We spent almost a week in Fairbanks, relaxing and catching up on resting, washing, shopping & working. Besides the overwhelming abundance of We were pleasantly surprised food-wise on two occasions. First the day after we arrived at Ericka’s place, they celebrated Miles’ b-day and we were invited to share the pizza, coke and pie and meet some of their family.

The next day we went out to see a bit more of Fairbanks and we cycled around the town visiting some places along the way like the lovely Farmer’s market, selling extremely expensive but . There were no video camera batteries for my camcorder anywhere in the city, so not sure if and what I can film before the next big city, which is Vancouver, 4000km away…

At the end of the day we visited the Pioneer Park, a place for tourists and locals to hang out. It is a bit corny, but they preserved and moved some of the oldest houses of Fairbanks here. We noticed a lot of people eating and unconsciously followed them to the source. We ended up at a set of tables, covered with fresh fruit, salad, chocolate cake, chips and meat. Besides it were a few large containers filled with cans of soft drinks, it was biketravellers’ heaven.

We asked a lady where we could buy a ticket for this feast, but she answered that we could just go ahead and get what we wanted. It appeared to be the yearly public picnic of one of the hospitals and food was catered for and free for everybody…

Ericka had gone rafting close to Denali park, which was our next destination and she had taken a box of our food, which we could pick up there. Though we are easy guests, we felt that we were overstaying a bit and did not want to bother Ericka too much and so we moved out. Michelle, the girl that had driven us up in the van to Prudhoe Bay had told us to come by when we were back in Fairbanks. Here is one lesson for friendly people: do not invite biketravellers to come by just out of courtesy, because they will come

We were welcome though and had a great home-cooked meal together with Michelle and one of her best friends Cathy. We could stay the night and the next morning were introduced to Bill, a pilot working for the tour company. Like all people we met so far in Alaska, they completely trusted us, went out the house giving us the key, leaving us alone with all their valuables, even though we barely knew them.

We decided to take one more resting day from cycling and took the bus to North Pole. Yes, that’s right, about 20kms from Fairbanks is a small town called North Pole. Santa Claus lives there and it is Xmas all year round. In Santa Claus House we actually talked with him and with this started a new small video project. The house is a shop & toy museum and filled will all kinds of cuddly and cute things.The walls are lined with letters from kids all over the world: everybody who writes a letter addressed to ‘Santa Claus, North Pole, Alaska’ will get it delivered right here and might even get an answer. Meanwhile Mr & Mrs Claus are sitting in their chairs and talking to children. When we were there a family walked in a small girl went straight to Santa, her eyes glowing, and without even introducing herself, she said:

‘Santa, Santa, do you remember me? We talked on the phone last year?’

‘Of course I remember you!’ Santa replied cheerfully and the child was completely happy

We stayed another night at Michelle & Bill’s place and got to know them a little better. One thing about travelling so much is that you get to meet a lot of people, but you seldom have time to spend more than a few minutes with each of them, so it is nice to have some extra time.

Day 20: July 30, Fairbanks to Nenana

The next day we were on the road again! We were on the George Parks highway now, the first real busy road we were on. The nice cycle path ended just outside of the city, but the smooth road had shoulders a few feet wide, so practically a cycle path as well.

We had not even left Fairbanks and we were fighting a very strong headwind with a serious threat of rain hanging into the air. It stayed dry, but the road started going up. First it seemed like a small hill, but then it just kept going up until we had climbed 15km almost non-stop! The headwind was so strong that we still had to pedal hard on the downhills and I never could get above 46km/hr, even on steep smooth slopes; at least it blew so hard that we only felt it when on top of a hill or going down; when going up it just blew over us, shaking the trees, but leaving us alone.

We only climbed two real hills, but together with the downhills we climbed more than 1000m and cycled over 90km before we rolled into the small town of Nenana. It is based at the confluence of two major Alaskan rivers, the Takana & Nenana rivers as well as the Alaskan railway & the Parks Highway. As always we were spotting for good campsites around town but noticed that the river was very high and flowing fast.

When we crossed the bridge we entered the town and it appeared charming enough for a longer visit, so we decided to ask around for a place to stay. There was actually a campsite in town, but the $15 they asked was out of our budget, so we asked some locals on the street. Everybody warned us to not camp close to the river, as its level was at its highest point in 40 years and still increasing as a result of the non-stop rains and more was expected. We hinted at pitching our tent on people’s lawn, but everybody just sent us to the baseball field a few blocks away. As it was summer holidays, there would be no classes playing, so we pitched our tent near one of the dug outs. The rain had started again and we were happy with the shelter the dug out was supplying us with, so we could cook and eat dry and then quickly enter the tent.

Nenana is also the place where the famous Nenana Ice Classic is being held each year. A huge wooden tripod is placed on the river when it is frozen solid in winter. The top of the tripod is connected with a bell that rings when the ice breaks up. The exact moment is something that betted on heavily, many thousands of dollars can be won if you predict the time the alarm will sound, audible many miles around..

Day 21: July 31st: Nenana

The next morning the rain had not stopped and not only there were puddles forming around our tent, we also noticed that our Big Agnes tent was dripping, somehow the fly was letting water through. As it is a very expensive tent that has won the Backpacker’s magazine Award, I trust that it is a bad sample, so we will write Big Agnes and ask them to replace it as we have barely used it a dozen times, of which only a few nights with heavy rain.

We headed into town but it was still raining so there was not much to do. People were frantically running to and from the river, which was getting higher by the minute. As the soil was saturated with water, also the streets were filled with water now. We found a very nice library, run by a nice woman, with her kids helping her out. Not only did they have computers to use, they even had a nice sitting and reading place and free WiFi, so I could work for a while, sitting in a huge leather chair, while outside the rain was still pouring down. Not just another day in the office, but a day in yet another office…

We were asked to leave at 19.00 as they closed and we wondered around the streets. We tried our luck in one of the local hotels and yes, they also offered free WiFi. We ate some pancakes, when we noticed another BikeTraveller passing by, who stopped when he saw Kowalski & Greeny parked outside. Thierry was French and had been cycling on and off for many years. He stayed in the hotel -and managed to get a free room-, Ivana arranged for us to stay in the garage of a local couple. They opened up the garage, filled with snowmobiles, and loads of cleaning and repairing stuff. It smelled a bit like oil and gas, but we were happy that we could dry out our tent and sleep under a roof.

Day 22: August 1: Nenana- Denali Park

The flooding was getting more and more serious and parts of the riverside were now closed off for the public. In 1968 the last flooding of this size had happened. Alaska has 4 seasons: June (Spring), July (summer), August (Autumn) and Winter (the rest). Everybody we met told us that this year was the coldest as well as the wettest summer in 40 years and the river seemed to prove it.  We met Thierry on the streets and headed out together as he was also going to Denali Park. When meeting other biketravellers it is always hard to know if you can actually cycle together as a small difference in pace can be very annoying, but it was fun to cycle with Thierry for a day. What was really unusual this day was the road. Though we had a slight headwind as usual, the road was actually flat. That’s right, no mountains, no hills! Actually we did climb about 400m, but it was so gradual it took us more than 90 km to do so, so for us it seemed completely flat, especially after the hills of the last cycling days. The weather was great, it was sunny and nicely warm, a great day for cycling and we did the 100km to Healy before we knew it.

Just before Healy we passed the Stampede Road, which eventually will turn into the Stampede trail. This place was made famous by Chris McCandle, a bright student turned traveller, who entered this trail one day to never return. He went to live into the wild, crossed a river he could not cross back again and lived months in an old deserted bus until he died, probably from eating wrong seeds. Jon Krakauer did a wonderful job describing his life in the acclaimed book ‘Into the Wild’ and Sean Penn made a great movie from the story, though that was actually filmed several miles away, to give it more the ‘Alaska look’ that the readers of the book expected… (Interesting to note is that I am actually writing this while sitting in an old deserted bus in Alaska myself, but more about that in a later post)

Since Chris McCandle’s adventures, Healy has grown and many lodges and employee lodgings (for the hotels in Denali Park) have been established. Thierry wanted to stay in Healy and we cycled around a bit to find a place for him, when we noticed a sign saying: ‘fresh fruit’. It attracted us like, well, biketravellers to food and soon we found ourselves next to a huge stall filled with all kinds of fruit, veggies and other goodies. Unfortunately the prices the friendly lady charged were as high as nearby Denali mountain and we settled for a few old bananas that were placed close to the exit, looking less fresh.

Just when we turned back onto the main road, Ivana noticed some large plastic bags, next to a large trash can, filled with lettuce and fruits. Most had some bad spots, but some others looked quite ok. We looked at each other but could not determine if this was trash or for somebody to pick up, so Ivana went back in to ask the owner. She came back out laughing: ‘This is for the pigs!’.

So that is it. we are now officially downgraded to pigs. We were allowed to take whatever we wanted and managed to salve about 3 das of good fruit and veggies that would have been fed to the pigs and that would have been sold for $20-$30 a few days before. The little son of the shop owner came running towards us with a small plastic bag which contained the rest of the fruit that had been on the counter. Just behind him followed the owner, apologizing.

‘I am sorry, I should not have told you that it was for the pigs. Here, take this bag of fruit, it would have ended on the same pile in a few hours anyway.’

This is one of the things I love about Ivana. She has not been raised in a throw-away society like mine or like the one in the USA. When it is past the due date, in Argentina food gets eaten (at least the good parts), leftovers get frozen and saved for later and broken stuff gets fixed. Unlike the Netherlands and USA where a printed date on a milk carton is considered sacred, even though it tastes perfect, where every household throws away dozens of kilos of uneaten food every month and luxury items end up in huge piles on the trash piles. Just we have so much money, we throw away perfectly good food and other items. Us ‘developed’ countries have a lot to learn from the ‘developing’ ones.

We had only 15km left to go to Denali Park, where we not only had left our food, but where we also had managed to find another Couchsurfing host. After a few last steep hills we entered the unexpected mix of cheap souvenir stores, pizza places, even a Subway and expensive lodges. Our host Eugene works for one of the hotels and they supply him with a very small cabin, just big enough for a bed and a small desk. he welcomed us and let us know that he would move in with a colleague for a few nights, so we could use his place, all to ourselves. Again we were pleasantly surprised by the hospitality and trust of the Alaskans. We cooked up a great pasta dinner with our saved zucchini & lettuce & cucumber and fell into a deep sleep, tired after our longest day yet…

Kowalski! Status report!

We did not cycle much in Fairbanks and even when we did, we did not always record it. So below are only the two longer days, from Fairbanks to Nenana and from Nenana to Denali Park, two of our longest days so far.

I went to sleep at the Arctic circle age 37 and woke up being 38, great place for a b-day. The road that Ivana had spotted had a name, which is always bad news. It was called the ‘Beaver Slide’ which could be pleasant in different contexts, but in our case it meant 3km of steep uphill cycling at a 10% grade. The asphalt had ended, so we were back on mud and gravel and the returning rain made it even more difficult.

The rain and hills did not stop all day but still we were in a good mood. Just when we thought we had enough hills, we entered the area which was called ‘The Rollercoaster’ and it deserved its name. We had been warned beforehand by some people as the big trucks cannot slow down on these hills and cannot avoid us well. In order to get up the next hill, they have to go full speed down, else they will not make it.

Well, on a fully loaded bike you cannot go down at full speed as you will break it, so we usually start braking at about 50km (30mi)/hrs speeds when on the mud and gravel as there are potholes everywhere. This means that we cannot make it back uphill, and many times we had to get off the bike and push it up.

Just when I was pushing my bike on part of the Rollercoaster, called the Sand Hill, I noticed something moving on the side of the road and I stopped pushing. A large dark brown shape swiftly crossed the muddy road, some 20 meters/70 feet in front of us. The sun was in front of us, so I could only see the silhouette, but knew what it was, a big black wolf. I turned around to quietly alert Ivana, who was a few meters behind me, but she was watching the road and did not notice. A second later, the wolf was gone into the forest on the other side. I told Ivana to stay close to me, got out the bearspray and the knife and quietly we pushed our bikes up the hill. On top of the hill, we found the cyclists Jason and Ben, who were cooking up some lunch. When I told them a wolf just passed between us, some 60 meters away from their lunchspot, they suddenly realized that we were still in the wild out here..

I got a wonderful 15km downhill for my b-day, through mountains lined with fields of pink fireweed flowers. We ended up doing more than 90km/ 56mi and almost 1500m vertical (almost a mile), both records so far. The perfect end to my b-day was arriving at the ’5mile Hotspot Cafe’, a crazy place filled with Alaskan humor, where two ladies were serving food! The others had already passed us and had finished their veggie-burgers. We got two huge hamburgers with a plate of fresh vegetables and to top it off the guys bought me a piece of pie with icecream!

22nd July: 5-Mile Cafe – Mile 15

Just 5 miles down the road was another surprise: the Yukon River cafe. I still felt a little b-day-ish, so I bought a big salmon burger for breakfast. The others were feasting on pancakes while I even took a shower, the first one since Amsterdam

Then it was time to get back down to business.. First we crossed the huge Yukon River, which we will see again in a few weeks in Whitehorse, Canada. A big bridge, covered with wood crossed the river, on a 6% angle. I checked the sides and bottom of the bridge as Jack Reakoff from Wiseman had told me to (see his story about the oil industry here) and sure there was enough room built in to hang another 2 or 3 pipelines…

Again we were fooled by the people all around, making us feel we had finished the Dalton. There was a lot of road work going on and some parts were getting paved, but we went even more up and down than the day before, but in only 70km distance. From the river we went up 500 vertical meters. Not too steep, but almost 15km of uphill will wear anybody out..

At the end of the day we were all beat and camped on an old road, enjoying our pasta meals..

23rd July: Mile 15 – Arctic Trading Post

After 15 miles of dirt, we finally reached the point where the Dalton Highway starts, mile 0! We made it. 700km/440mi of dirt, gravel, potholes, wildlife, rain and more than 8km (5mi)of uphill climbing. It is a classic bicycle roads in the world and I am very proud that Ivana made it as well, she did great.

We made the ‘after’ picture with the other guys, with te same line-up and order; you can compare it with the ‘before’ image from a few posts bacl

We were back on the asphalt again, only the Elliot Highway was separating us from all the supermarkets in Fairbanks. Unfortunately the hills didn’t stop, we almost had no minute of horizontal riding and though the bumps were lower than before and the road was perfect, we still went up more than 1200m/4000ft. We stopped on an exposed pull-out to cook some dinner, together with the other biketravellers. Ivana and I had no clue where exactly Joe’s Arctic Trading post was, the warm place where we stopped on our trip up. We knew it was somewhere on this highway, but where?

We decided to go downhill until we’d find some water and some place to camp. The latter did not seem to be easy as the forest was thick and all exit roads had big signs displaying unfriendly messages like: ‘Keep Out’, ‘Private Property’, & ‘Insured by Smith & Wesson’. At least we were on a downhill, so we just zoomed past these unwelcoming notices. Turning a corner, we suddenly saw a big wooden house: the Arctic Trading Post!

We rushed in and asked for Joe, but he was out. Instead his daughter Molly helped us out. We were all overwhelmed by the choice of foods and snacks. When I settled on a can of vegetable juice and some huge muffins and brought them over to Molly to pay, she gave me back half my money?

‘I thoughts the drinks and muffins were $1 each (which was already a very good price in Alaska)?’

‘Yes, but you are cyclists.’ She replied matter-of-factly.

‘?’

‘Well, we had some biketravellers from Scotland, then from Japan and then cyclists from all over the world stopped here. They were such good people and we liked them all so much, so we decided all biketravellers are good people and they all get 50% off our snacks and drinks!’

That was so great and made us even happier than the food itself.

Later Joe came in and not only offered us the rest of the muffins and coffee for free, but also told us some more about his family’s history. (Read more about Joe here in the 1000 Americans category.)

Joe invited us to pitch our tents on the soft grass near his duck pond and we gladly accepted and we fell into a deep sleep.

Day 13: 24th July, back to Fairbanks!

We could almost smell ‘home’ though the Alaskan hills were not giving up on us easily. Actually when we reached Ericka’s house again, we had just cycled our longest (95km/60mi) and highest day (>1500m /5000ft up and down). But the asphalt road made everything seem easy and for a change the weather was good. (‘What are those strange black things on the road?’ ‘Those are our shadows!’).

We had tried to call Ericka so got no answer, so we did not know if we were welcome. It turned out that we came back on Miles’ b-day, but we were welcomed nevertheless. We love camping, but it was nice to sleep in a bed again, having cycled 840km horizontally and 10.5km vertically since Prudhoe Bay.

We realized that we survived one of the hardest parts of the trip. We lost a lot of excess weight, which should make other climbs easier. We met extraordinary people living in extraordinary places. we had the privilege to witness the wild side of Alaska, which is already wild by anybody’s standards…

Kowalski, status reports!

6km up and down in 4 days, quite a finale…

But let’s go back a few weeks, back to the lowlands and share our journey with you in words and images.

I am not sure if it is me (us) or is there just no way to properly prepare for a 2.5 year trip? We had been planning since a year ago and still many things had to be done in literally the last minute. At least you can get a lot more done if you use the 8 hours we normally waste on sleeping on working and preparing

As our house was already rented out, we moved back and forth between my mom’s house and Romke & Anouks place. R&A have two wonderful kids and they were happy to assist in sorting out all the gear we received from our wonderful sponsors, this is Kira, checking out the Ortlieb and Carrera gear that Jacobsons sent us.

and this is how part of their livingroom looked during their vacation:

Thanks again, Romke & Anouk & Kira & Jelte, we would not have made it without you.

We took the train up North to say goodbye to my Mother and Sister. By the way, in The Netherlands we have a great railway system, which will get you everywhere in no time. of course people like to complain about the train service, but i think it is perfect, there are even a lot of special spaces for bicycles in every carriage, very useful to do some last minute fine-tuning:

My Mum helped us with some last things and we even managed to make a mess in her place. She was very sad; even though I have been away for many months at a time in the past, this will be the longest period away so far.

My sister lives close and we also visited her to say goodbye. We had a nice dinner at a organic Indonesian restaurant in Assen, with great food and service and we could even park our bikes inside. As with my mom, she was in tears when we waved goodbye from the train, but again somehow I was not sad, maybe we will see each other soon again.

Ivana had already said goodbye to her family in March, when she came to Amsterdam. But thanks to the wonders of skype and broadband Internet, she had been talking/videoconferencing with her mum and sister (that almost have the same names as mine) every evening for hours, while packing and sorting stuff.

Going on all these adventures is selfish in a way as we are worrying our friends and family. But I think we can repay their concerns and affection with stories and images and knowledge that we are following our hearts.

ps: we also had a nice going away slash b-day party, but i will post the images in a separate post once we find the images again

When we finally headed over to the Caribou Inn, they had already finished and were preparing for their trip. As a biketraveller, you have to take care with your money, as you never know where you might need it. That is why we were hesitant to attack the $18 lunch buffet that the cyclists had raved about. Once we took our group picture outside and said goodbye to the others, we had made up our mind to feast; but we were too late as lunch was over.

Only then we found the hidden secret of the Caribou Inn: the packed lunch. For $10 you could take a quite large paper bag and fill it with whatever you like. I am sure they had no idea how many salmonburgers, hamburgers, ham/cheese & salami sandwiches, chocolate cake, yogurt, fruit juice and potato salad a pair of cyclists could fit in just one bag

The tour started with a very old and used copy of a promotional video about the wonderful world of oil exploration and how well they take care of the environment. We had double feelings: without the oil, the road would not have been here and neither would we, but the industrial mess outside was removing all sense of wilderness from this place.

The only reason we wanted to go on the tour is that it is the only way you can go to the actual water. The Beaufort sea aka Arctic Ocean is 13km away from Deadhorse and the entire area is oilcompany-controlled. So it cost us $38 each, but we got to stand in Arctic waters, let’s see if we can have a similar image at 53 degrees South, in Ushuaia in a few years!

We had expected it to be freezing, but the water was not too bad. Actually, with the sandy coast and the sun, it felt like a fresh day at the beach. In winter this should all be covered in Arctic ice, but for how long? When I asked the retired but still working tour driver if he had noticed any change in seasons during the last few decades, he did not really answer the question, but switched over to a story of Polar Bears, who were not threatened according to him as they still were bothered by them.

Back at the Inn, we said goodbye to Darryll, the friendly cook. We did some last minute adjustments and headed off. It was not a good start. The wind was ferocious and the gravel road tough going. even though it was completely flat, we were both in 2nd gear (of our Rohloff’s 14 gears) and our ‘speed’ was about 8km/hr. I had serious doubts: if the wind would not change, we would need several weeks to get back to Fairbanks and we only brought about 2 weeks of food, of which we left half in Coldfoot on the way up yesterday…

We turned right onto the Dalton Highway, our home for the next weeks, and the wind was blowing from the side now. I had stopped to take a picture of the last signs we would see for a while, when the wind blew Kowalski right off his feet, even though he was fully loaded and stood stable on two stands.

Then we turned just a little more. Not much, but just enough for the wind to be in our back a little bit. We increased to about 20km/hour when the road would let us and flew over the tundra.

The sun was burning and soon we had to shed some layers, it was getting warm! Even though it was after dinnertime and we were at 70 degrees North, we were cycling in our light pants and T-shirt most of the time.

Our lunch bag served us a good dinner as well and as we did not have to cook we could continue cycling for a while. The landscape was empty, besides a few lonely caribou and some big trucks we did not see more than grass and lakes and of course the gravel of the road beneath our wheels.

The road turned just a few degrees, but it was enough to let the wind blow us off our bikes. We suddenly felt the accumulated tiredness in our legs and decided to call it a day. We found a grassy spot, with some bush to protect us a bit from the wind. There was an empty Shovel machine nearby, with its doors unlocked. So we could leave our foodbag safely inside, protected from bears and vermin. Even the keys were inside so it was very tempting to drive it around. But as we were here to show that you can travel without burning gallons of gasoline, I let it go. The fact that I had no clue how to use one of these machines played a small part as well

We were both exhausted and literally fell asleep when we hit our sleepingbags. I woke up the next morning with my toothbrush still inside my hands, while outside a strange loud buzzing sound had replaced the howling of the fierce wind…

Kowalski! Status report!

For those interested in facts and numbers, I will add some trip figures at the end of every post, Kowalski’s Status report We had not yet figured out our new cycling computers yet though

, so I cannot show you the graph. But basically we cycled about 52km, in about 4 hours. We hardly gained any altitude, maybe 20m.

Jacobsons is a daughter of AGU. Jacobsons imports great cycling brands like Nalini, GripGrab, Carrera and many more, see below for an overview. When they heard about our plans they worked hard to get us all the gear we needed. Debby van Stiphout and former manager Mario Dominicus moved mountains and set us up with the perfect gear.

• For cyclists there is only one brand of panniers: Ortlieb (www.ortlieb.com). These are proven time after time and are the strongest and most durable panniers around.
• Carrera supplies beautiful and still fucntional eyewear and helmets
• Of course our Santos bikes already came with the only real racks available: Tubus
• I love good gloves and GripGrab delivers.
• For the first cold months, we are being kept warm by Brynje underwear