When I was doing care giving for Mary, a lady who had had a stroke she took me on a week long cruise with her to Alaska. This was in the early summer and I had been riding a lot, just about everyday all Fall and Winter. A free vacation is great but after exploring the entire ship (one day's worth of excitement) I was feeling a little restless as I was watching this beautiful wilderness pass by.

I really wanted to be on the land riding through the forest and smelling the freshness of nature as one can only do when immersed in it's surroundings. After a few days of fantasizing of riding through this land we stopped in Juneau. I tucked Mary into bed at 8 pm and told her that I was going off the ship to go for a run. This was a reasonably acceptable alternative and I was pretty happy to have the chance to get my legs moving and my heart pumping. Riding would have much better because the excitement factor is a higher and I was used to doing it everyday.

I started out at a jog to warm up, running through town and within two minutes I saw a guy stopped by a store on a pretty fresh ride. I couldn't help but ask him how the mountain biking was around there and before I knew it I was borrowing his girlfriend's bike that was only a block away and we were headed up a gorgeous trail towards the ice fields.

The scenery was incredible, the air was as fresh as any imaginable, we saw wild animals and heard baby bald eagles screeching for food. It was still light when I got back at 11:30 pm barely making it back on the ship before it left. I don't know if it was just extremely good luck on my part or if I did something deserving of such a wonderful reward but it was magic. It can still bring tears to my eyes when I am feeling sentimental. It was one of those unbelievable experiences that just the memory of can erase the frustrations sometimes encountered in life.