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| Day One: The Adventure Begins |
| Opening Ceremonies was inspirational, if not a bit cheesy at times... 6:00am and we're off with full police escort and all lights blocked for our Fairbanks departure! |
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| My friend, Andrew, and I just after Opening Ceremonies and getting ready to ride out! |
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| Our first stop is Santa Claus House at the North Pole! I made it through to lunch without any major drama... the road is flat and the weather is spectacularly beautiful!!! |
| Lunch is a welcome break. My arse is beginning to hurt... Good food though, so that's a bonus. From outpost 2 to 3, we begin to climb our first hills. They said this day was flat, but I'm struggling to get up them and beginning to question my sanity for having volunteered to subject myself to this... En route to Outpost 4, I ride the longest 20 miles of my life. My legs are beginning to cramp and I have sharp, shooting pains running from my bum down my legs into my feet. I am cursing aloud with regularity at this point and vowing to never sit on a bike again at the end of the ride... I stagger into camp after my first 100 miles a short 11 hours after leaving Fairbanks. Whew! |
| Wasn't that fun? Who wants to go again? My bum is in agony but I'm stoked to have made it! |
| If you look really closely, you can almost see the mountains in the distance... In reality, they were an awesome sight to behold - mammoth, towering, hulking, snow-capped giants in the distance...so huge they create their own weather. |
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| Taking a break along the Tanana River. The milky, shallow glacial streams braid their way across the tundra, just above the permafrost. How cool that I am here!!! |
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