A ONE-HORSE TOWN AND THE HORSE JUST DIED

As many of you know, in just a few weeks our team--chief engineer, Rick Stiles, head navigator, Rick Stiles, professional photographer, Rick Stiles, and other crew members (me) will soon be embarking on a bicycling adventure that will begin in Billings, Montana, then meander over to Missoula, and finally after breaking our bikes down, we'll catch a plane and get dumped off at Deadhorse. 

For the directionally challenged, if you jumped on a plane and flew to the furthest northern point on the map, you'd land in Deadhorse.  But maybe you're afraid of heights so you decide to get in your car and drive there.  When the Pan-American road runs out of road--somewhere near the Arctic Ocean--that's Deadhorse.  

Interesting Facts About Deadhorse:  

• 500 miles north of Fairbanks
• population: 25-50 souls
• town built entirely on gravel pads
• longest day: 63 days (May 20-July 22)
• Shortest day: 45 minutes (November 24)
• average high in June: 46 degrees
• average low in June: 32 degrees
• snowfall in June: 1 foot

Deadhorse is the site that our bike tour will begin in earnest.  So I wondered about the town's name.  How did they come up with "Deadhorse?"  There are several versions about how the town got it's name.

Version One: the literalist view.  A gold-miner rode a horse into the area and decided to stay.  The lack of fillies and abundance of mosquitoes drove the horse insane.  But soon, a cross-eyed caribou caught the horse's fancy and a "meaningful relationship" blossomed.  Life is good.  Then the brutal winter hit and the poor horse didn't survive and thus it became literally, a "dead-horse."  RIP.  

Version Two: the dynamic equivancy view.  A cheechako (a greenhorn who came to the Alaskan frontier to get rich mining gold) somehow wandered into the Beaufort Sea and finding a caribou skull, mistook it for a horse skull and claimed the town of Deadhorse.

Version Three:  the paraphrase rendering.  Once upon a time a trucking company was contracted to remove dead horses in the Fairbanks area . . . or a disgruntled father was ticked off that his son made him financially responsible for a bankrupt gravel company and reportedly said to his son, "I hate to put money into feeding a dead horse."  

So that's the name-histories of Deadhorse.  I almost wonder if the inhabitants aren't painfully sensitive about their dead-animal name, so I certainly don't want to beat a deadhorse on this blog. More positively, what a great place from which to launch a bicycle tour--in a town at the top of the world with the Arctic Ocean as its backyard.  

The road that runs through Deadhorse, Alaska

FIRST, PICK YOUR OUTDOOR BEDROOM

Ever done that?  Ordered a personal, custom-made bedroom?  That’s exactly what you get to do when biking long-distance.  Lots of shapes and sizes to suit your taste, from tube-like tents to three-room canvas mansions.   As I approach our polar cycling expedition I have tried a variety of these mobile bedrooms. My bedroom will be an Outdoor Research "Advanced Bivy."

Here's the review in my journal after experiencing the "Advanced Bivy" . . . 

Star Date: April 30, 2014

Holy Shark Coffin, I just finished a full night under the stars.  (Bottom line:  tenting is for kids--they're nimble little things with backs as malleable as jellyfish, which, to my knowledge, never have back problems.)  

Note to self:  do not try to sleep in a bivy and invite your mini-dachshund to cuddle with you.  We were simply one dog too tight.  Baylie was so cold in the mountain air that she squinnied inside my cocoon-like sleeping bag designed to hold a pupa, not pupae.  So we seesawed and squirmed for position all night.  Just turning over to change position would result in ten minutes of readjustment from my K-9 sleeping companion.  

The bivy resembles a shark.  Big, gaping mouth and narrowing body.  Unfortunately, this shark had an upset stomach that, at precisely 4:30 am, regurgitated all its innards.  Amid the debris littering the campsite (okay, it was my porch) of pillows, plastic, flaps, pegs, and sleeping bag was a disgruntled dachshund and a sleep-deprived owner.  

Epilogue.  What was the actual single action, the precise straw that broke the bivy back?  Noises in the dark?  A mysterious movement in the bushes?  A blood-curdling scream for help?  I wish I could say yes, but no, none of the above.  Let the record indicate that I was not afraid--I had said my Wednesday night prayers from the Book of Common Prayer and wisely selected a campground that afforded some safety.  Surprisingly, what ended our tent-testing camp-out was a "lurch."  

A lurch?  So Baylie and owner are lying head to head staring at the stars, contemplating the big questions of life.  I softly pronounced a single word at 4:30 am and the word ended with a question mark.  I said, "Bed?"  In a mini-dachshund's brain, the translation far exceeds the single English word.  Rough dachshund translation:

Bed?  Arf!  Yes!  Inside cabin!  

Warm!  Under-the-covers!

Own space!  Arf!  

Leave chilly porch!

Bed!  Arf, arf!

That one word launched a spoiled dog into a wiener-like rocket launch out of the sleeping bag, out of the bivy-shark, into the cabin, up the stairs and in one final majestic movement, into an air-borne leap onto the bed and under the covers.  That dog did not emerge until sunlight  had kissed the earth for at least four hours.  

MORAL:  Always test your tent out . . . without a mini-dachshund.