So Now What?

Sell the Sportsmobile, that's the next mission. Although not as exciting as the ride from Key West, it will likely be more difficult for me. There is a LOT of crap in there I've stockpiled over the years in preparation for the zombie apocalypse, and sorting out and making decisions about large amounts of my own stuff freaks me out and overwhelms me.

Amazingly though, after 2 years of storage and severe winters in Alaska, it started right up on the first try. It was stored on my friends Don and Tina's land:

Storage

Peacocking

Together Again

There's a lot of work ahead of me to get it in decent shape to sell it. Apparently I was in a hurry to leave AK in 2010 because here's the state I left it in:

Alright this blog isn't exactly linear--today and yesterday I worked on the van and got it looking a little better:

Still another couple of days of work; it's been to Burning Man 5 times so has a lot of playa dust built up.

Here's a short vid:

Dalton Footage

Here's a 30 sec compilation of some of the conditions and scenery I ran across on the way to Prudhoe Bay on the Dalton (have I mentioned it's 414 miles, one way?): the Alaska pipeline is visible in the last bit.

Arctic Tour

So the morning of what became my treacherous trip back to Fairbanks was actually really cool. Deadhorse is not actually on the Arctic Ocean, but is as far north as you're allowed to go. So I paid $49 to take a shuttle to the Arctic Ocean, which also included a tour of the oil field operations, which was pretty fascinating. Apparently there's enough oil in this current oil field to keep producing for the next 50 years. I was relieved to hear that.

Oil Stuff

In the Arctic Ocean

Shuttle

Did I Say "Overblown"?

I take it back. The reports of how difficult the Haul Road (the Dalton) is are accurate--the ride back to Fairbanks from Deadhorse (Prudhoe Bay) beat me up pretty bad. It was tricky on the way up for sure, but nothing like the ride back.

The ride started out great, it was sunny, and I felt much more confident at first with my newly acquired riding skills gained on the way up. Then it started to rain. And then I hit some soft, rocky gravel and dumped the bike. It was humiliating to say the least, as this happened in front of a guy driving a road grader. But he was cool and helped me right my 700 lb motorcycle, which would be very difficult for me to do by myself, in spite of my legs, huge and powerful. I also held up a couple trucks getting all this sorted out. I had learned earlier that the truckers on the haul road hate motorcyclists already, so my awareness of this made holding them up all the more uncomfortable.

Being humbled, I rode much more slowly and deliberately in the rain through this hellish stretch of soft gravel mixed with large rocks, which lasted about 5 long miles.


It continued to rain and then I hit a really long stretch of hard packed dirt that was slippery as snot in the rain. The rain and mud caked in the radiator and the bike started overheating. I tried cleaning it off by scraping the wet mud with sticks but it didn't really work, so the only alternative was to ride until the bike got hot, then park and wait for it to cool off, which would take 5-10 minutes. I went through this cycle about 5 times before I finally found some water to wash it off more thoroughly. That did the trick and I made it back to Fairbanks after 400+ miles of this, but not until 2 am.


One cool part of the ride was that around midnight I got to see a near full moon rise in the funky Alaskan twilight. Of course I didn't take any pictures because I was cold, wet, hungry, afraid the bike would fall apart and I'd get eaten by bears, and pretty pissed off in general. In fact a bear did cross my path about 50 ft away. Wish I had a picture.


So today I finally got the FJR to a car wash bay and thoroughly cleaned the radiator and the rest of the bike. I also power washed my boots and legs to get the mud out. It made me feel funny, sensations I didn't understand.

And now, I' hanging at a Mc Donald's since they have wifi.

Deadhorse

I decided to stay in Deadhorse another night so I can go on the Arctic Ocean tour. It's the only way you can actually see the ocean because it's in a restricted area. They do a background check before you are allowed to go on the tour. So that happens a little later this morning; hoping to get some good pictures.

As a town, Deadhorse seems unique. It;s population is oil field workers, sprinkled in are some visitors and bikers. Lots of industria equipment and buildings designed to keep you warm when it's -50 degrees.

One interesting thing about being here is that when visitors arrive, they are often finishing a big trip, like I was, for which the end of the Dalton Highway is their goal. I met this couple who traveled from Argentina:

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.

Fairbanks, AK

I made it to Fairbanks today, and have a long way to go. From here to the town of Coldfoot is 254 miles, and from Coldfoot to Deadhorse is 241 miles. And these miles will be ridden on the North Slope Haul Road, also known as the Dalton Highway. It's mostly dirt, and in the winter has been on the show Ice Road Truckers. My motorcycle is not particularly suited to this road, but I know FJRs have made it up this road before, so I'm definitely going to try. Weather will probably be the determining factor--if it's sunny I'll probably make it, but if it's raining I probably won't. It's sunny now in Fairbanks at 9:49 pm, but the weather in AK is too dynamic to predict what it will be like along the haul road, so I'm just going to go forward as if it will be sunny.

Tonight I'm staying in a dorm room at the University of Alaska. No! That's not why! It's because they rent rooms out during the summer, and they are particularly motorcycle friendly, and very inexpensive--my room is only like $57 and there's wifi and free laundry. It's kind of weird being in a dorm again, but news about this place has spread to all the motorcycle forums so it's become an ad hoc meeting place for bikers riding the Dalton. I met Joe and Fred who had just finished the ride and they gave me a lot of valuable information about conditions and camping and such, and how to handle all the big rigs that regularly use the road. Basically, you pull over and let them pass. They said there's a tour you can do in Deadhorse of the oil fields and the Arctic Ocean. In fact it's the only way you can see the Arctic Ocean because they won't let anyone out there for security reasons, or so I'm told.

I need to clear something up about my destinations in Alaska. Palmer is where my Sportsmobile is, on my friends Don's property. Don and his wife Tina own Mica Guides, which is about an hour north of Palmer in Glacier View. Glacier View is where most of the action is, and where I camped out last night. Here's a picture of the operation--he also just opened the espresso stand:

The white blob behind the trees in the picture is the Matanuska Glacier, where all the ice climbing happens and where I spent the summer taking pictures in 2010.