205 miles

I woke up to the light patter of rain on corrugated metal, one of my favorite noises. I rolled over and let myself bask in the warmth of my sleeping bag for a minute. What a fantastic night of sleep. The air was cool, but not below freezing, and the pitter patter of rain provided a nice peaceful atmosphere. But what was that smell? My eyes flitted open. It smelled funky, kind of like sewage almost. Oh yeah, that’s right. I was sleeping in an outhouse. How could I forget.

Although the rain sounded nice when I woke up, it wasn’t as comforting once I was on the bike. The prospect of setting back out in 40° rain wasn’t super thrilling. I left my luxurious suite for one (half bath included) and continued east on the Alaska highway. For the fifth day in a row, I was working against a headwind. The rain was light, but cold, very cold. As I climbed up to the continental divide the rain turned into a wintry mix. The sleet stung my face on the descents and my extremities soon became numb, once again. I had a very hard time warming up the legs. All morning they felt slow and unresponsive. Honestly, I did sleep pretty well, but I hadn’t really eaten dinner the night before, so my stomach and body were understandably not super excited to be going again. With the rain and constant fog all around there wasn’t much to look at. However, in there being less to look at, there’s also more to look at. When there aren’t great peaks or grand vistas to stare at I find myself enjoying the small things a bit more. Beauty appears in the grasses on the side of the road, the shrubs and trees waving in the breeze, the common bird drifting in the wind, and the ever unique and dynamic clouds. Especially now that I am further south the vegetation is significantly more diverse. Instead of endless expanses of spruce and aspen there is now cottonwood, alder, pines, all sorts of small shrubs, and many other species of flora to look at. The leaves have not begun changing color in some of the valleys here, however, in the high passes the quintessential yellow aspens still light up the forest.

The comments under each blog post have been turned on. Every couple of days I’ve been able to go in and read through the comments. Thank you guys for the support! Sometimes (a lot of times) it’s lonely out here but it all feels a little less lonely to hear from people. I saw a comment asking about what I listen to in my earbuds while riding (thanks for the question, Stacy!) so I’d love to answer that question now since it was very pertinent during today’s ride. Quick digression: as the sights get less exciting on the Great Plains I might have less to write about and will have more consistent cell service so I’ll be at more liberty to answer questions. If you have questions even tangentially related to my riding please feel free to drop them in the comments. It gives me something to think about and I’d love to answer them. Back to the earbud question. During glum times like this morning—and in fact at almost all times while I’m riding—I turn to my earbuds for entertainment. Particularly during rough patches, music and auditory media can pull me through the day. Generally I listen to music, but I also do a lot of podcasts and some audiobooks as well. On any given 14 hour riding day I’ll have earbuds in the better part of 10 hours. I like to ride in silence sometimes as it really gives me time to think and give my full attention to the road and the world around me. However, the earbuds are a huge part of my life while biking and are a crutch for me to lean on. In addition to giving me something to think about so I don’t get too bored, music in particular can have an enormous effect on my mood and mindset. I have a 200+ hour long Spotify playlist that I usually put on shuffle during long rides. I listen to almost all genres of music so this playlist covers a lot of ground. Anything from Ethel Cain, Pink Floyd, Kendrick Lamar, Louis Armstrong, fred again, and everything in between. I love trying to find new music but that is a struggle when I’m so consistently out of cell service; I have all my saved music downloaded. Some podcasts I commonly have on rotation are Huberman Lab, Rich Roll, NPR’s Throughline, NYT’s The Daily, and WSJ’s The Journal. My absolute favorite podcasts are those that are interviews with endurance or extreme athletes: Courtney Dualwalter, Alex Honnold, Tommy Rivs, Lachlan Morton, etc. I still haven’t quite figured out what drives me in life and in sport—a question I am hoping to find some semblance of an answer to on this journey to Ushuaia—so I find it entertaining and productive to hear much more accomplished and well spoken athletes than myself talk about their own experiences, failures, and motivations. Rich Roll in particular does an excellent job of posing questions aimed at teasing out some of the deeper and almost philosophical information around motivation and drive. In the audiobook realm, I just finished Israel Palestine 100 Years of Conflict and Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. I just started Catch-22. A lot of times I’ll zone in and out while media is playing and at times the wind can make it difficult to decipher speech, so I find it difficult to listen to dense books that require deep thought and constant attention. I have listened to textbooks for classes while riding—as was the case with the Israel Palestine book—with varying degrees of successful comprehension. All this being said, I am constantly in search of new media, particularly music and podcasts, so please send me Spotify playlists, artist recommendations, podcasts, etc. I would love that! Feel free to drop recommendations in the comments or Instagram DM them to me.

Around mid morning I went over the continental divide. I’m not sure exactly where the actual divide was since there was no sign marking it. There were a couple different climbs where it could’ve been. It was still raining when I went over the continental divide, but when I began descending down the east side of the divide I started to notice some holes in the cloud cover. Large surrounding peaks were scraping the sky, tearing skylights of blue into the gray clouds. It continued to rain for two or three more hours, but eventually by noon I felt sun on my back. As soon as the sun came out, everything began to warm up very quickly. Fog rolled off the wet pavement quickly drying the road and I was able to stop and take off my rain gear. All morning I had a headwind, but when the sun came out, everything changed. After five days of headwind, I finally had my tailwind. I rode a 10 mile an hour tail wind towards the town of Watson Lake. 14 miles before Watson Lake I came across a food truck parked at the junction with Highway 37. I had been out of water for some time, so I was excited to grab a drink to carry me the last hour into Watson Lake. I grabbed a soda out of a cooler in front of the food truck and went to go pay, but the lady said they only took cash. I want to put the soda back, but she wouldn’t let me put it back. She told me to keep it. A group of motorcyclist overhearing out conversation came over and talked to me as well, offering to pay for anything I wanted from the food truck. I declined, but was thankful for the offer. Everybody was incredibly kind, and were very inquisitive about my journey. The lady who owned the food truck couldn’t have been nicer. She had a great big smile and emanated infectious joy. If you are ever at the intersection of Highway 37 and Highway 1 in British Columbia, make sure you stop at Courtney’s Caribou Cookshack! Fueled by my now full bottle and the positive energy Courtney had given me, I flew east towards Watson Lake. Watson Lake marked the end of an almost 150 mile stretch with no services. I was able to resupply and grabbed a huge lunch, including an entire cherry pie. While I was in the grocery store, a sweet chocolate lab named Scout watched my bike for me. I was able to get some tlc from the little guy which made up for all the cold rain I had experienced in the morning. While I sat and ate my cherry pie, I watched a fight unfold between construction workers paving the parking lot of the grocery store. Truly, a full-service, stop, entertainment, dog therapy, and a meal. The foreman sent both workers home, which happened to be Whitehorse, well over 200 miles west. That’s a long drive to think about how badly you messed up by swinging at your coworker on this job site. Watson Lake is home to the “world-famous sign forest“. Indeed there are thousands and thousands of road signs tacked up on poles in a large park in the city center. There were signs from all over the world. I would’ve loved to have walked through the forest a little bit, but obviously did not have the time to dote. I wanted to make the most of the tail wind while I had it since this was my first tailwind on my eight day journey. Now that the sun was out it was well over 55° and I left Watson Lake and nothing but my bibs and jersey. This is the first time since leaving New Hampshire that my bare skin has seen the light of day. Although I have been dipping in and out of British Columbia and Yukon for the past hundred miles, shortly after Watson Lake, I left Yukon for the last time and officially entered British Columbia. They were immediately signs everywhere warning of Buffalo on the roadway. I had no idea there are Buffalo up here in the wooded areas of Northern British Columbia. I was really hoping to see one. I made great time out of Watson Lake, and by the time Golden hour came around, I was feeling great and had put over 100 km in between Watson Lake and myself. I even managed to dodge the stray rainstorm and instead of getting wet I got to enjoy the rainbow! I continued on as the sun dipped low in the sky and was rewarded for my morning in the rain by a beautiful sunset and great vibes. I saw 2 buffalo in the evening! I also saw a black bear run across the road and I saw several eagles. I was riding along the beautiful Liard River all evening. I rode for about 20 minutes in total darkness before stopping at a pullover for the night. Tomorrow I’ll have to bust out my lights for the first time. A sign that I’m getting further south (and east, but south is where I want to be going)!