Sunday, July 12, 2009

Midnight Ride

The rain finally broke last night after two steady days of showers. Everybody was going a bit stir crazy by the end of the week, so Jeremy, Andreas and I went for a bike ride up the Haul Road at about midnight. There are "camp bikes" that are all over camp, which anyone can use. So, we grabbed a few bikes and headed out! It was a great ride! The one factor we hadn't quite accounted for is the muddiness of the dirt roads. By the end of the ride, we were all covered in mud splatters from head to toe. My last pair of semi-clean pants are now completely covered in mud... but it was completely worth it. We rode out to the access road of the pipeline and then up to the pipeline itself. It was a tough ride out since it is nearly all up hill heading away from Toolik. The last hill up to the pipeline is super steep and (I hate to admit it) but I ended up walking up part of the hill, which was just as fast as dragging the heavy mountain bike up! Once we got to the top, the fog was rolling back in and the rain was threatening to return, so we turned home.... down, down, down.

When we made it back to the pad, we decided that we needed to document the midnight bike ride since we were all so muddy. These photos don't do justice to the extent of the mud! We all also had racer stripes of mud running up our backs from the back wheels kicking up mud.

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