THIS IS NOT GOOD!!!!!!!!

THIS IS NOT GOOD!
We left Moose Meadows and headed down the Cassiar……..About 300 miles of dirt and chip seal road. First the good news…The views are simply amazing. Take your breath away kind of stuff. We saw two bears right off the bat. One of them was the most beautiful bear I’d ever seen. Although it was a Black Bear, it had a dark brown head and front legs with the rest of the body covered with Cinnamon colored grizzly type fur…..Beautiful!
We saw no less than five moose, and a few deer. Wildlife everywhere……
About 25 miles into the trip, we are stopped for road construction. At times the wait can be up to a half hour so we usually demount and chat with other folks in the line. When they see the Massachusetts license plates they freak out………”Hey Maude, these guys are from Massachusetts!!!”…” and on MOTORCYCLES”…..And sometimes we hear…..”Why do you people up there elect folks like Ted Kennedy…” (But I digress..) And of course my “accent ” ALWAYS comes up for a bit of ribbing…..
While we are standing around talking, I glance at my rear tire………and my heart falls into my groin! I can see threads showing through the worn rubber on the tire!!! We just checked our tires yesterday and although they were worn, we both felt we could easily make it the 2000 miles back to Montana. We both started with brand new Metzler Tourance tires……But I put about 1000 miles on mine before we left on a trip up to New Hampshire……..Bad move!
So here I am witrh a time bomb on the rear wheel of my bike and over 400 miles to go to get to anything on a map that even looks like a city, never mind having a motorcycle dealership and the chance that they have a tire that will fit my bike………This BLOWS!
So I let 10 pounds of air out of the tire so the tire will ride on the edges rather than the center and we ride on………I check the wear patch every 100 miles and it is growing at an alarming rate………So I keep it under 50 mph and muscle on……sphincter tighter than a Bull Froggs………At one point I’m convinced I’m not going to make it. I see a Helicopter warming up to take some miners out to the mines and I actually thought about hiring it to take me to town to get a tire……..But on we went…I played a little game…..I had 300 miles to go at one point so I cut it up into 50 mile blocks…….after each 50 miles I said….”one more fifty”…..And after 422 miles, we made it to the only motorcycle shop for hundreds of miles around……A HARLEY dealership……..really great1 What’s the odds that they will have a tire for a Suzuki V-Strom……..As it turns out they had a sport type tire that would fit. This bike uses a semi knobby type, off road tire. But since our dirt riding was done, and beggers can’t be choosers, I bought the tire and had it mounted. They charged me $264 for a tire that I can buy back home for $92……And I had to remove the wheel myself....I don't think they were comfortable working on something other than HD...No big deal, in ten minutes I had it off and their tech was mounting up the new skin
..I asked them if there was another motorcycle dealer in the area that might have the same tire I was replacing…..They said “no”…..They were the only dealer around. So tire mounted, price paid…off we go. About a ¼ mile down the road we ride by a HONDA DEALERSHIP ……….. It’s a good thing Canada won’t allow me to carry a handgun!!!! Sons of bitches!!!!
But what the heck…..I’m on vacation! The weather is fantastic……The bike is like a new bike with the new rubber (much more sporty………really leans into the corners now………..Hey Bob…..I’ll see ya down the road… )
I treated us to a reasonable motel tonight. Actually, it was a dump…But for $35 what do you want….The Ritz! As far as I could tell, the sheets were clean………
We ate at the A&W RootBeer restaurant……..really good! Bob when to bed early and I put my pants back on and walked back over to the A&W and had a Root Beer float! Hey, after this day…I deserve it……….No?