Alaska, atlasta...shades of Ushuia, 20+ hours of daylight, my time orientation out of whack, time to eat? cornflakes and milk or steak and red??…looks like 2pm, actually 10pm, sunset is 12.30am, sunrise 3am!…helps to make me realise how much I wouldn’t like to be here at the opposite time of year! And it’s my anniversary, yes, 25 June 2005 I flew into LA, sometimes it seems like 12 weeks, other times, forever! The bike’s just clicked over 72.000 kms! In Vancouver I met Nigel, a ski club program director, on his 1200 Adventure (the few problems I have with the [View Full Entry]

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Riding into the ferry terminal carpark at Haines, Alaska, it’s a big carpark and I ride down the No. 2 lane as I’d been told, already a lot of cars and 8 bikes there, suddenly a car driving down lane 1 turns in front of me, I veer right, evasive action mode, to try and get around but he’s turning too fast and I smash into his right front corner, wobble on a metre or two and crash out!!…..Check fingers and toes, check everything else, feels ok, stagger up, the front end of the little Chevy has been torn off and [View Full Entry]

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Finally made it to the very top...Prudhoe Bay...the northernmost part of Alaska...from Ushuia to Prudhoe Bay is the ultimate South/North trip...66,000 kms, 1 year and 2 days, from the bottom of the world to the top...whoo hoo!! (well, from the centre to the bottom, back to the centre and up to the north) I'd thought of many reasonable excuses and logicified many reasons for not going further than Fairbanks, Alaska, after all, I'd got this far!...(grammar??) in the end, how could I refuse the chance to make it to the absolute end of the road, sort of Ushuia but the other [View Full Entry]

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Her name was actually Renee but I called her Pandora because of her Porche Boxster, we met, duelling on the freeway…just like a worm, parts in the middle are perfectly motionless while other bits accelerate …but the system is fantastic, freeways get you a long way, very quickly…just don’t miss your turn off…aarrgghhh…hours later… the striated concrete often runs askew to the lane markings, (the striations made by a roadworker with St Vitus’ Dance dragging a huge rake down the line of the freeway, roughly) and at high speed, and with constan [View Full Entry]

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I first heard of “the green flash” in the Northern Territory where watching the sun set at East Point was a bit of a hippie tradition in the old days. Just as the sun sinks below the horizon you will see a green flash…. if you’re lucky?…… enhanced? Tonight I’m watching the ever-spectacular sunset from my balcony at the Hotel La Siesta in Mazatlan, Mexico, still one of my favourite places, even after all the rest. The sun sets through a low layer of glowing red coals clouds then breaks clear for the last free plunge into the Pacific. My third [View Full Entry]

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Sorry, I’ve edited and re-edited but it’s still a long tail! Starting off…..Back in sweaty, sultry, sloow, San Juan del Sur, if Puerto Viejo was desultory San Juan is sultry…..more gringo developments arising around us and a Japanese funded port facility (many Nicaraguan road bridges are signed “with the love and friendship of the people of Japan”, now I understand!) and the dolphin research centre next maybe?… but it’s still beautiful, maybe No. 2 after Bocas, went for my early morning dip and copped a sea wasp across my arm, blisters and [View Full Entry]

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I knew there were two bridges on the way, I knew they were going to be bad, I had planned a strategy to get help, or a truck, but I was onto the first one almost before I realised it and besides, there was no-one around and a line of cars not far behind me, spur-of-the-moment time….skinny rail tracks on shaky sleepers, shee-it…..I rode on. On each side of the tracks were planks, two wide (about 350 mm total) rough-cut, unfixed, splits, cracks, uneven heights, nasty gaps, all balancing on randomly placed and spaced sleepers….….on my right was the rail track [View Full Entry]

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Misty Bridges,….visions of the sweaty clamouring heaving silicone of a budding porn queen….no, rather the engineering/meteorological interface phenomenon suffered by early risers on a stormy day, the tourista cop, maybe, and the parallel travellers come back to haunt me. Finally it had rained in Panama after threatening for weeks, or maybe I brought it back to P City from Colon (don’t mention the irrigation) after the transit. Whatever brought it on, it worked, so I left early and went West, funny set-up, but Panama actually runs East - West, not North - South as you wou [View Full Entry]

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Or is that……died in the wool…..some kinky kiwi sexual asphyxiation fetish….and what inspired that thought?…..I'm just recovering from the 15 can transit, yes, I’ve pulled it off, right thru’ the far canal in a yacht! Where were we?…..I think leaving Bogota was last up, I’m still trying to summarise the last 6 months in south America, so hard to get my thoughts aligned, so much was there. So, back in panama last Thursday week?, 12 noon, 34 degrees and 110% humidity and drenched in sweat, love it!!….cab to the freight a [View Full Entry]

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Back at altitude with attitude again but I must be getting acclimatised. Great Bogota. Home to Bolivar’s greatest and lowest moments and still alive with a sense of history, passionate, proud and over populated with beggars. A little scene setting, this morning I took off the damaged panier, you might remember from the dog crash ep, I took it over the road to a small ferreteria (hardware) and told them I needed to fix it….did they have drill, hinges, rivets etc, within 5 mins the boy, the boss and 2 passing bike riders had accumulated tools, bits and pieces, sent the [View Full Entry]

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