Haines Junction

We arrive in Haines Junction at 3:00pm.  The day is really hot… at least 80 degrees.  This hot weather is a nice break after the long rainy two years we have had in Juneau.  We soak it up at a little outdoor restaurant near the visitor center.

 The visitor center is a surprisingly well-done facility with an excellent little museum.  In addition, the restaurant has great yuppie food, and I pig out on some kind of spinach loaf  that Jim recommended, and, of course, a chocolate milk shake.  While eating, we meet a fellow and his wife who live in Haines Junction, and are promoting a “Sense of Place” philosophy for the north by means of his Ph.D program out of the University of Texas.

The interesting part is that his thesis chairman, and one of the members of his thesis committee are guys I knew 30 years ago when a bunch of us out of Fairbanks were trying to raise awareness of the impact of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline on the North.  The whole thing is apparently coming around again as we talk gas pipelines, ANWAR development, and Canadian Justice Tom Berger’s report on the impact of rapid petroleum development in the north.

Near Miss

At 5:00pm, we are now on the Alaska Highway.  The first thing we run into is road construction, though only a mile’s worth.  Not bad, but it is almost impossible to pedal over gravel while trying to avoid Haines Junction’ “rush hour” traffic, and contractor water trucks.  I get off and walk.  In the process, I and the bike get a covering of good old Yukon mud.

 After construction, the roadway becomes a very narrow two-lane with no shoulder.  While dangerous, I rashly assume that vehicles will give us bicyclists some roadway when necessary.  Usually this is true, but I suddenly find out that some drivers haven’t heard of this rule.  I notice two big semis approaching me from behind, and an RV driver approaching me from the opposite direction.  I watch to see if the RV driver will slow down to give way to the trucks, but he does not.  Then I realize that the trucks aren’t going to slow down either.

As the RV and the first truck pass beside me, I realize that I am in trouble… there is another truck close behind the first, and I have about 1 foot of roadway to work with.  One foot of roadway is not enough room.  I give it up and head for the ditch as the second semi passes me.  The gravel is really loose.  As my front wheel slides out from under the bike, and into the ditch, and my knee goes into the gravel, I take note that a car is immediately behind the second semi, and is passing very close to my head.  Jeez!

 I manage to tear some skin off my knee, and ding a finger, but there is no worse damage to me or my gear.  Jim comes up and does an excellent first aid job on the knee.  A very sobering experience.  We continue on our way to our next possible campsite at Otter Falls.

Otter Falls Campground

Our third campground.  The Otter Falls campground is in the new roadhouse tradition: a general store full of cheap toys, a junk food grocery, stuffed animal heads, lots of tacky souvenirs, and gasoline out front.  We ask if they sell white gas.  The counter girl seems never to have heard of it, but does point out the pint bottles of gasoline additive called “Dry Gas.”  We give up on the idea of finding blazo here. 

We are directed to a campsite, and, after dinner, and a shower in a clean though sparsely equipped shower facility, we spend part of the night listening to the local dogs barking at bears.

There are a few bugs, but not as bad as I expected.

Thursday, 8:10am – An amazing day Begins

The day is clear, the winds are calm, and following, and the road is flat.  We think we can make 80 miles today, all the way from Otter Falls campground to Takhini Hot Springs about 20 miles northwest of Whitehorse.  To get there, we have to pass through the outer city limits of Whitehorse then go north up the Dawson highway to get to Takhini.  The next day, we will have to backtrack the 20 miles from Takhini to Whitehorse.

We make really good time for about 10 miles.

Champagne

Bike Break down at Champagne - "No Dogs!"

Jim has a breakdown here at Champagne.  His rear axle blows out, though we don’t really know that at first.  All we know for sure is that the rear wheel wobbles and the wobbling interferes with shifting and braking.

Jim walks into Champagne and finds a mechanic who uses a big wrench to kind of muscle the rear axle back into line as a temporary fix until we get to Whitehorse… still about 70 miles away.  

Some Beautiful Junk at Champagne

Unfortunately, our temporary fix turns out to be really temporary.  It lasts about 2 miles.  We then realize that the axle is totally blown, and we have to hitch to Whitehorse.  Neither of us has hitched much for a few decades, so this will be part of the adventure.  Feeling a lot like Jack Kerouac, I thrust my thumb out at the first passing truck.

Mike and Jim

After only a few minutes of hitching, a Travelall goes past headed toward Haines, turns around, comes back and asks if a lift back into Haines will help.  We defer saying we would rather not backtrack.

Then within a minute or so two new macho pickups pull up.  The first, blue with dual tires in the rear, a shell on the bed,  and a rotweiler in the cab with the driver.  He asks us what the problem is.  We explain our situation, and our need to get into Whitehorse to get a fix for our busted bike.  The driver talks briefly into a walkie-talkie to his partner in the rear truck.  The partner drives a big red macho pickup with a crew cab and a lockable lid on the bed.

They both pull off the road, and tell us to load up.  They will take us into Whitehorse.  We load up.  Jim gets into Mike’s blue truck, and I get into Jim’s red one.  It turns out that Mike is from Anchorage, and is a top salesman for an industrial fasteners company.  He is on his way to Boise, Idaho in pursuit of a deal involving snow machine carriers (or something like that).  His father, Jim, the red truck driver, is an operator of huge hydraulic cranes in Southern California.  Jim has come up to help Mike do the deal in Boise.

We head off down the road toward Whitehorse at 70 – 80 miles per hour.  Jim and Mike talk constantly on the walkie-talkies to keep each other in sight, and help each other get around those who don’t know where the accelerator pedals are on their cars. 

Jim is an unstoppable raconteur.  Before long I have heard not only all the technical specifications of the cranes he has operated, but some of the big jobs he has been on, and his problems with Mexican load spotters on big building projects in Orange county.  As one example of the technical information, Jim operates cranes with 300 foot booms that are rated to lift 1450 tons of material.  This seems impossible to me, based on the physics of levers, until Jim explains that the lifting capability of a crane is rated with the “load in your lap,” not at the end of the extended boom. 

Ah Hah!  Now it makes sense. 

Jim seems to have some kind of skin irritation, and tells me he had an accident several years ago that resulted in second and third degree burns.  “That’s the reason why Mosquitoes drive me crazy,”  He said.

Naively, I ask what happened.  “I was being a good Samaritan, and trying to help a lady get her car started by pouring gasoline down the carburetor.  After several attempts I told her it wasn’t going to work, but she begged me to try once more.  I poured big bunch of gasoline down the carburetor.  As soon as she hit the starter, a spark flew, and the engine back fired, blowing burning gasoline all over me.   My last conscious thought as I fell down, on fire, was that I was going to beat this thing, that I was going to live.”

“The next morning, I woke up and saw myself in a hospital mirror.  I looked like a mummy, but I felt good.  I knew I was going to live.  I had beaten the thing.  Then a doctor came in and explained that in severe burn cases like mine, I probably hadn’t been told yet that the burning continues for five days, and goes way down deep into your skin and muscles.  I said I didn’t believe him.  I was so happy on that first day, that I started badgering the nurses to let me up and help me get dressed so I could go home.

“Later, a guy named Ron came in.”  He said: ‘“So you’re Jim.  I understand you are kind of a wise guy, Jim.  Well, Jim, Let me tell you what’s going to happen here over the next five days.  I’m going to start by asking you if I can put this tube down your nose so that if your wind pipe suddenly closes up, we will still be able to help you breathe.  You can say no if you want, because we don’t want anybody to do things against their will.“

“If you don’t let me insert this tube, though, and your windpipe closes, I will have to cut your throat and insert a tube to block your windpipe open so we can put a machine on you to help you breathe.  Otherwise, you are going to die. Jim.  You may die anyway if I’m not in the building when your windpipe closes.  “

“That’s only the first of the things we are going to do, Jim.  Some of the things we will have to do with machines to your body are terrible, and we will hurt you.  If you try your best to cooperate with us over the next five days though, Jim, we may be able to save your life.”’

“I felt cocky as hell before talking to Ron.  By the time he was done describing reality to me, I was crying like a baby and telling him to please do whatever he had to do to help me live.  I was now dealing with reality for the first time in my life, and it changed me, probably forever.  On that fourth day, I remember very little except a couple of times when there appeared to be some kind of ghost hovering in the room.  Later they told me my heart stopped twice, but they were able to resuscitate.”

“After the crisis passed, I was then in rehab and skin grafting for the next two years, and my life continued to grow more and more real with every day.  I was blessed with a plastic surgeon who was an artist.  That’s why my scars are not real obvious, but I sure do feel those mosquitoes.” 

“Another part of my reality is that I don’t have any problem telling a job supervisor that I have to take off, like now, when my son needs my help.”

In Whitehorse, Mike and Jim waited while my biking partner, Jim, called a local bike shop, then they delivered us over there, unloaded our bikes, stood for a picture with the rotweiler, and were back on their way to Boise… at 70-80 miles per hour no doubt.

Jim and Mike - Great Guys

Whitehorse

The chief mechanic at The Riverdale Bike Shop in Whitehorse explains our axle problem to us.  The wheel itself will have to be replaced, because Schwinn used a shoddy axle mechanism on the bike, and that mechanism can shred under a load.  We luck out though, since the mechanic says he can do the work within a few minutes and have us back on our way.  Total price for parts and labor: about $60 canadian.

While they work on it, Jim and I head for a nearby restaurant, and pig out again on local delicacies.  I have the delicacies and an espresso milkshake.  One thing I have noticed about long distance bike riding is how hungry I get, and how much food I can eat.

One thing I notice about the City of Whitehorse is how much it has changed since I was last through here at least 25 years ago.  Instead of only being a transshipment point for the Yukon River, and the White Pass and Yukon RR, it is now a small, but very cosmopolitan city.  A real international cross roads with many races, cultures, and nationalities represented on its downtown streets. 

The Riverdale Bike Shop was itself a cross-cultural experience with what seemed to be many long distance bikers coming and going, some kids on skateboards hanging out, and some bikers who spoke no english at all.  We swap some notes on the road ahead with a couple who were bicycling to Fairbanks from Oregon on a bicycle built for two. 

 Since our original goal at the beginning of this day is Takhini Hot springs, we go there.  It is about 30 kilometers away… about 19 miles.  We have to back track to go there, but the idea of a hot springs bath seems well worth the effort.

Takhini Hot Springs, 9:15pm

I am eating a deluxe chicken burger after soaking in the hot springs for a half hour or so.  The food is good and the hot springs was relaxing.  After this amazing day, we needed both really bad.

Morning at the Takhini Campground - Ready to Pack Up and Head back to Whitehorse