Greetings All

I’m sitting in the cafeteria on the ferry MV Matanuska having just had a bite to eat while we cruise down from Skagway to Prince Rupert, the scenery is stunning with the snow from last winter sprinkled around the mountain summits that line the inland waterways, it’s a tough job but I’m willing to face the peril.

We’ve travelled about 8,500 km so far, starting from Seattle, up through Canada, Alaska onto Prudhoe Bay where the road stops and after a (very) brief dip in the Arctic Ocean we’re on the long journey south.

Arrival in the US

The last weeks of preparation for the trip flew by, but the final bike preparation went smoothly (not) and testing our set up and packing was extensive (not). Fortunately we had a base in Seattle with Simon and family which helped us greatly.

After getting the bike crated and dropped off at the shipping agent we got our own packing done for the flight, as usual flying from Oz to anywhere was long and tedious so no news there except for one incident.

As we were walking down the aisle of the plane to our seat I noticed that one of the the flight attendants, an older guy, was the spitting image of Jack Nicholson, think around the time of The Shining. I pointed him out to the Beloved and she agreed. As we walked past him I said to him;

“How often do people say you look like Jack Nicholson?”

He replied “You’re the first person on this flight today”

Anyway he must have been chuffed as he kept us well supplied with drinks all through the flight.

After catching a connecting flight to Seattle it was now a matter of waiting for the bike to arrive, which it did, eventually. It took one day to get from Oz to Los Angeles but then another 5 days to go by truck up to Seattle so in the meantime we did quite a bit of consumer therapy and luckily for us (?) Simon was moving into a new house so we spent a couple of days moving beds, furniture and boxes. Just the thing to stretch a cramped back after a long flight (???).

The following Friday Kitty arrived (Kitty is the name of the bike, according to the Beloved it spent so long in pieces it looked like a kit bike waiting to be put together). We were amazed at how quickly we got through all the bureaucracy.  I spent 10 minutes at the shipping agent, 5 minutes at US Customs and then 30 minutes at the United airlines cargo warehouse bashing the crate apart and bolting on the bits so I could ride it away. It  could not have gone smoother. (Australian Customs please take note)

We spent the next few days engaged in more consumer therapy and doing some local trips so that I could build up the mileage as I was till running in some new parts in the engine, remember that extensive testing I was talking about?

One of those day trips was to North Bend and Snoqualmie which if you were a fan of the 90’s TV series Twin Peaks you will be very familiar the local land marks like the Snoqualmie Waterfall in the opening titles and the diner in North Bend with its cherry pie and damn fine coffee. And yes before you ask the pie was very good.

The other unusual thing about North Bend are some of the street names. Bendigo Blvd, Ballarat Ave, Sydney Ave. When gold was discovered nearby in the 1860’s they picked names from Australian gold rush sites. Although I’m not sure how much gold was found in Sydney.

After building up the kilometres followed by an oil change and a few tweaks later we were ready to set off northward bound.

Departure from Seattle

It was a bright sunny day when we left Seattle. This was a good thing as I was privately freaking out about how much luggage we were carrying. Kitty seemed dwarfed by all the saddlebags, aluminium boxes and other stuff attached all over her. How much did she weigh? A few days later on I found out and that freaked me out even more.

I have to admit we got off to a bit of a shaky start. While parked in Simon’s driveway which has the gentlest of slopes on it we had to move Kitty around, as we pushed the bike off the centre stand it slowly toppled over onto its side. Bugger. We now found out what it was like to pick up when it was loaded up (with a full tank of fuel). I think I can say that we don’t want to do it on a regular basis.

Anyway 15 minutes later we are ready to leave, the Beloved is on the back, every thing is loaded, the engine is still cold and idling roughly but soon will be warmed up. Just as I’m saying goodbye to Simon the engine makes a loud “POF” sound and dies. I feel a thump on the toe of my right boot. When I look down I see that the right hand carburettor has blown off the engine. Bugger.

I say to the Beloved that she will need to get off and make her self comfortable as we will be here for a while, possibly a long while.

It’s not looking good, so far we have dropped the bike and have fairly serious mechanical problem with an unknown cause and we haven’t even left the driveway yet, I can’t wait for the rest of the day.

20 minutes later the carburettor is bolted firmly back on. (I was hoping that the cause was that the clamps were not quite tight enough) and off we go.

Luckily the rest of the day was without incident we crossed into Canada and stayed in Vancouver at Tom’s house.

I met Tom, Ron and Wayne in 2006 in Southern Canada when they were on their annual bike trip. Tom kindly offered to put us up for a night or two which was perfect timing as I suspected we would need to have another re organisation of all the gear after being shaken around for a day on the road. We sorted out a few things the next day and then left to go north up to the Alcan Highway.

North West to Alaska

If you’re a motorcyclist, Southern Canada is magnificent, lots of windy, twisty roads with stunning scenery. Snow capped peaks from last winter and for a few days, bright sunshine. What more could you ask for?

Dawson Creek is the start of the Alcan Highway it runs for approximately 2,400 km west ending near Fairbanks in Alaska. It was built during WW2 by the US army in record time to link Alaska to the lower 48 states. The original dirt/gravel road was a long and rough drive and even up to the last decade was a hard trip with long sections of gravel and mud when it rained. Now it’s pretty good with virtually all of paved except for sections that are under repair where the gravel can be deep and treacherous to unwary riders. The days of the “I survived the Alcan Highway” bumper sticker are limited.

Most of the time we were powering along at a good clip enjoying the scenery and wide sweeping bends, They do warn you about the thousands of Deer’s, Caribou and Moose that live in the surrounding forests leaping out in front of traffic but apart from seeing a herd of Bison (They are seriously BIG animals) we had a very uneventful trip. As you would expect in this part of the world is dotted with lakes and rivers.

It’s not all hard riding in Northern BC we found Liard River Hot Springs and had a relaxing soak.

One of the sights along the way is the Signpost Forest at Watson Lake, Yukon. It started back in 1942 when the US army were building the road and now there are over a 100,000 signs and people still leave signs to be put up.

A few days later we crossed into Alaska and headed south to Anchorage. Not long after the border we came across a couple of young brown bears on the road, they waddled off into the bush as we approached. We saw a couple more bears (Black bears, mother and cub) yesterday when we were in Canada on the Klondike Highway leaving Whitehorse.

There are bears in them thar woods and to be honest I’m glad that our encounters have been minimal. This morning while we were waiting for the ferry in Skagway we were talking to a couple of other guys on bikes (Don and Lee) from California. They were telling us about a bloke they met a couple of days earlier in a camping store who was buying all new kit.

He was camping out and woke up in the middle of the night to find a bear clawing its way into his tent. He bolted out of his sleeping bag and stood there stark naked as he watched the bear rip all his gear apart. The reason for all this? He kept all his food and cooking gear in the tent. This is a big No-No in this part of the world, give me snakes and spiders any day.

The rest of the trip to Anchorage and then north to Fairbanks was uneventful. More great scenery and fun roads. The weather for the trip started out warm and sunny early on but had deteriorated to overcast skies with showers and it was getting colder. The electric heated vests I bought are the best thing since sliced bread and I’m never going on another trip without it. Together with our rain gear and the vests we have stayed dry and warm.

While the rain was more nuisance than a problem I was worrying about what it was doing to the Dalton Highway as I had heard that when it gets wet that the resultant mud was extremely slippery, we soon found out the truth about that.

Dalton Highway to Deadhorse, Prudhoe Bay

The Dalton highway is a “haul road” built in the early 70’s linking the Oil fields in Prudhoe Bay to Fairbanks in the south. The highway is about 660 km long and was originally all gravel/dirt. Nowadays it’s about 25% paved but the remaining 75% is still a challenge especially when it’s wet. More about that soon.

We stayed in Fairbanks for a couple of days as we decided that Kitty had to loose some weight before we headed up to Dead Horse.

As you know about a week or so earlier while staying in Prince George we put the bike and us on a weighbridge and I nearly had a heart attack. Our total weight was 490 Kg (1080 lb for all you luddites). We dumped everything that we would not use for the next few days at the motel. The bag of stuff that we left was huge but there was nothing in it that was especially heavy. I kept wondering do we need it all?

Just before leaving Fairbanks I was talking to Monte (R1100GS) and his mate Bill (KLR650). They had just come back from Deadhorse. I asked what the road was like, Monte described riding through the muddy parts was like

“Being on glass coated with Vaseline”

That didn’t sound all that good.

I had told him earlier that we were heading up to Dead horse on Kitty I then mentioned we were two up. He gave the briefest pause, raised an eyebrow slightly and said

“Really”

I liked the sound of that even less.

He called over to Bill and said that we going up to Dead Horse two up and I swear Bill does the same pause, same eyebrow, same

“Really”

I’m getting seriously concerned by now. I was keen to leave as other people were coming past to chat to us (having an Australian number plate makes for a conversation point)

“How did you get the bike here?”

“How long are you away for?”

“There are two of you going to Dead Horse?”

“On the same bike”

“Really”

Or similar reaction. Let’s get out of here.

We got off to a slightly bad start when we took the wrong road and did about 40km before I realised that something was wrong. There is no point in having a GPS unless you actually look at the directions it’s telling you, and then follow them.

It started raining around that time and I knew it had been raining further north so I was thinking about the Vaseline on glass comments earlier on.

We eventually got to the start of the Dalton and the road instantly changes from tarmac to hard packed dirt with a dusting of gravel. This was ok, damp but not to bad and we made good time.

Soon it got interesting, we got to the first section of muddy road, just a thin layer of mud and while it was not quite as bad as the Vaseline on glass that Monte had described it wasn’t far from it.

I was down to crawl speed in first gear, the road had a slight slope to one side and I could feel the bike slipping sideways while I’m trying to persuade it to stay on the straight. After about a mile the ground changed to dirt which had better grip and I could breathe again until we went back to the slippery stuff. And that was how it was for about 100 km except when we got to sections of mud that were a couple of inches deep then it really got tough.

Just to make it interesting after going through all that we got to some road works where we had to stop for 50 minutes. Then it started bucket down with rain for almost the entire time while we waited. It had been raining earlier but they tended to be brief showers this was a downpour. I asked the Beloved if she was having fun yet and she said that she was. What a trooper!

None of the photos we were able to take really show how bad the road was. In those tough sections we were concentrating on keeping upright rather than photography but getting to the Arctic Circle was milestone for the trip.

After the roadwork’s we still had another 240km to go. Bugger. As it turned out the road did get better although we had another 70 km of dirt road which did have more of the slippery stuff but then it changed to tarmac for the final run into Coldfoot Camp where we were staying. While the road got better the rain got worse and just to make it interesting my crash helmet not only leaked water inside the visor it also fogged up as well. So I had to ride with the visor up and rain really stings at 80 kph.After getting into Coldfoot and settling in we again met up with a British couple Darren and Emma (R1200GS) in the bar. I really, really, really, enjoyed that beer. As it turns out it was the last beer that I was going to enjoy for a while.

The next day we did the final push to Dead Horse. According to the mile posts it’s a 240 mile (380 km) trip and there are no gas stations or any other services in between. We had company for today’s ride two brothers from the east coast. Forrest (KLR650) and Hayden (R100R with road tires!!) wanted to ride with us. Forrest’s bike had a hole in the radiator which he fixed with some glue and Hayden had a hole in his spare gas can which he fixed with the same glue. There’s safety in numbers.

The road was better than yesterday but still had slippery patches, I nearly lost it when I hit a deep patch of gravel and mud. Afterwards we saw a grader on the side of the road, the cause of the deep gravel. Grrr.

As the day went by it got colder and the rain got heavier. If you think we’re crazy, out in the middle of nowhere we saw a woman on her push bike, she had no luggage so she must have started from somewhere (?) nearby but I could not think where it would have been. All I could think of as I saw her in the cold and rain pedalling up this huge hill was

“I love my engine”

Did I mention there was a cold wind blowing as well?

Just to make our life interesting, not long after a roadside stop, we discovered that the vests no longer worked. We’d blown a fuse, Oh well I’ll fix that tonight. Then I found out how cold it was, ten minutes down the road it was a case of “we need to fix this now.”  Twenty minutes later we were off and warm again.

I love my heated vest.

We finally got to Deadhorse later that day. The only reason for Deadhorse to exist is as a base for the oil drilling operations. There are two hotels, the Arctic Caribou Inn (update it’s now closed) and the Prudhoe Bay Hotel. And that’s all. The rest of the place consists of a couple of gas stations, a general store and many oil related company buildings with piles of oil drilling hardware and other support services.

After a long days ride I was looking forward to a hot shower, a change of clothes, something hot to eat and a cleansing ale. The shower, clothes and food were no problem but Dead Horse is a dry town, apparently oil and alcohol are a bad mix. To say that Hayden and I were disappointed would be an understatement.

Deadhorse is about 8 miles inland from the coast of Prudhoe Bay and the Arctic Ocean. The oil companies do not allow access to the coast using private vehicles. The only way to get there is on a bus tour which has to be booked ahead of time so they can do a security check on you.

The tour takes a couple of hours and they show you various parts of the drilling and refining plants (from a distance) before finally going to the beach. The day was overcast and there was a fog not far off shore so it was quite bleak but we had made it as far north as we could possibly get so it was celebration time.

We had only 4 people on the tour. After stopping at the beach the other couple on the bus started to strip down and headed off for a swim. I decided that I would at least get my feet wet and to my surprise it wasn’t as cold I expected considering the ice pack was only a couple of miles out to sea. This combined with the celebratory mood of actually making here caused my brain cell to decide that it would also be a good idea to go for a swim. So stripping down to underwear I ran gently into the water before diving in, and then diving out almost as quickly. Bugger me it was cold!! I did go in a second time and it wasn’t any warmer.

We all do stupid things and I suppose going for swim in the Arctic Ocean does count as one of them. One stupid thing we did not do was have a “Sour Toe” drink in Dawson City.

In 1973’ish someone lost a toe due to frostbite and somebody had the great (?) idea to preserve it in a box of salt and then put it in a glass of spirits which people would drink (leaving the toe behind) hence the name Sour Toe. The original toe no longer exists as one punter was a bit to keen and swallowed it by accident, but they have more than one replacement. I am not making any of this up. Check out the Sour Toe Club on the web.

If anyone else is passing through Dawson/Whitehorse and feels like a drink with body please let me know what it’s like.

Ian & the Beloved

A few bonus photos

Some people think that Kitty is old school for our big trip. I think these people win that prize.