Moving right along...

I packed early today. I seem to be consistently bad at "reading" the time based on this Land of the Midnight Sun thing. Don't know why but when the sky gets light I wake up. Problem is it's only 4:30! My hotel rooms thus far have not had clocks and the electrical outlets where I place my phone for charging purposes are typically not by the night stand. So I wake up, thinking it looks like 7 a.m. (and it does LOOK like 7 a.m.), go to my phone and find out it's only 4:30, then try to go back to sleep.

It ain't workin' so good!

Slipped out of Destruction Bay before 7. It wasn't raining (that's a good thing!) but it was 37degrees (that's not a good thing). I should have quizzed Eddie on how to stay warm. I bet he has every gizmo made for comfort on a motorcycle! I guess some things you just have to learn the hard way.

Because of my late afternoon ride in the rain yesterday my shoes were once again wet. (Note to Alicia - they ARE the only shoes I have with me, unless you count my white heels, which I only get wet on very special occasions)😜

They were almost dry this morning! 

The road conditions have worsened since I got on the AlCan (or as they call it now, the Alaska Highway - where do they come up with this stuff?) If you've never travelled the AlCan, let me explain it to you, as I now know it.

Construction on the AlCan started during WWII, probably for military reasons. The road was opened in 1947 but no one was brave enough to attempt it until 1948, when 17 year old Siegfried Jones (probably an Irishman) took a wrong turn in Dawson Creek, British Columbia and entered the AlCan at milepost 0. Little did he know that, in a fit of government mismanagement, the Canadian Government had neglected to build off ramps!

When a 28 year old S. Jones registered at a Motel 6 in Delta Junction, Alaska, with his little white fluffy dog (who not only was born during the trip but conceived too - but that's another story for another time) no one realized that he had completed the first transcontinental trek on the AlCan. Because he was good and mad by this time he intended to go straight to parliament with a plan he had hatched during his trip. He was going to publish a book called Mile Post, that listed landmarks at one mile intervals across the entire length of the AlCan. Being good and mad, and having held this grudge over the entire 11 year journey, he was going to keep all of the proceeds from his book and not give any member of the Canadian Parliament, or Sarah Palin, a kickback. Unfortunately, blinded by his rage, he mistakenly turned onto the AlCan headed east.

When he arrived in Ottawa in 1970 (still no off-ramps) and presented his devious plan to Parliament they knew that this was bad. Allowing someone to make money without giving a kickback to a government official would throw the whole system into chaos. The very next day Parliament signed the White Paper on Metric Conversion.

Now when you travel the highway, locations are listed by mileage from Dawson Creek, but the markers along the road are in kilometers. That is until you reach the Canadian/U.S. Border where the markers become mile posts. Unfortunately, a mile is 1.609 kilometers and, due to rounding off, there is a 35 mile gap in the measured distance and that which is stated on the markers. The 35 miles of the AlCan highway is being kept in a room at the Smithsonian next to the 18 minutes of the Nixon Tapes and Trumps tax returns.

Because of the short Orange Barrel Season in the frozen tundra it is difficult to repair the annual frost heaves, but it is not difficult to mark them. This is because the barrels are manufactured and shipped from nearby Barrel, Alaska. Many of the barrels are cleverly disguised as an orange flag on a wooden stick. When you see an orange marker on your side it means there is a dip, bump, gravel or broken pavement on your side of the road - slow down. When you see a marker on both sides of the road it means that the  obstruction goes all the way across the road - slow down. When you see an orange marker only on the other side of the road it means Siegfried Jones was there the night before stealing orange flags again - slow down! They'll catch him eventually.

The nice thing about traveling the AlCan on a motorcycle is that you can follow an RV down the road. When they hit a bump, simply count the pieces that fall off and use that number to gauge the severity of the bump!

The road has been, for the most part, decent. Bad sections are often grouped together to make sure you don't have time to recover entirely after hitting the first bump at 90. This is another ploy of the Canadian Government. They carefully calculate the placement of speed reduction signs to be sure there is not sufficient time to divide the posted speed by 1.666 to determine the actual numeric speed limit before reaching the obstacle that was the cause of the speed reduction in the first place. The other part of this devious plot is the little known fact that no metric speed limit, divided by 1.666 gives a number that appears on a standard speedometer dial!

Example, you're traveling along at 90 when you come to a sign that has a 50 on it with an arrow pointing skyward. Now this could be interpreted in one of two ways. First, they are bringing to your attention the fact that a P50 fighter plane is, at that exact minute, flying directly over your head. (The reason the "P" does not appear on the sign is that there is no metric equivalent to the letter P). This is however a possibility easily discarded by anyone of average intelligence, i.e. not the average driver.

The second possibility is that the speed limit is being reduced "ahead", the arrow is pointing to the top of the human body where there is "a head". The 50 is then divided by 1.666, borrow a seven, cross multiply by the square root of... Thud!

I'm staying at the Grizzly Lake Campground in a lovely little cottage.

 The cottage has everything except privacy. There are no curtains except those little French things that hang down 6 inches or so from the curtain rod (a metric curtain?) 

The campground typically caters to the RV crowd which, apparently, brings their own food. After checking in I was told the closest restaurant is 53 miles down the road! Thus went my day 😟

Tomorrow I will ride an hour south, eat breakfast, then continue to Eagle River where I will stay with Scott and Bev. I don't have any idea what we'll do but every day with the Pressman's is an adventure!