The Northern Light

Media Credit: Kenna Bates Karl Wing biked to Homer this summer. [Click to enlarge]

Local UAA student and USUAA senator Karl Wing undertook what could be described as his greatest accomplishment to date: biking the Kenai Peninsula.

This summer, after completing Seward's Mt. Marathon race with a top-90 finish, Wing, always up for a challenge, took off on his adventure.

The first leg of Wing's bike ride was an 89-mile peddle from Seward to Soldotna. It was mostly flat land and was the easiest leg of the trip, which was a good thing; it allowed him to get used to riding on narrow shoulder lanes while gusts of wind from oncoming traffic nearly sent him to the ground.

When he woke up on day two he had to overcome asthma as well as complete body soreness before he could even attempt to tackle the hilly roads that lay ahead of him. After turning his motel bathroom into a sauna to alleviate his asthma and swimming in a pool to loosen his lungs and muscles, Wing began his trip to Homer, which would prove to be one of the hardest legs of the trip. Grueling hills stood as guardians to the promises of rest and relaxation that Homer offered. It would have been easy to get into his parents' RV and ride past the punishing hills, but Wing says, "The greater the challenge we face, the greater our minds and bodies become." He didn't give in and made it to Homer after about nine hours of bike riding.

The fatigue and soreness held him in bed much longer than he wanted the next morning. This, along with some errands to do in Homer, did not allow him to get on his bike to head back toward Soldotna until the afternoon. This late start frustrated Wing, but he harnessed all this emotion to tackle the same hills he faced the day before, this time with adrenaline on his side. He made it through and arrived in Kenai about six hours later-which was excellent because he imagined this leg of the trip as the most physically demanding. His joy was short-lived because overshadowing it was the fact that the next day's ride would be the most endurance-challenging leg of the trip at 155 miles.

He woke up feeling anchored to the bed but knew it had to be the day - he was going to finish what he set out to do. Traffic was terrible throughout the journey; a few 18-wheelers pinned him against cliff edges and forced him to keep his fatigued body alert. A flat tire, a wobbling tire and 16 hours later, Wing finally saw the "Welcome to Anchorage" sign and was instantly overcome with a feeling of the sublime.

After making it home and being congratulated by his family, Wing tried writing in his journal, but total exhaustion overcame him, and he fell into a long deep sleep - the joyous sleep of a person who has accomplished much at the end of the day.

"It's not over yet," said Wing. He has plans to ride from Seward to Fairbanks and back to Anchorage after next year's Mt. Marathon. It's a high goal, but "when he plans something, he keeps focused on it and does it," said his mom, Ursula Wing.

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