The Arctic Circle and back to Norman Wells
Mar 4th, 2014 by rallyadmin
We get out of the trucks and start the congratulations. None of us openly admits to having doubts about making it here but Bryan’s tire problems have inserted a tiny doubt in everyone’s mind. There’s no mention of it but we’ve all done this before and problems do cut these trips short on occasion.
But we’ve made it and we’re happy and quite pleased with ourselves. But it’s very cold out and we’ve come to spread more of Joe’s ashes here at the Circle. He was so looking forward to this trip but fate did let it happen. At least we managed to get his ashes here. He would have approved.
John has the ashes and we gather in a circle as John recites a verse from Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young”:
“May God bless you always, May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others and let others do for you,
May you build a ladder to the stars,
And climb every rung, May young stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young, may you stay forever young”
It’s the perfect verse. It so completely matches Joe that it brings tears to my eyes. Yes, that’s Joe: forever young.
John spreads the remaining ashes. We take the photos. John takes out the bottle of Canadian Club which we pass around for a shot to honor Joe. But it’s really cold and we have to get moving. It’s going to be a long haul back to Norman Wells.
Colin and I swap seats for the ride home. I drove yesterday from Fort Simpson and drove here today from Norman Wells. I want to take some more pictures. With the overcast and the flat lighting, it doesn’t look like I’ll get much. Who knows.
Back to Fort Good Hope and back onto the winter road to Norman Wells. On the way out of Fort Good Hope, there’s a well marked bump in the road which we had seen on the way up. We pass the bump and head out of town. Just maybe a kilometer later, Colin hits a totally unseen series of bumps that send the truck and everything in it airborne.
Colin never saw it and he was looking. I saw just as we were about to hit and warned Colin to hit the brakes but it was too late. The first first bump sent the truck off the ground and when the truck landed it was perfectly timed to go back up in the air 2 more times.
Everything loose in the truck was flying, cameras, clothes, drinks. In the truck bed things were also flying. But the real danger came from the hitch mount that had also flown breaking the ratchets in the process. The mount, luckily flew almost straight up and not forward. It ended up finally landing on the tool box that straddled the truck bed behind the truck cab. Between the ratchets, the security cable and the spare tires attached to the security cable the mounted didn’t get into the cab. If it had, it would have been disastrous, to put it mildly.
Colin had the brakes on from the first bump and quickly got the truck stopped. We checked to see that everyone and everything were all right and then set about gathering the gear up and straightening thing out in the truck bed.
We had been very lucky. No one had been hurt. The truck hadn’t been damaged save for the upper brake light on the cab that had been hit by the mount. And we had stayed on the road. We hadn’t broken any windows which at this temperature would have been very serious. We dodged a very big bullet. Back on the road.
The skies cleared on the way back to Norman Wells and the real beauty of this truly amazing winter landscape was laid out for all to see. A couple of hours later we were back in Norman Wells just as the sun was going down and just after the fuel station had closed.
Back to the hotel to meet up with Paul and off to dinner. I’ll have more on Paul Oskamp’s amazing day in the next post.
Obi-wan