Marathon Cleanup Ride, September 21st, 2008

By Tom Clark

On Sunday, the day following the Equinox Marathon, members of the Fairbanks Cycle Club volunteer to go pick up course markers, water bottles, cups, energy bar and GU wrappers, and all the other whatsit that ends up getting abandoned on the course. Clearly, some 99% of the crud must get picked up on the day of the race by the water station crews, but a lot of stuff manages to get strewn about the course by the runners, either intentionally dropped or otherwise. Either way, it's there, so we go get it. How noble of us.

We met at noon at the Patty Center parking lot. Jeff Oatley needed to be done by 2PM, so he took off immediately to go clean the section from the top of Henderson all the way out the "out and back" section. Gail Koepf went and cleaned Gold Hill Road. The rest of us (John Hufman, David James, Geoff Orth and myself) decided to ride as a group and see how that worked out. Quite well, it turns out.

It worked out that whoever was in the front of the pack would stop to pick something up, and the next rider would stop and get whatever it was stuffed into their backpack. So, you rarely ever put anything in your own pack, always in someone elses. This was much more time efficient. Someone else would end up in front and the packs would end up getting fairly even duty. Cool.

We were doing pretty well, collecting all sorts of stuff (but leaving the spent tissues on the trail -- yuck. Nobody said to bring hazmat gear...) and made our way up to the trail section off Kittiwake. After the first road crossing, Dave said "look out for the ditch!" Geoff rode up to the ditch on the side of the road and figured that he could just pop the front tire across, which he did, only it landed back in the ditch, sorta sideways. He went over the handlebars and managed to do a handstand for a moment, before collapsing onto the dirt road, unhurt. Cool crash. There were even logs in the ditch to help folks get through safely, but sometimes a guy's just gotta do an endo. There was a little reorganizing of the logs to improve rideability, then we were off, back down to Ballaine and up the next section of trail leading up to the top of Dalton Trail. We collected crap all the way, with most of the trail looking pretty clean so far. The runners weren't suffering just yet, so there were few wrappers at this point.

The trail over to the Large Animal Research Station (the Musk Ox Farm) was great, and we stopped at the fence to collect a bunch of flagging. Just then, a mountain unicyclist came by. Holy crap. Two pedals, one wheel, one seat. That's it. Out riding over bumpy, rooty ground. The guy looked like he was used to getting admired, but we didn't care, we admired him anyway. Wow. We asked him some questions which he answered, but none of it soaked in. My brain was still like "Dude -- he's only got one wheel!"

We watched the guy pedal off down the trail, turning his body in order to steer. It looked like the most incredible core workout you could ever want. No relaxing, no coasting. Wow. We agreed that we were no longer cool, not even a little bit. Just then we were joined by a fifth rider, Judy. I don't know her last name, but now we were five, and the cool factor went up a little. She was also riding a Seven hardtail. Nice.

We kept on, crossing Yankovitch into the ski trails, then down Lawlor and Lawlor extension, and next to the hay field. Just as we were getting ready to head down from the hay field, Dave discovered two broken spokes on his rear wheel, alternate sides. There was some deft spoke removal, then some quick tension adjustments, and he was underway again. It's good to be able to survive mechanicals.

We stopped at Dave and Karen's house to empty our backpacks. Good thing too, because we really started to collect crap now. Besides the course markers, there were lots of cups, water bottles, Gatorade bottles, GU wrappers, and other stuff, all the way up. When we got back out on Ester Dome road again, we were on the section that Jeff had cleaned already, and it showed. Only a couple more course markers, and very little garbage. We elected to just go up to the top at the second group of antennas, then turn around from there, opting out of most of the "out and back" section.

We rode back to Ullerhaven, the top of the Alder Chute. It was difficult to stop and pick crap up on that descent, but we managed. Had to go back once, on the steepest section. Then, it was just glorious coasting for much of the way down. I got very used to my brakes saying "EEEEEEEEEEE", the whole way. I gotta check 'em out, could be steel on steel.

It was pretty uneventful all the way back, collecting markers and trash. The best piece of trash that I found was a mostly empty water bottle labled "5", that had a ibuprofen tablet and a full GU taped to it. Geoff salvaged the GU. Other weird stuff was socks, sweatpants, lots of gloves and tops. Didn't find any hats. Thankfully, no underwear.

So yeah, great ride. Way better to do it as a group, as there's camraderie all the way around the course. Nice. Sorry that this ride report hasn't been very entertaining. How's this: Sarah Palin is my old girlfriend's secret lesbian lover!!! That oughta juice it up...