The CX500 had good tires, a fairly fresh oil change, and was
in top mechanical condition. But with a measly 3.3 gallon tank I'd have to stop too often.
Besides, who in their right mind wants to ride around in Alaska's widely varying weather
conditions on a naked bike. Okay, never mind the "right mind" thing, we're motorcyclists,
right? Anyway, it wasn't my first choice for this ride.
The Concours hadn't yet had its long-overdue valve adjustment, the
tires had already brought me to Alaska from Maine the long way around plus a few thousand more
miles here at home, and the new Michelins were still sitting in the basement, waiting for me to
find the time to mount them. Not the safest choice for this ride. The KZ1300 sat where
I had parked it in the shop, patiently waiting for me to give it the thorough going-over I promised
it would get before being taken out on the road.
So that left the Suzuki. Old reliable, neglected, Suzuki. The
'82 GS1100G that I'd bought a couple of years ago for $800. It had been dumped and the handlebars
got tweaked (still are, as I'm a bit of a procrastinator). It was suffering from years of neglect
when I got it, but I planned on taking it home and giving it lots of TLC. The tach and speedo
dials had been broken by vandals so I'd had to replace both of them, and the almost unused Conti-Tours
at both ends were suffering from terminal ozone cracking so they'd been replaced too. The clearcoat
on the slightly dented tank was peeling and the homemade windshield wasn't exactly symmetrical. The
seat covering had major cracks and splits and the Givi tail trunk was mounted on a light-duty rack at the
back of the seat pan, causing the pan to buckle. So I changed the tires and all the fluids, and
started riding it. Found out right away it needed Progressive fork springs and shocks and installed
those. Now it runs so well I just ride it and never find the time to make it look pretty. Maybe
some slow winter I'll get around to it, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
At least the Suzuki had new rubber at both ends. But it, too, was
needing a valve adjustment. Eight thousand miles since I started riding it, and who knows how many
the previous owner put on it, since they'd been touched. But it runs strong, so they can't be too
far off, can they? At least that's what I was telling myself. Guess the Suzuki will have to carry
the load again. My "utility" bike, the one that fills the gaps. Gets ridden but never pampered;
starts first thing in the spring and is put away last in the fall; that sits out in the weather at
way-too-low below zero, and is always ready to be taken for a ride. Typical rode-hard-and-put-up-wet
situation.
My riding partner for this trip would be mounted on his pristine '97 Kawasaki
Concours. The Suzi would look pretty, well, let's just say "ungraceful" in its company, to be
generous. With the big, wide Pacifico fairing I have good protection from the elements, but the
fairings of that era (circa 1982) had only a slight aerodynamic edge on an apple crate. Not as bad
as those The Motor Company was putting on their big alphabet-labeled tourers, but better by mere fractions.
Due, no doubt, to a total lack of good sense, my friend and I were planning
a 1000 mile day ride. Most riders are intelligent enough to know that 5 or 6 hundred miles a day on a
motorcycle is enough, sometimes more than enough. But there are a few that slipped through the cracks
who think that if a few miles are good, then a whole lot of miles are mucho better. In fact, there's
a sort of club that some of these weirdoes belong to. It's called the Iron Butt Association. This
band of fools calls themselves the "World's Toughest Motorcycle Riders". The MINIMUM qualification
for membership is a ride of 1000 miles in 24 hours or less, or 1500 miles in 36 hours or less. Plumb
insane, they are.
Now my partner for this ride, Will, had planned on doing the ride just for
his own satisfaction. But I convinced him that we should document it according to the Iron Butt
Association (IBA) rules. That way we could apply for official recognition, and get the certificates,
etc. that go with completion of one of the rides. After that, if someone questions our sanity, we
can pull out the papers to PROVE we're crazy.
So that's how it came to be Saturday morning and time to leave. Will
lives in Anchorage, Alaska and I live about 180 miles east northeast of him at the congregation of
igloos called Glennallen. Our plan was for me to leave around 3:00 AM and ride to Anchorage, where
Will would be waiting for me. We both would gas up there, Will to get his starting time, and me
to get a receipt showing I had indeed made a turn at Anchorage. From there we would head in a
generally northerly direction to Fairbanks via the Parks Hwy., then down the Richardson Hwy. to the
northern terminus of the Alaska Hwy. (still known affectionately up here as the "Alcan") and ride that
highway to the Canadian border. At that point we would turn back northwest to the town of Tok
(pronounced "toke") to get onto the Glenn Hwy., which would take me home to Glennallen, and Will back
to Anchorage.
Running the possible routes through a Rand McNally mapping program, I'd
found that the "circle" route between Anchorage and Fairbanks - going up the Parks Highway and back
down the Richardson and Glenn Highways - was 893 miles. Not enough. So we extended that by taking
the long way around through Tok, and then adding a turn-around leg from Tok to the border.
The Chevron station closest to my home was closed this morning, so I had
to ride a couple of miles farther to the Tesoro station I knew was open 24 hours, there to fill up and
get my official starting time from the gas pump's printed receipt. The receipt said 3:09 AM.
Although my ever-patient wife had gotten up with me and signed me out as a witness, I decided it
wouldn't hurt to get a second witness's signature and had the gas station attendant sign the form also.
Now it was 3:15 and time to be moving in the right direction.
It had rained earlier in the night, so I'd had to dry off the bike's seat
before leaving the house. Now the clouds were starting to break up a little, and there was a hint
of light in the sky to the northeast. I'd started to prepare the bike for this trip a little too
late (the night before, if you want to know the truth) so I hadn't had time to replace the standard
headlight bulb with a 100/80 watt as I'd planned. Even so, there was enough light to do the speed
limit without too much danger of not seeing a moose standing out in the road. It was the ones
feeding down along side the road that worried me. They are a BIG animal, and look downright huge
when you're looking up at one from the seat of a motorcycle. Hit a moose or run head on into an
oncoming semi, it wouldn't make much difference.
Suprisingly, there was quite a bit of traffic coming toward me for that
time of morning, most of it trucks heading to Valdez or Tok, presumably. Sixty miles down the road,
topping out Eureka summit at 3322 feet above sea level, I saw a large fog bank straddling the highway
a few miles ahead of me. Very shortly I was in it, and down to 45 mph. for a couple of miles.
But once I'd descended a few hundred feet I was out of the clouds and able to get back up to speed.
It was definitely getting lighter now, and the headlight wasn't so important, although still useful for
seeing the road surface - an important factor here on our lousy Alaskan roads.
Around Mile 87 (we measure everything - addresses, road conditions, what
have you - by mileposts up here) it started to drizzle. As I looked at the mountains I was riding
through, I noticed fresh snow on most of the higher peaks along the north side of the highway. Man,
I thought, this is looking like we'll have an early winter as it's only the 29th of July. By Mile
82 the rain was coming down pretty steadily, and I was glad I'd (for just this once) had the foresight
to don my raingear before getting soaked. The rain continued for only about 35 miles, and by the time
I pulled in at Palmer for a quick rest stop and to phone Will that I was on schedule, the roads were dry.
A little before getting into Palmer, as I was coming around a sharp bend
before climbing a hill, I spotted a cow moose with twin calves next to the road on the inside of the
curve. They were standing next to, appropriately enough, Moose Creek. Too bad all the tourists who
come up here to see Alaska wildlife were still sleeping soundly in their monstrous motor homes.
Will was waiting for me on Muldoon Road, and in a few minutes we were
gassed up, timed out, and on our way toward Fairbanks. A few drops of rain descended on us as we
made our way across the Eklutna Flats, crossed the Knik and Matanuska Rivers, and then got on the
Parks Hwy. and in a few miles, through Wasilla. Once north of the Big Lake turn-off traffic
lessened and we were able to pick up the pace a bit. It was still cool, as the sun was still hidden
behind a fairly solid cloud cover, and there were signs of recent rain on the pavement.
There hadn't been time to do a decent job of scrubbing the tires before
starting this ride, so I was riding pretty cautiously on the damp pavement. But the Michelins (bias
ply A50/M50) were doing a good job. There was one sweeper that I hit at an elevated speed and caught
a wet tar snake that made the handlebars shake just a little, but other than that, I might have been
on dry asphalt. This is good, I thought a little later as I was rounding a right hand sweeper and
met a loaded tanker pulling doubles, with the tires of this southbound behemoth whizzing by less than
five feet away.
Will hadn't had time for breakfast before leaving home, and the two slices
of toast I had quickly gobbled before leaving were hardly worthy of the name, so we pulled in at
Trapper Creek to get a quick snack and stretch our legs. I was still fully dressed from my ride
to Anchorage, but Will wasn't quite as warm, so he added a layer to thaw out.
After a break of about 20 minutes, we hit the road again. The clouds
to the west were beginning to lift, so we got a partial view of the top of Mt. Mckinley, North
America's tallest peak. It was beginning to look like a good ride. Just after we crossed Beyers
Creek and passed the Beyer's Lake Trading Post, some dogs started to come up out of the ditch on
the right hand side of the road. A tiny fraction of a second later I recognized that these weren't
dogs, but instead were bears - rather large bears. As I grabbed the front brake lever and gave it
a healthy squeeze I identified them as a sow grizzly and her three second-year cubs, nearly as big
as she was, bounding across the road, scared by the noisy machines bearing down on them. If they'd
only known! Could be that a moose isn't the worst thing I could run into.
Sighting the bears showed again how little this narrow strip of asphalt,
wending its way through these vast boreal forests, affected those denizens of the wild. To them, it
was no more an obstacle than a shallow stream might have been. And yet to the human inhabitants
scattered so sparsely along this same roadway, it offers a tenuous but reassuring connection with
the civilization that lies miles away in either direction.
We were just starting the descent from the summit of Broad Pass when
my engine started losing power. Already on reserve, there was no place to go but to the side of
the road. Sure enough, the tank was dry. Will rode on up to the first gas station, which I could
see off in the distance, and brought back some go juice. We'd been pushing the bikes right along,
and my 5.8 gallon tank hadn't been quite up to the 213 miles from Anchorage to Cantwell. This
little delay cost us 30 minutes. But it could have been worse.
We filled up there in Cantwell, and discussed our next stop. If we
filled up in Fairbanks, we'd have to stop once more to make it down to Tok. It looked like we now
had enough gas to make it to North Pole, about 16 miles beyond Fairbanks, and by gassing up there,
we should be able to make it into Tok without adding another stop. So that's what we did.
As we approached the entrance to Denali National Park we began meeting
more and more tour busses headed south toward Anchorage. The park has become THE major drawing card
for Alaska bound tourists, and is visited by thousands every summer. I suddenly realized it had been
nearly 25 years since I had been over this stretch of road, and the changes in the vicinity of the
park entrance made it almost unrecognizable. That area has turned into a small city, with the
abundance of hotels, gift shops, vendors, etc.
Back in '61, before there was a Parks Hwy. and this was just the west end of the
Denali Hwy. outside the park, my buddy and I had shot a moose right beside the road near here. We
were able to skin and quarter the moose, load it into our vehicle, and drive down the road a few
miles to camp beside a creek to cook a few steaks over an open fire without seeing a single passing
vehicle. Now there were literally hundreds of cars, pickups, busses, and semis going by every day.
The sun was coming out brightly as we crossed the Tanana River bridge,
by-passing Nenana, and we were really getting into the ride as we continued on toward Fairbanks. As
it approaches Alaska's second largest city, the Parks Hwy. climbs up onto a series of ridgetops that
continue nearly to the edge of town. As with any such geographical features, these are connected by
dips and saddles between the higher terrain. It would be difficult to imagine roads more suited to
motorcycle riding! In the next thirty miles, I can't recall any roadway that was both straight and
level. The sun was shining warmly, the road was smooth and dry, traffic was light, LEO's were nowhere
to be seen and Will's radar detector was silent, and the bikes were humming. Could Heaven be much
better than this?
With the new by-pass on the south side of Fairbanks it took only about
ten minutes from the time we entered on the west side, to our exit onto the Richardson Hwy. southbound.
In less than half an hour we were sitting down at the Taco Bell in North Pole having our first real
meal of the day.
After filling the bikes' tanks at the nearby Tesoro station, we were once
more on the road, this time headed for Delta Junction, the northern terminus of the Alaska Highway. It
seemed only minutes later that we pulled in there, where Will stopped to say a quick hi and goodbye to
a friend, and I cleaned some of the bug splat off my faceshield. On the way down from Fairbanks, we
twice came upon small groups of pedestrians and cars parked on the shoulder of the highway. Each time
there was a moose in a pond next to the road, posing for the numerous tourist pictures being taken.
In the Delta Jct. area there exists a peril even more ominous than the
ubiquitous moose, and that is the bison. Fortunately, we sighted not even one of these critters and
were able to maintain a brisk pace, occasionally even reaching the 55 MPH speed limit. Honest!
South of Delta Jct. the Alcan runs straight as a tight string for some
30 odd miles before getting into hills again. This was one of the few times we rode on the center of
our tires for more than a mile or two in a row. Alaska highways are NOT interstates! The highway
runs between the Tanana River and the Alaska Range of mountains for the entire 98 miles between Delta
Jct. and Tok. In places the valley is broad, with fertile farmland spreading across the topography.
In others, the river moves closer to the foothills and forces the highway to climb higher to avoid the
threat of floods. This all combines to make the ride more interesting, offering varied scenery as well
as curves and hilly terrain to navigate.
Around mile 1326.5 we pass a swampy area that brings back memories. In
February of 1962, while serving in Uncle Sam's armed forces, I went on a little camp-out right here with
a few hundred other guys. In late January, a few days before the actual maneuver started, the temperature
dropped to an unofficial 86 below zero at this site. As I recall, the official low at Northway, 160 miles
southeast, was 78 below that day. By the end of February, as we were packing up to return to Fort
Richardson, it warmed up to 10 above one sunny day and nearly everyone, including several of my buddies
from Southern California, was down to tee shirts in the relative heat.
After going on reserve 35 miles from Tok, I dropped my pace to conserve
fuel. Didn't want to make Will rescue me twice in one trip. We gassed up again in Tok, had some cold
drinks and candy bars, and then made for the border.
There's a relatively straight stretch out of Tok for a few miles and then
the highway crosses the Tanana River. After that it's a bikers' paradise. Well, it would have been if
not for the fresh pavement patches along the road. There's something about signs saying "LOOSE GRAVEL"
that makes you reach for the brake lever. We made good time between the patches, and it was fun. But
somewhere along here, meeting an oncoming vehicle on one of the patches, Will's headlight took a direct
hit from a rock that put a hole in it.
We stopped at the U. S. Customs station and chatted with the agent there,
who had just stepped out for a smoke. We explained what we were doing, and he said he would be glad to
witness our turn-around there at the border. So we rode the half mile or so to the actual boundary line
between the U. S. and Canada, took some pictures of the "Yukon" and "Alaska" signs, then turned around
to finish our trip. The agent stamped and initialed our paperwork, chatted a bit more, and then we
pulled out.
From that point this old horse started heading for the barn. The sun was
starting to get lower in the sky, and we were riding almost directly toward it, so visibility was often
obscured. Even having to slow down to a sensible speed didn't keep us from getting back to Tok in good
time. This time our stop was quicker, and we soon turned southwest toward our respective homes. Not
taking time at Tok to dress for the evening chill that I knew was inevitable as we went over Mentasta
Pass was a mistake. Before long, my hands were getting so numb that I had to look down to make sure where
my right hand was. But I could smell the hay in the barn now and we weren't slowing down.
It was 11:45 PM when we pulled in at the Hub of Alaska Tesoro station at
Glennallen, 20 1/2 hours after I'd pulled out that same morning. Nowhere near a record, but good enough
for me. We hadn't intended to set any records when we began this ride, just to have fun. And that we
did. We never saw anything close to the elusive five minute gas stop, but we saw grizzlies, moose, and
some of the most awesome scenery to be found anywhere in the world.
When we needed to stretch, we stopped and stretched. When we were thirsty,
we stopped and bought something cool to quench that thirst. We never passed in No Passing zones, and we
were careful when passing other traffic. A hard core rider could have done the thousand miles in several
hours less time. But we enjoyed the ride, and that's really what it's all about anyway. The way we rode,
the ride never felt punishing. In fact, had I had another bike waiting to go when I got home, all
long-distance prepared and packed for travel, I would have jumped on and headed out, confident that I could
have gone another 4 or 5 hours before needing any rest. There's something about getting into the saddle
and starting down the long road that energizes me. Maybe it's the anticipation of new places to go, new
things to see. Maybe it's just the feel of the wind on my face and the illusion of being in control of
my own destiny. Whatever it is, it keeps me coming back for more.
After gassing our bikes, we rode on to my home where my dear wife fixed Will
a quick cup of coffee before he mounted up and started on the last leg of his ride back to Anchorage,
where he arrived at 3:20 AM, without encountering any wayward moose along the way.
Before we started this ride, Will questioned me as to which bike I would be
riding. His disappointment that I wouldn't be taking my Concours was apparent. He told me later that
he felt that his Connie would want company of her own species. But by the time we were back in Glennallen
the two bikes seemed to have formed a happy relationship after the pleasant miles together. Aside from
higher gas consumption at elevated speeds, the Suzuki was nearly a match for the Kawasaki. Wish I could
have found time to do that valve adjustment and get those tires mounted before the weather started turning
wintery. Next year it'll be fun to see how much quicker I can do the 1000 miles on the Connie. At least
I won't have to worry about running out of gas so quickly with its 7.5 gallon tank.