You lose all sense of time when it doesn’t get darker at night. The
sun doesn’t set at 70 degrees North, but just circles around you like a
vulture above a fresh kill. As we do not have watches, only our cycle
computers and Lenny could tell us what time it was. The other cyclists
were buys packing as they were on the 08.00 tour, but as our tour only
started 6 hours later, we enjoyed the extra hours to relax for the
first time in weeks.
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…
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.
