The Rapid Retreat

August 16 -Dawson City

August 12 I moved on to Anchorage because the day promised only heavy rain. As I entered the city, it was coming down so hard that I had to pull over on a 4 lane highway - the riding was getting a little hairy with the grooved pavement, and my helmet was fogging up. Anchorage was huge, and I spent about an hour trying to find my way downtown, finally arriving in a foul mood at the IYH hostel.

After checking in I started hauling my gear upstairs. One of the guys in my room, a Kiwi, helped me carry my stuff up to the third floor.
"A motorcycle ride for 9 months? That must be fantastic," he said.
"Would be if it would just stop raining for a day. Itīs been 8 out of the last 10 days..." I said, about to go on about the snow, and the mud...
He looked at me, amused by my self pity. "Well, we all need a good whinge now and then."
I stopped for a second after dropping my dripping bags onto the floor. Then I laughed.
"Yeah, poor me, a solid week of rain in my 9 month vacation. Still beats working."
He was also on a bit of an adventure, across Alaska and Canada for a few months, as long as his money held out. We talked about Canada for a while, then I went out to find an internet place. On my way out I met a Habitat for Humanity group leader, up there with a group of kids from NYC. Heīd seen my license plate (held in place with baling wire since Fairbanks). He was more excited about my trip than I was at the moment, and started pointing me out to the kids in his group, who couldīve cared less.

The next day I left my gear at the hostel and headed out with a light bike for the Kenai Peninsula. The weather for once was beautiful, and the mountains rose out of fjords, next to the Pacific Ocean. The trees came in a huge variety, a welcome break from the endless black spruce bogs of the Alaskan interior. The road ran up into alpine valleys between mountains, and there was a riot of colors from all of the wildflowers. Every now and then a glacier came into view at the top of a ridge.

After about an hour, I arrived in Seward, a beautiful seaside town just a few streets wide and long, in a bay overlooked by mountains. Seward was the jump off point for boat expeditions to Kenai Fjords Park, where you can watch icebergs calve off of the Harding ice field into the ocean. I was too late for these, so I decided to take a flightseeing tour and visit Exit Glacier, which is just a few miles down the road from town. I was looking at the signs as I entered town, and one of them caught my eye - helicopter to the glacier. I didnīt even read the fine print. Iīd never been on a helicopter before, so if I was going to go flightseeing, that sounded like fun. I stopped at the office near the airport.

Godwin Glacier Summer Dog Sled Tours was a little more than I expected. Turns out that the helicopter flew you up to the top of the glacier - a flight of about 15 minutes each way - and then youīd ride a dog sled at the top. Even better. So I signed up, then took off and went to Exit Glacier, which is in its own park near town, about 7 miles off of the main road. By the time I got there, I had about an hour left before my tour, but the glacier was only half a mile from the parking lot, according to my information. That information was a little old. Exit Glacier has been retreating for years, and is now a good mile and a half away. Not all glaciers are shrinking as global warming happens - some are even growing - but most of them are, and in many cases this is changing the environment of Alaska in drastic ways. The Innuit are finding species of birds and insects that their language has no words for, because theyīve never encountered them before. Some things which were built some time ago on pilings in the permafrost are starting to find that it isnīt very perma anymore... Warming is happening everywhere, but it is having its most drastic effects where the weather had been the most extreme. Exit Glacier, stage left.

[Nov 30 - In a side note, I got an email from Betty in mid-November, and she said that all of the people with snowmobiles were pissed because it still hadnīt snowed and stuck... typically that happens by mid-September in Palmer. James Cameron (below) is having trouble training his dogsled teams for the Iditarod race because of the hottest fall that anyone can remember.]

Anyway, the glacier was too far for me to walk there and back and make the flight, and anyway it seemed a little redundant since I was going to land on a glacier in the helicopter. I headed back, and got in the helicopter with two Israelis in their 50īs. The helicopter was fun - it was strange watching the ground drop away while we stayed over the same spot. The pilot showed us some of the sights around Seward on our way up. In the mud near the bay were the rusting wrecks of huge ships that were driven ashore by the tsunami in 1964. The wave destroyed a lot of the town, and now there are tsunami evacuation route signs everywhere.

As we went up, the pilot took us right up the face of the mountain, looking for bears and mountain goats. He banked over the start of the glacier and pointed out a volcano, about 2 ridges back, that became active recently. The we landed at the dog sled camp, a tiny square in a broad plain of ice between three mountain peaks.

There were at least 100 identical dog houses, about 5 feet apart from each other, in rows, in what looked like dog Levittown. The huskies were all chained to their houses, which some of them chose to lay on top of. As soon as we landed, the dogs all started barking, and they never stopped. We were quickly led to our team, 16 dogs pulling two sleds that were attached one behind the other, which would allow the three of us and the woman who was driving the team to all try standing on the bag of the sled and sitting on the seat. This is one of those visceral realities that you just have to be there for. Riding a dog sled isnīt like a team of horses pulling a wagon. Itīs like an exercise in crowd control while youīre skiing.

A dog sled has 10-14 dogs pulling it, with one lead dog in front of them directing (hopefully) the rest of the pack. All of the dogs have their strengths and weaknesses. The lead dog needs to be smart and obedient, the next front dogs need to be strong and fast, all of the dogs have to get along with their neighbors, and if one of the dogs is a female in heat, forget trying to get any of them to do anything. The driver does not have reigns - the woman who was driving this team gave verbal commands to her lead dog. To stop the team, she gave a verbal command while she and the person driving the rear sled put down the brakes into the snow with one foot, and then sheīd drive a multipronged ice anchor into the ground, which has to be held down by the other foot. She let me hold the team while she camcordered the Israelis, and I nearly let up on the ice pick thing, and the team decided to make a go for it. Luckily I regained my balance.

A little after this, one of the Israelis, Igor, was driving the rear sled as we headed down a slight hill - the kind you barely notice is there when you are snowboarding. Our team leader starting braking, but he didnīt follow her lead in time, and we started to pass the front sled then flipped onto our side and tumbled into the snow. It much easier to overturn than Iīd imagined, though luckily we werenīt carrying 800 lbs of cargo in the wilderness. My turn driving went slightly better, and soon weīd completed our 1.5 mile tour.

One of the mushers there (I remember his name was James Cameron because I signed up for his email newsletter) was planning on doing his first Iditarod race that year - 800 miles from Anchorage to Nome, commemorating the run in the 1800īs that delivered typhoid vaccine to icebound Nome in the dead of winter. He said that the main thing to remember is never let go of the sled, even when you flip over... because your lead dog might bring the team back to you, or he might not, which can be a problem in the forest 400 miles from anything.

We got back in the helicopter, and I offered the front seat to Gregori, the other Israeli.
"No, thatīs ok, Iīve been in helicopters many times, in Lebanon." Heīd been an army medic, and related a story of going into a combat zone in southern Lebanon to pull out a soldier. As things got hot they were ordered to leave him behind, but instead they came down close enough for him to grab one of the skids. He had to hold on all the way home...

After getting off the helicopter, I was so excited that I forgot my bag in their office. I realized my mistake and went back 15 minutes later, but everyone was gone. I called the contact numbers on the brochure and on the outside of the office, but got no one. Finally I called the number on the office for aviation fuel, and the guy told me that the helicopter mechanic would be by there, and had keys. I raced back, and missed him by minutes. The bag had my camera and some other irreplaceable items, so I was stuck in Seward for the night.

So I went back to downtown and found a hostel, and parked my bike. The owners, a Swiss couple, mentioned that there might be live music at the Yukon Bar. I headed over there, and there was no music, but apparently Iīd just missed the St Pauli Girl.
I was sitting near a group of guys, and one of them asked "Did you get to sign her tits?"
"Nope, but she signed mine!"
They were a group of loan managers from Wells Fargo out on a fishing trip, and soon headed off to bed. I sat at the bar, and looked around. There were dollar bills all over the drop ceiling with writing on them. The bartender explained that this was an old miner custom - theyīd come in when they were flush, and have the bartender save a dollar bill with their name on it for when they came back in broke. I put one up one the ceiling with a long pole device they had with "Rndm" and a little drawing of North and South America on it. There was also a stuffed polar bear head over the cash register with a baseball hat, sunglasses, and a sneaker in its mouth. Around its neck hung a sign that said "Send more tourists".

The story behind this was that an animal-loving tourist from Europe had climbed into the cage of a polar bear at the zoo in Anchorage. After a light mauling, she miraculously escaped, begging that nothing be done to the bear, as it was her fault (the Alaskans agreed.) She had lost her sneaker inside the cage, however, and the polar bear played with it for weeks, leading to the "Send more tourists" headline in the local paper.

I had a couple of beers, and watched as a new crowd of characters appeared in the bar. One of them, half baked, looked like heīd already lost a bar brawl that evening. Actually, he looked worse than that. He told me that he was a mountain bike tester for K2 (and I thought they just made skis and snowboards), and he and his friend had been riding the newest bikes down Exit Glacier. He family was rich, and he was about to head home for some extensive reconstructive surgery. Work hard, play hard. His story had a few odd angles to it, but it was entertaining.

Another local named Bernie convinced me and him to head to an after hours bar called the Snakepit. Knowing already that this was going to lead to no good, I decided to go anyway, because I was in no mood to go to sleep, and I wanted to see what kind of characters hung out in a place called the Snakepit in rural Alaska. He convinced Mr Trainwreck to go by claiming that there would be cruise ship girls showing up there soon. We got a ride with a spaced out woman who drove a cab and knew Trainwreck - he said after we got out that she was "a little too much" for him, and sheīd seemed to be on something that made her a little speedy. Seconds after entering the fine establishment known as the Snakepit, it was clear that the male to female ratio was 15 to 1 and likely to stay that way. The place had just opened at 2:30 am, and everyone was already drunk. Rounds of Jagermeister and tequila ensued. Based on my experience in after hours bars, as soon as all of the women and halfway sober men leave, the fights begin, usually over nothing.

And I wasnīt wrong. Bernie seemed to be getting into trouble with some guy no one knew, and when I tried to calm things down in an amiable drunk way and buy him a drink, he started up with me. Bernie took him aside for a minute and everything was fine again. Another fight broke out in back. I was too wasted to understand what was going on, so I headed back to the bar and asked them to call me a cab. While I was waiting an Innuit woman in her late 40īs tried to pick me up. I told her I had a girlfriend and tried to introduce her to Trainwreck. I walked out to wait for the cab outside - Bernie and Trainwreck were upset that I was jumping ship so "early", as it was only 4:30 - and as the cab arrived, the lady from the bar jumped in with me and another guy to get a ride back to town. The driver was the same psycho woman from before, and she was now going at full speed. After a couple of minutes, I stopped politely answering her questions and just started ignoring her... and the driver stopped the cab, turned around, and shouted "He said no, so leave it, bitch!"
We had a very quiet ride after that.

The next morning I felt rather diseased and having some balance problems, and it took a long breakfast and 6 cups of coffee before I was ready to get on the road. I got my bag back and headed into Anchorage. I made a reservation for the 12,000 mile service for my bike in Seattle on August 23, the day that Cathy is supposed to arrive there. This gives me a pretty aggressive schedule for driving the 3000 miles from Anchorage to Seattle. I spent the rest of the day reading the paper and recuperating.

I finally got my act together the next day and headed out, trying to make Dawson City, a ride of close to 450 miles. I raced down the Glenn Highway at high speed, through rain, then sunshine, stopping for gas every 100 miles. As I approaced Glenn Allen, I saw what I thought was a cloud on the horizon. After another 20 miles, it resolved into the tops of three mountain peaks. Because of the haze from the fires, the rocky part of the mountains wasnīt visible until I was 10 miles away, so the peaks seemed to float monstrously in the air over the valley. If Denali was bigger than these mountains, I couldnīt imagine it.

There are not many highways in and out of Alaska - having one at all is pretty impressive. Not wanting to retrace my steps, I decided Iīd take the Taylor Highway, also known as the Top of the World Highway, from Tok through Chicken to the Yukon and Dawson City. This would allow me to meet up with the Alcan far to the south of where Iīd landed, but it also meant that I had to do something like 70 miles of dirt road to the Canadian border. I made the Taylor Highway outside of Tok at 7:15 pm, and the border with Canada closed at 8 pm Alaska time. Allowing for the kind of riding that Iīd had to do up to Deadhorse, knowing that the dirt was probably mud by now, I knew there was no way I was going to make it to Dawson City that night. I decided to stop in Chicken. I rode the first 70 miles of pavement and chipseal, not seeing any other vehicles, then hit the dirt for a few miles and arrived in town.

Chicken is as remote as towns get in Alaska while still having a road going to them, but because it was on the way from Dawson City, a major tourist attraction, there was usually a good amount of RV and other traffic that passes through. I stopped at the gas station/camp ground past town, and looked for a site. The gas pumps were locked, and the owner was elusive. Finally after I used the outhouse I startled him at his RV, and he told me campsites were $10, there was no water available, and there were no showers. I told him Iīd be right back, and went back to the road for the town.

Beautiful Downtown Chicken , as the locals like to call it, is really a single long connected building, ostensibly divided into 3 stores - a general store (i.e., souveneir shop), a bar, and a restaurant, with a big salmon bake screen room attached on one side, and signs for the Chicken Coop and the Liquor Store wedged between the real establishments. A covered wooden boardwalk out of a western town ties it all together. How did the town get its name? The miners who founded the place named it after their favorite food, a local bird resembling a chicken, but no one could figure out how to spell Ptarmigan.

The restaurant seemed to be closed, so I walked into the bar. The owner had seen me ride up, and immediately offered me a place to camp out in front for free. So I went out, parked my bike near the edge of the giant dirt and gravel lot, and walked my gear out about 50 feet into the tundra to where some picnic tables sat next to black spruce pines. It looked like a nice spot. I set up the tent and stowed my gear, and returned to the bar.

This time I got a good look inside, and it was the exact picture of what I thought a back woods Alaskan bar should look like. About 20 feet deep and 10 feet wide, with a row of stools bolted to the wooden floor, a pool table in the back, Hank Williams on the juke box, and baseball caps and shredded womens underwear hanging from the ceiling. The owner told me theyīd fire the underwear out of the little canon on the porch out into the tundra before they hung it up there... to which the woman bartender added, "and maybe itīs time we got some menīs underwear up there. Maybe tonight..."

I asked if they served food. The owner disappeared through a side door in the back - into the kitchen of the restaurant - and came back with 2 16 ounce paper cups and a plate of biscuits. I was greatful for anything, and I ordered a Silver Pilsner with it. I sat down at a side table, and tucked into the first cup filled with some pretty good chili. The biscuits were wonderful. Then I looked in the other cup. It appeared to be stew. I tasted it. Good, but something was a little odd. One of the locals said "Howīs the ībeefī stew?", and then told me that it was really bear - but they werenīt supposed to serve it to anyone so it was ībeefī, nudge nudge, wink wink. I enjoyed the stew, and just as I reached the bottom, I had a thought.
"So whereīd you guys bag this bear?" I asked
"Oh, he was hanging around town, going after our garbage. We got him out there in the parking lot." He pointed vaguely out the door towards my motorcycle and my tent.
That night, lying in my sleeping bag, I had many thoughts about becoming as Dave put it, the Bear Burrito.

I hung out in the bar until 9 pm, when the bartender shut off the generator, because the crowd had pretty much filtered out. She lit some candles, and I sat with the owner and a local gold miner finishing my beer. I had expected the place to keep my up all night, but they closed by 9:30 - the place was really a tourist oriented operation, and none of the RVīs that had passed through that evening had decided to stop.

This morning I packed up my gear and loaded the bike, then went into the restaurant. The woman working the place alternately bitched about tourists and then the lack of them, as she baked dozens of pies for the tour buses she hoped would arrive. All of this summer has been a disaster for Chicken and for Alaskan tourism in general, mainly because of September 11th. After failing to finish the "short stack" of blueberry pancakes (served in a gold mining pan) I stopped into the gift shop and bought a book called Into the Wild - a book about a kid who died in the Alaska wilderness of starvation a few years ago - and I headed out for Dawson City. The dirt had turned to 2-3 inch mud in places, and the road wound through hairpin curves and up and down the mountains - the advanced dirt course for graduates of the Haul Road. Where it totally dissolved, trucks and RVīs passed me, then I passed them as they slowed down for the washboard road which didnīt affect me on my dual sport bike. After about 30 miles of this, I started seeing rainbow patterns on the mud... Now oil? Youīve got to be kidding me... I thought. Lots of vehicles lose a little oil, and the little drops are no problem. This was puddles. After several more miles I crested a hill to see an RV parked in the middle of the road.

I stopped to ask them if they were ok. It was a family, with a 16 year old daughter, and theyīd lost their transmission pan on a rock. The father was just getting ready to unhitch their car from the back and drive it into Dawson City. I couldnīt imagine what he was going to have to pay to get a heavy tow truck to come up here in this and tow them out... assuming they didnīt lose the RV over the side on one of the curves. Iīll refrain from commenting on their common sense driving that road with their RV, given that I made the call to ride the same road on two wheels.

I made through the border formalities and back on to pavement on the Canadian side. This was a change from the Alcan, where the road got better in Alaska, and presumably this was because Canada was trying to attract tourists to Dawson City, which has been rebuilt historical attraction for the Yukon gold rush. The road had a few patches of gravel, but was otherwise pretty decent, and I made good time down to the Yukon River for the ferry.

Iīd crossed the Yukon before on my way to Deadhorse, where it was a beautiful blue river at the bottom of a river gorge. Here it was a mud bath, a leftover from all of the heavy dredging that went on for gold until the 1960īs. The landscape around Dawson has been reconfigured into a twisting snakelike nest of tailings from massive dredging operations, which you can see from above in one of the films at the town museum.

The museum explained the history of the gold rush, and just what the gold miners were up against when they came to the Yukon. The Yukon gold rush was the biggest of many gold rushes in the 19th century, partly fueled by the fact that the finding of gold came in the midst of a depression, and tens of thousands of men who were out of work anyway decided that they might as well try to strike it rich. Thousands arrived overland or by sea from the west coast, most of them ill prepared for the environment, all of them too late to stake a claim. The entire productive area of the Yukon had been claimed shortly after the first gold was found, and the news made it to the outside world almost a year later. Jack London had been there early and was lucky enough to have his own claim, but he still never made any money. The late arrivals had to come and work for someone else.

As you find out about the process of gold mining during the rush, you begin to realize how desperate some of these people must have been, and how brutal their lives were in the Yukon. The main thing to remember is that everything in the area and for 500-1000 miles south is permafrost, which means after the first few inches the earth is frozen solid for nearly 2000 feet. The vast majority of the gold found came from the placer rock layer, which is near bedrock normally about 40 feet underground. In some places this is exposed by the river, which is how the first big claims were found, but everything after the first lucky bit involves a lot of digging through frozen ground. To dig the ground, you first have to heat it. A variety of methods were used for this, from a fire, to using steam piped down a gun barrel driven into the ground, to simply using cold water. All of them would involve a miner being in the freezing cold in a hole, as frozen, wet earth defrosted, and digging it out. Eventually when the main shaft got down far enough the same method was used to go horizontally in a shaft usually no more than 4 feet tall. On the positive side, there was no need to brace the ceiling since it was frozen solid.

All of this had to be done during the winter, because come spring the placer rock had to be ready for a quick period of sluicing. Because of the permafost, when the spring thaw melts the snow the water runs off immediately and is gone within a few weeks. This meant the mining had to happen during the winter, largely in the dark. Mining soon stripped the surrounding area of poor timber it had, and soon the miners were spending as much effort on collecting water and wood as they were on finding the gold. Within a few years the small operations were gone, and soon gold mining on the Yukon evolved into an industry using heavy machinery to sort through massive amounts of dirt for smaller amounts of gold.

As bad as all of this was, the journey to get here was the worst part for many. Canadian Mounties at the border, afraid of mass starvation, demanded that each man have 2 tons of gear and provisions to cross over. This meant that many had to make as many as 40 separate trips hiking up and down a frozen mountain trail in order to accumulate their cache. Their edict killed a few there but probably did save many lives in the long run, since the would-be miners from the Lower 48 probably had no idea of the bleak environment that they were headed into, and the whole community could easily have run out of food. But imagine spending 6 months and everything you had to make a trip to the Yukon to strike it rich, being forced to buy supplies in Alaska at insane prices just to get across the border, only to find when you got there that all of the claims had already been staked and you would have to work in a cold, dark hole for someone elseīs chance to find the mother lode. This is a level of desperation that we see in other people trying to reach the U.S. - Chinese immigrants paying their life savings to be smuggled in ships that are a long shot to make it to shore, Mexicans hiking across tractless deserts, all for an opportunity to work like crazy for a chance at the good life - but no American has this level of desperation for economic reasons anymore. Now we do this kind of thing for fun...

Jack Londonīs cabin is located near the museum in town - sort of. The cabin originally stood in the middle of the forest 120 km from Dawson City, and was located after a lot of detective work in 1965. Half of the timbers wound up here, in a representation of his house and surrounding buildings, and the other half were sent to Londonīs home town of Oakland. One of the buildings reproduced is a shed on stilts that protected their food supply from bears and other varmints. While London never found much gold, he did get the raw material for many of his stories here.

Itīs starting to pour, so Iīll continue this later...

August 19 - Prince George, British Colombia

Iīve been reading Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer, the story of a 20 year old mystic who wandered off into the semi-wilderness near Denali and was found dead of starvation a few months later. One of the interesting things is that Krakauer rails against Tolstoy and Jack London, both of whom he feels romanticize life alone in a harsh environment. He particularly slams London, who he says contrary to the legend he created for himself died young and obese from drinking. Interesting that Krakauer imbues alcoholism and obesity with such moral tones, but then he is a life long mountain climber - he also wrote Into Thin Air about the misadventures of the unprepared on Mount Everest and presumably will continue adding to the Into outdoor disaster book series...perhaps Into a Million Pieces - fun with oxygen turns tragic at the top of Denali... sadly, Into the Woods has already been written by someone else.

The ride from Dawson to Miento Park was rainy and dreary. I stopped as it started to get dark - I was surprised after my time in northern Alaska when sundown was at 9:30 pm. The bathrooms were locked and the power was off. I got soaked inside my tent and woke up at dawn and was gone by 7 am. The showers were still locked and no one seemed to be around, so I just left.

On the 17th I made it to Liard River, between Whitehorse and Watson Lake. The campground seemed nice but the owner was not the nicest person, and after paying for my site, I found that showers were $3 Canadian for 5 minutes. I wondered what exactly I had paid $15 for. I met Heidi, a Swiss motorcyclist on a F650, who had just come from Inuvik. Inuvik was another route through the Yukon that made it to the Arctic Ocean, over a slightly longer stretch of dirt, with some small water crossings. At the end of the road, however, was not Big Oil but a small Innuit community. It sounded like a nice trip. She was heading down to find work in Canada for a few months, and then meet up with her boyfriend before heading down to Argentina. Her plan was to take another year for the trip south. She was no taller than Cathy, and now Iīd seen 2 women on F650īs riding on rough terrain - maybe Cathy can replace her Suzuki with an F650 for our next trip - I could carry one set of parts for both of our bikes.

There were hot springs nearby in Liard, but I have a lot of ground to cover, so I just got back on the road and kept going south. Yesterday I had rain again, fairly non-descript riding - I found out my bikeīs top speed is 105, going downhill, in a rolling open plain where I could see that there were no moose, but I canīt afford to burn that much gas for long with gas stops as far apart as they are up here. I usually keep it to a moderate 85. There are no towns of any size up here, so there are no cops on the road. I think Iīve come out of the permafrost zone - the trees seem to be a lot taller and have more variety.

Iīve fallen into a routine of riding long distances between tiny towns on a road that is just a notch in the trees, riding, eating and sleeping, all to make it back to Seattle in time. The towns tend to be a single restaurant and gas station, with sometimes a hotel thrown in - the environment canīt support much, so these places exist to serve the highway traffic. Theyīre usually about 50 miles apart, sometimes more, but occaisionally they run out of gas after getting hit hard by the RVīs, so I stop every 50 or 70 miles. Last night I was really beat from the marathon of 400 mile days, so after dropping my bike I decided I should treat myself to a motel room. Once again, it was a motel that is really a collection of trailers. This town had three restaurants and 2 motels, so I realized Iīd hit the northern edge of normal, subarctic British Columbia. British Columbia is almost as tall north to south as the entire U.S. west coast, and the northern half is fairly empty.

Today in Chetwynd I started seeing the chain fastfood restaurants that seem to be the normal blight on the landscape everywhere in North America, and I realized that they arenīt everywhere - there is a certain minimum population density necessary for the big chains to exist. Another attraction of the wilderness.

Iīve just called home, and my dad is has been ill - Iīm not sure how bad it is, but bad enough that he was in the hospital. It seems he fell from nerve damage related to his diabetes, and heīs having problems walking. Not much of it is making sense over the phone - I get the impression that this has been happening over a few weeks. I may have to go home at some point for a while, so I need to get the bike far enough south that I wonīt get trapped by winter if I return in October or November. I hope to be in Vancouver tomorrow night. I was hoping to do an insane ride over dirt to Bella Coola and take the ferry to the north end of Vancouver Island and then ride south to the city and ferry to Seattle. A good idea, but once again the ferry schedule has caught me by surprise - entirely my own fault, due to my lack of planning. It wonīt be doing that run for several days. It took some wrangling to get any of the BMW dealers in the Seattle area to work on my bike, so I canīt miss my slot on the 23rd.

Instead, Iīll try to make it into Vancouver, ferry over, then drive down to Victoria and ferry into the U.S. to get to Seattle. Itīs a little ambitious, but I want to see something of Vancouver Island. One thing Iīve learned from this is Iīm not making any definite plans anymore that involve me having to arrive at a place on a certain date - itīs making me crazy now, and when I get into Latin America it will be impossible.

August 23 - Seattle again

Finally Iīm here and the stress is over. The bike is being worked on, and I can leave Seattle tomorrow. Itīs been crazy for the last few days. The night of August 19th I stayed in a cheap hotel in Prince George. I had trouble sleeping again, and got going the next day at noon. That morning I actually went downtown for breakfast, parked the bike, had breakfast, and came back - to find my keys in the ignition. This demonstrates two things - one is, Canadians are incredibly honest. The other is, driving this far this fast is causing me to make the kind of mistakes you canīt afford to make on a bike. Plus, Iīm a dumbass.

That night I reached Cache Creek - as Iīve gone further south my late rising is becoming more and more of a liability, since I keep running out of sun, but I canīt seem to fall asleep at night. If there was more light I might have made Vancouver, but it was still a good 150-200 miles away and I wonīt ride that kind of distance in the dark (in general I try not to ride in the dark at all). I found a campsite at Marble Creek Park outside of Cache Creek. I spotted yet another bear on the road on my way there, but there seemed to be plenty of people on all sides of me, which gives a feeling of perhaps false security.

The next morning I headed down towards Vancouver - I was now retracing part of the route that Iīd taken west in July, so I decided to take route 99, a more scenic road past Whistler. Somehow I made a wrong turn in the town of Lilloet after lunch, and I ended up on a much smaller road - in some very narrow places it was actually a single lane for both sides, and there were traffic lights to tell you when your side of the road could proceed - until it finally dumped back out on route 1, the length of it that Iīd skipped on my first pass through Vancouver. I arrived in town just in time for rush hour, but by NYC standards it wasnīt too bad. I made it through to Horseshoe Bay and hopped the Nanaimo Ferry.

I hadnīt really thought this through. My bike had to be at the BMW dealer at 8am on the 23rd, and it was close to nightfall on the 20th. I got off the boat after dark, too late to travel or even look for a campground outside of town. All of the hostels were full. I got a motel, couldnīt sleep again. The next morning, I called home, and found out that Cathyīs dad also has been sick - critically so - and that she wasnīt going to be able to join me in Seattle. We spent a few hours on the phone. I was a little pissed because Iīd just killed myself to get here, for a service appointment date that I picked because that was when she was going to arrive in Seattle. I was supposed to stay with her friends. But it wasnīt her fault, and there was nothing she could do about it - she was doing the right thing. After I cooled off a little we came up with another plan for her to meet me in Reno for Burning Man, and I headed out from the hotel.

I found out the last ferry left at 6pm for Anacortes, which was still 90 miles from Seattle. So I had a half day to ride around. I decided going to the far side of Vancouver Island to see the orcas was out of the question, and just rested and did my laundry, then drove down to Victoria, then go the 90 miles down to Seattle. Iīd just tried to do too much in too little time.

Yesterday I got into Seattle and got a motel in the suburb near the BMW dealer. I had a place to stay, but it was across the Seattle metro area from the dealer, and I decided having made this effort to get here I should be certain to get here on time. So I dropped off my bike this morning, and now Iīm tooling around on their loaner F650. It feels like a little toy compared to my bike, even though the only real difference is the shocks and the wheels. Dave was right, the handlebars do feel a little odd. Today Iīll kill time by heading into town and doing some shopping at REI, and perhaps Iīll check out Seattleīs rush hour traffic - a good thing to experience if youīre thinking of moving to a place.

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