First, I’d like to thank Ronald Schulten and Sarah Olson for their generous donations.

If you go to northern Alaska, you have to visit Chicken. It is laid back, fun and in the middle of nowhere. With the population of only 27, Chicken was settled by gold miners in the late 1800s and in 1902, the local post office was established requiring a community name. Due to the prevalence of ptarmigan in the area, that was the name suggested as the official name for the new community. However, the spelling could not be agreed upon, and Chicken was used instead to avoid embarrassment. I was pumping gas when a Cessna 150 pulled in next to me and started filling up. The highway is also used as a runway for aircraft. You don’t see that in New York City.

From ,Chicken I rode southwest towards Tok to spend the night. Gib told me about a motorcycle campground named The Eagle Claw in Tok and I wanted to check it out; I also wanted to check my voicemails after 2 weeks. I got to the campground and saw a sign that said “Pick a spot, we will be around later.”

This campground is a marvelous place. Clean as it can get with teepees, cabins and tent sites. There’s a steam room, an unbelievably clean outhouse, dish station, ready-cut firewood, and real flowers on the table. There was also a stove and a pot to warm up water for cleaning dishes at the station. I was the only person in the whole area and no one came around, so I made a good fire and put Brian’s moose steaks on the coals. Dinner of moose and mashed potatoes and hot chocolate for dessert capped off the night. I packed up in the morning, turned the bike’s switch to “on”, pulled the clutch in, and heard a snap.

Lots of people made fun of me for taking spare parts with me, but dammit I was right. In the middle of nowhere, I had a brand new clutch cable sitting in my saddle bag and the tools to pull off the job. I got to work and unloaded everything again since I had to remove my seat to take the tank off to replace the cable. The weather was perfect and I was amused that my preparation had paid off. The new cable was not an exact fit but I made it fit anyway.

I loaded everything back up and stopped at the cabin to pay my camping fees. I knocked on the door and waited for a while, but no one was home and there was no drop box anywhere. I remembered seeing an ad for the place at the gas station where I filled up the night before, so I went back to the station and got the number and called the owner. She was a very nice lady and even told me to not worry about the camping fees, but I went back anyway and left the money in her car. If ever in Tok, don’t miss this place.

Crossing back into Canada was a breeze and the Alaska Highway was in its best shape. I stopped in Beaver Creek for a sandwich and met two guys on BMWs. Stephane Vachon is a French Canadian who’s been living in Panama for the past 15 years, and Oliver Fecht is a German teacher from south of Munich. I walked in and sat next to them at Buckshot Betty’s. I think it was Buckshot Betty herself who was serving us since she wasn’t very nice, but the food was great.

Oliver went looking for a campground. Stephane and I went to find a hotel room for him so I could use his internet connection before I would head out of town to pitch my tent somewhere in the bush. The single bedroom was $90 but the double bed was only $69, so Stephane invited me to stay. Stephane is riding a GS1200 BMW which he bought in Florida and has been touring Canada and Alaska for a while now. He was heading back to Whitehorse, so once again I found a cool travel mate. After answering emails and updating the website, we both crashed and before I knew it, the sun came up. It was -2C outside with a good frost covering everything. The morning started cold and stayed cold well into the afternoon. We hooked up with Oliver at Betty’s and all rode south together, changing lead every now and then. I wore everything I owned and had to bust out my ski gloves since my fingers were freezing, but it was a beautiful ride.

At the Haines junction, we said our goodbyes to Oliver as he rode south for Skagway while we went toward Whitehorse. We are staying at a hotel in Whitehorse (courtesy of Mr. Vachon) as I’m writing this and will go our separate ways tomorrow. Stephane will go to Skagway and take a ferry south, and I will head for Prince George in British Columbia. Stay tuned…

“People who get up early in the morning cause war, death and famine.” Bansky

I woke up late again. Dempster took a lot out of me and resting up seemed like a good idea. Let’s backtrack a day or two so when you read this post, you are familiar with the characters.

When I got back from the Dempster and met up with Gib again, I found out that he wasn’t the owner of the lodge. Gib Acuna is a Californian who’s been traveling for over a year now and decided to go up the Dempster on his Fat Boy Harley. On his way back, he asked for a job at the lodge and he’s been working there for a month now. The best way to describe this man is to say he is a “people person.” He can start a conversation with a dead tree stump if you let him. He loves candy bars (he already ate half my candy collection) and to cap it off, he is the coolest guy you’ll ever meet. Pushing 61, he still jumps around like a 5 year old and has more energy than a humming bird. After 4 days, it feels like I’ve known the guy my entire life. He offered to let me stay at his place and as I never say no, I moved in right away. He has also shared his employee meals with me ever since I’ve been here, and I’m indebted to this man greatly.

Gib had a master plan to build a motorcycle park right at the gate of the Dempster highway, with campsites next to the river, mechanic shop, food service and entertainment! His idea was a brilliant one and the location he had in mind was unbelievable. You can’t go a meter on the Dempster without relying on the Klondike River Lodge, and he wanted to pitch his idea to the owner of the lodge. I helped him prepare his business plan, make a PowerPoint presentation, and we worked on the details for a long time. When “show time” came, he nailed it and the great news is: starting in May of 2010, there will be an amazing motorcycle campground at the base of the Dempster highway with full support, from tires to towing and rescue. He is the right man to do it and I’m sure it will be successful. I’m designing his website, logo, and taking care of the computer stuff while he does his construction. I wish him the best of luck.

I also met the owner of the lodge, Ross Weitzel. Ross is an interesting sort of guy who does his business on a hand shake. Up here in Yukon, there are no lawyers or legal complications, you shake the man’s hand and your word is your contract. He sponsored my lodging and my meals throughout my stay and reimbursed my camping fees. I liked the place to begin with, now I like it even more. The cook’s name is Brian and being a long time biker, he feeds me every night and supplies the beer while we talk all night and he has more stories than you could imagine. One hell of a nice guy.

The most revolting encounter I had was a conversation with a guy named Mario who was dating Christy, one of the waitresses. Mario is a German who moved to Canada some years back and is a farmer in Whitehorse, Yukon. He asked me what was all the world hunger stuff about and as I was explaining, he said something that I will never forget. “What happens after we feed everyone and no one is hungry? They are going to want more, they would want to eat beef, they would want a motorbike, and they would want a house. I am not ready to give up what I have so they can get what they want. It’s a cruel reality but that’s how it is. They have to be poor so we can be rich.” Is it the ignorance or the arrogance or both?

Brian marinated two moose steaks for me to take along for dinner and after exchanging numbers and emails, I finally got on the road. First stop was Dawson City and I got aboard the ferry to cross the river. Top Of The World Highway starts from the river bank and goes all the way to Alaska. It’s a gravel road with occasional potholes and some paved patches. The road was OK and the scenery beautiful, but to be honest, I didn’t see much of it as I was cold and the wind blew so hard I could barely keep the bike upright. I concentrated on the road and zipped through for hope of lower elevations.

At the American border, the drama started. At the border crossing, I stopped at the red light. I put both of my feet down and put the bike in neutral and as I raised my head, I noticed the border patrol man in his shack waving at me, so I took it as a sign to go to him. I covered the 20 feet or so and stopped at his window and turned the bike off.

He asked why I ran the red light and didn’t wait for the green light. I told him that he signaled me to come over and so I did. He said that he was signaling me to stop. I told him I was already stopped and there was no need to signal me to do so. The conversation went on and on as to who was right, so I finally asked him straight up “what is it you want me to do?”

He said to go around and come back to the light again and wait till it was green, then approach him. I’m getting pretty pissed off at this point but I did what he wanted. I crossed into United States and came back into Canada and stopped at the light again. On green, I approached the window and this time he asked me why I didn’t stop at Canadian Customs while I was turning around! I told him that I was instructed to turn around and come back to him and that he didn’t tell me to stop at Canadian Customs. He looked at me and said: “You people don’t have a stoplight in your country?”

That’s when I blew up and said: “Well I’m an American and we do have a goddamn stoplight in our country. We also have another thing called Freedom of Speech and expression. Watch me exercise it for you now: Go F*** Yourself.”

There was a silence and his eyes were starting to open up, so I went on by telling him that he turned me around for no reason and I don’t care if he’s going to let me in Alaska or not. I will write a complaint letter to the Department of Homeland Security and will see it through to the end. He looked at me for a second or two, then asked for my passport very firmly calling me ‘Sir’. I thought to myself that he was going to rip the bike apart but to my astonishment, he stamped my passport with a big caribou stamp and said “No hard feelings. We are just testing our new light system. Have a good day.”

Warning: You should never tell a man to go f*** himself if he is the only one with a gun in the middle of nowhere! I got lucky; do it at your own risk.

All in all, I enjoyed my stay in the Yukon and met some amazing people. Yukon with little over 30,000 in population is still a wild place. Hope it stays that way…

I dedicate the following verse from an Alaskan bumper sticker to this infamous highway:

Dempster Highway

Winding in and winding out

Fills my heart with serious doubt

As to whether the lout, who built this route

Was going to hell, or coming out

The ride from Whitehorse to Dawson City went without a glitch. When I woke up that morning, Jean-Luc was ready to go but I was not. I told him to go ahead and we will meet at The Pit, a local bar in Dawson, in case I did’nt catch up to him on the road. I got to Dawson at 6pm and went straight to The Pit. There was no sign of Jean-Luc there or anywhere in the town. I waited at the bar for a couple hours and he didn’t show up so I figured he stopped somewhere along the way and called it good. He was trying to get out of going up the Dempster after all the horror stories he heard in Whitehorse and I think that was his way. It was raining on and off but nothing too bad, so I headed out of town to look for a camp spot. 15km out of Dawson, I found a small regional airport with a gravel parking lot. I pitched my tent in a corner and crawled into my sleeping bag.

I woke up to a jet landing 50 feet away from me and it was time to go. Dempster Highway starts 40 km before Dawson as Klondike Highway and there are only 3 fuel stations in the 750km stretch of the road. The first is called the Klondike River Lodge at mile zero; the next is at Eagle Plains, 370km deep into the Dempster; and the last is in Inuvik. My tank has a 450km range so reaching Eagle Plains should be easy but with the rain and the road conditions, I carried 3 extra gallons of fuel just in case I need a bailout before reaching Eagle Plains. I filled up at the river lodge and as I was pulling out, a guy from the restaurant ran out and asked me where I was heading. He said his name was Gib and if anything happened, that I should call the lodge and he would come up there to get me. I thought to myself what a nice owner.

The sun came out for a minute and it looked like a good day to go, but I knew it rained non-stop here for the past 7 days so I was expecting some bad sections. The first 5km of the road is paved, the next 5 is packed gravel of decent quality, and after that the road turns into chocolate pudding. Potholes 4-7 inches deep all over the place filled with water, deep tire grooves in the mud also covered with water, and the shiny surface of the road was a bad sign. I started at 110km/h on the paved section and gradually slowed down to a crawl of 30km/h. If I went any slower, I would dig into the mud so deep that I couldn’t get out, and if I went any faster, the bike would go all over the place. Since none of the road hazards were visible due to being filled with water, I couldn’t tell where the holes or the mud grooves were, so every time I hit one, especially the grooves, the bike would start shifting hard to the left and right which was scary as hell. I had my entire load with me and at 1,000 lbs, this bike isn’t exactly a light dirt bike.

I pushed on despite the conditions in hope of better sections to come, but it got worse as the day went by. 55km into the highway, I saw a truck coming toward me at full speed, and since I was riding in the middle of the road (the highest and driest section), I had to get out of the way just in case he slipped, so I slowly inched my way toward the shoulder, but all of the sudden I hit one of the mud grooves and flying into the air I went. I realized I still had hold of the handlebars, so I stood up on the foot pegs, shifting my weight to counter balance and rolled on the throttle hoping more speed would bring the bike upright again. At this point the truck is getting ready to pass me and he was freaking out seeing me out of control and heading straight for him. With all my might, I got the bike out of his way and kept rolling on the throttle till the beast was going in a straight line again. It all took only a few seconds but the bike fish-tailed the whole section of the road maybe 5 times before I barely escaped my death.

I was so shaken that all I wanted was to pull over but the mud was so deep that I knew if I stopped, I would never get out of that mess. With adrenaline so high and shaking uncontrollably, I pushed on and found a somewhat dry spot and stopped. I carry a piece of 1×4 plywood with me to put under my kickstand on soft ground, but even with that, the bike was leaning at a 45º angle with the wood buried in mud. Astonishingly, I decided to go on, and on I went. The road was getting better until the rain started and now I couldn’t see anything out of my goggles and the bike went for another slip. This time there was no other vehicle around and as soon as I got it under control, I found solid ground and stopped. I had to make a call then and there and I made the hard decision. As hard-headed as I am, this ride was suicidal and I had no such death wish. Turning back meant going back over the same road now in rain, but still seemed like a more logical choice than to continue north. The ride back was even scarier, but at least I knew what to expect. After a lot of sliding and slipping I made it back to the pavement and was home free.

I pulled into the parking lot of the River Lodge covered in mud and Gib asked me what happened. I said I stayed upright! I spent the rest of the day working on my World Hunger presentation and ended up doing two shows that night. As I never give up on anything, the next morning, I started planning my second assault on the highway.

The rain eventually stopped and the sun came out. 2 days of sunshine dried out the road somewhat and I unloaded 80 percent of my gear at Gib’s place. On the afternoon of Sep, 2^nd, Dempster looked like a different road. There is nothing more beautiful and majestic than seeing the Tombstone Mountains in full sunshine and not worrying about when you are going to hit the ground.

Autumn is the best season to go on Dempster (scenery wise) and locals agree. The whole land starts changing colors and the brisk air of the arctic is refreshing to breath. This road is a perfect practice ground for dirt riding as it changes every 10 miles to a different surface. I ran mud puddles, potholes, loose gravel patches, sharp corners but nothing even came close to the experience that I had on my first attempt. The Pirelli Scorpions held up and gave me the much-needed traction on the road and I averaged 80km/h on the highway. Wildlife is abundant here and rivers and creeks cut through the landscape all along the road. Passes and high plateaus cover much of the area and the road opens up in the boreal forest and the tundra follows. The most beautiful sections of the road are from Tombstone to Eagle Plains and through the Richardson Mountains in the Northwest Territories.

I reached Eagle Plains sometime after 5, fueled up, and headed north again. I passed the Arctic Circle without stopping and made it to Forth McPherson in Northwest Territories on the McKenzie River. That’s as far as I wanted to go and I passed on going to Inuvik so I could do the Top Of The World Highway in Alaska before snowfall instead.

I rode back to the Arctic Circle and pitched my camp right on 66º 33’north. After a dinner of soup and mashed potatoes, I retired for the night under a perfect arctic sky. I crashed like a log.The ride back was a treat on a dry road and I took my time taking in the scenery and taking pictures of everything. (I took 231 pictures on the way back).

If you are thinking of doing the Dempster, there are few things you should know:

1. Do NOT trust the weather reports and give yourself an ample amount of time to get up and down.
2. Go as light as possible but take good cold weather gear with you. (There was snow at the NWT border.)
3. Be sure of your riding abilities; this is not a time to bullshit yourself.
4. If your instincts are telling you that you shouldn’t go on, don’t go on.
5. Take a bottle of brandy with you for celebration ( I celebrated with mashed potatoes which sucked)
6. Don’t attempt the Dempster in torrential rain. No matter who you are and how many years you’ve been riding. Dempster is the most dangerous road in North America when wet. No question about it.
7. Don’t pass on the ride; it is the most gorgeous ride of your life.

I’m heading for the “Top Of The World Highway” in Alaska tomorrow. Next Stop: Chicken, Alaska. Population: 27.

I’d like to thank Geoffrey Tayner and Kim Geisbecht for their generous donations. I’m not asking you to buy me a beer or pay for my gas; all I’m asking is that if you are enjoying these reports, support me by helping to fulfill the goal of $1500 for the month of September as I’m doing my best, fundraising on the road. This expedition is financed out of my own pocket and with the help of my generous sponsors, NOT from the donations. All donations are directed toward the cause not one penny excluded. Sparing one espresso or a sandwich a week goes a long way. Be mindful of people out there who have nothing to eat, day after day after day. Their story could be your story. Your donations keep me going and make me more enthusiastic about updating the website more regularly.

“After these things I saw, and behold, a door opened in heaven, and the first voice which I heard, a voice as of a trumpet speaking with me, one saying, Come up hither, and I will show thee the things which must come to pass hereafter.” Book of Revelations 4-22

I have been holed up here in Yukon Territory for 4 days and 3 nights and have seen weather like I’ve never seen before. I’ve gotten ready to break camp and get on the road a million times, but in a blink of an eye, the sky turns apocalyptic and hail, rain, thunder, wind and agony dumps on me. If the end of the world is not coming, I’d be surprised.

The place I’m staying at is called Robert Service Campground and is just outside of Whitehorse. The famous poet Robert Service lived here for number of years before he married a Parisian and eventually moved to Paris. The campground is nice and clean and has a common area called the living room which is a few couches and a fire pit covered with a tarp overhead. I spend most of my time in the living room talking to people and working online. You meet people from all over the world and intelligent ones at that. I met Tammy Elliott, a plant ecologist who is doing a research on “Alpine Tundra Ecology” here in Yukon. She also did some research on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian High Arctic on muskoxen and showed me her presentations on the subject, which I found very interesting. The arctic has always been a big interest of mine. I even wanted to become a polar explorer when I grew up, but Robert .E. Peary beat me to it.

On Friday night I attended Jean-Luc’s Canadian Legion ceremony which was very touching and at the same time fun. They were a great bunch of folks and I enjoyed their company immensely. I did pick their brains on world hunger and recruited a few more people up here as well.

The rain has stopped so I’m going to pack the bike and get everything ready for tomorrow morning. God knows what Dempster looks like after all these rains, but I need to get closer if I want a shot at it. Still heading north…

I’ve combined three days of writing into one. I will be out of contact for the next 6 days so stay tuned and pray for good weather or I might not come back at all. Dempster is not a road to be taken lightly.

The 25^th started rather cold and cloudy. I woke up around 8 am and left Wal-Mart, dressed in my winter gear. I had no luck locating bear spray in Grande Prairie so I made it my mission to find some before I get eaten alive.

Storms up here tend to come from the north unlike in the United States where they normally come in from east or west. When something is coming down, I’m riding right into it and there is no way around it. It felt so cold that I thought it was going to snow at any moment but it never happened. When I got to Dawson Creek, I finally found bear spray and officially started my journey on the Alaska Highway.

The Alaska Highway is the most magnificent highway I’ve ever seen. With its twists and turns, sky high spruces, thick alders, high mountain lakes and the mesmerizing scenery, it is something out of a dream. The country up here is so wide and so wild that one can’t help admiring this beautiful land of plenty. Deer, caribou, buffalo and bears all roaming wild; babbling brooks and raging rivers at every bend, all put this highway in a league of its own. It’s awfully gorgeous.

At one of my pit stops, I met an older gentleman on a brand new Kawasaki Vulcan who was also headed north. Jean-Luc Darcy is in his sixties and is a Vietnam veteran who’s going to Whitehorse for the Canadian Legion ceremony. Born in Belgium and schooled in Canada, he has traveled the10K miles round trip from his home in Colorado to Alaska 3 times on a motorcycle and is under way to rack his 4^th one.

After sharing a smoke, we got back on the road and since we were heading the same route, we stopped at the same turnouts and became friends in no time. We stopped at a remote (everything is remote here) restaurant near Pink Mountain called Mel & Mags. I had the most amazing meat casserole I ever had in my life along with a giant plate of five different salads from the salad-bar. The place was clean and staff so friendly that we ended up staying there for almost 2 hours. This place is highly recommended and if you don’t know me well, I am the most anal person in the world when it comes to food.

I was planning on camping out but Jean-Luc offered to get a room for both us, which I didn’t argue with too much. We stopped at Fort Nelson for the night. At the Bluebell Inn, the internet was non-existent so no update could be done that night, but after a couple of beers, I found out Jean-Luc is not going to Alaska after all. He’s heading with me to the Arctic Circle (I might have had something to do with it but I blame it on beers). We studied the maps and made assault plans for the duo late into the night. Two is always better than one I suppose.

The next morning I re-arranged my stuff on the bike; I moved the gas cans to the side and put the tent and sleeping bag inside my backpack. Now the pack sits about 10 inches lower and what a huge difference that made. No more getting blown over with every gust. Now I can actually ride as fast as I want without holding on to the O-Shit-Bar for dear life.

Fort Nelson to Watson Lake was only supposed to be a 6 hour ride but we were wrong again. The road turned into a demon and I had one of the most nerve-wracking rides of my life. The highway construction ninjas had dumped loose gravel for 300 kilometers and then left for China I suppose. If caribous popping out of every corner, crazy truck drivers going 90mph and bombarding us with rocks, and the bikes fish-tailing and sliding on the ice-like surface of the road weren’t enough, we had to watch out for buffalos crossing the road like it was a parade of some sort. We stopped every 30 minutes to rest and bitch at the road and after 9 hours of tackling this death-trap, we decided we had enough. We stopped at a provincial park and camped out. Soup and english muffins was my contribution and the camping fee was Jean’s. We cleaned the bikes and setup our tents and before we knew it, the sun was coming up.

We left the Liard campground at 9am and we hoped to get to Whitehorse by nightfall. Whitehorse was 422 miles away and the construction zone ended right after the park, so we rode out in style. At one point I thought I saw a monkey, but then I figured out I was hallucinating from starving to death, so I picked up some speed and found a restaurant. We had eggs, bacon, potatoes and toast for breakfast and I checked my emails while we were there. The Whitefish Pilot published an article about me that I thought was interesting. Matt Baldwin, thank you if you are reading this.

We walked out of the café to black skies and cold wind from the north. The weather up here is like a woman: one minute it’s all nice and lovely and a minute later, it starts throwing a tantrum. It started raining shortly thereafter and it got colder by the minute and time stood still while we got soaked to the bone.

Out of my fogged up goggles I saw a loaded bicycle crashed on the road with what looked like a human body face down next to it. I hit the brakes hard and turned around for the scene of the crash,parked, and started running while un-doing my helmet and trying to take my goggles off at the same time. When I got there the body was moving and found a guy lifting his head up and trying to tell me something but I couldn’t hear anything. I took out my ear plugs and asked the guy what happened again. He was just drunk and there was no accident. He said he was trying to get out of the rain and take a nap. I was furious. This asshole almost got me killed from braking that hard on a wet road and there was nothing wrong with him. I told him to get his shit off the highway and move to the shoulder before he really gets run over and walked back to my bike. Now my head, the only part of my body that wasn’t wet till now, was soaking too.

I told Jean-Luc that we should ride all the way to Whitehorse no matter what and we can dry off in Wal-Mart or something, but his hip was hurting him pretty bad and he wasn’t about to ride another 2 hours in the rain. He wanted to get a hotel room and stay in the next town, so I told him I’m on a budget and can’t afford that kind of luxury. He offered his room and I didn’t argue either. We stopped at Teslin Lake in the Yukon Territory and got a lake-front cabin for the night. It’s a beautiful lake and a very nice cabin that I’m sure costs quite a bit. We started spreading everything all over the room to dry and I made more soup and cooked some rice for dinner.

We are heading to Whitehorse tomorrow morning and we’ll leave Whitehorse for Dawson City the next day. Dawson City is the last stop in the semi-civilized world up here before we start on the Dempster Highway for the Arctic Ocean. The Dempster is a notorious dirt road that is 750 kilometers long that goes all the way to Inuvik. If the rain stops and conditions are half decent, we should be dipping our toes in the ice water of the ocean above soon. Till then…

No surprise here, I woke up late again. 4 days of a warm bed and good company has spoiled me pretty bad. The light was on in the room so I figured that Sabina had tried to wake me up but to no avail. I started packing my stuff right away and got on the road.

Highway 16 goes out of Edmonton for about 70km before merging with highway 43 which leads to the famous Alaska Highway. It took about 2 hours to get to highway 43 because of all the construction but I finally made it. Alaska Highway is a giant and well maintained road (well mostly) which starts in Dawson Creek, BC and runs across Canada to Alaska. It is eye-blinding green everywhere you look and at times I thought I was in Ireland. Towns are getting farther apart and gas prices are soaring by the mile.

Because of my late start, my goal was to get to Grande Prairie, about 400km north. I stopped for lunch at a gravel turnout next to an impenetrable forest of aspen. I had my usual tuna in olive oil and a wheat english muffin. English muffins taste just like bread but last much longer. Tuna in olive oil is my staple diet and can be prepared a million different ways (which all taste the same by the way); it also is a good source of protein and fat. I didn’t take my eyes off of the forest edge which was 15 feet away for fear of a grizzly charging at my tuna can. I need to get some bear spray.

After riding through a construction zone before Grande Prairie on 20km of grooved road, I made it into town. These grooved surfaces are not dangerous per se but novice riders seem to have a heart attack when they encounter one because the grooves on the road take the bike in their path and it feels like the bike has a mind of its own. 80 km/h on groovies was a treat after a long stretch of a flat highway.

I stopped at Wal-Mart and got a tire repair kit (which I had forgotten to bring with me), bottle of sunscreen, and stocked up on stew and fish for the next few days. I was ready to head out of town and look for a camping spot but then I decided to pitch the tent right there at Wal-Mart and call it good. Italian wedding soup and two english muffins for dinner, cup of hot chocolate and a cookie for dessert. Camp Wal-Mart is quiet and cozy. Let’s see if I can wake up early tomorrow.

The city of Edmonton is built on the North Saskatchewan River with a population of over a million. Although I’m not a fan of large metropolitan areas, I have to admit that Edmonton is a great place to spend some time in. With its wall to wall night clubs, restaurants, and never ending shows and festivals, it truly is a hub for tourists and city lovers.

I rolled into town around 5pm on Thursday and met Sabina, my Couch Surfing host shortly thereafter. Sabina is a 26 year old Croatian-Canadian whom I met on Couchsurfing.com, the website for travelers who offer up their couch as a free night’s rest to other travelers. The couch surfing concept was introduced to me not long ago and I figured I’d give it a try. My sweat wasn’t dry yet before we were off to a party. Her circle of friends are from many different walks of life and parts of the world. I met people from Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Iran, India, Croatia, Russia, Spain, Canada and the United States all in one night and one place. It was just as she likes to put it:  the United Nations Council.

The next morning was rainy so I decided to spend a portion of it at home working on the computer. When the rain finally let up, I geared up for the sponsor hunt. Since it was Friday, I had a hard time catching the owners or general managers in stores, but managed to add two more sponsors to my list. The remote switch for my inverter was acting up, so I stopped at the Home Depot and bought a heavy duty switch and installed it in the parking lot. It’s amazing how many people ask me where I’m heading everywhere I stop. It must be the gunship look of the bike!

That night Sabina made a lovely dinner and we went to the “Edmonton Fringe Festival”. There were a lot of musicians and amusing plays from everywhere all in one place, lubricated by Canadian beers. One of the shows that I really liked was performed 5 feet off the ground by two American girls who called themselves Aerial Angels. These girls held the crowd together with their funny and masterful show for a good 45 minutes. (There’s a clip of the show under Video Journal page)

I was anxious to leave Edmonton but the weather didn’t co-operate so I stayed yet another night. Partying as usual with the international crowd capped off the night.

Throughout my stay, Sabina and her Russian friend Tatiana showed me much of the city and together we enjoyed some great food and treats. Our last excursion was to the University of Alberta Devonian Botanic gardens. This magnificent garden is 190 acres and is filled with exotic plants from much of the world. Rows and rows of vegetables, herbs, flowers, cactuses and trees, and includes an indoor tropical garden and butterfly house that made you feel like you were walking in the Amazon rainforest. It’s definitely worth seeing if you’re out and about.

I’ve been studying the weather and my maps and will start early tomorrow morning, heading for the top of the world. Weather forecast is still not favorable, but I’m pushing through based on my acceptable risk factors. If the conditions stay the same, the Dempster Highway will be impassable after all these rains and I’ll be forced to go with Plan B. Plan B is riding to Alaska and getting to the Arctic Circle via Dalton Highway. The Dalton Highway is just as bad as the Dempster, but it is shorter and more accessible.

Winter is closing in quickly at these latitudes and you can already feel the chill of the upcoming months. I have no time to waste if I want to get out of the north without getting snowed in. My cold weather gear is already out of my panniers. Next stop, Santa’s front yard…