— Paul David Rice figures it’s one of those “bucket list” things.

With his 60th birthday approaching, the San Marcos man, tired of just talking about it, loaded his bike and traveled 12,000 miles on his motorcycle to Alaska.

“I’m not getting any younger,” Rice said. “I figured I needed to do it pretty soon.”

On June 7, Rice left San Marcos on his ‘04 Kawasaki KLR 650, riding solo for six weeks to the town of Deadhorse, the northernmost point one can travel by automobile in Alaska. Along the way, Rice crossed 13 U.S. states and two Canadian territories, carrying with him two pairs of shoes, three pairs of clothes, a few tools, a sleeping bag, a tent, a Trac Fone to call his wife on, a pad for sleeping and a little money to stay in a hotel every third or fourth night.

“You’ve gotta shower at some point, right?” Rice said.

Rice, who has ridden a bike since 1971, was inspired by a book written by Dr. Gregory W. Frazier, who is the only motorcyclist in the world to have circumnavigated the globe four times on his bike. Rice rode through New Mexico, Arizona, California and up to Washington before heading northeast across Canada to Prudhoe Bay and the town of Deadhorse.

And then, he turned around and came back to Texas.

“Ain’t nothing up there. You pretty much take your picture, say ‘tag you’re it’ and then you go home,” Rice said.

Throughout his trip, he endured three flat tires, camped out in one man’s front yard (with his permission), ran out of gas twice and eventually had to call AAA after an unfortunate crash 30 miles into his return trip.

But Rice prefers to look at the bright side.

“If I had not crashed, I may not have had the money to get home,” Rice said. “I was trying to come back when I had a flat. In my second attempt to leave (the town of Fairbanks, AK), I had a another flat. The next day, I made my third attempt, and I went 83 miles before I had another flat, and I started fishtailing on that one...  After I called AAA, I had to wait for the insurance company to send me a check.”

While stranded, he called his wife from his Trac Fone to tell her the news.

“I said ‘honey I’ve got some good news and I’ve got some bad news, which one do you want first?’” Rice said. “She said she wanted the bad news. So I said ‘the bad news is, I crashed. The good news is that I’m unhurt. And the bike’s going to be OK, too.’”

While his wife Ruth was a little nervous about his six-week trek, Rice said that she’s not a “worry wart” and he gave her updates every chance he could along the way.

“My wife was OK with it. I let her go with my children to the Philippines last year while I stayed behind working. It was my turn, if you please,” Rice said.

There were acts of kindness along his journey, too. After his second flat, Rice met two men named Carlos, both from South America, making the same journey to Deadhorse on a pair of Harley Davidsons. He flagged them down, along with a local with a pickup truck passing by, seeking help.

“He had his camo suit on, and said he was going to shoot a caribou,” Rice said. “Well, between the four of us we loaded my bike on the back of his pick up, and he was kind enough to take me to a place where I could pitch my tent for the night.”

After completely replacing his rear tire, Rice made the remaining trip smoothly. He gets excited just explaining the view along the Pacific Highway and all the interesting folks he encountered, and says it’s a trip he’s certainly glad he made.

Of course, the biker’s still got a few other items on his list, too.

“I’m planning a trip with my son to the tip of South America. It’s this place called Tierra del Fuego in Argentina,” Rice said. “I’ve been to the northernmost point. Now I want to go south.”