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)