I
’d picked myself up off the
ground and start dusting off
while checking for any inju-
ries, relieved to find that ex-
cept for a few cuts I’d fared
quite well and glad I hadn’t
been going too fast. Looking over I’d
seen my baby, laying on her left side
in the middle of a gravel road.
“My baby”, a Triumph Tiger Ex-
plorer XC 1200cc and the gravel road,
the Top of the World highway.
This highway, if you want to call it
that, is the furthest northern route
a person can travel from Alaska into
Canada's Yukon territory, a passage-
way created for the gold mining rush
that pushed into the north in the late
1800s. Now in 2017, there are only
a few villages that remain along this
route. The place where I stood look-
ing at my bike was even more isolat-
ed, approximately 30 miles (48km)
behind me was a tiny border crossing
station, and 40 miles (64km) ahead
lay the nearest town at the end of the
road, Dawson City, Yukon.
I looked at my bike and contem-
plate how I was going to right a 586lbs
bike (267Kg) loaded down with a little
over 200lbs (90kg) of gear.
I thought back, trying to assess my
situation.
The last vehicle I'd seen was hours
ago, a black and white BWM GS. The
rider waved as he'd passed, he and
I had leapfrogged each other a few
times since turning onto this road,
but I'd imagined he was now far
ahead of me and obviously, no help.
At this point in my journey, early
July, I'd been getting my wheels un-
der me as a rider.
I'd started to ride only months be-
fore, in April, when the snow finally
started to melt near my hometown of
Wasilla, Alaska.
In Alaska even for its massive size
there are only 4 major highways and
a hand full of minor ones. I’d made
it a goal to travel each one and pre-
pared for an adventure of long dis-
tance motorcycle traveling. I'd taken
TRAVERSE 91
advantage of my large amount of time
off each month, challenging myself
to ride further and longer each day. I
believed I was ready for the adventure
by the time July came. That’s how I’d
ended up standing in the middle of
this road with nothing around me.
As I'd stood there, looking at my
bike laying on its side, that confi-
dence started to shatter. I didn’t think
I was ready for this or even where to
begin on a solo lift to get the bike off
the ground, impossible … I needed
another person, so I didn’t have to un-
load all the gear. I stood there look-
ing at my bike for what seemed like
forever.
My idea of travelling the USA took
hold years before I started riding a
motorcycle, and quite frankly the idea
of riding a motorcycle hadn’t even
appealed to me. I was one of those
people that classified a motorcycle as
a death trap and that if I were to ride I
would end up crashing before I made
it out of my driveway. Instead, I filled
my time away from work travelling
internationally.
I’d enjoyed immersing myself into
the culture of the areas, trying to
soak up as much of the food, views,
and people of a certain place. The
hundreds of people I met along the
way asked questions of me as I did of
them. I found that a certain question
started to resonate within me. They
asked, "What is living in America
like?"
A simple and solid question.
I'm from the East Coast, so I would
tell them about the small town I grew
up in, or about the past ten years of
living in Alaska. I would acquaint
them with stories about the last fron-
tier.
When I sat back and honestly
thought about that question they’d
asked, the places I talked about would
become a tiny drop in the bucket the
USA encompasses. I began to formu-
late a plan, so I could travel and ex-
plore places like the Grand Canyon,
Key West, D.C., or Bangor to name