My Alaska Ride

OK....I think I'm finally ready to document my riding portion of the trip. After a loooooong drive in the truck to Athol, ID and losing 5 tailights & one light bracket from the trailer I set out to meet Tracy in Banff about 6 hours away. I took off around 3 and half of the ride was in cold freaking rain. I also was a little freaked out because I saw several bears, deer & big horn sheep going along the way and my bike didn't stop all that well on dry roads so I didn't want to test it in the rain. Stephen & Jerry were going to rest for an hour or so and meet us but decided to head out early in the morning.

After being in the truck with those fools for 2 days straight I was excited to see this.


We had a few beers with Beth & Steve at a brewpub and I was beat. OK, not really...I wanted to go to the Dancing Sasquatch but the line was too long.


The next morning came way too early and I was sad that I'd be leaving Tracy (again) but excited for what the next few weeks would hold. We did a little sight seeing and had some poutine and then it was time to roll. Lake Louise was really pretty and last week my coworker that all the hippy college students have lots of free lovin' there. Not sure about that but everyone that wasn't a tourist there under 50 looked pretty nasty.




Now it was time to roll and get the real bike trip started! I met up with Stephen & Jerry at a gas station in Lake Louise and after warming up with some hot chocolate we were on our way. The highway from Lake Louise to Jasper was possibly the most beautiful road that we rode on. Pretty much the whole ride had awesome mountain views on both sides and got COLD. Here's a glacier ("glassier" in Canadian) in the top left behind Stephen.


We kept riding and soon it was too freaking cold for me so I had to strip down and put on some more layers. This looks like it's in the middle of the day but this picture was taken at 9:54PM. Tracy got mad when I posted this on Facebook. That's what awesome it is.


We finally rolled into Jasper when it was getting dark a little after midnight. Stephen and I voted for camping when all of the hotels were over $200 but Jerry found one for $160.

More to some later and I promise it won't take 2 1/2 months for the next post.

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We woke up early the next morning to cover some ground and after lolly gagging and trying to get everything just perfect on our bikes we set out maybe around 10Am. Or maybe 11AM, who knows. All I remember is that it started out fan-freaking-tastic. We gassed up in Jasper along with a truck that had a wrecked airplane on a trailer (which happened to be a pretty common sight on our trip) and there's no picture of it cause I told Prasek that it would be morbid snapping a pic if someone died in the wreck.

We didn't really get many pictures on the way to Dawson Creek because it was raining but here you can see it went from a beautiful day to OH MAN ITS COLD AND FREAKING WET.





Oh crap, that's the way we're headed...


The ride was cold and wet for the last few hours (poutine at a DQ in Grand Cache [I think] warmed me up) but we rolled into Dawson Creek around 7PM. Not really sure where to go but Jerry came to the rescue and asked some girl on a Vespa where to stay and eat dinner. She recommended the Super 8 that had some kind of bar & grill attached so we headed on over there. When I was checking in some braces-wearing-apple-eating-5-foot-nothing kid asked where I was from and when he heard "Texas", he said, "Why don't you come up here and work on a real oil patch?" Whatever, boss, I was just interested in checking in and getting into dry clothes so after getting cleaned up we ate at the grill next door and yes, I had some more poutine. After dinner, Prasek and I headed to the Alaska Bar which the Vespa girl recommended but instead of leaving after one beer "because it's dodgey" we just about shut it down. After getting harassed by one girl thinking we were cops (not sure what was going on that they'd be worried about cops) and another one that REALLY wanted to dance with this cat right here we decided it was time to leave cause her short-kid boyfriend was getting plssed that she was dancing with every dude in the place except him (and me & Prasek) we decided to head out. What up with the short kids around here?

Prasek having a good time and what Mile 0 of the AlCan highway looks like at 2AM.

Yes, it's sideways.

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