Alaska Man Monday: Texas Cyclists, and Another Cautionary Moose Tale

At last, it’s beginning to feel like summer! We’ve had a week of sunshine and warm days here in the Susitna Valley, and much as we love the peaceful, lovely winters here, it’s always nice to have a few sunny, t-shirt days in the summertime.

On to some interesting stuff from the Great Land and beyond: It’s always great to see the nation’s two biggest states working together in a good cause.

A group of 39 students at the University of Texas at Austin, split into two smaller teams, are currently seventeen days into a 70-day odyssey from Austin to Anchorage.
They are the 2026 standard-bearers of the Texas 4000, a yearly journey started in 2004, aimed at raising money for cancer research.
Each rider is required to raise at least $7,500 to participate, with many clearing that amount by a significant margin. The total raised, according to rider Aishwarya Kothalanka, is in the neighborhood of $350,000.
“And the idea is that we will be granting out this money along the route,” she said.
That’s a significant boost in research funding for one of the nastiest diseases humans can suffer from. Having lost several friends and one sister to cancer, I’m particularly glad to see this.

The cyclists aren’t the only ones pitching in:

Kothalanka, along with the eighteen other members of the Sierra team, were in Lake Tahoe, California, as of Tuesday night, staying with one of many hosts along the way.
“Typically, we are provided a space to sleep,” rider Nadia Toh said. “Sometimes it’s beds. Oftentimes it’s just space on the floor, which we appreciate just the same.”
The group has already encountered flat prairies, hot deserts, and steep inclines, with more challenges still to come.
“We’re already in bear country in the eastern Sierra, so every evening when we arrive at our place to stay, we need to move all of our food out of our vehicles,” Sierra route ride director Katie Chang said. “Later up in Canada, this is going to continue to be an issue.”

Oh, they’ll be in bigger bear country in the Great Land, but with a little foresight and all due caution, they should be all right.

Alaska Man score: 5 happy cyclists, dodging the Alaska moose nuggets on the road.\

Speaking of big critters: Stay away from moose with calves!

Five people were injured by moose in Anchorage this past weekend in five separate incidents, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
Biologist Cory Stantorf said the attacks occurred in different parts of town, but they all involved mother moose protecting calves.
In one incident, Stantorf said, a person was attacked on the trails behind Bartlett High School. The person was able to call the police on a cellphone, who responded. Stantorf said they ended up putting the mother moose down to protect the victim.
“They’re adorable but deadly,” he said, referring to the calves. “Because behind that cute baby moose is a mom who is very protective of her calves. Especially the first week of life, their defense mechanism is mom. She will be aggressive towards anything that she perceives as a threat to those calves.”

The sad thing is that people get hurt every year because they are dumb around a big animal. It’s entirely avoidable with just a dash of common sense, but the problem often is, as my Old Man used to say, that “common sense… isn’t.”

Alaska Man score: No score for this one. Use your heads, folks, and avoid half-ton beasts with babies.

Now, let’s talk about some mysterious appearances.

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