These are the Cliff Notes of my Alcan 5000 adventure in the Mustang. I wrote this for my work newsletter, so it’s written for a Ford audience, and it leaves out a lot of the smaller stories and adventures I had on this trip, but it gets to the heart of the fun and is as succinct a trip summary as I could write. Enjoy! (more…)
Four weeks ago, I handed my keys off to my friend Dan, hopped on an airplane, and flew from Fairbanks, Alaska back home to Detroit. Dan then proceeded to bring the car home for me, taking the car on his own adventures, driving the car from Alaska through Canada and finally back home to Detroit, pulling into my driveway three weeks ago.
“Canadian Dan,” as he is called in my circle of friends, is one hell of a wrench, a lover a beat up jalopies, and perhaps just as crazy as the friends who joined me for the Alcan 5000, and was the perfect guy to hire to “deliver” my car back home for me. When he offered to drive the car back for me sometime earlier this year, it was an easy decision to make; I wrote him a check for what I estimated would be the cost of shipping my Mustang back home via truck transport, and told him to have fun. He could do whatever he wanted with the car, I’d cover any additional parts and repair costs, and the only requirement was that the car eventually make it home. (more…)
As work continues on the Mustang, I’m finalizing my plans for this year’s summer road trip.
A year and a half ago, my friend Dmitry decided to sign up for the Alcan 5000, a road rally that runs from Seattle, Washington, up through Canada on the Alaskan Highway, into Alaska, continuing north until you hit the Arctic Circle, and finishing down south in Fairbanks. Dmitry signed up for the rally on a motorcycle, because he’s nuts.
I’m not quite as nuts as he is. Therefore, I decided to sign up for the rally in a 50-year old car: my old ’66 Mustang. So I’m still arguably nuts, just not quite as nuts as Dmitry. A friend of mine, Mike Boryca, also signed up for the Alcan 5000 in a vintage car. I convinced my friend Brandon Boyd to serve as my navigator for the rally.
I had just completed an 8k mile road trip in the Mustang, traveling from Michigan to California, up to Washington State, and back to Michigan. A road trip to Alaska would be a similar distance, so the Mustang, already having proven itself a more-than-capable long distance road trip machine, would be perfect for the Alcan.
For the past year, I’ve been keeping track of my travel plans in a Google Doc, just like I did with my previous road trip in the Mustang. In the year since I started planning, a couple of people have joined in the adventure. For better or worse, these folks are already well versed in foolish adventures, either with me or on their own. (more…)
I’m slowly but surely collecting things for this year’s Alcan 5000. I found this Stevens Rally Indicator on eBay for $27 shipped. It’s basically a circular slide rule for calculating distances and times. It’s pretty nifty, and most importantly, lets me — someone unable to manually calculate things quickly under duress — have an easy, visually simple way to calculate splits. Now I just need to find timepieces that wouldn’t look out of place in a 60’s rally car, and figure out what I’m going to do for a rally odometer.