English Pan-American Highwaymen Pass Through Brinnon

Hello again! Jeffrey and Graham were spotted passing through Brinnon, just off the coast of Washington state. They stopped for a bit of "geoducking", some sort of clam digging exercise but for a very large (and tasty as it turns out) shell fish. This report was written by one of their motorcycle mates. Apparently a big group of bikers from the area turned out to greet the boys and spend the day with them. Today (Wednesday, July 7th) the boys are in San Francisco on their way to Monterey and it's very hot, but all is well. Mary

Thursday July 1 two mad Englishmen dropped in on the home of Beau and Bobbi Billeaudeaux in Brinnon. They had just completed the first 6,500 km of a planned 30,000 km journey down the Pan-American Highway from Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's Arctic Ocean coast down to Ushuaia on the island Terra Del Fuego in Argentina, the southernmost drivable point in the world. And they're doing this trip on motorcycles.

Jeffrey Poulter (aged 60) from north London and Graham Tillotson (aged 57) from Oxshott, Surrey, a village close to London had been travelling five weeks before arriving in Brinnon. They had flown their Honda NX650 Dominator motorcycles from London to Anchorage in Alaska, which they picked up the day after they themselves arrived in Alaska’s capital on Friday May 28. Then they set out, heading north through the Denali National Park, home of Mount McKinley, North America's highest peak, through Fairbanks and then onto the infamous Dalton Highway up to Prudhoe. The Dalton, known as the haul road, is 414 miles of dirt road built to supply the oilfields of Alaska’s North Slope, and to service and maintain the 850 mile oil pipeline which runs down to the warmer waters of Valdez. It's a rough road for 4-wheeled vehicles, terrible for motorcycles, especially the sections of deep gravel. But the Englishmen survived the journey north, hitting freezing temperatures as they travelled the last few miles to Prudhoe. Deborah, Prudhoe's delightful postmistress and manager of the general store, officially set them off the following morning for their long journey all the way through North, Central and South America.

Trouble first struck south of Coldfoot on the Dalton, when Jeff's bike stalled. By various means, Jeff and Graham were able to limp back to Fairbanks where the problem was diagnosed as a damaged piston which, in turn, had damaged the cylinder head. They were marooned in Fairbanks for twelve days waiting for parts to arrive from California and then for the repair to be made. Of all the places in the western hemisphere to spend twelve days, Fairbanks is a bad call.

Their journey then took them through the Yukon in northern Canada, British Colombia, into Vancouver and finally onto Brinnon where they were welcomed by the Billeaudeaux, who hosted a party for the intrepid (or, more frequently called, crazy) English, attend by a score of Brinnonites. Commissioner Rogers proffered a formal welcome and presented Stars and Stripes pins.

Without doubt, the highlight of the Brinnon visit was the geoduck hunt, probably the planet's most unlikely pastime. Indeed, it took the extraction of the first geoduck from the mud, accompanied by an apparently mandatory Tarzan yell, even to convince the English that these creatures actually exist, and that the entire escapade was not a hoax dreamt up by the good citizens of Brinnon to visit upon gullible passing travellers. The whole process was summed up by the English as being entirely ludicrous and could not possibly be chronicled because, seriously, who would believe them? Perhaps geoducking should, after all, be the secret of the lovely Brinnon coast.

Jeff and Graham set off Saturday July 3 down highway 101, through Washington, Oregon and California to their next border crossing into Mexico.They expect their journey to take just over six months, finally departing Argentina from Buenos Aires in early December.

Both Englishmen are retired. Jeff graduated as an engineer but spent all his career working in advertising agencies, including one he founded, in London. Graham graduated with a business degree, working in market research and planning for twenty years before moving into the national newspaper business where he spent the rest of his working life.

Surprisingly, both have wives left in the UK and, even more surprisingly, expect them to be there on their return. Neither wife was prepared to spend six months on the pillion seat of a motorcycle – and who could blame them? But the clincher is that the wives agree that camping is defined as any hotel with fewer than four stars. So the daily budget of $50 each rider, including fuel, was agreed to be unlikely to extend to accommodation of fitting quality. So the dutiful wives are looking after the households while the lads of spending half a year on the adventure of a lifetime.

Anon 01.07.04