Packed up the next morning and continued down to Palmer and then Anchorage, Alaska. My goal here was to view a Bore Tide. I had heard about these tides in High School and wanted to view one first hand. It was low tide when I rode up to a viewing area known as Beluga point. However, no one there knew when the tides changed. So I headed out looking for a campground for the night. I also found a bulletin board that had a tide chart posted, it was last years. A lot of good that does. Figures. So after I set up camp, off I went to a local café to sastisfy my basic need. I was hungry! While there I asked the waitress if they happen to have a booklet on the tides in Alaska for 2004. They did! As I'm reading and calculating the times from the chart, I realized that the tide had rolled in twenty minutes before. So much for seeing the bore tide. The waitress tells me it isn't much to see. She say's it's like a six inch wave of water rolling in, not a three to five foot wall of water. She's been here ten years and never seen anything like that.

A few months after I'm back in Colorado, I find out from a visiting Anchorage local that the best time to view the bore tide is when a full or new moon is present. That's when the bore tides are the largest. Who knew? On my next trip I'll have to time my arrival to coincide with a new moon.

Fairbanks
Found the local Harley dealer and a grocery store. Also found an Internet café. The College Coffeehouse. Nice place. Good food and hot coffee. People were friendly and High Speed Internet service using their PC's or your own laptop. What more could you want? It was here that I heard about Karl Bushby, a former british Paratrooper, (yes, us former paratroopers still do crazy things later on in life.) who is walking around the world. Yes, you read this correctly. He is walking around the world! From the tip of South America, across the Bearing Straight, through Russia, and onward to Great Britain. Check out his web site and read about a fascinating adventure.

Anyway, I answered my e-mails, sent out some photos recently taken, and I was able to access and repair my web site. It's now up and running again.

The road from Fairbanks to the beginning of the Dalton is paved. From the Dalton highway on, is four hundred and fourteen miles of hard packed rough gravel, and I do mean "rough". The first two to three miles of the road had me thinking, what the hell am I doing here! After I settled down I continued on. Two miles down the road it began to smooth out, for a gravel road that is. The road changes from rough gravel to dirt to gravel and so forth. The only real problem I encountered on the road was when the highway crews were performing road maintenance. First the water truck soaks the road, and I do mean soak. Then the road grader scrapes the road. The water truck comes by and soaks the road again. After the grader scrapes the road, again the water truck shows up. This maintenance is usually five to eight miles long and the going is slow, 23 - 28 mph. Any slower and I won't be able to keep the bike upright. Same is true if I attempt to ride at a faster rate. The road is very slick in this state. Or to put it mildly, muddy. Once I get past that though it's pretty good. At one point I even rode on a section of chip seal that was 70 miles long.

I arrived at the Yukon River and rode across the E. L. Patton bridge. Named after Ed Patton, the man who designed and built the Alaskan Pipeline, among other things. Click here for some interesting facts presented by the Alyeska Pipeline Service Company.

Stopped at the BLM information center and spoke to the BLM person there. He shared some insights regarding the area and more importantly, headed me in the right direction for lunch. Took some photos of the area and continued North. Stopped for lunch and gas at Teresa's 'Hot Spot Cafe' Pulled up for gas, waited for someone to come out and fire up the generator so I could pump the gas. I believe it was Teresa herself. Filled up and had lunch at the same place. The owner ask me the usual's. Where are you from, how long have you been on the road, how far are you headed. She gave me some good pointers on where to eat and stay when I arrive at Coldfoot.

Paid for lunch and I was back on the road again heading North. About a mile down the road I came upon an unusual site. Well maybe unusual in the lower forty eight but not up here. It was a barricade on the side of the road. The kind you would normally see at a Railroad crossing. To the right of the barricade was a sign that stated road closed due to aircraft landing. The aircraft didn't actually land on the road, they landed on the airstrip, paralleling the road twenty feet away. A safety factor no doubt. This runway was complete with a tower and runway lights.

An hour, maybe less, I arrived at the Arctic Circle! Another first for me. The Arctic Circle known to most people as the spot where the sun never sets on June 21, the summer solstice, and the spot where the sun never rises on December 21, the winter solstice. Click here to see where the Arctic Circle passes through Alaska. In case you're wondering where I am at this point of my trip, where the Arctic Circle, (represented by dashes), intersects the Pipe Line, (represented by the dots) and Dalton Highway, is little ole me. Ok, big ole me.

Thirty minutes later I'm back on the road and still heading North.

I arrived at Coldfoot around 7: 30 p.m. Although the distance from Fairbanks to Coldfoot was only two hundred and fifty six miles, you don't travel very fast on a dirt and gravel road on a Harley with street tires. Filled up with gas and had two cups of coffee. Now why did I do that! It's already 7:30 p.m., and I'm going to set up camp. Oh well, what's done is done. Talked to some hikers there who had hiked through the back country from the Yukon to here. I believe they said it took about four weeks.

Made a call home and started to leave. It was then that I met two more bikers who had just returned from Prudhoe Bay. Scott and Jerry from Orlando Florida. They had been planning this trip for a while and decided to ride down to Key West Florida and start the trip there. Their goal was to leave Key West, Florida and ride all the way to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, turn around and ride back to Key West Florida. Taking an indirect route so they could take in the sites around the country. They knew that other people had ridden from Key West, Florida to Prudhoe Bay, but they didn't think anyone ever rode back to Key West and they wanted to be the first. We exchanged information regarding where we've been and what to look for along the way. They told me about the Prudhoe Bay Motel and the meals served on the premises. That was good to know. I gave them my e-mail address so they could keep me posted on their trip. We parted company and I headed North to BLM's Marion Creek Campground and spent the night. Didn't get ready to go to sleep until 11:45 p.m., must be the coffee I had earlier. This is amazing. The amount of daylight makes you think it's as though it's 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon.

Next morning I was up at 8: 30 a.m. and on the road by ten. A late start. Who cares. I decided to skip breakfast. Big mistake. The last time I had anything to eat was at the Hotspots café the day before. I won't do that again. The next time I had something to eat, not counting water, was at Prudhoe Bay at 7:15 p.m. It's only two hundred and forty four miles from Coldfoot to Prudhoe Bay, but the road conditions, remember the description earlier. Of course there were many stops along the way for the photo opportunities. As I begin to head down the road I happen by chance to look down towards the front wheel and notice a bolt on my front end was about ready to fall off. One of four in the triple tree that clamps the front tubes together. That's not a good sign. I pulled over and spent the next ten minutes making a minor repair and checking the other bolts.

As I'm finishing up, a pickup with a slide-in-camper heading South passes by and I wave at the driver. Ten seconds later I looked up towards the camper and noticed his back door to the camper was wide opened. I waved hoping he would see me in the mirror. He didn't. Hope everything is still inside when he reaches his destination.

Eight hours later, I made it to Deadhorse, the entrance to Prudhoe Bay. What a trip! Thank you Jerry and Scott for the info on the Prudhoe Bay Hotel. The food was plentiful and excellent too! I was starved! Made some calls, took a well earned shower and hit the sack.

7:00 a.m. I think. Hard to tell when it's light all the time Got up, had breakfast and walked around the town. Hopefully I can take a tour today. As I inquire about the tour I discover they require twenty four hours notice for a security check prior to taking a two hour tour of Prudhoe Bay. I left some basic info about me and continued on my small walking tour. Hopefully they'll make an exception.

Took pictures of some of the equipment around here. All specialized for the rigid Arctic winters. Quite a bit of equipment sitting around. I discover afterwards that most of the work is done during the winter. The reason for that is simple. Roads. There are none. The State of Alaska and the government won't allow them to build any more roads over the permafrost to drill for oil. The agreement made back in the early seventies between the oil companies and the state of Alaska was that roads created in Prudhoe Bay on top of the permafrost will be temporary and returned to it's original state when the oil companies pull out. The roads currently here are created from gravel. Something that is not readily available in Northern Alaska. So it has to be trucked in. Some of these roads are five to eight feet above the permafrost. That's quite a bit of gravel from a long distance away. A necessary evil in Prudhoe Bay to house people, facilities and equipment. So what's the solution. Ice Roads. Although not much snow falls in Prudhoe Bay, it does get cold. Very cold. During the winter snow cats create a roadway on the snow that has fallen out to a new drilling site. This could be anywhere from thirty miles and up. Insulated trailers filled with water travel over the snow roads spraying multiple layers of water. After a day, maybe even hours, large tractors begin to haul special buildings and trailers loaded with drilling equipment, on skids to the site. By early spring, the drilling site is constructed and all road equipment is back at Prudhoe Bay. By mid May the ice roads have melted with no damage caused to the permafrost. Traveling to the site now is accomplished by helicopter. Summer is reserved for maintaining the equipment for use next winter.

One piece of equipment I took a picture of is enormous! A trailer. I don't know what they put on this thing but it is huge! Maybe I can find out from someone here what they haul with it.

On the way back from my walk I meet up with Williams. That's all he gave me. He was pushing a bicycle with a pole that had flags from many nations attached. I stopped and talked with him for a while. Williams, along with two other friends, were from Argentina, South America. Yesterday afternoon was the last leg of their trip. Are you ready for this? They rode their bicycles from Ushuaia, the Southern tip of Argentina, all the way to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska! Williams, Sebastian, and a young lady, Marsella. They are riding for: "BikesforPeace04". I'm not certain of the connection between peace and riding bicycles, but if it works, more power to them. "Twenty Six Months on the Road!" Pedal Power from the tip of South America to the top of North America. WOW! I'm impressed. No, I'm very impressed!

A side note here:
Back in 1996 a co-worker and I signed up to enter a bicycle ride in Colorado known as: "Ride the Rockies" Now I don't recall which one of us suggested it but when it came time to send in the application along with deposit, we just did it. The ride traveled a distance of 410 miles in six days. No big deal. How bad could it be? After all, I had a mountain bike with 15 speeds and a crawler gear for the hills. It's only a bicycle ride. WRONG! Here I am, a forty seven year old, former U.S. Army Paratrooper, who was tops in Physical Combat Proficiency, both in Basic and Advanced Infantry Training while in the U.S. Army, now slightly overweight and a little bit, Ok a lot, out of shape, trying to make the first forty nine miles of DAY ONE! (Day one for me is 7:00 a.m. to 5: 30 p.m. Did you know Lance Armstrong does 110+ miles in four hours and a few minutes?) So here I am, being passed every ten seconds, "On your left", (Bicycle riders say that when they're passing another rider), by old men and women. Some of them are a little heavier than me too. By old I mean ten to twenty years older than me. The oldest participant was eighty two and he finished the entire ride. Now if that wasn't bad enough here comes Daryl. Daryl is a Paraplegic and he's riding a hand powered three wheel cycle. He stops and begins to chat with me while taking a drink break and a munch on a power bar. (I will NEVER eat another POWER BAR AGAIN!) When he's finished he wishes me luck and he's off. Never to be seen by me again until the last day of the event. It took me ten hours that day to ride forty nine miles. Day two was the worst. I barely made fifteen miles and was dying on the side of the road taking a breather. Up rides another participant. He asked me if I was Ok. I stated I was and was giving my legs a break. He responded saying I know what you mean. You should try doing it with one leg. I look over and here's a guy riding a bicycle four hundred and ten miles on one leg, and I'm complaining. That was it for me. I was done.

At the conclusion of the six day ride I attended the presentation ceremonies, along with my co-worker who dropped out of the ride on day three. All of the people I mentioned including the guy with one leg and Daryl, completed the entire course of four hundred and ten miles. These people kicked my butt! I am here to tell you that I am a very humble person after that event. Never judge a book by it's cover people.

I asked what they plan to do after this trip. Sebastian stated that they would ride their bikes through Africa. Hope the roads are in better shape there. Williams heads off to try and make a deal with some of the drivers up here heading back to Fairbanks. They were looking for a free ride back for themselves and the bikes. They didn't want to ride the bikes. Can't say that I blame them. I took some pictures and wished them well on their future trips.

Called the tour company back around 12:30 p.m. I'm on! Two hours later I am swimming (floundering?) in 39 Deg Arctic Ocean! Now I'm fulfilled. I have "TALK the TALK" and now "I HAVE WALKED THE WALK"!

Ok, what now? Oh yeah, I still need to make the ride back to Fairbanks. I noticed on the way back to the Hotel that the three bicyclists I met from Argentina this morning are gone. Looks like Williams found a ride for all of them. Good luck Guys.

Well, mission accomplished. I rode the Harley all the way to Prudhoe Bay. On a Dyna Low Rider I might add. Although this may not have been the bike of choice to travel to Prudhoe Bay, it was the only one I had. But with patience and perseverance, I prevailed. Patience Hell, I just persevered! I jumped into the Arctic Ocean and viewed the oil facilities. Plan to leave here in the a.m. and head back to Coldfoot. I would like to view wildlife along the way. That's been a big been a disappointment so far. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll spot them on the way back.