The Rise Up Ride: Day 113-114, Cashing in the Wooden Nickel from Montana
Date: 13 August 2021
Start Location: Harding Lake State Recreational Area
End Location: Delta Junction and Tok, Alaska
Distance: 90 km
Time: 5:04
Total elapsed: 5:47
Elevation: 603 m
The rain returned at dawn, just light enough to make striking the tent a wet messy affair. And, in my hurry to get down the road I passed up a non-potable well, mistakenly assuming that there would be drinkable water somewhere over the next 90 km. Welcome to the Alaska Highway, where services are less frequent than when there were frontier outposts a day's ride apart. Today everything is designed for vehicles that can cover 100 km in an hour, not 15. I rode for almost six hours across Eastern Alaska, foolishly hoping that the next wide spot in the road would have water, food, anything.
Back in June, after leaving Darby and heading down the Bitterroot Valley Trail towards Missoula, a colorful guy with bright red panniers and an obnoxiously loud orange hi-vis vest riding up the trail called out, "Hey, are you Kimo? Jim says hi." I was going to stop anyway because I hadn't seen many cyclists in the last few days, but this was a shocker. Seems John Sloan had been coming up the path from Missoula, pedaling alongside Jim Sayer (who was turning off, heading up Lolo Pass) and Jim knew that I was riding down from Chief Joseph Pass. Jim convinced John to surprise me with a greeting (which he did!) and we started chatting. He was riding the TransAm to see his daughter, who lives in Lander, Wyoming. (What a way to make an entrance!) John, from Alaska, invited me to come visit if I was ever in Delta Junction where he owned a drive-in, and even gave me a wooden nickel that was good for a free small ice-cream. I've carried that coin safely in my drybag all the way from Montana to Alaska, and today I was riding, triumphantly, into Delta Junction to cash in my wooden nickel!
The ride was visually stimulating but a tedious slough up and over low rollers while I got hungrier and thirstier. At any point I could have stopped at a stream, filtered water and cooked up some dehydrated sealable envelope of food product, but I just couldn't believe that this major transportation corridor through a lush forest and arctic wetlands would have the population density and traveler services of the Mojave Desert. I just kept riding in the blithe hope that a wide spot in the road ahead might contain a red glowing neon "OPEN" sign. It never did.
John and I had kept in touch after our meeting in Montana. At Shawn's home in Missoula that night in June, I'd told the story of Jim's excellent trail prank and shown Frosene his photo. "Oh, my God, that's John Sloan. We've been riding together for the past week! He's a great guy!" I've now come to realize just what a great guy he is.
John was waiting for me in the grocery store parking lot and, together with Liam, another cyclist riding down the Alcan and facing similar Canadian border issues, we drove to his home just outside of town.
John and Linda, both schoolteachers, had broken down on the Alcan decades ago and set down roots. They raised kids, taught school, ran a successful drive-in restaurant from June through September, lived in a log cabin they built while they built a nicer home just up the hill. Liam and I occupied the first and they had us up to the second for a huge spaghetti dinner.
Liam @liam_theimpaler is on a fantastic adventure, riding alone at seventeen from Prudhoe Bay only accompanied by his 280,000+ online followers. He's sponsored by Taco Bell and trying to be the youngest solo rider to do the PanAm but had similar border issues. Both of us needed a negative COVID-19 test and then had 72 hours to get to the border, several days away by bicycle.
John loaded all of our gear and bicycles into his camper, drove us to the Clinic for a quick negative swab, then to his own restaurant for a huge lunch at picnic tables on the lawn in the sunshine on a perfect (and rare in Eastern Alaska) warm summer day. I've had many a great hamburger over the years and the one that I had at John Sloan's Buffalo Drive-in was one of the best. And I cashed in my wooden nickel for a free ice cream (but John let me keep the coin for sentimental reasons.)
Fueled and positively negative on the COVID front, John and Linda dropped us down the road in Tok, just close enough to the Canada border so we could make it in three days-time time. Liam and I parted ways as he headed to a town with a post office where his mother had sent his passport. I found a B&B outside of Tok to prepare for the dash over the next two days across the Tenana Valley State Forest to Canada.
