Arctic Circle Jerks Part 4: Live Free or Die Jerks

For anyone just tuning in:
Arctic Circle Jerks
Arctic Circle Jerks part 2: Circle Harder
Arctic Circle Jerks part 3: Jerks with a Vengeance

When we last left off, Chris's engine was having water trouble, and our heroes had devised a daring plan involving a plastic bottle and some zip-ties to keep the bike running.

Will it work?

Yep.

Will our heroes get eaten by bears?

Nope.



The fender extension worked just fine, and the engine fired right up on both cylinders after Chris put it all back together, and we took off again.



Sup, dog?



Chillin, yo.



Word. Keep on keepin' on.



Word. Let's roll, C.

And on we rolled.

How does engine type correlate with sexual preference?

Oh, well okay then.


And so we rode on. And then we had to stop again, because holy crap what is that?









Excuse the spots on my lens--it was raining at this point and there wasn't any way to keep it dry.










It was cold and rainy and all we wanted to do was finish getting to Prince George so we could put up camp and sleep, but this was the most incredible rainbow we'd ever seen; it was brilliant in a way the cameras just couldn't capture, like a multicolored laser shooting out of the ground, pointing at a magical pot of gay somewhere over the horizon.

But we managed to eventually shut our gaping mouths and fight on through the torrential rain that produced that rainbow, and a few hours later we had camp set up at Goji's place.


We woke up at Goji's, packed up our crap, talked to Goji about some magical Chinese herbal roofies or something that he wanted to share with us, and then took off.

At this point, I had realized that my chain and rear sprocket were both worn as damn--the sprocket teeth had been worn thin and sharp, and the chain was having to be tightened and lubed at almost every gas stop, it was stretching so quickly.


Nate's Ass: Status sexy.

And we met a man named BigHat McBallsChin.

No, I have no idea why they call him that.

I think this was the day when Chris's GPS actually fell off his bike while we were cruising--I guess Chris hadn't reapplied the zipties yet that day. We stopped and went back, and wouldn't you know it, the stupid thing was still working. So we strapped it back on and kept moving.

We switched bikes once between gas stops, just for some variety, and when we came to our next stop, it was like there had been an oil explosion somewhere around the aft and of Chris's bike's motor. There was oil on the shock, spring, swingarm, centerstand, rear header pipe, everywhere. Terrified, I went to the local auto parts place and got some thicker oil, oil stabilizer, and silicone for emergency leak patching. We spent a few hours trying to figure out what the F, and never could figure out where it was really coming from. So we topped her off and kept going and hoped this wasn't going to strand our asses up here to get assaulted by lonely, amorous moose.

Turns out after that first unexplained oil explosion, the oil loss slowed to barely a trickle, so we'd throw in a few drops at every gas stop, and it never gave us any more trouble. I think we ended up deciding it was the countershaft seal, but it never tried to recreate the Exxon Valdez incident again.

We made it to our friend Mike's place in Burnaby, BC, and I was jonesin' for some hot food, so Mike's slow-moving spaniel was starting to look tasty.




Then Mike distracted me with some real food, and managed to save his dog. Mostly. We cleaned ourselves up and took off for a night on the town in Vancouver.

Hey, a camera!


Old school! I wonder if anyone's done the Dalton Hwy on one of these.


Vancouver at night:


On the right is Mike, who kicks ass. To the left, not shown: a man urinating in public.




and here's our group, minus Chris the photographer.

Code names: The Revisionist, Mortal Wombat, Nathaniel T Kittenstomp III, and Man With Beard (Mike).

and if we were all in a band, this would be our album cover photo:


Nate: Easily Distracted.


Crotch: Present and accounted for.


Fill with care, indeed. Reminds me of how I feel about your mom, Chris.


Bridges: just another reason for Nate to make the Unnecessary Angry Face.


There's no way a caption could possibly improve this picture.


Jalapeño poppers, meet The Angry Face.


There was actually no reason to have an angry face. We had much Canadian beer, walked around town a lot, and ended up at some fancy restaurant, where we had poutine.

Poutine, for those who don't know, is a Canadian thing that's a huge bastard pile of fries, drenched in brown gravy, and topped with melty cheese curd. It's delicious, and probably took years off my life, and could only be improved with the addition of bacon. But we were in Canada, dammit, so to the hell with healthy eating!

I highly recommend it.

The next morning, Chris took off early and hauled ass, so he could meet some work friends in Oregon. I slept in and took my time, and found this, when I approached the border:


Miles of it.

It turns out that morning was the morning of the Glasgow/London airport bombings, so they turned the border dial down to Slow As Frozen Shit Running Uphill. It took me 5 hours to get across that thing, so in the meantime I turned off my bike and walked around distributing Coffee Crisp candy bars to my fellow motorists before they melted all over the insides of my saddlebags. One lady gave me some bottled water and an apple in exchange--God bless Canada. Everyone got out of their cars and hung out--it was like a cocktail party on a beautiful sunny day, except it took place in a gigantic traffic jam.

I eventually made it to the border, and the border crossing asshole confiscated my gigantic 1kg bag of dried pepperoni sticks, because I guess we're not okay with Canadian beef anymore. Screw that guy, twice. I called him unpublishable things under my breath, and then headed to Eugene, Oregon, to Susie's place, without incident.

Susie is for some reason deathly afraid of my camera, and is now a brunette:


Chris caught up with me there, and all three of us crashed together on the futon that night (in separate sleeping bags). Chris managed to get this shot of me before he left in the morning, so now I have proof that once I was in the same bed as a girl.


I stuck around that day, because Susie was having a potluck for other Couchsurfing members that night, and because I don't have a real person job that requires me to be available at any particular time, like Chris does.

I gave Susie a moto ride around town, picking up tiki torches and other things that I would not advise carrying on a bike, and then I helped her pound in a support for a fence, while she commented on my form:


Later, Steve arrived to surf Susie's couch that night, and also share in the potluck festivities There's him on the right:


As it turns out, Steve is my long-lost brother who lives in Chico, CA. He also has a cheap adventure bike (KLR650) held together mostly by bungees, and a traveling beard, and by a very strange coincidence, we have the same military-surplus rifle from Big 5 Sporting Goods, which I was thinking about bringing to fend off bears, and which he suggested I bring to fend off bears. We were finishing each other's sentences within 15 minutes of meeting. It was kind of strange.

The potluck went well. I set off some fireworks, and we all got good and drunk on Susie's mojitos, and everyone who attended thinks that Susie and Steve and I had a threesome later(we did not, in fact, at any time, have a threesome).

But I eventually managed to tear myself away from Susie and the charming town of Eugene, and headed off the next morning, equipped with the newest Feline Positioning System navigation technology.


That's cutting edge stuff, folks.

But after another uneventful day, a stop-off in San Fran at Ben's place that involved some incredibly gay karaoke and a piñata, and another day of cruising down the coast, I was home.

I don't think I've ever been so happy to see the Pacific Ocean:


When I pulled into the driveway, my bike was offially done running for a while:

The rear tire was down to damn near zero tread: toasted.

The chain was stretched way beyond the "replace now" point, to the "you should have replaced this a few thousand miles ago" point: toasted.

The rear sprocket wasn't just worn as hell, it only had half its teeth left; the rest had broken off between here and San Francisco: definitely toasted.

The sprockets and chain, I'd been tightening and lubing at every single gas stop since the Canadian border to keep them from falling apart. 200 miles farther and I wouldn't have made it.



So now the long, painful (for my ass) adventure is over, and I'm back home in Los Angeles. There are no insane black flies, or torrential downpours. I can have three meals a day, none of which have to be trail mix or beef jerky, and I have a choice of more than two shirts, and they're nearly all clean. Shoes and pants are purely optional, and I can drink things with ice in them, out of cups and not a Camelbak that makes everything taste like Wild Turkey 101. I get to sleep on a real bed, instead of next to Chris in a tiny 35-year-old backpacker tent that may or may not be leaking rain on my face.

But sometimes I wonder if that's what I really want.

For all its difficulties and discomforts, the road felt like home. Two wheels, the endless road, and a leaky blue tent were all I had, but they were all I needed. I always had a good night's sleep, no distractions, and the time and space to really think, and now I don't have those anymore. Left them out on the road, I suppose.

I just hope they're still waiting for me when I get back there.