Saturday, June 23rd, 2007

Today we head back up the Alcan about 10 miles to the the northern end of the Cassiar Hwy. We've heard the usual horror and heaven stories about this road. Long stretches of what was once dirt are now mud and construction so bad you want to turn around, but spectacular. After Prudhoe Bay we are fearless and intrepid explorers and we laugh in the face of adversity, Hah!

Well it starts to rain on us almost immediately so we stop and put on our rain gear. It gets colder and colder and colder. Mother nature detests arrogance. We pull into a small market literally out in the middle of nowhere for gas around noon very wet and dirty from lots and lots of mud. There is no restaurant so we all scrounge a meal at a grocery deli. Chicken bits and chicken things, umm umm good. While gassing up we see a truck pulling a travel trailer come in for gas. We all noticed that the right rear tire of the trailer has shredded and almost come off the rim. Thinking that the driver might not realize it, we told him. Sure enough, he did not know it. When they get out of the truck Frank recognizes one of the passengers as someone he knows from Flag. Sure enough they are from Flag, heading up to Alaska to do some fishing. What are the odds?

After our gourmet meal of chicken parts, we hit the trail with about 150 more miles of constant rain. The clouds were low on the mountains but we would get an occasional glimpse and as John said: "It was the prettiest ride I never did see." Except for the mud and the constant rain it was a really great ride. No, I take that back, it was a great ride even with the mud and rain. The forest here is made up of much bigger trees than we saw further north. Beautiful tall trees and water every where, the rivers are swollen with spring runoff from record snow fall. What a sight, just wish we could have seen the mountains. What we did see were covered with snow.

We were about 16 miles from our nights lodging when John's KTM just quit running. Frank (our resident mechanic) helped John get his bike to a clearing beside the road where we all took stock. Before we even got our helmets off they hit us hard, waves of them in perfect formation in a coordinated sneak attack, such perfidy, never have so many feasted on so few. The attack caught us completely by surprise and made us all look like bad spellers trying to dance to the Village People singing 'YMCA'. Millions nay billions of mosquitoes and biting flies hungry for our blood and our good humor came at us with the fierce determination. Frank shouted those immortal fighting words: "Let's get the heck out of here". We very quickly decided that there was no way to push or tow John 16 miles so we pushed his bike away from the road to then go to our lodging to seek reinforcements and help. Before we left I suggested that we better chain the bike to a tree. Allen said what for there's no one around, to which I replied, the mosquitoes might carry it off. John said let em have it if they want it and he jumped on the back of Haynes

bike and we beat a hasty retreat.

As we travelled to Bell Vue II where we were staying I saw the above mountain briefly and thought what a great shot. I stopped beside the highway, took out my camera and was ambushed again. I barely got the shot off before they tried to take me away. It was only my prodigious clothing that saved me! Seriously, it's almost enough to cause a panic attack when under such an onslaught.

When at the lodge our good fortune was at hand. A worker for a local (200 miles away) utility was staying there and asked if he could help, and did he ever have a truck. Frank and I followed him and John back to the killing fields where he picked up John's bike and loaded it into the back of his boom truck. Of course we had to take pictures. Someone said to tell Anthony, this is a new KTM rescue vehicle. By the time we got the bike unloaded at Bell Vue, it ran. We thought that maybe he got some bad gas and decided that with the limited facilities there, (it was just a heli-skiing lodge and gas several hundred miles from anywhere else) we had better see how far south to better facilities we could get the next morning. Meanwhile, Hayne is getting very good at changing his oil each evening.

For those that are not familiar with Bell Vue, I took a couple of pictures of some unique meeting rooms, note the sod roof. Very very nice and expensive, too bad it's so far away. It continued to rain and so ended the day. We are averaging about 300-350 miles per day now and slowly heading south.