Our ferry arrived in Homer at 8 am, which meant we could easily reach Anchorage before the close of regular business hours. We found a couple of shops that could probably fix the leaky rear shock, and moderately confident, we decided to add a sightseeing detour into our route.
There is a curious town we wanted to check out, Whittier. What makes it interesting is that a) you have to go through a long one-way tunnel to reach it, and b) most of its residents live in a single large condominium. When I asked our Homer host, Andy, about Whittier, he shrugged and said, well, you can visit it if you want to. Andy completely misrepresented the situation.
Personally, I cannot suggest this town as a destination for motorcycle riders.
- There is a toll to use the tunnel, and motorcycles pay the same as cars, $13, which is not cool, but also not the most unpleasant thing about it.
- The tunnel only has a single lane, so traffic goes one direction on the hour, and the other direction at hour and 30 min. You can’t go whenever you want, if you miss the time slot, you have to wait another hour.
- Motorcycles go at the very end of the lineup, after all other vehicle types, because… I have no idea.
- Once you’re in town, you cannot go anywhere near the infamous condominium. Unless you’re staying there, you are restricted to the immediate harbor area and a huge gray parking lot.
- Speaking of the harbor area, it’s a complete tourist trap. Overpriced (yes, even by Alaskan standards) mediocre food, lame souvenirs and plenty of tourists eagerly shelling out money and encouraging this madness.
If I had another go at this part, I would stop at Portage Lake Overlook, which is just before you reach the tunnel, park my bike, enjoy the lake for some time, maybe even take a short hike, and then turn around and go back to Seward Highway. But since we wasted so much time in Whittier and had to be in Anchorage before shops close, we didn’t stop at that lake at all. It looked really beautiful from the road!
On the bright side, we did make it to Anchorage in good time, and the suspension guy at Alaska Motorsports & Equipment agreed to work on the bike through the evening and have it ready by morning. Travis from Go Race, who initially set up our suspensions, suggested we carry spare quad rings for the rear shocks, since this is a part most likely to wear out and fail, and having the correct replacement makes servicing it easy anywhere in the world. We were happy to have followed his advice.
While at the shop, we changed oil on the bikes, then left one for overnight service and went downtown on the other one, 2 up. What a weird feeling! A Peruvian chicken later, we felt a lot better about the day, and treated ourselves to a luxurious ice cream cone.
Aside from oil and rear shock, we also needed to get a rear tire. My old one wasn’t entirely gone, but it absolutely would not last to the next city large enough to have any replacements. Even in Anchorage, it proved quite complicated. We called up many stores, and none seemed to have anything in the right size. It wasn’t until next day that we found a place aptly named The Motorcycle Shop, and they had one last dual sport tire in my size. It was a rather aggressive Motoz Tractionator Rallz, which made for a funny combo with the mellow Heidenau K60 Ranger front, but hey, you take what you can get.
Sadly, The Motorcycle Shop were super busy and had no mechanics available to actually change the tire, so we headed to yet another place to get that done, 3D Powersports. The guys there graciously agreed to quickly swap the tire while we waited. While waiting, we changed my worn rear brake pads. Phew, what a couple of days!
As we chatted with the mechanics at this last shop, they told us that during the summers they work until 6 or 7 pm, and then go out riding for a few hours. Quite a packed schedule. What do you do in the winters, we asked. Oh, we spent winters in Maui. Like I said, if you squint, Alaska and Hawaii are not that different.
It was 3 pm when we finally left the city. It may sound late, but of course, there were still hours and hours of daylight left. This time we headed east on Glenn Highway, stopping to look at more majestic glaciers along the way. Kept going for about 3 hours before calling it a day and settling in a quiet campsite on Little Nelchina River.
