Day 9

July 28. Whew! What a day! After a cold, cold start (30s), I made it:



But after that... Well.

That gnarly piece of road that young fellow said lay up ahead wasn't really that bad, just some patches of asphalt and chip seal. And the Yukon side wasn't bad at all. Then there was the Alaska side. Not bad, until the fog hit. I mean fog like cotton candy. But by now there were stretches of road that they call "Pavement Breaks," as in "Pavement Break Ahead" on a day-glo orange sign. What that means is that they've ripped up the pavement to get rid of the frost heaves and either laid down gravel or just not, which means you got dirt. Now, these really aren't bad, except when you can't see them coming because of the fog! But that passed and the road got pretty nice, until there appeared another kind of sign: "Road construction next 47 miles." This was just more and longer stretches of "Pavement breaks." But kind of wore me down, especially when it started to rain! But then, again, this wasn't really all that bad.

Here's what was bad. After an hour of hard rain, comes another sign: "Road Construction next 8 miles." Shit, I say, I just did 47 miles of bad road, how bad can 8 more be? Wrong question.

On this stretch, they'd skimmed off one layer of old surface and left an even older one exposed. For the whole fucking 8 miles! Think 8 miles of potholes, one after the other and stretching across the lane. The bike was bucking and bouncing around like an epilectic with his shorts full of hornets. And every once in a while, there would be a sign that said "Road Construction Ahead." Like what the fuck are we in now if there's construction up there. But that only indicated actual work being done, like backhoes swinging in front of you and graders and pointer cars.

Worst stretch of road I have ever been on, or ever hope to be on. But I got to ride every fucking inch of it back the other way!

So after that (it did pass), the rain really started coming down, all the way to Fairbanks (where I somehow landed after 448 miles). At one point, trying to look on the bright side, I thought to myself, At least there isn't any wind. You guessed it. About 15 minutes later, there comes the wind. As a test I thought, At least it isn't snowing. It didn't snow, so I'm pretty sure the wind was a coincidence.

I was planning to check into a hotel and get to the HD dealer in the morning for an oil change, but as I was looking for a hotel, shazamm, there was the HD building, so I stopped there first. And they wouldn't do it. Booked, they said. I tried to convince them otherwise, but no go. Have to go back in the morning. So of course I was all pissed off that I'm going to get what I wanted in the first place. Funny how 55 miles of bad road and a day in the rain makes you cranky.