"Life of Perpetual Motion"

Charlie MacInnes, in his mid-60s, ready for another long bike trek.

LIFE OF PERPETUAL MOTION

JULY 2012

It was difficult not to be impressed by the physical abilities of Charlie MacInnes.

In December 1979, for his Christmas vacation, he spent nearly two weeks bicycling 1,116 miles from San Diego, California, to Cabo San Lucas at the southern tip of the Baja peninsula in Mexico.

On the first day of this trip, he was nudged off his bike in San Diego traffic by the box of a camper truck driven—as MacInnes wrote later in his diary—by “an overweight American tourist.” Despite abrasions to his left elbow and right leg, he climbed right back on his bike, determined not to allow a bad beginning to ruin his entire vacation.

MacInnes was 66 years old at the time.

In his mid-60s, Charlie MacInnes was a lean machine. After the effort of the Baja bike tour, he weighed only 137 pounds (down about 10 pounds from his usual weight), and stood 5-foot-9½ in his bare feet. In a photo accompanying a January 1980 Cheechako News article about the bike trip, MacInnes is seen standing next to his touring bike and facing the photographer. Evident even in grainy black-and-white is his squarish, handsome face, coupled with his wiry arms, tapered chest, thin waist, and muscular legs—a chiseled form atypical for a man his age.

But that strong frame was no fluke of genetics. It had been carved through the hard work of a lifetime on the move, years of self-propulsion by a man who eschewed most mechanized traveled in favor of whatever distance he could cover under his own power.

MacInnes, and his wife, Kit, preferred to glide on skis, run on their own two feet, mush sled dogs, and ride bicycles—and so that’s what they did, decade after decade. Starting in their 20s, they ventured outdoors and began moving forward, producing some striking results:

Kit MacInnes competes in a sled dog race in 1955.

·         They both competed in the dogsledding sprint races at Fur Rendezvous and elsewhere from the late 1940s until the early 1960s. In 1961, at the age of 42, Kit won the Women’s Championship for the third time. Charlie won a number of preliminary events and finished high in the finals many times.

·         Charlie, at the age of 64 in 1977, competed in a marathon on the Resurrection Pass Trail.

·         In her late 60s, Kit, petite and only five feet tall, was still competing in races with her daughter, Ann (MacInnes) Mize.

·         In his early 70s, Charlie once rode his bike from their home on Mackey Lake Road to the end of the spit in Homer, intending to ride back far enough to earn a “century”—a 100-mile day—before calling to have someone drive down and pick him up. Instead, he felt so good that day that he decided to ride on home. Upon his arrival, he determined that he was close to a “double-century,” so he kept going. He headed north and then doubled back to earn his total.

·         Both Charlie and Kit stayed physically active into their early 80s.

According to the MacInneses’ good friend, Alan Boraas, all this fitness, particularly during their geriatric years, ran counter to the medical wisdom that prevailed when Charlie and Kit were growing up and even in their early adulthood.

“At the time, the wisdom was that you stopped doing sports in your teens or early 20s,” Boraas said. “(After that) it wasn’t seemly to be running. Doctors felt it was a stress on the heart. And both Charlie and Kit were of the opinion, contrary to what medicine said, that they loved (vigorous exercise), and it was meaningful to them.”

“I don’t think Charlie or Kit ever even considered the thought that getting older meant that they could do less,” Boraas said. “And Charlie was certainly aware that he didn’t have the stamina that he did when he was younger—Kit, too, probably. He was aware that he wasn’t as fast—but that didn’t matter. He thought, ‘What’s the percent of my ability that I can do?’ And so they always pushed to the 90 percent of whatever age they were. And they had great admiration for those that did the same at their age.”

 “It was the body that was important,” Boraas continued. “It was what the body could do. And that’s a fact that a lot of people miss today. Well, for Charlie and Kit exercise was a joy. It was the meaning of life. And so the body was a vehicle for the two of them to embrace that life. And that’s the significance. They didn’t sculpt their bodies to look good. They created hard, muscular, endurance-based bodies in order to enjoy those endurance activities that they loved.”

Ski touring with their dogs in Turnagain Pass in 1992.

 

It was that mindset and that endurance-based body that allowed Charlie (as part of a 20-person guided group of mixed ages) to pedal more than 1,100 miles through dry desert country in his mid-60s—an average of about 10 hours and 80 miles of pedaling per day, sometimes over mountainous terrain, for a dozen days. In his trip diary, he wrote that their guide had told him that Charlie was the oldest biker ever to complete the trip.

Charlie and Kit mountain biking in 1989.

In 1994, less than a year before Charlie died, Boraas recalled, he and Kit were still active outdoors—still biking, still skiing. On one particular day that Boraas and his wife were skiing at Kincaid Park in Anchorage, they unexpectedly met up with Kit and Charlie (then about 80 years old) on the trails:

“We saw two old people shuffling up the trail. It was, of course, Charlie and Kit MacInnes. It was near the end of the day, and we talked happily about racers, skiing, trails and weather, all the while bathed in the wonderful yellow light that comes with the setting sun in mid-winter,” Boraas wrote about the incident.

“Then Charlie said they better be going, and Kit said, with a twinkle in her eye, “Race you to the car.” Cheeks red, eyes merry, the two old folks stepped around to gain the advantage on the trail. Charlie got going first. But Kit stuck out her pole and tripped him and then zipped into the lead. The chase was on. We could still hear them laughing as they rounded a bend and disappeared from sight. It may have been the most spirited race of the day.”

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

When they first arrived in Anchorage from Pennsylvania in 1946, Charlie and Kit lived inside a large packing crate in the Mountain View area. Charlie constructed a wooden yoke for Kit so that she could carry two buckets and haul fresh water to their home each day.

Such living wasn’t easy, but fortunately for the MacInneses their situation quickly improved.

Soon, they were in the undeveloped Tudor Road area, building their first house together on a wooded 20-acre homesite. Their new place, a wood-frame, two-story building with a chimney and fireplace handmade from boulders hauled in from distant Granite Creek, would be their home for nearly the next 30 years.

There—before moving to the Kenai Peninsula for their retirement years—they would raise their daughter, Ann, and son, Scott, and firmly entrench themselves in the outdoor-based, active lifestyle that would become their trademark.

Charlie in Navy uniform, 1941.

Charles Ernest MacInnes was born in 1913 and raised in Philadelphia. He attended college to earn a business degree, and he entered the Navy in 1941, serving until just after the end of World War II. Catherine (“Kit”) Chambers MacInnes was born in 1919 and also raised in Philadelphia. She, too, attended college, earning a degree in physical therapy.

Charlie and Kit, who were still enjoying running and other outdoor activities in their 20s, well after many of their contemporaries were settling into more sedentary lifestyles, married in 1946 and headed for a honeymoon in Alaska, fulfilling a long-held dream of Charlie’s to visit the north country.

They never looked back.

In Anchorage, Charlie found employment behind the ticket counter at Pacific Northern Airlines. PNA would eventually merge with Western Airlines, which would later merge with Delta Airlines, and during all that time Charlie would work behind the counter, despite having the intellect and the acumen to enter into a management position, according to Boraas.

“He specifically chose that job for two reasons,” Boraas said. “It was a 9-to-5 job. He did not want a job that he could take home with him, where he could lie awake at night worrying about whatever. He wanted a job that allowed him freedom to have the active outdoor lifestyle he embraced. And because he worked for an airline, he got essentially free travel. He loved to travel, and travel usually involved some sort of exercise, bicycling or skiing or whatever.”

Charlie running a marathon on Resurrection Pass
Trail in the summer of 1977.

While others might have succumbed to the social pressures to keep climbing a ladder of success, Charlie remained content. He worked for the airline until his retirement in 1975.

Meanwhile, Kit put her physical therapy degree to use, becoming the first P.T. ever hired by the original Alaska Native Medical Center. Like Charlie, she rarely carried her work home with her, allowing the growing MacInnes family time and energy to ski, run, bike, mush sled dogs, and hunt together. She retired a few years earlier than Charlie, and was ready for their big move to the peninsula when it came.

Kit cross country skiing in 1988.

Before they moved out of town, however, the MacInneses firmly entrenched themselves as pioneers in a growing Anchorage community of outdoor enthusiasts. They alpine skied in the mountains, mushed dogs in the Fur Rendezvous sprint races and in other races around the state, biked along the road systems, and skied and ran cross-country for fun and competition.

The year Charlie retired, they purchased a parcel of land just off Mackey Lake Road in Soldotna, and they left Anchorage behind. On their new property, they initially settled for a small cabin and a large outbuilding for their canoes and skis, their other outdoor gear, and the requirements for their livestock and pets—mainly horses, chickens, and dogs.

Boraas, an outdoor enthusiast who had arrived on the peninsula only a few years earlier, first encountered the pair at a meeting of the Kalifonsky Nordic Ski Club.

“They both had a huge impact on me, reaffirming what we were all trying to do,” Boraas said.

From their Soldotna home, the MacInneses continued to travel and to embrace vigorous outdoor exercise. In his 60s, Charlie began making his long bicycling treks, once traveling to the Texas coast to do some birding.

Often, Boraas said, Charlie would write about his trips after he had completed them, and his writing revealed both his environmental ethos and his careful eye for detail. On the Baja trip he wrote:

“I sat by my cheery fire and thought of my wife this Christmas Eve. There was a fat waxing sickle moon in the zenith whose silvery light made facile moving about my tiny camp. I leave only a few boot prints. No debris to defile Mother Earth.”

On Dec. 28 in Cabo San Lucas, the end point of the trek, he made the following entry:

Charlie, 1987.

“The climax of the trip was quite colorful. The paved road made a left turn in the middle of the small town. There, just beyond the plaza, were about 20 touring bikes all parked along a stone wall on the sidewalk, colorful with the rainbow assortment of numerous bike banners. Twenty cyclists sat on the curb, busy quaffing pop, eating fruit and cookies, and talking. I think everyone reveled in a deep sense of accomplishment.”

Kit and Charlie were also integral to the growing outdoor-recreation scene on the central peninsula. They could be seen running and biking and skiing throughout each year, and they were involved in the early stages of the Tsalteshi Trails.

Kit, 1984.

Of his father—and, by extension, his mother—Scott MacInnes said, “He just enjoyed staying active. And he was determined to stay active. It was just part of his lifestyle.”

After a brief bout with cancer, Charlie passed away in 1995 at the age of 81. Kit, who suffered a stroke several years later, died in 2003 at the age of 83.

About a week before he died, Charlie was still on his bicycle. He came home from his last ride, Scott said, and told the family that he didn’t feel well.

During that ride, or one about that same time, Charlie was pedaling along the flats beyond Sterling when Boraas drove by: “I was going to Seward, or to Anchorage, and there was Charlie on his bike. And his bike wheel was going so slow that he was barely moving, but he was out there. He kept going till the end—I just wanted to stop and give him a hug, but, you know—that’s the significance of Charlie.”