Posted: 23 September 2006 at 3:51pm | IP Logged

I completed the UCC from Prudhoe Bay to Key West on my V Strom on July 17.  I have a story and many good pictures from the Haul Road all the way south taken by my wife as she followed me in our chase truck.  Can anyone tell me how I go about posting the story here?  When I did the 50CC and 4 Corners stories, I sent them to Mike Kneebone a couple of years ago and never saw them again.  I can post on Stromtroopers but would really like to post here.

Julian Whaley, Fresno, California IB 16618

Posted: 23 September 2006 at 4:20pm | IP Logged

I for one would be interested in reading it.

Baggerman

Posted: 23 September 2006 at 5:42pm | IP Logged

You can read my 50CC and 4 Corners stories and see the pictures by going to Google and putting in CA2E.  This will get you to our Fresno, CA Goldwing site.  Go to events, I believe it is, and scroll down quite a ways to Julian Whaley"s 50 CC and 4 Corners ride.  Let me know if you have any problems.

Posted: 23 September 2006 at 7:14pm | IP Logged

Thanks for the info.  I found the stories with no problems. 

Posted: 24 September 2006 at 7:44pm | IP Logged

Thanks for the suggestion Chip.  As you can see I could post only the written text.  It isn't much without the pictures.  Any ideas for including pictures?

Cropdoc

The Ultimate Coast to Coast Adventure

Julian W. Whaley

In motorcycle terms there are rides, trips and adventures.  This story is about an adventure that took place from July 2 to July 17, 2006.  Most people have never had an adventure of this magnitude and it is too bad that they have never had a chance to feel the extreme exhilaration one gets when the journey is complete. This exhilaration trumps the pain, uncertainty and bone tiredness encountered along the way (at least, most of it).

You are about to read about a challenging Iron Butt ride.  For those who have never heard of the Iron Butt Association, I suggest going to the Iron Butt Association website and reading the rules for the Ultimate Coast to Coast (UCC).  That is what my story is about. The rider must get appropriate witnesses at the beginning and end of the ride, keep all computerized gas receipts and a log of all the stops.  In addition pictures of the rider and the bike must be taken at easily identifiable sites at the beginning and end of the ride.  In the case of the UCC it can be the Caribou Inn or Post Office at Prudhoe Bay and the southernmost monument or the Police Station or Post Office in Key West, Florida (some 6000 miles to the south).  All this is sent in to the Iron Butt Association and, if you have gone through all the hoops properly, the paperwork is reviewed by Iron Butt members and you get a certificate to prove that you have completed the ride.  That’s it, no atta boy, cash prize or trophy.  You do get strange looks from people who think you are crazy for even doing the ride no matter what you get for it.

There is no easy answer as to why I did the ride.  The best explanation I have is that I wondered if I could do it.  I had been planning this adventure for two years. The Iron Butt fixation began for me about three years ago in September when I made the shortest ride to qualify me for membership in this Internet group of 24,000 people from all over the world who like the challenge of endurance motorcycle riding.  I did the Saddle Sore 1000 from Fresno to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico in about 18 hours.  The rider has a maximum of 24 hours to ride 1000 miles.  I thought this ride wasn’t too bad so I will move up the ride ladder in 2004 so I took on two rides.  I completed the 50CC ride early in the summer.  In this challenge one has 50 hours to go coast to coast anywhere you choose.  I went from San Diego to Jacksonville Beach, Florida in a little over 47 hours and thought, this wasn’t too bad, and maybe I can continue to go up the scale of Iron Butt rides until I hit my limit of endurance.  Later that same summer, my two riding buddies, Gary and Bill from Montana joined me on the Four Corners Ride to San Ysidro, CA, Key West, FL, Madawaska, ME and Blaine WA in 17 days for a total of 10,000 miles by the time I got back home to Fresno, CA.  The rider has 21 days to complete this ride.  It took two days to ride home to Fresno, California from Blaine, Washington so the entire trip was 19 days. Now I had gone from West to East across the U.S.A (more than once) and to the extreme four corners.  What would be a good one to do next?

The next ride up the scale of difficulty, in my opinion, was the Ultimate Coast to Coast from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to Key West, Florida. This includes the furthest north you can go on a road in North America to the furthest south you can go in the lower 48.  Most riders go north from Key West.  Some ride all the way to the tip of South America from Prudhoe Bay, but first things first. All the earlier Iron Butt rides were done on my 2002 Honda GL 1800 Gold Wing, which is made for long distance comfort on paved roads.  At 900 pounds, it is not made for gravel, rocks, mud or slime roads like one finds in Alaska and the Yukon.  A lighter, more agile adventure-touring class bike was needed for these miserable roads.

After a year of Internet research and reading many motorcycle magazine articles, I found the perfect bike for such a trip.  I bought a new red and black 2005 Suzuki V Strom 650 at LA Cycle Sports in Inglewood, CA in August, 2005 and spent the next year equipping it for the Iron Butt adventure.  Here is a picture of the naked bike on our way from Inglewood to Fresno.  That was the last trip for the stock windscreen.  It is worse than no screen at all. You have to remember that I am used to the comfort of a Goldwing.  Items such as knobby tires were a must as well as hard luggage, crash bars, skid plates, heated grips, a very loud horn, wiring for heated clothing, hand guards, a charging indicator and many other such fun things. I have a great wife who always gives me slack when I want to buy another car, bike or buy equipment for any of them.  She says “you work hard, you can afford it, and you deserve it so go ahead.” I have carried this permission to an extreme with an 02 Goldwing, 67 Sunbeam Tiger, 66 T Bird, 84 Porsche Carrera, 02 Tundra and 01 Audi.

I talked about the Alaska to Florida trip with Jeanie, my wife, and she volunteered to drive the chase truck, our 2002 Toyota Tundra 4WD.  It seems that I couldn’t interest another rider in doing it and it is too dangerous to do alone, in our opinion, although I was willing to try it. We have been to Alaska three times and she loves the last frontier as much as I do.  I always felt that I should have been born in the mid 1800s and experienced the western migration of pioneers across the country.  One of my favorite songs, “I Was Born Under a Wanderin Star” is performed by Lee Marvin in the movie “Paint Your Wagon.”   It describes exactly how I feel about seeing new places and traveling on my motorcycle.

We also decided to have our 12 year old grandson, RJ, join us for the entire trip. He was just the right age to enjoy it and not be ashamed that he was with his grandparents.  RJ flew out from his home in Indianapolis on June 17 just a week before the start of the trip.  He would end up experiencing 13,000 miles of adventure, new people, and new places.  Never once did he complain about being bored or the long driving days in the truck.  I promised him that he could ride with me on my V Strom on the way south when the roads permitted. 

We did all kinds of touristy things on the way north from Fresno CA - things like renting a helicopter and flying into the crater of Mt. St. Helens and taking the marine ferry from Prince Rupert, BC to Haines, AK.  We saw eagles, humpback whales, glaciers, Orcas, sea lions, sea otters and a lot of nice people. Our truck looked like the Clampetts going to Alaska. We unloaded from the ferry at Haines, Alaska and arrived in Prudhoe Bay at 12:30 AM on July 2, 2006.  It rained most of the way to Fairbanks and continued as we went further north. The temperature was down in the low 30s and it continued raining on the Dalton Highway (Haul Road) which is composed of gravel, rocks, dirt and slime, all the way up to Deadhorse.

I didn’t sleep much that night in Deadhorse because I got a good look at a wet Haul Road on the way north a few hours before and was not sure that I could ride it back south through 414 miles of very steep slopes, mountain passes, mud, animals, rocks, gravel, slime, dust and big trucks to the paved road 75 miles north of Fairbanks. I wondered what I have gotten my trusting family into. This is a rough place, this Prudhoe Bay area. We stayed in Deadhorse at the Caribou Inn and were warned that grizzly bears, and sometimes polar bears were a constant problem. Several times in the recent past a grizzly came in and walked down the halls looking for food.  We were food.  Polar Bears frequent the area certain times of the year and are feared more than the grizzlies.  One of the Iron Butt riders a few years ago had his BMW knocked over and mauled by a bear while he slept and he had to freight the damaged bike back to Anchorage. Another time a guest walked quickly through the door at the Caribou Inn and tripped over a sleeping grizzly, which was on the doorstep waiting for breakfast. A third BMW rider reported that he came out early one morning and a bear was eating his leather seat and starting on the tires.

The Haul Road is also known as the Dalton Highway.  It was started and completed in 1974 over a five month period to allow big trucks to carry equipment needed to build the 800-mile trans-Alaskan Pipeline that runs from the oil wells at Prudhoe Bay south to Valdez where the oil is loaded on tankers.  The road is built on permafrost (permanently frozen soil) which is frozen only a few inches from the   surface in the summer.  In some places a plastic sheet had to be put down to keep the permafrost from thawing and turning into muddy slime.  There are 8-16 feet of gravel, rocks and soil on top of the roadbed.  All this turns to slippery slime when wet.  It can get wet from rain or by road repair crews who have unlimited water and water trucks.  It is 500 miles from Deadhorse to Fairbanks and only the first 75 miles is paved as you leave Fairbanks and head toward the Arctic Circle and Prudhoe Bay.

The Milepost travel guide states that 75% of the Haul Road is gravel and 25% is paved.  The few paved areas are really short stretches.  It sure didn’t seem like 25% was paved to me.  They must be counting the 75 miles North from Fairbanks which is paved.  The road passes through to the Brooks Range (which runs from east to west) and up over Atigun pass (4800 ft.) and down to the North Slope.  Grades are as steep as 12%.  Perhaps you have seen on the History Channel that truckers who drive the Haul Road have the most dangerous job of all truckers.  Many have slid off the road and been killed.  The temperatures in the winter can go down to 60 degrees below 0 Fahrenheit.  Truckers have to keep their rigs running all the time or they won’t start.  They also have to avoid touching any metal without gloves or their skin will stick to it. You also wouldn’t want to put your tongue on any pump handles in this country.

One needs to define gravel road. It doesn’t sound too bad if you imagine a nice stretch of dry road with a little gravel on it. It is fine if not wet.  The kind of road conditions a rider on the Haul Road faces can be described as: dry with sharp rocks on the surface, dry and hard with 1-3 inches of gravel, dry and giant chuckholes, dry with washboards like you have never seen, dry with dust so thick you can see nothing as the big trucks pass, dry with softball sized rocks or all of the above.  Now, that is when the road is good.  You begin to  pray for these dusty conditions. Dust became welcome  because this means the road is dry.  Wet slime is bad. 

Wet can occur when it rains or snows, which is most days.  When it rains over the whole area, it is virtually impassable to motorcycles. Anyone who is unlucky enough to encounter the Haul Road when it is raining probably cannot complete the trip.  You should follow the weather carefully.  Wet can also be caused by road construction crews. Wet is dark brown in color.  Wet is bad, real bad.  Dry road is light brown.  You hope for light brown and your palms sweat and your heart beat picks up when you see dark brown ahead. 

Road construction goes on constantly in the short summer.  The purpose is to remove chuckholes and washboards.  Crews approach a dry road and turn it into a quagmire with their equipment.  They loosen the top 4- 6 inches of gravel and soil like you would with a rototiller; wet it down completely with detergent and calcium chloride to hold down the dust and keep the soil particles from sticking together.  By wetting it down I mean spraying thousands of gallons of detergent and water from huge water trucks.  The drivers seem to take great pride in squirting, spraying, leaking and  flooding motorcycles and their riders every chance they get.  Hey, if you worked up here you would have to get your kicks too.  There is no liquor allowed so this substitutes for booze in  those with a sense on humor.  With any luck you can send the rider and bike down into the mud.  This is a knee slapper for them.  This final road mix has been likened to snot and I cannot think of a better description. There is no way to get traction even with knobby tires.  You learn to fishtail for miles and miles on this snot.

Truckers call motorcycle riders Evil Kinevals when laughing at us while talking on their CB radios.  We are in the same class as mosquitoes to some truckers, just an annoyance and kind of funny when mud covered. 

We had originally thought that we might spend a couple of days in the Prudhoe Bay area so we could see the sights.  We actually saw all the sights in just a few minutes as we pulled into Deadhorse in the early morning of July 2, so no need to stay any longer than necessary.  We decided to “get out of town” before the rains began.  This is a place of oil field workers, mud puddles, wind, cold short summers, rain, clouds and really cold winters.  It is dreary even though the sun never sets in early July. It is spooky. The dark clouds come all the way down to the modular homes, fuel tanks and heavy equipment that make up this town of oil workers.  They work two weeks and fly home for two weeks.

At 8:30 AM on July 2 we took the Princess tour bus a few miles to the Arctic Ocean and the oil fields.  Everything is kept almost spotless on the oil fields.  They have workers who check under cars and trucks for oil dripping and they clean it up. It is about as antiseptic as it can get for an active oil field.  Musk oxen, bears and caribou abound in the drilling fields and along the pipeline.  The environmentalists were wrong again when they said all this activity and the pipeline meant the end of the world for wildlife.

The air temperature was about 33^oF and the water temperature in the Arctic Ocean about the same.  There was a 30 mile per hour wind blowing off the ocean. It was a normal summer day.  If you run into an old timer and say, it’s pretty cold today, he would say, not particularly. This is a cold place.   At least it wasn’t raining very hard.  I always look for something positive.  I collected a vial of Arctic Ocean water and put it in my tank bag beside the empty bottle in which I would collect some Atlantic Ocean water when I get to Key West, Florida.  Key West seemed a long way from here.  A few people asked where I was going and I said Key West.  I got the same quiet blank stares that I got later in Key West when people asked where I had ridden from.  So what, this ride is for me and I don’t expect anyone else to care or understand. Why should they?

In preparing to leave Deadhorse, I remembered coming north on the Haul Road several hours before and kept focusing my mind on the mountain   just south of Antigun pass where the road was next to impassable due to the snotty mud.  It was raining much of the way up.  Even our Toyota Tundra in four wheel drive was slipping and sliding sideways and almost did not have enough traction to keep going to the top of the pass.  I wished I had all wheel drive on my Suzuki V Strom to go with the knobby tire on the back.  The front knobby was not available when I left Fresno and I wasn’t sure that I could make that part of the road on one knobby if it were still raining and the mud and muck was still there.  

I had seen three bikes parked outside the Caribou Inn when we came in a little after midnight that morning. There was a Honda ST 1300, a Yamaha FJR 1300 and a BMW 1200 GS.  They were gone when I got up early and checked out.  They only had one way to go, south.  I wondered if they knew how bad the road was a few hours ago.  I asked  the clerk as I checked out after the Arctic Ocean tour if he knew anything about them.  He said that all he knew was that one of them had crashed into a ditch as they came into Deadhorse yesterday and limped into the hotel.  I asked him how long it would take to dry up the wet muck and make the road passable. He said it would only take 4-5 hours if it were sunny, warm, and windy and a lot of heavy trucks drove over it.  We had none of these conditions as we left. I didn’t feel doomed but I could see doomed from the hotel door.

Antigun Pass, in the Brooks Range also came to our minds as we left Deadhorse about 2:30 PM. We had noticed that the 4800 ft pass had guard rails on most of it.  We also recalled that there was not one 10 foot section that had not been smashed or dented by the big trucks.  Jeanie and I visualized one section in particular in our heads.  A vehicle had gone through the guard rails and over the side.  The rails were completely broken in two and both pieces dangled and vibrated in the wind over the side just the width of a truck.  I would estimate that it was at least a thousand foot drop straight down the side of the mountain with the broken guard rails dangling over like turning left sent you to Hell.  Of course we also realized everybody is on their own up here.  Go over the side and no one even looks for you or cares.  It’s an adventurous place, this Haul Road.  Yes sir, I should have been born in the mid 1800s when the whole country was like this.  For a moment I rethought my desire to have been born at that time.

I went over driving techniques for Jeanie in case she began to slide over the edge.  Actually we decided that there is not much you can do but wave. With these confident words we took off.  I had sense enough to put my luggage cases in the truck to lighten my load on the bike and it should handle better on the way south.  I led and she followed, both dreading what might be ahead in the Brooks Range. Our grandson thought it was all cool and wasn’t worried at all.  

The weather was cold, cloudy and rainy as we headed south from Deadhorse about 2 pm on July 2. My new Garmin Quest 2 GPS that I bought especially for this trip froze up and would not reboot. What a time to crap out.  I composed a nasty letter to Garmin Inc. in my mind.  I had prayed for just one dry day today so I could make it 500 miles to Fairbanks without slipping off the road.  When we left it seemed like my hopes were dashed.  All in all it was not a good start.   As each mile passed, I thought at least I am one mile closer to the paved road in about 425 miles.  It made me feel better. Also it was not snowing yet.   Coldfoot was only 239 miles away so I dwelled on these positive thoughts and hoped for good weather as we headed south.

I kept scanning the sky for any blue patches and about 50 miles south of Deadhorse some of the clouds lightened up.  I couldn’t believe it.  What great luck.  We went up over Antigun Pass down the other side past the dangling guard rails and headed for the next pass that was wet and mostly impassible less than 24 hours before.   It was actually mostly dry.  Wow! I must be living right.  Then we hit serious road construction and the road turned to 4-5 inches of snot. A water truck spilled and shot huge amounts of water, calcium chloride and detergent on the surface and me just as I passed him.  I know that he enjoyed soaking me, the road and my bike.  By this time my bike and our chase truck were coated with thick, brown mud and slipping and sliding all over the thick snot called the Haul Road.

I learned that I could go up to 40-45 miles per hour when the road was dry.  I could fly over the chuckholes and washboard areas and have a pretty smooth ride. I had seen people do this but had never ridden on gravel more than a few miles, ever.   I was glad that my 900 pound Goldwing was home in the garage.  The truck was not so fortunate.  It banged and slid along over these bad spots.  I began to follow Jeanie and RJ because after a stop I could take off quicker on the bike. If she followed me I would keep looking in the rear view mirror and  never see them coming so I would have to lose my focus, pull off the road and wait.  They had to adjust things in the truck, get soft drinks out of the back, put new music or books on tape on the player before taking off and I would worry about what the heck happened to them.  We needed to reverse the vehicle order so I began to follow them.

After gaining some confidence heading south I could look around a little and loosen my death grip on the bike.  I remember one straight stretch of road where I looked far ahead to see what appeared to be a brown wall on the side of a mountain ahead of me. It looked like someone had cleared all the plants off for some reason.  As I got closer I realized that this was the road.  In the mid 70s when they built this road no one worried about the steepness of the grades.  You just have to get up some speed and go over the top knowing that it will be just as steep going down.

The weather held as we pulled into Coldfoot late in the evening of July 2nd for gas.  It was 245 miles south of Deadhorse and my Suzuki V Strom made it with a gallon to spare in the 5.8 gallon tank.  My chase vehicle partners wanted to spend the night here so we got a room with two single beds for $169 and RJ slept on the floor for a second night in a row.  I was so glad to be half way to Fairbanks that I slept well.  We hoped that the good weather would hold for the next day.

We gassed up early in the morning and hoped for the best.  The weather became cloudy but no rain yet.  About 100 miles south of Coldfoot the road construction began again and created really dangerous conditions for me and my motorcycle. I thought that the muck would never end.  Big rocks were uncovered by the construction crew and mixed in with the mud, calcium chloride, detergent, water and gravel.  In a dry area a big truck threw a baseball sized rock which hit my leg.  Remembering my baseball days, I didn’t rub it but it hurt like mad for the next hour.

Here is my advice on the Haul Road to those motorcyclists planning the trip.  If the road is dry and all you have to worry about is flying rocks, sharp rocks, football sized rocks, dust, and big trucks flying by hurling rocks at you, you are lucky and can make the ride.  If there is a lot of road construction or rain, the odds are against you. An adventure-touring bike is recommended.  Leave your 900 pound cruisers at home.  Use knobby tires and enjoy the challenge.

After 425 miles of bad road from Deadhorse, the last 75 paved miles into Fairbanks seemed like a magic carpet.  I vowed to never complain about the condition of a paved road again.  Of course I broke this vow when I hit the Yukon.              

We had no flat tires and only two broken windshields and a quarter of inch of mud everywhere to show for the trip so far. It is recommended for travelers to carry two spare tires because of the damage this road does.  I had my summer back tire in the back of the truck. I called from Fairbanks and ordered a new windshield to be sent to Missoula, Montana where I would take a day to do some work on the bike.  My heavy duty skid plate was bent and vibrated against the exhaust pipes making a terrible noise.  It couldn’t be pried away far enough to be quiet.  I also needed to change to my summer rear tire and clean off some of the mud.  I had 3000 more miles to go before that would happen.

We did 368 miles from Coldfoot past Fairbanks to Delta Junction and the beginning of the north end of Alaska Highway on July 3. Several moose, a grizzly and a black bear were grazing near the road along the way. 

On the fourth of July we went from Delta Junction to Haines Junction on a 416 mile day.  No fireworks were seen as there was no one around to set them off or see them.  As soon as we hit the Yukon, road construction began and was done the same way as on the Haul Road. It was very slippery. Scattered showers began and fishtailing became a way of life.   

I got up early on the fifth of July in Haines Junction and began packing.  When I opened my Suzuki luggage I found it full of bright green stuff mixed with my clothes and tools.  A big tube of slime (a stop leak for tires) had discharged its contents.  What a mess to start the day.  

We stopped in Whitehorse in the Yukon on the way to Watson Lake that afternoon.  We tried to contact Garmin Inc. to get ideas on how to get my Quest 2 working again.  It was worthless to keep track of my mileage from Prudhoe Bay even if we got it rebooted.  It would be impossible to wait at least 30 minutes to talk to Garmin since we were not able to use our cell phones here and would have to use an expensive pay phone or our satellite phone, which was more expensive.  We were next to a Staples Office Center in Whitehorse and I walked over to see if anyone could help me.  The manager was a friendly young man who worked on it for two hours.  He took it apart and replugged everything several times.  Amazingly, he got it working.  I am writing a letter of thanks to him with a copy to Staples and a nasty letter to Garmin Inc.  I am going to suggest to Staples that he get a promotion.  Staples got a new customer today and Garmin lost one.  They do not even sell Garmin GPS units at Staples but he knew about them.       

I rode on to Watson Lake, Yukon after the Whitehorse stop and   it was nice to have the  Garmin Quest 2 working on the bike again.  I always enjoyed listening to my mp3 or radio while riding the Goldwing.  All I could hear on the V Strom was the vibrating skid plate, in my noisy Schuberth helmet and a faint female voice on the GPS. Her voice was welcome.  This leg of the trip is where the first of five steel grate bridges appeared.  This first one was a surprise to me and I didn’t have time to slow down before I hit it.  What a thrill it was to move about a foot either way with large motor homes coming straight at me.    There were four more to come on the Alaska Highway.  As I rode into Watson Lake I saw the sign collection with hundreds of street and city signs from all around the world.  There was not a decent place to stay or eat in this town.  We had come mile after mile through rain all around Destruction Bay and very muddy roads so even a bad room and bad food was welcome.

The next morning we gladly left Watson Lake and planned to stop at Laird Hot Springs on the way to Fort Nelson.  The hot springs were hot, clean and wonderful.  The mosquitoes also loved it with all the near naked bodies on which to feed.  It was OK if you stayed underwater and breathed through a straw.  There were three more steel grate bridges to look forward to on the way to Fort Nelson.  I began to recognize the warning signs so I slowed down before weaving over them.  There were 50-60 wild sheep on the roads on this leg and a herd of wild horses in the middle of the road.  I heard some people talking the day before that a motorcyclist hit one of the horses and the rider was seriously hurt.   Sure enough at the next blind curve I saw horse droppings on the road and slowed down.   There were about 8-10 wild horses in the middle of the road.  A few miles later we came upon a herd of wild Bison crossing the road slowly.  They are huge and I was glad that I saw them in time to stop.

About 50 miles from Fort Nelson the skies turned black and a storm hit hard.   After a 331 mile day it seemed wise to spend the night here at the most inviting Super 8 I have ever seen.  It was equivalent to   Embassy Suites. It seemed to us that we had finally gotten back to civilization in Ft. Nelson and were going to make it back to the lower 48 alive and well.  It was guest recognition night and the hotel management provided us a dinner of pizza and soda.  We all slept well and enjoyed a hearty breakfast the next morning.

On July 7, we left Fort Nelson for a 373 mile ride south to Grand Prairie, Alberta on the way to Jasper National Park.  The sky was still black and it had rained all night with no signs of letting up this morning as we left.  I knew that my windscreen was about two inches too tall and was no fun in the rain and mud.  I should have known better when I ordered it by phone. I ordered another from CalSci.   It was two inches shorter and would be waiting for me in Missoula. 

The weather channel showed that the rain was coming up from the south and Fort St. John weather was supposed to be dry so I hoped to ride out of it after about half a day.  The fifth steel grate bridge was on this leg.  It was the worst of all in that it was a long one and slanted rather steeply downhill.  This was the last one on the trip.  The rain stopped after 140 miles and was replaced with a severe wind from the west as I rode south. We stopped to eat at Ft. St. John and met a local motorcycle couple who suggested that we not ride south to Prince George.  They suggested a shorter ride east to Grand Prairie in order to take route 40 south toward Jasper.  It seems that black bears dominate highway 97 from Ft. St. John to Prince George and they like to run across the road much like Texas hill country or West Virginia deer.  So far I had not hit an animal and did not want to start now.  I wanted to save this part of the adventure for Homestead, Florida.  More on this later.   Going east from Ft. St. John also meant, theoretically, that I should now have a tail wind. As I turned to the east out of Ft. St. John, the wind shifted to the dreaded crosswind and increased in intensity from the south.  So much for a possible tail wind.  I went south on Route 40 through Grand Cache and on to Hinton.  This is a great paved road with virtually no traffic. 

As I pulled into Jasper the traffic was heavy and the scenery very beautiful.  I had my grandson join me on the V Strom at this point.  He had waited a long time to ride on the bike with me. I did not think it was safe on the bad dirt roads of Alaska and the Yukon but now the highway was first class and the weather was dry.  My skid plate was vibrating more than ever and the noise was deafening.  Even RJ noted how bad it was.  It was such a strong skid plate that efforts to bend it away from the exhaust failed.  Later in Missoula, my friend Gary had to remove it and saw away the part near the exhaust to correct the problem. 

My riding buddies from Montana, Bill Clausen and Gary Edwards met up with us at the Saskatchewan River Crossing in Jasper National Park.  Gary and I grew up together in West Virginia and have been friends for about 60 years.  I was lucky enough to meet Bill about 10 years ago.  We ride together in the southwest every spring.  Gary’s BMW LT and Bill’s GL 1800 were sparkling clean and my V Strom was brown with thick mud everywhere and it sounded like a million mad bees. We rode south through Banff National Park and 100 miles more to a nice little town of Canmore, Alberta where we stopped for the night and had a great reunion and meal.  This put us only about 516 miles north of Missoula on July 8.  It had been 6 days since leaving Prudhoe Bay and I felt that it should be a piece of cake to make it to Key West on familiar paved roads.  RJ decided that he would like to ride some on the Goldwing with Bill where it was quiet and more comfortable than my loud, muddy V Strom.  I didn’t blame him.

On July 9 we rode the Kananaskis Highway (Route 40) toward Missoula.  This is a must see highway with Canadian Rockies and glaciers on both sides of the road.  Traffic was light. We then went into Glacier National Park from the east and rode completely through the park to the west entrance.  We stopped for some refreshment in West Glacier where we met a group of guys on Goldwings and cruisers. They had spotless bikes and some were using white rags to dust them.  Here I sat on a mud covered little bike.  Their eyes avoided my bike like you would avoid a bum under a bridge.  I thought that I would love to show them the Haul Road for a couple of days and see if they could wipe the mud off with their white hankies. There had been road construction everywhere in the park and this had taken much of the fun out of the Glacier park ride.  We had been there several times and had seen so many beautiful mountains so far that we didn’t have much stamina left to enjoy it the way we should. 

We bid Bill goodbye at Seeley Lake that evening before we got to Missoula and he went on another 80 miles in the dark to his home near Helena.  We had played deer roulette on Route 82 along the way that night on a road where no brush was cut on either side of the road and deer eyes were shining everywhere around the trees  All it would have taken for a disaster is for one deer to run in front of any of us.  Our luck held this time.  My luck would change later in the adventure.

We took a day off on July 10 in Missoula.  My shorter windscreen had arrived.  Gary took the skid plate off and cut it down to avoid the terrible vibrating sound that bothered me for 3000 miles.  A BMW friend of Gary took off my knobby tire and replaced it with my summer tire.  I was not going to wash the bike until I finished the ride but had to clean off the oil cooler and radiator at the car wash so I decided to clean the bike as best I could.  It looked better but mud was still sticking to many parts.   

I no longer needed a chase vehicle and Jeanie and RJ needed time to go see the lower 48 on their own.  They were tired of me getting up early and shouting OK marines this is day 3 of an Iron Butt ride, let’s get moving now we’re not here to look at the scenery or eat. Jeanie and I both agreed that this would be best for all of us.

I took off early on July 11 and headed out on I 94 to Buffalo, WY and a nice bed and breakfast.  I had a buffalo steak that night at the Occidental Hotel.  The hotel, and I think the steak had been preserved from old west days.  The next morning I headed out across South Dakota to Mitchell.  It was 500 very windy and hot miles.  Of course I was headed east and the wind was out of the south.  I was bushed when I reached Mitchell.  I have to admit that I missed my 2002 Goldwing at this point.  The V Strom did pretty well at 85 mph but I missed the radio and the comfortable, quiet ride of the Goldwing.  I calculated that I had about 1800 more miles to Key West.  On the Goldwing that would have been a two day ride.  It would take longer on my adventure-touring bike.  The Goldwing would never have carried me through the Haul Road so why am I even thinking about it because that is the trade off.

I stopped in Sturgis for lunch and  spent the night at my third choice of a motel in Mitchell, South Dakota because I stopped near Cabelas home store.  It was 10 pm by the time I finally found a vacancy and the sporting goods store was closing.  I had hoped to look around but it was too near closing time. 

I was now well into the annual eastern humidity festival which would last throughout my entire trip to Key West as well as the rest of the  summer. Thunderstorms were predicted for my route and they appeared all along the way.  On July 13 I avoided going through Kansas City and  rode 464 miles to Chillicothe, MO on US 36, a road that would also avoid St. Louis if I stayed on it a while longer.  Earlier that day on I 29 South I got caught in a huge thunderstorm without my rain gear on.   I stopped at the first rest area after I was completely soaked and put on my Frog Toggs in the 100% humidity and heat.  That did the trick. I had created a steam room under my clothes.   It didn’t rain any more that day because I had put on my gear.  As I approached Chillicothe, MO I saw the sky getting blacker and blacker so I stopped for the night just before a huge wind and thunderstorm hit.  I sat on the front porch at the motel, ate some fruit I had bought at a nearby Wall Mart and watched it blow and storm for an hour or so.  It was nice not being on the bike in this storm.  The wind almost blew it off the center stand while it was parked outside my room.

I checked the GPS in the morning and found that I actually had 1700 more miles to get to Key West.  I had miscalculated yesterday.   No problem, it isn’t that far to the end.  I planned a route for the next day on US 36 which would take me east to a road heading south to the east side of St. Louis, a city I hated to ride through and had successfully avoided the last few trips to the east.  As I took off on July 14, I felt confident that I knew the way to avoid most of St. Louis. In a weak moment I changed my mind as my confident GPS lady said to turn south about 50 miles west of where I had planned.  She sounded so sincere and I had began to trust her.  You should never do that once you make up your mind.  I knew better but followed her voice down to the west side of St. Louis, a place I did not want to be on the way to Nashville.  I saw the sign to a Suzuki dealer at Boones Crossing so decided to stop and have the bike serviced.  I was starved for a Cracker Barrel restaurant by this time so I thought that I would eat while the bike was being serviced.  They were kind enough to work on my bike but it took 4 hours and there was no place to eat within walking distance. 

I finally took off on I70 and headed into heat, rain, 5 o’clock traffic and road construction into the heart of St. Louis.  As we crawled along I counted the bricks on their new baseball park and vowed to never again follow the GPS when I knew a better route.  Another big storm hit just as I rode into Metropolis, IL (home of Superman).  I checked in, showered and headed to a Cracker Barrel restaurant across the parking through wind and rain.   I was beyond starved.  Once again I lucked out and missed a storm on the bike.  I would recommend the trout with pepper and lemon butter at Cracker Barrel restaurants.

On July 15 I rode 483 miles to Macon, GA and stayed in a forgettable Fairfield Inn motel.  Now my adventure had only 583 more miles to Key West according to ”Miss Know it All” GPS.  I calculated that I had done over 90% of the needed miles at this point. The hot, humid weather produced some strong thunderstorms on the way but I had been through so much that it no longer mattered.  At least I was riding on pavement and there were places to stop that actually had people in them all along the way.

I figured two more easy days to Key West as I left Macon, GA for a 424 mile ride to Avon Park, FL.  A newly remodeled 1957 style motel on US 27 caught my eye and I decided to stop.  Why not?  I was in no hurry now as I would pull into Key West tomorrow after 14 riding days plus one day off in Missoula.  I was tired of doing 85 mph with the trucks on the Florida Turnpike and decided to take US 27 down the center of the state to Avon Park and Sebring. This route has minimal traffic and moderate construction. Another advantage is that I would miss Miami, another city that I avoid, when possible.

On July 17, my final day of the ride, I only had to go another 357 miles to Key West from Avon Park.  I had made up my mind that this was the day to be especially careful and assume that every vehicle was out to get me before I could finish the ride. I stopped on the western outskirts of Miami and bought a big cigar to smoke in a solo Key West celebration I had planned later that day on the beach.  I had been planning a big celebration and a two day stay in Key West for the last half of the trip.  When you don’t have a radio or any music to listen to, it is time to mentally plan celebrations.   I rode carefully through the swamps to HWY 1 in Homestead.  I was familiar with this road from my 4 Corners ride two years ago.  The downtown has little tourist shops on either side of a heavily traveled route.  Traffic was moving slowly and I saw the end of town about 50 yards ahead.  I had 157 more miles to Key West.  The adventure was over, so I thought.

Suddenly two dogs appeared out from behind a parked car to my left.  They were going at full speed toward my front wheel.  There was fairly heavy traffic around and I only had a split second to make up my mind to either hit them or slam on the brakes and go down on the hard asphalt.  I chose the latter because one dog was really big and his buddy was medium sized.  If they had been small dogs I would not have slowed down.  They were running side by side so I would hit both if I did not hit the brakes.  Oh, where are my Goldwing ABS brakes at a time like this?  I locked the front brake and did a low side on my left side and missed the dogs. I hit the asphalt very solidly on my left hip.  It instantly hurt really badly from an area about 18 inches below my waist to a foot above it.  The bike slid away on its left side and traffic stopped. I missed the dogs.  They were nowhere to be found and I was in no position to hunt them down.  I was angry, really angry. My anger exceeded the pain by two fold for a few minutes, and then the pain took the lead for the next two weeks.  If I could have found those dogs, I hate to think what I would have done to them.  I thought of all the animals that had crossed my path on this trip.  There were grizzly bears, black bears, deer, elk, caribou, wild bison, wild horses, porcupines, musk oxen, mountain sheep and mountain goats.  I had avoided all of them but two friggin mongrel dogs in a city just outside of Key West on my last day.  What a “revoltin development this was” to quote Chester Riley from an old radio show called “The Life of Riley.”

Two police cars and the paramedics seemed to show up almost instantly.  I was slowly getting up off the pavement and going over to pick up my bike when they stopped me and said they would pick it up for me.  I wasn’t about to stop my journey now even though my left side hurt a lot. The paramedics wanted to take me somewhere to examine me.  They explained that I might have internal injuries and should go with them. Although I hurt, I told them that I had just ridden over 6000 miles and was only 157 miles away from the finish so I was going on.  Nothing was broken.  If something needed attention, I would get it in Key West.  I told them once again that I was OK and thanked them for coming to my aid so quickly.  After the police checked my papers and wrote a report I climbed back aboard ready to take off again.  The engine wouldn’t start.  Luckily, the accident happened across from a motorcycle and watercraft repair shop.  The owner, who was a bike rider also, came over, taped up my left directional signal and tweaked a wire on the left handlebar to allow the bike to start after a fall.  I got back on with only a slight moaning sound.  The engine roared to life and I was on the road again figuratively speaking. 

I decided that I would ride directly to Key West with no stops.  My side hurt so badly that I feared that I might not have been able to get back on the bike if I stopped.  I was still very angry and in disbelief about what  had just happened.  I rode carefully through the hot, humid day to a Shell station in Key West and got my final gas receipt.  It felt good even though I hurt.  I figured that I needed to finish up the paperwork, witness signatures and pictures today.  I rode on to the Police station for pictures and signatures.  They were very nice to me and gave me some hints about places to stay and eat in Key West.  I then rode on to the buoy at the Southernmost Point and had some more pictures taken of me to prove to the Iron Butt data reviewers that I had been there.  One of the places suggested for me to stay was near the buoy at the Southernmost Point.  Actually every building around there is called the southernmost something - hotel, motel, restaurant, bar, bed and breakfast, etc.

I checked into the Avalon Bed and Breakfast on Duvall Street near the water.  The young woman at the desk said she would show me to my room.  It was up a steep flight of stairs to the second floor.  She helped me carry some luggage.   I barely made it and needed three trips to carry everything. 

I checked my body and sure enough the left side was already turning black and blue and the kidney area hurt the worst.  My First Gear mesh riding pants and jacket were ripped and torn.  However, they had done their job and I had no road rash at all.  My Schuberth helmet was scratched up but I had no head wounds and the shield was fine.  All in all I was OK I thought even though the pain was severe. I was lucky that nothing seemed to be broken.  I changed into my shorts and went down to check my bike carefully for the first time since I went down.  Basically, everything was OK.  The Givi crash bars had done their job and were scratched.  The left side Suzuki hard bag had been scratched up but protected me from the bike sliding on my body.  The left handlebar weight was bent and there was a small damaged area on the windscreen and fender.  The Suzuki hand guard was scratched but had protected me quite well.  Actually, the 2005 Suzuki V Strom was a perfect bike for this trip and gave me a good ride.   There were no mechanical problems on any part of the trip.  I chose the correct bike and the year of searching for the best adventure/touring bike paid off.  It is a great bike and so easy to handle after being used to my heavy Goldwing. I had seen 20-25 V Stroms on the roads in Alaska and Canada.  It seems that I was not the only one who saw the advantage of a bike where dealerships and parts were plentiful, the bike was inexpensive and reliable.  The BMW  1200 GS had been my second choice but did not have any of  the advantages of my Suzuki mentioned above.

I limped down to the ocean with my cigar and ordered some appetizers and a drink at a beach bar.  I collected a vial of Atlantic Ocean water. Bending over wasn’t easy. The celebration wasn’t quite what I had rehearsed in my mind but I went through with it anyway. I had envisioned running down to the ocean with my vial and swimming out a few hundred yards, filling the vial and screaming I did it folks, I made the ride.  Instead I bent over very slowly toward the water and groaned quietly. Those damned dogs.  I wished that this bar were a Southeastern Asian restaurant and they had dog lips on the menu.  I would have ordered several helpings.  At the bar some people asked me where I had ridden from and when I said Alaska they gave me the usual silent blank stare and said nothing more.  The guy looked at his wife and she looked at him and that was it.  I recognized that stare because in Prudhoe Bay some people asked where I was headed and when I said Key West, the conversation stopped with that same stare.

To put things in a good perspective, I must say that the little spill in Homestead was not important.  The significance of completing the Ultimate Coast to Coast ride far outweighs my personal meeting with the Homestead asphalt. I felt that this ride was the toughest that I have done and the most rewarding personally.  I am really glad that I did it or I would have never known if it were possible for me. It is as simple as that.

It has been eight weeks now since my ride ended in Key West and I am pretty well healed and the bike has been repaired as good as new.  I have bought a new third generation First Gear Riding jacket and pants and a leather jacket with small ventilating pores to compare with the mesh equipment.   Would I do the ride again?  Maybe.  My wife, at lunch today said she would like for us to go back to Prudhoe Bay again when we had no time pressure.  She is my kind of wife and I have known that for 36 years.  I guess you could say that I, excuse the expression, am a lucky dog.

Posted: 25 September 2006 at 9:23am | IP Logged

Here's your URL:

http://ca2e.org/Events/Julian_four_corners.pdf

Posted: 26 September 2006 at 10:16am | IP Logged

Great ride report.  That one is on my list of rides to do. Although you didn't inlcude any pictures, your words painted a vivid picture of the haul road in my mind.

Thanks!