Skagway: Alaska Day 5

Today we arrived at the town of Skagway. Skagway was born out of the Klondike gold rush of the late 1890’s at for a time was the largest town in Alaska with a population of 20,000 people. After the gold dried up at the turn of the century the population began to dwindle to its current level of 848 residents.

Just after getting off of the boat, we saw a stand where a guy was renting mountain bikes for something like $5 an hour and as we were representing Colorado we decided it was only natural for us to go for a bike ride around Skagway.

The bikes were immaculately maintained which would end up costing me later (more about that soon) so we had a great ride up to a viewpoint where we could look down on the town of Skagway and see the docks where there were 4 cruise ships at anchor. Because the population of Skagway is so small, the cruise ships coming into port effectively increased the population by 8 times while we were there! The ride back down that mountain was SO much fun! Nearly 2 miles of downhill coasting to make up for the hard work it took to scale the mountain!

It was after hitting up the souvenir shops that I ran into trouble. Being from Boulder, I was assumed to be the most adept at bike riding, and so I was nominated to carry a rather large bag containing all of our newly acquired merchandise in one hand, while expertly maneuvering my bike with the other.

This worked reasonably well until we were nearly back to the docks and the ship. Of course it had to happen on the one road to the docks, where everyone coming from or going to the ships passes, as well as the only route for the large tour busses. A slight gust of wind caught the bag and caused it to swing into my front tire. Now this in itself was not enough to do anything but startle me into performing the action that would doom me. I reacted by squeezing the front break handle very hard as I am used to my mountain bike in Boulder which has brakes in need of adjustment. These brakes however were finely adjusted and completely stopped the front tire! As a result I went headfirst over the handlebars and proceeded to flip the bike over on myself, all while my leg had become caught in the pedal.

The resulting wreck was nothing more than an embarrassing situation for me where my greatest concern was gathering up the gummy snacks I had purchased which were now laying in the street, but apparently to the rest of the world I looked like I had broken my leg and was lucky to be conscious. Buses in both directions stopped as well as the throngs of people going to and fro. Even a construction worker across the street stopped his crane and leaned out the window to ask if I needed his assistance. Fortunately for me I got off with nothing more than a scrape on my shoulder that didn’t even tear the shirt, but the contents of that souvenir bag were not so lucky….

The remnants of Dad's Coffee mug

The brake handle of the bike was also bent but still functional and fortunately the owner of the bikes made no mention of it when we returned them.

Later that night, I decided not to regale my new found friends with my tale of gracefulness and instead I decided to give dancing another try. I was pleased to see that my taking the dance floor prompted the arrival of no less than three more girls to dance with me, but I was a sore disappointment to them. No matter how hard I try I just can’t get passed feeling incredibly silly and everything I do feels ridiculous. I’ve decided I don’t need to try to stomp my feet in time to the beat which helped somewhat, but I still have no idea what to do with my hands or the rest of my body for that matter. The girls were polite and put up with it, but I know that I looked quite foolish. Before too long the more skilled and drunken dancers had captured the attention of the girls so I called it a night.