Additional comments from the present (Oct. 16, 2019): This is going to be another longer entry, but for good reason. Just warning you up front. I’ve also spliced a lot of new content (in italics) with what was originally posted. Hope you enjoy.
The Tale of Dawson City, Cont’d
July 1, 2019
Additional comments from the present (Oct. 16, 2019): The date on this should really be the 2nd, due to it being written in the wee hours of the morning, however I’m using July 1, because that is when it all actually happened. Just want to clear that up before the first sentence confuses someone.
Today, well yesterday, was… odd. Dawson City is odd.
I had planned on staying in Dawson City for Canada Day, so I did that.
Additional comments from the present (Oct. 16, 2019): We all wandered around the town for a bit before grabbing breakfast along the river to watch the Canada Day parade. Canada Day celebrates the formation of Canada from separate provinces in 1867.
The parade was pretty fantastic. I’m fairly certain everyone from town was in it, and they even had a classic car group from Fairbanks show up. Something I didn’t get, though (maybe a Canadian can explain this one, or maybe there is no explanation)… all the vehicles in the parade were throwing frozen popsicles in addition to candy. Why? It made about as much sense as the woman dressed as a lobster.
So, the guys I met yesterday are all on KLRs, and they were about ready (at least Marshall still thought so) for new (rear) tires. Normally that wouldn’t be an issue, but we are in the Canadian Yukon.
Additional comments from the present (Oct. 16, 2019): There are a LOT of bikes coming through Dawson City because of it being a bit of a gateway to several other places, so it is surprising someone hasn’t actually opened a seasonal shop. They’d probably do ok.
One of the guys (Marshall), and I were walking around town after the parade just checking things out. Happened to stop a guy on a bike for some intel (I believe he described the road as like ‘riding on Nutella’), and he points us to the visitor center. The visitor center tells us what they know about the Dempster Highway, and points us back across the street to the Northwest Territories visitor center.
Additional comments from the present (Oct. 16, 2019): Before we actually got to the visitor center, Marshall & I split off from the group to check out the town, buy some stickers (yep!), and generally wander around. The whole city is right on the Yukon river, and they have a paddleboat out of the water you can tour. It’s massive. It also scared the crap out of us. They blast the horn every so often, and this time it happened to be while we were standing right next to it. Needless to say, it scared both of us.
While we’re in there hearing about road conditions, there’s another guy looking around. Marshall mentions tires, and the guy says, “I have tires for a KLR.” He didn’t even know what bikes these guys are riding.
Additional comments from the present (Oct. 16, 2019): We actually walked in on the mystery guy having an interesting conversation with the woman in the NE Territories visitor center which means we looked around a bit before we were actually able to speak to the woman working.
Once we were able to speak with her we learned a few things. 1) the road conditions are all about the weather, and 1a) we were looking good according to the forecast, and 2) everyone knows Dick the Tire Guy. Marshall asked the woman working about tires, and sure enough she asked if he’d tried Dick yet. The jokes write themselves, so I won’t.
The guy overheard the tire conversation, and just deadpanned the line about having tires. Our expressions must have read as incredulous, because he followed it up with, “I’m serious. I’ll show you.” He then explained that his trailer was just a few blocks away, and we could just follow him. Nothing at all sketchy here, folks. Just going to follow a stranger to his ‘trailer’…
It all felt really weird, and I might have lagged a few steps behind just in case a rumble went down (a rumble?). It turns out the guy was completely legit. He actually had a trailer parked a few blocks away that had several KLRs & tires in it. Many of the tires new. The odds of this are… nearly zero I would guess. Marshall and I kept looking at one another with looks of amused amazement.
While tires were being dug out of the trailer we learned a bunch about our new friend, Max. Max had just, and I mean just as in mere days before, moved to Dawson City from Calgary. He packed everything he owns into a trailer, headed to Dawson City to look for mining work. Or start a mine. Or… something with mining. He ended up in a situation where he found not one, but three deals on KLRs right before he moved. They came with spares. He had spares.
As if all of this wasn’t strange enough, we eventually got one of the other guys to come down and help us carry tires. At this point the ‘negotiation’ began. Not only over which tires, but how much. Eventually a price was settled upon, and Max was ok with not getting cash until later, as the only working ATM happened to be in the casino that had yet to open. Drew offered to pay in bitcoin, Max said he’d prefer dogecoin. I’m not making this up.
Yesterday we passed through a portal into Post Fire. Today we reached a new place that we began to call PT, or Post Tire. We’ve ended up in a post-apocalyptic place where bartering is the way of life, and cryptocurrency has completely replaced paper, and it might actually be 3019. Post tire is a strange place.
We haven’t even had lunch yet…
Welp, not too long later we’ve made a new friend, tires are being changed in the street, and nearly all the locals are stopping by to check things out. Surreal.
Oh, the same guy also happened to have some rear pads one of the guys needed badly. Like, pad was toasted badly. Unbelievable.
A guy came by with a guitar. Totally normal.
I can’t really describe accurately what today felt like. Nothing felt real. It’s like being in a weird video game. Maybe I’ve stumbled into a time warp, and this is actually what the future becomes. Such a strange, but wonderful day.
Additional comments from the present (Oct. 16, 2019): After the tires were procured we ended up back in front of our hotel to change them. Well, Marshall would do the bulk of the work, the guys would help, and I would mostly watch while writing. My bike was fine.
That doesn’t mean nothing else interesting happened. It isn’t totally normal to be changing tires in the dirt street in front of a hotel, so we had visitors coming by. The Captain stopped in to check on his wife, offer some advice, and tell some crazy stories. A guy that looked like Meatloaf came by, eventually playing his guitar for us. He got mad when I asked if I could call him Meatloaf, wouldn’t play the guitar for the toonie I offered, but he took a beer. This after he said he only plays for money.
I think nearly everyone in town came by at one point. It was truly… not to overuse the word, but… surreal. People came to watch. They came to ‘help.’ They came in waves. Drew even had another guy (I can’t recall his name) scouring town for brake pads. A totally normal day in Dawson City.
As if all this wasn’t enough, something else remarkable happened in a pretty unremarkable way; Drew prevented the hotel from burning down. Yes, you read that correctly. He saved Dawson City. While he was doing laundry he discovered a smoldering box of rags in a hotel closet. He took them outside, doused them with the fire extinguisher, and informed the hotel. All of it in a very calm, matter-of-fact way that I imagine only Drew could pull off.
After we got the bikes sorted we headed back to the Sourdough Saloon to meet Max, have some beers, and watch Drew take one more crack at buying more parts off Max’s stash of KLRs. Earlier Drew had asked about rear brake pads, but Max was hesitant. This time, he was all for it. It seemed like Max was going to sell them a whole KLR one piece at a time. So we ended up changing brake pads at some hour of the night. You can’t really tell when the sun never goes down.
If I wasn’t there it would be hard for me to believe all of these things just happened. In fact, I still find some of it hard to believe. There are things I missed, but the main parts are here. Dawson City, Post Tire just isn’t a normal place. Neither was Westworld, though.
Tomorrow will see the group of five of us travel up the Dempster to Tuktoyaktuk. Six days up & back. Not really certain what the conditions will be, but we’ll go as far as we can.
For those that don’t know, it’s the same road featured in Ice Road Truckers, but clearly in summer.
I’ll be out of cell coverage for a while, so nobody panic. Tracker is on – https://share.garmin.com
If you want to know more about Tuk: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuktoyaktuk
Arctic circle bound!
Also, it’s 2am… the sun is still up. It’s insane.
Ryan Cavalier 