… And so it goes here in Alaska… there are maybe 5 or 6 major highways… there’s the Alaska Highway, the Denali Highway, the Richardson Highway, the Parks Highway and the Glenn Highway… and they use “highway” loosely… as long as it’s somewhat level and sometimes paved, I think it qualifies as a “highway”.  When you find something called a “road” you really have to be ready for anything.  Definitely larger gravel, sometimes resembling something more like golf-balls, punctuated with small landslides, sinkholes and wash-outs.  Somewhat rare and often randomly placed guardrails along with occasional disabled vehicle make for an exhilarating, albeit often quite slow, drive. 

So now… have you ever wondered what it would be like to turn east on The McCarthy Road and head up the 63 mile old railroad track turned car road (a very simple 3-hour drive as long as you keep on the lookout for spikes that have come loose from the old tracks that might ruin your day… not to mention your tire) to the old mining town of McCarthy and walk around for a while and maybe take a hike across the aged footbridge and up the 4-mile Root Glacier Trail to the Kennicott Glacier and step out onto the glacier and check it out and, say, grab a nice rock and take in the sensation of being there on that huge expanse of ice that has been moving slowly towards the Chitina River for centuries before deciding to head back to Thumper to make another nice dinner and call it a night so you can get up early and head back to the town of Chitina and “cruise” the last 14 miles of pseudo-paved road to where you had  turned off of Alaska Hwy 4 originally to begin this whole adventure and then make another left turn and keep driving south towards Valdez?

Well… we wondered just that not 3 or 4 days ago… and you know what?... it turned out to be an interesting decision.  You see… we were moving right along keeping an eye out for those elusive railroad spikes and the ever warned of Moose when we came upon the single-lane Kuskulana Bridge. It was built in 1909 as a railroad bridge that spans 525’ about 238’ above the river and only on in 1988 did it get guardrails and complete decking (before that, there were boards missing and you could see through the holes down to the river below!).  So… we want to get a picture crossing this amazing bridge.  

I drop Susan off on this side of the bridge with the cameras and drove slowly (No Stopping on The Bridge!) to the other side.  I turn around and drive back over to pick her up.  Now, we both drive over to the other  side and pull into this nice parking area (the first one we’ve seen in 17 miles) so we can walk back to check the bridge out in person.  When I turn off the engine I hear this faint Hhhhssssssnng coming from the back tire… and Yes… it was the beginning of our first flat tire of the trip.  We had heard rumors of these inevitable flat tires… kind of like the never-ending Moose warnings… but had been fortunate enough to drive some pretty bad roads and only suffer a stone chipped windshield and enough mud on the truck we could have chiseled it off.  But there it was… a stone in the tread.  I told Susan to go check out the bridge and I would get the spare on and we could head on down the road.  

Well… to make this long story a bit shorter, I dropped the spare tire from underneath the truck (an achievement of its own… had to get Susan to help before she took off for her walk) and I got Thumper jacked up and ready to go.  Now… all I need is to get the lug nuts off.  This would be a LOT easier if only I could find the tire iron!  It’s an interesting scenario here, as my actual tire iron doesn’t work on the long lugs on the truck so I have a deep-well socket and a breaker-bar to get the nuts off.  I couldn’t find that breaker bar anywhere.  Susan and I took the truck apart and looked for it everywhere… and then looked again.  We could only hypothesize where it went... did it fall out?... slide under Thumper?... get taken out and not put back?... or is it still sitting on the driveway in Clifton?  In any case, I decided that I was going to try to plug the hole with this great kit that The Pragers (of Palisade, Colorado fame) gave us for Christmas last year.  It sounds SO simple doesn’t it?  

Well, it would be simple, if only I could get the $%#@& stone out of the tire!  I never thought a stone could be so embedded in a tire and so determined to stay there.  I tried prying it out with a screwdriver… then with 2 screwdrivers… then I tried to pound it into the tire…and after I almost knocked myself out with a rebounding, 3-pound hammer, I got the screwdriver back out.  After breaking one screwdriver, drinking one beer, talking strategies with another couple from Colorado who stopped, putting the hammer away, trying to invent a new type of tool to turn a deep-well socket and putting another beer on ice for later, I finally got the stone out!  We are keeping that stone as a souvenir by the way.  Susan and I rejoiced over this little victory in the face of defeat and I proceeded to read the instructions on the tire plug kit… ream the hole, thread the plug material into the big needle-like thingy, apply rubber cement, put it in and pull it out… NO twisting!  Done… And there was another little celebratory moment in the parking area.  Now all we have to do is fill it with air.  I KNEW I should have bought that $30 electric air pump at Canadian Tire (the Canadian version of Super-Target) but it seemed so frivolous at the time.  So… the new tool-of-the-hour becomes our bike tire pump!  

Not one to turn away from a challenge, I connect it up to the tire and start pumping.  I manage to get to 10psi before my arms go numb and Susan steps in and takes over with a comment on how similar this is to churning ice-cream.  I had to agree with her in some odd, kinda-sorta way.  We keep taking turns pumping away and trying to hide the whole circus act when someone else drives by.  Slowly, but surely we approach our goal… 80psi… each pump putting a solid 1/16^th psi into the tire.  At 72psi we decided we were good (as that’s all the other tires had in them) and there was much rejoicing.  By now it’s almost dark and we are hungry and that other beer is almost cold.  With everything in kind of a holding pattern till morning, we headed out for a quick walk before we called it a night and went into Thumper to discuss our next move… keep going forward to the unknown or retreat back towards the somewhat familiar.  Let’s sleep on it…