points north moto

Role Models

I suppose there aren’t a lot of people who think riding a motorcycle almost 6,000 miles in 15 days is their idea of an epic vacation. Lucky for me my father is built a little different. For almost 3 years my pop has been plotting and scheming and promoting the idea of this huge Alaskan journey. I will admit I was a willing accomplice feeding the idea every chance I could.

Having returned from our journey I continue to replay all of sights, sounds, and feelings of being on the road. As grand as it was, an adventure like this is pretty demanding, riding 10-14 hours a day in all manners of weather from blistering hot, to rain and freezing cold. There were hundreds of miles of rough and dirt road requiring at the least attentive riding, and at worst some real skill to keep the bike right side up.  My father at 66 was a soldier pushing us to keep on the road and make our next destination regardless of weather or road.

What I respect most about my father is not his old school brand of tough where he just doesn’t acknowledge the difficulties in our way but just accepts that they are part of the experience we set off to find. What I respect is that with every twist of road his curiosity for his surroundings grew. From reading every park history exhibit to studying the map of our route like a cartographer, and stopping to ask the workmen questions about the Alaskan Pipeline. 

I would like to think that both my parents have imparted many important values to me making me a better human. Both have an insatiable curiosity that is the greatest thing I could have inherited. Below is a picture of my pop with a volt meter doing some electrical diagnosis in a gravel campsite in the middle of know where, that brand of capability and boy scout like preparedness just doesn’t live in many people.

My father is a lot of things, a farm boy, an engineer, an entrepreneur, and a venture capitalist. Having dramatically changed his station in life by his own means and efforts he has a perspective I often seek. I remember him saying as I was growing up that a true man could have an equally meaningful conversation with the mechanic working on his car or Henry Ford himself. That you could speak to either intelligently, and with genuine respect and interest in their work is a perfect example of the type person I strive to be.

I owe a debt to my dad for pushing me to take this trip, for keeping us on track in our travels, but mostly for continuing to teach me how to be the type of man I want to be.

Side Trips & Unexpected Awesomeness

Trips like this have a funny way of extending themselves. In my experience you typically set out by setting a pretty aggressive itinerary but you leave a little padding in there for weather or vehicle malfunction. Then you once you are on the bike rain or shine each day you encourage each other to push on a little further than the schedule dictates. Before you know it you are running ahead of schedule and in our case having made our ultimate goal of the Arctic Ocean and back to Fairbanks we started scheming of other destinations in Alaska worth seeing.

After some heated debate over coffee and omelets on a leisurely Sunday in Fairbanks we decided we should start by heading to Denali Park. We made quick time to the park gates and while the road and scenery was spectacular the cloud cover was too dense for us to see Denali peak.

I think the same rule applies to motorcycle travel as hiking or backpacking, that when possible you never want to have to run the same route twice. With this adage in mind we decided against you pleasant paved route for a 135 mile old park road called the old Denali Highway.  This longest of “short cuts” was slow going but granted us some surreal views of the Alaska Range in the evening sun.

With one successful side trip under our belts I spent the next day under my helmet thinking of how we could sneak off our route and go see the ocean in “America’s Fjord” of Skagway. 

We pushed 200 miles off our intended route but it was worth every extra minute of sore ass and sore wrists to see Skagway. The road is epic in every way twisting its way down steep peaks and across suspension bridges spanning the glacier cut valley down to the sea.

The rest of the day we soldiered on under hot sun with road weary bodies not ending our day till nearly 10pm in shabby motel in the old AlCAN work camp of Rancheria. Not once did either of us complain about the extra miles as we continued to recount to each other the wonder of Skagway!

View from the Edge of the Earth

What is it like to ride to one of the edges of the earth? The Dalton Hwy, or as the locals call it the “Haul road”, from Fairbanks to Deadhorse AK is a road the lives up to its legend. The legend is that the Haul road is hard on the body, hard on the bike, and a waste of time. “People only do it to get their ticket punched” was an expression I heard more than once on this trip.  

Having driven across the open spans of Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, I thought I had a pretty good idea of the vastness of the American West. What I have seen in the past two days dwarfs those spaces. You start riding along a winding ribbon of dirt cut through the largest and most dense expanse of spruce trees your mind could comprehend. Hundreds of miles in every direction are rolling hills of spruce. You climb subtly but steadily the road varying from broken pavement, to gravel, to loose mud and stone. As you rise the mountains rise with you and the signs indicate you are entering the Brooks Range. Despite the bright all day sun, the chill begins to creep into your hands and feet reminding you, you are in the Arctic Circle. Your companion for every twist and turn of this road is the fabled Alaskan Pipeline, it weaves with the road and you can loose many miles imaging the feat it must have been to build.

The highest altitude comes as you summit the Atigun pass and begin your 150 mile decent to the arctic ocean. The pass is breathtaking, and more than beautiful it is humbling.

As you break from the mountains the serenity of being surrounded by all this profound and vast beauty rapidly fades. The feeling that pours over you is foreign because the place is so foreign.

This is what it is like at the end of the earth. It is open with nothing growing more than a few feet high because the ground is permanently frozen some 800 meters deep. Individually the tundra is likely a pretty shade of chartreuse, but in fields 100s of miles wide it looks simply cold and stark. The quiet you would expect at the end of the world is superseded by the constant and deafening noise of the wind buffeting your helment. The roads are now a more serious mix of gravel and mud, progress is slow but you push on since there is no place to stop, no respite from the wind and cold to be found until you reach the end of the line. 

The end of the line is Deadhorse, 414 miles up the Haul road. It would be a disappointment, this shabby oil field “town” but shaking from the cold and running out of fuel it is a welcome site. Deadhorse is small and industrial with several oil pumping and storing structures, two hotels or “camps”, and one gas station. The temperatures are in the low 40s and the fog has rolled in so that the Arctic ocean is not visible, as if you would be able to see that far from behind your mud smeared helmet visor to begin with.

The legend is true the road is long and tough on both body and bike, it is cold, windy, desolate, foreign and in at its end not very pretty at all. Is it worth two hard days ride to “get your ticket punched”? The question truly never entered my mind until writing this

Taking this ride reminds me it is of our nature to explore. I would like to think on a micro scale I might have felt some of what true explorers must feel when reaching their destination.

There is an odd emotional dichotomy at the end of the road, or edge of the earth,  you feel so triumphant but the glee of your achievement is overshadowed by the humility caused by the immensity of our planet.

Finding that moment of Zen

Sure spending 11 hours on a motorcycle seat enduring the cold, the wet, the aching muscles is not for everyone, and in fact I often get asked the question why? There is no easy way to explain  the why of doing a trip like this. What I can say is that as I sit here trying to type with stiff sore hands and heavy eyes I am still holding on to that feeling that make days like this worth every hardship.

There is a perfect moment, after you ride hundreds of miles in the cold and wet, after it gets into your bones and makes your muscles shake beneath your many layers, after your joints start to ache from the cold and lack of movement, after you stop to warm up and stretch in a park and have to witness a bear being shot; sometime after all of that, the sun breaks from the clouds, a perfect song comes on your iPod, and you twist the throttle past 100mph as you celebrate entering the Yukon Territory and remembering your journey is just beginning 

Just The Facts for 4th of July

We woke up early in Smithers British Columbia staring down a long day of riding. We headed west out Highway 16 hoping to turn north before the rain. It was only 44 degrees getting on the bikes so the morning ride shook us awake

We headed north on 37N the Cassair Hwy. This is road is a small two lane B-road through the Cassair mountain range and until last summer it was not entirely paved. We would be on this stretch of road for nearly 480 long miles on this 4th of July. 

A little ways up the road the sprinkles started and we suited up for more wet riding.

Luckily the rain stayed pretty light and we were able to push on without stopping. Along the road we picked up a rider from Denver on a GS1200 who asked if he could ride with us. We continued along the winding two lane highway surrounded by mountains, lakes and rivers.

As the sun broke we snapped a few quick pics and broke off from our new friend Jason and made the final push to Watson Lake in the Yukon Territory

The Road Less Traveled Indeed

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The first two days of riding have been amazing but not without their hardships. We have been about 750 miles from our departure in Calgary to where we are sleeping tonight in Smithers B.C. While the travel has been gorgeous we have been dealing with thunder, lighting, rain, and a dash hail and high winds for good measure. Cold and Wet we have covered some good miles only to realize that our original route has been washed out. 

We have changed our route to Watson lake now heading up Route 37 also called the Cassiar Highway. This scenic route through the high Cassiar mountains was not on our GPS because up until last summer the road was not paved. 

Heading to bed early tonight for a huge day of 855km through the mountains with more rain in the forecast. 

Here are some pictures from the road while I drift off and dream of that beach vacation we probably should have taken :-)

Check out more road photos: 

Locked and Loaded

After months of toiling on my Ducati she is finally ready for the Alaska Trip. I have made several long rides on this bike before but this one being the most demanding I have had to adapt the bike significantly.

The bike is a 2005 Ducati Multistrada 1000s, now running with piaa 510 front lights double bubble windscreen, supermoto front fender, skid shield frame mounted crash bars, Hypermoto foot pegs, Sergeant seat, double luggage rack and fully removable perlican rear cases.

Many of these parts are made by other enthusiasts in small volume. TD Graham at Strada Avventurosa has been an invaluable help both with his supremely fabricated parts and advice on off roading the Multi.

You can see all of the first class fabrication and innovative parts here:

http://www.strada-avventurosa.com/ 

While I don’t have quite the machine shop or engineering aptitude that TD has did enjoy making as many parts as I could to make this bike uniquely my own.

Teenage Dreams

Why a Ducati-

I have been into motorcycles since the time I could ride a bicycle, and while I appreciate all types of motorcycles, the fascination for me has always been about going fast! If you were a teenager in the 90’s that wanted to a fast motorcycle then you understand the allure of the Ducati. Both motorcycle enthusiasts and passers by know them as the Ferrari of motorcycles, they are fast, temperamental, expensive, and gorgeous. In the 80s and 90s brilliantly engineered Japanese motorcycles ruled the world of motorcycle racing. While the Japanese pushed the limits mechanically and technically they bikes seem to lack the soul of the old European racers.

At the same time in Bolgna Italy the storied brand Ducati had hired a raft of engineers and a designer named Massimo Tamburini to help them build a bike that would put them back on the world stage.

That bike was the Ducati 916, it is was arguably the single biggest item of teenage lust for me. The 916 and its successors the 996 and 998 all became the dominant bikes in the World Superbike race series in the late 90s. I have not been fortunate enough to own one of these bikes but when it came time to buy a bike that could handle longer distance travel, I dispelled more sensible and affordable options in favor of a Ducati.

I have had to buy or build dozens of parts to make this Ducati suitable for this trip across Alaska. Some times when I see BMWs or KTMs that are more suited to this type of trip I find myself looking at them longingly only to crack a smile knowing that my bike is far more unique and will likely be one of few Ducati’s to dip it’s front wheel in the Arctic ocean.  Somewhere along the way I am sure I will have issues that come with owning a fickle Italian motorcycle but I just need to remember my questionable decision to take an exotic bike to one of the ends of the earth is all just the realization of my teenage lust.