Crickets

Nothing is happening quickly right now. I've got the van advertised on craigslist and ebay for $13,500 and not getting any action. Over the past couple of days I've continued cleaning it though and got it looking pretty good:

Look I made the bed!

I did have a little excitement on Friday when I got a call from Mark, a friend and accomplished photographer from DC. He was in the neighborhood to do a 200 mile bike ride from Glacier View to Valdez, so we met up and had lunch and explored in the Sporstmobile a little. I was going to meet him in Valdez and take the ferry to Whittier, but when I called for reservations there was no room for the motorcycle, so I didn't make the trip.

I feel kind of trapped in that I need to be near the computer and wifi in case I get hits on the van, but I'm not really trapped. I could go out and do a hike or something for a day and just log on to email at the end of the day. For some reason I'm not doing that. Well one reason I don't move around too much is that my van only gets 13 mpg, so to move it is about 30 cents a mile, and that adds up. Still, I'm going to try to be more active during the day.

Kinda Quiet Now

Man, after all the traveling, getting the van ready and waiting for it to sell is not very exciting. In fact it's close to driving me insane. I've got it posted on craigslist and ebay, and now I wait. No hits yet.

During the day I hang out in a coffeeshop in Palmer called Vagabond Blues. But I can only drink so much coffee and surf the internet for so long before I get antsy. At 13 mpg, the van is expensive to move around, so I don't really want to go exploring with it.

The motorcycle is in dire need of new tires, so this morning I go to start it to take it to the shop and the battery was dead. That damn battery. This time I'd left the GPS on the bike, turned off, but somehow over the course of a week it managed to drain a lot of the battery. I pulled the battery and drove to the motorcycle shop to get it tested and charged. While it charged I hung out at Vagabond Blues.

I've got the battery now and will try it out tomorrow. Since I'm living in the van, it doesn't really matter where I am, I can spend the night anywhere. Since Palmer has cell phone and internet (the whole town actually has wireless), I'm going to stay here tonight and wait for hits on the van.

Sportsmobile Getting Some TLC

Daily Scenery

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: