Maybe This Wasn't Such a Good Idea

This is what Jonny told me on this wet, soggy, morning:
"I can't ride behind you," he said. "I can't take the pressure. I am so worried about you. Did you see the line of cars behind you? You were holding everyone up! One minute you go 50 miles per hour, one minute you go 40! I can't do this! If anything happens to you, the kids told me I should stay in Alaska!"
I was very quiet.
He went on, "It's bad enough having to deal with the wild animals and the rocks and the navigation but I'm worried about you. I don't think I can continue. Maybe we'll take the ferry back from Alaska to Vancouver...I don't know what the roads are like...I don't know what lies ahead."
It was not an upbeat morning.
I hadn't even told him what I was going through as I rode down this huge plunging road but I guess he figured it out without my saying anything. I was so scared that I pushed down too hard on the shifting pedal and I was cruising in neutral and unable to get the motorcycle back into gear. Imagine falling into the Atlantic Ocean from a plane without a parachute and that is about how I felt. I did engage the bike and continue on my merry way but I was rather rattled.
When Jonny said this, we had pulled into Liard Hot Springs, an oasis in the middle of this barren land. There are hot springs (see pix) and it looks like a wild jungle all of a sudden. It might be a long highway, but it's a small highway, because we even ran into a woman we had met a few nights back in a bed and breakfast. (She had told me, "My grandma used to fry her doughnuts and fritters in bear lard! It is pure white and never tastes burnt!" and I said, to quote dear Ralph Beaver, "Them's good eatin'!"
It was raining as we took off all our motorcycle gear and went into the hot springs. I lasted about three minutes. Then we rode off again, and I was feeling very blue. Maybe Jonny was right. I really was having a hard time handling the bike up and down the steep mountain passes. Maybe I'm in over my head...
It was drizzling and that made our mood even worse. One of those dreary mornings where I didn't feel carefree riding but only wet and blue. We rode by rivers and the water was bleached of all its blue color, just stones and treeless terrain, and then more hills. Once we came out of the Rockies, the sun came out, and I felt more sure-footed on flatter terrain.
We passed the sign for the Yukon Territory and everything seemed desolate again. I had thought there would be more RV's and motorcyclists around but at Coal River, the owner said, "This used to be bumper to bumper traffic but with the economy the way it is, nobody is out on the roads."
It is very scary to contemplate what could happen if one of us breaks down out here. We don't even want to stop because of the bears. We passed a bison -- huge -- standing by itself with some leaves on its back just eating and then two bears. We also came across a herd of bison grazing. And closed-down motels and gas stations. People can't keep up their businesses around here especially if there are no tourists which makes riding here more challenging. If you run out of gas, you run out of luck so we have been filling up at every gas station we pass. Gas costs anywhere from $4.80 to $6 a gallon (US).
Then we reached Watson Lake and the signpost forest. In 1942, a soldier, Carl K. Lindley, of Danville, Ill.inois, was working on the Alaska Highway and got so homesick that he put up a sign pointing the way to his hometown. Other soldiers followed him and now this "forest" full of license plates and homemade signs now has more than 40,000 signs. We found a New York sign as well as one from Israel and we scribbled our names on it. By then, our moods had perked up and we even posed for a kiss with our helmets on.
Now we are in Nugget City, Northern Beaver Post, where we ate at Wolf It Down Restaurant and have a little cabin on the Highway. Jonny ditched the idea of the ferry but we decided that if we know that if the weather is really bad, we might have to find a different solution.
"Maybe," Jonny said.
Plus, he is pissed off because he lost his best cold weather motorcycle gloves. And it gets cold in the morning -- the other day it was 37.3 degrees (about 1 degree Celsius). This morning it was 10 degrees Celsisu (50.1) We are just past Watson Lake, now travelling northwest through the Yukon and the next service stop is in 71 miles -- about most of the Long Island Expressway.