Started out bad. Got my bike all packed tonight and decided to give it a test ride to see how all the stuff I packed on the back was going to ride. I took off forgetting that my helmet was sitting up on top of the stuff on the back. Got it into 3rd gear before it fell off on the road and rolled along with me for a bit. Scratched the face mask all to pieces. Hard to see through it. Used some buffing compound that I use after painting my pickup with a little foam ball in my cordless drill and managed to get it looking pretty good. Whoooeeeeee!! I am glad I didn't break it. I have to remember not to do that any more. It is tough to get old and lose your mind. Well, I am all packed and ready to go. Going to bed early tonight and off in the morning. I am looking forward to all the adventures I am sure the next three weeks hold. I will try and blog most every day. Love ya. Dee

I got my motorcycle back. New front tire. New spark plugs. New oil. New back brakes. New starter. Tune up and a wash!! Time to get it dirty again. I leave tomorrow (Thursday) morning at about 7 am. I will be camping at Lake Chelan, Washington tomorrow night. Just above Ellensburg if you are looking on the map. I am heading to Redmond and then will drive north through Washington and into Canada on highway 97. I will ride about 400 miles tomorrow. I am going to try and ride 400 to 450 miles each day. That will put me into Fairbanks sometime on July 6th. I will head to Anchorage on July 8th spend the night at Jay Goolds place. Head to Soldotna on July 9th and fish there for Sockeye salmon for 5 days. I will head home on July 15th and should be home on the 21st. I will try and find a WiFi spot on the road most days so I can tell you about the falls that I have taken, the bears that I have outrun, and the beautiful scenery that I have seen. Love ya all. Dee

I just finished checking the weather in each town in Canada and Alaska I will be in on the day that I will be there, and it looks like rain all the way!! Every motorcycle trip that I have gone on it has rained most of the time. I am getting used to it. The first couple of times I road in the rain I had the idea that it was pretty much like riding on snow. That my bike was going to slip and spin and go out from under me at the smallest wrong wiggle, so I rode with fear and trembling which is quite exhausting after awhile. I am getting more confident in my motorcycle tires to hold the road even if wet, even sometimes very, very wet. My prayer life goes up a lot while riding in the rain. Praying that God will send some big angels to guard me and protect me from a wreck. My riding suit is waterproof and even in a very hard rain I stay pretty dry. About the only place I get wet is right at the top of my coat. The worst part of the rain is setting up camp in the rain. Everything in my dry bags gets wet as I drag it out, set up my tent, get my pad and sleeping bag into the tent and attempt to cook on my little stove. Most of the places that I camp have washers and dryers so I spend some quarters drying everything out the next morning. Works.

I took my motorcycle in last Thursday to get new plugs, valves adjusted, brakes worked on, new front tire, oil changed etc. Went to pick it up today so I could leave tomorrow morning bright and early and they told me my starter had about 2 more starts in it and then copluey! $500 for a starter and it wouldn't be ready until Wednesday. I bought an extra warranty last year for my motorcycle that would cover everything but brakes and clutch before I left on my 48 State tour last year. I handed the paper to the guy and asked if this would cover the starter and he said 100%. So I will leave bright and early on Thursday morning with a brand new starter. Way better hear than hours from nowhere up on the Alaskan Highway!! That means two less days fishing or 400 miles each day instead of 350. We will see how my rear end holds up with 350 miles a day before I decide that one. The cost of the trip was going to be $800. $500 for gas figuring 45 miles to the gallon and I got 48 on my last trip, $200 for camp sights for 15 nights at $12 per night and staying with friends the other 6 nights. $100 for fishing licence, candy, etc. I got a check in the mail this morning for $801.49 from IRS because I made a mistake in my taxes!! Whoooeeeeeee!! Now it is a free trip to Alaska on my motorcycle, sort of!

Wow, I only have one more day before I am off to Alaska. I am getting really nervous about the trip. It is always a puzzle to me as I think about it, what causes that weird feeling in my stomach before events like this. Is it fear? I am sure that the nervousness last year was fear being a total novice at motorcycle riding and not having a clue about what was going to happen having never gone to most of the places I was going. But this year I have 30,000 miles of motorcycle experience this past year and Patty and I drove the exact route last year in our car so I know exactly where I am going and what to expect. I think it is more anticipation than anything. One of the reasons I do so much planning, research, reading, and writing about these trips before I go is that I enjoy what anticipation does to me. It seems to give me more enthusiasm and energy and just makes life simply more fun. I like fun and it is nice having learned how to create a lot of it in my own life by doing those things that builds anticipation.

I have learned at this stage in my life that thinking a lot about going to heaven and imagining what that is going to be like creates a lot of anticipation and the benefits that go along with anticipation.

I am going to spend a lot of tomorrow packing my bike. Love ya all. Dee

The question that gets asked often of me is why ride your motorcycle to Alaska. Here's the answer:

I believe very strongly that God speakes to us. You probably all do as well. I believe that God speaks to us in His Word, but also through the Holy Spirit that indwells each Christian. We hear Him primarily in our thoughts. I also believe that a lot of messages that we think are from God probably are not. It is a very difficult thing to sort out all the thoughts in our mind and decern which are from God and which are not. The primary discipline to figure that out for me is solitude. Solitude would include a number of things. Quiet would be an obvious one. Our brain is constantly recieving input from people, books, TV, radio, CD players etc and it overwelms the input of the Holy Spirit. I become confused with all the input that comes into my brain in a normal day. Another key is being alone. A motorcycle for me is a perfect place to travel and see the creation around me yet be alone inside my helmet, on my bike. Also being away from responsibility for a season. Being responsible as a pastor, husband, father, and friend is very important to me. It takes up a lot of my thinking time figuring out what to do and say in the various roles that I am so that others are blessed by my life and leadership.

Another discipline besides solitude is writing. I seem to be able to hear my thoughts and sort them out much better as I write reflectively. It works like the old cream separator that I used to crank by hand as a kid separating the cream from the milk. There are so many thoughts that I have that are mine. They come from my past, my education, my prejudices, etc. I want the thoughts that are the words from God to be very clear to me as coming from God, not from me, from you, from the world, or from the devil.

So that is my reason for these seasons of motorcycle trips that I started on last year and hope to continue as long as I can keep a motorcyle upright, and then I will get a three wheeler! Love ya all. Dee

Dee's Motorcycle trip to Alaska

I am off to Alaska on another motorcycle trip. I am going with a pastor friend from Washington named Glen Douglas. I went by myself last year as I toured the lower 48 States but there is very little cell phone service on this trip and I thought it would be safer to have someone with me in case my bike had problems.

We will be riding a total of 6000 miles in 24 days. Last year my total trip was 12000 miles so this one is much easier in terms of miles ridden. We will be heading for Fairbanks, Alaska where my daughter Shelly, her husband Philip and my two grand kids live. We will stay with them for two nights and then head to Anchorage and stay one night with Jay and Marsia Goold, good friends who used to live in Jefferson and attend JBC. Then we will be off to Soldotna where we will stay with a friend who has a cabin there. We will fish on the Kenai river for about 4 days. My friend, Chick Fisher drove up in May in a pickup and will be driving back here in the Fall, and he said he would can my salmon for me and bring it back with him when he came. I plan on catching a lot of sockeye salmon.

When we get done fishing we will head home. I plan on being home on the 22nd of July. I am going to try to stay in campgrounds that have WiFi so I should be able to do some blogging every night of our days adventures. We are taking all of our camping stuff with us on our bikes. I will be eating 10 grain cereal in the morning and freeze dried dinners at night. Just heat water. My kind of cooking. For lunch I will pick up whatever at service stations when we get gas. You know, health food like black licorice and snickers candy bars.

The big challenge will be making sure we don't run out of gas. Gas stations are farther apart on this trip, and motorcycles don't have very big gas tanks. Mine is 3.7 gallons and I get about 47 miles to the gallon. 170 miles per tank. My goal is to fill up every 100 miles. I am carrying 2 gallons of gas just in case. The other challenge will be not hitting any wildlife. Patty and I drove this same route in our car last summer and saw lots of deer, elk, caribou, buffalo, bears, and goats right in the middle of the road acting like we were trespassing. I am thinking it will hurt if I hit any of them. With the bear it will probably hurt twice.

Well, I hope you have as much fun reading the blog of our trip as I will have writing it. Love ya all. Dee