turn and gallops down the sidewalk.

If you've never seen a moose run, let me tell you it's not pretty. If you can imagine a horse galloping across the plains, sleek and fast, with it's ears back, mane and tail streaming behind it, looking like grace and power, a moose has none of that. A moose is more like a gangly uncoordinated Jerry Lewis trying to be a horse walking on all fours. And this moose was an uncoordinated teenager moose, so it looked even more crazy.

Thats when I realized, about a half a mile down the road, there was a mother and two young girls riding there bikes up the hill. Which was also when the mother and her two girls realized there was rabid sack of uncoordinated moose parts flying towards thim faster than anyone knew moose parts could fly. They franticly turned around on the path and began a flight of terror. Shoot. I'm not taking the blame for aggravating a crazy moose and causing the first trampling of little girls in 2013, I better do something. I don't have a gun, and I only have a few seconds to avert the unthinkable. If I stop before the girls and drive the Donkey onto the sidewalk, the maniacal moose will have to trample us, instead of the little girls. It's a chance I'm willing to take. As I approach, and start thinking about how I'm about to be a hero, I notice the moose hang a left. It's pulling a Crazy Ivan! It bolts across 4 lanes of traffic, missing every car like a big brown frogger. That was amazing! Then it hangs a right, galloping down the opposite sidewalk. Why won't this moose get back in the swamps like all the sane moose? Well, theres no way they can hang this one on me, that moose is clearly nuts. I breath a sigh of relief, the moose finally turns into the trees and dissapears. As we pass the Mother and two little girls, they're still fleeing for their life, the smallest one was in the lead, not even riding her bike but running and screaming at the top of her lungs, well ahead of her mother and older sister. I wonder if they ever looked back to see the moose was gone? I don't envy the first clown that girl see's.

And thats how I saved Christmas. But at Tanacross, it was a completely different story. As lousy as the weather was, it wasn't looking like we'd have a very good weekend. Some people even joked about bringing their ice racing tires, as it had snowed just a week before. We braced for the worst, And headed to Tanacross. It's about a 6 hour drive from Anchorage, and things were looking up, it was the first real sunny day since we left Hawaii. I met my cousin and we caravaned up for a mostly uneventful trip.

Check out the reflection in the windows....

The drive was beautiful, we even got to see a bull Caribou on the road as well as several moose. Tanacross turned out to have Spectacular weather, sunny and well into the 70's every day.

Everyone wound up getting sunburned. I even brought the Donkey up to the starting grid, so some spectators could enjoy shade provided by our awning. After much racing, and many cars breaking, we made it through another Memorial Day.