Just When You Think It's Going Great...........

WARNING THIS BLOG ENTRY CONTAINS SWEARING - THOSE EASILY OFFENDED SHOULD LOG OFF NOW AND VISIT: http://www.fluffylambsandshitlikethat.com/ (Don't bother clicking on it, there's nothing there!

THIS IS AN EPIC....GO TO THE TOILET NOW BEFORE YOU GET READING

This is the official entry for the day of the crash....It's no big deal, we were a little shaken up, BOB is slightly the worse for wear, we put it to the back of our minds straight away.....As soon as the bear started chasing us....only joking! All right this is how the day went...... back to the morning, we had a quiet night in Wiseman and as the last leg from Wiseman to Deadhorse is the hardest for both us and the bike we made sure we had plenty of rest. The weather forecast meant nothing, although temperatures in Prudhoe Bay had been as high as 5 or 6 we expected rain or snow on the Atigun pass, so as soon as we had breakfast and Tony and Andy were ready we set off.

Sue sporting the Simon Cowell bike pants!

The weather this side of the Brooks Range was excellent, the road was mostly hard packed gravel and dirt and in places had dried out enough to make following too closely a strain on our lungs. The down side to dry roads is the road crews come along every now again and wet it to keep the dust down, the driving conditions then become real fun... as long as the front wheel is in contact with the road BOB's back end just wanders around with a mind of its own!

Just far enough back to breathe

These stretches are a joy to ride

The Brooks range is part of the Great Continental Divide, everything north of here empties into the Arctic ocean and everything south goes to the Pacific. Around this point the road got real nasty, we're talking swearing and cursing type nasty. The graders must have been well and truly pissed off with something because they tore up the road to the point where we had to drive on the other side to avoid the grapefruit size rocks, this was fine until something met you coming the other way and you needed to get back onto your side of the road. The difficulty is crossing the berm in the middle of the road, this is basically a mound of gravel, dirt and rocks pushed up by the trucks and graders, to cross them safely you need to hit them as close to 90 degrees as possible and be up on the pegs to lower your centre of gravity or follow in someone else's tracks.

Sue did a great job of taking photos while listening to me on the bluetooth intercom...
Wooah! shit! bugger! whoops!

Then to cap it all off they go and spray it with calcium chloride...... Bastards. This is the most evil, shitty substance known to man The wet calcium chloride is sprayed onto the road surface and when it's absorbed it bonds the aggregate together not unlike cement. If you get on it before it dries you end up with a cement bike, you get covered, when the trucks go past with bloody John Denver blasting away, your bloody head gets covered! you cant see, you're all over the road......Ooh and the scenery here is spectacular.

With no rear mudguard on Andy's bike, up front was the place to be.

Still on the shitty, shitty roads covered in shite! heading for the Atigun Pass just above the tree line, from here to the Arctic ocean the tallest living thing is me, or a bear on it's hind legs!

Darth Vader always took a small girl on his bike trip to feed the bears!
(notice BOB's backside is getting filthier by the minute)

Starting the climb up the pass, we were so lucky with the weather. The mountains here produce there own climate, the warm winds from the south collide with the Arctic winds from the north and guess what... choose one of the following:

1) Rain...

2) Rain and Sleet

3) Ice winds and rain

4) Snow

5) All of the above

And the correct answer is number 5!

If we separated now we would surely die...(over dramatising again)

As we rode up the pass the temperature dropped around 1 degree for every half mile, when we took the photo at the bottom of the pass the temperature was a respectable 19 degrees, where the pass flattens out at nearly 4,800 ft it had dropped to 7 degrees and now we were riding into a headwind with a windchill factor of minus 90 degrees ( all right I exaggerate a little!)

Coming down the other side of the pass looking to the north (take a look at the armco barrier, that's stopped a few vehicles taking the short route)

All the hard riding is behind us now folks....Yeah right


We never did catch up to that rain, until later.


This land is as flat as the flatlands, true Arctic tundra, which is the Eskimo word for FLAT.

We decide that we would stop for a coffee break once we were on the other side of the Brooks range, so we pulled off the road at a gravel clearing. Big mistake, huge, stupid mistake, the mosquitoes here were on steroids, I did wonder what they managed to feed on in such an bleak, desolate, environment and the answer of course is anything daft enough to stand still, (for that read Graham, Sue Tony and Andy). Even with a wind blowing they appeared within seconds. Click on the following photo to view it full size and I bet you end up scratching!!

These insects laughed at mosquito netting

Tony set up his fancy MSR multi fuel stove. These are clever little devices that will run on any kind of fuel, petrol, diesel, paraffin, the down side is that they are nothing short of an incendiary device and once going can only be extinguished by somebody brave (or stupid) enough to turn of the fuel supply

Full power, (now who's gonna get close enough to take the pan off?)

Answer- the man who owns the stove.

Andy found that if he pulled his mosquito net tightly enough the bite marks formed a neat little grid pattern on his head.

We managed to get a quick drink in between swallowing mozzies but gave up on the idea of picnicking in swimwear just because the sun was out. We set off for the final leg to Deadhorse, but a couple of miles down the road BOB suffered his first injury...a strategically placed rock took out his rear mudguard, smashed it clean off, the bracket, everything. all that was left were the mounting screws attached the swing arm..Great!

The rear of the bike was cleverly camouflaged against the road.


These are musk ox, the animal equivalent of a Parker Knoll chair....... they look very comfy, but you wouldn't want one in your living room!

And so to the part you have all been waiting for.....The Crash.....we were approximately 30 miles out of Deadhorse and had been running a bad section of gravel for about 20 odd miles, the gravel was 3 or 4 inches deep and even deeper where the trucks had pushed it up in the centre of the road and on the edges. Since leaving the Atigun Pass I had spent most of the time standing on the pegs it's a lot easier to control the bike and you can see far enough ahead for hazards like change of road surface and potholes, for Sue sitting on the back, the view is somewhat limited to left, right and the physical specimen that is...my backside! The road itself is built up off the tundra about 4 or 5 feet so that when it snows the depth of snow on the road is less than that on the surrounding ground and trucks can still travel back and forth to the oil fields, visibility is as far as the eye can see in any direction. Ahead in the distance was a flatbed coming towards us and as I was on his side of the road I thought it sensible to move across, when I say his side of the road there is really only a correct side when passing, at all other times you find the easiest line and take it and if that means moving left or right then that's what you do to stay upright. I crossed the central berm in good time to allow him to pass, once he was out of the way I decided to get back onto the left side and the better surface. Instead of standing on the pegs to cross back I foolishly sat down and allowed more weight off the front wheel, as soon as it hit the central pile of gravel it snapped to one side, as I counteracted the steering it did exactly the same thing.The next thing we were on the other side of the road with the front and the back of the bike thrashing about like two fish tied together at the tail!, now the off road experts will tell you that at this point the trick is to apply full power and slide your way out of it......right...... if I had had the presence of mind to do that I might just have got away with it, for a split second I did consider it, but in that same split second I visualised me Sue and BOB rocketing uncontrolled into the tundra at silly miles an hour!

The moment when it becomes apparent that you are going to crash is quite surreal I remember thinking this could be a short, expensive adventure! then THUMP........I remember saying to myself "Fuck"! just before I hit the ground and I remember seeing gravel going past out of the side of my visor, then silence.... I'd like to think I slid to a standstill but before coming to rest I jumped to my feet perfectly in control like the MotoGP riders you see on television. the reality is I went down like a sack of shit and when I did get up I was heading in the wrong direction!!!!!!!

I dashed across to see if Sue was OK and found her lying on her back still on the gravel I thought "this is not the time to be taking a nap"! Like the true star that she is, Sue came through it with flying colours and did all the right things like talking to me and reassuring me she was alright, whilst I'm still running round like a chicken going fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. I then went to check out BOB who was a lot further down the road and resting on the tundra, in fact when you look at the photos he's quite a way off the road, the first thing I notice as I approach is all our stuff everywhere. Both panniers had burst open spilling the contents around the crash site, my main concern was whether the bike would run, I heaved BOB vertical and tried to fire him up..... nothing.....dead.......more chicken noises..fuckfuckfuckfuck., it later transpired that in the panic I had forgot to knock it into neutral!

At this point I looked down and saw a pool of liquid next to the bike which looked like it could have been clutch or brake fluid, I did the quick finger test....red,warm,sticky....just like blood!... more chicken noises, more panic, I give myself the once over, head, arms, legs, the usual stuff that leak when damaged and nothing. If it's not me it must be....Sue!! I dash back to the roadside to check if Sue is bleeding and that's when she points out I have one black motorcycle boot and one red one! great it's me that's bleeding. On closer inspection I have a hole in my calf just big enough to get your finger in, and, due to the panic and running around it's leaking like a stuck pig!

There will now be a short intermission when patrons can get popcorn or ice cream

No problem here then, me ex firefighter, first aider, cycling proficiency badge holder and Sue a nurse (albeit psychiatric) I stop the bleeding, direct pressure and all that, Sue asks me how I'm feeling and if I was ever bullied as a child?!!! We work as a team to dress the wound assisted by Craig and Tom, the two guys in the flatbed that had passed earlier, they had seen us crash and turned round to help. They were a couple of polar bear scientists out for a days birdspotting (that reads like they're polar bears who are also scientists?) anyway, luckily for us they were in contact with the authorities in Prudhoe Bay and called in the accident and said they would bring me to the hospital.

Scavengers appeared quickly from nowhere looking for crash souvenirs.



On a more positive note, we were never gonna hit a tree

By this time Tony and Andy had caught up and proceeded to help Sue gather all our posessions up, repack the panniers and make sure the bike would start. They then moved it to the other side of the road and returned later that night to bring it back to the hotel. I was given a lift to the medical centre in Deadhorse by Craig and Tom, and Sue would follow later on the back of Tony's bike. BOB was left unceremoniously at the side of the road to be mocked by herds of passing caribou (who probably jeered and said something like, "yeeah..not going so fast now big boy")

How's your leg?.....SWELL!

In the meantime I was transferred to an ambulance outside Deadhorse and whisked off to the medical centre with lights and sirens, the whole lot (I suppose they don't get many emergency calls). So they put me on the operating trolley and were passing the time of day and the medic says "we better just x-ray that leg before we stitch you up" and Kerching!! I can see the dollar signs going round like a taxi meter I'm thinking "maybe just one of them big fat BandAids would be fine", anyway, before my pension is sucked dry I have to ask: "Excuse me, I don't mean to sound ungrateful but how much is all his going to cost?"..nothing..not a cent, she tells me that the only medical facility of any note for 500 miles is owned by BP, that's British Petroleum...I'm British, that means I probably own some of that somewhere down the line......."and relax sir, roll down your pants I'm just going to give you a tetanus shot just in case" "Go ahead" says I "at these prices I'll take two"!!!

Sometimes when these things happen you get lucky, sometimes you don't. I'd like to think that this was some kind of payback for stopping to give the guy a lift back to his bike after he ran out of petrol, either way in spite of the crash today had been our lucky day........