Update 16

With a 1:30AM shorefall on the ferry to Prince Rupert, I decided to stay up. I passed my time in the ship's bar, where I met Chris and Felicity. Chris was a geographer headed to Gingolx, BC, a town in the Nass River Valley somewhere around Prince Rupert. His aim is to study land title issues in the native Nisga'a population. For context, the Canadian government has a plan to dispense with reservations. Currently the Crown holds lands in trust for the reservations, and the tribes administer them as they see fit in conjunction with the ministry for Indian Affairs. They hope to create a system of private land ownership where reservations can issue title to individuals and they in turn can take loans, partner with investors, or sell their land outright to others. Felicity is a current member of the folkish rock band, "The United Steel Workers of Montreal," while Chris was a former member, and they regaled me with stories of their rowdy European tours. Listening now, the band makes pretty good music!

Departing the ship brought me minor drama as I rolled off the car deck with great poise, and onto the dark and rainy ramp. On the centerline were wet wooden planks and as soon as my front tire left the steel grating and hit the slick wood I started drifting left and right up the ramp, legs flailing wildly to keep balance. I managed to keep the bike upright, but with much loss of dignity. As often happens after these moments, I heard the immortal words of Eurosport race commentator Carlton Kirby go through my mind, "...and he nearly got it very wrong indeed."

I rested for a couple hours at the BC Ferries terminal, lying down among the half-dozen bicyclists and hikers arrayed under the covered front of the building. The terminal opened at 5am and I purchased a ticket and was shuffled off into line. I cut ahead to join a group of motorcyclists and we were loaded on promptly to the front of the ferry. I stopped in line with a fellow on a beautiful ZX9R, which he said had 70,000km on it. Astonishing bike.



The ferry from Prince Rupert to Port Hardy is a new German-built vessel called the MV Northern Expedition. After I boarded and deposited my luggage in the rear "solarium" area, I got to watch the Captain and First Officer of the boat make fools of themselves as they loaded the tender after doing a waterline inspection. They couldn't seem to quite figure out how to secure it to the davit arm, and after 5 minutes of swaying back and forth from the hoist they eventually asked to disembark the tender and allowed a crew member to finish fiddling with it on his own. I offered him some consolation, "all that bother and they didn't catch any fish, eh?" The boat is new and it seems that they're all trying to get accustomed to it.



I bade farewell to my last vessel, the MV Taku. I didn't realize how much I would miss her. Take momentary notice of the open-ended solarium on the Taku's top deck, where I stayed for much of the journey.



This BC Ferry route is not quite as pretty as the Alaska Ferry, but still quite nice. Unfortunately it was continually misty so the views consisted of wispy fog and trees and water and more trees and more water and a fish and water and trees and so forth.



Let's instead focus on the MV Taku vs. the MV Northern Expedition. The MV Taku was built in 1963 and has a maximum displacement of 4,300 tons. It accommodates 450 passengers. The MV Northern Expedition is a newer boat built for 600 passengers, and has a displacement of 8000 tons. Its primary route is the Inside Passage, which is a 16 hour run in summer and an overnighter in winter. It is also completely and utterly inhuman in its design.

Let's begin with the solarium. The solarium on the Expedition is much shallower and exposed to the elements. As you can see, the deck is covered with rain water. The only way into the inner decks is by walking down the outer staircase, or through either exposed walkway to the rear. In short, it is not possible to leave the solarium and enter the ship in rainy weather without getting wet. It is also covered with seating fixtures. I do not know what sort of imbecile designed it this way, but it reminds me of room plans I have built on Ikea computer terminals by filling the screen with quantity 100 of Borkborkbork. To add injury to insult, where the Taku has ample space heating, the Expedition has none.



You will also notice how all of the seating is divided with rigid armrests. This is replicated throughout the whole ship. This leads me to the conclusion that German designers are extremely protective of personal space, or they really want to force people into cabins if they intend to sleep. Perhaps both are true. I counted a total of 10 places in this enormous ship where someone could actually lie down on a piece of furniture. 8 of those were benches in elevator lobbies, presumably intended for temporary seating with luggage.

This inhumanity is replicated throughout the ship in every conceivable way. Here is the hallway to the cabins, outfitted with wall-flush doors and metal security-card locks.



The stairways consist of an angular geometry of brushed steel and glass aside cheap brown motel carpets and faux-wood panel walls, with tile accents.



Apparently the proper place for the hoi polloi is in straight-back reclining chairs, where reclining means an generous additional incline of 10%. Periodically a radio-perfect voice would come on the PA and announce the passage of some or other moderately interesting historical fixture on the coast. Note the strict separation of physical space through the use of steel columns behind the window-facing seating. Vee must forbid that anyone lean forward against a seated passenger, thought the clever designers.



To diversify its revenue stream, the MV Northern Expedition has a cafeteria, a restaurant, and a paid $45 lounge at the bow of the ship. First the lounge, next the restaurant.



The restaurant is where I made a stand against this inhumanity and perversion of modern design. I had not eaten much in the morning, and as the critical hour approached I steeled myself for the struggle ahead. At 5:30PM the doors opened to the $30 dinner buffet, and I would have 3 hours to lay waste to the buffet. I executed my battle plan flawlessly, consuming food in the precise order necessary to cause maximum damage.

Plate 1
Caesar Salad with Shrimp
4 Pieces of Smoked Salmon
Cucumber Salad

Plate 2
Beets
Oriental Salad
Potato Salad

Plate 3
Fillet of Salmon
Steamed Vegetables
Veggie Ratatouille
Two Large Ravioli

Plate 4
Thai Pork and Rice
Chicken in Mushroom Sauce
Steamed Vegetables

Plate 5
Slice of Roast Lamb
Slice of Roast Beef
Potato Gratin

Plate 6
Caramel Custard Cake
Blueberry Pie

Plate 7
Cheesecake with Whipped Cream and Strawberries
Chocolate Mousse Cake

I washed it down with a cup of hot tea, laid back, and let my eyelids droop under the weight of this consumption. It was all I could do to not fall asleep before I paid my pittance at the cash register. I retired to the relative comfort of my tent and sleeping pad on the rear deck and slept there for several hours.



The ship landed in Port Hardy and I found a campsite not far from the ferry terminal. By chance I was joined by Darren, a motorcyclist I had spoken with briefly on the ferry, and we split the cost on a campsite. He passed through San Francisco yesterday and got the benefit of a guided tour, learning how to lane-split and be a proper California motorcycle hooligan. Here's a picture of my bike at camp there, the last shot I have of my bike in its final evolution of luggage outfitting.



In the morning I set out to ride the length of Vancouver Island. It's beautiful country, and it's also the closest I've been to active logging. Many of the areas being logged were right by the road.




It was an interesting coincidence that I had read "The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed" in the ferry gift and book shop. It's a well-written non-fiction book about one strange fellow's reaction to the ecological destruction perpetrated on the Queen Charlotte Islands (now Haida Gwaii) and other BC coastal islands. Grant Hadwin, a former logging engineer, took a chainsaw to a rare mutant "Golden Spruce" tree that had been left untouched and indeed was protected by the large logging company, MacMillan Bloedel. To him, felling the tree was a way to protest the hypocrisy of a company keeping a "pet tree" while clear-cutting millions of acres of pristine old-growth forest. Being not entirely of sound mind, he neglected to consider the tree's role in the native culture of Haida Gwaii, and their own complicated relationship with the logging industry. It was not unheard of for tribes to aggressively log areas out of spite if they are under their de-facto control, when subjected to claims from competing tribes. Hadwin was to be brought to trial, but disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

Logging has a visceral quality, whatever your opinions on forestry past or present. There's the sight of cut trees against living forest, the smell of sap in the air, the rumble of logging trucks, the roar of chainsaws, the muscular contest against earth and tree.

There is something undeniably impressive about seeing and hearing a 20 pound, 9 horsepower Stihl 084 ripping a 50" bar through a tree. Some of the old giants felled decades ago were so large the faller would cut a corridor through the trunk of the tree and cut blocks away from the inside. The sawdust and 2-stroke smoke and noise could be so thick at times that the first sign of the tree of the tree falling would be daylight appearing above.

At an individual level, logging is an manly art, a kind of dance that ends with the death of at least one of the partners. I wouldn't mind having a logging saw with an enormous bar and chain hanging on my wall. As riders we have to face the same contradiction that's embodied in the chainsaw; the thrill of being empowered against the destructive nature of our hobby. There's nothing quite like a fresh set of tires biting hard into the earth and ripping a rooster-tail of topsoil into the air as you catapult forward over roots and grass and rock. Looking at it that way, I can hardly begrudge the faller for falling in love with the saw and the wood.

But enough of the navel-gazing. Vancouver Island is pretty, it seems like a great place to go play.



I took the ferry across from Victoria to Vancouver, and crossed the border in the afternoon. I made a quick stop in Bellingham to pick up some parts I had shipped there. I was feeling good and pondered whether I should do an iron butt down to San Francisco or stop in Bend, OR. I decided to route by way of Bend. Once I headed that way, I ended up on a highway over Mt. Hood that was dark and narrow and cold and windy, which put me out of reasonable striking distance to San Francisco.

Once I got into the Deschutes Forest right outside Bend, I picked a random dirt road and set up camp. It was 3am on a clear night with no moon, and the stars shone bright and numerous. I stayed a day in Bend and caught up with friends and wandered about. It was a beautiful 80-degree day so I swam in the Deschutes River and ogled the town's perfectly sculpted bodies.

I broke camp the next day, wandered around a bit, and headed toward San Francisco in earnest. I passed Mt. Shasta in the early evening, and it was beautiful.



Two bros in a jacked-up Bronco threw me the horns as I cannonballed down the Dunsmuir grade south of Mt. Shasta. I passed them, threw the horns back, and kept the throttle wide open all the way to San Francisco. I hit a top speed of 89mph on the downhill and maintained between 70 and 80mph on the flats. Gas mileage was a record low of 38mpg.

Glad to be home.

Update 15

It was a short hop from Skagway to Juneau, so I laid down on a recliner in the rear solarium area of the ship. I had left my sleeping bag in the car deck, which was inaccessible while under way, so I put my backpack under my head, and slept for a few hours. When we arrived in Juneau I was feeling much better and rode into town to write this update from a Starbucks inside Safeway.

Catching the news for the first time in weeks I learned that a Norwegian massacred over 70 people and that little girl was bitten by a shark in Florida. When interviewed, the girl forgave the shark and said "he didn't mean to do it."

The TV man also warned gravely that if we don't cut back on spending for the poor and elderly we face the choice of becoming a country with European tax burdens, or turn into an irresponsible and insolvent nation like modern-day Greece. Ancient Sparta seemed a better comparison to me, with its focus on strength and superiority, its vast resources invested in military might, freedom and equality for those who have the resources or birthright to enjoy it, and humiliation and servitude for its own weak and the poor. To help the viewer reach a reasoned conclusion, a debate ensued. It appeared to consist of people shouting contextless one-liners called "facts," while continually trying to interrupt each other. Whenever the opposing side actually spoke more than one sentence, the camera would cut to the attractive female co-host who would gape and roll her eyes at the lesser man. I cannot understand how anyone can watch people behaving in such a way and saying the things they do without becoming enraged or ill. I had planned to stay longer but found it intolerable.

Back on the boat I settled in for the long stretch for Prince Rupert and took a few pictures in the evening and the next morning. It has been rainy and overcast continually, but I am enjoying the trip a lot. I really like the ship. The whole boat thrums and rumbles in resonance with the engines, and rocks and rolls gently as the captain runs the course through the endless straights and island chains.

After weeks of camping, electricity, water, and heat are in limitless supply. I took a 30 minute shower and for the first time needed to turn down the heat to avoid getting scalded. The bathroom appeared to be heated by the ambient warmth of the exhaust stacks radiating through the boat superstructure, so I didn't even freeze after stepping out of the shower. Food is good here too, and three times a day I can get full to the point of being unable to eat any more, for $10 a meal. That's cheaper than at any diner or fast-food restaurant I've been in. Large $2 bowls of cottage cheese really help round out breakfast and lunch, and I make sure to ask for gravy on anything that'll carry it.

Last night we sailed past a stark border in the waters, between the dark tide off the open ocean and the lighter tide of the fresher inner waters.



I awoke in the morning to a few people milling around the rear deck of the ship to see the Wrangell Narrows. It was very narrow and I was impressed at the skill demonstrated by navigating a large ship through the channel. Mud flats were throwing up breakers from our wake only tens of feet off either side. Bald eagles rested like pidgeons on the buoys and channel markers. Many houses lay along the straight, most in good repair. I envied the man with the glass-front house, and nice aluminum boat and seaplane parked out front. You can see part of the solarium canopy in one of the pictures. It is an open-faced structure with glass panels and gas heaters to make some warmth despite the wind. It's nice to stay out there instead of being cooped into one of the cabins or lounges.



Arrival in Prince Rupert is at 3AM on the 28th, and I will try to catch the BC Ferry the same morning at 7:30AM over to Port Hardy at the northern tip of Vancouver Island, arrival at 10:30PM.

Update 14

The road from Tok to Whitehorse was nice, and since I had a late start I got to enjoy the beautiful scenery at dusk.

Right before the Canada border I was passed at Mach 5 by two Porsche 911s covered in blue masking tape and dust. They were held up at the border for a bit as I crossed, but driving side by side they passed me again in the Yukon. By the time I got the camera out, they were already a mile down the road. Radar detectors are not legal in the Yukon, but I have no doubt that these guys were decked out in every possible form of concealed warning or jamming system. If not for the wildlife on the road, this would be the best way to tour the north.



Once the hour or two of darkness fell, I was again struggling with my dim headlight. In the fading light it was hard to tell bear from bush and tree from moose beside the road. Fortunately I saw only one of the formers among many of the latters.



I didn't know where to camp once I was in Whitehorse so I went in search of wifi internet, but it was 3am. Everything was closed and my cell phone made for poor wardriving. I stopped into Tim Horton's and asked some past-curfew teenagers about wifi, and they suggested hanging out in front of Starbucks even if it was closed. They also gave me directions to Yukon Yamaha, and referenced Robert Services Campground as a waypoint. With this info, internet was no longer needed. I rolled my bike past the gate at Robert Services and laid down on the outdoor couch beside the idiotically named "Hippy Yuppy" coffee shop, "where the locals and the globals meet." Apparently it's a cool thing for rich young kids up here to camp all summer in this shitty campground. I was so tired I didn't take off any of my gear and instead just laid down with everything on and fell asleep until 6am when a surly old security guy woke me up.

The next morning I went to Yukon Yamaha for a tire. They had a WR250R collecting dust in the very back of the showroom, so I walked back to my bike, removed my pitiful hacked and worn chain slider, and brought it to the counter. Like a beggar pointing to his open sores I asked meekly if it wouldn't be too much to ask to have the chain slider off of their showroom bike. Even though the replacement part was on backorder from Japan for 3 weeks, they agreed! I bought a Kenda K270 which they static balanced for me once I mounted it. With the heavy side of the tire by the rimlock, it needed 20 grams at the rimlock to re-balance with 160g stuck to the other side from when I had my D606's balanced. His weights didn't stick to the soapy rim so I just removed 20 grams from the other side. I couldn't thank these guys enough. They really went out of their way to help me, even though they were busy.

A sour-faced elfish fellow from Brazil was there as well, looking for new tires, a tire change, and an oil change. He was agitated and insistent that they do the work for him, saying in terribly broken English that when they offered him the tire they had somehow promised also to mount it and do his oil change. Unfortunately their service department was all booked up, and so after much arguing he left with only the rear tire. He paid $350 for it, and outside he asked me if tire good one. I was totally unfamiliar with the brand so I looked at it severely and nodded, yes, very good, last long time. He hopped on his cruiser bike while his girlfriend slung the tire over her shoulder and slid in behind him. They made a comical sight as two of them rode away, mostly obscured by the tall backrest which had been transformed into an enormous Christmas tree of gear and decorated with an uncountable number of brightly colored bungee cords.

Lesson of the day is don't be an incompetent dick. You can be either and get away with it, but things go best if you're competent enough to do 90% yourself and polite enough that good people will do you a favor on the last 10%. It's getting hard to keep a positive karmic balance sheet with all this help I've been receiving.

My ferry was at 5AM the next morning and Skagway was just a short jaunt away so my only goal for the day was to get somewhere around there, eat food, and camp for the night.

On the way I stopped at the Carcross Desert, one of the few active dunes landscapes in North America. It was produced not by the dryness of the area but rather by the collection of fine debris from the terminus of several glaciers, under what was once a lake. With the lake now evaporated, the sand remains. People are allowed to ride over it, a novel thing for a Californian! I decided to try my hand at it, but had a terrible time with the Metzeler Enduro 1 front tire. It has no prominent tread and I wore myself out very quickly trying to keep it straight. I know the recipe is to gas it and stay loose on the bars, but I didn't want to know what would happen to my directional control at 30mph with an effectively bald tire guiding the way. With the little 250 there really isn't any reason not to run knobbies all the time, lest you be going down the highway and bam there's surprise dunes or singletrack to ride.



The landscape further on toward Skagway was spectacular glacier-scoured rock. I tried to ride out on some of the terrain here and made it off the bouldered road fringe, but as soon as I got there I saw that the rock was covered with fragile moss and scrub and my tire was tearing it up. I didn't want to be that shithead who scars everything up so I turned around and contented myself with experiencing the land from a distance.



One of many pretty waterfalls.



Skagway is a big cruise ship destination, so it's crawling with people and the food and drink isn't too bad. I had a good burger, some smoked salmon, a beer, and for $5 got some Flor de Cana rum on the rocks, but to fill the order the bartender had to bottom out two bottles for me and there was only room for one icecube at the end. Woe. One drink per axle is a saying I favor, but I'd need duallies out back to match my last drink so I hung around the library for a bit before heading off to find camp.



The fellow at the ferry terminal told me there were two campsites down Dyea Rd. I inspected one, found it satisfactory, and went to explore the road and find the other. At the end of the road I caught this glimpse of an overhanging glacier.



Seeing no other way forward I went to find the other campsite. It turned out to be near the site of the old Gold Rush town of Dyea, and permit-only. Dyea was on a tidal flat, a mile in from the deep water. Ships would come in and men would trudge out over the mud and back with the supplies. The town died almost as soon as it was founded, as the Klondike Trail worked its way further north in pursuit of gold.

As I was riding around I saw my first grizzly bear walk onto the road a few hundred feet away. I continued to roll forward and began honking to chase him away. After a moment he went loping into the bush, and I rode back to the camping area to inform the campers. A passing driver told me they'd shot at the bear with rubber bullets the day before, but he was back hanging around a creek. I was very excited and started to ride around the various roads winding through the area to make some noise when I realized that I couldn't see 5 feet off the road and decided it would be better to just leave. As I was riding back, I passed a clearing and there he was, maybe two football field's length away.



I think I really wanted to scare him off because like a stupid chimpanzee running around waving branches I decided that making a lot of noise and riding some distance toward the bear would be the right thing to do. I had a fresh tire and figured I could whip a turn and hook up pretty good if he decided to hold his ground. I got a third of the way there when he looked up and started to stand up. He wasn't even looking at me, I think a dog off to the right had caught his attention. In any case, I immediately came to my senses and realized I was doing something very very stupid around a very large bear, turned broadside, took a couple shaky pictures, and raced back onto the road as fast as I could looking into the side mirror to make sure I didn't have an angry grizzly running to chomp on my ass.



I returned to the other campsite and while settling in I discovered that a whole bottle of Dr Bronner's peppermint castile soap had emptied itself into my Giant Loop. Fortunately it had been in with other liquids and toiletries, but I wanted to clean everything up to get rid of the very strong odor. I spent an hour washing everything in the cold glacial creek running by the campsite.

I also noticed that my rear tire was a little flat. It turned out that the inner tube on the Tubliss had low pressure. When I wiggled the valve stem soapy water bubbled out, so I am guessing the some of it got stuck inside and when I initially inflated to 110psi the tube was pressing up against a water or air cavity. With that cavity drained, it read only 40PSI and wasn't holding the seal on the tire well. I reinflated the inner tube and all seems well. My electric air compressor didn't work when I went to top off the tire itself, which was disappointing. It has been sitting snug against the bike under my Giant Loop bag so perhaps the wet and heat and vibration got to it. At least my hand pump works, and my arm got a good workout.

I had only slept a couple of hours at Martin Service campground in Whitehorse the night before so being tired and lazy I put my sleeping bag and sleeping pad on the picnic table, and tried to fall asleep. The wind was howling down the valley, stirring the forest, and sleep was not coming to me. I thought setting up my tent and getting in would help, so I willed myself to do that, but that didn't work either. Finally I started packing everything up, got my gear on, and thought maybe I could just sleep with everything on again. I plugged my heated vest in for a few minutes to get warm, then laid down. My helmet worked surprisingly well as a pillow, but with the wind and night chill I was cold again very soon. I had run out of options so I decided to ride back to Skagway. I pulled into the ferry parking lot and without noticing the 'no camping' sign I inflated my sleeping bag, pulled out my sleeping bag, and crawled next to an electrical transformer box that shaded me a little from the bright sodium lights' glare. I fell fast asleep, missed all my alarms, and woke up just as the cars began to line up for the ferry. I looked over and saw the driver of this camper van watching me. I thought to myself, how can this be?



I rubbed my eyes, decided this wasn't a particularly intense hallucination induced by lack of sleep, and got packed up to catch the ferry. This RV was also driven by a dog.