Greetings from Fairbanks…

Day 14 – June 13, 2010 Mileage today: 42 Total Trip Mileage: 4,741 Today is a rest/maintenance day for us. It was a rainy morning, perfect for catching up on some sleep. First item on the agenda for today is to eat some breakfast. Sam's Sourdough Cafe, and then to round-up my new tire and mount it. I had prearranged to have a new tire waiting for me when I arrived in Fairbanks. Dan from Adventure Cycleworks here in Fairbanks took really good care of me. He even power washed all the mess from the Top of the World Highway off of the bike for me.

Just south of here there is a little novelty town called North Pole, AK. And yep, you guessed it, it’s the home of Santa. We had seen something on television a while back and decided we would check it out in person. Here’s this year’s Christmas Card: Boy oh Boy, to say this place gave me the creeps would be a huge understatement. It was flat out weird, and for whatever reason, really depressing. Maybe I am too old, and I notice the fact that Santa’s Sleigh was obviously cut out of less than choice plywood, or the blistering on the gigantic Santa statue, or the fact that Santa’s Reindeer (that live behind the gift shop) would have already taken their own lives - if not for the lack of having opposable thumbs. So, we cut our losses and returned to Fairbanks to take care of a few errands. One such errand was to obtain grape jelly. At some point during our trip we decided we needed some grape jelly. Not strawberry, not blackberry, not huckleberry (Montana loved these things). We struck out at every grocery store in Canada, but finally once back in the good-ol’ US-A we were able to get our grape jelly. We will not even go into the difficulties of trying to find sweet tea. I must be grumpy… jordan