First Thoughts

My, my – over two decades have passed since I made a memorable tour through Alaska. Alas, back then I was not an avid trip blogger that I have since become – and that trip, in the summer of 2004, was one of my best ones. Now, pretty much 21 years later, I thought to jot down the events that I still recall. Needless to say, many sights and adventures have been erased from my memory, so this story will probably be a short one. To make matters worse, I took a digital camera that was quite new to me – and for fear of filling up its memory, I made only three dozen shots – rather stringent of me, I must say.

Interesting for me is that some of the memories are still really vivid, there are many stories I have told over and over to friends and acquaintances. Through some pretty deep searches in my Outlook mails, I have been able to gather some fragments of the actual route I had taken – I must say some sections of this surprised me twenty-odd years later, I had no recollection whatsoever – now, looking at the map, some shimmer of familiarity does arise.

Still, even to this day, this was to become pretty much the very best of my trips. Unplanned, as usual, having only a very vague idea as to where I was going and how I would head back. Back then, I was 33 years (“Christ Age”, as we refer it in Hungarian, that is the age of Jesus that he was crucified), in best strength and I had a very good bike under my buttocks, a shiny steel Rivendell Romulus. I had absolutely no doubt that this trip would turn out to be a great one – and it really did.

It began with a beautiful, 3-day boat ride from Seattle, followed by 850 miles of biking over 9 days – equalling some150 kilometers per day over amazing – and rather challenging – terrain. I hitchhiked twice (this is something that those long-lost mails in Outlook revealed), but both times it was for a good purpose.