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Thursday, June 11, 2009

From a dead horse to getting cold feet.

Went to bed at about 1am at the caribou inn. I didn't have any trouble falling asleep but stayed up for a bit thinking what i'll be doing with the M50. Time to customize i guess. strip it down when i get home, fix what has to be fixed and make it a nice cruiser as it should be. no more bashing this thing around like it's stolen.

woke up at 6:45 and had a smoke outside.
the local wildlife was out and about.



is prudhoe bay pretty you ask?

here's a picture. you decide. i'd say no myself. It's an industrial complex. i'm not sure why, but everything is painted that same blue. maybe to see it in winter?


the temperature at this point was about freezing. zero celcius. 32F. it was cold in shorts and a t-shirt.
saw Frank and Selena there packing up to go south again, and Spoke to John and Ulla again.

went inside and had breakfast. i wasn't hungry, but i hadn't eaten anything since little snacks along the road, and the last meal i had was in coldfoot.
steve and levi were there eating already. wow. levi up before me, that's a first. haha.
i ate a bunch and went back to bed. i wanted to catch a few more hours of sleep before checking out.

I woke up and had another smoke. went to see the front desk of the inn to see if their maintenance guy could help me out.
Got the maintenance guy and he lent me a very large and long crowbar. maybe i can bend the handlebar back in position. I used it and it bent back in a bit, but still needs to be bent down. no leverage, but it was a bit better than last night. it's rideable.
brought back the crowbar and went in for a small snack. who knows when we'd be eating again.

I asked an alaska air guy if they shipped bikes and he said that sometimes they do. at this point i was too tempted to do just that, so i didn't investigate that avenue. I'm riding Beast home. Maybe i should call Beast, the Mothership, since that's what Levi said it looked like. I look like the spaceman on his mothership, saddlebags and dry bags flapping every which way. hah.

Here's a pic of ADVRider Maxgreene (i think i got that correct) he came to deadhorse 2up with his wife. He was then packing to go south solo. she took a flight home. I can understand her. I'd take a flight too the way i was feeling.


The mothership surrounded by the BMW escorts.


we went to the gas station and fueled up. one pump, works only by credit card, and we were i na lineup.

after i filled up a couple were having problems talking in english and they needed fuel. They were on bicycles. They started talking to themselves in french so i was able to translate. They needed about a litre of fuel for their camp stoves as they just flew into Prudhoe bay and were touring down to calgary. Steve was next in line and asked him if the french couple could buy fuel from him. Steve said he would give it to them. all is well.
Steve is an old time MotoX guy, used to run enduros back in the day and he's done quite a bit in his day. He still runs motorcycles, but his other hobby is long distance bicyling. I explained all that steve also does bike touring as well, so he understands. everyone left happy.



We went to the general store. when asked for directions it was "the blue building down the road, you can't miss it" well, most of the buildings are blue.
we walked in and it looked more like a hardware and parts store. A great store really, with everything you can think of to fix almost anything. no real gift shop though.
turns out the store was upstairs. hah.

In the general store, bumped into Ulla and John again. funny. I think the 'catch of the town worked there.' maybe it's because i hadn't seen a good looking woman in a while... but wow. nice. :) sorry, no pictures, that would be a bit creepy.

Bought a few shirts, batteries, stickers, etc and went outside. This is where levi roped me into being the resident psyhcologist for Bigfoot. Levi and Steve are making a bigfoot mockumentary where they' ve been tracking bigfoot down all the way up to alaska. i can't wait to get a copy of that, it's pretty neat idea and they are doing it really well.

My bike crash is due to bigfoot lunging at me while i rode past him. that's the story and i'm sticking to it.

pictures of the sign at the general store.

My ADV salute. Can i be a honorary ADVRider now even though i don't have a KLR/BMW/KTM or any other dual sport? hah.
I got there. i'll get back. Deadhorse didn't kill me.

I won.

Levi and Steve by the sign.

Woot. 10,000Kms on the odo since leaving home May 26th. heh. i wonder how much more will be on there when i get back.

The three of us road to the end of the road in deadhorse where the sign says "private road, no access"

Levi at the sign.



Steve... well, Steve kinda missed the sign and kept going. hah. he's gone further than we did.
showoff. hah.


we left deadhorse after a few pics and left town. i was leary about the damn gravel, thinking it might bite me again. it didn't. 30 miles out, a herd of caribou wanted to cross. they did.

pics of the hills. in person they looked really neat and you could pick out the different colors. very nice to look at.



a few more times miles apart, they kept crossing. At one point Levi noticed a young buck to our left, about a 100 yards away running with us. Levi slowed and stopped and so did the buck. when we started going, the buck started again. we repeated this for a few more times. it was neat to be playing a game with this buck. he kept his distance and kept running with us. a memory i won't soon forget. We finally sped off and i could see him running his heart out trying to catch us. he didn't.

i sure hope it doesn't rain. i was trying to be an optimist that day, because i don't think i could take any more rain and slick roads.

stunning scenery nonetheless.


This is what you call a GOOD road.
like those runs of potholes? once you hit one going 50 mph, you hit them all.

an even better road. this is essentially the same track of land that was the mud the day before.

The road to coldfoot was generally good, with just a few wet spots. at one point, levi stopped and said "this is it" pointing down.
It was a great road surface, but a bit wet. This was the same strip we went across in deep mud. looks like the grader was out in the morning and removed that layer of crap.






coffee at coldfoot. finally.




we got to coldfoot, had some food, relaxed and camped for the night. we had talking about going all the way to fairbanks, but we agreed it wouldn't be a good idea. i don't need another mistake 2 days in a row. I was still dead tired.

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