A great part of travel is made up by the people one meets. When people talk of experiences while traveling, it is usually related to encounters with other human beings. There are, of course, solitary experiences but you would have to be a long way from anywhere and anyone before these come into play. The 50-year-old lady I sat next to on the flight from Gatwick to St. Louis certainly made the long haul bearable. A biologist married to a chemist and mother to an architect and a watercolour artist. She teaches, edits a science journal and writes software. She talked of science, I of travel, both of education, youth, choices and scones. She had just spent a month teaching at a university in the North of England. She had traveled alone. This might not seem surprising, except that she is almost blind, having been struck by a retinal disease that had already taken one eye and was steadily deteriorating the other. She was full of courage, modesty, curiosity and encouragement. All the things I will need for my journey.

I flew into Anchorage, Alaska where I stayed for five days while the bike arrived and cleared customs. I am very glad for the delay as I got to know the town and quite a few of its inhabitants. Alaskans feel very separate from the rest of the United States, or the Lower 48 as they know it. There are some who even refer to it as the Outside. The more I got to know them, the more I had to agree. Alaska would seems to be a country very much to itself, separated from the outside by Canada on one side, and the oceans on the others. They are a very relaxed people, generous and inquisitive. As the majority has immigrated from somewhere else, they are much readier to accept an outsider. There don't seem to be any defined groups or cliques and they seem free of judgment. How refreshing. I was fortunate to be put up by Nat and Marty, a couple in their early sixties going on mid twenties, who are friends of friends. It was through their generosity and energy that I was able to see Alaska as it should be seen. If you are ever here, try the king crab legs. They are something unbelievable, rather like the fresh red salmon.

I set off North on Tuesday 10th August. It was the first sunny day since I have been here. I had good weather all the way up to Fairbanks and a little beyond. Just under 400 miles in ten hours. There were a few stops. One was at Skinny Dicks Cafe, where I dropped the bike. Well, its own weight carried it forward off the side-stand. No damage and I even managed to lift it up, fully loaded. It is good to know that I can do it. Skinny's bar is covered with one-dollar bills, signed by their donors. He tears them down every now and then and donates them to the American Legion. I camped out for the first time this trip. I set up next to a lake and under a clear sky. I wrote, and fell asleep. I don't know what woke me first, the rain or the moose. They were both a surprise. I took a photo of the moose and the flash sent her scampering off into the trees.

The road up to Prudhoe Bay is probably the worst I will encounter the entire journey. 400 miles of dirt road used by the trucks hauling machinery and provisions up to the oil fields at the top of the world. Thankfully, there are not too many at this time of year and most of the very little traffic I encountered were other mad tourists. The distance between heaven and hell is but the width of a swing door. I could be snapping along at 70mph along fine gravel when it would suddenly turn into a foot of wet clay mud or golf-ball sized gravel they had been too lazy to smash up. I could be standing over the front wheel for up to thirty miles, trying to keep my weight over it and maintain control. I set off at 6:30am and dismounted at 7:50pm. Too long. And because I am concentrating so hard on the road, I miss out on a lot of what is going on around me. The road goes through various different changes of landscape. I started in forested hills, passed into hard black mountains and then the world opened into flat featureless tundra. The pipeline, carrying 1.5 million barrels of oil and natural gas from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez every day, shadows the road all the way. It is over 800 miles long and sits on stilts set at sometimes no more than 20 meters apart. It is designed to withstand earthquakes and severe temperature changes and makes a strange silver companion on my ride north. I took a tour to touch the Arctic Ocean the morning after my arrival. Non oil personnel are not allowed on the oil field, so I was unable to get my back wheel in the water as I would have liked, but at least I got to stand in it myself. I don't envy the people who work here, all 3000 of them. They live in a town that is not legally a town. There are no bars, no children and nothing that you would expect to find in a normal working community. In winter they work through 96 days of total darkness. No wonder they work 2 weeks on, 2 off. The town is actually called Deadhorse. It got its name from the haulage firm that was contracted to build the airstrip and thereafter the town that grew up around it. The firm was so named after the owner's father gave it to him, having deemed the company a deadhorse after many years of loss. You can imagine how pleased his son was once they discovered oil in Prudhoe Bay.

I took two days to ride back down. It felt different now. Better. Probably because I had now actually started the journey for real. I was on my way south, my intended bearing. I took it slower because of the awful weather. This also meant I could pay a little more attention to my surroundings. I stopped at the Arctic Circle and noticed the names of various sections and hills. Oil Spill Hill. This was attributed to a deadly gravel hill that I barley managed to slither down. Good name. Gobbler's Knob. I didn't even ask. No Name Creek. Well, no danger of forgetting that one. I chatted to a girl in a café where I took some lunch. I asked her about these names. She told me that all the really interesting ones had been taken down when the tourists started coming. Oh Shit Corner was one. I think there were a lot more than one.

I was very glad to hit tarmac. The weather kept me in Fairbanks for a couple of days; a good chance to rest and check the bike. I am now 90 miles from Canada and still riding through pure wilderness. Alaska is 97% open country and looks like staying that way. I would dearly love to see her wolves and bears, of which there are many. But for the time being I am quite content to let my bike and mind drift over this beautiful, empty and appealing country. I'll have to make do with Canadian bears and wolves. Poor me.

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