Between Kosovo and Alaska - part four (Virginia)

I know I mentioned the movie Elizabethtown before, but I kept thinking about it. Tracy and I had seen the movie when we were living in Budapest in 2005-06, and the road trip montage at the end of the film was just so... North American (Canadians do them, too), it was something I had been thinking of since we knew Alaska was a possibility. I had the option of shipping the car to Anchorage, but it would have cost thousands, and it didn't really take much to persuade me to drive.

It's not that I like driving, because most often I don't. But I had been mostly living outside the US since I left Lehigh in 2010, and I had some feeling that I needed to see everything again, reconnect, and I knew I had friends and family most of the way from Atlanta to British Columbia. I now needed that - needed them - more than ever. My dad had installed a new radio in our old car, new tires, and I had arranged a detailed itinerary to Virginia, the DC area, and then stopping in Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, the Yukon, and then into Alaska. It would take 6000 miles (10,000 km) and three weeks. First stop was Blacksburg, Virginia.

I drove on back roads from Muscadine, Alabama into Georgia, then through Rome until I reached the interstate south of Chattanooga, Tennessee. I knew the back roads of Georgia and Alabama well, Georgia largely from driving to bike rides, Alabama from the long drives between Montgomery (where Tracy I were based at Maxwell AFB) and my parents' house in Muscadine, west of Atlanta. Those roads often included plenty of struggling communities, the occasional Waffle House or Dollar General, gun shops and churches. When driving past the small Georgia Highlands College near Rome, what looked like a 2-year diploma mill of sorts, I wondered if I should stop and drop off a resume at their HR office. I drove through Tennessee (even saw a QAnon billboard), into Virginia, and reached Blacksburg early enough that I could go out for double margaritas (doctor's orders).

Tracy and I had first seen Blacksburg in 1999, visiting Erich's parents who had moved to nearby Christiansburg after leaving Wisconsin. I didn't go back until I started working with Robert and Jenny, two Virginia Tech professors I had met through an odd combination of circumstances. Robert had attended one of our scenario workshops in DC in early 2013, one focused on Hawaii, and as a tsunami expert he was hooked and kept wanting to work with us. I hadn't seen them since 2015, and when their son Linus was maybe a year old.

Kids, make sure your glasses fit in your helmet (from Tour des Stations, 2018)

So let me start with Linus, because this has to do with bikes. I know parents can call their 5-year old kids smart, be proud of them, but this kid wasn't just smart, he was smart about bikes. He saw my road bike, and started asking questions about rolling resistance, gear ratios, power output for pedaling, stuff that I sort of knew in 9th grade when I started cycling. Sort of. I'm still learning. I couldn't fool him, but in another sense he was still 5, and was most impressed with me not by my bike, or my racing skills (the UCI license did give him pause- I hope he didn't think I was doping), or my bike kit (I have a memory of a very young Linus four years ago, looking at me in disapproval as I left on a bike ride-- he didn't think bright colors were for me, apparently).... No, what impressed him the most was my ability to take off my glasses and stick them in my helmet, all while cycling. This was revolutionary.

My biggest fan

The first morning, Robert knew I would need to go out on the bike. He said we needed to be on campus by around 10:30am, so keep the ride short, he said. Yeah, uh-huh.

The sun rose over the mountains at 6:15. I started my Wahoo GPS at 6:14, and I knew where I was headed.

The film Dirty Dancing was filmed outside Blacksburg, on a hilltop resort off US460. The Mountain Lake Lodge is 18 miles (29km) from the Virginia Tech campus, but the busy highway is a deterrent to taking the straight road. I had ridden there via the quieter country roads in 2015, and since I was preparing for Kosovo, I had mapped out a climb along the way. I didn't really pay attention to the math at the time, meaning I knew how high the climb was but not the short distance it took to reach the summit. In other words, it is damn steep. When I reached the top in 2015, I stopped at the hikers' shop (this is along the Appalachian Trail) and joked to the cashier about how unexpectedly difficult the climb had just been. He looked at me strangely, "Dude, you just climbed the Mountain of Misery."

I knew that climb. Every serious cyclist in that part of the country had heard of the Mountain of Misery ride, and I had just finished the final climb without realizing it. What a noob.

 

So this time I knew what to expect. The roads took me past campus and into the countryside, quiet winding roads down to the New River, fog and mist still covering the water. I was still recovering from a sinus cold I had caught on the flight from Istanbul, so admittedly my memories of that landscape are tempered by coughing and hacking. To me at the time, that all seemed symbolic. I needed to get into the warm air, I needed to exert myself as much as possible, and I just needed to get out all these toxins and poisons.

The road gently climbed from the river to the start of the mountain proper. It was much cooler than when I'd first climbed the mountain four years previous, so I'd hoped that this time I would be faster. I was in the end, by all of 23 seconds out of a time of 48 minutes. That was- not a great improvement. The climb itself is 10km long at an average 6% grade, though the last 4 km average 10%. It's a very quiet, winding climb, since most traffic to the mountaintop use the other road closer to the highway (and which is not nearly as steep). The only real disappointment was that there was no gift shop at the top, no T-shirts saying "Baby put me in a corner," or Patrick Swayze Christmas ornaments. I suppose there was the trail shop, but I reached the top before 9 AM and it wasn't open yet. I needed to keep moving, because I promised Robert that I would be back at the house by 10 AM. Twenty-nine kilometers in one hour, I could do that.

Baby was here

Back in 2015, I had simply retraced my route because I wanted to avoid the main highway. This time I took the main road, descending on extremely well maintained asphalt for 10 km. That part was fun, certainly more than the overly steep and winding misery descent, where in 2015 it'd been so hot I had to stop twice to let my wheel rims cool down from braking. This time I only had to lightly touch the brakes, and on the way down saw a group of students running the climb on the way up. That looked painful. Perhaps a hundred of them, their buses had gone on ahead to take them back down the mountain-- why work so hard when you can't enjoy descending? Anyway, a few of them even cheered me on, but their faces became more and more pained the farther back they were in the group.

Sinking Creek falls

The roads wound past Sinking Creek, and met up with the 460 highway, which led straight back to Blacksburg. I didn't enjoy the highway experience, especially the short segments where I had to climb, but at least the Wahoo map directed me onto parallel roads when it could. I reached the Virginia Tech campus again, back toward the house, and arrived just at the same time as Robert drove up in the car. I was exhausted, but happily so. (I'd ridden over 50 miles in 3.5 hours, with over a mile of climbing.)

We spent the morning on the VT campus, and this turned to disaster planning for Alaska. Robert helped me formulate a plan with the VT faculty and admins to share resources remotely, as a way of getting my Alaska MPP degree off the ground should I find I didn't have the resources in Anchorage. This was not a simple matter, since universities can spend years negotiating shared courses and tuition- we were cobbling an agreement together over two mornings. It gave me a sense that I wasn't alone and completely helpless, and after I'd written up the plan and sent it to the dean at UAA, she shared it with the provost as an example of how creatively (and quickly) I was trying to work through the crisis.

I left after three nights, this time bound for the Washington DC suburb of Greenbelt, Maryland. I was due to spend time there packing up the storage units we'd had since we'd lived in DC and before Europe, but the uncertainty of the situation had forced me to reconsider. Shipping everything would be expensive, and while Alaska had given me some funds for the move, a shipment that far would be horribly expensive, even more so if I had to turn around and ship it back, So the same morning I sent Karen the VT-UAA cooperation agreement, I called to cancel the moving trailer. But, the previous month this move had seemed essential, and so Greenbelt was the only place along these three weeks where I prepaid for a hotel room (and for three nights!), since under what circumstances would I NOT need to do this?

The drive from Blacksburg to DC is one I'd done a number of times before, but this time I chose to
stop along the way in the town of Front Royal, west of DC. I'd never biked through the Shenandoah National Park and Skyline Drive, and wasn't about to pass it up this time. It meant a very hot noon start from near the 7-Eleven at the park entrance, and after buying my park pass ended up waiting in the sun for a long time waiting for a construction crew to open the road. Skyline Drive is over 100 miles long, running through the Virginia Mountains, and despite my time living in DC I'd not biked it. But rather than do a straight out and back to a certain point (I certainly didn't have time to ride 210 miles), I followed a loop that only went as far as Thornton Pass, then west through Luray and then up a western ridge.

The first climbs go up about 1000m (3000+ feet) from Front Royal, and I was one of the few cyclists on the road that day. It was the middle of the week and excessively hot, with temperatures in the 90s F (30s C) topping out around 104 (40). The climbs weren't that bad and the road was in very good shape, and from my time in Kosovo I was used to mountain climbs. The heat did wear on me, though, and stress with a combination of travel food and lingering issues from my spring trip to Egypt, was not a good mix.

Shenandoah National Park, Virginia

On one long climb I saw a black bear on the road in front of me, which was a first. I stopped right away, of course, and figured he had right-of-way. I waited there for a few minutes, when a park ranger in a truck drove up and scared the bear over a barrier fence with a loud horn. I continued up the first climbs, descended into Luray off the park boundaries, and stopped at the 7-Eleven there. Without going into gory details, this is where my stomach protested violently. It took awhile to leave Luray, and the second 40 miles of the ride were really, really rough.

It was one of those times when even the most die-hard cyclist wants to call a friend and just get picked up in a car. The route back to Front Royal had only one major climb, a 1000ft (300m) steep cliff outside of Luray, then rolling hills through forested farmland, with only one small village along the way (luckily the gas station was open to buy water). I limped back to the car, drove to a pharmacy to get something for my stomach, and then drove around DC to get to the Holiday Inn at Greenbelt. After a shower, I only had the energy to order room service and collapse into bed. Then I would have to figure out what came next. (Strava record of ride)

I had only just started the road trip, with two long days of driving (and neither pointed toward Alaska), and already I was tired, at least mentally. OK, physically, too, though much of that was a deliberate attempt to deal with stress. The night before I left Virginia, I saw news that a timetable had been set out by the University of Alaska system. The massive budget cuts would have to hit immediately, and many faculty and staff would be given notice by late October, with two months before getting laid off by the end of December. So I had until then, very likely. Tracy would likely have to stay in Kosovo, I might still try to work and save some money from August to December, and then what? Not even tenured professors were safe under the budget cuts, so what was I walking (driving) into?

Between Kosovo and Alaska- part three (back in the USA)

“Sometimes the most scenic roads in life are the detours you didn't mean to take.”

― Angela N. Blount, Once Upon an Ever After

I left the bike cafe late on Friday night, the last of several farewell parties and bike rides, a quiet ending to four years in Kosovo. In some ways everything seemed routine, especially since Tracy and the cats remained in the apartment, and the only real difference was packing up the bikes and leaving no trace of cycling behind. In the morning I rode to the airport as I'd done dozens of times before, sat in the departure area with Aimee (another American leaving), and set for the flight to Istanbul and then long leg to Atlanta. I had no idea at that time what was happening back in Alaska, what political bombshell had been dropped about the same time I'd left the cafe late Friday night, and that everything was about to change.

With my Scott and Fondriest bikes, leaving Kosovo

What I didn't know was that at about the same hour I was leaving Kosovo, it was Friday afternoon in Alaska, and the governor was releasing a bombshell set of line-item vetoes that would set the state on fire, metaphorically speaking (much of the state would literally be on fire within weeks, but that's another story).

I flew from Prishtina to the new airport in Istanbul, a sparkling, multi-billion dollar project that was perhaps too fancy for its own good. I raced through (extra security check, plus layers of document checks before boarding a flight to the US), just wanting a bottle of water to buy, not a Hermes scarf or a Rolex. Then a long flight to Atlanta, where upon landing I tried catching the free airport WiFi to check my mail. At the top of my email inbox was an odd message from the dean in Alaska, saying in effect, "We'll work through these cuts, nothing affects you personally yet. Don't panic."

The new Istanbul airport

That's weird, I thought. I knew it was the end of the fiscal year, and the legislature had agreed to cut the university budget by 5%. But we knew that already, right? Why would Karen try to reassure me over something I already knew about?

The WiFi cut out when entering the immigration hall in Atlanta, and I focused more on getting through and finding the bikes, hoping they were in good condition (they were). My dad met me at the arrivals hall, we drove back to my parents' house across the state line in Alabama, and I tried to get some sleep. Ambitious as I was, I had set up a bike ride for the next morning near Heflin, Alabama, and had invited several friends up from Georgia. Jen wrote the next morning saying she couldn't come, but Jim was driving from Carrollton, and Betty Jean from much farther away in Monticello.

Jim, a geology prof from West Georgia University, had ridden with me since 2014, while Betty Jean was an environmental engineer and cycling hero of mine since I 'd read about her RAAM race in 2015, and we'd become friends and long-distance cycling buddies since the following year. They'd agreed to meet me and ride the Cheaha route to the highest point in Alabama, and met at the Heflin ranger station. I'd tried thinking of everything I needed for the bike to be ready, the Trek 5200 I'd kept stored with my parents for long rides back in the US, and even gave myself extra time in case a tire was flat-- as one was.

But, and this was a big but, I'd forgotten my shoes. For those not into cycling this is not a minor point, as our pedals (and especially my Speedplays) don't work well without specialized shoes. So  -sigh-  we drove back toward my parents', and then rode a simpler route along the state line. Perhaps that was for the best anyway, the Cheaha route is punishing and this was more social, and I could reward Jim and Betty Jean with my mom's cookies while overlooking the Tallapoosa River.

The big problem with the easier Georgia/Alabama routes are the dog hazards. Unlike the rather tame Kosovo dogs, in the South they seem to appear every 400 meters along the road, chasing after us and even affecting which routes we choose. On the circle where I took Jim and BJ^2, one long stretch can really only be ridden south-to-north, as going the opposite direction requires a long climb where dogs are free to catch cyclists. If doing it as a descent, the trick is to keep up speeds above 25mph (40kph) to prevent dogs from having a chance at getting to the road. Admittedly, it's stressful and plenty of my local friends have crashed due to dog attacks.

I preferred the Kosovo cows.

With Jim and Betty Jean on the West Georgia roads

Betty Jean and Jim were, as ever, good riding companions. Always strong but laid back, they're the sort of cyclists who never complain about anything, are never out to prove anything to others, and are aware of their environment. I don't mind cyclists who are competitive and always focused on the bikes themselves, but bike rides can serve different purposes, and for relieving stress over long periods it's better to ride with someone who works with you instead of against you.

There's something deeply cathartic about the bike, and not just as an exercise in physical exhaustion -- in fact that often backfires on a bike, where it can be difficult to sleep after tearing up leg and back muscles. There is certainly the dopamine reaction, the release of euphoria-like chemicals in the brain after pain recedes (especially hard mountain climbs), but for me it has also been the escapist factor, too. Getting away, either alone or with friends, onto country backroads that few others see, escaping the closed rooms where I would just be pacing and fidgeting, focusing instead on the mechanics of the moment: speed, gear ratios, climb grade, cadence, shift position, stand up, signal to others, shift gear again... there is a constancy and simplicity to what needs to be done, and it allows the mind to clear. Well, except for when someone puts a song in my head, those can take ages to get rid of (and Betty Jean has been known to break into song on very long rides).

Group ride near Carrollton, Georgia

Oh, and we went to Burger Chick afterwards. If anyone finds themselves in Tallapoosa, Georgia, this small shack is a must-see experience.

With Linell and Jen at Burger Chick, April 2018

It wasn't until Sunday afternoon that I saw a message from a cycling friend in Colorado (Lisa) who wrote with a link from the University of Alaska president, and she asked how this would affect me. I read the letter.

Oh f*ck.

It would affect everything.

There are times when you see a news item and it just stops everything around you, not in the world-shattering 9/11 sense of things, but language being used in what should be quite a conventional manner but you immediately feel things unraveling around you. It was the same feeling I had when I saw this tweet pop up, what was for me early morning in London when the Tohoku earthquake occurred (later revised to a 9.1 event). It was a slow feeling of dread that bad things were about to happen, that if I kept looking at the computer I would just see carnage.

OK, this was a political earthquake, but I'm trained for that, too, right? I was between contracts, between homes, Tracy still in Kosovo and everything balanced on a tightrope that had suddenly been cut out. So how does one even raise this issue at the dinner table? How do I write to Tracy to alert her to the news? (Answer: she's used to disasters and war zones, too-- the blunt approach worked.) And what would it all mean? I had previously been a budget director, so I knew that my own position was especially vulnerable, an administrator for a program that did not yet exist, with a contract that did not start for another six weeks. I was instantly reminded of the start of the Michael J Fox movie from the 1980s, where he was unceremoniously fired the moment he showed up for work.

I found myself turning disaster planning skills onto my own life, something I've done time and again but always hated doing. Contingencies, plans A and B and C and mapping out possible alternate pathways, etc, etc. It's enough to drive anyone crazy, and I won't go into details. Suffice it to say that even my scenario planning skills were sorely tested, working through alternate logistics of whether to go to Alaska, what should be taken from where, if and when Tracy should fly to Anchorage (she already had airline tickets, including for the cats), and if somehow I still had a job when I arrived in Alaska, how to start a new program when everything else is being cut.

I had already set out a detailed itinerary of the road trip, which was due to start July 9. I kept abandoning my bewildered parents to ride with cycling friends. Jen, of Kosovo and Albania legend, had stayed in the area longer to see me, and we circled Carroll County while trying to think of how to prioritize protecting my own job, Tracy's well-being, my university program, the related research...

Trying to sort out problems with Jen, cycling Queen of Kosovo

I do not even remember where we biked, other than we started in Bremen. Jen and I had become friends during the Dublin 420 K back in 2016, the same long ride where I got to know Betty Jean and Julie G so well. Jen had flown to Kosovo the following year, after riding in the world championship in France, and we had spent two weeks (usually with Gjengiz and Migjen) climbing the mountains of Kosovo, Albania, and Montenegro. So it was not just the bike, riding with her was a good way to clear my head, to keep from pacing the hallways in my parents' house. Jen had to leave for Canada, but I really appreciated seeing one of my best friends before she went.

Then there was Jason. Jason had been a close riding partner starting in 2014, but especially during the summer of 2015 in the time between Budapest and Kosovo. A soft-spoken Marine, riding with him was never so much conversational as physically demanding- we would push each other's limits, save for 200km or longer rides, when I felt I had to hold him back a bit. He never complained when on the bike, whatever I threw at him or extra distance I caused by poor navigation. He and I rode in some backwoods areas I had not seen before, pushing the pace on the Scott I brought back from Kosovo.

Linell is another story. Jen's best friend and bike/running partner, Linell was the Tennessee state mountain bike champion when she was younger, and apparently never lost any of her energy since that time. From previous rides with her, I had these vivid memories of her climbing hills on her big (53) chain ring, calmly dictating text messages into her phone, and then wondering why everyone else was staring at her. Pure energy and pure goodness, we also rode together on a long, rambling circle around Carroll County.

Rare shot of Linell slowing down to check directions

Riding with Jim on the 4th of July

I also escaped for two days to north Georgia to ride with Julie, another long-distance randonneur and professor at Emory U. She had invited me to come and stay with her and her husband at a cabin near Dahlonega, meant as a group ride but for some reason only I was brave enough to follow her around the mountains. Our roughly 200km ride had over 3000m (10000ft) of climbing, often the short, sharp hills that are easy enough at first, but increasingly wearing as they offer no rest. We were in the back of beyond in north Georgia near the Tennessee border, a hot day spent dodging thunderstorms, visiting general stores where Fourth of July sales had candy and firearms on offer, and where I was completely, utterly lost. Julie always knew where we were, and she did remarkably keep us clear of thunderstorms that we could hear crashing around us.

With Julie in the north Georgia 'secret gaps'

The night before the ride we watched the movie Animal House, my choice and perhaps trying to find some humor in university administration-- though I was beginning to sympathize with Dean Wormer.

What happened in Alaska on June 28th shattered not only my own peace of mind, but those of most Alaskans and others across the US. Ignoring the bipartisan compromise budget the state legislature had worked out over months, Governor Dunleavy had, with one stroke of the veto pen, erased $135 million of funding from the University of Alaska system, along with a number of social programs, infrastructure, and other public goods. No university in the US had ever been attacked like this, given a 41% operating budget cut the afternoon before the new fiscal year, and ignoring the majority of Alaskans and their representatives. My feelings were summed up here fairly well.

I kept texting with Tracy as best I could given the time difference, and give her credit for her coolness under fire. She emphasized that she'd be there with me, whatever we decided or what happened. It was a rotten time to be apart, though that had happened often enough in the past. But we had to sort out what the budget cuts really meant. I figured I would start on the road trip, and kept having visions of Karen (the dean, and my immediate boss in Alaska) calling me when I was on the bike in Wisconsin, telling me to stay in Madison because there would be nothing for me in Anchorage. I did not even know what to pack, not knowing how long I would be in Alaska, and I tossed out earlier plans to mail boxes of clothes and books from Alabama to my new office. The car ended up being packed with a strange mixture of summer clothes, emergency road equipment, my laptops, and admittedly a fair amount of biking gear (including and especially the Trek 5200- the Scott and Fondriest would stay in Alabama).

So on July 9, I left early in the morning on the first day of three weeks across the continent - first stop Blacksburg, Virginia, where my friend were experts in disasters and tsunamis.

Between Kosovo and Alaska- part two

“At the end of the day, your feet should be dirty, your hair messy, and your eyes sparkling.” –Shanti

With Miriam at the Woodrow Wilson Center

I traveled to Washington, DC in May to launch the new book with Miriam (please buy it!), an event where I was struggling with a high fever and then collapsed afterwards for a few days. I limped back home to Kosovo, finally got back on the bike for a few shorter routes, and then left again for Ukraine. Odessa was strange- I won’t get into it here, but between the disbelief from my colleagues over moving to Alaska and the realization that I wouldn't escape the war anytime soon, it was sobering to realize that I had to leave Europe in a few short weeks. We'd been in Europe for almost five years at a stretch, and it would be a shock going back to the US.  The plan was for a road trip across the continent, with Tracy then flying with the cats straight from Kosovo to Anchorage. Our car was still in Alabama, I would drive up to DC to arrange for our things still in storage to be moved, and I would have a chance to reconnect with the US and Canada on the road. Sort of like the end of the movie Elizabethtown, though over three weeks and an entire continent.

The summer would also be notable for trying to cram in as much cycling as a could between the middle of June and the beginning of August. There were really only two goals involved. I had to bike as much as possible in Kosovo in the two weeks before I left, and then once back in the US, I had to bike 1000 miles (1600km) in order to earn a Trek t-shirt. Yeah, I know. T-shirts can be bought in stores, they can be ordered from my phone while laying comfortably in bed, and there is no concrete need to wake up at 4am and pedal for hundreds of miles just to get a free one. It's funny how we react to small incentives. No one could pay me to work so hard, but for something I already loved, that I knew I needed (ha, no idea yet!), having a set goal was necessary. Promise that I'll bike 20 miles and I feel no incentive. Promise myself that I'll bike 1000 and I build up spreadsheets to make sure I reach the goal and don't fall behind, spend hours researching maps and charting routes so I can hit 1000 (spoiler: I reached 1000 miles my last day of cycling in July, in front of a Tim Horton's in Banff, Canada).

With Uta and Tracy at the Bike Cafe

I had to start the goodbyes already- Uta was about to leave again for Nepal, and we wouldn't see each other again before I left Europe. She had been a great influence on me and remains a good friend, so it was hard when Tracy and I had to say farewell (hopefully she can come to Alaska and climb Denali).

With Bashkim and the "No Fun Club"

For Kosovo, I needed to spend more time with my local cycling friends, and there were two other related goals that needed attention. I had not climbed the south side of Bajgora mountain north of Prishtina- I had twice climbed the north road, and once raced up the new and incredibly steep section from Vushtrii, but the long, winding climb from Podujeva had escaped me. Bashkim and I rode that once I was back from Ukraine, on a foggy morning where we climbed Stallova above the clouds, descending again toward Dyz, and then on the long slog toward Bajgora.

Above the clouds on Stallova-Koliq

Northern Kosovo road furniture

The Bajgora ride, which turned out to be just under 100 miles for me in the end, was an example of the challenges in dressing for a long cycling route in Kosovo. It was cold and rainy at the start, warmed up on the first climb, was cold on the descent, grew outright hot toward the start of the big climb, and on the way back we were trying to stay ahead of a massive thunderstorm. While we can carry extra clothes, the immense amount of climbing involved in Kosovo makes that ponderous- even a couple extra kilograms are really noticeable, plus bulky in the back of a summer jersey (in the photo above, you can see Bashkim was wearing a vest early on).

Local cycling heroine Vera (right) and her slower husband Lindi crest the Gateway climb

The route back included a new climb that had just been paved in the spring, and which (for some reason that now escapes me) I had named the Koliq Gateway climb. It was tough, 5km of steep climbing with rolling grades between -1 to +16%, so steep that tired legs have trouble moving at any speed, and this came at the end of a long day of climbing. I kept a decent pace up, but Bashkim was definitely slowing down, and was some 15 minutes behind me. All the while, I saw this massive storm front moving in, could see lightning and hear the thunder, and I kept wishing Bashkim would hurry up so we could outrun the storm back into town. Getting caught in the Grashtica valley with this storm would be Bad. That's not a joke- despite the lack of tornadoes and such in Kosovo, the poor road drainage and geography make rain storms dangerous for bikes, even more so when one considers roads covered in motor oil and full of potholes. Just before leaving Ukraine this last time I had been caught in a storm, lightning all around me on the Prison Break climb, then coming into Prishtina my wheels were submerged in at least four inches (12 cm) of water, brakes not working and the risk of potholes or slipping all around. Getting wet I don't mind, drowning while still on my bike would just be embarrassing.

Bashkim did finally make it up the Gateway climb, and we pushed on tailwinds ahead of the storm, which... well, come to think of it, for some reason it didn't hit Prishtina. Stupid clouds. (Strava record of ride)

Early morning to Mitrovica

The other goal before leaving Kosovo was really more Gjengiz's idea than my own. After completing the 420km Dublin ride with Jen, Betty Jean and Julie in 2016, a jealous Gjengiz had mapped out a 300km route inside Kosovo. There were a few variants, but essentially it called for a counter-clockwise circling of most of the country, heading straight north from Prishtina to Mitrovica, southwest to Peja, southeast to Gjakova and Prizren, over the Prevalla pass, and back to Prishtina via Gjilan. I wasn't a fan of the route, and my own variants had us skipping the Gjilan road in favor of a tougher, hillier route. I had frequently biked the Gjilan road over short segments, but it's busy and dangerous, and in the summer Schatzi season especially so. But Gjengiz had no one else who would do this ride with him, and I agreed to give it a try.

We left at sunrise around the summer solstice, figuring that an early morning dash up the Mitrovica highway would be safe and quiet-- which it was. From there we had a vague idea where to turn, but it was strange for me as I had done this same-ish route but in reverse during a multi-day ride in 2017. The leg from Mitrovica to Peja was green and rolling hills, with the Prokletije (Accursed) Mountains to our right. We joked about taking a short detour up Kulla Pass to the border, that without my passport I couldn't climb all the way into Montenegro, but it was the sort of joking bluster that masked our uncertainty over how long our planned ride would take.

Stopping at towns along the way, we restocked on bananas and water in Peja, and then found the main road from Peja to Gjakova was busier than expected-- plus, it was being resurfaced. For some 15km (at least) we had stretches where the asphalt had been stripped, leaving waving grooves in the roads and raw tar that coated the bottoms of our bikes. It was not at all pleasant. We arrived in the lovely town of Gjakova around 10:30am, having already biked some 150km, and had decided that we would rest for lunch there. We found a restaurant willing to serve lunch early, and indecisive between sweet and salty, I ordered a Hawaiian pizza.

 Gjakova bike lanes- don't go anywhere and are used by horses

OK, for those of you who don't like Hawaiian pizzas, I got my punishment. Apparently for Gjakovars, Hawaiian pizza is not just ham and pineapple, and in fact the fruit portion was a bit scarce. No, they seemed to think that since Hawaii consists of islands, that the pizza also needed fish, so they added plenty of tuna. Tuna. And not white albacore tuna, but the brownish, low quality tinned tuna that most cats turn their noses up to. Yeah, I ate it anyway. All of it. Carbs, protein, whatever. For some reason I was reminded of the Anne Bancroft lines from Home for the Holidays, "Where is everybody? There are starving people in the former Yugoslavia." Maybe the taste made me hallucinate. Even the memory of it makes me a bit dizzy.

The road from Gjavoka to Prizren was mostly flat, climbing toward the second city before the road disappeared into the Sharr Mountains and Prevalla Pass. Gjengiz and I had just raced on much of the same road in April, during our epic breakaway. This time I could tell that Gjengiz was slowing down. He had turned to running recently, and long distance was never his specialty, so as we crossed over 100 miles (160km) I was impressed he had made it that far. And I figured he would be done by the top of Prevalla, an HC (beyond category) climb to an elevation of 5000 feet (1500+m), one which we knew well, and while a fairly gradual climb, was always a tough effort. We stopped near the start of the Prevalla climb to fill up on water and take a dose of electrolytes, but he told me to go on ahead. It was a slower pace for me, and I stopped at one point to talk to a rival racer from a nearby Serbian village, who was coming from the other side of the pass. He was surprised I was leaving Kosovo, and said, "So, you go to US, and you must send back someone like you. We need serious cyclists." (Jimmy, you're up.)

Prevalla Pass (photo taken with Anja Kalan in Sept 2018)

Although I thought I was checking my phone, I didn't see the text I was expecting from Gjengiz throwing in the towel. I turned around and rode back down, which I was happy to say had come at the end of road repairs for the Prevalla road. It's a long. long descent to Prizren, and this time on the best road conditions I'd seen in Kosovo. It was a great end to my last HC climb of the season, and I was glad to avoid the Gjilan road on a Saturday night. We took the bus back to Prishtina. (Strava record here)

On the Grashtica Road leaving Prishtina

The last rides I took were familiar roads with familiar friends, perfect summer weather around Batllava reservoir, and the simpler ride to the Bear Park. I will always miss this rides from Lindi and Vera's bike cafe, the dodging of traffic out of Prishtina to the Grashtica road, the endless coffees and the stoic cows, the kids cheering us on from the sides of the road, I know those rides will always be unique in my memory to Kosovo. I saw most of the country that way, all the cities, hundreds of villages, the beauty of mountain passes and the scars of environmental damage. I could not imagine having a feel for the country had I just stayed in the city, writing from my office. And while I took a bike with my to Kosovo when I first moved in 2015, without Tolga and others I would never have explored so far into the countryside and the mountains. Thanks, guys.

With Tolga near Badovac Lake

With teammate Migjen and others at the bike cafe

There was one last thing I had to do before leaving. I had thought that I would miss it, but the Kosovo Security Forces had their ceremony for commissioning cadets into officers. I struggled to dig out my suit, scrounged for dress shoes to borrow (thanks, Agim), and tried to remember how to find the barracks in Ferizaj (they leave military installations off Google maps). Cadets had been part of my classes in Kosovo from my first semester, and I had taught them everything from information warfare to ethics.

I was proud of them, and happy that I could attend as they became junior officers in the KSF. A few of them that day had been first semester freshmen my first fall in Kosovo, so it was a rare chance to see how far they'd come. 

I'd wanted to think that I had learned a great deal in four years, as well.  The cadets and civilian students had certainly taught me a trick or two about irregular warfare in simulations, things so surprising I had to include them in the book. I'd learned about Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, I'd spent months in Ukraine working and learning Russian. We'd adopted two cats and rescued/rehomed about a dozen dogs to the US and Canada-- some of it seemed like drops in a bucket, but one had to try.

But I had to learn something new, live somewhere I'd not been before, get back into climate security issues where I felt more comfortably than tangling with Russian security services. 

Alaska would challenge me more than I could imagine.

Between Kosovo and Alaska- part one

“There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.”

― George Bernard Shaw

Kosovo winter ride in the Obiliq smog

January was rough. The air quality in Prishtina had predictably plummeted, with frequent PM2.5 concentrations above 300. There was a dark haze over the city, much of it sulfurous coal dust from the nearby Kosovo A & B power plants. I woke up every morning with a splitting headache. I couldn’t get to the gym, the weather prevented me from getting on the bike outside of the city, and once Gjengiz and I tried to drive to Albania, only to be forced back by blowing snow and cars sliding dangerously around us. One puppy we had tried fostering died of a parvo-related heart attack his second night with us. The president of the university had just been fired, and the board seemed to expect me to fix ‘faculty morale’ problems. I'm not saying I was having a tougher time than most people in Kosovo, but I was having a hard time seeing the future, and my body was rejecting the idea of any more soot-choked winters in the Kosovo capital.

Inspirobot.com motivational poster

So there I was on a video conference with Anchorage, Alaska, 8400km away. It was a late night (for me, morning for them) preliminary job interview, and the internet kept cutting out. I had to speak in sentence fragments, trying to answer difficult questions about management styles and experiences while often waiting 20 seconds for buffering. I could only try to imagine what their impression was in Alaska, but they later told me the biggest takeaway was my ability to stay calm for an hour of complete frustration. I had submitted my application to them on November 30th, arguing they needed someone with experience in disaster planning, and four hours later a massive earthquake hit the city. Apparently I made an impression. And so began the journey.

I meant to keep updating this blog through the spring and summer, but the anticipated (though often uncertain) move back to the US was hard to describe at the time. The dean at my school in Kosovo (RIT-AUK) asked me to keep my departure a secret, and in Kosovo even telling one person would have meant the entire country would have known within days. I felt guilty for leaving my students, my bike team and buddies (sorry, Tolga), my fellow dog rescuers, my friend and business partner Uta, all the friends like Ivana who had been so close to us during our time there. The thought of leaving them, not the place, was difficult. I felt bad for leaving my defense work in Ukraine behind me. The war was still raging and I had a role to play in helping, but going to the other side of Russia would mean abandoning that work. After all, who would be talking about Ukraine in the US come late 2019?

The in-person interview came first. I was due to fly to Anchorage just before the start of the Iditarod, taking the long route via Frankfurt and Denver, a 28-hour itinerary.

Before I left for Alaska, I received an email from Marie Lowe, the chair of the search committee, asking how tall I was. I stared at the email on my phone for a time, wondering what the heck kind of question that was for a job candidate, until my eyes caught the text below explaining that they were asking so that they could find a bike my size during my visit.

You see, cycling is what led me to Alaska. Last year, while recovering from the Tour de Stations I had starting reading Jill Homer’s books on cycling. The first one I read was her Be Brave, Be Strong about her Grand Divide race, but the others were about racing the Iditarod on a bike, a 1000-mile trek across interior Alaska in the winter. Her stories were beyond crazy, but I couldn’t stop reading them. I’d lived years in Canada and Norway, but had never been to Alaska. My Arctic work had been put aside a number of times, either by the Air Force (retasking us to Hawaii), or by needing to focus on the Balkans and Eastern Europe, or...whatever. But her stories were in my mind when I ran across the job listing at the University of Alaska in October. I had only applied for four jobs last year, and Alaska became one because I had longed for open spaces, clean air, I suppose the sorts of things I definitely did not have in Kosovo. And I remembered that during the January video call, the one period when the internet worked well and I could speak at length, was in answering the question about why I had thought of moving to Alaska. I told them about Jill Homer, about how I could only move back to the US if there was some edge to where I was going, some way to avoid a cloistered and overly comfortable existence somewhere.

Sunrise over Anchorage

I flew to Anchorage on a Monday, leaving early morning from Kosovo and arriving late at night (or 9am the next day back in Kosovo), with a taxi driver who had grown up in Skopje. With a hotel window overlooking the Chugach foothills and Elmendorf Air Force Base (JBER), I slept most of Tuesday, but had arranged to arrive plenty early so that I could spend a day fat biking around Anchorage. I walked from downtown to midtown (now that I live here, that seems crazy) to the Trek store, and started riding along the Chester Creek and Coastal trails- the same ones I now ride every day. The snow was plentiful and well groomed on the trails, the temperature hovered around -15C, and ... it was a lot of work.

Remember that I’m a roadie, so riding for nearly four hours and working hard, only to discover that I had covered only 50km or so, that seemed frustrating. I kept seeing people skate-skiing on the trails, and couldn’t help but think that would be easier, but I was determined to ride to Kincaid Park and back, part of the way to the university, and not completely wear myself out before my interview proper started the next day.

But the air- so clean even for the middle of a city, the views of the mountains, the lack of trash or stray dogs or illegally parked cars, or ... it was exhausting yet calming, thrilling yet soothing, and I only regretted not seeing any moose that day. I could spend hours on the snow, within and yet not in the city, the only people being skiers with their overly happy dogs running alongside. I was just flown halfway around the world (10 time zones) and was determined to try the place out.

Of course, riding trails isn't Alaska. The hiring committee, in particular Kevin Berry, had the idea from my Jill Homer references to take me outside of town on Friday afternoon, following the last of my formal interview and before my Saturday morning flights back to Europe. Kevin and I drove up to powerline pass near Flattop, with knee-deep snow and more real conditions for fatbiking in the bush. It made me even more appreciate the Homerian odysseys in the Alaska interior, or having to push the bike half the time, and this without all their gear and still within hiking distance of the parking lot. It was more humorous than anything, really. At one point, riding behind Kevin, my front wheel post-holed into a snow cavity, sending me flying over the handlebars just as he looked behind to check on me. His thought was, "Crap, the dean will kill me if I injure Dr. Briggs," while I was just laughing. Having broken and cracked bones in Kosovo and Albania, diving into soft snow was more like being a kid. It was a metaphorically perfect way to end the trip.

Powerline pass outside Anchorage

I received an offer shortly after returning to Kosovo, and negotiated a good contract-- the final verbal negotiation with the dean taking place when I was in Cairo, in the middle of the night overlooking Tahir Square. It was a promotion in my career to become an administrator, a chance to start and develop a new masters degree in public policy, a chance to get back into Arctic work and be at the front lines of climate change, and a chance to step away from the constant, existential stress of working on information warfare. Ha, well, Alaska would have plenty of surprises for me yet.

Celebratory martini while crashing a 2am private party at the Ritz Carlton Cairo

(continues in Part Two)