This is more or less the way things went.
Mike Kneebone kept baiting us all year. "Is anybody ready to go to Prudhoe
Bay?" Well, the format of the rally dictated that leg 3 had 114 hours total.
Not enough time really to take the chance to get from Sunnyside, WA to
Prudhoe Bay, Alaska and then to Gorham, ME. But at the dinner the night
before the rally start, Mike asked who would go to Prudhoe Bay IF they had
the time? About 40 riders stood up so Mike sent us all to one side of the
room. The deal was you had the whole rally to go there. But if you went to Prudhoe
and failed you were done - you could not get any other bonus from any other
legs in the rally, so it was one big gamble. Make it, life is good. Miss it,
enjoy the ride home. Kneebone also happened to mention temps in the 30's
oh and it had been raining steadily on the Haul Road.

I decided the risk was doable and to go to Prudhoe Bay. The route was
straightforward from our starting point in Madison, Alabama. There were other
big bonuses in Denali, AK, Sunnyside, WA, Key West, FL and a few minor bonuses
in FL, NC and TN. Denali was on the way, the others I'd worry about after I made Prudhoe Bay.
It’s all about time.
My strategy was simple as well. Ride the big roads, don't stray far from my
planned route to get bonuses, sleep at least 4 hours in every 24 in a motel,
and drink lots of water. Other than that keep your butt in the saddle and ride.

Leaving Madison, AL, Monday at 10am, we picked up a bonus in Memphis,
TN and then headed straight for Canada, via Minot, ND. Paul Taylor (BMW 1150
GS) and I rode together from Madison picking up the Denali, AK bonus around dinner time
and back-tracking to Fairbanks before sunset. Roughly 1,400 miles per day average.
Some more, some less, but reasonable progress - considering multiple construction delays etc.
We booked a motel room Thursday when we arrived to store gear. We immediately stripped
down the bikes, making them as light as possible for the 490+ miles to Prudhoe Bay.

Friday morning we headed for Coldfoot (roughly 200 miles north) and it
started pouring rain the minute the road switched from pavement to dirt. We
stopped and let some air out of the tires. This later proved problematic for
me as my valve stem wouldn't seal shut so I kept losing air. I stopped and
replaced the valve on the side of the road. A big hauler stopped and
offered me some air from his pressure hose but the hose fitting from his
truck wouldn't fit the stem and the rims of my Dymags. So close to air and
yet so far away! Moreover, I could not get much air in or out. The CO2's
proved mostly useless, so I ran the remaining miles to Coldfoot on 17lbs in
the rear tire.

That was before dumping the Tiger, however. For lack of a better
description, a truck came at me and I had no escape route since we were down
to one lane. Half the road had been graded over and was soft muck and sand
plus about a foot higher in one lane. I headed for it anyway; the bike dumped easily
in the graded deep sand. No real damage except the windscreen was broken and
one Piaa light was out but not damaged. I came to miss the tall windscreen
almost immediately. A guy in a road grader helped me pick the bike up and told me
not to worry about the plastic he'd bury it momentarily and got back in his grader.

When we reached Coldfoot it was rainy, cold and the road
was like snot. I did manage to get some air in the tire at the truck stop
and filled it with 'fix a flat' in case the rim was the problem. We stopped and had an
unplanned hourlong breakfast. I bought the trucker breakfast as well. It was over $50
for the three of us. Not a cheap date for scarmbled eggs. I'm also ummm.... cheap.Taylor and I
would split up since he had slightly more dirt-worthy tires and I would nurse the Macadam 100x’s
up through another 200+ miles.

[This is what calcium and muck a cement like mixture does to a motorcycle.
Note the license plates are long gone. Although the tire tread still looks pretty good
it will be trash within hours.]

The road to Coldfoot was nothing compared to the second half ride to Deadhorse.
Weather and road conditions change rapidly so one minute the road is snot,
the next dust. North of Coldfoot is Atigun Pass which tends to create it’s
own weather. The road dried out and I made great time. I also saw some Dall
sheep and that was a nice surprise. After dropping down the other side (and
it’s steep), I ran into my first bout with serious fog. It was daylight so it
didn’t slow me down as much as one might think. I flipped on my Piaa’s. No
Piaa’s. In a moment of inspiration I stopped and kicked the lights. Now I
had one Piaa. Better. But my dims were gone so I only had brights on the
Tiger. The road switched from dust and rocks to snot and back again over and over.
Meeting the hauler trucks meant you were about to get hit with dust, flying rocks and no
idea where the road went until it cleared.

A little more than halfway to Deadhorse, a section of construction some 27
miles long greeted everyone going north or south. You sat and waited around
to go, then trashed your bike on rocks and ruts, then you followed a
pickup through the dust and you were home free. A sixty mile jaunt to
Deadhorse and 500,000 points topped the ride in. I met Taylor on is way out of Deadhorse.
Considering I was riding mostly on rim, I was still within acceptable scheduling. But, rapidly reaching
the bubble where I might have to stay overnight. It’s tough to imagine how vast the landscape and
how lonely this road appears in diminishing daylight.
By this time my rear tire was mostly flat, albeit holding steady again at 17 lbs down from 42.
I arrived at The Caribou Inn in Prudhoe Bay, signed in and took my flag photo with the Polaroid
and was accosted by some journalist photographers who snapped some photos for me with my box
camera before pulling out some real cameras and snapping away. I felt like a Polar Bear who just
wandered into town. I have no idea what they were up to. One just said I’d be famous and laughed. I
asked them if they happened to have a valve stem. We were not exactly on the
same wavelength - that much I do know.

I needed fuel and also my tire had to be checked out. A night run back to
Coldfoot with an almost flat tire didn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy
inside. By this time it was after 6:30 pm and the workers in the truck
repair shops were gone. I tracked down a manager type and he opened one shop
and let me have at it. I worked on the bike for a bit and managed to get the
tire to fill to over 40 lbs again. I then ran it down to the fleet shop and
dragged two guys having dinner out to check the bike. We went over the rim -
it had no leaks but the valve stem was still leaking. One guy went through parts
and screwed the stem down hard. We sprayed the heck out if it for ten
minutes with soapy water. No air leaks. It was now dark, grey with misty rain - and late.
I asked when it got dark. As in real dark. They explained they went to bed at ten o’clock and
weren’t too sure. I was the last bike to leave Deadhorse. I hopped on the Tiger and knocked
off the drizzly miles toward the 27 mile construction zone.

[The Haul Road waiting at one of several rain-soaked construction zones.]

Dropping down a steep rock grade toward the construction zone the day crew
had been replaced with a sparse night crew. No flag trucks, none of the
daytime waiting. The road was completely torn out and I waited while they
filled it back in so traffic could pass. Of course there really was no
traffic. One truck, to be exact. Alan Barbic was on the side of the road with
his ST1100 partially torn down. I just thought ‘man what a pain in the ass.’
His radiator fan would not turn off and was draining his battery. He’d
rather have the Piaa’s than the fan. The hell with overheating, it was
getting dark and cold. Barbic said he wouldn’t mind the company but to go
first, and we both understood we’d stay within reach of each other as long as
practical. He was being cautious so as not to dump the ST. It was also pretty
clear we were in for a lonely ride to Coldfoot.

A Tiger can cover a lot more rocky ground than an ST and after riding within
range for some time the ST’s lights flashed seemingly miles behind over the Tundra. I
headed straight into what turned out to be a dense fog
bank and never saw the ST again until Alabama.

One Piaa and brights made making my way through the fog a little too
challenging in the approaching dark. I couldn’t tell where anything was,
especially the road. I stopped and masked duct tape over the tops of my
lenses and turned my brights into fog lights, tapeing until they aimed where
I wanted them to go. This worked to near perfection and it only cost about a
dime. It was now pitch black. I now know what poets mean by the dark of the
night. This seemed as dark as dark can get. I wear glasses which kept
fogging up even though my helmet visor didn’t. It was a major distraction so
I offed the glasses. Whenever a truck passed me in the dark I’d pull off to
the side. Even though the lights were taped they still pissed drivers off.