18. AK, BC & YT — Out to Sea

The ferryboat from Haines was newer than the one to Skagway. In particular, there was no tent deck. That meant I had to break regulations and sneak into the observation deck after lights out to sleep. I don’t remember anything else about the first day except trying to read a book by Dean Koontz. It was not a good one. It was one tediously descriptive paragraph after another. It was so bad that I ripped it in two and threw it in the trash. I didn’t want to have some other poor devil waste their time coming to the same conclusion.

According to my notes, I got off the ferry for a walk when we got to Ketchikan. The town was dead as it was Sunday. I had a submarine sandwich and went back to the ferry and watched a sailboat race out in the channel.

The first thing I actually remember was hearing our foghorn at 4:30 am the next morning. We had taken the outside route because the open ocean was calm due to no wind. Of course, that’s why it was foggy out there. The fog lifted around 5:30 am. By then, I had eaten the grapefruit and two muffins I bought in Ketchikan and had some coffee.

The lubrication pump for the reduction gear on one propeller shaft quit running somewhere near Port Hardy. We were now making 8 knots instead of the usual 15.7. They got the emergency power for that shaft running during the night. Now our speed was up to 12 knots.

That would make us three hours late to Bellingham. Cellphones and cellphone service were still a rarity out there back then so I couldn’t contact Charlie. He would just have to wait around for me. (Now that I think about it, there might have been a way. Charlie was a retired Coast Guard captain. I might have been able to have the ship contact the Coast Guard who would have been able to contact Charlie. Oh, well.)

We were treated to Orca Whales spouting and playing along the way. Then we finally got to Bellingham. On the drive back to Mount Lake Terrace, Charlie and I stopped for lunch at Susan’s place in Everett. Susan and Dan came down there the next day for dinner. Barb, Ken, and the kids gave me a ride back to Spokane. They had spent a week at The Breakers down by Ocean Shores.

That was the end of my first epic bicycle tour. The next one was going to be from Surprise, AZ to Key West, Florida. And after that, I was going to make a grand tour of BC. But my heart troubles interfered with those plans. I did make a couple of short tours from Spokane, which I may write about later.

======= Epilogue =======

I was very pleased to stumble on the Yukon Sights blog by Sue Thomas. She has 70% of the pictures that were on my eight rolls of Kodachrome that fell into a black hole. I learned in one of the posts that she grew up in Beaver Creek. I did learn that her dad carved the airstrip there out of woods. [Beaver Creek region]

I’ve remembered an amusing experience at the Beaver Creek border station. I rode up on my bike and presented my passport at the window. The agent spotted my bear spray mounted on the handlebars. Canada requires that any bear spray that you bring in meets their specific requirements. They are very fussy about guns and bear spray there.

The giveaway was mine was not the usual size. I handed it to him and explained that I had bought it in Dawson City. He didn’t believe me so I explained further that it was a second-hand canister I bought at a sporting goods store on 3rd or 4th street. Suddenly he disappeared into the interior of the station. Maybe he checked my story in Dawson City. Maybe he asked his superior, I don’t know. He returned after a while, said it was not legal, and handed it back to me. Strange.

I came to the conclusion in Haines that a guy I met early on the tour was indeed putting me on. He had news about impassable construction on Haines Road, a big forest fire, and bears. Supposedly food was so scarce that summer they were resorting to “grabbing people.” I listened politely but severely doubted his stories. I had heard nothing further about those events by the time I got to Haines, and there was no construction of any kind on Haines Road. Fake News.