Day 72-73
   
   7/8-7/9/01
   Mile 5078
   Anchorage, AK
   
   For Sunday, Ken and I had originally planned to grab some other bikers
   and hit the hills around town for some interesting riding, but it
   rained the entire day.  Not much was to be done, so mostly we sat
   around discussing the cycling world and watching the Tour de France on ESPN.
   Oh well.
   
   On Monday, I followed Ken into work and took a gander at the printing
   presses at his shop.  Then I headed into town and toured the museum,
   where I got the answer to a question that had been bugging me for
   years.
   
   There has been a focus of late to concentrate on the Cuban Missile
   Crisis as a turning point in history.  It was, to be sure, but I have
   always considered it a mere subsidiary to another turning point much further
   back in history.  If William Seward had not convinced Congress to
   approve the purchase of Alaska from Russia, we would be living in a
   much different world right now, and the old USSR would have boxed in the
   United States from two sides, not just one.
   
   So why did they sell it in the first place?  Such enormous transfers,
   covering a considerable portion of the land mass of the planet, do not
   come about whimsically: there must have been forces at work that
   somehow made this a good idea for Russia at the time, and now I knew why.
   I'll share it with you:
   
   Russia had just lost the Crimean war of 1856, and it was time to
   re-evaluate her American holdings; the fur industry had declined and
   was no longer profitable.  Additionally, there was no practical way for
   Russia to defend it.  Worst of all, Britain had expanded to the point where
   it looked like they might dominate the Pacific, and having America own
   Alaska looked like a lesser-of-two-evils, a suitable buffer between
   the Russia and Britain.
   
   So in 1867, with the U.S. still reeling from the huge cost of the
   civil war, Seward had somehow talked his way into getting the U.S. to lay
   out much-needed gold to buy millions of acres of "worthless ice and
   snow"....which ended up being worth billions in gold and oil, and
   forever shifted the balance of power.
   
   Maybe we should have let him be a broker for a few other choice spots
   of land, too.  We seem to import a lot of oil....
   
   I later went through the art exhibits, and developed an appreciation
   for the works of Rockwell Kent.  This guy was no pasty-faced "artiste"
   churning out works in some sunless studio in a big city; at the
   beginning of the 1900's he traveled through polar regions such as Alaska,
   Greenland, and Patagonia on expeditions of self-discovery.  He even
   modified his dogsled to be an easel of sorts, so he could attach his canvas,
   and painted vibrant scenes of raw, gut-clenching icescapes barren beauty,
   the "spirit-stirring glamour of the terrible".  Once, shipwrecked near
   Greenland, he saved the party by climbing alone for three days across
   mountainous terrain until he regained the ocean.  He's been compared
   to DaVinci, a man who was good at everything - and he described himself
   as "a man who detested the endless petty quarrels and the bitterness of
   the crowded world - the pilgrimage of a philosopher in a quest of
   happiness and peace of mind".  I recommend perusing his works, both of
   paint and of pen.
   
   It was also a bit disconcerting to me to see quote after quote from
   him on the exhibit walls, each time thinking to myself, "this sounds like
   something that would come out of my own mouth".

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