Battling against the elements
Added on Monday, August 23rd, 2010 by Carole Nash Editor
Battling against the elements
Sitting in my hotel room in Prudhoe Bay. It’s 9pm and I will sleep soon. The ride up the Dalton was easy for the most part, hard in small sections. Tarmac alternates with hard packed earth, stamped solid by countless trucks with their heavy loads. Heated and dried and then frozen only to thaw again in the spring.
The climate has not been friendly. Low cloud hung lower the further north I rode. The sense of growing isolation was impossible to ignore. For two nights I slept rough, wrapped up in my sleeping bag in some truck stop under a veranda. I am still determined to ride this adventure as I always have, hard and fast. Too many hotels soften the soul; too few miles make me weak.
Going up was hard on the bike and I am a little nervous how it will fare on the way down. Mud spray from the front wheel oven baked on the hot radiator and choked the engine of cool air. At one point I caught the temperature gauge showing 120 so stopped and allowed it to cool down. I found a small airstrip and asked if I could sponge off the mud and that seemed to work. It’s still not right but within acceptable parameters. It is hard up here but I will miss it when I’m gone. Why is it like that?
The tundra is turning red and that is a sign of fall. Summer turns into winter in two or three weeks with little in between. I had thought about risking starting in the south but that would have been a disaster. Fortune favours the brave but catastrophes await the stupid. It is said that everything is chance but with preparation you lesson the risk of the unknown.
Trucks batter past, the surface changes from dry to wet, from paved to soft soil. One minute the air is war and dry the next stinging cold rain lashes down. I am tired and tomorrow the journey starts for the south.
