(Click HERE for Day 1 of Ride)

Distance to Date: 25,089 km / 15,555 mi

From Tok, we rode to Fairbanks where we resupplied for the final push to Deadhorse in Prudhoe Bay. Well, unfortunately, after 19 months on the road, the bike gave way. Derailleur cable snapped (we were able to replace this), then a couple of spokes on the freewheel side broke, then the chain, and the chain breaker was missing a critical part, etc... Things were not good.

Being so close to the end with no bike shop (or anything!) around, we decided to hitch and shuttle to get to Deadhorse. And we got there! It really is true that getting from A to B is not necessarily the journey, it's the "everything else" in between! This was certainly true for us.

From up there, we first hitched in a truck and then with an Ice Road Trucker (who prefers to refer to himself as a "Haul Road Trucker" -- thanks, Andy!). So we are back in Fairbanks.

But wait, there's more! Stay tuned. There's going to be an epilogue. We're planning to donate the tandem bike to Access Alaska here in Fairbanks, fly to Southern California, get single bikes (since Christi can now ride a bike), and ride back to Phoenix.

Here are two recent news articles: Disabled World and Yukon News from Whitenorse, Yukon Territory, Canada.

On the road to Fairbanks, we stop in Delta Junction for a newspaper interview. Doing our job to raise awareness. Onward, we pass by the Alaskan Pipeline that runs from Prudhoe Bay (Deadhorse) to Valdez. In Valdez, oil is loaded into oil tankers to be transported to Anacortes near Seattle for refining. We meet Paul from NJ. He's heading for Ushuaia -- where we started! This has to be the coolest village in the world! North of Fairbanks en route to the Dalton Hwy, we camp at this rest area for a couple of days to wait out the rain. Rain = no good visually. Not visible here, but there are lots of up's and down's. One can only smile. 84 miles north of Fairbanks -- the start of the Dalton Hwy, also known as "The Haul Road" since everything in the north slope's gigantic oil operation is hauled through this road. Yelp, take caution. We slowly edge along. The official start. Deadhorse 414 miles to go. Nothing in between these three places. Absolutely nothing. No gas, no food, nothing! North of Yukon River, we get caught in a muddy road work. And it is here where the stress on the rear wheel as we fish-tail that spokes broke. We clean the bike, fix other things, but concede to the spokes. We didn't have enough replacement spokes. And a broken chain. Game over. Diversion. So we hitch. Christi shadow dances to pass time as we try to hitch. The "Camp-ulance" picks us up. Once an ambulance, it is now a camper. Campulance's first patient? The tandem bike. Two thumbs up, and we continue north. We get to the Arctic Circle and do the obligatory photo-op. We get to Coldfoot (250 miles north of Fairbanks and halfway to Deadhorse). The bike is okay, but not fit to ride. So close, yet still far. Some 250 miles of our final destination. Back on the road to hitch. Yelp, NOTHING out here! We heard about a shuttle passing through the following day and so decided to catch that. The Dalton Hwy rides alongside the pipeline. It's an impressive engineering feat. Our camp in Deadhorse. It's tundra country. Oil... some love it... some hate it. Deadhorse exists solely for one thing: oil. It's the land of BP, Exxon-Mobil, and Conoco-Philips. The Arctic Ocean is not as cold as we thought. The road back down. Any takers? First hitch is in the back of a truck. Tauru gets splattered with mud. Wet, muddy and slippery. Second hitch is with a trucker. The pipeline and the road. The tanker that took us back to Fairbanks. The bike is safe in the back. Thanks, Andy, for trucking back down!