FLASK July 10-17

Cirque Update Tomorrow - Sorry for not posting ride update before I went in ...
July 10:
186 km to Grand Prairie, Alberta. 830-830. Wet, wet, wet ... & grimy. About a 15 km downhill to start the ride down over a cool metal/wood bridge & low clouds in the densely wooded valleys. Then a 25 km climb ... no, wait ... make that a series of climbs up onto the Grand Plateau, then a long series of rolling hills with intermittent long climbs. Past coal plants, coal mines, gas plants, landfills, toxic waste sites ... eew. When I stopped for lunch in the rain at a gravel picnic area, Curtis invited me into his trailer for some place dry to eat. His 3 kids - Nathan, Cali, & Corey - were adorably showing me flashlights, coloring books, & hairy cookies dropped on the carpet. Fun! Curtis was waiting for his father-in-law to rescue them from transmission failure on his truck & I left just as he arrived. The bike computer stopped working again. It's really frustrating to not know how far I have yet to go so when I saw the GP 100 km sign around 2:00 I thought I had a shot at making it. The 70 km sign at 4:00 was also encouraging. Troy, a young framer, stood by the side of the road, shaking his head, "I couldn't believe that sign on your bike, dude!" Wanting a picture ... Inexplicably, there was a little trailer kitchen at Cutbank River so I had a Smokie Sausage & an Orange Crush while Eileen told me a story about some dingbat who left his camper parked too close to the rising water - it was washed downstream overnight! & a story someone incredulously told yesterday about a fellow "camped right alongside the road the other day!" "That was me!," I exclaimed. A long climb followed so it wasn't til 6:00 that I saw the 50 km sign. The gears, chain, & brakes were getting worn & loosened by the accumulating road grit & I futiley rinsed them. I saw the half-eaten remains - open chest cavity - of a moose. Cool but gross. Tired, the road finally became flat but there were no mileage signs until 12 km left. Then there was a steep 20 minute climb that I grr'd through standing up, sweating like a mother & getting buzzed by the increasing traffic. At the 1st stoplight I discovered I had no brakes - the road slurry had completely worn the disc brake pads. Scarey! I found a hotel, hosed down the bike, bags, & my raingear then jumped in the shower. I talked to Rae before & after a 2 Whopper BK dinner (yuck! But it was already 9:00 & it was right across the street). Stretched, beer, cold medicine, bed ... Tired but not as desperately so as the last 2 days. Rain in the forecast all week. Coughing in morning & at night now. Hmmm ...
July 11:
146 km to Farmington, BC (10 miles north of Mile 0 of the Alaskan Highway (Hwy 97) in Dawson Creek). 1000-730. No rain til late in the day ... Frustrating day with two great gifts! The terrain was all rolling hills. Tailwind creates tag-along swarms of mosquitos on steeper climbs. Brake adjustment in the morning was nearly ineffective & it nearly cost me when a befuddled old man almost pinched me into our guardrail at high speed. PBS called & really like my adventure as a story idea for a PBS TV promotion, relating to my enthusiasm for Ken Burn's National Park series. Jon was very enthusiastic & fun to talk to. Just before Dawson Creek, it unleashed a storm on me. Question: why does the muck created by cars end up being the shit on the shoulder that I have to ride through? More brake, chain, & gear slurry & I'm not only wet but messy. Oh, & did I mention that this mess wears off the bug juice so that whenever I stop, I'm bitten by another swarm of mosquitos? Griffin's is the only bike shop in town & they sucked. Overpriced. Limited selection. Staffed by a young nimrod know-it-all who sold me a wireless computer when I specifically said, "No wireless. Too fickle." & brake pads to big by a (critical) smidge. Gift 1: Melanie runs the RV park / golf course at which I stopped for the night & she offers to let me work on the bike in the golf mechanic's shop. Dry, warm, tools, ... grinder. Brake discs are modified & fit in within 15 minutes. Yes! I have braking power again! Then I discover the computer is wireless. It has a cable for pedal cadence, which confused Jr. Oh ... & it doesn't work. Grrr. Davon is a local bad kid going good with the help of Jon, Melanie's husband & the fellow who approved my use of the grinder. Davon's interesting to talk to & he's also helpful in securing gift 2: 1/2 oz of BC kind! Yum! Quick late dinner. No stretch. Everything but bag, clothes, & yoga mat are wet & most are filthy. I do not sleep well as rain hammers the tent. Dreading tomorrow as the drive train's roaching itself with the road slurry.
July 12:
140 km to near Wonowon, BC. 830-800. Jon made my breakfast even though their kitchen isn't really open for this early in the wet season they're having. Two egg & meat sandwiches & fruit. Yum! Messy getting out of the mud & gravel RV park, the road is mercifully dry but it's obviously been too much for the drive train. Pointy teeth on all three chain rings, both derailluer pullies, & 1/2 the cassette. So in Ft. St. John, I find Ferris Fast Cyclery run by Pat, a super knowledgeble, helpful, & enthusiastic guy running a top quality shop with good selection & appropriate prices. & he won't even SELL wireless computers! "Too fickle," he says! Ha! He only has 9-speed cassettes but I'm running friction shifting now, not index, so I get started installing my new crankset & pullies, Pat replaces the cassette & sets the chain length. Just helping. No charge. Nice. I'm tuning the derailleur on my way out of there only 2 hours down, convinced I have a shot at Wonowon, where Jon says there's food & cabins, about which I'm stoked if it rains again. But it doesn't! All day! All day! Hills are many in this terrain. The breaks downhill are recuperative til very late in the day, when starting another hill brings a notable taughtness of fatique. But I make steady progress, deciding based on what I wanted to do before sleep - set up camp, stretch, adjust front derailleur (again), simple rice & Tasty Bite in tortillas dinner, put up bear line, write - that I'd pull over at the 1st suitable spot that came up between 730 & 8, by which I thought I'd make Wonowon. I find a decent roadside spot. Gravel. No mud. Reasonably flat. Dry area big enough for tent & yoga mat. Yellow flowers abuzz with fat honeybees. Sunshine breaking through steadily in a long sunset, revealing the 1st cloudless stretch of sky I've seen in days. Those flowers alight forever as I have a fantastic, connected-to-the-world, great progress-after-so-many-consecutive-wet-hard-days stretch. It's just crisp enough to keep the mosquitos tolerably down. A bright white, nearly full moon rises in the still pale blue sky & lingers above the treeline while I make & eat dinner. I am happy. Great mileage. The rig feels ready with all the investment (despite the frustration of not having a functioning computer). I feel humbly adventurous. Not out there - trucks rolling by til at least 11 - but remoter than I think I've been thus far. Knowing I have a reasonable shot at Watson Lake by mid-day the 18th because I can put miles in under difficult circumstances day after day. I'm kinda tough & I dig it. Well ... when I'm not whinging about how horrid something is! Hahaha! Great day of touring.
July 13:
208 km (129 miles, farthest of this tour). 8-10. I awoke early after sleeping well, despite persistent coughing as I fell asleep. I spread everything out in the low horizon sun, make oatmeal with raisins, syrup, & granola, & hot cocoa. Meditated. Packed. Uphill for what turned out to be 4 miles to Wonowon (I couldn't know that last night since I DON'T HAVE A WORKING COMPUTER!), where I eat 2nd breakfast & have coffee. Yum! Childishly, I'm still mad at Griffin's & frustrated throughout the day not knowing how far I've gone nor how far to go. Important in this very sparsely populated Interior. Lots of hills today early into Pink Mountain where I ate 2nd lunch: cheeseburger & ice cream added to 2 PBJs & handful upon handful of jerky, gummi bears, candy bars, & GORP. Into Buckinghorse River for what I decided would be dinner at 6: another cheeseburger & fries. Now I'm at Alaska Highway Mile 173 & wanting to get at least to Mile 200. Thinking I'd pull over at the best looking spot between 830-900, stretch, snack, sleep. Nope. I got reminded there are bears out here when 2 juvenile grizzlies 20 m off the road noticed me pedal by. Hanging food is a hassle so I wanted to stay where there's people & bear boxes, which meant I was gunning for Prophet River PP & what I thought could be a 120 mile day ...there was no mile or km for the PP marked on the map. But I am beastly strong today in this my second straight day of no rain &, get this, it was sunny! & hot at times! Awesome! Two big climbs leaving Buckinghorse then it's gloriously powerful riding on remarkably easier terrain (many fewer & far gentler rollers plus an overall downhill). It's getting late after I roll well past 100 miles - I now notice they have km markers on the highway every 5 km - when I spot Chris on the opposite side of the road, remounting his Honda 600. I ask about the PP & he vaguely suggests maybe 20 km further. Nope, though I'm really riding strong, grateful I managed to feed myself so often today, so I don't really care. It's crisp but not cold. The sun lingers forever, dancing through the treeline orange & bright. I spot motorbikers camped at a river pullout, well after I think I should've seen the PP & just having determined that I should ride the 20 km (I think) into Prophet River. Whew! There's also a touron here & a car's pulled in since I crawled into the tent, desperately trying to avoid letting the incessant mosquito swarm in with me. Completely satisfied with my performance & attitude on a beautifully, rare sunny day through truly wild country of dense boreal forest & the tallest aspens I've ever seen. Still there is the presence of extractive industries. The towns now are really camps for work crews with some restaurant & convenience store across the highway. Will easily make Ft. Nelson tomorrow early enough to have a shop look at the computer & re-stock for a big 3 1/2 day push to Watson Lake, 335 miles from Ft. Nelson. Within striking distance if I crank out big, near 100 mile days so that I can get there by noon the 18th. Cirque of the Unclimbables on the near horizin! Holy shit! Yea!
July 14:
125 km to Ft. Nelson. 700-300. Spoke too soon ... Awoke to make breakfast & repack in a swarm of mosqitos, who were joined in the swarm as I rode by flies & black flies. Hundreds of dragonflies dodged as I came through. Lunch of PBJ behind a shady company sign on the only groomed grass in 200 km but sun turned to thunderstorm as I came into Ft. Nelson. Then started debugging the POS wireless bike computer & managed to stab my hamd pretty deeply with my knife trying to get tie wraps off. Bled steadily all the rest of the day. Drugstore for cough syrup. Bike store for wired bike computer (thanks, CBC Sports & Louie for 10% off). It's getting later now (5pm), thunderstorming, & the PP is 56 km away. I decided a hotel was in order. After showering, I noticed there was a passel of rough work crew drinking outside their rooms & they were wanting to know what was wrong with, me biking this far. Dean, Jeremy, & 2 already drunk guys, Earl & Morris. Dean was super nice, bandaging my wounded hand, giving me leftover pizza, & sharing stories from his rough young life, starting on his own at 14. We had a good time talking about roughnecking lifestyle, where everything's free (food, hotel, gas, truck, ...) & the pay's good (Dean made $138K last year). They order me more pizza & some wings for 1st dinner. I'd met Asian motorbikers outside the drugstore & they'd invited me to dinner. Jody & Ethel, Kendall & Lynda are from the SF area, riding the loop for vacation. Jody was a hoot, German-Japanese heritage ("they lost the war," says Ethel), & an old football coach. They paid for my dinner - too sweet. Exhausted, talking to Rae, falling asleep. No stretch - stupid. Room to hot trying to dry wet clothes. Hard to fall asleep. Rain. Thunder. Weariness creeping in.
July 15:
151 km to Summit Lake CG in Stone Mountain PP. 900-900. Trouble getting started - still tired. Put on new (wired) bike computer. Crappy buffet breakfast at cafe but great chat with Rae. Rain started just out of town & continued all day. Met Rob from Wales & Swiss-German Regula from Whitehorse - funny tourons riding together for a bit. He's going to Columbia & she to Calgary. Super hard, steep, wet, windy, cold climb up Steamboat Pass then a mercifully steep downhill into Tetsa River for warm, homemade cinnamon buns. Out of there & into the rain at 630 for the final 30 km, low grade push to Summit Lake PP CG. Set up & cooked in rain, fell into sack exhausted, tight, & cold. Too tired to get dressed again so I can get out & stake the rainfly, which I failed to do in my cold, wet stupor. Cough very persistent now.
July 16:
171 km to Laird Hotsprings CG. 700-630. Up early, then oatmeal, cocoa, & cinnamon bun in tent. Packed in tent. Pad definitely leaking air - damn. Wet tent. Wet pad. Wet Craig. Rain let up by Toad River where I had 2nd breakfast & with WiFi but no signal, emailed Rae. Her reply induced tears & I struggled the rest of the day emotionally. One hard climb to Muncho Lake, then a hundred rollers. One juvenile caribou, a dozen bighorn sheep (all females & kids), & one huge bison. I met Ken & Linda taking bison pictures & they were under the picnic area cover when I arrived wet at Laird HS CG. It'd been threatening all day, but it was a huge disappointment to have the downpour start when I saw the 2km to PP sign. Grr. Anyway, despite the rain, things began to go better. Ken & Linda work in education for the Alberta university system, are from NZ, & fed me smokies, salad, salmon, cheese, crackers, & beer. Then I stretched briefly before Denny & his family offered 2nd dinner: steak & beans. A loooong soak in the beautiful hot springs. With the tent set up under the picnic cover, things were drying out, & I was warm, loose, & dry for a change. Cough persistent, though. Pad deflated. But anticipate sleeping well since I'm tired & loose.
July 17:
212 km to Watson Lake. 730-800. Up early, intent on making the 165 km to Iron Lake in the Yukon, leaving just 53 km to Watson Lake for tomorrow. Left in fog but it soon burned off to reveal bright sun, a fast running Liard River, & rolling, densely treed hills. A herd of a dozen bison on the roadside were startled by the bike - calves scattering with their mothers & 3 young bulls tore down the shoulder ahead of me for 3 km or so. Awesome sight! More huge bison lounging & rolling in the dust around another curve. I pulled into Coal River for 2nd breakfast, yummy Hungry Man (eggs, great potatoes, bacon, sausage, ham, & coffee) served all day. As I was leaving around 1230 Wes, Quinn, & Giovanni pulled in! Wow, was it great to see them! Excited hugs, intro to Gio (who is a tiny but good-looking & very well-built Columbian), unload all my gear into their car, & rip out of there light & powerful. It's so easy to push the empty bike with all the towing power now under the hood & I adjusted to the squirreliness within 10 km. They caught up after eating & then met me every 30-45 km for the entire SUPPORTED 150 km to Watson Lake! I was so excited to be in the Yukon! Seeing that sign meant it was getting even wilder! I saw 5 black bears, so small that when I saw one I thought it was a cub til I got closer & saw the 2 tiny cubs with her. Pictures at the Watson Lake sign, then soon I saw my support team at the side of the road hanging next to a crazy van with 2 former Tucson Nimbus dudes - Mike & Eric - on a roaring, crazy adventure. Intent on working in Homer this summer to make money for a South American jaunt, they're living the dirtbag dream & happy, funny, generous dudes. The four amigos went & found dinner, then we made a quick run to the grocery store for dessert & beer before going to find Mike & Eric's poached campsite. Mike pestered Gio for an hour about finding his dream girl, any dark-haired gal named "Catalina" who might like a wierd dirtbag. Together, these two crazies had developed a complicated movie script based largely on mosquitos, which was a fun way to kill all the time they're spending together. Now I'm hoping to run into them around Anchorage when I get there. 2nd dinner was fresh-caught but oversalted trout with Hagen Daz dessert & a few beers. Very tired despite the easy riding as I'd pushed hard to finish the ride into WL today for a complete rest day tomorrow. The last hard 2 weeks of riding are over & my body needs rest.