Eagle, Alaska

In Chicken the night before, the proprietor of the mercantile/liquor store/bar/cafe asked if I was going up to Eagle, AK. "I suppose not, since I've never heard of it."

"Oh, you have the time, on *that* bike, you have to go. It's like this", she says as she makes back and forth motions with her hands. "You'll love it."

Alright, I'll add that to the list. And bright and early at 7:00 to pack the bike and head up to Eagle. Coffee first, though. Susan, the proprietor, had said to knock on the door of the cafe if I wasn't too early and she'd fix me up with coffee. As I walk down, titanium coffee cup in hand, an RV camper says, "they don't open until 7:30." I just nod. You see, I'm "in" with the owner.

I knock, Susan opens, I walk in. "I think it's a little weak", she says, "try it and let me know what you think." Yeah, it's a little watery. She said she'd run it through the grounds again. I tell her I'm heading out, and thank her for her hospitality. "You still owe me $2 for the coffee, though." Fair enough.

Up the dirt road, and to the turn off for Eagle. Meh, it's 65 miles of dirt, and then 65 miles back since it's the only road in and out. I think I'll just skip it. A half mile later, I ask myself what the hell I'm doing out here if not to see where a road goes. That's the whole reason I went to Deadhorse, isn't it? To see where the road goes? Screw it, I'm going. 

As I turn the bike around, I do all the right things, swivel my head in the direction I want to go, ease the clutch out and turn the bike...and discover I'm in neutral. So there I am, sideways and taking up the entire lane, pointing such that I have a bit of difficulty getting the bike backed up. Thankfully the road has zero traffic at that hour, and finally succeed in heading to Eagle.

And thankfully I did. A month ago this road would have scared the shit out of me. Random gravel, tight and blind corners, 200 foot drops to the river below with no guard rail. But that was a month ago. I've since taken an off-road course and ridden the 830 miles of the round trip to Deadhorse, so my confidence is way up. Instead of the white-knuckle ride of terror it would have been not 30 days ago, it's a hoot.

Eagle, AK: not much to say. The public library, which is run by volunteers and open two hours a day, has WiFi. So I catch up on mail, sent a few texts, send off the blog updates. I notice two guys across the street working on a shed, so I ask them where to get a cup of coffee. They tell me, then like so many conversations I've had this trip we talk about where I'm from, where I've been, and where I'm going. One guys's wife, Geraldine, has a father that helped build this road. Before departing, Geraldine's husband tells me, "watch out for bears on the way out." I think, "oh, the cute little black bears I've been seeing?"

"Those grizzs will just come right out in the road, and they're fast."

All I could think of was Bill Paxton in the movie _Aliens_ when the dropship crashes in a ball of fire and screeching metal: "Well, that's just great, man! That's just fuckin' great!"

I get my coffee, swing by Fort Egbert, and then head on out. I never saw any grizzlies. I did see Mama Moose and Baby Moose in the middle of the road shortly after leaving town, though.

Now that I know the road holds no surprises, I am tearing it up. Experienced dirt riders would laugh at my pathetic slowness, but for me I'm flying. Kick the tail out with the throttle in the corners until the traction control says, "that will be enough of that, Mr. Stewart" and just doing stuff I wouldn't imagine when I bought the bike.

On through the easiest border crossing I've ever had and onto Dawson. I figure I'd take the ferry across the river, grab some dinner and find a place to camp. As I coast down to the ferry, I see two guys waving at me, pretty enthusiastically actually. Either they're big BMW fans, or just friendly folk. As I wait in line at the ferry, it's Chris and Virgil again that were waving. Small world, sure, but this is pretty weird. I ask them where they're staying, and they're at the public campground that I just passed.

Instead going to town for supper, I just eat out of my panniers. Freeze-dried lentils and rice, and fire-roasted vegetables. Works for me. After supper, I wander down to Chris and Virgil's campsite, made obvious by the bikes that I'm now seeing for the third time this trip. I end up hanging out until midnight swapping stories. Well, listening to their stories is more like it. My stories are still kind of lame. But they're stories have me in stitches. Virgil riding down a trail until it gets so narrow that he can't turn the bike around, so he gently lays it on the ground and spins it around on the cylinder head (BMW flat-twin cylinders stick out to the side). His buddy Chris is apparently the nuttier one of the bunch, and he has more gnarly stories complete with pictures of his bike in places I'd never dare go. Of course in the course of the stories, bikes end up on their sides, body parts get dislocated, body parts get put back into their proper places using bungie cords and some pulling ("my thumb was pornographically long"). I should have been in bed long ago, and I'll regret this, but it was well worth it.