We made it to Alaska!
Added on Thursday, May 27th, 2010 by Carole Nash Editor
We made it to Alaska!
We made it to Alaska on a technicality. Several hundred miles north you can enter via Beaver Creek on the Alaskan Highway but we ran out of time. The project was slated to last eight or nine weeks and the six days we lost in the port of Buenos Aires we only partly made up. I reckon we were four to six days behind our best schedule and given that we rode nearly 20 000 miles in two months, I’d say that was a success. It was enough that we had done this ride safely, but that it had been completed almost, tantalisingly close to schedule that was almost impossible to please, I’d rate the project eight out of ten. Several hundred miles south of where we planned to enter Alaska is a little place called Hyder. You enter from the Canadian side at Stewart, itself at the end of the Stewart Highway deep inside British Columbia. There are a handful of houses in Hyder and the Sealaska Inn. If there are two famous places that act as some kind of homage American bikers try to ride to, it is here and the salt lake near Gerlach in Nevada.
Gary owned the Sealaska and remembered from when I led 22 riders around the world in 2002. He lives in Hyder in the summer and winters in Hawaii. The rest of the time the bad lads come to Hyder to hide. One half of the town disowns the other and if you stayed here for long an edgy feel would quickly gain momentum. We never stay anywhere for long. We move fast and see everything on the move. Having placed into position another important piece of the jigsaw, a clearer picture of the adventure slowly began to come into focus, the true clarity of which would only happen once we got home. Separation from minor problems and squabbles would be essential to gain a grounded perspective for the magnitude of what each rider had achieved. This journey was the Mount Everest of the motorbike world, and I feel qualified to say so.
The route back through the Banff and Jasper national park was spectacular. The Colombian Icefield was as I remembered all those years ago. The entrails of the head of ice retreating presented itself as mounds of grit and scree, everything grey, held frozen for hundreds of years only to be secreted and left scraped by the roadside. Nearby Bow Glacier lay next to Crowfoot Glacier and by Hector Lake, frozen and green, Mosquito Creek looked cold and forbidding. This route between Jasper and Banff is one of the most magnificent routes in North America and as a motorcyclist you almost go down on bended knee wanting to be wedded to such beauty.
Brian’s bike was still without a working rectifier so only by successively exchanging batteries could it be ridden for distances of 150 miles in which time I could charge one for him using my engine. His mindset though was of one having completed the journey and that this was the end of the ride. He rode all the way and put 17 000 miles on the clock of a Tenere in eight weeks. It is only when you start to look back at where these riders have been, and in such a short time, that you begin to establish a respect for what they have done. In all the tours that I have led, this one has been the cruellest, and in all the groups of men and women that have completed their adventure, this final hard core group of riders that I have the privilege to ride with, are without doubt the most understated, and amongst the toughest. As seems to be the prerogative of the talented, they are also a tad temperamental. In the Sandman Hotel at McBride Jonny and Nigel had been arguing ferociously. I can hear Jonny now, shouting how no one wants to ride with him, as his voice starts to get higher and higher. He would drink more beer and bang his fist hard on the table. A man so strong he could open up a clam with his fingers. Nigel, the little bearded one, could survive a ride alone across the Nubian but would last seconds if the large Norwegian really got on a roll. They, along with Steve, Nadine and Tim Hughston are now the back markers of this expedition, behind all of the others who elected to leave a few days sooner.
It is raining and it is cold and Caroline and I are driving to Calgary. I stopped riding in Guatemala to take over the duties driving the support vehicle. Paperwork and the dealing with corrupt policemen and petty officialdom required more experience than Roy yet possessed, and as has happened most nights, end of our workday will be midnight once again.
The next morning it is her time to return home. Everyone is dispensable at some point on a project, and most certainly me, so I dropped her off at Calgary airport. I was then 400 miles behind my small group and we had arranged to try and meet up around Winnipeg. There are final objectives to ride to Niagara Falls but the bikes must be delivered to the shippers near New York in the next five days.
I left Brian in Calgary with a friend of his who lived there and left him equally with an interesting choice, which might not be of his own choosing. Because Tenere’s are not sold in North America his bike could not be fixed. By exchanging batteries, which I could selectively charge and keep swapping, he could keep going to New York. He didn’t fancy that. If I carried his bike to New York without him it would be difficult to save any of the other riders should they befall a catastrophe. He would need to sit in the truck with me so I could get him on the road using our emergency procedure. It was only 4000 miles to the end of the trip but he decided to stay. He was considering leaving his bike here with the view of flying back later in the year bringing back the part he needed and then ride around America. One moment his life had a route he understood, the next moment presented a possible dramatic change of fortune. How interesting. I left and found a Super 8 motel nearby and the next morning set off east, on my own on the Trans Canadian Highway chasing trains.
