Reaching Mile Zero of the Alaska Highway

We pulled out of Fox Creek after following all the rules ("No pet not allowed from management! Not Allowed any cook in the room except in kitchenette!") to sunny skies. Headed down Moose Row with lots of signs for moose and one moose sighting in the distance. Fog curled on the ponds along the edge of the road. Weather forecast: Thunderstorms...but we were lucky. (We were also lucky in Saskatchewan; after we left, there was a tornado!)
No more farms and ranches; now there are hills, and the perfect golf course green of the praries has turned a duller green with patches of brown. We crossed over the province line into British Columbia. The seams in one road had buckled so much that every other second I went over them and felt like a salad dressing bottle that some huge guy was shaking. (Jonny also pointed out that each time I landed, my foot accidentally hit the brake pedal. But my BMW was very forgiving and seemed not to notice and kept driving nicely.)
Out of the parentheses, I think it's about time I get funky and a tad techinical and talk about what exactly is the motorcycle I am riding.
"Do you even know what kind of motorcycle you are riding?" Jonny asked me as we sat eating vermicilli noodles at the Noodle Hut, a Vietnamese Restaurant in downtown Dawson Creek.
"Of course!" I said indignantly. "A BMW 650 GS."
"NO!" he said just as indignantly. "It's a BMW G 650 GS with a single cylinder and it's chain-driven!"
Being technically-challenged, I cannot reveal any further information about the motorcycle at this time. I do know that it has a chain that is thicker than a bicycle which we have oiled twice so far. (I turn the wheel and Jonny greases it up.) When I learn what a single cylinder means I will inform all of you. I know that all my girlfriends will have skipped this information but I want to be Zen and try to know more facts about the bike than its color (CHERRY RED!)
Pulled into Dawson Creek. It is another frontier town but because it was started in the 1800s, there is a downtown area where you can walk around and not just another crisscross of strip malls. We did the obvious touristy thing and photographed ourselves by the Mile ZERO of the Alaska Highway marker. In that photo with the white RV behind us, the woman was nice enough to let me get an inside view of the RV. It looked nicer than some houses, complete with a fruit bowl. Sometimes when I am riding in the rain, I think, what am I nuts? I could be sittin' pretty (and bored out of my mind) in one of them.
We are staying at Shelagh Gliberry's bed and breakfast, Northern Lights, right in Dawson Creek. The houses are quite plain all around but hers is an oasis with clump birch and weeping birch trees and a little pond. The bed is so high you just about need a ladder to climb into it. Very lovely. And lots of beautiful local artwork.
This afternoon we went for a walk and, on Shelagh's suggestion, stopped at Europa Cafe for coffee. Jonny said "this was the best iced expresso I ever had in my life. What else can I say? End of story." The owner, Zoltan Wicha, (in the photo with his daughter, Fanni Kovacs) is from Hungary. He just opened the cafe a short while ago. Jonny of course told him two pertinent facts:
"My son, Nadav, will be studying physical therapy in Budapest next year!" AND, "We have a dog, a Viszla, from Hungary!"
Then we left and walked around a bit. Dawson Creek, Mile Zero, is the absolute, definitive start of the Alaska Highway which, if you don't know, was built in nine months during World War Two, to serve as a land route to Alaska after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Thousands of soldiers worked on the road in the snow and the cold and many of them died...We have it easy.
Tomorrow we begin the approximately 1,500-mile journey up the highway toward Alaska. The weather report: thunderstorms...We had a taste of what we're in for this afternoon. We were sitting on the porch of the bed and breakfast when a sheet of black clouds moved in and the rain began, first a gentle patter, then getting so strong that we had to move inside. There was cracks of lightning and thunder. Even the local TV station, which we were watching at the time, lost its power and for a moment, the screen and the kitchen and the sky all went black.