Keeping on target
Added on Monday, August 23rd, 2010 by Carole Nash Editor
Keeping on target
I slept for three hours last night, pulled out my bag and laid out in the back of someone’s pickup on the outskirts of Fairbanks. I need to stay hard yet pace myself. I have been stupid. On previous record rides I run until I’m trashed and hang in until the end. Not efficient. A battery that’s abused never really recovers.
Now I’m pacing myself. 48 hours on the road and then into a hotel, even for 5 hours. Have to get the downloads done. Have to communicate.
Last night I was restless in the car but slept. In the morning I set off and felt strong. Strange how good I feel. Before the start I was so nervous, afraid I might not have it in me anymore to suffer enough to succeed. Listen, if it were that easy I wouldn’t be alone out here. There are others but they are slower.
22 days, that’s my target, 19 if I didn’t have to film. The fire is beginning to stir in my belly, my loins. It has been a while since I needed like this. I need this one; I have to have this journey as I see it in my head.
Finished with the Dalton Highway, with the pipeline, with Deadhorse, the grime and the oil, the big trucks and the s****y roads. I’ve already passed over the Brookes Range with the magnificent Atigan Pass, over 70 degrees latitude, well on the way to the Arctic Ocean. It’s a different world and it changes daily. I cross into Canada from Alaska, to Beaver Creek (pop 60). I want a fridge magnet, but no one has one, not even at Buckshot Bettys, so I ride on…
The vision is coming into focus. I rode hard all day from Fairbanks, the top of the Alaskan Highway to where I am now, the Yukon River 150 miles west of Watson Lake.
Loads to do before Salt Lake; Calgary late tonight if I’m lucky. Take this evening. I had only 250 miles more to do and the sun was going down in Whitehorse. The animals come out at night; bears, moose, caribou. There are buffalo on the side of the road at Watson Lake.
I rode fast, really fast, swept around the corners on a surface sports bike riders would want to steady themselves with their feet. There is gravel and small round stones and mud and dust that clogs up the radiator. I’m running hot all the time. The bike and me. The focus is intense, scanning each bush on both sides of the highway.
I try to make where I need to be before it gets dark but it’s not to be. Two long days and a morning will get me to Salt Lake. I can ride the bike very hard knowing it will be serviced within an inch of its life; four mechanics at Wrights, in two hours, and then ride late until the Mexican border. I’m not crossing there at night. There is a plan.
