fallride2010: Weather window was a door

8 bells sharp I took off into a clear frosty morning. About 2km up the road a dense ice fog dropped in. Now fog is ok, but when it is freezing to your windscreen, your visor, and your glasses, visibility gets a little fuzzy. Kind of like beer goggles...about 14 beer goggles. Stopped for breaky about an hour out, and after a short wait, the fog lifted.....and became rain. As Oisin would say "it was pesin raan all f----n day". The light rain was ok, well my bike was getting dirty, but no bigee. Now up comes Ft St John. The Bible Belt must have known Philly was comin, because it became a DELUGE fitting of the forty days and nights thing. I pulled off, and squinted my way to a Shell gas bar, and parked under the canopy until I saw the gas jerk coming over to give me the heave ho. I spotted a Safeway, and whipped under the entrance door overhang, and squished against the building like a cockroach does if you turn the lights on at night. There I stayed for about two hours, enough time to grab a Starbucks and answer about 500 "nice day for a ride, eh" from the yokels. At last the rain abated enough to leave, and about 2km from town the highway was dry as a bone. In my infinite wisdom, I had failed to don rain gear, so I was soaked to the crack, and stayed that way all day. This process was repeated several more times, and once I even said to myself "well, at least it's not hailing"....at which point buckshot sized hail balls started pinging off my face shield. AWW COME ON...give me a freakin break. Then the mandatory Alaska highway construction....20Km of dirt track, pot holes, huge rocks, gravel that looked like sharpened shale, and all in the lashing rain. Will the fun never stop??? The sign holder chick even had the stones to ask me, as I sat there dripping "so, are you enjoying your trip?"
I stopped for gas at a place called Pink Mountain, and the guy asked me what I was doing out here on a bike...I said "Sept was supposed to be balmy and nice"....to which he replied "not here...ever". A crazy cowboy guy (he had two horses, and was a little "off" came over to me at Pink, and laid his hand on my bike, and recited the Lord's prayer before I left.......no kidding, this is true, I couldn't make this stuff up. I was too shocky to think to take a snap of him...too late now. Finally made it to Ft Nelson....another oil town with huge trucks roaring around, and everything is over priced because they can. I'm sure that if I had been mounted on a lesser steed, this trip would have gone south long ago, but Big D has been rock solid, forgiving, and 12 hour rideable. Should be an easy three hour spin to Liard tomorrow. I hope this place is spectacular, I really could use an upside to this trip. Do I sound like a glass half full or a half empty kind of guy??...or maybe just "full of it". Finally got pics posted....sorry for the delay.