Went on a sweet bike ride today.

My time in Fairbanks and the rest of Alaska is winding down, and I'm very sad to leave (Alaska in general, that is...not Fairbanks. Ha.). I'm trying to take advantage of everything I can do in the next week and a half before I fly out (on Saturday, August 24th).

Now that I'm spending most of my time in Fairbanks, I've been able to bike to work more often (when we aren't being asphyxiated by smoke from numerous wildfires blazing in our vicinity), which has made me bike more in general. I live on a hill that has numerous Nordic skiing trails that function as good mountain biking trails in the summer. I just discovered those trails a couple of weeks ago, and I'm hooked. Every non-smoky weekend day I try to go out there, and sometimes some weekdays. I usually need to drive to and from work on a day that I want to go for a ride on the trails after work, though, otherwise I'll be too tired from going up the hill back home.

Anyways, I went on a 10km ride today, a good after-work length, just to get the blood pumping and take advantage of the fact that some wind blew the smoke mostly out of town throughout the course of today (I almost suffocated on my drive in this morning). I decided to take my camera, too, and mounted my Sigma 50mm f/1.4 since it's a good, fast, general-purpose lens (I bought it at the beginning of the summer, and I love it so far). I snapped some photos at rest stops. It was a pretty fast, rolling trail that's very wide but has a nice singletrack that bikers obviously prefer. I don't really have anything to say other than that...it was fun! Here are some images.

My bike on the trail. My host family was nice enough to let me borrow one of their old mountain bikes while I'm here. And, although it is old, it was state-of-the-art back in its day. It has a Ti frame, great handling and gearing, and it's light and fast. I love taking it down trails like these.

The convention center(?) atop Birch Hill, where they hold parties in the summer and hub ski competitions in the winter.

Going down the trail.

Unrelated to the bike ride, just thought it was a neat shot...a sprinkler on the lawn on the top of the hill.

The trail.

Read: in the winter, there's a chance you could accidentally be shot while Nordic skiing the trail if you go down it while biathletes are practicing their shooting.

The end!