I have a few mop-ups from Whitehorse.

Transportation Museum

Being about transportation, you get some of the usual in these museum showrooms.

Bushflight

However, being this far North, their specialty is ‚bushflight,‘ which here means flying onto frozen lakes at -40C (about -40F), spending the night, and then flying on.

When you arrived on the destination lake, you covered the engine with sheeting, and drained the oil. In the morning you spent two hours heating the oil and the engine with the above-shown plumbers blowtorch. You needed to spend the time with the setup, inhaling fumes, because any malfunction ignited the blow torch‘s gas, and destroyed the plane.

To speed up the process, two torches were used. However, if one failed, it would often spew fine fuel fumes that were then ignited by the second torch.

Other issues involved having the proper landing gear installed. Without it:

Images on the right, and bottom show the improvisation needed to conduct repairs in the field.

Quilt Project

A local quilt making club took up the challenge of creating a tableau in celebration of an Alaskan Highway anniversary:

Beringia Interpretive Center (2)

You already met the nearby Yukon Beringia Interpretive Center. It‘s where the Bering land bridge was explained. However, I also loved the following artifacts: The on the left are glass bead work. The last image is all colored pushpins:

Rendezvous Dress

… and here the winning entry for the Rendezvous Queen contest. This dress took three months to produce, and these truly are playing cards. The lady wore the dress to the contest.

The Atlatl Humiliation

The Atlatl below was used in Europe, Australia, and here in the Yukon 14K years ago. The invention accelerates a thrown spear.

The device is a stick with a thorn-like protrusion at one end, and two leather loops for holding the stick. The thorn is hooked into the back end of the hollow spear, and the tool plus spear are held together in the throwing hand. While hurling the spear, the hunter flicks their wrist, roughly doubling the spear‘s reach.

We were about six visitors at this museum‘s hunting demonstration. After providing evidence of the invention‘s supreme efficacy, the young man invited each of us to try our luck.

I fared by far the worst, lopping the spear around eight feet ahead of me into the ground.

One of the women in the audience consoled me:

„You can always be a gatherer.“

This and That in Whitehorse

The gears and locomotive above are available as kits in a toy store. The pieces are laser cut, and you put the sculptures together yourself.

Nightmare.

On the other hand, seems like Canada has a less infantile relationship to Cuba. You don‘t have the ridiculous ban on Cuban cigars.

Marketing Challenge

Casino in Whitehorse is evidently a mining companay. Imagine the challenge of being their marketing manager.

„Hey, Nancy, people are bitching about our copper strip mines. Something about old-growth trees. Also, burial grounds. Be a dear, give people warm feelings. Also, get me cup of coffee, angel, will you?“

Here is Nancy‘s real-life result:

Units of Measure are Personal

You may wonder about the heading of this section, after you heard me rail against the horrid Inch, and its subdivisions: 73/164th of an inch, added to 36/97th of an inch is…what?

Yes, metric is king. But within a day of switching to kilometers in Canada, something happened to me very naturally. When I was a kid, we often spent vacation time in Freiburg, a town South of Karlsruhe, where I grew up.

We drove the Autobahn from Karlsruhe to Freiburg many times, me in the backseat, and excited for what was to come. The distance between the two towns is 130km. Without thinking, I began measuring riding distances here in Canada in units of Karlsruhe-Freiburg Autobahn lengths.

Oh, that‘s just a three Khe-Frbg distances. I can do that.

This measure is clearly quite personal. What‘s interesting is that distance analogies seem to be culturally tinted as well:

Notice the specificity: a „White Moose.“ Only the culturally immersed would distinguish the distance from the other types of moose.

Commitment Issues

I‘m noticing on this trip that my motorcycle is working to teach me interpersonal skills. The machine is pointing to some personality deficits, or, say, tensions.

I am riding along the Alaska Highway towards Hanes Junction, when I miss a photo opportunity. Something intimate, like this:

I decide against the risk of reversing course on the highway, though the road is entirely empty for miles. First clue: am I avoiding intimacy?

Some miles on I see what passes as the name of a road leading into the woods. The road‘s got a name, so it‘s a real artifact. Following it into the forest might get me to another intimate spot that I can photograph. Notice the distancing function of the lens here? I am photographing intimacy, not experiencing it!

I slow down, point the bike across the road, and enter about seven feet into this ‚road‘:

Those seven feet into the path are needed to remove the tail of my bike from the Alaskan Highway. These turn out to seven feet of no return: they are an incline towards the woods. Did I mention that I don‘t have a reverse gear, and weigh a lot, particularly counting a nearly full fuel tank, and three luggage cases? Add the gravel on the path, and there is no way I can duck-walk back out of what turns out to be this wagon trail.

I‘m committed, and truly don‘t want to be. But having no choice, I roll on into the woods. This is a very bad idea. The path narrows to only just wider than my bike is long.

People think riding fast on a touring bike must be dangerous. It‘s not. At speed, these vehicles want to stay upright. You have to work hard, should you wish to put it on its side.

But at near-zero speed, care is required. The force is not with you then.

Some ways in I need to decide. Do I continue, and trust that the path will widen into a breathable clearing? Or will I be caught in an ever narrowing, suffocating environment that will clutch onto me? A bigger man would have gone forward with confidence. My Adrenaline screamed to get out of the situation.

Repeatedly using a very slight bump in the trail for a six-point U-turn, I succeeded in turning the bike around without putting it down. When I reach the wide open road, my chest expands, and I roll.

Trail of Confusion

As I am staying three nights in Hanes junction, I get any of their outdoor rental equipment free of charge. Canoe, e-Bike, or mountain bike. I pick mountain bike for the morning, and eBike for the afternoon.

Lucky for me, all the moderate, and difficult trails require a car with bike rack to access. Easy is therefore available to me without loss of face.

These structures are exclusively for swallows of various sorts. They nest here, and eat mosquitos from the nearby swamps.

Nail in the Ass

For years now, bicycle seat designs have matched Inquisition day Iron Maidens.

How are these designers allowed to continue?

The Shimano Enigma

As I pedal along, the going is too easy. Not enough resistance for my strong thighs to work against.

I encounter a lever on the right, and another on the left. I press the one near my right hand, and the gears shift into the wrong direction, towards even easier. Now I‘m a hamster on a wheel.

I try rotating the handle, but that‘s another shifter company. What looks like a button for shifting the other way is a screw. Against better instinct, I depress the lever again, but that obviously makes it worse. I eventually find the well hidden counter lever, and I‘m off into the bush.

Bears or Birds?

Seeing the sign at the trailhead, I begin whistling Loch Lomond, in hopes of bears taking the low road, while I take the high one. Soon, two issues arise with my strategy:

Say, a bear is around that corner. Do we pass, each staying on the right side of the boardwalk? Will I have time to dismount, and hold the bicycle high over my head?

And then there is this:

„Seeing birds“ doesn‘t go with whistling Loch Lomond. Birds take the very high road when you do that.

Landscape Along the Trail

But here is the dreaded life choice:

A fork in the road.

I know from a poem that in a situation like this I should take the road less traveled. But there‘s nobody here. So what does that stupid saying even mean? Say, there was grizzly dung on one of the roads, well, then that would be the road more traveled. But no such guidance is at hand.

Buddhism is no help. They‘d just say:

„If you find yourself at a fork of the road, Stop.“

…which is infeasible, given mosquitos, and grizzly bears. Even a Buddhist would see the dilemma here.

Provided insufficient information, I take the low road. Feels more to character.

But here comes the real bummer:

No Buddhist, nor poem, not any bumper sticker ever says what to do when you hit a second fork in the road. While I contemplate, I take a quick pee, to clarify for grizzlies and wolves that this fork is my territory for the moment. And there it is:

Pointing at the bushes, near-hidden guidance reveals itself:

The second fork resolved, I am on my way again, to the next conundrum.

…test the will to survive… How does that play out? Two mountain sheep rams meet, and:

„You know, Charly, I don‘t feel that old will to survive. I recently rented a mountain bike, and the seat was just hell. The age appropriate ewes are getting older, have you noticed? And the eternal grazing is just so soul crushingly tedious.

„Well, Bob, what do you have in mind?“

„Next time they give the test I‘ll check ‚No‘ on the: Is it your will to survive? question.“

„No, Bob, don‘t do that. If you check ‚No,‘ they‘ll send you to therapy. You gotta check ‚None of the above.‘ The tester will see right away:

„That‘s one confused ram. It‘s time for him, for sure.“