Either you decide to stay in the shallow end of the pool or you go out into the ocean.
— Christopher Reeve
Alaska Ride News, Vol. 1, Dispatch No. 1 (July 2023), pp. 15/7/2023: Didn’t plan it this way but, I’m the first person of our little ride group to arrive in McCarthy from Valdez. I’m at the world famous potato-head restaurant. Led Zeppelin is now playing on a loud stereo nearby;
oh oh oh oh You don’t have to go, oh oh oh oh oh, You don’t have to go … I love you- ooh baby I love you.
The place is a little hippy kind of paradise and community. Uncut hair, unshaven and mismatched clothes all around. I said, hey I now fit right in. Similar to maybe how the rest of the mining towns got their start.
Getting here is a challenge though but, people do it in every thing from hippie school buses to motor homes. Let me just say that the road at times resembles a run down forest service road, rutted up with streams of water running through it and a tree line that grows right up to it. Thank goodness it rained and no dust in the air. The speed limit is 30 but, if you stand up on your foot pegs, open up your visor, breathe in deeply the glacier air while keeping your head on a swivel; you too can easily negotiate it and cruise smoothly at around 60 mph.
At one point, I saw up ahead two motorcycles. I knew I would soon catch them on a rocky section so, I gave a little horn toot; moved over to the far left side and saw their Oregon plates. They were loaded for bear with camping equipment. I slowed way way down just to make sure they caught site of my Washington state plate, and then booked it on back to a comfortable, for me 56 mph. The little Klondike is now in it’s element. I hardly sat down the entire time.
If I rode into town, a century ago, I would’ve probably done something like prospectors did; wallked a mule with a pack mule following.
I peed and then I took my obligatory photos by the town welcomes signage.
And then I headed straight for the Potato Head Restaurant. When I pulled up and parked, a guy with long hair, unshaven and thin but shorter than I, wearing brown suspended coveralls, gets out of his service truck and commences to read me the riot act about the locals only bridge. Whaaaaat!
If it was high noon and we were a century earlier the locals would’ve seen a shootout. Your hero would’ve walked right in and ordered a shot of whiskey and fresh oats for me mules.
Apparently google maps is wrong and it just so happens that my timing was right/wrong you decide. At least according to a handwritten sign by the rocky more stream like than road.
A gal wearing a walking cast, nose, lips and ears piercing’s dismounted a four wheeler. She was holding up a gate post and I just went through it and quickly waved. I suppose if I would’ve looked back I would’ve seen her jaw drop or been given the finger.
It was cool looking all around at the rustic and rundown things all around. I never gave it another thought until this coveralls guy shows up with the gal on her four wheeler nearby.
And now we’re three for three. 1) Todd and the water truck guy and flagger sign gal who said he was trying to take a swing at him; 2) Tom and the fire truck driver guy who said Tom was trying to see around his truck at the downed motorcycle rider; and now me and possibly the town Mayor for all I know at McCarthy
And now back to the Lola song.
My leather bomber jacket must’ve intimidated him when he saw me because he cautiously tried explaining the process.
Nobody but locals allowed on this bridge.m! We paid heavily for it and blah blah blah. And now through his words I can hear the words;
“Well, I’m not dumb but I can’t understand
Why she walked like a woman but talked like a man
Oh my Lola
La-la-la-la Lola”
Girls will be boys and boys will be girls
It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world, except for Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
At this point in time I’m now starving and thirsty and more interested in eating than a shoot out at the OK corral so, we parted ways and I entered the potato head.
Well, I’m not the world’s most masculine man
But I know what I am and I’m glad I’m a man
And so is Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
“Well, I left home just a week before
And I’d never ever kissed a woman before
But Lola smiled and took me by the hand
And said “Dear boy, I’m gonna make you a man”
Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
The song ended. I smiled at the place and then the waitress took my order for a corn chowder, a chicken burrito and water.
This morning I thought I was the first one up, until I found Alaska Todd upstairs with the television on but muted; watching what else but, you guessed it, dirt bike racing around a track. And then I proceeded to make coffee. I offered him a cup and soon everything was right with his world again. And today a new rider joins us. He arrived late last night taking that Thompson pass and those roads we traveled through to get here at night; what am I talking about. It never gets dark. Just colder and wetter as it is now raining. Spencer is from Alaska and from recent conversations I gather that he’s extremely knowledgeable about our entire route planning, as Todd says, he’s mostly the one who put it all together. Spencer also told me that once we get to the Wrangel-St Elias area he says it’s what people think; when they think Alaska. Some of the most beautiful places in the world. You decide.
Listen to this from the Alaska Milepost book: ……exceeding the scale of Yosemite valley in California. In 1913 it was the stampeders that made their way through the rugged countryside by whatever means possible.
Spencer told me about Eagle and how it was the first Army Fort established after we purchased Alaska from the Russians. I now wonder what the money for the purchase of Alaska funded or whose pockets it went into.
Found it: After losing the Crimean War to Britain, France, and Turkey in 1856, the tsar was in no mood to negotiate with Great Britain or to see Alaska absorbed by a recent enemy. Russia thus turned to the only other potential buyer, the United States. And soon they’ll again lose yet another war – Ukraine.
Earlier this morning Paul says to me. Your bike fell over. I found the little Klondike resting on its side. First I had to remove the more than twenty pounds of tools from the back seat and then I pulled it towards the fire pit where it was level. When I pulled it up it felt like a toy. I just couldn’t imagine doing that to my BMW GSA 1250 motorcycle that is in my garage back home.
I now hear Roberto in an adjoining room having a conversation with his wife. He’s talking about their next adventures together- bicycling the Portuguese Camino up to Santiago Spain. Earlier I had a similar conversation with my wife. She texted me wanting to know how to turn on the pool lights.
There’s a story about a guy named Richard Proenneke who from the age of 51 on, lived alone in the Alaska wilderness. His claim to fame came when he started documenting a log cabin, he constructed, without any power tools by the shore of a lake, while hunting and fishing, and documenting his everyday activities.
There’s some who would probably want to do the same thing but, not many. At least not me. Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
When you’re alone in a cabin in the Alaskan wilderness, the simplest question becomes the most complicated: How do you fill a day?
For me this morning in our three story rented cabin by a lake just outside of Valdez my day started by making coffee for the boys and searching around for breakfast like foods. Our first priority is fuel for everyone. And then we ride. Today’s schedule calls for us to ride the following;
7/15 – Valdez to McCarthy (180mi.)
Stop 1 – Chitina (120mi.) Photo Op in historic town. Excursion on the Haley Creek Trail
10mi. round trip.
Stop 2 – McCarthy (60mi.) Stay at Kennicott Glacier Lodge, 15 Kennicott Millsite Rd.
Glennallen, AK 99588•(907) 258-2350.Tour of Historic Kennicott copper mine.
Yesterday we got around by Uber. A woman who has lived in Valdez for over 50 years picked us up in her minivan. She told me that she first came to Valdez to visit her friend who was with a Coast Guard guy. Her friend went back to the lower 48 states and she stayed behind and probably with the coastie guy.
This morning we are blessed with a little rain and so I left the boys behind and headed for McCarthy, no one to chase and all of them behind. I stopped for pictures for gas and to pee. Soon I fell into a rider’s groove and into my thoughts. All was good as the bomber jacket also served as my rain jacket.
And yesterday while waiting on road construction and we spoke to a highway flagger. The little gal looked like she was fifteen. She told me a woman told her so. She said she was twenty one and that she was required to purchase her own sign to flag. It’s $120 in case anyone wants to know. And in top of that she is on overtime. 12 hour days seven days a week at about $50 or more an hour.
Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
La-la-la-la Lola
End
Trawlercat Chronicles 