I don't know how this keeps happening to me....

... Again this summer, I've become known as a terrible driver. Last summer with trek after loosing my trailer twice while driving everyone regarded me as reckless. This summer, I've already had at least one formal complaint about my driving from one of our passengers and supposedly the cops have mentioned my name as a driver who doesn't obey traffic laws, speeds, and is generally reckless. I thought this week that I had finally recovered from the latest incident when low and behold before 8am yesterday, with a van full of passengers, I got pulled-over with two other guides in the van. The cop was no nonsense, he clocked me at 51 in a zone and slapped me with a $138 fine, that like three days of wages (and I work 10 hour days). It totally ruined my day and almost made me cry, it was also kind of embarrassing. If I hadn't already lost my bonus before, I definitely have now. Boo!

I thought my day couldn't have gotten any worse and then on my last tour I had a women fall off her bike and hurt herself pretty bad. This is a really shitty feeling as a guide and as a person in general.

No worries, I went on a bike ride last night and saw a black bear with three cubs and then went to yoga and worked on my hand stands some more.

Today, I knew was going to be a better day then I saw my boss. He informed that he has to write me up for getting pulled over with passengers, he claims reckless endangerment. 51 MPH on a flat road, reckless? BS!!!! I think that I'm going to contest the ticket just for the fun of it.

Female Dream Team

So there's about 15 people who work for Sockeye Cycles here in Skagway, three of which are women (me included). It finally happened today: Andrea, Meg and Myself led tours all day together. It was totally awesome, our second tour, no joke, was a bunch of lesbians and one family which I imagine felt mildly uncomfortable.

This picture is taken in Fraser, BC. We have this really cool tour where our passengers take the train from Skagway to Fraser and then we meet them there and bike them back to Skagway. The best part about this tour is that Fraser is about a 40 minute van ride from Skagway so as guides we get to party all the way up there, you know.. listen to music, dance, gossip you name it. I take it back, the very best part about the tour is that we can get to Fraser in less than half an hour and the train is almost always late. Meaning that we get to just kick-it (hang out) in Fraser (without clients). We usually have a little dance party or we hacky sack but because it was a girl party we took tons of pictures and, you guessed it: Double Dutched in Fraser today. We even left early (which my boss did not appreciate) to give ourselves a little extra time. And we're getting paid all the while (not very much, but still).

In other news, I fell off my bike today while leading a tour. Luckily, I was just tail guiding so I don't think anybody saw it, but I hurt my elbow really bad. I wasn't even trying to do any cool bike trick, I just wasn't paying attention. This could have been really embarrassing.

Update: I'm getting really good at hand stands. This picture is taken at the White Pass Summit (3,292 feet).

SE Alaskan State Fair

Hootie hoo! So I hate fairs, pretty much everything about them: fair food, rides, petting zoos, carnies, you name it. However, us Skagwains look for pretty much any reason to get out of Skaway for the weekend, and the fair is as good a reason as any.

I'm really glad I went. As per usual, I went with a group of dudes that I work with and that's why I was so happy to run into these lovely ladies in Haines. They are all Alaskan Mountain Guides (AMG) and really just fabulous people. AMG are our neighbors in both Haines and Skagway and I'm extremely grateful for that. Because even though hanging out with guys all the time is fun, a girl needs some female camaraderie sometimes.

At the fair, I bought some cool earrings, ate sushi, drank beer from the Haines Brew Co, listened/danced to blue grass and rockabilly music, and then stayed in a really cool cabin in the woods that belongs to one of the bike mechanics in Haines. Overall, a great weekend.

Now, I'm going to do some restorative yoga at the Rec center and get ready for another exciting week of bike trips.

I've put up new pictures on my flickr site, everyone should check it...

Atlin Music Festival

This last weekend, me and most of my fellow Sockeyes loaded up a van with bikes and and a canoe and went to Atlin, BC for a music festival. It was totally rad. After spending months in Skagway it is really nice to get away, even if it just for an hour (Wet Hot American Summer), we were actually there for the entire weekend. In perfect American fashion, I think we totally pissed off most of the Canadians we came in contact with. Starting with the fact that we refused to pay to get into the festival. A two-day pass was $70, who's gonna pay that? We were not going to give our hard-earned money to some Canadian tree-huggers. Instead we spent most of the day hanging out outside of the festival, listening to music, drinking, riding bikes and double-dutching. Our boss para-glided off the side of a mountain and then cooked us all beer-battered halibut, he even had a keg of beer from the Haines Brewing Company (beer+halibut=party). After the BBQ on Saturday we headed back into town to actually go inside the festival. I got in at the teenage rate ($25) and let me tell you that the music wasn't even worth that. The music was pretty bad but we made the most of it. I crowd-surfed for the first time. It was totally inappropriate. There was this girl punk/rock band. Most of the Canadian hippies were just jumping around when one of my co-workers got the idea to crowd-surf. Then we started a mash-pit. Nobody was amused except us, but we were really amused. In fact, I'm still laughing just thinking about the look on some of their faces when I was jumping into the crowd, priceless.

In other news, everything is so expensive here that I, along with my co-workers are now dumpster divers. Yeah, the grocery store is right next to my house, so during our lunch break or after work we go take a look before we actually buy anything. I got two bags of spinach and a head of cabbage today!! Luckily, there has been a lot of cottage cheese lately that is outdated so I've been enjoying a lot of that, which is good because I love cottage cheese.

I think the thing that I'm going to miss most about Alaska when I move back to civilization is the fact that it is so socially acceptable to be dirty all of the time. Everybody stinks and every body's clothes are permanently stained, usually with bike grease. I love it. I really enjoy this lifestyle. It's working for me right now. Okay, more pictures to follow.

Peace in our time and all time......

Slow Internets and Shady Cell Phone Reception

My apologies for the lack of blogging. I haven't had any access to the Internet for over a week, which is pretty weak if you ask me (get it?). I have done a lot of cool stuff though. For a quick review, I was in bike relay two weekends ago. We raced from Haines Junction to Haines. It's about 150 miles. We had an 8-person relay. We came in third but were pretty disappointed because we were, after all, the only bike shop to have a team. Whatever, I got to go to Haines for the weekend. And it was summer solstice so there was a huge party. Good times.

Last weekend, I did some Mountain Biking, and didn't mess up me face. It was great fun. I also went on a awesome hike last weekend which is where the photo came from. The road that you see in the photo is actually the road I bike down everyday for work. Pretty cool, eh?

Yesterday was America's birthday. There was huge parade, egg toss, three legged race, tug of war. It was all very festive. I had a great time.

That all for me right now. I'm thinking about cancelling my cell phone, which will make getting a hold of me even harder. If I do decide to do this, I let everyone know the house phone of the place where I'm staying, provided nobody abuses it (mom).

I'm going to try to post new photos soon.

Peace, Emily