Getting Ready for the Dalton Highway…

We arrived in Fairbanks today, under a thick grey cloud, and light drizzle…

We made this “Grizzly” find at the Silver Fox Roadhouse, where we stopped to refuel…

Not the weather we were hoping for…!! We have had wonderful weather all the way up here from Vancouver, and have ridden under bright blue skies and in warm sunshine for most of the time…

Whoever named this place got their bearings slightly wrong….!! And there is nothing Fair about Banks either…!! Can I get a witness…??

On our ride today, we saw the huge Alaskan Oil Pipeline for the first time… You know the one…!! It gets the “Greenies” all excited at the meetings they drive to, in their gas-guzzling, 5 litre, Chevy pick-ups…

We also stopped at a tiny roadhouse for fuel, where Mark and I arrived on fumes, having decided to stretch the range of our bikes…again…!!

Mark is proving quite game to my little habit of riding out into the wild blue yonder without knowing where exactly the next gas station is…!! He agrees that it adds an exciting element to long distance riding…!!

Trevor has given up trying to make us fill up more often… With his 33 litre tank, we call him the “Exxon Valdez”, and breeze along merrily, knowing that if we run out of fuel, we’ll just suck some from Big Red…!!

We also made a quick stop in the town of North Pole to see Santa, and deliver our wishes for this coming Christmas… Top of our lists was of course, “World Peace”, followed closely by “enough money to keep riding till we drop dead”…

We handed our wish lists to Santa in the town of North Pole…

The Prudhoe Posse outside Santa’s House…

I have a suspicion that Livengood isn’t all it might be cracked up to be… Alaska seems to be lost in a bit of a time warp…!!

Fairbanks is the final staging point for those adventurous enough to make the 820 km ride along the Dalton Highway, to Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay, the northernmost point that a vehicle can reach on the North American continent…

It is a two-day slog on what is for the most part a gravel road, that turns to “something like porridge” and can be “rather slippery” in wet weather, as I was told by a guy who has just returned from there…

Today I had the Big Fella checked at Adventure Cycleworks here in Fairbanks… The road leading to the workshop of Dan and Shawn Armstrong, was hard-packed dirt, covered in the “porridge” that we can expect on the road north…!!

It had been drizzling all morning up here, and we tip-toed our way down the road and up his steep driveway…

Trevor and I exchanged nervous looks when we dismounted…

“Bloody hell…!! That was a bit slippery…!!’ he exclaimed…

It would seem that testing times lie in wait for us…!!

I’d rather live in a place with this name…!! Sounds like what we are doing…!!

After checking my rear drive and gearbox, Shawn said that he was satisfied that all was in order, and that I should have nothing to worry about on my way up north…!! This was very good news, as I have been more than a little concerned that I might have a serious breakdown soon, and be stranded so close to my final big goal on this journey…

I think the Big Fella knew this all along, and had just been messing with my already addled brain…!!

Our first stint tomorrow takes us to the little settlement of Cold Foot, crossing into the Arctic Circle on the way there… This will be my second crossing of this mythical Line of Latitude, that tells you that you are nearing the northern reaches of our planet…

My first crossing was in Finland, near the town of Rovaniemi, in August 2010, on my way to the northernmost point on the planet, where a vehicle can still be ridden…

That seems so long ago and far away now…!! And yet, when I think about it, I can recall the people I met there, and the guy who gave me a little lucky talisman that he had carried with him for years… I still have it in the right hand pocket of my riding pants, along with many others I have collected…

There is no internet or telephone reception between here and Prudhoe Bay, so I have a very good excuse for not writing about our trip up there until I return…!!

We have gone “back to school” as Chenty put it, when we checked into the Ladies Dormitory of the University of Alaska… During the Summer, when all the students have gone away on their holidays, their rooms are rented out to travelers such as ourselves, for far less than any hotel in town… A brilliant idea…!!

Mark at his desk, preparing for tomorrow’s lesson, “Riding in Mud for 500 Miles”….

It is now just past 11.00 pm, and it is still light enough to read a book outside… Problem is, I don’t have a book, and it’s too cold to be outdoors anyway…!!

To all those that have emailed their best wishes to us, we thank you… Now please pray that the rain stops…!!

GB and the Prudhoe Posse,

Fairbanks, Alaska.