Ride on, Highway Cat !!: Alaska Highway road crew

DAY 3, Fri. Aug 28, 2015
Whitehorse - Otter Falls Cutoff. 123 km Alaska Hwy16.6 km avg., 7.5 hrs. headwind/rain

Started the morning with a huge breakfast at the motel restaurant. It was great except for the hard foreign body that I bit into. Possibly a ceramic fragment or stone. I don't know, but it got me a free $12.00 omelet. They were great about it. I will surely regret eating this much...
I asked the staff to hold my bike box for when I return from my trip. They did just that.
I headed out 9 ish. knowing that my goal was more 7 ish. sigh. It was a crappy start. Wind, rain and an upset Gastrointestinal system. (yes I was right about the big breakfast) So, I felt terrible for much of the day. The road conditions were crap and the headwind was cool. Dammitt.
Hardly any traffic on this road. I felt quite alone for hours.
Unfortunately, my bicycle fitness was almost zero. I had only ridden a few times in the past 6 months. A very unusual year for me indeed. A pain in my knee was surfacing and I began a downward spiral into slow cadence syndrome. Up until this point in my life, I had never had any kind of knee pain, even through times of ultra marathon training.
Anyway, I pedalled on pathetically..
I noticed a vehicle coming towards me in the Eastbound lane. It was slowing with the window down. We both stopped. He yelled out something to the effect of, "Do you need anything, water, food, tools?" I looked at my supply and noticed I was down 700 ml of water, so he topped me up. I couldn't think of anything else. I was dumbfounded. I guess you had to be there. A lonely desolate hwy. in the wilderness with very little traffic for hours and you happen upon an adventure tour vehicle fully stocked and a friendly Australian accented dude offering assistance. A similar situation happened to me years ago, riding back from Ironman Canada Penticton BC to Vancouver. These situations are priceless.
Anyway, I failed in getting to Haines Junction as I decided to crash at Otter Falls Cutoff. A truck stop with a diner and a really pathetic campground. (I use the word campground loosely) I was toast from the relentless cold wind and the unexpected knee pain.
Setting up the tent involved some swearing as it was more like hang gliding. No, not SOME swearing, MUCH swearing.
I paid for a hot shower. But got a cold one. My core temp was too low for this shit. After more swearing, the water seemed to warm up a bit. Anyway, I spent a lot of time in the diner as it was basically shelter. They had a TV mounted on an otherwise big empty wall. Continuous reality shows like "Highway Hell" or something like that. I just held my warm terrible coffee and stared blankly at the screen waiting for tomorrow...

Leaving Whitehorse... Finally!

Hey. Let's go for a bike ride. Yay!!

""Who ya gonna call?"

Crappy pic, but gotta include it. "Why is it so damn cold?" and no, that's not a fish finder on my helmet. It's a GPS locator. Actually it's a Grizzly Bear lure. Ya, that's it

We were sing'n "Highway to Hellll" The pic doesn't show how crappy the surface is. I'm not complaining. Just 7.5 hours of rough road with a headwind, knee pain and bowel discomfort. Isn't this the standard summer vacation?