First Taste of Camping

Today, I reached the Rockies in northern British Columbia as the weather was easing up. Once arriving at the mountains, which happens fairly quickly, it's a quick ride up into the sky. I had a minor panic when I reached the campground - in bright sunshine! - and stood at the pay station filling out my form, which asks for my license number. I'm used to this drill by now, and have a photo of it on my camera roll, and that's when I reached for my phone and it wasn't there. 

INSTANT PANIC! Klinger, you hopeless idiot. Why do you even try to leave the house?  I can't be trusted with a roll of LifeSavers and here I am trying to cross the entire continent without supervision.  I was in a total panic and at the same time furious with myself.

I went through all seven stages of grief walking back to the bike, knowing it was not going to be there, and wondering if it was still at the McDonald's way back there at the bottom of the hill in Fort Nelson, and if so, did someone turn it in or just take it? Or is it not there at all and never to be seen again? What do I do next?  How can I save this trip?  Should I even try?

I got back to the bike, and looked through everything just to say I did it, when I saw the charging cable leading into the tank bag that had not been there at any time during this trip,  

Instant relief! 

I had forgotten that, knowing I would be camping tonight with no power, I stopped an hour before to plug in the phone and give it a full charge. With that panic behind me, and the fresh half pint of whiskey that I had bought earlier in the day, I began to set up camp in the most beautiful place you could imagine. I said to myself, more than once on this trip, "this is the coolest thing I've ever done." And it was.

The relentless wind made tearing down and packing up a bit of a chore, but the view and bright sunshine and crisp temperatures made it enjoyable. Light the fires, lift the kickstand, and continue on for a reservation on the Klondike Highway.

Alaska Highway

I knew I was way behind on this, for reasons many and varied, but looking back how far I've come since the time of this post, it's like a whole different world. 

Rewinding to this day, I have two memories from my ride across Alberta to Dawson Creek, British Columbia where the Alaska Highway begins. As the roads get worse, and traffic gets thinner, there are still a lot more vehicles on the road than I had expected due to the fact that there are just so few roads, period. Not a lot of traffic, just not none. And also, a lot of industry is happening here.

I remember how someone in a Porsche watching me navigate the beltways of Chicago on an overgrown dirt bike, dressed up like an alien with 2 gallons of water strapped to my bike and gear crammed everywhere, would have said to his wife, "hey Karen, get a load of this guy." Whistling across Alberta, I looked not at all out of place, with a more working purpose mentality prevailing, and many vehicles wearing that dust and dirt patina, my own included.

The next morning, I picked up a pint of whiskey, and headed off in the rain up the Alaska Highway.  The directions I was given by the desk clerk for the liquor store included the phrase, "down a few traffic lights, right after the pot store."  I suppose for Canadians, and some Americans, that would not be unusual, but I'd have thought "dispensary" or something. 

On the road, I was surprised by the change in the makeup of the traffic. Everything was an oil extraction  support truck, a camper, or a bike like mine. This continued until reaching the Rockies, when suddenly the oil industry traffic stopped cold. Now, it's just survivalists and adventurers. Not a Porsche to be found. 

O, Canada

Waking up only a couple hundred meters west of the Saskatchewan / Alberta  border, I had a long haul across Alberta and well into British Columbia on Monday. It confirmed another thing I suspected about Western Canada, knowing it was true for the Western United States. You can pretty much tell what longitude you're at by the geography. 105 degrees west looks like 105 west regardless of how far north or south you are. The American Southwest is a desert and red, and Montana is green, but the features are the same. There are no hoodoos in Alberta that I'm aware of, but again you know where you are. 

This is also big oil country. Edmonton is a huge refining and distribution hub; its towers of steel and glass are built from the liquid gold. Cattle on the top and dinosaurs underneath.

Oh, I got stopped for going 117 in a 60, which has never happened to me before. Even when you convert it down from kilometers, 72 in a 40 sounds like a lot.

The rub is kind of it was 110 km/h freeway, with a car stopped on the shoulder for assistance. The law is in that situation, any flashing light, slow to 60. Well, there were two Mounties, and one of them wasn't there to help at all.

He actually gave me a warning for two reasons, the first being that this limit is different between provinces, and it should be displayed on a sign which I could have missed. Second, The ticket would have been over $800! I was super polite and was a good boy from there on out.

The other rub is that I had just gotten done passing a guy on an adventure bike similar to mine. And he must have gotten a good laugh out of it. Oh look at this guy going like hell. Oh look at this idiot getting pulled over.

The wind at the end of this leg was stiff, and relentless. When it started to rain pretty good, the wind was blowing the slipstream from southbound trucks across the 2-lane highway, leaving me to crash through walls of water. That wasn't the most fun. But, it builds character. 

I was in Max Hydro mode, which with this new setup means all ankles and wrists cinched up tight, full gauntlet gloves, and the neck sock over the collar of the jacket, with the jacket zipped to the pants and all vents zipped shut. I had hit rain since early on, and while the suit is watertight, I have had incursions when not fully hunkered down. The equipment was wet at a pee stop in Indiana, and if you're a long-time reader, you know how much I hate soggy balls.

Even in magic future time as I write this a week later, I have still not been in a hammering rain for any length of time. So, yeah, TBD. I did run smack into this scene in the pic below the day before, and stopped to engage said Max Hydro Mode.  There were lightning bolts blasting out of there and the whole 9 yards. Normally that's a deal breaker for me, but I had places to be and, really, how often do you actually hear about Honda riders being struck by lightning?

Much to my relief, I only clipped a corner of it and it was actually no big deal. Onward.