161 VERSUS 183 - A FIELD TEST

Nordic skate skiing is one of my favourite pastimes here in Interior Alaska. However, it has some drawbacks, as opposed to the traditional, classic cross-country skiing (which I also greatly enjoy). First, you need a relatively flat and at least partially groomed surface, without more than a few cm of loose snow on top. Second, the trail must generally be about two metres wide, and third, to get effective glide for efficient, fast, and fun skating, the temperature really needs to be warmer than -20C (-4F), and preferably, warmer than -15C (+5F).

Then, our nordic ski trail systems around Fairbanks, groomed for skating, don't allow canines on them, even if they are assistant editors and research assistants for prestigious on-line reviews. And, the local rivers (Tanana and Chena) can have high amounts of fast snowmachine traffic on weekends, posing a hazard for Homer and Mattie. So, when I was in my latest ski class last week (your lead editor is a professional ski student, been taking lessons for six years now, with no end in sight!), a very knowledgeable local expert, Jim Lokken, told me about some short skate skis on clearance at our local sport shop.

They are called "jibskate" skis, Fischer brand. On Fischer's web-site, it says they are for free-style skating and acrobatics. Jim said he got some a few years ago and has been able to skate on narrower trails than with his regular skate skis. Here you can see the difference. My regular skate skis are 183 cm long, the Fischer jibskates are only 161 cm. The are a little on the heavy side, but they have great camber, which  helps make up for their short length, by absorbing most of the energy of your push, with each skate stride, and transferring it to the snow surface.

So, I got these last weekend, for a fraction of their normal price. This past tuesday then, I  decided to test them out on some narrower, canine-friendly, but not too heavily used (at least on a weekday) snow-machine packed trails.

First stop was a portion of the Yukon Quest trail, near Chena Hot Springs, about 90 km east of Fairbanks. The Yukon Quest is the toughest, coldest, mushing race in Alaska, from Fairbanks to Whitehorse, Yukon, every February. It's usually much colder during this race, than for the Iditarod, which is currently ongoing, from near Anchorage, to Nome.

We drove out to the Chena Dome trailhead, which is about 10 km west of Chena Hot Springs. The Yukon Quest trail intersects it, only a few hundred metres in. Unfortunately, a large area of overflow ice was in our way, right off the bat.

So we had to carefully edge around that, as I did not want to ice up the gliding surface of the skate skis, which would then collect snow, and really slow me down. It was about -13C (+12F) when we started around 1030 in the morning.

As you can see, the trail was pretty narrow, only about a metre wide. With my regular skate skis, it would have been difficult, to impossible, to execute the main technique for skating on the flats, the V2 stride. Which is where you push off with both poles to each side, with each kick that you make. It almost does look a little like ice skating, but with longer implements on your feet, and poles in your hands.

However, with the shorter skis, I was actually able to V2, not fully, as the trail wasn't quite wide enough, but partially. This alone, helped me to go quite a bit faster, than if I was on my classic skis, kicking each one straight ahead, and poling with the opposite hand. There were a few short gentle uphill sections though, in the 16 km section that we skated out on. Unfortunately, one metre trail width is not wide enough to V1, which is the uphill stride. Where you lean further out over each ski as you kick uphill, and plant your poles on just one side, leaving the other side just a kick, without a pole push. You have to have your skis in a wider stance to do this. So, I ended up having to really use my arms alot to keep from sliding back, while I tried to V1 in a faster tempo. Not ideal for long distances. Jim L. said he sometimes puts grip wax on the kick zone of these skis, so he can use a classic stride to go uphill. But it does slow down the skating somewhat on the flats and downhills he said.

After about 16km, or just over 90 minutes (1.5 to 2X faster than if I had been on classic skis), I had to turn around. The trail was getting too narrow for any skating at all. If I was on some kind of race or back-country outing, at this point I would have to put grip wax on, and go into a classic stride, if I would want to continue. However, I wanted to solely test the skating properties of these skis, so I didn't do that.

We got back to the trailhead after our just over 3 hour 32km outing (including a 15 min. lunch stop), wanting more time out. It was getting colder as well, a mini-"Arctic Front" was coming through, with light snow and west winds bringing colder air in. The temperature had dropped to -17C (+5F) when we finished, and I could tell my glide was not quite as good, since my glide wax was for warmer conditions. Mattie and Homer too, were itching for more trail time.

So, we drove through some near white-out conditions to the Elliott Highway, which we then took 50 km north, to the main trailhead for the BLM White Mountains National Recreation Area.
http://www.blm.gov/ak/st/en/prog/nlcs/white_mtns.html
This is the NRA that has several cabins on an extensive trail system, that people can reserve and stay in, after skiing, snowmachining, biking, or hiking in. When we got to the Wickersham Dome trailhead at 1600 in the afternoon, the temperature had dropped to -19C (-2F), and there was a couple of cm of stiff new powder on the trail.

These trails are a little wider, packed down by more snowmachine traffic. About 1.5 to 2 metres wide. I've skated on my 183 cm skis here before, but had to actually take them off and walk, on narrower, uphill sections. On the gentle uphill slants like this, I was able to execute a decent V1, and keep up a regular pace. Even with the reduced glide from the colder temperature and stiff new powder.

But when we got to a steeper uphill section, about 8 km in, I couldn't keep up my V1, the trail just wasn't quite wide enough. So I had to duckwalk, or herring-bone up, which is very slow and awkward. That is when we decided to turn back.

Most of the 8km back to the trailhead were flat or downhill, which made for a very fast return. All in all, this was a great test, of these new skis. And we would recommend them for anyone who wants to be able to skate on narrower trails.

Our next step, is to "hybridise" them, by applying grip wax to the kick zone on the ski base, and see how well that works to allow us to do a classic stride uphill, and if, or how much, this will slow our skating, on the flats, and downhills. We'll give you a full report after we complete that test. Cheers.

VERS UNE AMERIQUE DU NORD GENTER 2040

The title of our article today, translated from the French, is "Toward a gentler North America, 2040". It's in French, because we here at the Alaska Progressive Review, admire Canada, as a healthier (but by no means perfect), gentler country, than the U.S. A Social Democracy, with universal health coverage, and more strictly regulated capitalism, in general. Which is why their economy is much healthier than ours now, they have strict regulations disallowing banks to venture into risky, destructive, loaning and investing programs, unlike those in the U.S.

Growing up in the 1970s, in San Diego, I suppose some people from other parts of the U.S. would think that my junior and senior high school education would have been very "liberal", biased with "revisionist" history. But that really wasn't the case, I think. The history and social studies curriculum did change quite a bit in the 1970s, all over the U.S., as our society liberalised, in general, to teach slightly more about the real history on this continent, concerning for example, what happened with the indigenous people. But not nearly enough.

I didn't read historian Dee Brown's shattering compilation of stories from indigenous peoples on this continent, "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee", (first published in 1970) until 1990, when I was 25.

http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9781402760662-1  It brought tears to my eyes on many occasions, documenting the broken treaties, forced relocations, battles, and massacres that occurred from 1492 until 1890 (the massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota). This massacre occurred when troops fired on a fleeing defenseless band of Lakota Souix people, killing over 300, well over half of whom where women and children. 

As we have mentioned before, if all the treaties with indigenous people that the U.S. government ratified through Congress, and signed by the President, but were later broken, were forced to be honoured, the U.S. would cease to exist, as we know it. And indigenous people in the U.S. are still suffering, with the highest infant mortality rates, unemployment, and lowest life expectancies, of any group, on their reservations.

In fact, one of the World's most well-known political prisoners, Leonard Peltier, resides in Leavenworth Federal Prison, where he was framed for the murders of two FBI agents, on the Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation, in 1975. http://www.leonardpeltier.net/newsroom.htm  He has garnered support from people and well-known figures world-wide, such as Desmond Tutu of South Africa, and the Dalai Lama. Yet he has been denied parole every year since 1980, and will probably die in prison. His story makes for heartbreaking reading.

Another book we were never exposed to, growing up, is USMC Lt. General Smedley Butler's shattering expose of the wars and subversions the U.S. was involved in when he was in the prime of his career from 1905-1930. "War is a Racket". http://www.powells.com/biblio/18-9780060838652-0  This should be mandatory reading for every U.S. citizen, as should be "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee". Butler's book documents how all the invasions and subversions of many Latin American countries he was involved in, were for corporate interests, and how they all profited. He also documented how the corporate world and politicians benefitted from World War I as well. It makes for sad, but eye-opening reading. The publisher's description reads:

"Smedley Butler took his Constitutional vows seriously, repelling threats to America both without and within. Shortly after retiring from a lauded career, the popular Marine brought down a Fascist corporate plot to sieze the White House. Concerned for the future of Democracy, Butler began to speak out against the venal motives behind many of this country's military actions. Written during the Great Depression, War is a Racket pulls no punches against a corrupt military-industrial complex, eager to murder both foreign and native-born  children for the sake of profit. This edition includes two other anti-intervention screeds written by Butler, in addtion to photographs taken from the astonishing 1932 antiwar book, The Horror of It. Adam Parfrey's introduction reveals names suppressed from a Congressional investigation that verified the right-wing coup plotted against President Franklin D. Roosevelt by corporate bigwigs."

And unfortunately, nothing has really changed, since this book was written, as several of our previous articles will attest.

http://akprogressive.blogspot.com/2009/10/capitalisms-dirty-warssecrets.html

http://akprogressive.blogspot.com/2009/08/making-out-like-bandits.html

http://akprogressive.blogspot.com/2010/01/remembering-what-he-died-for.html The current Democratic, Obama administration, is in every way, just an extension of the previous Republican Bush administration, with a more eloquent speaker at the head, the only substantive difference. Consider. Obama's administration is packed with the same banking/financial criminals who through their greedy, short-sighted actions nearly derailed not just the U.S., but the global economy, and who continue to receive "bail-outs" from the government. The insane U.S. defense budget, which is over $700 billion annually, over 8 times that of the next largest country's, China's, continues to rise every year. The immoral, and illegal invasion and occupation of the sovereign country of Iraq, in which over a million innocent civilians have died, continues apace, with no apologies or acknowledgement of the crimes committed, including torture. And, further escalation in the empire-destroying country of Afghanistan also continues, for no real reason (except corporate profits and political gain). Both of these imperial actions are costing hundreds of billions of dollars annually, with no end in sight.

When "health-care reform" was to be a highlight of the new administration, what has come out has been a capitulation to the greedy, deadly, health insurance companies, whose sole purpose in existence seems to be denying coverage whenever possible to people in need, to maximise profits. And, no recision of the unconstitutional Patriot act has been attempted, or even criticism of previous officials of the Bush Administration, when they tried to justify it, and tortures committed as part of the Iraq and Afghanistan misadventures.

Since both the Democratic and Republican parties are thoroughly under corporate domination, and the corporate media won't allow third parties any significant exposure, nothing seems likely to change in the U.S. Which means that at some point, it will bankrupt itself, or other countries will be forced to work together to force it to change. Which could easily be done economically. If China were to stop supporting our economy by investing in our currency, and if the global oil market were to switch to pricing in Euros, instead of Dollars, this country would be destitute, and would be unable to support it's bloated military and imperial actions. Much like what happened to the Soviet Union, in the 1980s.

This probably will happen at some point. Because the greedy corporations and oligarchs who actually control U.S. policy are not going to change, and the U.S. population is just too misinformed, apathetic (some say lazy, but we at A.P.R. think that is not entirely the case), and splintered into mistrustful ethnic/class groupings to come together and force real changes.

We think this will happen within three decades, if not sooner, helped along by people like this:

I think this satirical political sticker says it all, about her and her supporters, don't you?

To prepare you for this eventuality, for the past few weeks, we have been working on our vision of what a kinder, gentler North America will look like, by 2040, after the forced dissolution of the U.S., brought about by it's unsustainable greed and exceptionalist mentality, and concerted actions by the rest of the World.

We will tell you the story of this future history, how this continental realinement comes about, and describe each of these interesting, and some very different, smaller nations, in future articles. Stay tuned. Cheers.