I finally got back up there to see my family, it’s only been like 9 years since I’d been up there. I just had a hard time coming to an agreement as to when, so I never made it up. This time I wasn’t really give a choice, my BFF from High School bought my ticket with the understanding that I’d rent a motorcycle. The plan was for us to do some trail riding up there. I didn’t have any luck finding a rental place in Fairbanks so I flew into Anchorage. I thought I had scured a bike reservation with one place but they seemed to have lost it. So I called the other place in town. As luck would have it, they had a very pretty F800 with a low seat for me to use. Score!
While on the phone trying to figure out the rental mess I get a text from one of the ADV riders I tracked down earlier in the day. He invited me to go for an evening ride on one of his bikes down to Girdwood. I haven’t been on the Seward Hwy since it was redone, so I was all over that idea. It was a really nice Daytona. I had a ball on it.
Yes, I’m wearing jeans. It’s risky. I did it understanding the risk that I took by doing that.
I picked up the bike on Thursday morning, headed back to the place I was staying. Packed up my stuff. It was tricky trying to decide what to take with me camping… camping and riding made it harder to decide what to bring up there with me. Especially since the weather was changing so much and so was the plan.
I finished packing up the bike, stopped for lunch on the way out of town, and made my way to Paxson. I was to meet Lori and John at Tangle Lakes, finally on Thursday morning, she decided where we were to meet up. She was riding down from Fairbanks and John was driving the chase car loaded with food and camping gear. Since they had to bring camping gear for me too the chase car was a great idea.
I took my sweet time riding from Anchorage to Paxson, stopped for a number of pictures. I was surprised by how little the Glen Hwy had changed in the past 9 years. Still great to be able to see the Mat-Su glacier from the road. I made it to the Lakes about 7pm, since it was pretty much daylight until 4am it didn’t matter how much time we took to put up the tents. Or to cook dinner, or that we had another biker join us later in the evening.