Day 22: Battle Mountain NV

Hurrah!  Long-time competitors, organisators, volunteers and general Good Eggs Carole and George Leone have arrived, bringing with them five Penniless Student Oaves from Cal Poly, who are anxious to build a bike for the WHPSC rather than mucking about with the American Society of Mechanical Engineers' event.  In which most machines are described by Professor Sir Generalissimo Nogami as "Lawn chairs with wheels".  Retirement is clearly taking its toll on George, as he is building a scale replica of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, to conceal a tank of some kind in their garden.  When finished it will even have scale climbers on it, complete with rope.  No-one give this man a plate of mashed potatoes lest he start to channel his inner Richard Dreyfus.

Half Dome in 2003, yesterday

Tuesday morning was basically a repeat of Monday night, albeit with slightly fewer visitations from the P*nct*r* Fairy.  This time she only visited Andrea, who decked Taurus around the three mile mark.  Larry Lem declined to risk Wahoo's shiny paintwork in the wind and didn't start.  Newcomer Valina Sintalova, riding the repaired second-string Toronto bike Bluenose, launched but went down almost immediately for reasons variously attributed to aliens, wild horses and Bigfoot.  And Jennifer Breet dropped VeloX 8 at catch when her main monitor decided to turn its display umop-ap!sdn.  But at least I have figured out¹ how to make my camera run in burst mode, or whatever Olympus call it, so was actually able to get pictures of the bikes passing timing without having to reply on luck.

Michael Head of the Liverpool team recreates a famous moment from movie history.  Leonardo de Caprio just out of shot.

Jennifer Breet in VeloX 8 exits timing

After the morning debrief it's time for the Show'n'Shine, when the Small People are traditionally loosed upon the assembled team to poke their little jammy fingers into the nethermost reaches of the bikes.  Pour encourager les autres, Lander County's Convention and Tourism folks - led by the inestimable Paula Tomera - lay on a free buffet lunch.  I had two, which is why I'm typing this now instead of propping up a table at one of the local restaurants.  But I managed to take a few pictures before before sore feet and jammy fingers drove me back to the Super 8, where lack of other folks allowed the Intertubes to upload said pictures without squishing them.  I think the camera automatically reduces the size anyway when it's shooting in rapid-fire mode.

CO2 before the application of Little Jammy Fingers

Small-pitch industrial chain for Altaïr 6's final drive

When I woke up after my afternoon snooze, the good news was that Danny Guthrie had made it into town to help at timing and produce more of his fabulous pictures of the desert sky.  The bad news was that it was windier than ever, but we all traipsed out to the course anyway, because:

• it's about fifteen miles away and the weather can be quite different out there, and
• the wind usually drops the later it gets, and
• some people know no fear

In the latter category was Jennifer, who remained upright but lost her chain and only managed just under 59 mph in an evil crosswind.  Not in the latter category was Larry, who declined to risk Wahoo's shiny paintwork in the wind and didn't start.  I am beginning to sense a theme here.  Matthias made a "not-pushing" run at 48 and a bit; Fabien Canal was less cautious and did 62.07 in Altaïr 6.  Just under 100 km/h chiz.  All three are capable of a lot more with more experience and/or less wind.

Matthias König/VeloX XS, not pushing

Fabien Canal/Altaïr 6, pushing quite a bit

For the final heat the wind did the hoped-for trick, with Lucy the anemometer showing wind speeds of under 100 ft/s for the first time this week.  Andrea duly obliged with an 82.80 mph run.  7th rider over 80 mph, 4th fastest rider ever (a fraction behind Sam Whittingham).  Lieke did 74.21, Ellen 70.64 and Ishtey Amminger 60.94 for a new world record in the Junior Men's Multitrack category.  We also smuggled Calvin into the last heat; he ran 75.32 mph.  We want this low-slung revolving wheels high-speed trend to continue.

Andrea Gallo/Taurus, pushing a lot

Ishtey Amminger/CO2, pushing hard enough to claim a world record

Sorry for the picture quality of the above but the light was a bit lacking.  And Idiot Boy neglected to zoom in close enough.

CNN have a film crew in da 'hood.  Russell Bridge reckons the threat of exposure on national TV has caused DHL to pull their collective finger out and get the Soup Dragon to Reno tomorrow morning.  We are keeping our wossnames crossed but will only believe it when the bike passes tech inspection.

1: Lie.  I read the fucking manual.

Day 21: Battle Mountain NV

Jun: So how was Alaska? See any BEARS?
Me: It was pretty cool, but the only BEARS I saw were in Canada.
Arnold: That's because they have better healthcare!

Maybe you had to be there.  Anyway, off we went into the pre-dawn dark to set timing Stuffs up.  This is actually pretty straightforward once Jun has remembered how it all goes together, that the light beam gadgets need batteries in them and that when using a plumb-line to make sure the sensors are set up exactly on the survey markers, that it helps if the said plumb-line is not two hundred metres away at the other end of the traps.  The current timing crew is Jun (important Stuffs), me (wind speed readings), Marieke Ligtvoet (radio goddess and hammer-wielder) and Garrie Hill, who sits at the start of the measured 200m and periodically waves his hand in front of the light beam to check it all works.

We also had some spiffy flags on big poles, which fit into tubes attached to spikes that are hammered into the dirt:

Marieke Thorsdottir

and a new wind speed meter, unfathomably called "Lucy", which we haven't figured out how to work properly yet.  We're sticking with the old one for now.  And among the things I didn't know before is that the roll of paper in the printer is wedged into place with a bar of soap robbed from the Super 8.

Once these things are sorted out, we can actually start on time and in budget.  The wind was not cooperative for the early runners and only four of the twelve runners had a reading below the permitted maximum.  This being qualifying over the short course it mostly didn't matter too much, though had Karen Darke had legal wind, her 39.11 mph would have smashed the existing women's arms-only record by about 15 mph chiz.

ARION 4 passing through timing

Fastest of all was Andrea Gallo in Taurus, whose 69.7 mph run was the second fastest ever on the short course.  Both Lieke de Cock and Jennifer Breet, sharing the HPT Deft/Amsterdam machine VeloX 8, were also over 60, as was Matthias König in VeloX XS.  Greg Cantori, riding a stock Milan SL velomobile, did a respectable - and legal - 53.15 mph but there is a distinct possibility he's going to have to fly back to the east coast to save his boat from an impending series of hurricanes heading that way.  Several people have expressed an interest in having a run in the Milan in his absence.  The only issue was suffered by Junior trike rider Ishtey Amminger, who dropped the chain in Garrie Hill's CO2, fortunately close enough to a ranch road as to be able to pull over without drama.

Greg Cantori/Milan SL

Andrea Gallo/Taurus.  Prettier with the red nose it had last year, IMHO...

We were actually back in town by 10:00, which is normally when we're supposed to be packing up out on 305.  Lazy afternoon of watching Larry Lem stickering-up the Wahoo, feeding quarters into the washing machine and the drier, and catching up on sleep.  Or not, such as when Marieke set off the Mustang's alarm and couldn't figure which button to press to turn it off.

Something fishy going on here (ba-dum,tish)

Monday evening was something of a contrast to the morning session.  People weren't where they were supposed to be, delaying the start and things just snowballed from there.  Andrea was the first rider to start in the final heat, at 19:00.  Which is when out permit from the Department of Transportation says we're supposed to be finished.  No-one had a wind-legal run.  And Matthias, Calvin Moes in Eta Prime and Ken Talbot in ARION 4 all suffered punctures; both Matthias and Calvin crashing at speed.  Both riders are undamaged and the bikes should just need a bit of sanding and polishing, but Eta Prime look as though it would never stop spinning on its side.  "I was starting to get bored" Calvin observed later.

Once again Andrea was fastest, at 78.05 mph in spite of narrowly avoiding a couple of substantial deer strolling across the road.  The first, he said, was about 15m ahead of the bike.  The second was somewhat closer.  "I look on screen - only black!"  Both VeloX 8 riders was also over 70 mph wit Ellen van Vugt not far behind.  Light conditions in the evening do not appear to play nicely with my camera, so I suppose I'll have to RTFM.

Jennifer Breet/VeloX 8, testing the limits of my camera

The latest word on the Soup Dragon fiasco is, according to team member Barney Townsend:

Update on the Soup Dragon delivery by DHL: there is no update! After many depressing hours on hold on the phone today the result is that they “think” it’s still in the Cincinnati hub but they can’t be sure. And they claim that they have no phone number for that depot and can only contact them by email which has a 6 hour response time limit. So we won’t get another update until tomorrow morning.

In the meantime, Russ has been getting used to the camera business by riding an Optima Baron using his phone held in front of his face.  A prize for the rudest term that "DHL" might be short for.  "Drop it, Hide it, Leg it" is not snarky enough.

Day 20: Battle Mountain NV

The calm before a weekend of late nights, early mornings and swearing.  Civilised breakfast followed by a trip out to the course to finish setting Stuffs up - mostly the boards zip-tied to the Armco on the bridge just after the finish line to prevent errant bikes getting caught in the gap 'twixt barrier and road.  The good news is than we have a spiffy new parking area right at the measured 200 metres.

The bad news is that the access road was built smack where one of the tripods holding the timing apparatus has to stand.  Mr Professor Sir Generalissmo Timelord Jun Nogami has noted that anyone knocking the tripod over will be executed and buried in the desert, where "there is plenty of room".

Back to town in Arnold's highly growly Mustang.  I'm sure it makes more noise than mine did last year.  Many of The Usual Suspects have been arriving at the Super 8 and jumping to the obvious, and wrong, conclusion.  For comparison:

Which one looks like it's been to Alaska and back, eh?  EH??  I then spent a lot of time doing not much over at the Civic Center while Arnold and Hans van Vugt conducted technical inspections of everyone who was ready i.e. everyone except IUT Annecy (rider not yet able to make the thing stay upright) Universidad la Salle (bike apparently not ready yet) and London South Bank University¹(bike still 2/3 of a continent away).

Hang around trash-talking outside the motel.  Sample dialogue:

Volunteer X²: I have a girlfriend now.
Volunteer Y: Did you build her?

Naughty Mr Jackson oops what a giveaway.  Thence back to the Civic Center for the pre-event introductions and pep-talk.  Organisators Al'n'Alice Krause have got this down to a fine art by now, so it only took an hour and a quarter if you exclude the additional form-filling, which we veterans had done earlier in the day so as to stand a sporting chance of actually getting to eat before bedtime.  Though the cunning Frenchies had gone one better by phoning in their order in advance.

In the absence of Danny Guthrie at least for the start of the week - sidelined by a serious forest fire threatening his father's neighbourhood in northern California, I have wangled myself a place in timing for now.  This is good because it means I get to see the machines running flat-out, but bad because Jun say we have to leave at 06:00 tomorrow to make sure everything it A-OK before anyone actually starts riding.  Oh.  Time for bed.

1: Hereinafter referred to as LSBU, to save electrons
2: Names omitted to protect innocent and guilty alike

Day 19: Klamath Falls OR - Battle Mountain NV

Today could only get better after discovering the lift was out of order.  I was on the fourth floor and had parked That Shitbox Dodge having paid due consideration to the location of the lift.  Miles away from the stairs next to my room.  Bah!

The drive from Klamath Falls to Battle Mountain is so forgettable that I found I had indeed forgotten large chunks of it, and will probably have done so again by tomorrow.  There's a chunk of agriculture for a bit then a brief interlude of forest, and then after that it all looks like this:

Pretty smoky on the way over from the fires in northern California but it started to clear about fifty miles northeast of Winnemucca and here it's hust a bit hazy.  A few of the usual suspects have already been encountered loitering around the Super 8 - Garrie Hill, John Jackson and an assortment of Lems - plus there are a couple of gert big crates outside, one of which contains VeloX 8 and the other, we think, Taurus.  On the other hand, it has been reported elsewhere that the Soup Dragon - the Mike Burrows/Glen Thompson co-production entered under the auspices of South Bank University and to be ridden by Russell Bridge, is stuck in Customs.  In Cincinnati,  Which is shut for the weekend.  Since DHL claim to have delivered it to $HOTEL in Las Vegas prior to being transported up here, someone needs a good shoeing.

Not much else to report yet, except that the trip meter wossname in That Shitbox Dodge resets itself to 0 after 10,000 km :-)  And the internets in the Super 8 are not yet clogged with Penniless Student Oaves doing Social Media, so that picture ^^^^ actually uploaded pretty sharpish at full resolution.  I doubt this state of affairs will persist for long, mind.

Day 18: Troutdale OR - Klamath Falls OR

So, yes, our mission today is to do the West Cascades Scenic Byway that we didn't do last year because of burny fiery DETH everywhere.  But first, no visit to this area would be complete without a visit here:

Dunno how I missed it last year, but it does mean that in the past couple of months I've been to both Boring and Twatt.

The first bit of the aforementioned scenic byway, if you're starting at the northern end in the Clackamas River Highway (sic - it makes the average BRITISH B-road look like the Ventura Freeway).  I got really quite a long way down this last year before finding a Ford Crown Victoria parked across the road with a man inside inviting me to fuck off back the way I had come, adding about a hundred miles to the route.  But he wasn't there this time, and nor was the smoke which made the whole thing even more grim.

The Breitenbach River.  Use your Junior Pocket Microscope (Model 3a) to count the ducks.

The Breitenbach River had a family of ducks in it.  Mummy Duck, Daddy Duck and n Ducklets.  Until some unidentified feathery pirate dropped out of the sky, after which there were n-1.  This bit ends at Detroit.  No, not that one.  No car factories or Motown studio here.  Just OR-22, on which I had the misfortune to be stuck behind a Chevy van driven by someone with a haphazard idea of lane discipline - worrying as there's only one in each direction - and a haircut which, in silhouette, bore an altogether remarkable resemblance to that formerly sported by footballer Jason Lee:

I managed to overtake Jason before heading onto US-20 and then OR-126.  Last year the weather was starting to look distinctly not-convertible-friendly; this year it was still gloriously warm and sunny on reaching the Sahalie Falls on the McKenzie River.  Parts of them look like this:

Approaching McKenzie Bridge, however, the sky was turning a bit, well, smoky.  Surely the NF-19, aka the Aufderheide Forest Drive could not be closed again?

Oh.  Aufderheide?  Arsederscheisse, more like!  Back onto 126 towards Springfield and fifty extra miles.  Though I did get to see this, which was nice.

And so onto US-58, which is nice to look at but lumpy and twisty and not provided with sufficient passing lanes, so when you are second in the queue behind some roaster towing one of those collapsable caravan contraptions which is a foot wider than his mirrors, thereby preventing him from seeing the mile-long queue of Angry People being Angry as his speed varied, seemingly randomly, between 35 and 60 mph, you get angry too.  "If only there had not been burny fiery DETH, I would have missed all this nonse" I thought, before realising that the south end of the Aufderheide debouches onto US-58 anyway.  D'oh.

Still, Emily tells me that all I have to do is keep driving along US-58 until I'm 400 yards from my destination.  "Hurrah!" I thought.  "At least I won't have to do that detestable bit of US-97 which I have grown to hate bigly over the years!"  Shortly thereafter, the 58 merges with the 97 in a manner subtle enough not to attract Emily's attention.  Piss.  It's enough to make you do this:

Anyway I'm here now and it's only 600 km to Battle Mountain.  Unless Mike Sova can't get anyone else to give him a lift from Reno, in which case it's 800.

Day 17: Penticton BC - Troutdale OR

I bounced out of bed with vim, vigour and something else beginning with "v" and into the shower.  Arse!  It is one of those where the difference between "cooking lobster" and "Scott of the Antarctic" is about 1/8".  But on the plus side, the bedside light is clever, in that you only have to touch its base to switch in on or off, so no more frantic groping for the switch in the middle of the night when you can't remember the route to the bathroom.

Today's mission was two-fold:

• Enter USAnia and stay there, as opposed to a brief sojourn followed by a one-way ticket to Guantanamo Bay.
• See the Columbia River gorge, as opposed to a thick cloud of smoke where it is alleged to be.

#1 turned out not to be a problem.  I expect having already been in a United State on this trip helped.  Albeit one containing a numbskull flying a Confederate flag from his pickup.  Hello?  When the Confederates lost the Civil War, Alaska was still art of Russia, you hoofwanking bunglecunt.  Anyway, the orchards and vineyards of the Okanagan soon gave way to the orchards and vineyards of the Okanogan as, for no readily apparent reason, the name changes when you cross the 49th parallel.  And they don't last long before the resident flora turns into a slightly more lush of that to be found around Battle Mountain.

Emily picks what looks like a slightly convoluted route, but she assures me it's the quickest.  It involves climbing over lots of hills which the Columbia River prefers to skirt; hills which often make southern New Mexico look like a National Park.

Across the Mighty Columbia for the first time just downstream of Chief Joseph Dam.  There are pelicans:

Click to embiggen, or use your trusty Junior Pocket Microscope (Model 3a)

On the other side of the hill lies the Grand Coulee, which is not dammed by the Grand Coulee dam, no, and instead is a rather nice canyon with lakes in it, and at one end Dry Falls, which is a relic of some catastrophic flooding at the end of the last Ice Age.

Then you hit I-90.  This being the first even remotely freeway-ish road I've been on since leaving Fairbanks, it's a bit disconcerting at first.  Especially because the great tool who designed That Shitbox Dodge's dashboard did the MPH markings in dark red digits.  Tiny dark red digits.  On a black background.  I have to rely on Emily to translate the speed limits.  I-90 gives way to I-82 over more hills and the Columbia River a second time, on one of these;

That pic is from 2015 but the bridge is still the same.  At the same time, I discover that on one of my photographic walkabouts, I have imported about twenty goathead thorns into the driver's footwell.  These are discovered, one at a time, when they stick into my bare feet, causing Bad Swears until they can be thrown out of the window.

While yesterday was the first day of the trip on which I was neither smoked nor rained on, today was similar only better.  There was a bit of smoke around the Chief Joseph Dam but that was soon left behind.  And it was 15C first thing, topping out at 33 this afternoon.  Hurrah!  Which meant stopping for a fag in the depths of Horse Heaven was uncomfortably warm.  Bah!  The descent from Horse Heaven brings one to cross the Mighty Columbia for the third time and...

...it was free from smoke and every bit as impressive nestling in its gorge as the Tourist Information Offices make out.  It's a bit like the Rhine in the Koblenz/Bingen area but with more pickups and fewer barges¹.

Because I went down the Oregon side this time, which means I-84, stopping places are limited, but some notion may be gained from the pictures of lovely bridgey goodness snapped on the way.

Groovy lifting rail bridge just upstream from The Dalles

And so to Troutdale.  I stayed here a year and a day ago, when you wouldn't have seen the river if you fell in it, so that's goal #2 taken care of too.  Goal #3 requires intricate route planning through the forests of the Cascades, so I'll have to get cracking on that, like NOW.

1: Barge count: 0, though I'm told they do exist

Day 16: McBride BC - Penticton BC

As promised, the view from out the front door.  Note mountains with SNO on them.

Also outside the door, or rather above it, is this sign, carefully photographed in the rear window of That Shitbox Dodge to make it look more arty.

You will note, if you click the above fully to embiggen it, that while it warns of the hazards of falling H2O, it does *not* counsel the inattentive traveller not to tolchock his or her gulliver against the dangly flowerpot.  The bastards.

Hey-ho for BC-16 eastwards again.  More of the same, but with a deer either side of the road on leaving town.  They are the same colour as the unwiped portion of That Shitbox Dodge's rear window.  There was also evidence of a major lorry-versus-Bambi smooshing a bit further up the road.  I found myself wondering why the driver of the Ford F-150 in front of me did a swift three-point turn on passing the smoosh-stain and shot back towards McBride.  My suspicion was that he was looking for roadkill.

Turned off onto BC-5 just before Tete Jaune Cache, thereby avoiding venturing back into Alberta.  Lovely road.  A brief climb out the the Fraser River valley and into that of the North Thompson River, which means it's downhill pretty much all the way to Kamloops, which is a Good Thing from the perspective of fuel consumption.  The gophers living at the Thunder River rest area have taken up golf:

At another lay-by was this slightly shabby but sound-looking Citroen:

in marked contrast to the not-at-all-shabby river:

The first fruit stand and vineyard popped up about 40 km north of Kamloops; such things will form a major component of the scenery the way down to the border and beyond.  Kamloops bring navigational complications because it's the junction of a Several of main roads but eventually you get fired off up the valley of the South Thompson River.  By now the space between the trees is a lot larger than it was further north and it has a semi-desert look to it.  The pale-coloured cliffs along the opposite side of the river looks as though they were airlifted here from New Mexico.  However, the branch of BC-97 I wanted (for they are legion in these parts) climbs back into the hills and looks more like Colorado:

Monte Lake

Down into the Okanagan valley ad turn sharp right onto the minor road along the west side of said lake.  It's narrow and twisty and they're digging it up but the main road goes the other side of the hills on the east side, so you can't see the lake, and also smack through the middle of Kelowna.  Which you do not want to do at that time of day.  As noted in 2015, the lake is long, and monster-haunted, and here is a picture to prove it¹:

Ogopogo (circled); the Okanagan Lake monster

USAnia tomorrow, and hopefully:

• I will get to see the Columbia River gorge this time, and
• The NSA haven't tipped off the chaps at the border about all the beastly things I may have thought about the Fanta Menace.

Additional: Since I turned off the option to allows Windows to turn off the wifi adaptor on this box, the wifi adaptor has taken to turning itself off anyway.  I have just installed a new driver for the said network adapter.  If this does not fix it the screams of pent-up rage and fury will be audible in Fairbanks.

1: May contain traces of Lie

Day 15: Smithers BC - McBride BC

I have been here before.  The entirety of today's route being a replay of ground covered in 2015.  Then it was raining.  Today it was mostly sunny, though there was an attack of smoke west of Burns Lake and another hovering over Prince George.  But I get ahead of myself.

Examination of the plastic box in which I keep my stock of tea bags revealed a noticeable shortage of, well, the wherewithal to make The Cup That Cheers.  Assembling all available digits into some kind of arithmetical device indicated that I had done my sums wrong.

• I am in ABROAD, where the FOREIGNS come from, for a month
• Two mugs of tea per evening
• Two bags per mug, for the mug is large

Eighty tea bags will not be sufficient, will it?  Fortunately the prospect of a tea drought was staved off by the good offices of Safeway in Smithers, who sold me, for the princely sum of seven dollars and thirty-nine cents, this:

BC-16 as far as Prince George, when it's not hidden behind a cloud of smoke, is quite agricultural though there are still enough trees to support a heavy population of sawmills and the inevitable logging truck plague that goes with them.  And quite a lot of other traffic as well, which is definitely a novelty after such a long time in the wilderness.  BC does, however, have some cool roadside bins:

as well as this odd memorial thingy:

Named in 1913 after Tintagel, Cornwall, England.  The central stone in this cairn once formed part of the Norman walls of Tintagel Castle, reputed birthplace of King Arthur, Knight of the Round Table.

To Vanderhoof.  Vanderhoof claims to be the geographical centre of British Columbia.  It's more than 400 km as the crow flies from the coast and and >500 km north of the 49th parallel, which gives one some idea of just why it's taking me four days to get from Watson Lake to USAnia.

Prince George is by far the biggest place I've been to since leaving Anchorage and sits coughing under a cloud not entirely of its own making.  BC-16 soon emerges into the sunshine on the other side and back into the trees for most of the remaining 200-odd km to McBride.  The Rockies are doing their rearing-up trick in the distance and there are some quite nifty mountains surrounding McBride too, though the town nestles in the Robson Valley and has fields and cows and things in the vicinity.  If you're good, I'll show you the view from the North Country Lodge tomorrow.

Day 14: Dease Lake BC - Smithers BC

Things I learned today:  Canadian fag packets open sideways!

The wildlife tally is now up to three live BEARS (plus two dead ones), as well as yesterday's fox, a coyote on the outskirts of Whitehorse and an unidentified but vaguely feline-looking beastie cross the Klondike Highway the other day.  Too far away to spot many distinguishing features.  Today's live BEARS were determined not to be photographed.  One I only had a brief sight of as I was behind a bus-sized motorhome; the other got spooked by That Shitbox Dodge creeping up on him and ran off into the woods just as I was getting the camera pointed in the right direction.  I tried stopping at a rest area and making a noise like a bowl of porridge but no takers.

The Cassiar Highway south of Dease Lake is very much like the Cassiar Highway north of Dease Lake, though this morning I was sharing it with five Alaskan bikers at least until they stopped for breakfast after 100 km.

Though shortly after the Stikine River bridge, they have thrown in a kilometre or so of gravel just to keep the bikers on their toes - it being quite a steep and wiggly hill and - today at least - blanketed in low cloud.

The road heads pretty much due south,as confirmed by Emily's built-in compass and not by the similar gadget in That Shitbox Dodge.  At one point Emily had me - correctly - going south while TSD said I was going east???  Navigation did become easier at the halfway point of the Cassiar, though, because someone had managed to open BC Highways' tin of paint.

Which no doubt helped these two boy-racers at Bob Quinn Lake airport:

First of two junctions encountered in 600 km was at Meziadin Junction.  Straight on for Stewart and Hyder AK, but I went there in 2015 so turned left.  A few kilometres on I had intended to make use of the rest area at the Nass River bridge, but The Man is in the middle of replacing the old single lane bridge and the former rest area is full of Big Yellow Things doing nothing (for today is a Bank Holibob in Leftpondia).  The Nass River rest area was where I met Ursula and Farley for the first time in 2015, only to meet them again a couple of weeks later and a Several of hundreds of km away.

Ursula and Farley at Hells Gate in 2015.  Ursula is the one with the blue jumper.

Kitwanga brings civilisation or, put another way, cows.  These may actually be the first cows I've seen on the entire trip.  There is also a junction.  Left for the final run towards Smithers.  New Hazelton brings both the first traffic light in more than 1200 km and the sound of a lawnmower, for it is still just about summer down here.  And just like in 2015, Emily tries to knock 50 yards off the trip by diverting me through the residential bit of Moricetown.  This time I am not fooled and thus got to see this:

And so to Smithers.  The good news is that I am at the back of the building and thus away from BC-16, wot is the main road between the port of Prince Rupert and Prince George, the largest town in the area.  The bad news is that the railway line is on this side of the building too.  Bah!

Day 13: Whitehorse YT - Dease Lake BC

Things to do in Whitehorse on a wet Sunday morning:

1) Photograph the urban fox licking his 'nads outside the hotel

Yes, it's a rubbish photo.  I think the camera auto-focussed on the (closed) window instead of Foxy-Woxy, but if you install Hollywood-OS™ you will easily be able to count the hairs in his big furry tail.

2) Visit the SS Klondike, parked on the bank of the Mighty Yukon and tended this morning by a chap with a bushy black beard and an eye-patch.  He looked pretty fierce so I did not inquire as to the wellbeing of his parrot.

The Klondike (more accurately, the Klondike II as the Klondike I ran aground somewhere on the river and was cannibalised to build this one in 1937) is the big sister of the Keno, and is 64m long, 12.5m wide and draws a mere 1m when fully loaded¹.

3) Get on Robert Service Way and hightail it out of town.  Robert Service, aka "The Bard Of The Yukon", was born to Scottish parents in Preston and didn't fetch up in the Yukon until he was thirty and only spent eight years there before clearing off to Paris, but is revered for his "verse" in these parts - he was careful not to refer to it as "poetry" though it was still dismissed as doggerel by the literati.

From Whitehorse it was more or less a straight retrace back to Watson Lake, except for the bit I missed out with the diverfsion via Tagish and Carcross on the way up.  This bit does not look any different to any of the other bits of the Alaska Highway in the Yukon.  I went back to Watson Lake for two reasons:

a) To buy a sandwich, and
b) To check out the Sign Post Forest, which I had driven right past without noticing last week.

This was started by a Private Carl K. Lindley of the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1942, during the construction of the Alaska Highway.  He added a sign pointing to his hometown of Danville IL to an existing signpost he had been ordered to repair, other squaddies added to it and now it covers a Several of acres.

Retrace 20-something km again to J37 and turn south onto the Cassiar Highway, leaving Yukon for good shortly thereafter.  The road is narrower than the Alaska Highway and the parsimonious British Columbians have saved a few bob by not painting a line down the middle, and the Cassiar Mountains are a lot more in-yor-face than anything to be seen on the main road.  In spite of this, I still found myself in danger of falling asleep so stopped for a snooze and hence didn't get here until 17:30.  Travellers should note that if you stick to the posted speed limit in this corner of Canada you will be, barring the odd outsize motorhome, the slowest thing on the road and probably travlling faster than Josh Homme's new business venture too:

1: All fakts are korekt for a change