Arctic Circle Jerks
Part 3:
Gravel, Burgers, and Engine Trouble in the Rain
For those just joining us:
Arctic Circle Jerks: Part 1
Arctic Circle Jerks: Part 2: Graffiti, Firewater, and Gravel
So we woke up in Fairbanks and took our time with breakfast (peanut butter and Pop-Tarts, Breakfast of [Poor] Champions), because I'd allotted an entire day to get to the Circle, only 200 miles away.
While we were in fairbanks, some guy in a truck next to us at a light started revving his engine and looking over at us, like he wanted to race.
We let him race himself, since we were in the left hand turn lane. He wasted at least $20 in rubber and didn't really go anywhere. Between him and the Walgreens cashier with the serious fem-stache, this place is obviously filled with the best and brightest humanity has to offer.
Good times. A few trees and clouds later:
and we were at the beginning of the infamous Dalton Highway.
Chris, ready to tackle this thing on his streetbike. How he fits in regular sized pants, I'll never know:
Crotch is intact and operational. Let's do this.
This is the picture Wikipedia has for the Dalton: looks about right.
Here's some of the sort of road we spent most of the Dalton dealing with:
Nate is slightly dismayed by all this gravel, and doesn't know what the F.
All he knows is fuck gravel.
At this point, the infamous Alaska Black Flies had finally shown themselves. As soon as we stepped off our bikes and removed our helmets, we had about a second of peace, and then we were surrounded by a cloud of these tiny black assholes. Thousands of them, all trying to climb inside our noses and mouths and eyes, and the 98% DEET we had all over us barely slowed them down--these bastards eat DEET for breakfast. So we took off before we could be their lunch.
That's my excuse for having so few pictures of the Dalton. Every time we stopped, they attacked.
So after the first few miles of dirt road, we switched bikes so we could share the terrifying experience of riding it on the SV, just for giggles. It was quite a sight, me trying to ride a sportbike like it was a motocrosser--standing up, elbows out, sliding the rear all over the place. Except for the potholes, it was fun, in a demented, masochistic sort of way.
We stopped at the Yukon River crossing to fill up, since gas stations were about as rare as sanity up here. We loaded our Camelbaks up with ice and water, and tried to hit on the cashier girl.
How she resisted my grizzled charms, I'll never know:
Down the road, we pulled off to get some shots of Finger Mountain, and for me to exaggerate about the rocks we had to get through, and also the size of my johnson:
Thumbs up, Finger Mountain!
Crotch Status: Operational
Take that, Finger Mountain.
And here's finger mountain unmolested. Not really much of a mountain, truth be told.
...and back to the road.
There were a few construction portions where the road was covered in at least 6 inches of jagged, pool-ball-sized gravel. That was the worst-- neither bike's front wheel would stay put in that crap, and we were forced to follow a pilot truck that was going about 5 MPH, which did not help. These sections were the ones infamous for shredding tires and sending bikers back to Fairbanks on a tow truck, but somehow we escaped any such disasters.
Anyhoo, 17 miles past Finger Mountain there was this:
Awww yeah. That's the stuff.
We took some pictures with the sign to prove we were there:
...of course, one of our trusty bikes:
...and one of me jumping off a rock trying to look like I'm sitting on top of the world:
This is Lisa:
She works for UAF and was doing some kind of recreation study, giving questionnaires to travelers and whatnot, so we kept her company for a while.
We didn't add our mark to the back of the Arctic Circle sign, but we admired the handiwork of those who came before us.
And I read about some nature crap:
After dicking around for a few hours, we decided to start heading back so we could get a head start on some of the obscenely long days we had scheduled ahead of us, and maybe get some hot food for the night.
We stopped so we could take a closer look at this Alaska Pipeline:
Limited access, blah blah whatever.
I got your limited access right here, buddy.
You say pipeline, we say urinal.
Would these count as evidence of trespassing in court? Maybe we shouldn't be posting so many of them.
Seriously though, that's one big pipeline. GOD BLESS THE USA
"Why Chris, I do believe I have a gigantic pipeline emerging from the fly of my pantaloons!"
"You know, Nate, I have some recollection of a similar comment that your mother said last night regarding my own trousers."
"To that level of wit I truly have no answer. Touché, my friend."
Anyway, enough screwing around, back on the road.
And then it started raining, which was interesting.
And by "interesting", I mean "the only possible way to make the Dalton any more terrifying".
But we made it 60 miles anyway, and stopped at the Hot Spot "restaurant" for dinner, where I had the most obscenely large hamburger ever:
Seriously, it was ginormous. It extended an inch past the bun all the way around, and was a good 2cm thick at least--I'm guessing a pound of meat. This was a burger you could use to beat a man to death with, and then feed a family of four.
F you kitty, this is my big-ass burger!
We made camp right there by the Hot Spot, hoping that the smell of delicious burgers didn't attract any bears:
The ground was impenetrable, so we had to go find big rocks to replace our useless tent pegs.
Take THAT, tent!
obligatory "epic motorcycle picture with top-of-the-world sunset in the background:
Tomorrow: the Long Way Home.
We woke up the next morning, filthy and fly-bitten. Turns out 32 year old metal tent zippers start losing teeth when you pull them out of retirement for some roughin' it.
Our stuff was pretty dirty at this point, mostly just dried mud instead of the furry coat of dead bugs we had before. Here's my setup, complete with "WASH ME" and disgustingly dirty emergency spare helmet:
...and Chris's bike, which is normally quite a handsome machine:
Here's my emergency spare gas, a Powerade container.
The vast majority of plastic soda/water bottles are made of polyethylene, which is the same stuff my gas tank is made of, so it may not be DOT approved, but it's perfectly safe to use in a pinch, at least with a nice strong thick bottle like this one.
So we took off, back down the shitty gravelly Dalton, which, now that we had time for pictures, looked mostly like this:
Sometimes it would get a little shittier like this:
We'd show you the really big sharp stuff, but we were too scared to stop while we were actually going through it. So go ahead and pretend that I just posted pictures of us climbing mountains of jagged obsidian with our bikes strapped to our backs or something. It was approximately that manly, I assure you.
This was a pretty common sight for us, old guys on BMW GSs and slightly less old guys on KTMs. They thought Chris and I were fuckin' nuts for taking a streetbike up there. We told them our next project was doing the Dakar Rally on a Segway.
But eventually we reached proper tarmac, at the Elliot Highway.
Oh God yes, pavement.
I think I just peed myself a little.
Our trip off the paved roads had wreaked havoc with Chris's GPS cradle, and the power connection was only working intermittently, so Chris anchored that little shit down with a ziptie to make it work.
It continued to give us problems, though. Our solution? More zipties, of course.
2 Zip Ties: Serious Business.
We still had plenty of energy due to the head start we'd given ourselves the night before, so we went right through Fairbanks and kept going, until we stopped for dinner in Tok (pronounced "Toke"), Alaska.
A friend on an online forum suggested we try the pizza at Fast Eddy's, and since it was about the only restaurant in town, wasn't exactly a difficult choice:
Hot food! Yeehaw!
Pizza so good, you'll catch the Down's:
It's just...so beautiful.
They were all sold out, but this might be the greatest piece of Mountie-related art I've ever seen, and dammit, I want one.
We ended up going all the way to Alcan, just on the Alaska side of the border, and camping in the rain.
32-year-old backpacker tent: mostly waterproof. mostly.
I kid you not, we had to pay 12 dollars to camp in this muddy, sloped "campsite". Don't get me wrong, it was probably worth that just for the hot showers, but referring to this generator and tire graveyard as a "campsite" is a bit of a stretch.
As soon as the rain subsided enough the next morning, we packed up our crap...
...and booked it out of that place. Other than the hot Southern blonde working the front counter, there just wasn't any reason to stick around that hole any longer.
A bit down the road, our first mechanical issue of the trip struck, and we had to stop to take care of it.
It was the dreaded Wet Twin becomes Thumper Syndrome, where the front fender isn't long enough, and the front wheel throws water up into the engine and drowns the front spark plug, turning a 650cc Twin into a really shitty 325cc Single. It's pretty common on the SV, and a lot of people get fender extensions to prevent it.
"A lot of people", meaning "a lot of people who are not Chris".
So Chris cursed and started removing parts to get at the problem area while i provided encouragement and dicked around with his camera, which was much nicer than mine:
Chris managed to get most of the water out of there, clean the area up a bit, and displace the rest of the water with some WD40 (the WD stands for Water Displacement--go figure), and we carved up a bottle and ziptied it in place, for a homemade fender extension that I think Macgyver would be proud of:
Will it work?
Will our heroes get eaten by bears?
How does engine type correlate with sexual preference?
Tune in next time to find out!
Circle Jerks 4: Live Free or Die Jerks (the last part)
Arctic Circle Jerks: Part 1
Arctic Circle Jerks: Part 2: Graffiti, Firewater, and Gravel
So we woke up in Fairbanks and took our time with breakfast (peanut butter and Pop-Tarts, Breakfast of [Poor] Champions), because I'd allotted an entire day to get to the Circle, only 200 miles away.
While we were in fairbanks, some guy in a truck next to us at a light started revving his engine and looking over at us, like he wanted to race.
We let him race himself, since we were in the left hand turn lane. He wasted at least $20 in rubber and didn't really go anywhere. Between him and the Walgreens cashier with the serious fem-stache, this place is obviously filled with the best and brightest humanity has to offer.
Good times. A few trees and clouds later:
and we were at the beginning of the infamous Dalton Highway.
Chris, ready to tackle this thing on his streetbike. How he fits in regular sized pants, I'll never know:
Crotch is intact and operational. Let's do this.
This is the picture Wikipedia has for the Dalton: looks about right.
Here's some of the sort of road we spent most of the Dalton dealing with:
Nate is slightly dismayed by all this gravel, and doesn't know what the F.
All he knows is fuck gravel.
At this point, the infamous Alaska Black Flies had finally shown themselves. As soon as we stepped off our bikes and removed our helmets, we had about a second of peace, and then we were surrounded by a cloud of these tiny black assholes. Thousands of them, all trying to climb inside our noses and mouths and eyes, and the 98% DEET we had all over us barely slowed them down--these bastards eat DEET for breakfast. So we took off before we could be their lunch.
That's my excuse for having so few pictures of the Dalton. Every time we stopped, they attacked.
So after the first few miles of dirt road, we switched bikes so we could share the terrifying experience of riding it on the SV, just for giggles. It was quite a sight, me trying to ride a sportbike like it was a motocrosser--standing up, elbows out, sliding the rear all over the place. Except for the potholes, it was fun, in a demented, masochistic sort of way.
We stopped at the Yukon River crossing to fill up, since gas stations were about as rare as sanity up here. We loaded our Camelbaks up with ice and water, and tried to hit on the cashier girl.
How she resisted my grizzled charms, I'll never know:
Down the road, we pulled off to get some shots of Finger Mountain, and for me to exaggerate about the rocks we had to get through, and also the size of my johnson:
Thumbs up, Finger Mountain!
Crotch Status: Operational
Take that, Finger Mountain.
And here's finger mountain unmolested. Not really much of a mountain, truth be told.
...and back to the road.
There were a few construction portions where the road was covered in at least 6 inches of jagged, pool-ball-sized gravel. That was the worst-- neither bike's front wheel would stay put in that crap, and we were forced to follow a pilot truck that was going about 5 MPH, which did not help. These sections were the ones infamous for shredding tires and sending bikers back to Fairbanks on a tow truck, but somehow we escaped any such disasters.
Anyhoo, 17 miles past Finger Mountain there was this:
Awww yeah. That's the stuff.
We took some pictures with the sign to prove we were there:
...of course, one of our trusty bikes:
...and one of me jumping off a rock trying to look like I'm sitting on top of the world:
This is Lisa:
She works for UAF and was doing some kind of recreation study, giving questionnaires to travelers and whatnot, so we kept her company for a while.
We didn't add our mark to the back of the Arctic Circle sign, but we admired the handiwork of those who came before us.
And I read about some nature crap:
After dicking around for a few hours, we decided to start heading back so we could get a head start on some of the obscenely long days we had scheduled ahead of us, and maybe get some hot food for the night.
We stopped so we could take a closer look at this Alaska Pipeline:
Limited access, blah blah whatever.
I got your limited access right here, buddy.
You say pipeline, we say urinal.
Would these count as evidence of trespassing in court? Maybe we shouldn't be posting so many of them.
Seriously though, that's one big pipeline. GOD BLESS THE USA
"Why Chris, I do believe I have a gigantic pipeline emerging from the fly of my pantaloons!"
"You know, Nate, I have some recollection of a similar comment that your mother said last night regarding my own trousers."
"To that level of wit I truly have no answer. Touché, my friend."
Anyway, enough screwing around, back on the road.
And then it started raining, which was interesting.
And by "interesting", I mean "the only possible way to make the Dalton any more terrifying".
But we made it 60 miles anyway, and stopped at the Hot Spot "restaurant" for dinner, where I had the most obscenely large hamburger ever:
Seriously, it was ginormous. It extended an inch past the bun all the way around, and was a good 2cm thick at least--I'm guessing a pound of meat. This was a burger you could use to beat a man to death with, and then feed a family of four.
F you kitty, this is my big-ass burger!
We made camp right there by the Hot Spot, hoping that the smell of delicious burgers didn't attract any bears:
The ground was impenetrable, so we had to go find big rocks to replace our useless tent pegs.
Take THAT, tent!
obligatory "epic motorcycle picture with top-of-the-world sunset in the background:
Tomorrow: the Long Way Home.
We woke up the next morning, filthy and fly-bitten. Turns out 32 year old metal tent zippers start losing teeth when you pull them out of retirement for some roughin' it.
Our stuff was pretty dirty at this point, mostly just dried mud instead of the furry coat of dead bugs we had before. Here's my setup, complete with "WASH ME" and disgustingly dirty emergency spare helmet:
...and Chris's bike, which is normally quite a handsome machine:
Here's my emergency spare gas, a Powerade container.
The vast majority of plastic soda/water bottles are made of polyethylene, which is the same stuff my gas tank is made of, so it may not be DOT approved, but it's perfectly safe to use in a pinch, at least with a nice strong thick bottle like this one.
So we took off, back down the shitty gravelly Dalton, which, now that we had time for pictures, looked mostly like this:
Sometimes it would get a little shittier like this:
We'd show you the really big sharp stuff, but we were too scared to stop while we were actually going through it. So go ahead and pretend that I just posted pictures of us climbing mountains of jagged obsidian with our bikes strapped to our backs or something. It was approximately that manly, I assure you.
This was a pretty common sight for us, old guys on BMW GSs and slightly less old guys on KTMs. They thought Chris and I were fuckin' nuts for taking a streetbike up there. We told them our next project was doing the Dakar Rally on a Segway.
But eventually we reached proper tarmac, at the Elliot Highway.
Oh God yes, pavement.
I think I just peed myself a little.
Our trip off the paved roads had wreaked havoc with Chris's GPS cradle, and the power connection was only working intermittently, so Chris anchored that little shit down with a ziptie to make it work.
It continued to give us problems, though. Our solution? More zipties, of course.
2 Zip Ties: Serious Business.
We still had plenty of energy due to the head start we'd given ourselves the night before, so we went right through Fairbanks and kept going, until we stopped for dinner in Tok (pronounced "Toke"), Alaska.
A friend on an online forum suggested we try the pizza at Fast Eddy's, and since it was about the only restaurant in town, wasn't exactly a difficult choice:
Hot food! Yeehaw!
Pizza so good, you'll catch the Down's:
It's just...so beautiful.
They were all sold out, but this might be the greatest piece of Mountie-related art I've ever seen, and dammit, I want one.
We ended up going all the way to Alcan, just on the Alaska side of the border, and camping in the rain.
32-year-old backpacker tent: mostly waterproof. mostly.
I kid you not, we had to pay 12 dollars to camp in this muddy, sloped "campsite". Don't get me wrong, it was probably worth that just for the hot showers, but referring to this generator and tire graveyard as a "campsite" is a bit of a stretch.
As soon as the rain subsided enough the next morning, we packed up our crap...
...and booked it out of that place. Other than the hot Southern blonde working the front counter, there just wasn't any reason to stick around that hole any longer.
A bit down the road, our first mechanical issue of the trip struck, and we had to stop to take care of it.
It was the dreaded Wet Twin becomes Thumper Syndrome, where the front fender isn't long enough, and the front wheel throws water up into the engine and drowns the front spark plug, turning a 650cc Twin into a really shitty 325cc Single. It's pretty common on the SV, and a lot of people get fender extensions to prevent it.
"A lot of people", meaning "a lot of people who are not Chris".
So Chris cursed and started removing parts to get at the problem area while i provided encouragement and dicked around with his camera, which was much nicer than mine:
Chris managed to get most of the water out of there, clean the area up a bit, and displace the rest of the water with some WD40 (the WD stands for Water Displacement--go figure), and we carved up a bottle and ziptied it in place, for a homemade fender extension that I think Macgyver would be proud of:
Will it work?
Will our heroes get eaten by bears?
How does engine type correlate with sexual preference?
Tune in next time to find out!
Circle Jerks 4: Live Free or Die Jerks (the last part)
Labels: I swear this is true., photos
posted by Nate Falls at
01:29
1 Comments:
hey, wouldn't dropping 5-10 psi on the tyres give you more off-roadability on the SV?
Just a thought for next time :-D
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