About Larry
I live in Bandon on the southern Oregon coast and I've been riding for a long, long time, years, decades. We won't go there kiddies but believe me, it's been awhile. During that time I've done most of my riding on the road with occasional off-road forays, most of which were intentional. Some weren't. Until just a couple of years ago I'd never ridden a hack - that's sidecar to those who aren't familiar with the lingo. I figure riding a hack up Alaska's infamous Haul road all the way to Deadhorse should top off my torture tank for quite awhile.
About Mac
Mac hails from Robins, Iowa and has been riding bikes longer than most people have been around. He managed to torture his old BMW past the 100,000 mile mark and presently rides a Yamaha FJR. His newest ride, a 2008 Ural Patrol is waiting on the dealer's highest shelf until the flood waters recede after which they'll assemble it and turn it over to him. The fact that he's heading to Alaska for his first journey on a new rig should tell you all you need to know about him...
As Mac himself most recently declared it, it's the Yu-Freakin-Kon... We began the day at 05:30am by breaking camp and heading for Mukluk Annie's (aka Anny Frank's Pooty Hall according to Mac) While there we met a couple from Olympia, WA who thought our hacks were particularly cool which tends to make one wonder about people from Olympia.
As this was just another day in living on the road it only seemed natural that the heating controller for Mac's electric jacket went kaput. Being of sound mind he pretended that it meant nothing to him and said he could control the heat by plugging and unplugging it as needed. I witnessed this while riding behind him and nearly drove off the road laughing. Hopefully he'll find an easier solution soon.
Arriving at White Horse we checked into the tourist information office and garnered some info on where to exchange Yankee dollars into Canadian. Turned out to be enlightening as they charged $2.50 for the privilege and discounted our bucks by 5%. Helluvadeal, eh? Eh? Eh? Ha ha .... Those Canadians, ha ha...
After that it was on to Linda's favorite store Wal-Mart where we scored bungee cords and shoe-goo for Mac and a bright red 2-piece rain suit for myself. Seems my zillion dollar Rev'It costume isn't really waterproof so it was time for a new act. I gave it a ten-mile test ride and then stopped long enough to cut the hood off. Not too neat but functional as the bunched up hood was pressing my gourd forward and giving me a neck ache.
Further down the road we stopped at one of the local points of interest - a log cabin thingy way station where we took pics, then proceeded onward to the township of Carmacks (where as a point of general interest Mac claims his uncle was a car dealer) and we decided to spend the night. If memory serves me right this may have been the place where Chuck Connors starred in the film Motel Hell...
At this point I must apologize to our regular readers ( if such exist ) as we truly need to go to dinner, or have a lie-down, etc., plus we're laughing way too hard to continue.
9:00pm - Just came back from dinner at the "hotel" dining room... to quote Mac, "Worst dinner, worst price, worst service...did I forget something?" At least the pizza I had was good and I think his dinner was too but the humongous person who "waited" on us had the worst attitude we've encountered thus far. Being a particularly petty person I thanked her (him? just spotted the chest hairs) graciously and paid the bill without tipping. My revenge is tomorrow he/she will still be stuck waiting tables in this burg-from-hell and we'll be down the road having a good time. Mac was unable to exert this particular form of vengeance as he doesn't tip anyway.
More tamale...or whenever we encounter another wifi...
PS - Thanks for the picture of me Mac...
Raining again this morning, seems like we're getting our share of it but it also seems we're getting used to it. For openers one of us (the ding-dong...me) locked us out of our room so we had to wait until 7:30am to get back in and finish loading our stuff. Fortunately the gal from Florida (she and her husband have been following us) let us back into the lobby so we could drink coffee while we waited for the manager to open up. It would have been great if the restaurant had been open but evidently Monday isn't a high priority so the curse of darkness was upon them.
Finished packing we set off in the rain heading up the Cassiar's longest remaining portion of mud & gravel. Our goal was to reach Teslin Lake campground which we did. Via the usual road construction stops, one at which we ran into the Florida couple again, etc. (They promised to email pics..Where are they?) On the way we also stopped to photo a big honkin mama moose, then had brunch at Sally's. Mac is still salivating over that one and I can't say as I blame him, they serve hot fresh baked bread that's to die for.
Without much else going on Mac decided to entertain us with a cracked windsceen. (I noticed it so I loaned him my Leatherman special edition tool to fix it with) Anyhow, he drilled a couple of holes in it which as we all know will prevent the cracks from getting worse and off we went, once more on the yellow brick road to OZ. (Teslin)
BTW, Mac informed me that Joe O'Connor totally whimped out when he faced the challenge of the Teslin potato grater bridge a few years back. Just thought I'd throw that in as Joe is following this blog. :)
We arrived at the campground around 5:00pm after a 300 mile ride, more than enough for two old geezer riders. The sun was shining, there was free firewood, and just enough wind to keep the mosquitoes at bay. We set up camp and Mac demonstrated his cooking finesse by whipping up a gourmet meal of Top Ramen noodles. I settled for canned salmon on crackers with cheese-food and a reasonable number of GT's. We stayed up very late, around 11:00pm talking, mostly about how odd it was that it was still daylight at that time. I think Mac is easily entertained...
As Mac himself most recently declared it, it's the Yu-Freakin-Kon... We began the day at 05:30am by breaking camp and heading for Mukluk Annie's (aka Anny Frank's Pooty Hall according to Mac) While there we met a couple from Olympia, WA who thought our hacks were particularly cool which tends to make one wonder about people from Olympia. 
