Whitehorse,Yukon
Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 12:32AM
Well I made it to Whitehorse, YT yesterday. Nothing of importance on the ride from Otter Falls cut off to the capital of the Yukon. It was another very beautiful ride, Azure got a good picture of what is called the man in the mountain, for obvious reasons.
I was making the best time of any ride thus far averaging about 19mph despite the rolling hills and then about 15 miles outside of Whitehorse a huge head wind picked up. Suddenly, I went from riding at about 22mph to struggling to ride 9mph. Needless to say the last leg of the ride sucked and significantly reduced my daily average.
Azure and I spent the evening relaxing, for real this time. It was the first time we have had coverage in awhile so we made our perspective phone calls and checked email. I need to share the ridiculous phone call that I had with my Grandmother. For those of you who don’t know Marie, I will say that she is a tough one to describe. Kind of like the Dalton Highway descriptions really aren’t sufficient, she is best experienced first hand.
“Hello”
“Hey Grandma”
“WHO IS THIS? PATRICK?”
“Yup, how’s it going?”
“I’m glad you called, I have been thinking about you guys.”
“Oh, yeah well we have had you on our minds as well.”
“No, no, no, I have been thinking, what is the situation with the sheets on your bed?”
“What?”
“Your sheets, what are you doing about keeping them clean? You know you need to keep the sheets clean on that bed!”
“Grandma, I have just ridden over 1100 miles of some of the most remote and most dangerous terrain in the country and your first question is how are you keeping the sheets clean?”
A very long pause, which was good… at least I knew she was giving it some thought.
“Yes, you know Patrick clean sheets are important, so how have you been keeping them clean?”
“Well, at the end of the day I am pretty dirty, so we really aren’t. Every time we get somewhere that has laundry facilities. Azure does all the laundry but other than that there isn’t a whole lot we can do about it.”
“Well I don’t know what you can do, but you need to figure out some way to keep those sheets clean.”
“OK grandma, I’ll see what I can do, how are things in Virginia?”
“Pretty good, ok well I have to get ready for bed”
“Ok I love you, I’ll call you next time we get a chance”
“That would be nice.”
That was pretty much the entire conversation, and I guarantee you that as I sit here and type this she is sitting in her recliner trying to come up with a plan to keep our sheets clean on the bed.
We spent the day today tooling around Whitehorse, getting bike supplies and my rear wheel fixed. Several museums other historical spots later we called it a day. We will be heading out tomorrow morning early and will be off the grid for a while but I will post again as soon as we get to somewhere that has internet.
Yesterday’s ride stats
77.2 miles
16.7mph average
37.5mph max
4:36:04 Ride Time
Reader Comments (1)
HI GUYS, SOUND LIKE THINGS ARE GOING WELL, WE ARE VERY SAD HERE ON THE IBIS AS NEW PEOPLE ARE MOVING IN NEXTDOOR AS I TYPE, HOT HERE, 105 YESTERDAY, TAKE CARE AND KNOW YOU ARE MISSED.