US Customs Port Alcan.  Early July, 2011.

“Are those your plates?” the customs officer asked.  “Yup!” was my reply with a smile as I handed him my passport.  The “Explore” plates had been going over quite well on the trip.

Key punches.  Waiting.  “You’ve been randomly chosen for a secondary inspection.  Please pull up and to the left.”

I pulled forward as directed and turned Sam off.  The customs officer checked under Sam’s hood, then continued walking around to the hitch-mount cargo container.

“How do you open this?” he asked me.

“Well… it would be easier if I just showed you.  Would you mind if I showed you?”

“Ok.”

I got out and walked around to the cargo box.  As I was fiddling with the lock, I said, “So, I thought it would be fun to play hockey while I was up here.”

The lid popped open, revealing my hockey gear bag.

The officer poked the bag with his finger and said, “Hockey, huh.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “and my sticks are in the back,” nodding towards the back seat.

The officer paused for a moment while looking at me, mulling over the situation.   Then he handed my passport back to me.  “Have a nice day, sir.”

“Thanks!”

Maybe he was a fellow hockey player.  Or maybe he just didn’t feel like digging through a bunch of smelly hockey gear.

I had just picked up some supplies and was nearly back to Sam when something caught my eye in the next parking lot row.  It was an RV with the Minnesota vanity license plate “Travel”!  Naturally, I felt compelled to meet the person with such good taste in license plates.

Travel! Explore!

I went up to the RV and knocked on the door.  The owners greeted me, and I returned the favor.  We were making pleasant small talk when an even more remarkable coincidence came to bear: Pat and Dianne were from the northeast corner of Plymouth, Minnesota.  That’s about three miles from where I grew up!  It’s quite probable that we have mutual acquaintances.

I think this guy likes to kayak (Another neat license plate, seen in Whitehorse, YT)

It’s incredible to think about the number of pieces that had to fall into place to precipitate that encounter.  At a minimum, it took me making a wrong turn trying to find a Starbucks, finding a Walmart instead, deciding that I needed more Febreze for my hockey gear, and parking in a particular section of the lot.  Not to mention everything leading up to my being in Fairbanks in the first place, which for other reasons ended up happening several days earlier than planned (mostly having to do with, of all things, the existence of direct flights to Whitehorse from Frankfurt and Zurich).

Amazing.  A butterfly flaps its wings, indeed.

I was speeding up the Alaska Highway from Fort Saint John towards Fort Nelson when it happened.  I think I was admiring how similar that part of British Columbia looks to the river valleys of Indiana and central Minnesota: rolling hills, farms, deciduous trees, and so on.  The only major difference was the occasional appearance of chemical facilities alongside the road.

One in particular caught my eye, and my gaze drifted from the road to the plant’s sign. “Sour gas processing? I wonder what sour…”

*WHAM!!!*

My eyes immediately jerked back to the road, then up to the rear view mirror to see what I had hit.  Rapidly receding into the distance was an enormous pothole.  I had seen countless potholes already in the short time I had been traveling on the Alaska highway, and although the earlier ones had been large and deep, they were easy enough to avoid.  Easy enough, that is, when watching the road.

Poor Sam.  Just a day earlier, I had been in a Walmart parking lot repairing his windshield from a rock chip.  The pothole encounter threatened to be far worse.

With my heart thumping, I turned off the radio and felt and listened for any sign of mechanical distress.  Any new noises?  Any vibrations? I concentrated intensely.  After several seconds, I became satisfied that nothing was amiss, turned the radio back up, and sped up to about 100 mph to pass a truck.

In hindsight, that was stupid.

A couple hours later, I stopped to stretch my legs.  While I was out of the car, I happened to glance at Sam’s driver’s-rear tire.  What I saw made my heart sink: a huge bulge in the sidewall.

That's going to be expensive...

Sidewall bulges are bad news because they can cause blowouts.   They can’t be repaired; the tire must be replaced.  Based on the mark on the rim (which thankfully was not bent), I figure the impact with the pothole snapped some of the tire’s cords, causing the bulge.  Sam had a spare tire, but it was just a temporary, and those aren’t good to use for long distances.   And a long distance was exactly what I faced.

I was about 60 miles before Fort Nelson at the time I noticed the bulge, so I decided to press on.  I arrived at 4:30 p.m. on a Saturday; most everything was closed.  Fortunately, one of the two tire shops in town, Kal Tire, happened to be open, so I pulled in there and talked with one of the guys.  Unfortunately, they had only a single tire of the right size in stock, and it’s bad practice to replace only a single tire in an all-wheel drive car.  I weighed the risk of a blowout against the potential damage to Sam’s differential.  I also considered the high cost of the tire, which would have been around $200.

Complicating matters was the fact that I was in an extremely remote part of the country.  There wasn’t much between Fort Nelson and Whitehorse.  Not even cell service, for the most part (though I could have fallen back to the satellite phone).

In the end, I decided to press on the 600 miles to Whitehorse.  I knew that the tire could fail at any time, but if it did, it would probably not mean a loss of control since the tire was in the rear.  The presence of the spare increased my comfort with the risk.

The next day, I began the drive.  It was the slowest 600 miles I have ever driven: at no time did I exceed 60 mph.  That limited the stress on the bad tire and reduced the chances of loss of control should a failure occur.

Along the way, I encountered numerous large animals on and near the road: dozens of black bears, a few moose, some elk, some caribou, a few goats, some big-horned sheep, and a couple of herds of bison. Yes, bison.  I didn’t think that their range extended so far north, but there they were.  I was thankful that I had hit a pothole instead of a large mammal.

Bison along the Alaska Highway. Don't want to hit one of those.

It was a beautiful road, one of the most scenic that I have driven.  It was also, fortunately, an uneventful trip.  I reached Whitehorse without any difficulties.

The search for replacement tires in Whitehorse was not so simple.  Very few tires of the requisite 225/60R17 size were to be had in Whitehorse.  Canadian Tire had a few in stock, but none of them were very good (according to the Tire Rack reviews), and at any rate they were at least 50% more costly than in the States.

Since Sam’s other three tires were still in good shape, I wanted to replace only the bad tire.  As I mentioned earlier, that’s normally ill-advised with an all-wheel drive car due to the stress on the differentials, but after reading about the subject for a while, I decided that replacing a single tire was still the most economic course of action.  If the circumferences of the tires were similar (within 1/4″ or so), the stress wouldn’t be too great. I conveniently ignored the potential differences in level of grip.

Given the high cost of new tires in Canada, I decided to go the used route.  I found a guy named Art advertising used tires on Kijiji and gave him a call.   As luck would have it, he had some tires of the right size in stock!  I drove over to his place, a couple miles from downtown Whitehorse, to give them a look.

Art was working on a Hummer H3 when I pulled up to his house and workshop.  He was a husky fellow, with blonde hair and a jovial personality.  All around his workshop were piles of tires. Some were sorted and labeled, while others — the new arrivals, I would learn — were simply in piles.

Tires, tires everywhere

I took a look at the tires he had mentioned and found them to be a matched set of four in great condition.  However, I needed only one tire, and Art was understandably reluctant to break the set.

We talked for a little while, and I described my trip to him.  It turned out that he had moved to the Yukon from Winnipeg, and that he and his wife spent winters in the Philippines.  After a little while, he suggested another option to me: I could look through the unsorted tires and see if I could find a single tire of the right size.  So I did.

After about 15 minutes of digging through mounds of tires, I struck gold: a 225/60R17 with 8/32″ of tread left, the same amount remaining on Sam’s existing tires.  It was a different brand, Bridgestone instead of Continental, but beggars can’t be too choosey.  Art dug around too, and he found another tire of the same size, a Goodyear.  That gave me not one but two options.

Amazed at my good luck, I chose the Goodyear, and soon the old Conti was in the pile headed for the dump.

The old tire

Everything turned out fine. Sam got his game face back on.

Sam on the Alaska Highway

Now that the trip is finishing its second week, I thought it would be good to talk a little bit about my horse car, Sam.

Sam as a new car, June 2010

Sam has been a trouper on the journey so far.  About 10% of the total miles for the trip have been covered, and he has done it with aplomb.  He just keeps going and going.

One of the major expenses for the trip is gasoline.  Sam’s EPA rating for highway mileage is about 25 MPG, but thus far on the trip he has far surpassed that.  With the AC going pretty much all the time, and at 70+ MPH speeds on cruise control, he has been averaging about 28 MPG.

He laughs at hills.  He blows by other cars when passing.  He handles well, even with the 150 pounds of cargo box and hockey gear sitting on his hitch.

Sam on the Icefields Parkway in Jasper NP

The only problem so far occurred just outside of Dawson Creek, BC when a mean ol’ Nissan kicked up a rock that put a star in Sam’s windshield.  Given the nature of the chip, I knew that it would evolve into a large crack if not promptly treated, so I stopped at the first store that I knew would both be open on a holiday (Canada Day) and stock the necessary salve: Walmart.

I got the repair kit, found some shade in the parking lot in the shadow of an RV, and set to work.  Things might have gone better if the syringe hadn’t had a crack in it, if the RV had stayed parked, or if the adhesive donut applicator thing hadn’t failed under pressure (spewing resin all over the place), but I think the repair was mostly successful.  The chip is still visible, but the star pattern is mostly gone.  Sam will be getting a new windshield soon anyway due to a crack that’s mostly concealed by my Minnesota State Parks sticker, but I’m trying to delay that as long as possible due to the hassle of finding a replacement on the road.

Sam has surgery after taking a rock to the forehead

What Sam needs now is a good bath.  He looks like a good Subaru — that is, muddy — but I don’t think the numerous bugs are good for his paint.  I’ve sprayed him down a few times along the way, but I really need to spend an hour or so to give him a long soaking and maybe a new coat of wax.  Wouldn’t hurt to vacuum his interior, too.

So yes, on the car front, everything has been great.  I’ll do my best not to make you hit a moose, Sam!

What better place to be on Canada Day than in Canada?  After all, on Canada Day, everybody is a little bit Canadian.

Cheap Canadian flags are MADE IN CANADA, eh?

I began Canada Day in Jasper, Alberta. It was incredibly similar to being in the States on the Fourth of July, except everybody was waving around Canadian flags instead of the stars and stripes.

Canadians like Canada, eh?

Canada Day celebrates the creation of Canada back in 1867.  That was not the date of Canadian independence, which came gradually over the years.  Canada was still somewhat subordinate to the UK until 1982, when an act of the British parliament which granted Canada the right to change its own constitution.  Not that there’s anything wrong with celebrating the beginning rather than the end of the change; nobody in the States celebrates June 21, which is the anniversary of the 1788 ratification of the United States Constitution.

Jasper kicked off Canada Day with a pancake breakfast.  Pancakes are always extra delicious when enjoyed outside on a beautiful morning with big mountains sitting all around the horizon.

Pancake breakfast in Jasper, AB, eh?

From standing in line, I got the impression that there were at least a few townsfolk present, but many of the patrons seemed to be visitors.   It was hard to tell them apart.  I do know that I enjoyed my flapjacks over conversation with a family from Edmonton and a couple from Santa Cruz, California.

Pouring pancakes, eh?

I’m not sure why, but I found the celebration of Canada Day by all of the Canadians to be incredibly amusing.  It was almost like a kid (Canada) trying to emulate an adult (America) – and I mean that in the nicest way possible.  Maybe it was just my perspective.  I’m sure that foreigners find America’s Independence day festivities equally ridiculous.  Is there really much difference between a little kid riding around on a tricycle decked out in the stars and stripes versus one with a bunch of maple leaves?

For my part, I walked around in my red raincoat, which was made in Canada.  I figured it would be less alarming than walking around in my red goalie mask (which was also made in Canada).

It was time to hit the road after breakfast.  My destination was Ft. St. John, British Columbia, about 370 miles from Jasper.

Along the way, I happened upon the remote town of Grand Cache, Alberta.  Grand Cache is the sort of place that is the “next gas” and “last gas” for 100 miles in any direction. It is the center of activity for a large swath of land.  They had a Canada Day celebration, too, complete with street hockey and cake.  I was too early for hockey, so I partook in Canada birthday cake instead.

Canada Cake. The little kid to the back-left knows what's up, eh?

Canada Day was fun.  If I time things right, I might be back in Canada in October for Canadian Thanksgiving.