Living Well With Diabetes

When I started this tour I explicitly planned to not bring anything to read. I told people I didn’t want the distraction of getting lost in someone else’s world — made up or otherwise — when I had my own real world right in front of me to explore and experience. Plus, it was extra weight I would have to carry with me over every hill and mountain I rode over between Salt Lake City, Utah and Juneau, Alaska.

Well, as it turns out, I decided it would be good to have something to read while I was on the ferry. I picked up a copy of John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley in Search of America” at one of the many local booksellers in Bellingham, Washington.

It’s been a fascinating read so far. Even before I got through the Introduction (by Jay Parini), I knew this was going to be a book that would really speak to me. For one thing, it’s about a journey across America taken by John Steinbeck when he was in his late 50’s. I’m no John Steinbeck and I’m not in my 50’s; it’s the journey across America part that speaks to me. He talks about the urge to travel, the preparations for it, the day-to-day reality of it, and the rusty, rural countryside you experience when you’re not on the freeway. That’s what speaks to me.

I’d like to share with you something he writes on the very first page:

Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process; a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. I feel better now, having said this, although only those who have experienced it will understand it.

My plan, my schedule, for today was to get an early start and ride thirty-two miles or so to the “end of the road” at Echo Cove. Along the way would be excellent opportunities to see whales and, of course, bears. Well, true to what Steinbeck writes, that schedule is now wreckage on the personality of the trip. And around Juneau, a big part of the personality of the trip is the weather. It’s raining hard this morning and I’m not sure I, or my bike, can can stand another extended ride in the rain.

If today is anything like the previous three days, the rain will let up by midday. That still leaves plenty of daylight for my planned ride. In the meantime, I’m doing laundry, getting my new Dexcom receiver connected, enjoying the luxury of a tall cup of coffee from the local coffee shop, and, of course, doing some writing.

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The Mendenhall Glacier is the one thing that everybody has been telling me I must see while I’m in Juneau. Today, that’s what I did.

It was not a good day for visiting it. Actually, it was a good day to visit — the rain and clouds kept the tour buses away, I’m told — but it was not a good day for photographing it.

I enjoyed a leisurely cup of coffee while I waited for it to stop raining. At about 10 AM, it was only barely raining, so I hopped on the bike and negotiated my way through a series of intersections along the Egan Highway to the Mendenhall Loop Road. Four miles or so later, I was at the Visitors Center. I spent most of the rest of the day hiking the various trails which start at the Visitors Center. The Steep Creek Trail was one recommended to me as one where I would likely see salmon in the stream and bears fishing for those salmon. I saw plenty of salmon — Sockeye, I believe — but no bears. I was told the bears are attracted to the streams when they hear the sounds of the salmon splashing in the water. Well, the stream flow is high enough still that the salmon don’t do this very often. Thus, no bears.

After leaving the visitors center, I took the “back loop” of the Mendenhall Loop Road. There’s a lot less traffic on this section because it’s a longer way to get to back to the Egan Highway. When I returned to the bridge across the Mendenhall River, I took a paved bike trail called the “River Road” which goes through a dense forest along the Mendenhall River for about 3 miles. I was a little nervous about surprising a bear on this trail. I decided it must be a bear-free area because there where plenty of people out on the trail walking their dogs.

Here are some of my favorite photos from today’s outing:

When I returned to the hotel, there was a package for me at the front desk — my replacement Dexcom receiver arrived!

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Today, I rode my bike the twelve miles or so to downtown Juneau.

The main road to downtown Juneau is Egan Drive and bicycles are explicitly not allowed on it. I was told there was a bicycle route that paralleled Egan Drive. This morning, I spent about 15 minutes trying to locate it. Once I realized that pedestrian walkways at big intersections will basically take you to the bicycle path, then big intersections were much easier to negotiate.

I parked my bike at the Juneau Convention Hall and Visitor Information Center and explored downtown on foot. Exploring on bicycle would have been difficult due to the amount of traffic and the number of pedestrians.

On the way back from downtown, I stopped in at the Macaulay Salmon Hatchery and Visitor Center. It is one of a group of non-profit hatcheries in Alaska whose mission is to sustain and enhance valuable salmon resources of the State of Alaska. This one is one of the largest salmon hatcheries in the world outside of Japan. It releases about 125 million young salmon into the wild each year. In 4-6 years, about 10% of those salmon will successfully return to the hatchery to spawn.

Here are some of my favorite photos from my travels today:

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In one of my earlier posts, I mentioned some troubles I was having with my Dexcom continuous glucose monitor. This post is an update on those issues.

I spoke with Dexcom technical support a couple weeks ago and described the troubles I was having with calibrations. I need to transfer at least one blood glucose reading from a traditional blood glucose meter (a “calibration” reading) every 12 hours. I need to transfer readings more often if the Dexcom system isn’t “tracking” actual blood sugar readings well.

Technical support decided my troubles were due to a malfunctioning cable which is used to transfer the reading from the glucose meter to the Dexcom hand-held unit (called the “receiver” because it receives signals from the transmitter attached to my body. The transmitter reads voltage levels from the sensor which is inserted subcutaneously). That cable is awaiting my arrival in Sitka, Alaska in a few days.

The day before I was to board the ferry in Bellingham, I was camping. I decided to take a shower and I wanted to give my cycling jersey a good rinse out. So, I hopped in the shower with my jersey still on…and the Dexcom receiver still in the back pocket. Oops. As soon as I realized what I had done, I took it out, dried it off, and assumed it would be OK. After the shower, I couldn’t get a response out of it. So, I let it dry out for a few days while I was on the ferry.

I tried it again today after I checked in to the motel. It still didn’t respond to any of my key presses. I called Dexcom technical support again. They had me try a few things, but still nothing. Bless their hearts, they’re going to send me a new receiver unit while I’m here in Juneau. I should have it tomorrow, the day after at the latest.

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I left Bellingham, Washington on July 25 at about 6 PM under sunny skies and this morning at 4:45 AM, I rolled my bike off the ferry in Juneau, Alaska. It was barely light and raining a light, steady, all-day kind of rain.

It was not the arrival I had imagined, having to ride in the early morning in a steady rain. Still, I was happy to be on the bike again and as I rolled onto Highway 7 towards downtown Juneau, I realized I had just completed my goal for this bike tour: I had ridden my bicycle in Alaska. Alaska, the forty-ninth state, becomes the forty-ninth state I have ridden my bicycle in. The only one remaining is Hawaii, the fiftieth state.

Under the awning of the ferry terminal, as I was putting on my rain gear, I met my first Alaskan. He said “You should wait until it stops raining.” Helpful advice. He continued “Of course, you might have to wait fifteen days or so.” That wasn’t such helpful advice. He said they’ve had fifteen days or so of rain everyday. He said that’s unusual for this time of year.

The three nights and two days on the ferry was quite an experience. There were people from all over the world on that ferry and people of all shapes, sizes and flavors. It was a interesting maneuver to strike up a conversation because I never knew if the person I was speaking to actually spoke one of the languages I spoke. By that I mean English.

During the day, the ferry had some of the feel of a motel and some of the feel of a tourist attraction, depending on what deck you were on. On the Upper Deck and Cabin Deck felt like a motel, although very cramped. The Ship Deck and Bridge Deck were above that. There, you had access to outdoors and it definitely felt like you were on a ship, but it also felt like a tourist attraction because people were taking pictures of the scenery and wildlife all day long. There were half a dozen or so whale and dolphin sightings, but I was only able to see one of them and then I was only able to get a single, blurry photo of a couple of fins sticking out of the water. I quickly learned the difficulty with whale-watching: the ocean, even the teeny bit you can see from a ship, is a very big place and you can’t possibly look everywhere. To me, it seemed largely a matter of luck as to whether you were able to get a decent photo of a whale or dolphin.

At night, the ship began to feel like a refuge camp. I didn’t know this, but there are areas set aside for campers to set up tents. If you do this, bring lots of duck tape otherwise you risk having your tent and all its contents blow overboard. There’s also a heated, covered area — the Solarium — where people would sleep, mostly in deck chairs. This is where I imagined myself sleeping except by the time I got my bicycle stashed and I arrived at the Solarium, the place was packed and there wasn’t a single empty deck chair in sight. That left me, along with quite a few others, scrounging for a recliner or floor space in either the TV Lounge or the Forward Lounge.

The first night, I slept on the indoor/outdoor carpeting of the TV Lounge. It had the unfortunate characteristic of a floor that vibrated in an irregular pattern. It kept me awake for part of the night. The second night, I tried the Forward Lounge which seemed to have a steadier floor, but it was linoleum. It’s amazing how much harder linoleum is than even a basic indoor/outdoor carpet floor covering. It was also drafty and right next to the cocktail lounge, so the third night I went back to the TV Lounge and had a much better night except for having to get up at 4 AM to get ready to disembark at 4:45 in Juneau.

I’ve got a bunch of photos I’d like to upload to add to this posting, but for some reason, I’m unable to do that here at the motel where I’m staying. Until I figure out how to do that, this post will have to remain photoless.

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