Alaska Ride News, Vol. 1, Dispatch No. 3 (July 2023), pp. 14/7/2023: I pictured all of us (Tom, Paul, Jacob, Roberto, Todd, Riley, Scott and yours truly riding away with Anchorage in our rear view mirrors, it’s weather deteriorating rapidly to a 90% chance of rain; with chest thrust out high, fingers lightly gripping the wide-spread controls of our adventure bikes and butts planted firmly on anything other than the original bikes seats.
We ride to Valdez! The southern terminus of the Alaska pipeline. Two of the KTMs are sporting seat comforts seats, the Norden 901s are also probably after market as well and several like Robertos and Pauls have therm-a-rest mattress like inflatables (what’s your sleep number) and I am sporting half a sheep skin on top of mine.
If Roberto 1 had his way, he’d be riding on a beaver. Yesterday we visited the Fur Factory in Anchorage Alaska for something like a few hours. My friend Roberto 1 became so fascinated with the beaver; that he had to have two. I neglected to try, on several occasions, to describe to him, the American euphemism for Beaver but, things got lost somewhere in my translation.
OK OK hold on here. Today riding to Valdez was like life itself; it should be lived backwards. I want to try starting out dead and then get that awkward part out of the way.
Then suddenly wake up in an old people’s home until I start to feel better every day. Soon they would kick me out for being way too healthy. Then the pension checks would start to arrive and we’d be filthy rich on account of someone else dying and leaving us a small fortune.
Later in life a party would take place; whereby, they would present you with a Rolex. And the next day you report to work. Not just any work but, the ideal job of your dreams.
You work for 20 years until you’re young enough again to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink copious amounts of alcohol, and are generally promiscuous with the opposite sex, then you are ready for high school.
You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play and you play and you play some more; you visit Grandma and Grandpa is still there. Then you ride motorcycles around the world for something like ten years.
You have no responsibilities, you become a baby until you are born. And then you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, your room gets larger each day and then Voila! You are finished off as an orgasm!
That’s Valdez today. And the cabin we are in is three stories high; the view is drop dead gorgeous and the ride, at times made it look like a version of Jurassic park and Avatar coming through Thompson Pass.
Sometime around 1910 the British used a slang (beaver) for a mans beard but, it took America to convolute it so that by 1927, due to the visual similarity of the product, the definition was extended by college students to the female genitalia, and the rest as they say, is now history.
And unlike the beaver my sheepskin seat cover, purchased at Alaska Fur Company for $49 symbolizes a simple yet pastoral life, full of nothing but pleasantries, somewhat akin to the beaver.
And more stats if you’re interested. Two sets of father son riders; Riley and Scott and Jacob; three business owners; four former enlisted guys and a former military officer; nearly everyone is college educated but, like Mike Rowe says; “We need to tell better stories of men and women who master a trade.
We have to stop telling kids to blindly follow their passion and show them the opportunities that exist. That was the big, overarching message of ‘Dirty Jobs.’
Today we reached a massive traffic stop on the road to Valdez. It turned out that a woman rider on a BMW GSA motorcycle encountered a rock on the road that turned her world upside down. Motoquest down. The next thing we saw was a helicopter that flew the woman out due to injuries sustained. Never fixate on a rock or anything you don’t want to hit.
I could go on and on and on but, I won’t on account of a full belly at Mikes Place in Valdez.
Today we saw where that pipeline we saw in Prudoe Bay ends up. In Valdez.
The Carter Administration in 1980 created the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve that we are also hoping to visit. Roberto and I took advantage on our previous ride and time off from riding to visit the Fjords National Park and glacier. That park is huge; it’s 13+ million acres of Park and Preserve.
Soon (in two days) we ride from Dawson to McCarthy. This town is a small satellite town to nearby Kennicott; and home to the bars and prostitutes that were forbidden there. But wait, that was in 1911 and those women today would be, well all dead.
End
Trawlercat Chronicles 