“When I go uphill, the dogs help pull,” he said.

Westphal, who hails from Germany, departed Anchorage last week on his fourth bicycle trip across North America. The first leg took him down the Kenai Peninsula, and the team arrived in Homer on Monday afternoon. After he travels by ferry from Homer to Valdez, he will bike through the Yukon and British Columbia, and he hopes to hit Vancouver before Christmas. After that, it’s down the Rocky Mountains to Texas, then on to the Appalachian Trail and north to New York and New England before flying to Moscow before the end of 2006.

He also has traveled across South America and Europe — anywhere with a cold climate, he said.

Aside from being a record-holder for bicycling, Westphal also is a cancer survivor, and said he bikes to remember how important it is to enjoy life when you can.

“Just to prove (to myself), ‘you’re not sick, you just have cancer,’” he said.

Westphal has been in the Guinness World Book of Records since 1988 for the most distance traveled on a bicycle accompanied by a dog.

On this trip, two dogs, a malamute and a Siberian husky, are accompanying Westphal down the Sterling Highway. It is his first visit to the Kenai Peninsula. As of Wednesday morning, Westphal was still in Homer, negotiating with the state’s ferry service to find a way for his dogs to accompany him to Valdez. If it doesn’t work, he said, he’ll just bike back up the highway again.

Westphal also bikes to raise awareness of cancer, and that having it doesn’t mean one has to stop enjoying life.

“Don’t sit in the corner and wait for death. You must open your eyes and do what you like to do,” Westphal said during an interview at the Best Western Bidarka Inn, which offered him and his dogs a complimentary room Monday and Tuesday night.

Westphal said he has had 26 operations for melanoma. He was first diagnosed with cancer in advanced stages in 1987, he said, and doctors gave him a short time to live. After a year, however, he was still alive, and he decided to take to the road.

Westphal cycled across the Alps in seven weeks, accompanied by sled dogs. The next year he traveled to North America with his first malamute, crossing the Rocky Mountains and Alaska in winter. On the way, he spoke at universities, hospitals and help organizations about his travels, he said.

He also got help from anyone who would offer it — motels, restaurants or people who recognized him on the street from newspaper articles or television.

That often keeps Westphal from camping in his tent every night.

“Nobody supports me, just the American people,” Westphal said.

Aside from recurring melanoma, Westphal also travels with an injured leg that was almost amputated in 1996 after a car accident in Argentina. The accident killed his first malamute, Shir Khan.

After undergoing several leg operations, he started cycling again in Europe two years after the accident. The next year, Westphal bought Shir Kahn’s grandson, Yukon, one of two dogs accompanying him on the trip.

The dogs don’t always run along Westphal’s side, however. When the team heads down a steep hill, they get to ride on a small trailer he pulls behind the bike. The whole package — Westphal, the bike, the dogs and gear, weighs well over 400 pounds, he said.