Off soon….

It’s almost the long weekend!! A few more hours before I skip town. I am taking the day off tomorrow and WFH today so that I can leave early and ride down to Astoria. I’ll spend all of Friday wandering down the Oregon coast, enjoying one of the most scenic rides in the United States. On Saturday I need to be in Eugene, OR for a party in the evening (same biker party I went to last year), so depending on where I spend Friday night, I’ll have to find some cool roads to explore during the day.

The party should be great. I’m looking forward to meeting a bunch of people that I made friends with last year and haven’t seen in a while. Last year they had a HUGE bonfire and flaming tetherball, which was good times. ;) Sarah’s riding down from Portland too and between the two of us, you can bet there will be trouble.

Whenever I am ready to get out on Sunday morning, I’ll hit the road again and head up north to ride the roads around the Columbia River Gorge both on the Oregon and Washington side. I’m not sure if I can do both banks on the same day or if I’ll have to split it up to the next day, but I intend to spend the night at a friend’s place in Washougal chatting again about bikes and his big adventure ride from last year. Monday morning I’ll be seeking to find the fastest way home and get back to Seattle mid-afternoon so I can relax and maybe catch a SIFF film.

It strikes me that this is the first time since the summer of 2007 that I will be doing a somewhat long solo ride! While I have ridden a lot between then and now, it has always been with other people – a little strange for a loner like me.

All my bags are packed  and waiting to be hitched to the bike. I’m bringing my tent and sleeping bag as I intend to camp for at least a couple of nights (solo camping! eek! yay!). I’m bringing my netbook and of course my camera and attempt blogging while on the road. Basically I’m trying as much as possible to simulate my upcoming X-country ride on a smaller scale to work out all the kinks and get a better idea of what I need to bring along and what to leave at home.

A few more hours!! Can’t wait… can’t wait!! :D

Bonehead Enduro 2009

(more…)

Stopping in Slana

HUCK HOBBIT’S HOMESTEAD

We managed to get my GS back up after unloading the majority of luggage off of it and a lot of concerted pulling and dragging. That done, we pulled her KLR out of the mud. In my fogged memory, I don’t even remember how we got the bikes back down to the bridge.

We finally called the hostel and the folks said they’d come out at once to come get us. We unloaded what essentials we needed for the night. I hated to leave the bike there and not have all my stuff with me, but there was no way to carrry everything with us.

Finally a green van came down the hill and a man who introduced himself as Steve got out and helped us with our luggage. We dumped our tank bags, packs and riding gear into the back and clambered into the front with him as we set off back up the hill. Even his four wheel drive vehicles kept sliding around alarmingly and I didn’t feel so bad about not making it on the bike after all.

By the time we rolled into Steve’s front yard, I was tired, hungry, cranky and just wanted to get clean and dry and sleep for a good ten hours. We parked a little distance away from a two storey house with the windows lit up, as if someone was waiting up for us. This looked promising.

We got out and unloaded our gear, but instead of walking to the house he led us in the opposite direction, down a narrow, dark path. Before long we saw a little house down below us with a woman standing outside it, carrying a lamp. We treaded carefully down some rough, wrought steps that appeared to be carved out of mud. He introduced the woman to us as his wife.

They took us inside the little house and after he had set down our stuff, I looked around to get my bearings. We were in a little room about 12 feet by 10. We were standing in the little kitchen area . There was a stove in the center of the room with a little pail of water standing next to it. To the far side of the room were four little bunk beds. High up on the wall between the beds were two small windows that looked out onto the night sky and an enormous bear skin – head and all – stretched out between them.

At the back of the room was a little makeshift shower area that used a solar panel to heat water. It turned out that there was no running water or electricity in the place. The fire was going on the stove, which warmed the place up somewhat, but it would need to be stoked throughout the night if we wanted to stay warm. There was no bathroom – just an outhouse a little way down the path.

They told us to come over to the main house for coffee in the morning and with those words they departed.

By this time my crankiness had led to disgust and disgruntlement. There was to be no hot dinner or shower. At this point all I wanted to do was eat the sorry remnants of whatever food I had left and curl up into bed.

Sarah was quite a bit more enthusiastic than I was – does nothing dampen her spirits? She told me that I was behaving like a spoilt brat and that this was the real adventure – out here in the wild in a cabin made by someone with their own two hands and a skinned bear hanging up on the wall!

“I’m tired,” I mumble before climbing under the covers and pulling them over my head. Thank heavens for a real bed, at least! Let’s just hope that the mosquitoes don’t decide to lay seige tonight.
 THE NEXT MORNING

I woke up the next morning to see the light streaming in through the windows. It was cold after the last of the fire had died out. I got out of bed and padded softly across the floor. There was just light enough to see around the cabin. I turned the doorknob – made out of a real animal’s horn and stepped outside. And my jaw dropped open.

It had been pitch black outside when we had arrived the previous night, so I hadn’t had much of a chance to peruse the surroundings. I don’t know exactly what I had expected but I stood there gaping at the foggy morning that shrouded the forest in the distance. I felt like I had been transported back through time and across a universe into a fairy tale world. The mist that hung in the air gave it an even more convincing aura of unreality. It was like being in a dreamlike state.

The air was so unbelievably still that you were afraid of breathing too loudly for fear of shattering the silence. There were none of the sounds one associates with civilization – no birds chirping, no sounds of traffic, no hum of machinery, no comfortable clinking and clattering of everyday objects. Out here it was silent – a quiet, muffled silence like as if the land was wrapped in cotton wool. Is this what the first visitors to Alaska had felt? Had they fallen silent in turn, forced to be in turns respectful and awe-stricken?

After a while I tore my eyes away from the hypnotic sight of the trees in the distance and looked around to my immediate surroundings. All the trees and leaves and grasses were impossibly green. I didn’t know if it was dew or rain drops, but every blade of grass, every flower petal, every twig that lay on the ground was covered in tiny water droplets that caught and reflected the daylight. I have lived in rainy places, but I’d never seen anything like this. I marvelled at the form nature could take if left undisturbed.

There was a stream on the other side of the cabin – one that Huck had engineered to bring water over from a nearby river. And that ultimately was the charm of this place. After spending a lifetime in apartments and houses and office spaces created by some nameless, faceless construction crews, it startling to be faced with a place where someone had built every part of a house, built the paths and stairs and streams, rigged up the water supply and energy conduits, sewed the curtains and bed spreads, killed the animal that would yield the bones and skin towards decorating the place – all with their bare hands. This truly was a spectacle of the pioneering spirit of humankind – the kind that said that if there were raw materials to be had, humans would persevere and survive.

 

 

 

 

Sarah made some coffee – as per usual – which we sipped as we walked around and explored our surroundings some more. Following it up with a poor breakfast of protein bars  and nuts, we decided to head over to the main house to say goodbye to our hosts, pay them and get a ride back to our bikes.

In the light of day, their house looked even cheerier, made entirely of wood, with a clothes line hanging outside it demonstrating a fine spirit of optimism, I thought wryly. We mounted the stairs and knocked and waited and Steve answered the door. He welcomed us inside and as we walked in, I had another jaw dropping moment. This time it was at the sight of the interior of the house – in many ways like any regular suburban house altough entirely constructed with logs, with comfortable looking fuirniture, photographs lining the walls, an old computer and stairs leading up to the second level, except that there were animal skins and animal heads of every kind hanging up on the walls. The couch and all the chairs were draped with soft animal fur of some kind. Even the stairs were lined with fur. The vicious bear skin hanging in our cabin must have been one that didn’t fit in with the decor, or possibly something they had gotten tired of.  

I remember Steve having mentioned something about being a hunter trapper the previous evening and now I realized to the fullest what that meant.

We sat down with them and grateful accepted their offer of coffee. On being asked, we told them more about our ride and how we ended up there. I tried my best to not be rude, but it was impossible to not gape at the dead fox skin hanging a few inches away from my head and running my hands over the soft skin of the chair I was sitting on. On the table were various hats made of animal heads, one of which he identified as a lynx. I was almost scared to touch them because they were so real. I imagined that not a few months ago, these animals must have been alive and vicious and free to roam the wild.

You would think that the animal lover in me would have been revolted by this experience and indeed hunting for sport does provoke a certain  reaction in me. However, out here in the back woods of this primal land, it felt right. These were humans living as they did hundreds of years ago – on the land and making the best they could of it. They hunted the animals like our ancestors did – for food rather than sport, and they did it with a profound respect for the creatures. They used every part of the animal – skin, bones, meat. Every kill went toward feeding families and stocking up for the harsh winters. Out here it felt right.

And I cannot deny that I still felt like I was caught in a spell. I took the fox skin off of the nail it was hanging on and stroked it, feeling its fine soft fur underneath my hands. The head and paws were still intact so that it wasn’t a disembodied piece of material added to some fashionable garment.

 They showed us around their greenhouse attached to the house where they grew vegetables and flowers. The flowers exuded a strange perfume that made you want to breathe in deeply.

We had intended to stop for a few minutes, but we ended up staying and talking for many long hours. As lunch was being prepard, I peeked into the backyard to look at the baby moose that had wandered in, while Steve and Sara took turns jamming on his guitar.

Lunch was a delicious meal of salmon patties made out of fish caught from the river the previous evening and vegetables grown in their garden. This was the first time I ever had a meal that comprised entirely of materials grown in and around the land. It might have been this or the fact that I hadn’t eaten a good meal for two days, but I devoured it and finished every last morsel. 

 

 Meals done and goodbyes said, we were driven back out to the muddy road where our bikes waited for us. It was quick work to saddle up and get going. As we rode over the Slana river and made our way out towards the Alaskan Highway, I thought to myself how very fortunate we had been in making the choice to get off the beaten track and ended up there. Adventures do seem to happen to you when you least expect them.

The Richardson Highway

The Richardson Highway stretches from Valdez, AK in the south to Fairbanks, AK in the north. We got onto it fairly late in the day. Our ferry from Whittier docked at Valdez at around 4:00PM. We descended down to the deck, unhitched our bikes and departed tooting our horns and waving at the sailors who disappeared from view as we rode out of the ferry docks and into the little town of Valdez, AK.

In 1964, Valdez acquired notoriety when the Enron tanker spilled oil into its waters causing massive destruction of wildlife and rendering the destroying the economy of the fishing town – an incident that the residents are fighting for damages to this day.

The town was quiet and sleepy. We needed to drop off Sarah’s oil from her oil change before we took off and hit the road. The Port of Valdez harbor toxic waste dump was where we got pointed to. The deed done and the light already starting to fail on us, we left Valdez to turn onto the Richardson Highway, intending to end the day at Slana, AK.

The day was gray and listless with not a shred of sun to brighten the way. We were still going pretty slow because we were both tired from a long day’s riding. About 20 miles down the road, we stopped at some waterfalls to take pictures. It seemed to be a bit of a tourist hotspot with a big tour bus parked outside it and throngs of people in and around the area.

That was the last we were to see of a crowd of people for the next few days though. As we left the waterfalls far behind, and entered deeper into the heart of wilderness, we rarely saw more than a couple of vehicles an hour.

 

The mountains thronging the Richardson Highway were unbelievably huge and green and lush – again reminding me of the Scottish highlands – and the highway snaked through them in isolation. As I rode, I had this feeling of being the only person on the planet carving my way through unknown territory. It was a strange feeling with mixed emotions – there was triumph, freedom, excitement, fatigue with the slightest hint of danger and fear of the unknown. One thing I did know is that we had to keep going forward and onward.

…until a hundred miles later when we hit a wall of fog.

Visibility suddenly went plummeted so that we could barely see 30 feet in front of us and we were forced to slow down and crawl along. Suddenly the beautiful valley seemed hostile and dangerous. After about fifteen minutes of slow inching along, I pulled over and Sarah stopped behind me. I was feeling a little frustrated. We had almost a hundred miles to go before we hit any civilization but there was no way I could ride at that pace for too much longer. It was too late to turn around and go to Valdez though. As we discussed our options, as if out of nowhere a bicyclist rode past. We stopped him and asked him how much further the fog was and he told us it would end in just five miles.

Five miles – that didn’t sound too bad. I was relieved and we got back on again. The fog was still bad and I didn’t care for it very much but at least it was a known enemy now. Pretty soon as predicted we broke out into sunshine and the world was a warm, friendly place again.

And that was my first experience of riding through a cloud – at times cold and clammy and almost consistently unnerving.

The road now seemed almost a little rural with little settlements whizzing past as we made good speed. Pretty soon we started seeing glimpses of the famed Alaskan Pipeline. By now we were both tired and in need of rest and nourishment.

We pulled over into the gravel parkway of a little roadside shop. The owner was an older lady who welcomed us with a warm smile. Her little store was full of little knick-knacks. At the back though, there was food – we helped ourselves to frozen burritos and pizzas and heated them up in the microwave and wolfed them down. Some hot cocoa to go with it and we started feeling human again.

Now we finally felt able to look around and talk to the owner. She was a sweet woman who told us how she had come out to Alaska twenty years with her three children before to escape from an abusive marriage because she knew that her husband would never find her there. She told us a bit about her life there and about her kids who had all grown up and left Alaska but had returned within a couple of years. I could understand that. Live here long enough and it gets in your blood. As someone who grew up in a big urban city, I couldn’t imagine making my home in such a place, there was no denying the thrall of the complete isolation and the appeal to a certain spirit of hardiness.

She showed us a little blanket she was making from seal skin – caught fresh by an Indian hunter friend. It was the softest thing I had ever touched!

Sarah and I went outside to the back of the shop to look at the numerous antlers for sale – they gather them from the forests after the deer shed them – and got one each to mount on the backs of our bikes. I picked mine out for a friend back in Seattle who was fond of collecting skeletons and dead things.

We finally said our goodbyes and took off, but not before she had told us how to find a good spot to get a closer look at the pipeline. We had to ride a couple of miles down the road before hanging a left down a gravel road which led to the pipeline.

Out came the cameras again as we walked below the pipeline. It was a curious thing – to see stark, clean technology here amidst wild nature. The pipeline stretched all the way north to Prudhoe Bay up in the Arctic. We wouldn’t be able to go that far north on this journey but we would follow it at least for a little while further.

Pictures taken, we got back on to finish the last leg of our journey – to Tok – back where we had come from.

It was really late in the day though and it didn’t seem possible to make it as far north as we wanted. We pulled out the list of hostels and found that there was a stop a little earlier than Tok that seemed like a likely possibility – a place called Slana at a hostel called “Huck Hobbit’s Homestead”. We had to stop at a place called Huck Hobbit’s Homestead! It seemed like the thing to do.

From here on it was about 50 more miles before we went through the cursed town of GlennAllen. Not too many happy memories attached to this place after the horrendous rains we had encountered there the previous week!Slana was about 60 miles north of here. We knew we were going to be pushing the limits of energy what with the gathering darkness and the rain that was starting to fall, not to mention our own flagging energy at the end of a long day, but we wanted to get in those extra miles and get to Slana.

At the gas station in Glenn Allen, we stopped and got a rude meal – a cold sandwich, some fruit and protein bars along with the old familiar gas station coffee. I sat outside on a bench eating and trying to get warm while Sarah called the hostel to find out if it was okay for us to show up. They did have room and told us that they’d be expecting us. The lady on the phone gave us directions – off the main highway for about 10 miles – although the last five were a bit muddy. She told us to call them when we got there so that they could come and pick us up in their truck.

“Oh don’t worry about it,” Sarah said, “We’re on dirt bikes.”

And as it so often happens, those words would come back to haunt us.

———-

The sixty miles between GlennAllen and Slana were an ode to willpower. That particular stretch of highway hadn’t been fun the last time we had ridden through it five days ago and it still didn’t have very much to commend it. We went a steady clip of 70mph on a lacklustre road where everything looked gray and blurry, punctuated with gravel patches – gravel not bothering me anymore as we rolled straight on through it. It was raining profusely now.

We took turns leading. At one point she pulled over and pointed at my headlamp as I came up close to her and said – “Did you know that your lamp is dead? I had to keep turning around to assure myself that you were still there!”

Uh-oh. Not the greatest news. But I wasn’t too worried because I had enough light to see by and we weren’t exactly in the most trafficked place in the world. I figured I’d replace the bulb the next time we were stopped for the night.

And so we kept going until finally we saw the turnoff in the distance and we got off the main highway to go toward the little Slavic sounding town called Slana. Just a few more miles – I thought to myself – before we can stop, peel off our soaking wet clothes, get warm, eat, get a hot shower, and curl up in a warm bed with thick blankets and know that we earned it.

The smooth tarmac road soon turned into uneven gravel which wasn’t much fun, which soon turned into mud – yet more non-fun. I wasn’t very happy at the way things were going anymore. It was a struggle to keep the bike going in a straight line. We eventually reached a little bridge with signs that said “Bad road ahead. Do not drive unless you are on a high clearance vehicle”.

This sounded ominous and I didn’t care to disobey the sign. I hated to quit but I’d rather have called them and have them pick us up as they had offered.

“C’mon! It’s only two more miles! We’re almost there!” Sarah yelled.

Two more miles of this sticky, gooey shit along tight little turns that led into who the hell knew where? No can do. I didn’t have much of a choice though as she kept going.

The next few minutes were some of the most hellish moments I’ve had on any motorcycle as the bike kept sliding around no matter what I did until it finally slid halfway into a ditch and I landed on my side caked in mud and furious. A few yards away, Sarah’s KLR was completely stuck in the mud and refused to move.

 

And there we were, two bikes stuck in the middle of nowhere, one of them literally so. As muddy, tired and near to tears I was at that moment, little did I know that just around the corner was the best part of our adventure yet, and a story that we would remember and recount for the rest of our lives.

Heading North

LET’S GET ON THE ROAD ALREADY

It appeared that I had spent a good part of the past two months doing nothing but obsessing about the trip, planning, shopping, packing, and all at once the day was here – the day I had penciled into my calendar as the day of departure.

Sarah had ridden down from Portland the day before. We had spent the afternoon exchanging notes, showing each other our purchases, and finishing up last minute errands. That evening we got together with Jasen and drank to the success of our journey.

On the day of our departure – June 21st, 2008 – I spent a good couple of hours sorting through all my stuff and setting aside at least half of it.Nothing like last minute unpacking and repacking? My bike was still unbelievably heavy. All of the bike’s movements were exaggerated by the heavier load. I knew that I would get used to the weight after a few hours, but at the time I fervently went through every single item I had thought was “indispensable” and tossed whatever I thought I could live without. The trouble with going to a remote place like Alaska was that a lot of things that you could live without in the lower 48 you really wanted to have with you “just in case”.

I finally declared the packing done at noon and we decided to get lunch before taking off. We rode down to a little Moroccan restaurant close by – the B&O.

One would expect that I would have been excited beyond words and chomping at the bit to get out on the road, but the reality is that I was feeling not a little nauseous and stressed out as I always do when I am on the cusp of a new adventure. It finally dawned on me that this was it, I was on my way and there was no backing out. My body reacts to stress in extreme ways so that I was feeling physically sick and wanting to lay down and curl up in bed for the rest of the day. The extreme heat of that afternoon wasn’t helping either. The food tasted like ashes in my mouth and I ate more for the sake of eating than out of any real hunger.

Lunch eaten and paid for, it was time to gear up and hit the road!

Within minutes were on I-5 north headed towards Vancouver BC. As we g0t on the freeway, I cast one last wistful look at Capitol Hill, my home and all the comfort and familiarity of the place, missing it already. Leaving home is always gut-wrenching.

Still, part of me was itching to get out of the country. After the first 50 miles or so, it dawned on me – 0ur adventure had begun! We were truly on our way! Alaska, here we come!!

Traffic on I-5N at 2:00PM was what we had expected. It moved quickly and pretty soon we were nearing the border. We had decided to cross into Canada at Sumas rather than Vancouver in the interest of saving time. The route from I-9 to Sumas was along a narrow, winding, charming rural road – the kind of road that I would think longingly of up in the Yukon and Alaska. The sight of a police car along the way made me curb my enthusiasm just enough to ride a sensible pace. No sense tempting fate and picking up a ticket on the very first leg of the journey!

BORDER CROSSING AT SUMAS

The border crossing was fairly uneventful. We parked our bikes outside and went inside with our paperw0rk. The official gave my passport and visa a cursory look and stamped it with the date of entry.

From here on it was about a hundred miles (I hadn’t begun to think in kilometers yet) to our first stop. Even though the scenery and surroundings weren’t very different from Washington, I was acutely aware of being in a different country and I could feel a part of me trying to come to terms with the lack of familiarity. Little things like the measurements of distance and gas seemed far more important now than they should have been.

Every time we stopped at a restaurant or gas station, people came over to talk to us and to admire Sarah’s gorgeous new KLR. I felt a little bummed that nobody remarked at my 0ld crummy bike.

After riding for about a hundred miles from the border, I started feeling really tired from the stress of the day and my flagging efforts in trying to coax some amount of acceleration out of my heavy bike. We stopped at the first RV park sign I saw. Our spot was a rather scenic one overlooking a river. We didn’t have very much time to enjoy the view though as night fell speedily. We cooked a small dinner from our dehydrated meals over a small camp stove and sipped some of Sarah’s home brewed bourbon.

Finally we retired for the night. I crawled into my tent and snuggled inside my sleeping bag for the first of many nights. It was comforting to be able to see the profile of my bike a few feet away from my tent. A motorcycle, a warm place to sleep, enough money for food and gas, and endless days and nights of adventure on the horizon. What more could a girl ask for? In this, my little microcosm of the world, where all my needs had been stripped to these bare essentials, and all my belongings could be socked away into my panniers, life was simple, life was grand, life was intense, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

000

TO CACHE CREEK, BC

I woke up early the next morning with the first rays of sunshine coming through the clear dome of my dent. I got up and crawled out blinking at the light. I had been periodically awoken during the night by the sounds of freight trains in the distance, but outside of that I had slept well and felt refreshed. Sarah was still asleep. I called out to her and she grunted in response. Taking that to be a sign that she wasn’t ready to stir yet, I started breaking down camp and putting things away. That done, I walked down the gravel path to the center of the campground to find the bathrooms and clean up.

Morning ablutions done, I filled up my camelback with water from a tap. The people in the RVs were now awake and sitting in camp chairs, cooking breakfast and making coffee. Fresh coffee, I thought ruefully as I walked back to camp thinking of the espresso shots we had brought to mix with hot water – our version of coffee. Not nearly the same thing, but it would have to do. I’m not the biggest caffeine addict compared to the general populace of Seattle, but coffee and cigarettes is something I closely associate with motorcycle rides.

By the time I got back to camp, I found Sarah awake and lighting up her stove. I pulled mine out too and together we made some hot water for “coffee” and cooked eggs – the first of our dehydrated meals.

Breakfast things done and put away, we were ready to saddle up and take off. We hoped to make it to Cache Creek by that afternoon.

The riding up Highway 1 was brilliant. It was a crisp, clear morning and the bike handled really well. I found that accelerating was no problem and soon I was ripping down the highway reveling in the beautiful scenery. Sarah was doing a more relaxed pace and taking time to stop and take photos – a trend that would continue throughout the journey. Some parts of this ride were gorgeous and unusual enough that I finally felt that we had indeed left the United States far behind.

We reached Cache Creek that afternoon as predicted, rolling into town and pulling into the first gas station we saw. We were greeted by a bunch of bikers who sat outside the station and waved at us as we went past and stopped to fuel up. I filled my tank to the top, parked and went inside to get some protein bars and get water. When I came outside, I chatted with the bikers who said that one of them was having engine trouble and was waiting for a tow truck. There were four of them who had ridden across the country, up through Alaska and back and now three of them would continue on down while the one with the downed bike would fly home.

Before we got back on the road, Sarah and I made a stop at the local bank. Even though American money was generally accepted in the area, I had been a bit troubled by the fact that I had no Canadian money. I soon remedied that and got about $200 in Canadian money which I stashed away, hoping it would be enough for the rest of the week.

On we rode now, passing through 70 Mile House, 100 Mile House, 150 Mile House, Williams Lake. The weather continued to be brilliant and we were delayed only once by s0me construction.

We were hoping to make it to Prince George by the end of the day but that hope turned out to be a bit ambitious. After doing a particularly long stretch of road after the last gas stop, I realized that I was in danger of running out. The next gas station was almost fifty miles away and I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold out until then. We decided to pull over and siphon gas from Sarah’s tank into mine. We pulled off of the main highway and took a little side road to where we saw some houses and a sign announcing cherries for sale.

The transfer of gas was easily done and we set off to search for cherries. The owner of the house we were parked outside sold us some mighty fine cherries – I bought two bagfuls, one for each of us, and some apples.

We heard sounds of song from the house and on inquiry found that it was a church group that had gathered to sing hymns. Sarah looked delighted – “I know those songs! I grew up signing them.” The old man invited us to come in and join in the singing. She looked hesitantly at me and said that we should probably get on our way.

I looked at her with disbelief and said – “This is what we are out here for. To meet people and have these experiences. If you want to sing, we should go join them. It’s more imp0rtant than clocking miles.”

She didn’t need much convincing and we headed over to the house, stopping to take off our boots as requested and into the living room where were greeted by the sight of almost 30 people – men, women, boys and girls – some with hymn books in their laps, all of them smiling and singing. They paused briefly to welcome us into their home and hand out a hymn book to us which we shared.

Sarah was raised in the Southern Baptist church and she had most of the hymns memorized. I found that it wasn’t too difficult for me to follow along either. While I am by no means religious, I was struck by how happy everyone in the room looked and how joyously they sang out. How often does one encounter family members of such varied ages gathering together and sharing such happy moments?  There were husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, teenagers and toddlers alike sitting close, some holding hands or with their arms around each other, some with their heads on the others’ shoulders, the little children crawling on the floor or playing with each other. They all seemed to know most of the songs, and every time one hymn was done, someone called out a request for the next one to the man playing the piano.

We must have spent a good hour there. When we were finally ready to leave, we said our goodbyes quietly and left with the strains of music still leaving the house.

As we got ready to get on the bikes, I asked Sarah – “So – do you think they all voted for Bush?”

She replied – “They can’t. They’re Canadian.”

“Oh.”

We laughed all the way back to the road.

That night we stopped at an RV camp and set up our tents in the midst of a big, open, windy field.

TOWARDS PRINCE GEORGE

Day3: 97N, Prince George, 16W, Vanderhoof, New Hazelton

We made good progress on our third day. We reached Prince George by mid-morning where we made an uneventful gas stop and reached  Burns Lake by mid-day. Parked outside a pizza place we saw a group of BMW motorcycles parked. We pulled into the parking lot and as we got off our bikes, the riders walked out of the restaurant. This time it was my turn to have my bike admired and talked about as none of them so much as glanced at Sarah’s bike. Typical BMW riders!

They told us that they had come down from riding to Inuvik up the Dempster Highway. The ride had been rainy and miserable and the road had been so muddy that it had been like riding on grease. One of their group had had a bad crash with his bike landing on him and he had broken his back and had to be flown to a hospital in Fairbanks. This was very sobering news and for the first time the dangerous nature of some of the routes we had planned on dawned on us. Sarah hadn’t been very keen on riding the Dempster, but I was very intent on at least attempting to get to the Arctic Circle. It would be very tough going if the weather continued to be rainy though and we were going to have to make a decision as to whether to continue going north towards the Dempster or turn west towards Alaska. Still, we didn’t have to decide today. We still had Hyder to look forward to, which we hoped to reach by the end of the day.

We spent more time in Burns Lake than we had intended to, glad to find a place with good food and able to stretch out and relax for a little bit. This cost us dearly however and when evening started to fall we realized that we wouldn’t be able to reach Hyder that day after all. We stopped at a little town called New Hazelton.

NEW HAZELTON AND THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE BEAR THAT VISITED EVERY NIGHT

Sarah found us lodging in the backyard of a lady’s house who said that we could camp there. As an afterthought, she told us to be careful about the bear.

“The bear?” – we asked politely. She told us that a particular bear visited there every other night and we should be careful about not leaving any food lying around. Oh, good to know, we replied.

We set up our tents under the shelter of the barn and proceeded to eat some sandwiches that we had picked up earlier in the day.

It had been a good day but unfortunately this was where we had our first fight. Spending hours together with one other person can take its toll and the frustrations and disgruntlements that had been building up between us finally spilled out. I had been particularly exasperated at her wanting to go off on gravel roads at the end of a long, tiring day to find places to camp at.

My idea of touring had always been to put in long hours in the saddle and finally stop someplace comfortable to wind down. I was content with stopping anywhere for the night, even an RV park, as long as we stopped riding and had some daylight hours left to kick back and relax. I had toured long enough to know that I would regret it if I did nothing but ride without spending some time off the bike and really experiencing what the place had to offer. While I obviously enjoy riding, the best part of touring is the time off the bike with meeeting people and talking to them, roaming around little towns, finding secret spots and having a quiet smoke while looking out at the water. Thus far we hadn’t done very much of that and I had felt pressured to keep riding until the light started to fail. I have stated before that I was not into  camping and I was even less a fan of riding off-road, having little to no experience with it. The last thing I wanted to do at the end of a long day was to ride my overloaded heavy bike up and down unpaved paths, trying to find a spot that she felt satisfied with. We had done that a couple of times now and I was pissed off about having to do that again tonight.

Sarah on the other hand had started riding with an off-road bike and was far more comfortable on that kind of terrain. She had been steadily frustrated at the fact that we had been doing nothing but tarmac and that I got cranky every time she even suggested going off on a trail. She liked the idea of finding a nice, cosy grassy spot by a river to camp on and she was willing to hunt around for a while to find the perfect spot. She was also intent on riding long hours every day until she felt that she was far enough away from home. She had spent a great deal of money on her bike and equipment, not to mention all her vacation for the next two years, and she felt like the ride was turning out to be a terrible disappointment.

We proceeded to have a heated conversation, neither one trying to find a middle ground. I had the sinking feeling that the adventure was not turning out to be quite as idyllic as I had thought it would be. Here then was the danger in riding with a complete stranger. For all that we had been friends, good acquaintances rather in the past few years, we had never once ridden together and had never discussed what kind of riding we liked to do or what pace we liked to keep. Now it turned out that our ideas of what would make this a ride worth it to each of us were so poles apart that there wasn’t very much we could do to salvage it. We talked briefly about separating and going our own ways, each to finish the ride the way she best wanted.

Neither of us really wanted to separate though, and considering the trials of the road ahead of us, it would have been the worst possible solution to our problems. We didn’t reach any conclusions that night. I half-heartedly said that I would try to do more off-road riding as long as it wasn’t at the end of the day when I was tired.

We finally went to bed without reaching any conclusion. The next morning would see us riding a hundred miles west to reach Hyder, AK. Maybe things would seem different then and we’d be better able to decide where we wanted to go from there.