The dealership has a pile of bikes and will “mine” any required part from this liberal stock of crashed and abandoned motorcycles, likely left there by people like us.
There are six of us here:
Mike, Dan, Linda, Stan, Bill & Friedl
Mike Matthews and his girlfriend Linda Sikorowski – have done the lion’s share of trip planning 
Friedl Neuhold, an Austrian living in Switzerland, has been working for years on converting municipal waste to energy (Friedl is riding Mike’s Transalp).
Stan Hix and Bill Nunes are driving the chase vehicle. Bill was supposed to ride the haul road with us tomorrow, but had an unfortunate accident which left his bike incapacitated – but Bill is OK. So far no new donations to the Harley dealership motorcycle pile.
The group has been in Alaska for one week already (prior to my arrival):
Mike, Friedl and Me
Mike needed to have his tires changed and he found a place located way back in the woods – It specializes in tires for people just like us. The shop is run by Dan Armstrong, an Alaska mountain man who, in addition to knowing everything about tires, is an expert on bears. 
Armstrong debunked the two basic rules that I have always lived by:
- Wear little bells and carry pepper spray when in the woods and
- Look for bear scat – if you see small scat, it’s generally a black bear and if you see brown scat (with little bells that smell like pepper spray), it’s generally a grizzly
Armstrong implied that the reverse is true – as grizzlies charge, one should stand up, wave their arms and make as much noise as possible and the grizzlies will stop. On the very rare occasion that they do attack, you should roll up in a ball and play dead. Armstrong is much more leery of black bears (which can be also be brown, but without the hump) – they attack ferociously and do not fall for the roll up and play dead trick. Armstrong believes they are much more dangerous than grizzlies and that you should fight for your life. For the rest of the day I was preoccupied by the thought of bears:
I asked Armstrong if it’s worthwhile carrying a pistol in bear country and he replied “If you carry a pistol the smart thing to do is file off the front sites so that when the bear rams the pistol where the sun don’t shine it won’t hurt as much.”
Three of us will take the trip on the haul road tomorrow; Mike and I will go all the way to Prudhoe Bay and Friedl will go to the halfway point. We plan to spend two nights in Coldfoot at the halfway point, and one night in Deadhorse on Prudhoe Bay – this will put us back in Fairbanks by Thursday night. If the Top of the World Highway is open (Yukon Highway 9 which connects Alaska to Dawson City), our plan is to head west to Dawson city and up into the Yukon on the Dempster Highway.
It has been slightly below freezing at night so we plan to depart around 9:00 a.m. when the day warms up.