Five Oceans…!!

Apart from riding on six continents, and visiting 100 countries or more, another of my goals was to swim (or at least wade…!!) in all five oceans…

Today I was finally able to tick the 5th box marked, “Arctic Ocean”…

Getting ready for our tour through the oilfields and to the shores of the Arctic Ocean… As usual, ten million mosquitoes turned up to see us off…!!

But before we left the hotel, we had to keep a wary eye out for a Grizzly bear and her cub, who were wandering around in the parking lot…!! My bike was parked in a narrow alleyway far from reception, and I daresay I got the Big Fella loaded in record time, using only one eye…!! The other must have looked like that of a chameleon, while it spun about trying to locate the bears…!!

Oilmen have a sense of humour… The nearest real tree is about 100 miles to the south…!!

The road to the Arctic Ocean from Prudhoe Bay, is barred to the public by the giant oil companies that pump the black gold in this area… B.P., Shell, Exxon and Mobil all have drilling concessions in and around the small town that sprung up as a result of the oil exploration…

The only way to reach the ocean is to pay $49.00 for a bus tour into the oilfields, which later stops at the shores of the Arctic Ocean, and allows passengers to spend about half an hour exploring the pebble-strewn beach…

We rode slowly through the checkpoint and then were taken past the huge oil-rigs that had been pumping oil from the this area for thirty years…

It is estimated that there is another thirty years of oil left in these fields, and then every piece of equipment has to be removed and the tundra left as man found it….

A rather blurry photo of the rare Snowy Owl…

We saw where all the smaller pipelines eventually joined up to the main line that ran south to Valdez for over 800 miles…

Out on the Tundra, caribou grazed; a snowy owl sat motionless on a small berm, hoping for a marmot or some other rodent to break cover; Canadian geese and a few Arctic Swans paddled around in the small lakes and ponds between the drill sites…

I was not particularly interested in the machinery that we passed… I was not here to see that… I just wanted to get out of the bus and into the last ocean on my list…

As we clambered out of the bus under leaden skies, the first thing I did was honour a promise I had made to two very special people…You may recall my post from Australia, entitled, “The Tale of Two Ribbons…” which explained the ribbons I have attached to my console…

Today the ribbon given to me by Tibor Molnar in Budapest, finally reached its destination…!! I promised Tibor that I would take the ribbon to Prudhoe Bay for him… This ribbon in my own mind, eventually came to represent all the friends I have made along the way, and whose prayers and best wishes, both humbled and helped me through the toughest rides I sometimes had to make…

“Tibor, I left your ribbon near the windswept shores of Prudhoe Bay, just as I said I would… It was an honour and a pleasure to carry it there for you, my friend…!!”

The two ribbons I have carried from Budapest in Hungary, and Bali in Indonesia…

The other ribbon, was from Patricia, who has remained firmly in my mind ever since the day we first met… This bright red ribbon reminds me of the love we share, and the wonderful woman waiting for me at the end of my ride…

“Darling, the sight of your ribbon flapping in the breeze has both inspired me, and helped lift my flagging spirits when the road got too long, or the distance between us seemed so great… You’ve been there with me ever since I rode out of Ubud…”

Finally, I am on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, and suitably attired for a day at the beach…!!

The Prudhoe Bay Posse celebrate a big day in each of their lives… For me, getting here with these guys was a very special moment….

And then it was down to the other little matter at hand… A quick swim in water that was cold enough to freeze the testicles off a brass monkey…!!

“Are you sure this is a good idea, GB…?? You have a wedding coming up soon, you know…!!” Trevor and Mark walk me down to the Prudhoe Bay “Beach”…

Not sure what this sign says, but I chose to treat it in the same way as I treat “No Parking” signs…

Wet legs and head was going to have to do it… Nobody said anything about getting other valuable bits wet in this freezing water…!!

Been there and done that…!! I had been in all five oceans, and would not miss this, the last and coldest of them all….!!

I stripped off my t-shirts and waded out into the freezing water…

It did not take me long to decide that this was not going to be an ordinary “swim”…

The water was very shallow for starters, and was more like a lake than a sea… It lapped onto the pebbly beach…no waves, no current…

What decided me was the shock of the cold water…!! Within a few minutes I could not feel my feet and calves, so numbed were they by the freezing cold sea…

I had heard that without any protective gear, being in water this cold would put your life in danger within four to five minutes… That is how quickly your core temperature would drop, to a point where your vital organs began to shut down…

Despite this rather interesting piece of trivia, my two riding buddies waded out to join me, once I had completed my ritual “swim”…

Trevor and Mark join me in the Arctic Ocean…

Then a group hug to commemorate the special occasion…

Rachel Evanson submerged herself completely, and posed for this photo… Her husband Damon later joined her in the water…

It was a wonderful feeling to be standing out in the water with my friends, Trevor and Mark… We waved our flags while Chenty took pictures from the shoreline…

Nearby, a couple we had been chatting to on the bus, were also getting ready for their own Arctic swim…

Unlike us, they got right under the water, and still managed to keep a smile on their faces… Or maybe it was a grimace of pain… I can’t be sure…!!

Little did we know at the time, that the Evanson’s would play a big role in our ride back to Coldfoot later that same day…

A short while later, Chenty rolled up her jeans and got her feet wet too… She also found a Geo-Cache chained to a large chunk of concrete… These little “time-capsules” are left in many unusual and exotic locations around the world…

Usually they are in the form of a bottle or plastic container, and various little bits are placed in them by people who locate them..

There is even a little log-book and a pen so that you can add your name, date and details of the item you place in the cache…

Chenty empties the contents of the geo-cache she found… Trevor added a coin to the cache…

When we got back to Deadhorse, we saddled up and prepared to make the long ride back to Coldfoot… We were all in high spirits, having each achieved the special goals we had set for ourselves…

I for one was already beginning to think about my long ride back to the east coast of the U.S.A. …

I guess I should have been concentrating more on the immediate task at hand, because the Dalton Highway was about to strike back…!!

©GBWT 2012