Do you remember what I said about my wonderful mood? Yeah, well it soured real quickly today. I had about 220 km left until reaching my destination of Deadhorse and I wanted to do half of that today. My day started with 40 km of large rolling hills heading east northeast, of course into the wind. I was looking forward to reaching the Sagavanirktok River (The Sag), which the Dalton more or less follows the rest of the way to the ocean. My thinking was rivers don’t go uphill. So if the road follows the river I won’t go uphill. When I get to the river and turn north, the wind did too! Lucky me! I got to face a head wind for over 10 straight hours that day! I did have a long stretch of gradual down hill but the road still somehow found ways to turn straight up another 9% grade to really make me hate life, and the Dalton. I had to keep reminding myself that I volunteered for this. No one is making me do this to myself other than me. I ended up making it to Happy Valley, I call it Unhappy Valley due to the worst mosquitoes I have ever encountered in my life. It was truly horrible. I had probably over 200 on the screen of my tent. Eating in the morning was a challenge cause the wind had died down so the mozzies were constantly flying into my food. More protein I guess? I had talked to another cyclist heading south the night before wand he told me the forecast for today said east wind. I’ll take it over a north headwind again.
It turns out it wasn’t an east wind after all. I got more headwind! I had a few more rolling hills to deal with. Leading up to what turned out to be that last of them, I was on a nice and rare stretch of tarmac and I saw that the road was following the river into a valley, with steep bluffs on either side. I knew that the road would not go through that valley, but veer straight up it at one point and boy does it ever! I was cursing everything and everyone who built this road. I think the engineers who made this would see a big hill or mountain and say “Let’s fucking plow straight up that thing! No point in going around it, no one is ever going to be stupid enough to want to bicycle this”!
The wind continued to pick up intensity throughout the day, to where is was blowing at a sustained 35 mph out of the north and gusting to 45. I was just getting destroyed. Even though I was “going downhill” I still had to get off and push my bike because I couldn’t fight the wind anymore pedaling. I was yelling and swearing at he sky, flipping the weather gods off, crying, and just being flat out angry. I was so close to being done yet I was having the hardest test at the end. At one point point I got hit by a gust so strong it actually knocked me and Yonder over. Thankfully both of us were alright.
I was demoralized, tired, and hungry. I had been looking at my watch for the past few hours of little gain. Calculating how long it would take me to get to Deadhorse from my location, the time, seemingly ever increasing. The Buffet at the Aurora Hotel in Deadhorse closes at 8pm. It was 5:30pm. I had 25 km to go and I was at best going 4 km/h. I was not going to make it. I had my heart and mind set on making it to the end that night, I was not going to camp only 20 or so km from Deadhorse. I stuck my thumb out hoping for a ride. I got picked up by a man and a woman around my age, and they drove me the rest of the way to the Aurora and I got my room and got to eating around 7pm. I had 2 bacon cheese burgers, both with fries, a side of rice, corn on the cob, 2 apples, chocolate ice cream with M&M’s on top, and four bags of Peanut M&M’s for dinner. When I got back to my room and turned on the shower to wash days of blood, dirt, and sweat off of my body I let out a noise that was a mixture of crying and hysterical laughter. I was done with the Dalton.