ALASKA!

Anchorage, Alaska! I had finally arrived at the starting point for my big 14,000 mile-ish ride from the top of North America to the southernmost tip of  South America.  Though getting here from Bangkok had not been plain sailing...

Flight 1 – Bangkok to Japan – Charged almost the price of my flight ticket to bring my bike on board and had to show my account balance to be able to fly as I had no onward flight booked from Japan.

Flight 2 - Japan – Sydney – Did not have Australian visa and was not able to board plane! My fault....it never even occurred to me.  Checkout guy squeals at me in the highest pitch voice you’ve ever  heard...”no visa no flyyyyyy!” without an ounce of sympathy, reminiscent of the Chinese guy from the film The hangover who shouts, ”suck on my tiny Chinese.....” I walk away in a strop and impulsively start booking a flight on my phone to Kazakhstan, deciding to knock Australia on the head and cycle home from there instead. Mr No fly finds me in the airport 15 minutes later..... “I make special arrangement for youuuuu”. He seems to have pulled some strings, booked me on the evening flight and got me the e-visa sorted  too. Fair play.

Flight 3 Sydney – Hawaii –Get to check in and am told that I can’t board the flight as I don’t have a flight leaving the States! Cycling out doesn’t count. I go off and find the cheapest flight I can, Florida to Colombia for 90n quid, and I’m allowed to fly.

Flight 4 Hawaii – Anchorage, Alaska – plain sailing, they don’t even check the weight of my bike box. Though when I get to check in I realise I’ve left my tent in Hawaii!!!

All that forgotten, I get to arrivals and am relieved to find my big cardboard bike box waiting for me. Assembling my bike at 5am I see another bloke putting his bike together. He’s what they call in Alaska a “snowbird” – someone that has gone down south to escape the harsh winter. I forget his name, but a friendly weathered hick sort of looking bloke who had been working on a chicken farm in Arizona, who kindly offered to show me where my hostel was.  As we leave the airport and cycle into the city, apart from my hands being freezing cold the other thing I notice is there is not a single car insight! On the way to the “Bent prop Inn” where I’m staying we pass a frozen lake runway and the blokes former house where his ex-wife is now living. It now occurs to me that he doesn’t have a home to return to! We grab a coffee while waiting for the Inn to open (things open late in Alaska – they do it their way).  The lady working on the hostel is pretty savage and says he can’t come in, though Anchorage is a small town and apparently he knew someone else that worked there and was hoping to ask for a job – nice bloke I hope it works out for him.

I grabbed an hours sleep and went to the outdoor shop to replace my lost tent and buy a stove (I wasn’t going to - so glad I did!!) and stocked up on food and bear spray in readiness to hit the  road!! Walking around the town I met a top British bloke who had been living there for many years with his family. His name was Finn and he invited me for breakfast and showed me around the local area. Despite being the capital of the state Anchorage is a very sleepy place with a lawless cowboy feel to it, where people drive Harleys without helmets. The downtown is a bit of a ghost town and has virtually no traffic. A few years back it was apparently full of strip clubs. Apparently things are tightening up now but living in Alaska a few years ago you could do pretty much whatever you wanted. With everything being imported from the states through Canada it is however very expensive, a loaf of bread is 5 bucks.  Homelessness and drugs are a big problem with many native intuits that have moved into the city living permanently drunk on the streets.

Breakfast with Fin

Downtown Anchorage

Anxious to hit the road I left Anchorage the following afternoon and started heading east in the direction of Tok.  I didn’t get on the road till 3pm and did a short 55 mile first day, somewhat nervous yet also excited about camping my first night in Alaska. I spent the first night in a field outside the town of Palmer. I woke up freezing with my water bottle solid but it was a bear free first night!  After Palmer things became extremely remote, though the scenery was spectacular. Alaska was the sort of place that hadn’t seemed to change in years, blokes had big beards (not the manicured pathetic things boys have in east London), really bushy beards and carry guns. Its so remote that many of the tiny villages have runways for light aircraft and its often 150 miles between towns. Well, a town here is a gas station! This is where the gas stove came in handy – looking back I’m not sure if I could have survive without it as cooking pasta with a can of tuna was my staple  diet for many days.  Its by far the most remote place I’ve cycled and you definitely need to plan ahead. I later realised that most people who do this route start a month later when its warmer and the few campsites and service stations you come across are no longer boarded shut for winter.  To get the full Alaskan experience I tuned my radio into the local station where I heard famous classics such as, sound of the seal, the seal song and Ice Alaska.

Meeting Santa

1st Camp in Alaska - just outside Palmer

During my cycle east through Alaska I bought myself an Alaskan number plate from an old guy with a massive beard, who told me he brought up the bear “little Bart” from the film The Revenant – I haven’t seen it and neither has he – well anyone with a beard like that could never admit to watching a Leonardo De Caprio film! In fact all the people I met were very friendly, even the guy who opened the door with a pistol in his hand when I knocked on his caravan to ask for some water! He ended up giving me a sandwich too (I boil lake water for cooking but I didn’t have any purification tablets so try to get tap water for drinking). Another lady who was taking care of her friends lodge invited me in for breakfast after seeing my freeze camping by the roadside. The place was like something from a 70’s movie with Bear skins all over the war and a beautiful stove burning away – it was heaven walking in there after freezing my tits off overnight in the tent. Speaking of tents, its the only thing I’m glad to have lost. The new one I can actually sit up in without hitting my head on the ceiling and raindrops coming in.

Boiling Broccoli - life saving stove

House in Chistochina where i was invited for Breakfast - check out the decor!

Alaska was over too quickly. It would have nice to have seen more of it, the north is apparently more beautiful but cycling north into even colder climates when you have 14,000 miles to do in the opposite direction is hard to do! 500 miles and several freezing nights in a tent took me to the border with Canada (The Yukon). As if to emphasise just how big the place is.....Canada customs is 20 miles away from the US border! I’d already been on the road for 100 mountainous miles at this point, riding an unexpected 20 more to the Canadian border was pretty brutal!!

The Canadian arrival at the extremely remote micro- town of Bever Creek was as friendly as they are renowned for. After the normal formalities the immigration lady takes my photo by the border and, being a keen cyclists herself, asks if there’s anything else I need. I explain that I’m about to run out of cooking gas. She immediately calls her boyfriend who drives to meet me in his pick up and offers me a room in their house for the night. I hadn’t had a shower since leaving Anchorage but took them up on the offer without hesitation. I hadn’t had a shower in nearly a week and must have absolutely stunk! They were legendary, they fed me up, gave me 2 bottles of gas, sun cream, loads of food for the roads...and the shower was heavenly.  They explained to me that because of the difficulty in getting Canadians to work in such a remote inhospitable place (minus 40 in winter and a 500 mile round trip to get groceries from the nearest town, Whitehorse!!!) there million dollar government house is free and their salaries a lot higher.

Canadian Border

Amazing hospitality at Bever Creek - Canadian Border

I hit the road the next morning feeling like a new man! It was about to be an interesting day on the road. Up until now I had seen all sorts of animals on the roads, Caribou, fox, hares but not the legendary Grizzly Bear, until now! There was a huge one right ahead of me crossing the road. Even though I was a way back I could clearly see it cross the road (Its mass occupied half of one carriageway) and sit by the side of it.  I waited until an oncoming truck went past and it ran away...then past it like I was doing a sprint finish.  Around 3 miles up the road an oncoming RV flags me down where an old Alaskan couple – snowbirds I presume – say in a deep Alaskan accent, “there’s a great big grizzly right back there about a mile back!” . Apparently this area of Canada has the highest number of Grizzly Bears anywhere in the world.  They kindly offer to turn around and see me past it. A part of me hopes its still there, but he’s gone.  And again, a mile or so later a bloke passes by in a pickup who slows down grits his teeth and starts peeling his fingers over bear- claw style. Either he believes he’s a bear, or he’s trying to tell me there’s on ahead, though I didn’t see it.

I keep pedalling into the evening, days are long and nightfall isn’t until 10:30pm. As I start to climb up the mountain pass the weather become more and more miserable and freezing rain is coming down. At the top of the pass there is a lay-by with a wooden outhouse. I take shelter there and start cooking some grub, which with methane and what not is probably a bad idea on hindsight. With the rain getting heavy, fresh memories of bears and nightfall coming, I figure it’s better to sleep in the bog than try and pitch my tent somewhere.  I managed to sleep reasonably well considering the cold...but what I didn’t expect to see when I opened the toilet door that morning was a snow storm!! It was coming down thick and fast. I put on all my clothes and was frozen to the core as I left my luxury accommodation.  My hands were in agony, I wore 2 pairs of gloves and tied two knots in the bottom of my over trousers and put them over my hands which helped somewhat but they were still frozen. Around 11am in warmed up a little.

Grizzly Bear on the Highway

Gourmet cooking in a Bog

Waking up to snow

100 miles later and after another big day on the Alaskan Highway I reached the top of the pass 20 miles away from the town of Haines Junction where I saw a cyclist coming towards me. He was a teacher, who immediately offered me a place to stay.  It’s got to me more comfortable than a toilet I thought. His family home was awesome. They had goats, chickens, all sorts. He explained to me he was an “outdoors teacher” and taught kids how to trap animals! I’m not so keen on killing animals myself but it was fascinating stuff. His wife was a former carpenter who had a business selling hand made products from the fur, gloves made from lynx and all sorts.  They fed me up proper, gave me some wild bison sausage for the road and I set goodbye. Nice family.

Awesome Pancake Breakfast

These are Lynx apparently

By now it had been too many 100 plus mile days in a row and my legs were like jelly. A hard 100 mile day took me to my current location of Whitehorse, which is the capital of the Yukon and by far the biggest place in the province. Instead of camping it was the chance to stay in a hostel and chill out a bit.....I say that, I was woken up by my bed being rocked madly at 5:31 this morning by an earthquake which measured 6.3 in the Richter scale!  It was big national news!!! Didn’t expect that one!