Rambling Rat

Well this is the latest update from where i am staying over the Christmas holiday break, its going to be a holiday for me too as i want to have some time off from being on the road all the time, I am staying with a lovely family, Mike and Kristina Willing, they have a 5 acre country house and have been very kind to let me stay. 

I arrived back into Smithers on the 9th of December late in the evening and was so happy to see the family that first let me stay a few weeks before when i was planning to go up into the Arctic, it was nearly 10 pm and i had pushed on along very heavy snow laded roads to get to the Willings house before the went to bed. I don’t normally go anywere twice but i am very drawn to the small friendly town and its warm people, they also have a good swimming pool and its the home of Glacier Toyota who sponsored me before i left. The following day i went to visit the Toyota garage and we had an oil and filter change and had to fix a problem with a blowing relay, i have found that the main beam rely has blown 3 times on this trip and i think it is the prolonged use of main beam when i am on the empty roads and it gets burnt out qicker than town use.

On thursday the 11th i was given a wonderful opportunity by a lady called Lucie Levesque to do a talk in a bilingual school in Smithers called Muheim, it was again a very rewarding interaction with young pepole from the town and i spoke to them about ways that they could become active helping other young people who are disadvantaged, i introduced them to an organization called Kiva, www.kiva.org they manage a web based micro loan system where you can as an individual or a group loan small amounts of money, say $30 and this money is to help an individual say buy a cow or maybe a stock of fruit that they can sell, when they sell this they pay the money back, about 85% of money is payed back and it is a wonderful idea that means you can interact with the person you want to help.

We spent about ten minutes outside talking about how i live in my car and the rest of the time in the class room, the kids were very interested in the whole concept of my expedition and i felt that i had left them with a lot of things to dicuss after i had left.

Thank you to all the young people at Muheim the class teacher Eric Dufresne he was very intested too and Lucie Levesque.

On the 14th of December the car froze up, i’m not sure how this occured and i was lucky to be parked at the Willings house but the car would not start, it was sub minus 30 and the heaters had stopped and no   fuel was getting to the engine, this meant that all the pipes for the water had frozen on the habbitation side of things and my charcoal filter had smached open. I had plenty of antifreeze in the engine so that wasn’t a problem but we suspected that the fuel had frozen, maybe we had some water in the tank and it had frozen, Mike Willing was very helpful in providing a canopy to put over the vehicle creating a huge igloo effect over the car, we then lit a huge 3 burner gas barbeque under the diesel tank to thaw out any frozen lines to the pump, this seemed to work, but the lift pump had failed and i think in the cold the diaphram had cracked so we bought a manual lift pump and we were in buisness, it started. Thank you Mike Willing if this had happened in Alaska it would have been not so good.

So that leads me up to today, this evening i have a school friend from Uk coming to me, his name is Ben Brown and its the first time i have seen any of my friends or family in the last 7 months so this will be a change, also its really good of ben to have a year away from his family like myself so we will both enjoy Christmas with our adopted family in Smithers.

I want to say hello to everyone that reads my blogs all over the world, since James Emerton has been working on the new RamblingRat website and i have been able to keep track of all the different cities that poeple log in and just over the last month i have had about 3000 page views in 108 cities all over the world and that is very exciting, i will update you on James Emerton and how he has helped RamblingRat.com

Happy ChristMoose everyone.   Love Tim

Tim Dennis with Kaltires Terry Ostash

You may remeber a while ago last time i was in Smithers i slid into a ditch, and it was decided that i would have studs fitted to the tires, well Glacier Toyota were kind to sponsor studding the rear tyres to be Studded with small metal studs that work like spikes on golf shoes to the rear tires as they were new, the front tyres however had some ware and they sent me to Kaltire who are able to redrill new holes as long as i had 14mm of tread on them, I met Terry Ostash the Manager and he inspected the tires and was happy to re drill and stud them. Since this time i have had no traction problems and have covered 7000 klm’s 

I have been back for a tire check this thursday and they have re studded the rear tires again as they were new tires and the Make Cooper has a very deep tread of 18mm and the studs had pushed down low enogh to become ineffective so they re drilled and studded the back tires again for me.

Kaltire Services have been very helpful in Sponsoring the RamblingRat benefitting Streetkids International Expedition 

Thank you Terry Ostash  Tel: 2508472665

www.kaltire.com

Border with Alaska and Canada

Its around the minus 30 mark and the pipes and water pumps inside the car that supply my camping water have frozen up, i had a comfortable nights sleep though inside my big thick subzero bag and with the diesel heater I’m ok but i guess the heat doesn’t reach everywhere in the car so some things are freezing up.

I’m on my way back down to Canada and the scenery is breathtakingly beautiful the mountains are incredible, I’m thinking over the whole Alaskan experience and it has been a huge adventure really testing my vehicle myself and my traveling partner Chris Burton, 

Chris is no longer with me as he chose to stay in Fairbanks after a pretty stressful attempt we both had at driving the Dalton highway on that minus 40 morning it made me realize how dangerous it can get if you loose the engine and you have no heat.

I have not heard from Chris at all since he has left the expedition which is strange as he was very keen to help the RamblingRat benefiting StreetKids International and he wanted to carry on promoting our work after we had gone our separate way’s, i thank him again for all his help whilst he was with me as he was better than i at asking for sponsorship and has had a huge input into the expedition on the Canadian Alaskan leg of the journey, i do hope he emails me or makes a comment as to hear nothing from him after working together i felt that i have given him opportunities that he may never have been involved in if i hadn’t put my advert on Craigs list so it would be nice for him to comment on his time spent on the Rat Run.

As i am now leaving Alaska i want to thank Patrick Endres he has allowed Chris and i to stay in his lovely home on the outskirts of Fairbanks, he is one of the top wildlife photographers in America and is the number one name in photography in Alaska, his work is incredible, he has pictures of Polar Bears Moose Caribou all sorts of heart warming thought provoking pictures please look him up if you like wildlife pictures, he has been very kind by taking some professional pictures of my self and Chris which i use as the profile picture on my Facebook profile, his email is patrick@alaskaphotographics.com  and his web site is www.alaskaphotographics.com Thank you Patrick and the hot tub experience outside at 05:30 am with my hair frozen will stick in my mind for a while,, you crazy Moose!!

The border into Canada is called Beaver Creek and after you have left America which have about six staff you arrive at the Canada side and they have just one man on at night, he actually told me that he would be happier with two on shift but the Canadian authorities’ don’t agree and the american unions are a lot stronger i’m told, anyway i was again made very much welcome and their was only one car other than mine at the border he asked me to come inside and i made myself tea and some hot noodles on my tailgate before carrying them inside to eat in the warm. Because i have been coming in and out of Canada a few times he gave me a paper Visa with all my information on to make it easier for me and save times on the borders which was nice of him, we then chatted for a while about my trip, no other cars came through the border it is so very quiet and the snow is getting really heavy.

I made it all the way down the Alkan Alaska highway to the 37 where i turn off for Smithers, the road is really scary and i was overtaken by a truck and you cannot see anything and i’m a confident driver and nearly went off the road, it is so dangerous and i decided to call it a night and parked up in a small lay by covered in maybe one and a half foot of snow, i hope’t that when i wake up i don’t have to dig myself out, also i’m starting to not feel very well maybe its all the stress of being up north but i am really looking forward to seeing all my new friends in Smither’s.

Tracing the footsteps of Christopher McCandless

After leaving the Dalton highway and making my way back to Fairbanks i feel like i want to relax a little as it has been an intense few days up in the far north, i parked up south west of Fairbanks in a small lay by in a place called Nenana and the road conditions were very bad and i had seen a few cars that had spun off the road, one vehicle had gone down the ditch and i used me winch to pull a family out, they offered me money which i declined and asked them just to look at my web site but i felt good for helping them.

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Really horrid drive back from Coldfoot, terrible conditions blizzards, trucks were sliding off the road all over the place its taken me all day to do 200 miles and I’m tired now. It is such a Dangerous road and I have so much respect for the drivers who drive up and down every day.

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I left Toolik at 2pm and turned north onto the Dalton highway, the road conditions were much worse and I was having to concentrate a lot more, just a single track was in use in the center of the road and when oncoming trucks come along I had to pull over and come to a stop as it is so dangerous that if your tire touches the drifted snow it will pull your car off the side of the road. I kept plodding a long in the dark and arrived at Deadhorse and Prudhoe bay at around 7 pm. I had a look at the Prudhoe bay hotel but didn’t stop for anything, the whole area is geared around the oil industry and all the buildings are temporary style units so it says hotel but looks like a shipping container.

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Well I’m up in the arctic and last night was my second night up on the Dalton highway, the road was built back in the 80’s by the Aleysken oil pipe line company and was the idea of James Dalton who its named after, the road is about 500 miles long and runs from Fairbanks up to Deadhorse and your horse would be dead if you rode up hear in these temperatures, not a lot lives up here.

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About a week ago Chris had arranged to get a copy of his birth certificate sent up to a youth hostel in Fairbanks and the hostel called Billies is a great place to meet like minded travelers we both made some new friends and Chris last night had decided to have a night with some of the people from the hostel and I decided to do my own thing.

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Last night we left the engine running all night and the outside temperature has plummeted down to -40°C this is the coldest I have ever experienced in my life, Sweden was minus 28 but this really goes through you we are only 500 miles away from the most northernly point in America which is above latitude 70 and can go down to minus 70°C.

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Tomorrow we are going to start a 500 mile drive up the Dalton highway which is the furthest north that you can drive anywhere in the world, we will be 7 miles away from the arctic sea when we arrive in Prudhoe Bay the day after tomorrow.

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