Once again it was pouring with rain when I left Whitehorse, again vindicating the call that I had made a day before not to ride the Road over the Top of the World.

It is now nearly eight weeks on the road. I have been living out of a small waterproof bag and hotel rooms and my tent for too many nights now. I want to get back to our home in Michigan for a start. To be in one place (of my own) for a few nights and to be able to relax, log on to my own high speed internet without a different password every evening. So I decide to start doing some real miles today.

The normal midway break between Whitehorse and Dawson City, this in turn marks the end of the Alaskan Highway, is Watson Lake. I have been there before, remember. The honeymoon suite, without the honey. Not again I have promised myself. Watson Lake is, to put it mildly, a bad smelling shithouse. A town, with a bad vibe and people with bad attitude. When I finish the trip I will rate all the places I have stayed in on Trip Advisor and Watson Lake is in for a pounding.

This is reaffirmed when I stop for breakfast at Dawson Peaks. This is where I stayed for two nights on the way up. I promised Dave and Carolyn, the owners, that I would pop in on the way back and I keep this promise. Making the effort to keep in contact with friends is always worth the extra effort. When I arrive there, two hours after leaving Whitehorse I am starving. It has been cold and I have left at 08h00, which means I have been up since about 06h30.

At Dawson Peaks were two other couples having breakfast. We start talking. You all know me. Shy to start and then I get into it. They have spent the previous evening at Watson Lake. I ask them how they enjoyed it. They tell me that had they known yesterday what was waiting for them at Andrea’s Motel next to the Big Horn Hotel, they would have driven the extra three hours to get to Dawson Peaks, even though this was very late at night.

We all agree that Watson Lake is the very worst place we have ever been to. It reminds me of Springfontein in the Free State. Neither town has even one redeeming feature other than the fact that you can get through them quickly. This is reconfirmed to me a few hours later when I pass through Watson Lake and have to refuel. The service station is appalling. Dirty and run down. The staff is tardy and they are particularly slow in dealing with everyone. They also sell liquor at the garage and they are shoveling out no name gin and whiskey to a never-ending line of local First Nations members. No doubt drinking off the weekend’s hangover, as it is only Monday lunchtime.

I cannot get out of here fast enough. The only other viable over-night stops before Fort Nelson are the Northern Rockies Lodge and Toad Lake according to the Milepost Guide. These are too close to Fort Nelson and I may as well push on. Passing the Northern Rockies Lodge it looks very nice but I am pleased that I have given Toad Lake a miss. However I like the name and more postcards are sent to the mug wumps c/o of their sulking mother. Worry not Noodle, you are still my favourite oldest daughter.

This morning, I ride for the first two and a half hours on an empty stomach. I find this makes me perform better. A few hunger pangs definitely sharpen the senses. I know this when I am on short rations for most things. When I have been away for a while, DD always keeps me at bay for a few hours, knowing that this will sharpen my attention dramatically. The same applies to when I play golf or ride Bonnie and the other girls. Often, after a meal, I am a bit sluggish.

I find when I play golf, the meal or a large snack at the half way house always destroys a looking to be great round of golf. This is one of the many devious tactics used by one of my more regular golf opponents. Not that I have had the time to play much golf over the past few years.

However the individual concerned, a doctor and a very talented sportsman is extremely competitive. I have decided to adopt the “no names no pack drill” approach for all future posts. Everyone will have a pseudonym that will make it impossible for you to work out who the individual concerned is. Other than Lesley that is, because she sadly is no longer, an early victim to breast cancer some time ago and I do not know her family, nor they me.

This is necessary after the severe shitting out I received from DD after my post about her sisters. In future they will be known as The Panzer, Apricot Jam and Half Quart. I will not tell you who is who!

Anyway back to my good Doctor friend who shall be known as Doctor D (for Doos), his party trick is to organise the game at his home course. He gives you the wrong tee off time and then just as you arrive at the club concerned, you find out that the actual time is in less than five minutes. So you have to get changed and rush up a huge hill to make the allotted time. As you arrive there out of breath, he saunters over, cool as a cucumber having spent 30 minutes on the practice tee and then he hitches a ride up in someone’s golf cart.

In our last game I played against him with my usual partner, also a doctor who shall be known as Doctor Scope. D’s partner was another doctor who shall be known as Doctor Rontgen. Dr. Rontgen is equally as competitive, the difference between him and his partner is that D has a great swing which he practices at every opportunity, even pre coital, or at least so his wife tells me. They have a driver and a putter in the bedroom; Bill Clinton only needed a cigar! Rontgen however holds the club as if it is a prehistoric weapon and launches into the ball as if it is a deadly snake. Nothing smooth or subtle about his swing. He could never handle my girls properly. They need finesse not just brute power. The effect is worryingly good. The ball dies in the fairway, miles down and in the middle with great regularity.

My partner Dr. Scope always allows D to get into his head and to screw with his mind. This is never good I think as I ride along. In fact at the moment Scope is letting too much shit get into his head as he has been thinking with the wrong one. Maybe we should play golf now as there cannot be much more room in his head for D to find sufficient place to get into. Maybe what he is thinking of will solve his putting yips, smooth strokes and all

He should have listened to the wise words of advice I was given by a Senior Training Captain in the airline. This sage shall be called Captain Steek Oog. In the same way as Dinah Taute spoke to the new hostesses and warned them to beware of pilots, Steek Oog took it upon himself to school me in the ways of the world. He was very dismissive about the intentions of the girls who hunted down the men and his advice was summed up in an acronym. APOPOP, he kept on telling me. The only thing that was faster than Steek Oog’s sense of humour was the speed with which he could light up a Texan plain after take off. This was in the days when smoking in the cockpit was still allowed. His other motto was “Gear up, light up”.

I chuckle to myself as I ride along, stomach gnawing but my concentration good. I am looking forward to more golf with these reprobates and maybe a beer with Steek Oog. The miles tick by. I notice Marsh Lake and cannot remember it on the way up. Then I recall that I took the by route via Carcross and hence did not pass it. Soon I am at the start of Lake Teslin. I ride along it for over 70 miles.

Dave and Carolyn are very pleased to see me. They tell me that they have had numerous problems with bears in the period since I was there. In fact one bear virtually climbed onto the veranda of the cabin I stayed in to join some fishermen and their dinner, which they were cooking there. They only managed to get rid of it when in desperation one of the men hit it on the head with the frying pan. It then peered in the window of their dinning room as all the guest were eating dinner. Eventually their lady next-door neighbour shot it as it approached her grandchildren while they were playing in her garden.

Their year has not been busy. Traffic is dramatically down on the highway. We discuss the reasons. The poor economic situation is a major reason but demographics also play a major role. Young people do not do road trips anymore it seems. They prefer to take a low cost flight and then get involved in action vacations. Also people do not have the time to take a drive to Alaska as this takes a minimum of ten days each way from almost anywhere in the USA. I have seen that numerous stop over points have closed along the entire route.

These are people who have spent their lives trying to build up businesses and now find that these are worthless due to circumstances beyond their control. I fear that the real effects of the economic meltdown are only now starting to be felt as they play out over time. Americans in the middle classes have lost nearly 50% of their net worth over the past five years as the values of their investments in the stock market and their homes have tanked. The problems are far from over and more are on the way. Given the poor caliber of political leadership in the world at present, a proper way forward is unlikely to be found soon.

After Watson Lake the outlook improves. The weather is clearing and it is getting much warmer. For the past week the temperature as barely peeked above 50 F, now it is getting into the 80’s. It will be like this all the way to Michigan. My warm gear is being packed away as I write.

With about 200 kms to go to Fort Nelson I knew I had the Alaskan Highway licked. I would be in Fort Nelson by 20h00 and the days are still long. The total distance for the day is 597 miles or close on 950 kms. This is a huge day and I have managed it well. My back has held up. I phone ahead to reserve a room using my Sat Phone.

I will have been in the saddle for over 11 hours today. This is an epic session for Bonnie and me. Longer than even my best performance with either Spot or Jayne. Once I know that I will make it, I tap off and enjoy the ride at slower pace. It is as if I know that I have satisfied Bonnie and I now can enjoy the post coital glow with her. Moving together becomes something which lacks the pace and urgency of the earlier parts of the day. Old lovers, we know we have the end of the day in sight and a well deserved rest. This is actually a good thing because we pass an enormous herd of Bison grazing on the side of the road and then a stunning 100 km long valley in which I am able to clearly identify the glacial damage to the mountains and the glacial and riverine formation in the valleys using my new found knowledge gained a few days ago at the Worthington Glacier.

This whole area is part of the Muskwa Kechiika Wilderness Reserve declared by the Canadian Government in 1995. It is 6.5 million acres in size and operates a very successful public private partnership with the First Nations people of the area. In true style I think this means that everyone else does the work an they reap the rewards.

Tomorrow, Tuesday I will try and get as close to Edmonton as possible. Then all going to plan it should be possible to be back in Michigan by Sunday or Monday, nearly a week ahead of schedule.

On arrival a guy approaches me. He tells me he has also ridden here from Alaska. His name is Kevin. We meet in the bar after I have had a shower and have dinner together. He is a software developer for Amazon and runs a small team of eight people who manage all the various state and city sales tax models for the Internet commerce behemoth. As he explains, these are massively complex and often two identical items that differ in colour only, will attract different rates of tax when they are supplied from one state into another.

We discuss the scale of what Amazon does and what it entails. All their computing is done using distributed small computers. No main frames. His small team has direct access to over 8500 computers. The company employs more than 10,000 developers. The scale of the customer data to which he has access, is frightening.

The Hotel in which I am staying, the Woodlands, is fairly new and the rooms are very good. It has one significant drawback. No Wi-Fi in the rooms. I find this hard to believe. In this day and age you cannot expect guests to have to sit in either the restaurant which only opens at 17h00 and closes at 20h00 or the bar area in order to use their internet.

I will go down early in the morning to upload this but without the pictures as this is what takes the time.

From Fort Williams. Good Night and Good Luck

Copyright 2012