June 5th, 2007, 12:30am Alaska Time
Fairbanks, Alaska

I owe everyone an apology - i've had so little time ever since entering the States &amp; Canada that i've fallen behind on the journal postings. 

I have not forgotten - i'm keeping notes, and will continue to post (late) journals as I have time &amp; cognitive abilities - which abilities have been in short supply with the increasing sleep deficit we've all been dealing with.  I should have much more time (and sleep), though, in the next few days.

Realizing how far behind I am with the journal posts, and that I'll need several hours to do justice to the whole thing, I decided that I'd make a quick little update-in-the-middle post, and let everyone know where we are and what is going on, in a bit of a zoomed-out detail overview.

We made it all the way from Whitehorse, YT to Fairbanks, Alaska today.  Not our hardest ride, by a long shot, but it was a lot of distance covered today, on very little sleep for everyone here.  It was, however, one of the most beautiful &amp; hard on the butt.

See, the Alaska Highway when it comes through the Yukon should properly be called the Frost Heave Highway - or, as the locals call it, Manybumpswillpoundyerbum.  Couldn't believe some of the road conditions today, and then we had miles and miles and miles of construction to deal with - conditions, I suppose, that we'll hit on the Haul Road tomorrow.

That's right, we're almost finished.  Should everything go well (knock on wood) we'll be headin' out of Fairbanks tomorrow about 9:30am and hitting the Haul Road shortly after.  We've spoken to several bikers we've run into (not literally) here in Alaska about the Haul Road, and the consensus seems to be that we should be able to do it in twelve to fourteen hours (this road is 400 MILES of gravel, dirt  heavy traffic).  It looks, though, that it's going to be the toughest 400 miles of our trip so far.

I'll let you all know as soon as I can, but I may not be able to access the interweb when we're in Deadhorse/Prudhoe Bay.  We will give a call to Natalie or Kathy to get a post through with an update, whatever happens.

It's nearly 1am here, and my body's crying for sleep.  Rob and Sean have promised that they'll let me sleep in until 7am or so, but I'm not sure they'll be able to wait that long.

Here's hoping,
Ryan Noble,
Fairbanks, Alaska