Bike to Alaska

 Chapter 29: Home  September 18, Thursday: 150 miles ! (8272)   Work starts early on a farm, so the noise woke me up, and I was on the road by 5:30. It was still quite dark, and cold, but nothing like last week in the Yukon. A real treat to be riding before and during sunrise, and a treat the rest of the day just to be riding in the East, through familiar countryside. It's wonderful to see old things in a new way - to really appreciate seeing blue jays, starlings, cows, poison ivy, grasshoppers, maple trees, old-old farms and barns, chicory and other wildflowers, grapes, hardwood forests... I find it's comforting to ride among old, graceful hills, friendly and inviting, instead of jagged inhospitable mountains, to have towns every five or ten miles - old well-established towns, and to hear crickets in the fields. It was not all roses, of course.  Being called a homophobic slur by some punk in a passing car was a rude reawakening; a reminder that not everyon...

 Chapter 28: Five Days on a Bus This photo is from a previous bike trip I made in 1977, from Connecticut to Colorado, which also involved taking a bus to get home. As you can see, I used my spare time to write back then too. September 13, Saturday  0 bike miles, ~875 bus miles, to Dawson Creek  Berserk morning. It turned out that Dan Moore, who had given me Denise's number when we met on the Dempster, was back in town, so after Denise fed me a big breakfast, we went to see him. He came with us downtown, and we looked around for a Whitehorse T-shirt. We couldn't find one, so I just bought food for the bus ride, packed, and we went to the bus station. I learned that there was no way the bike would arrive with me if I shipped it by bus, and it was going to cost $30 anyway, so I called CP air, and found out I could ship it by air freight for the same price, and it would get there in two or three days. Denise and I zipped over to CP Air while Dan stood in line to buy...

 Chapter 27: Whitehorse September 9, Tuesday  83 miles (7886)   Today was awful - a real low point. I was unenthused about riding right from the start, and I was tired of pushing for the arbitrary goal of Whitehorse. I wasn't making good time to begin with, and then after Beaver Creek, I suddenly got a tremendous headwind. As if that weren't enough, I came to a stretch where they were watering the road. I had heard about this but couldn't believe it.   The tractor-trailer tank truck had clearly already made at least two passes before I got there, and it went by three more times , till the road was just mud. I was in total despair; a sunny day, and I had to ride in mud. I screamed curses at the wind and the water truck and the whole world until I was hoarse, and I decided that I would start hitching when I got to Koidern, the next town.   Somehow I kept pedaling though, and by the time I got to Koidern, the road was dry again, and the wind had even shif...