It has been a while since I have written a new story. People have asked me: What are you up to? Where are you? Why aren’t you writing anymore? Then I looked up a word in the dictionary.
To hamper: “to prevent free movement, action or progress”
Hampering, what a word! And it so aptly describes my feelings about this blog. It prevents me from moving freely through the world and doing what I want to do, progress. My previous story, I wrote as if it were my last. It took a lot of effort but I like it. So why should I just trow it out there? My travels in Central Asia were so valuable and the story tells you everything you need to know about me, travelling (only in Dutch though).
I guess some stories will forever be mine. So forgive me my blogging lethargy. I am not interested in writing a silly diary. When I write, I want it to be good, for me. I might still write some big stories or I might not but for now I choose not to. I just want to ride! And if you really want to know what I am doing, send me an email, ask me on Facebook or on Skype. You will get the exclusive story and I get to hear yours So I decided to post some pictures and give you my thoughts on them. After all, we live in a visual era. Who wants to read all those fancy words anyway? Hope you enjoy the pics! Now I have some time to actually do something and visit the Museum of the North!
I bade Asia farewell and travelled to America, the land of the corporate spell. Like many Europeans before me, I arrived in New York. Ever since these settlers set foot on American soil, they have been enchanted by the abundance of the land. This new continent offered hope to the adventuresome and those who were chasing dreams. But eventually these industrious little settlers laid claim to all the land between the oceans and reluctantly settled down untill the United States purchased Alaska from the Russians in 1867 for a price of 7,2 million dollars and the rest is history. This great land of the North has put a spell on many explorers, miners, trappers, wild men and travellers and just like them, I too was drawn to the Arctic.
I started my migration South in Deadhorse or Prudhoe Bay, whichever you prefer. The only reason for its existence are the depleting oil reservoirs of the Arctic. In 1975 the Alyeska pipeline consortium started working on a massive project. Two years later they finished construction of the 800 mile (roughly 1300km) pipeline from the Arctic Ocean to the ice-free port of Valdez. The pipeline crosses 3 mountain ranges, 800 rivers and streams and is build on permafrost. When there is oil involves, anything is possible. In 1988 more than 2 million barrels flowed to Valdez but these days the production has dropped to less than 500 000 barrels. In the meantime they managed to dump about 11 million gallons of oil (3 million liters) in one of the richest and most beautiful marine ecosystems in the world when the Exxon Valdez struck a reef in the Prince William Sound. Pumping up all this oil from the Arctic requires a lot of people and resources. To get all these supplies up there, the whole operation relies on the truckers who haul everything North on the Dalton Highway (AKA the Haul Road), the lifeline of this Northern oil settlement. And that’s where me and my bicycle come in. I want to ride that road. So I did….
Prudhoe Bay – Deadhorse: End of the line
The Road
Hello, my name is Highway, Dalton Highway, but my friends call me Haul Road. You may remember me from TV-shows such as “Ice Road Truckers” on Discovery channel. I go all the way to Prudhoe bay, the northernmost town in North-America accessible by road. Together with my friend Elliot Highway I will take you from the Arctic Ocean to Fairbanks, 500 miles or 800km to the South. I am pretty badass crossing the Arctic tundra, the Brooks range and the endless boreal forest and I like it dirty. You won’t find any grocery stores where I’m going so you better come prepared. This is what trucker Butch Rohweder had to say about me in 1976. We go way back… “Sure it gets a little rough at sixty below. Your brakes freeze to drums, or you can pop a drive shaft like a piece of candy cane if you’re not kind of tender with the gears. Make a wrong move on a hill and suddenly you’re driving an eighteen-wheel toboggan. That’s how come some guys call this road the Kamikaze Trail. But it’s the best trucking in the world if you know what you’re doing.”
The Milepost
Riding restless rolling hills,
Shiew-wiew-woe-wiew, tundra wind roar,
posted miles, my ride is a bore.
How long have I travelled, I wish not to know,
How far still to go, beyond the moon’s glow.
The Land
This is what it’s all about in Alaska. The land is magical and there is plenty of time to see it because the sun never sets. When I was travelling “immer gerade oost”, I was cycling along the latitudes. But as I travel South, crossing the latitudes, the land is much more diverse. In the North, the world is drawn to a close. The land is flat, empty and with a gentle stroke of the pencil, it dissolves into the horizon. The Brooks range breaks up the tundra and introduces the great green ocean of the taiga.
The Wildlife
The wildlife is amazing and in great abundance. It is so easy to spot. In fact, wherever you go, it follows you. Are you happy or are you sad, the wildlife will always stand by you. Alaska is a wild land that is suited for wild men only. And here I find myself, without a beard, at the mercy of millions of mosquitos trying to get friendly with me. I have been to the Arctic before and my friend commented on the abundance of mosquitos to an Arctic local. His answer was: “Are you kidding? This is nothing! You can count them still!” I have never understood what he meant by that. But today I know. You could count them! Contrary to popular belief, the wildlife in Northern Alaska is not abundant. The land is shrouded in darkness for six months of the year and temperatures drop to bonebreaking lows. It is not productive. But the animals have space to roam this Northern wilderness roughly the size of Spain. Driving you’re car on the Dalton, you have to be lucky to see some wildlife but a cyclist just might get lucky… .
Never cry Wolf
Boehoehoe! I’m weeping, Where are you Caribou?
I’m roaming your land, I’m riding your hills.
Have you disappeared or all died in the kills? Not bear, not wolf but slain by the gun,
Another massacre and all just for fun.
Life on the road
The Dalton Highway, some call it a bike ride, some call it a full-blown expedition. There are many fancy words to describe it and I don’t know them. But if there is one thing I can say about it, it is not ordinary. So you do not have to behave as an ordinary person. You can just do what you want up here. Writing your diary, flat on your belly in the tundra, wearing your only pair of pants tucked away in your waterproof winter socks. Orange camo gloves on your hands, jacket hoodie and mosquito net over the head, nobody cares. Another thing you can indulge in up here is talk to yourself, out loud. In fact, Alaskans encourage it. It is all part of being aware of the bear. And after a Grizzly and a Black Bear visited my camp at night, I am talking to myself all the time. The conditions on the road are also far from ordinary. One day your sweltering away under the Arctic sun and the next day you wake up to the melancholy of a post-apocalyptic scene where the tundra wind is howling and the sun is unable to protrude the yellow haze of dust and smoke blown in from the forest fires in the South. It never gets ordinary here. I also never gets dark. Just like Janis Joplin discovered at the end of the sixties: “It’s all the same f* day, man!”.
When the fire starts to burn
Immer Gerade Oost 