That certificate is MINE

It took 14 hours, but yesterday I rode from Fairbanks and made it to Deadhorse/Prudhoe Bay. It was an exciting and beautiful ride on the dirt through magnificent expanses of uninhabited mountains and valleys. I don't have any pictures really because I knew it was going to be a long day and I didn't feel I had the time to stop. On the way back today I hope to take more time to photograph the landscape.

On the way up I passed through the Arctic Circle.

In Coldfoot I ran into this amazing character named Jim. He's 76 years old and is doing the same Iron Butt ride as me, only he had only been on the road for 13 days! We wound up riding together for the last 100 miles or so, and split a room together in Prudhoe Bay. Here he is gassing up at the weird gas station. See the blue door? The credit card reader is inside there. I guess it's designed that way because of the harsh winters.

The Prudhoe Bay hotel is wild and awesome. It mostly houses oil field workers, and a lot of bikers stay there too, but during our visit only saw 1 other bike guy. But anyway the room was $110, but included dinner and breakfast, and you can pack a lunch for the day you check out. And the food is delicious and plentiful, served out of a central giant cafeteria.

In general the ride up was pretty good. Hit some rain early on, but then it cleared up and was sunny most of the way. While the road definitely had some tricky spots with gravel and rocks, I felt the ominous reports about the road were a little overblown. Then again, I had pretty good weather. The main problem is that my radiator is caked with mud and might cause an overheating issue on the eway back. There aren't any car washes or anything like that here, it's all industrial space for oil field operations.