July 10th:
100 km WIND AND RAIN!
(ROB)
This morning, we had breakfast at a quant little restaurant with 2 other
groups of cyclists. One group, Nick and Darren, were from Arizona and
had ridden around Alaska and were heading back to Arizona riding! The
other two, O’Ryan and Will, were from Wisconsin. They were ridding
from the top of Alaska to Argentina. They were a crazy group of kids though.
They had no money and were heading south asking people to work for their
food. They also carried with them a shotgun and were hunting for their
food! Joseph and I felt like a couple of rich kids after that. We had,
of course, all the good gear for touring and they didn’t. Their
setups had plastic bags over things, rope tying things on and they wore
jeans and cotton T-shirts. We had synthetic fibers and our gear was all
stacked neatly in a compact trailer that didn’t have all sorts of
extras tied on the outside.
Later we started cycling along the new Alaskan Highway. We didn’t realize however, that our map was off by about 40 km! We rode through one of the most difficult sections of the trip. The land here is rolling and we are heading over the Great Dividing Range. To make it worse, we had a giant storm roll in that dumped on us. It was so cold that I could not feel my legs as I was ridding. Even as we traveled downhill, we felt like it was an uphill run! We thought we had over 40 km left when we ran into this quaint little lodge! Joy. We stopped here to eat. It was great!
(Joseph) .Wet, cold, and slow going on the first portion of the Alaska Hwy today. After a hundred Km we rested our frozen soggy feet in a little country inn. Stuffed wild animals decorated this dark and rustic establishment. The owner was a crazy old lady with a wicked split personality. Slightly hunched over the old white haired women would race across the room and yell and Rob for walking around bare footed. Then a minute latter she would come back in and very nicely say that if we wanted to dry off, we should or MUST add more wood to the burning stove. Latter she yells at to Biker Ladies who wanted a different kind of Vodka than what her inn offered. The Harley chicks bolted out of there before they could take off there coats, while calling the old one….. Well let’s just say foal names. She blamed the whole incident on Rob’s feet stinking up the place. I think it was actually every inch of both of our bodies that stunk up the place.
