June 6 was a wet adventure, but had some cool stuff happen.

I woke up again without the assistants of an alarm clock. I was wide eyed at 6am. Never, and I mean never when I ‘m home and working weekly does this ever happen. At best I’m up at 8am with a backup alarm set at 8:45am. So I caught a quick shower and bounced out the front door to sprinkles. Not a full rain shower, but sprinkles. I ran into the poor motorcycle guy and he was no better off than the day before, but he was in high spirits. I hope today he found a solution. We part ways and that was the last I saw of him.

I walked down to a breakfast spot and on a sign hanging outside said, “The Best Buns in Town.” So I walked in and told the woman behind the counter, “I had to take down your sign outside that said, The Best Buns in Town, temporarily because I’m in town now. My wife tells me all the time I have nice buns, so it must be true.” To which she responded, “That’s you’re wife’s opinion.” We all had a good laugh and then I selected my Blueberry bun and she invited me to sit down with some older, bearded, man. Who by the way, thought my comment was hilarious.

So I sat with the old man for a good 45 minutes talking about everything under the sun you can image. Work, wives, kids, government's, Canada, and the United States. My 5 to 10 minute breakfast bun turned into chat fest. We both mutually decided it was time for us to leave and time for me to get riding. I paid for his coffee and asked his name. He proudly said, “Ken, but everyone calls me Rooster!” Well Rooster now how did you end up with a nickname like that I was wondering. He told me. When I was younger, I was a woman chaser. What a character he turned out to be and made for a great start to the day.

I never thought I was going to get out of Stewart. You have to understand that there may be 45 to 50 people living there full time. Everyone that walked by wanted to chat. What was I to do? So I chatted with them all, including the guy who wanted to pump my gas but I had to turn down. I have a funny fuel tank on this bike. When it clicks off, I can squeeze another 3/4 of gallon of fuel in that tank. Thanks to the Adventure forums for that tip. When I did finally get the BMW rolling, it was in a full rain shower, not a down pour, but a nice steady rain. I only took a few pictures today because of the rain. I made sure that I got a few of the Snow slide and made sure Dixie got in the shot. Left her out yesterday and she was not happy. When I open the tank bag, she let me know it!

Before I talk about the rain, let me tell you about the one other thing that happened today and it started by me making a u-turn to check on a fellow rider. If you didn’t know, a motorcycle parked on the side of the road means you are required to check on their well being. I was just a bit late to the scene, but he apparently dropped his bike trying to put his kickstand down. Before you think, how dumb is that. Wait until you hear the rest of the story. This fellow riding the motorcycle, R1150GS, was Jeffrey Polnaja. I had no idea who he was, but he as been on the road for 6 years and has visited 77 countries. He is from Indonesia. He sold his company, to which he told me in American money was only $100,000, and started traveling the world in 2006. Can you imagine? Now do you think I’m less crazy? Once again, if you have a dream, follow it. He did! He told me he managed to get all his equipment paid for with the exception of the bike. He still has to pay for gas, food, and a place to sleep sometimes. When he started his adventure, he spoke no English and now spoke it better than most West Virginian’s. Sorry, I live in Virginia, so I have the right to make that comment. Come on guy’s, all in fun. So we chatted, he took pictures and I took pictures and we went in opposite directions. Now how cool was that? Now looking at the picture of his bike, you can see everything he owns is on that bike. Now, dropping it seems more possible than not.

Check him out here.

Pretty interesting day considering it looked so dismal outside and then rained on me the entire day until the last hour of the ride. The good news about all that rain was that I dry. I was warm. My toes were really warm. Can you see me smiling? I did have a little big dummy moment. So I pulled into a parking area that was slightly slanted down hill. I needed to make a glove adjustment. I raised my modular helmet to the open position, and began to take off my rain gloves. Um, the bike slightly shifted, my left foot slipped on the wet rocks and dirt and down we all went. Put a big cuss word right _____! I picked it up and put it on a kickstand. Repeat after me so it sinks in my big dumb head. When you’re not holding onto a 900 to 1000 bike, and your on your tip toes because it is so tall, put your damn kickstand down first before you start fiddling with anything. Specially when your on a slight grade. Big Dummy. So two riders with heavily loaded bikes, and even though they know what to do, have dumb moments.

The only other thing that I have to speak about that is significant is my tail bag. It is the bag that has the two red fuel tanks on top. Something somewhere is leaking water inside the bag. My water resistant bag inside did a pretty good job protecting my cloths but the water pooled under the bag so one pair of jeans got wet. Also all my receipts got wet that I put in the bottom of the bag. I’ve poured water all over the case and can’t find it. I drilled 4 holes in the case for those red tanks and it makes sense that it should leak there, but I can’t find it. I made my own seal and treated the holes on both sides with silicone, so I do not think it is possible, but maybe. I need to find something that I can spread on the inside the case that will show water tracks when it’s leaking. If anyone knows of a compound that I can spread on aluminum, speak up.

Tomorrow I head to Vancouver and I plan to be there a few days. Let me clarify. I have a few things I would like to see in the city and then I want to ride a ferry over to Vancouver Island and spend at least two days riding there. This was unplanned and after all the talk on the road that I’ve heard about the island, I’m going. I found a Road Runner route out of my subscription to the magazine online, downloaded and I’m still breaking it apart. 

One more side note. I thought I was getting close to breaking my all time mileage record for a trip, but not so. Lori and I road to California and back to the tune of 10,415 miles. I’m currently at 8,535 miles, so I still got a bit to go.

I almost forgot, would you stay here? It was clean and cozy inside. Not bad for $100.

 

 

 

 

Pictures of the Day