PROLOGUE
Vancouver, October 1990
Caligula was in fine form. He delivered the punchline to a long, complicated joke about a hockey player with a lisp who went looking for a puck. Julius Caesar burst into laughter. I laughed too, even though I didn't really understand the joke. The bar heaved with Romans. It was noisy and hot and I began to feel tired. I finished my glass of Rickards Red and figured I'd head for the sack. My two companions had other ideas.
“Hey, Rob, there's someone I want you to meet”. Caligula had to almost shout to make himself heard above the noise in the bar. He disappeared into the crowd in search of 'someone'. Caesar began telling me how much of a struggle it was to pay the rent each month. His sing-song voice melted into the general hubbub and I found myself only half listening to what he was saying.
We were in a neighbourhood pub in Kitslano, a trendy district on the west side of Vancouver. It was Halloween and the pub was packed with students from the University of British Columbia. The students were going to a fancy dress party later that evening. Everyone came dressed as an ancient Roman, except for me. I spoke with a London accent, and, in my mid twenties, I was a little bit older than the rest of the people crowded around the bar. Perhaps this had aroused Caligula and Caesar's curiosity. They came over and introduced themselves and we got talking. I'd had a late one the previous night and popped into the pub just for a quick drink. I now found myself on my third pint of Rickards Red.
Caligula returned.
“Rob, Rob, you'll never guess who this is.”
Behind Caligula stood a smallish man with long hair. The long hair partially obscured his face, making it difficult to distinguish his features. An array of bracelets and beads hung from his body. A red silk shirt was complimented by green corduroy trousers and a pair of dirty trainers. Nicotine stained fingers with long nails clutched a French cigarette. He had a lop-sided laurel leaf array on his head.
Caligula steered the man towards me.
“This is Ringo Starr's brother. He's a fellow Brit.”
Ringo Starr's brother let out a long chuckle and I could hear his beads and bracelets rattling above the general din.
“Pleased to meet you,” I said, “what's your name?”
My question was met with more chuckles.
“His name's Zak,” put in Caesar, “he lives on a houseboat down at the harbour. He's a painter; well known in Vancouver.”
Ringo Starr's brother stayed with us for about twenty minutes. I noticed that during this time he never actually said anything. Instead, he chuckled continuously and threw back gin like there was no tomorrow. Finally a Roman Empress took charge of him and I heard his chuckles die away as he was led across the room to meet Nero. It appeared that being Ringo Starr's brother was a full time job. I wondered just how he had ended-up in Vancouver.
And you may be wondering just how I ended-up in Vancouver. Well, during the winter of 1987/88 I'd been living in Calgary, trying to salvage a failed relationship with a woman. The summer of 1988 found me in San Francisco with the beautiful people, trying to forget the aforementioned woman. During these trips, Vancouver had been on my list of 'things to do', but I never got round to it. After San Francisco I spent nearly two years working back in London. Then I just took off on my own for Vancouver, but not before the Inland Revenue had relieved me of most of the money I had saved for the trip.
So, there I am in Vancouver, autumn 1990. I had hardly any money and did not have a permit to work in Canada. Not that there was much work anyway, since the world was going through a bad recession at the time. Sounds pretty dumb, huh? but I often do things without really understanding why I'm doing them. It's only years later, as your life starts to unravel a bit more, that you realise there's some kind of rhyme or reason to what has gone before, however tenuous.
But at the time there didn't appear to be much rhyme or reason in trying to find a job that just didn't exist, or writing reams of bad poetry, or regularly getting soaked from rain that fell like stair rods from the tempestuous sky. Yes, the monsoon season had arrived in Vancouver, Canada's main western port and gateway to the Pacific, and a continuous flow of churning blue/black clouds rolled down off the surrounding mountains.
In these circumstances it is perhaps not surprising that I spent a lot of my time getting drunk in the neighbourhood pub.
Julius Caesar thrust another pint of Rickards Red into my hand and started telling me about the vacation he and Caligula had taken that summer, when they drove an old, beat-up VW camper van all the way along the Alaska Highway and up to Fairbanks, in the Alaskan interior. Now, I felt very tired that evening in the pub but their enthusiasm about the trip got me hooked and I was soon listening with rapt attention.
I'd been vaguely aware of the Alaska Highway and knew that it was a very long road that went to, well, Alaska. But I didn't know much else about it. I now heard tales of a 1500 mile dirt and rock road that ran through a vast wilderness, a wilderness patrolled by bears, wolves and eagles. A road that threw up rock slides and floods and mountain precipices. A road where you could drive for days and never see another human being. A road where danger lay around every bend.
Hey, this sounded like fun, so I pumped Caligula and Julius Caesar for more information. I suppose it was at that moment that I resolved that one day I, too, would drive the Alaska Highway.
I had no idea that the seed planted in my mind on that rainy evening in Vancouver would take nine years to germinate. I also had no idea of the drama that would ensue during my own trip to Alaska.
From Chapter One: It's for chaaarity, Mate!
The next morning, Sunday, we were up early; well, if you call 10am early. This was our only full day on the Outer Hebrides and we wanted to make the most of it. We planned to drive around the south of Harris and put the car through its paces. This was going to be the 2CV Hebridean Challenge.
After a big breakfast we drove over to the petrol station, only to discover a closed sign. It was then that we found out that the Hebrideans are very religious people (Presbyterian Church of Scotland). This means that Sunday is a big deal for them, a day of rest. Shops and restaurants are closed. Hotels are only open to guests who are staying there. It is not possible to buy petrol or newspapers or hookers on Sundays. There are no planes, buses or ferries. There's no nothing. The only thing freely available is the Spirit of the Lord, and we weren't sure how far a 2CV would go on a tank of that.
We went back to the hotel and asked for help. A giggling young girl behind the desk told us that the petrol station would open on a Sunday only in a dire emergency. The 2CV Hebridean Challenge was not a dire emergency. At this point, Jose let out a string of expletives. Fortunately, Jose spoke in her native language, Dutch, which has no resemblance to Gaelic. Giggles still understood the tone, though, and was somewhat taken aback. Jose puffed heavily on her cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke across the reception desk. A wave of dismissive Dutch followed the smoke.
I took Jose outside and tried to calm her down. Ok, we were low on fuel, but I felt certain there was at least 30 miles worth left in the tank. We could still drive around a bit with that. Yes, of course, we wouldn't be able to do the full days drive, but it was better than nothing. In the back of the car we carried an emergency 5 litre can of petrol. This could be used for the drive to Stornoway on Monday morning – we were scheduled to take the 6.15am ferry from Stornoway back to the mainland. There would be no petrol stations open at that time of morning, either.
The root of the problem lay with the 2CV's fuel gauge: it didn't work. The fuel gauges on 2CVs never work. It's one of the things that gives the car its character. Just like every 2CV has dents in it, no matter how new, how pristine it is. I'm sure that at the very end of the 2CV production line Citroen employed an old peasant to use his elbow to dent the wing of every 2CV that came off the line. I've put this to the test. I've seen 2CVs in absolutely immaculate condition, but if you look close enough you'll always find a dent somewhere on the bodywork. And of course, the more battered a 2CV is the more authentic it is. These were working cars, and they worked hard.
From Chapter Two: The Marie Anne…
Now that the Marie Anne had finally got underway the first order of business was to clean the ship. The white kaolin powder coated every surface and had congealed into lumps. Captain Markiewicz stood on the Bridge and watched his crew using pressure hoses to clear the kaolin. It took them most of the afternoon and at the end of it the ship was gleaming. Once the outside of the ship had been taken care of, attention then turned to the inside. While in port, cardboard mats were placed along the corridors to try and contain the mess that people brought in on their shoes. These mats were now removed and every surface received a polish. In the upper part of the superstructure, where the officers and passengers were quartered, Barry carried out this cleaning, and it was thorough. You could see your face in the polished walls and floors. When he wasn't presiding over mealtimes, Barry spent most of his time in an endless round of polishing. He wore a red bandana around his head to prevent drips of sweat from ruining his work. When making your way around inside the superstructure, if Barry was wearing his red bandana you had to be careful not to slip and break your neck.
On the morning of the second day at sea Barry, knocked on my cabin door: 'you ees moving todair'. True to his word, the Captain was letting me have a double cabin. Barry led me up to the deck above, where I was surprised to discover that my new quarters were in the owner's cabin, the biggest on the ship. The only other cabins up on this deck were the Captain's and Chief Engineer's. The owner's cabin consisted of a bedroom with a double bed and adjoining bathroom, and a large sitting room with two sofas, a low table and a huge porthole. The sitting room also had a desk. Perfect for writing bad poetry and the Alaska Challenge bulletins.
Once settled in my new quarters I sought out the Chief and asked him if I could get some of my stuff from the cars in No.5 hold. The 'stuff' included my typewriter and office equipment. The only access to No.5 hold was via a hatch on the cargo deck. A steel ladder ran down the side of the cavernous hold, 50 feet to the bottom. They told me that on a pitching, rolling ship it was too dangerous for a passenger to climb down that ladder. One of the crewmen would go down and get the things for me. The problem being, the cars contained so much gear that the crewman would never be able to find what I wanted. The Chief and some of the crew gathered around the hatch and I explained this to them. In the end they agreed to let me go down, but only with a rope tied around me. Two of the crewman held on to the rope while I carefully made my way down the ladder. They were right, it was dangerous. The sea was quite calm but the ship still moved around a lot and at times I had to halt my descent and cling on to the ladder for dear life. Eventually I made it to the bottom of the hold, where the two Citroen 2CVs had been out of sight and out of mind for the last five days. Seeing them again reminded me that this ocean voyage was just the start of an even bigger adventure. As I stood there alone at the bottom of the hold it felt strange, it felt exciting.
At the end of that second day at sea we left the English Channel and headed out into the Atlantic Ocean. A family of dolphins began following us. The sea was calm. The weather good. I stood on deck and gazed around: no land, no other ships, no nothing except the deep, swelling ocean. Gulp. I experienced a terrible anxiety as it hit home that I would be on this ship, on this ocean for eight more days with no escape, in the hands of fate and its servant, the cruel sea. I became acutely aware that the little white lie I'd told the Captain might well come back to haunt me.
For some months I'd been experiencing an uncomfortable feeling in my lower right abdomen…
From Chapter Two: The Marie Anne…
Barry told me about a barbeque he'd attended on another shipping line. It was a wet day and the 3rd Engineer tried to get the barbeque going with a petrol can. The petrol reacted with the charcoal and caused a huge flare-up. Two of the crewmen were badly burnt. One died in hospital. Filled with remorse, the 3rd Engineer later threw himself over the aft rail, where he plunged into the depths below and was cut to pieces by the ship's propeller. Barry said that they never did find all the pieces of his body.
Every morning Barry came to my cabin to make my bed and tidy up. On the morning after the barbeque he looked hung over. He told me that at midday the ship's general alarm would be sounded. We were having a lifeboat drill. When the alarm sounded I must put on my lifejacket and go to the Boat Deck as quickly as possible. The Captain put Barry in charge of Kurt for the duration of the lifeboat drill. It would be his job to get Kurt into a lifejacket and up to the Boat Deck. Barry cursed his luck.
Sure enough, at midday the ship's alarm sounded. I grabbed my lifejacket and wrapped it around me. I couldn't figure out how the straps connected together and so I just let them hang loose. Up on the Boat Deck most of the crew were already assembled. The lifeboat drill had been no secret and everyone wanted to get it over and done with as soon as possible. Captain Markiewicz held a stopwatch in his hand. He explained the safety regulations to me and took me through what was happening. First of all we gathered around the port lifeboat. It was painted bright orange. Five of the crew jumped inside and the lifeboat was lowered off its derrick. It hung there, gently swaying in the breeze. The five crewmen began peddling furiously. We could see the propeller whizzing round. Captain Markiewicz explained unnecessarily that this lifeboat was driven by peddle power.
Next we all went over to the starboard lifeboat. This was driven by a petrol motor. Two of the crewmen jumped inside. The winch was started and we could hear a grating, grinding noise. The lifeboat remained on the derrick. The engineers fiddled around with the winch but the lifeboat still wouldn't budge. The Chief went off to get a crowbar. Barry told me about a lifeboat drill he'd been involved in while crossing the Pacific Ocean. A big wave had landed on the deck and swept three crewman overboard. Barry said that the Pacific rollers were the biggest in the world. The three crewman were never seen again.
The Chief returned with a crowbar and did some violence to the winch. Still the lifeboat wouldn't budge. In the end we all got fed up with it and called it a day. So ended the lifeboat drill. If the Marie Anne ever ran into difficulties only half the crew would be able to get off, and they would be the fittest ship wreck survivors ever found.
For more than a week the radio bands had been awash with static. On the morning of 14th July they came alive again: Dunkin Donuts, Dodge dealerships and Dolly Parton announced the lurking presence of America. Small, colourful fishing boats began to dot the ocean and jet planes arcing high up into the sky left vapour trails that looked like giant party streamers. The loneliness of the open ocean was coming to an end…
From Chapter Three: Into The Arms Of America…
The next morning, Friday 30th July, we said goodbye to sweltering Savannah and set out on the road journey to Canada. Our original plan was to follow the coast north via Washington DC and New York, which would provide some great photo opportunities with the cars in front of the White House, the Statue Of Liberty, etc. However, both Jose and I felt a need to get away from the hustle and bustle of the big population centres, so we decided to drive up to Canada via the inland route, on Interstate Highways 26 and 77, up through the Carolinas and on to the back roads of West Virginia.
We were insured for the road. We'd stocked up with cheap cigarettes and filled the cars with the cheapest petrol in America. We were taking part in a road movie and the cars were the stars. We got just twenty miles from Savannah and then the No.1 car developed engine problems. I contacted Jose on the walkie-talkie:
'This is yellow duck calling green duck, can you give me a big ten four, over.'
'What?!.'
'Er, green duck, I'm having problems with yellow duck, do you copy?'
'Oh fuck off'
'Green duck, yellow duck has engine problems, over.'
'Bloody ducks'
'Suggest we pull off the freeway at the next gas station, copy green duck.'
'Copy what?!'
|
A car followed us off the freeway and on to the gas station forecourt. The driver was a young man who introduced himself as Billy. Billy wanted to video us and the 2CVs and kept saying 'Wow!' He asked us to wave at the camera and say hi to Hank. It was Hank's birthday. We tried to be polite to Billy, but in that sweltering heat, and nursing a car with mechanical problems, we were polite behind gritted teeth. Jose lit-up a cigarette, despite all the 'No Smoking' signs, and spoke to Billy. Fortunately, Billy couldn't understand Dutch.
Ever since driving away from the Marie Anne a steady stream of people had been filming and photographing the cars. It was nice that people took an interest in us, but at times it got a tad annoying. We were somewhat surprised at the reaction to the cars. People would toot at us, wave at us, give us the thumbs up. Mostly, though they wanted to film and photograph the cars... Billy sensed the tension in the air and didn't linger long. He told us that Hank would be thrilled when he saw the video and thanked us profusely before driving off, leaving us to figure out what was wrong with the No.1 car.
It didn't take long to figure it out. Whenever I eased off on the No.1 car's accelerator the engine started spluttering. When the revs dropped down to tick over speed the engine cut out completely. The engine could be restarted without difficulty, but would only keep going if high revs were maintained. Easy. Now all we had to do was figure out how to fix it. Hmm...
From Chapter Three: Into The Arms Of America…
Just north of the Falls is the Rainbow Bridge, which joins the USA and Canada. At lunchtime on Tuesday 3rd August, two Citroen 2CVs trundled across the Rainbow Bridge into Canada. It had taken us five days to drive the 1500 miles up from Savannah. At the border post we were told to pull over at the Customs Office. Jose and Rob and the cars were closely inspected by Erin and Harry, Canadian Customs and Immigration Officers. The prognosis was good. We took a picture of Erin and Harry standing by the cars. Erin gave Jose and I a Maple Leaf badge each. Welcome to Canada. We thanked the two of them and then made to drive away. The No.2 car wouldn't start. Jose kept turning the ignition key but the engine wouldn't fire. An embarrassing moment as Erin and Harry grew tired of waving at us. We let the No.2 car sit for a while and tried starting it again. With much spluttering and coughing the engine finally fired into life and we were on our way.
“We're on the way to Hog Town, Green Duck, and I'm smoking the brakes comin' off the Cabbage”
“...”
“Did you eye that Crotch Rocket at the cash register?”
“...”
“It's a ten nine. Buddy's after those Lot Lizards but there's a smokin' scooter taking pictures.”
“Oh for christsake, SHUT UP!”
|
Niagara Falls consists of two cataracts. The Horseshoe, or Canadian Falls, and the American Falls. Every second, more than half a million gallons of water dive into the wide canyon and explode on the rocks below; although lord knows how they calculate these things. At night the falls are lit up, and the churning waters tumble dramatically into blackness, while in winter the whole scene changes as the falls freeze to form gigantic razor-tipped icicles which give statisticians multiple orgasms.
Niagara Falls is up there with, say, the Taj Mahal or The Great Wall of China. It's one of the world's top tourist attractions and no commercial opening has been left unexploited. The Canadian side of the Falls affords the most spectacular view. Here, hotels and apartment blocks have sprung up beside the canyon like giant steel and concrete weeds. There's a Hard Rock Cafe and a casino, a plague of gift shops, and to make it even easier to part with your money a variety of methods have been laid on to help you get closer to the Falls: boats, catwalks, observation towers and helicopters all push as near to the curtain of falling water as they dare. Even one hundred years ago, Oscar Wilde found the tourist operation at the Falls tacky. Oscar quipped that he would have been more impressed if the falls ran upwards.
From Chapter Four: The Wild West…
… the fan cover was bloodily removed and the fan was taken off by means of the two Billys' wrench and a big whack with a hammer. The whack caused a huge cloud of rust to fall from the No.2 car. We tactfully ignored it and put in a new set of points and condenser, and it worked: the engine fired into life at the first attempt. For a moment we were stunned, then, Whoopee! We were on our way once more, for about 100 yards, when the No.2 car's engine died again. The ignition timing needed doing, and we were doing it for another two hours before the car deemed to start. The feeling of getting a knackered Citroen 2CV working again can be compared to childbirth... and so we continued bowling westward, chewing up the miles/kilometres across the spectacular scenery of northern Ontario.
Our last night in Ontario was spent in Terrace Bay. This little town sits at the northernmost point of Lake Superior. Terrace Bay is known as the "gem of the north shore". It's surrounded by rugged beauty which to the north is total wilderness. The tourist office town guide lists “54 things to do in Terrace Bay”, amongst which are walking along the beach and visiting the tourist office.
Jose and I did neither of these things. Instead we had a row. Well, it was due, we hadn't had a bust-up since the car collision in Quebec City. The cause of our conflict began as soon as we got up to the hotel bedroom, where I immediately started working with the laptop computer. The Alaska Challenge bulletins were a bit behind schedule and this was an opportunity to bash one out. Jose had been growing increasingly annoyed over the amount of time I was spending on the laptop. I told her to get lost. After all, there were 54 things to do in Terrace Bay, and one of them most definitely did not involve unplugging the mouse from the laptop just as I was reaching the end of my scribblings. This caused our feeble little computer to go into a spin. I lost my work. I had to re-type the bulletin all over again. I was not pleased. In the dining room that evening we sat at separate tables…
From Chapter Four: The Wild West…
It was then that I hit upon the idea of taking a sex doll up to the Arctic with me. It seemed a good way to end the Alaska Challenge, which had been a wacky venture right from the start. More than anything, though, I find all those 'adventure journeys' that one sees rather tedious. It's all the same sort of macho rollocks; 'endurance', 'hard going', 'gee aren't we tough guys'. I was both the producer and the director of the 2CV Alaska Challenge, and now that the leading actress was no longer sticking to the script it was time for a bit of improvisation.
The following morning we checked out of the Comfort Inn and I took a room at the Captain Bartlett. This was Jose's last day in Alaska. The plane for Seattle left at midnight. But first, we had to buy a sex doll. This didn't prove easy, because despite the large military presence there's no red light district in Fairbanks. In fact, there didn't seem to be any sex shops at all. We pulled into a gas station. A young chap lounged behind the counter. Jose asked him where we could buy a sex doll. The young chap's mouth dropped open and for a few seconds he was speechless. It was an interesting meeting between American prudishness and Dutch liberalism. The young chap recovered his composure and became bashful. It turned out that in the whole of northern Alaska, a place the size of western Europe, there is just one sex shop. Luckily, though, it was situated only twenty miles from Fairbanks, out in the wilderness. We headed off down the highway.
We'd never have found the sex shop if it wasn't for the fact that the chap told us it lurked near a small lumber yard. The sex shop was set back from the highway, down a small dirt track that led into thick forest. We pulled up outside a long, wood cabin without any windows. It looked abandoned. There were two cars parked outside. Ah ha.... we cautiously pushed open the battered metal door and found ourselves inside a large emporium of the flesh, no different from any you'd find in Europe. A bored, fat guy sat at the counter. He was watching a ball game on a small portable tv. His eyes met ours for a fraction of a second. The only other customers in the sex shop were a GI and his girlfriend. They were holding up and admiring various sized dildos. Their eyes met ours for a fraction of a second.
We wandered around the shop. There were videos titled 'Sex the Greek way', 'Cowboy Brothel' and 'Masturbation Danish style'. There was the 'Orgasmo electric vagina', the 'Clitofing', 'Chinese Erekto Cream', and the 'Giant Strap-on Cocky'. There was also a large selection of sex dolls. Linda Lovelips, 'fully equipped with three holes for pleasure'. Doll Mate, 'you can vary the grip of her soft, inviting vagina during intercourse'. The Sexy Doreen Doll, 'with lifelike pubic hair'. Naw, I didn't like the look of any of them. I plumped for Jamie the Love Doll, because at forty bucks she was the cheapest. I handed over my cash at the counter. The fat guy's eyes met mine for a fraction of a second.
Now that I'd acquired my new co-star I just had to get some good shots of her, to put up on the web site. So, the three of us drove to the airport…
From Chapter Five: The Arctic
I laid down on the bed again and let out a loud groan. I glanced across the room and saw the grinning face of Jamie the Love Doll. How the hell could a guy screw one of those things? I remembered just what Jamie was doing here in this hotel room in Alaska. Oh shit. I remembered that I was an intrepid adventurer, that today I was driving up into the lonely, desolate wastes of the Arctic, in an old, beat-up Citroen 2CV. I began to pull the bed covers back over me.
But onwards and upwards; after all, I was an intrepid adventurer. I scrabbled around for my travel alarm clock. It showed just after half past nine. Right, time to get moving. I felt fired up, a reaction against the fear that was starting to grip me. I got dressed and then managed to force down some breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Without Jose around it all felt fresh and new. The parameters had changed. The landscape was different.
It was gone eleven by the time I carried my rucksack and Jamie the Love Doll out to the hotel car park. The No.1 car gleamed in the sunlight. It felt like an old friend. This old friend, though, might very soon die on rock and gravel roads that ran 500 miles due north from Fairbanks up to the Arctic Ocean. I could hardly bear to start the engine. It fired into life at the first attempt. Once again I found myself amazed at the stamina and durability of this car. How could I risk killing it in the Arctic?
The Arctic... it seemed sensible to stock up with some essential supplies for the trip, so I drove to nearby a supermarket. Supermarkets always give me anxiety attacks, and this one, crowded with weekend shoppers, was no exception. I shot round and picked up the essential supplies, which consisted of two packets of crisps, one bar of chocolate, a carton of cigarettes and four crates of beer. All set, and at twelve minutes past midday I drove out of Fairbanks and headed north on Highway 70. On the seat beside me was Jamie the Love Doll, who was strangely silent.
Highway 70 is paved, that is, until you leave Fairbanks City limits and it becomes a rutted dirt road. I didn't know at the time that the pounding the No.1 car was now receiving would be nothing compared to what lay just a short distance ahead, on the Dalton Highway…
From Chapter Five: The Arctic…
… the Alaskans don't have to pay a state income tax. Oil revenues pay for most of Alaska's state spending. It's a similar set-up in some of the Middle East oil countries, like Saudi Arabia, where the citizens pay no income tax and get a pay out every year from the oil revenues. A nice gig if you can get it.
Arizona Joe and his gang did four months work during the summer and earned a very large sum of money. Repairing the Dalton Highway basically meant filling in the pot holes and trying to level it out. This was a never ending task. The condition of the Dalton varied from year to year, depending on how harsh the winter had been and how much rain fell during the summer months. I met people who told me that the Dalton Highway had been in much worse shape the year before. The Dalton is a rough drive whenever you attempt it. From what I could make out, in the summer of 1999 it was in average condition.
The road repair season was over. Arizona Joe and his chaps were throwing an end of term celebration. Joe's overweight wife had come up to claim him and in the morning they were all flying south, back to the real world. The party was somewhat marred by the fact that there was no booze sold in Coldfoot. Everyone contributed whatever they could, which amounted to a mostly empty bottle of whisky, some rusty cans of Budweiser and two bottles of revolting red wine. Meanwhile, someone called Rusty had been sent to get the road gang's secret stash of beer. We all waited impatiently for Rusty to return. It was a private party, but in arctic climes no one is a stranger and everyone is a guest. Guests, however, are expected to make a contribution. I put a five dollar bill into the hat that was passed around and supped on a rusty can of Budweiser.
In the hotel lobby I noticed the young English couple. I gave them a wave. They waved back and hurried on their way. Perhaps they thought they'd encounter Jamie sitting up on a bar stool? Rusty arrived on the scene and soon I was drinking cans of Budweiser that weren't rusty. As the beer flowed the different personalities in the road gang began to emerge. They were a nice, if somewhat rowdy bunch of chaps. A beautiful young Indian girl appeared and began strumming a guitar and singing folk songs. From the looks given by the men it was obvious that some of them had been making whoopee with her. Well, it gets lonely up in the Arctic, particularly if your testosterone is flying around… I could see it coming, and sure enough an argument broke out between some of the men and they started fighting. Arizona Joe's wife managed to restore order. The blood was mopped up and after cheers for an encore the beautiful Indian girl gave another rendition of Blowing in the Wind. At this point I left them all to it and walked along the dingy corridor, back to my box-like hotel room. It didn't seem possible that just the night before I'd seen Jose off at Fairbanks Airport. Jose would now be back home in London, back in normality, whatever that is. I missed her. I didn't miss the normality…
From Chapter Five: The Arctic
The Dalton Highway gave a smooth ride across the tundra. I no longer needed every ounce of concentration to keep the car on the road and so I relaxed a bit. We were very close to our goal. You could smell sea salt in the freezing air. By way of an early celebration I cracked open a bottle of beer and drove with one hand on the wheel. By the time I was on my second bottle of beer the Arctic no longer looked so lonely and desolate. Even Jamie the Love Doll seemed relaxed. Or maybe it was a slow puncture.
I suddenly noticed something on the horizon. From a distance it looked like a moose or caribou. It came down the road directly towards me. I eased off on the gas pedal and peered through the windscreen. Hmm, it didn't move like a moose or caribou. A bear? Oh dear. I scrambled for the pepper spray on the parcel shelf. As the thing got nearer I was somewhat relieved when I could distinguish human features.
The 'thing' turned out to be a Japanese man. He seemed to be in his late teens and as he walked along he wore a determined look on his face. On his back he carried one of the biggest rucksacks I've ever seen. The top of the rucksack protruded at least 14 inches above the top of his head. The Japanese guy bowed under the weight of it. This is what made him look like some kind of animal from a distance.
We converged on each other and I stopped the car. The Japanese guy couldn't speak much English, but there again, I couldn't speak much Japanese. He told me his name was Kuji. I offered him a beer. He declined. I offered him a cigarette. He declined. In broken English, Kuji explained that he was on vacation and had flown up to the Arctic. He wanted to walk back to Fairbanks from Prudhoe Bay. What! or more to the point, why? I tried to explain to Kuji that Fairbanks was a long, long way away, but he didn't seem too worried about this. He had two weeks vacation and he could walk 500 kilometres in that time and 'get to see the wilderness'. No, Fairbanks was 500 miles from Prudhoe Bay, not 500 kilometres, and to leave the Arctic you had to cross over a desolate mountain range. Kuji didn't appear to understand the difference between miles and kilometres and had a laid-back attitude when it came to desolate mountain ranges. He produced a camera and asked me to take a picture of him standing beside the No.1 car. For the second or two while I took the picture, Kuji's face broke into a radiant smile, then it returned to a look of painful determination.
It felt very cold standing there on the side of the road. A brisk wind was blowing in off the Arctic Ocean and across the tundra. We were at least forty miles from Prudhoe Bay, so Kuji must have been walking for two days already. I wished him luck and told him to look out for the hunters further south. I had visions of him ending up as a display trophy on the wall of an Alaskan log cabin. Kuji and I shook hands, then I climbed back into the warm car and watched him disappear in the rear view mirror.
From Chapter Six: Wilderness Blues…
Dawn began to break as the ferry slipped her moorings and headed up the Lynn Canal. The Canal is about half a mile wide. It has steep sloping walls of black rock. At the top of the walls are forests leading up the slopes of the surrounding mountains. The waters of the Canal were crystal clear. The silence magical.
At the head of the Lynn Canal lay Skagway, nestling at the foot of a steep glaciated valley. A few miles further up the inlet lay the smaller settlement of Dyea, which is now a ghost town. Skagway is derived from a Tlingit Indian name, "Skagua", which means "the place where the north wind blows".
Wisps of mist rose from the Canal waters. On the right I could see the mouth of the Skagway river, where there was a small dock and oil storage tanks. Directly ahead lay the small ferry terminal, and on the left a black sand beach. The chill morning air resonated with history. A hundred years ago stampeders poured from the steamships. They would have dragged their belongings up that black sand beach and found themselves in a place that was often described as "hell on earth". Back in the 1897, Skagway grew from one cabin to a town of twenty thousand in the space of three months. It boasted over seventy bars and hundreds of prostitutes, and was controlled by organized criminals.
That single cabin belonged to William Moore, a former steamboat captain who arrived in Skagway ten years before the gold rush. Moore was a smart chap. He believed that gold lay in the Klondike because it had been found in similar mountain ranges in South America, Mexico and California. Skagway lay on the most direct route to the Klondike. Moore and his son built a log cabin, a wharf and a saw mill in anticipation of future gold prospectors passing through on their way to the Klondike. They were going to mine the miners.
And come they did, a decade later, at first just a trickle making their way up the Chilkoot Pass and White Pass, then in the summer of 1897 a torrent of prospectors as news of the Klondike discovery spread across the world. William Moore was overwhelmed and suddenly found himself in the middle of a boom town, where self-appointed officials forced Moore and his family on to a five acre tract of land and turned his log cabin into a hotel; which goes to show that sometimes you can be just a bit too smart.
It was just after 6am on a Sunday morning. Skagway slumbered. Only a lone intrepid adventurer in a 2CV roamed the streets. Skagway has retained much of the Victorian buildings from the old days. I drove past William Moore's log cabin, which is now a tourist trap. Skagway is a small town that lives on its past. As I drove along the deserted streets the ghosts of the gold rush seemed to hang in the air. This place had once been the archetypal wild west. Bandits and bad men ruled supreme, including of course the notorious Jefferson "Soapy" Smith, who was the first successful gangster in the west. Years before Al Capone had made a name for himself in Chicago, Soapy was running Denver with gambling dens, sly scams and corrupt officials. The gold rush brought Soapy to Skagway, which he ruled with an iron hand. He ran crooked gambling halls, freight companies that hauled nothing, telegraph offices that had no telegraph link, even an "army enlistment" tent where the victim's clothes and possessions were stolen while a "doctor" gave an examination. Eventually the citizens of Skagway bandied together and put an end to Soapy's rule. He was shot dead in a gunfight in July 1898 at the age of 37.
The lawlessness and gun slinging didn't last long, though. In 1898 the 14th Infantry arrived in Skagway to maintain order…
From Chapter Seven: Lotus Land…
The architecture in downtown Duncan is cliché wild west, with a single track railway line running straight through the centre of town, complete with a station that could have come out of The Adventures of Jesse James. As well as cowboys you've also got your injuns' and there are totem poles all around town. I liked Duncan and spent the night sleeping in a lay-by on the outskirts of town.
The next day I explored the Cowichan district - 'Cowichan' is the name of the First Nations folk who have lived in this area for thousands of years. Duncan is on the Cowichan River, which six or so miles to the east leads into Cowichan Bay and the sea. To the west of Duncan it's a 35 mile drive up into the mountains to Lake Cowichan, a very long, large lake with crystal clear water. The tarmac roads runs out here at a little village called Youbou, half way along the north shore of the lake. If you want to go further west along the lake you have to use logging roads. I used them for about five miles until coming to a National Park camping ground. It was a very pretty spot; remote, but not too remote, and there were water taps and picnic tables. Of course at that time of year, late summer, the camping ground was deserted. Perfect, and so we spent the best part of a week living there. Just me, Jamie and the bears. I had an inflatable mattress and slept on one of the picnic tables. The mild weather made things easy and I managed some excellent night's sleep. Every day Jamie and I would go for a swim in the lake. This was bathtime, and despite the fact that the waters came from snow and ice on the mountains they were surprisingly warm. The village of Youbou lay just down the road, to get supplies, or to spend time in the bar there. All in all, it was very pleasant living by the lake for a while. To begin with the bears were the only worry, because I'd hear them moving around at night while I slept on the picnic table. After a while though, when it became apparent that they weren't going to bother me, I became glad of the bear's company.
It was an idyllic respite after all those months of hard travelling, but it couldn't last long. Early October arrived and sent Summer packing. The nights were getting chilly. I still hadn't found any paid work, despite frequent trips down to Victoria. Work or no work, I needed a roof over my head. Trouble is, roofs are so expensive. It would have been nice to rent somewhere near Lake Cowichan. I didn't have the funds for a long term let, what with a month's deposit, a months rent up front and all that lark, which left me with short term lets, holiday accommodation, hotels and the like. There wasn't much going in the Lake Cowichan area. Duncan seemed a better prospect. However, although I found the town interesting it was not the sort of place I'd like to live in. Instead I moved further east to Cowichan Bay, where I paid for a month up front in the Wessex Inn. Ouch!
The Wessex Inn is a modern, two storey structure in mock tudor style, situated just outside Cowichan Bay village. My spacious room contained a very large bed and a kitchen and from the balcony you just about had a view of the bay. Not a bad place to live. The room also had a table that I used as a desk. It was now the 5th of October and the first time since the 28th of July, when the Marie Anne docked in Savannah, that I found myself sleeping in the same bed, the same place for more than a few nights. Some sort of home at last, and even if it was still semi-permanent it sure beat the hell out of crashing on people's sofas, or having their spare room for a night or two.
Pretty little Cowichan Bay now had a famous resident; or at least, he was famous in his own hotel room. White men first arrived in these parts in 1848. Ten years later the first hotel cum general store opened, right here in Cowichan Bay. The town of Duncan came into being when the railroad from Victoria was built in 1886. After that the Cowichan district developed rapidly; that is, it developed rapidly for the white men. For the Cowichan Indians it was the same old story as elsewhere in North America: the white men brought death and the destruction of the Indian's way of life…
From Chapter Seven: Lotus Land…
Everyone on Vancouver Island seemed to be strapped for cash. Getting them to sign on that infamous dotted line was often like going five rounds with Mike Tyson. Meanwhile, a financial crisis loomed. Jack wasn't much help, and explained that the only true wealth is wisdom. He suggested that I try the power of crystals.
Instead, I went to see Cat, to ask for some wages again. Cat had just got back from a trip to the wilderness part of the island. His bombsite garden now had a caravan parked in it. His house filled with pleasant, smiling young people who all seemed to be busy. It was harvest time, the harvest being marijuana. Cat sat at his desk. He held a bedraggled plant in his hand and examined it with a magnifying glass. “Hey Rob! come take a look”. The young people smiled pleasantly at me. Cat passed over the magnifying glass and showed me the THC on the plant. THC stands for tetrahydrocannabinol, which is a right mouthful and is the little crystals on the leaves and stalks of the marijuana plant. It's the THC which makes you high. British Columbia produces some of the most potent pot in the world, with THC levels as high as 30%, compared to pot produced in other regions which can have a THC level as low as a few percent. Growing and selling marijuana is illegal of course, and it's estimated that British Columbia's annual pot production is worth as much as 4 billion dollars. The authorities attitude towards pot is more liberal these days, yet if you're caught cultivating the stuff you can still face huge fines and imprisonment. That's why Vancouver Island's such a popular place when it comes to growing marijuana plants: the huge, unpopulated wilderness and all those lonely island outposts means that you can raise a crop with very little chance of being caught; and a large number of people do raise a crop. This is one reason why they call Vancouver Island 'Lotus Land'. My question about a wage got lost in the clouds of exotic smoke.
When I woke up in the morning I had a cup of tea and then drove over to see Tim Peterson. I needed to get the Alaska Challenge booklet rolling. I needed to earn some money. Tim wasn't around. His secretary told me that he would be getting in touch real soon, that the booklet was still very much a goer. I left Tim's place somewhat buoyed-up if not somewhat frustrated. It was Halloween and time for witches and goblins and trick-or-treat, and pumpkins, huge bloody pumpkins. The faces carved on the pumpkins seemed to me mocking me as I drove back to the Wessex Inn.
From Chapter Seven: Lotus Land…
All I had to do now was hit Cat with the idea. I put my designs on to a floppy disk, jumped from the caravan, slipped over in the mud and then ran to the house. I discovered Suz crashed out on the sofa, puffing on a bedraggled cigarette. Cat sat at his desk, staring intently at the computer screen. The computer was turned off. My sudden entrance and enthusiasm stirred them both. I quickly explained my idea and Cat was impressed: “Hey Rob, Wacky Web Sites!” Suz, too, got caught-up in the excitement and managed to get up off the sofa. We all felt that this was it, the money earner we'd been looking for.
Cat's concentration level at that moment in time couldn't handle looking through my detailed statistics of how many birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, etc, were celebrated every single day, and how we only needed to get a tiny percentage of this market to make a fortune. “Hey Rob, Wacky Web Sites!” Cat said that he'd look through the details in the morning. Suz offered me her joint, and by way of celebration I took it.
The next morning I got up early; well, if you call 10am early. I had a gut rot and Mary hangover. There was no sign of life from the house. Still fired-up by the Wacky Web Sites idea, I drove into Duncan to find a printer. Wacky Web Sites felt like our saviour and in order for it to work we needed publicity. None of us had the funds to take out adverts in the press, so instead I would get publicity flyers printed and deliver them by hand all over Vancouver Island (Vancouver Island is the same size as England). I found a printer who did me a really good deal on the publicity flyers. Even the printer was impressed by the Wacky Web Sites idea. It was an omen. I had hundreds and hundreds of flyers printed.
When I got back to the house at lunchtime, Cat and Suz had finally stirred. Cat looked through the information on my floppy disk and seemed very impressed: “Hey Rob, Wacky Web Sites!” Suz made coffee and rolled joints. The potency of Lotus Land pot was such that after half an hour we were all completely stoned and unable to talk properly. Cat and Suz staggered into the bedroom. They were celebrating their reunion by having huge amounts of sex. I staggered back through the rain to the caravan. Ok, if Cat and Suz were unable to launch Wacky Web Sites I'd do it myself. I had so much faith in my idea, felt so confident in its successful outcome, was so smashed out of my brains, that I didn't see Wacky Web Sites for what it was: Custer's last stand.
I did it myself, in the pouring rain. I delivered hundreds and hundreds of flyers to homes in and around Duncan. I then drove down to Victoria and spent days doing the same. The real killer was the architecture in this part of the world. Many of the homes are built with the living space raised above ground level and a half sunk basement. This meant that to reach the front door you had to climb up a long flight of steps to a veranda. Sounds easy, huh? Not if you're doing it hundreds of times a day, carrying a huge weight of leaflets and in the pouring rain. After two days the muscles on the back of my legs were screaming in pain and I had developed a very bad chest infection. Even Cat commented on it one evening: “Hey Rob! what's with the funny walk?” But the gut rot kept me going and after one week I had delivered every single leaflet to what I estimated was more than one thousand homes on Vancouver Island.
From Chapter Eight: A Retreat In The Snow…
... on the final 50 mile stretch to Kamloops the moon did a disappearing act and it began snowing. The Yukon Queen was slipping and sliding again, and this time I also had to deal with appalling visibility. It wasn't much fun, and now the lack of traffic on the road was a major worry: if the Yukon Queen got stuck in the snow I could well find myself stranded in a remote part of the mountains. “People didn't know about it yet”, indeed!
We made it, though, we made it to Kamloops where we rejoined Trans-Canada Highway 1 and a little slice of civilisation. It had taken me nearly six hours to drive the 120 miles up the Sky Highway. I felt so exhausted by the ordeal that despite my lack of funds I checked into a hotel for the night. Before falling into a deep sleep I vowed that I would never again attempt these mountain roads in darkness.
With that in mind, the next morning I got up at first light. There in Kamloops I was only half way across the Rocky Mountains. If all went well, by nightfall I would be in Calgary, first stop on the prairies. I tried to forget that from Calgary it was still 2320 miles / 3740km to Montreal. That's twelve tanks of fuel for a Citroen 2CV. I tried to forget how much each tank of fuel would cost.
A light dusting of snow lay on the ground, yet the day was clear and mild and driving conditions were good as I bowled along eastwards. I was now on exactly the same route that Jose and I had taken back in the summer, but going in the opposite direction. I passed through Salmon Arm and then Revelstoke, where pretty white flakes began to fall from the heavens. On the climb up to the Rogers Pass a strong wind began whipping the snow, causing blizzard conditions. The road was narrow, with just one lane in each direction. I crawled along at 10 miles per hour, all the lights on the car blazing. After a few miles of battling through the atrocious weather I slid to a halt by a gang of workers who were trying to clear the road. We were all encountering the first heavy snowfall of winter in the Canadian Rockies. I had half a mind to turn back to Revelstoke, fearing that I'd never make it over the pass in these conditions. However, the road gang made me feel more secure: at least there were people about if anything untoward happened. Besides, now that winter had finally arrived in the Rockies it seemed unlikely that the snow would let-up in the near future. I could be spending a very long time in Revelstoke.
I asked the road gang how far it was to the top of the pass: about two miles. I told the gang that I was going to attempt the drive up there. One of them said that the Yukon Queen would never make it. I replied that if she did make it at least I knew that I could slide down the other side of the pass. I don't think they heard me. Everyone was muffled-up against the blizzard conditions.
It may surprise some readers just how well Citroen 2CVs cope in the snow. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, the 2CV has front wheel drive, which gives it better traction. Secondly, the tyres on a 2CV are very narrow, which means less tyre contact with the snow and ice, which means less chance of tyre slip. 2CVs are also very light cars. You'll see big four-wheel drives stuck in snow drifts that a 2CV will easily pass through. Of course, that road gang wouldn't have known all this, because Citroen 2CVs were never sold in North America.
I still pushed my luck, though, as the Yukon Queen crawled up the Rogers Pass in first gear and barely doing five miles an hour. It didn't matter, as long as I could keep the car moving; and keep moving she did.
At the summit of the Rogers Pass there is a gas station…
Media Coverage of the 2CV Alaska Challenge
rob@spiderbomb.com
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