After two days out of the seat in Cranbrook, a fun couple of days spent visiting family, we were back on the road again, but not without a hiccup.
Last night as we were getting the bikes ready for a mid-morning start to what should have been a straightforward day, Kirk checked my tire pressure and the rear tire showed 32lbs….a full 10lbs lower than it should be.
That’s not right…and it meant that I likely had picked up a nail or something. So we rolled the bike forward a little at a time until…..oh hello…there you are…Dammit!
Well shit, now we have to get that fixed before we can leave town.
This morning we went down to the tire shop and the fellow there basically walked past us and said “We don’t touch motorcycles” and told us to go to a bike shop. Not exactly helpful.
So we went to the local Kawasaki dealership, where a month ago they’d been less than helpful to a stranded rider…and it didn’t go much better. They said they won’t plug tired on a street bike, but they be happy to sell me a new set of tires, though they wouldn’t book me in until late afternoon. Kirk started calling other places, another shop across the highway would plug it, but they were swamped and couldn’t do it today. By this time the Kawi service guy seemed to realize he was going to lose the tire sale and the service booking and said he could get us in around noon, but it would still take a couple of hours. Meanwhile, the swamped shop told Kirk to call another shop, an independently owned and operated motorsports repair place back near the first tire shop. He called, that guy said come on over, I’ll plug it for you now.
We left All Season Motorsports and I can’t see ever stopping in there again; they failed me twice and are not particularly service oriented.
We rode up to Mizera Motorsports and a young guy waved us into the driveway. He looked at the screw in the tire and then asked a couple of question, the main one being how do I ride. I get it, it’s a sport bike and a plugged tire can fail at high speeds. I made it clear that I’m not a crazy rider (Kirk helpfully interjected “just half crazy”), I said I’m not a speed demon and we are going to replace the tires when we get home, they are fairly old and could use replacement. We told him about the breadcrumb trail to get there and he told us that there wasn’t a tire shop in town that would touch a motorcycle. When we told him about the dealership, he smiled and said “Dealership mentality.……” then added…”I used to work there”.
We had a similar issue when I put a steel rod into the truck tire, a few calls weren’t getting us a repair and it was going to cost a couple of thousand dollars for a new set of tires since the old ones were out of manufacture. In the end someone did plug it and we have been driving on that plugged tire for almost two years now, without issue. We do still need to replace them, but at least it bought us time. In the truck’s case, a lot of time.
He shuffled a few things around, moved the bike he’d been working on out, and rolled my bike into the shop and onto the lift to pull the wheel off. Wall-E surveyed it all from his perch on top of my dry bag 🙃 and I laughed to see someone else’s ride-along toy on a bike in the lot.
It took about an hour before he rolled it back out. He’d double plugged the tire from the inside, checked the seal, and charged us a reasonable price for the work. If I ever find myself in need of motorcycle repairs in Cranbrook, this is where I will come from now on. We chatted a bit, he had started down the road into mechanical engineering and then in his first year realized he would be spending a lot of time behind a computer when what he wants to do it work with his hands….so he left university and went this direction instead. Really nice guy.
And then we were finally on the road, a couple of hours later than intended, but it wasn’t a terribly long ride (distance wise) today, just over to Creston, up Kootenay Lake, across the ferry to Balfour, up to Kaslo, over to New Denver, and into Nakusp. We still had lots of day to get there in daylight, get the tent set up before dark, and walk into town for dinner somewhere. It did mean that we wouldn’t have time to stop at the Gray Creek General Store and poke around, or stop to take photos of the glass house….but we would have lots of time to stop in Kaslo for a late’ish lunch, at what looked like a good brew house, and have a short walk on the waterfront.
The ride to Creston was uneventful and the tire felt fine. We were a little worried we were going to miss the ferry, particularly coming into Crawford Bay and ending up behind a Saskatchewan plated car. We found a place to pass quickly and made the 1:10pm ferry. It was a pretty ride across the lake; blue sky, warm weather, and friendly people, including the couple from Saskatchewan who ended up beside us on the ferry. They packed us in so tight that the woman could barely get out of the car. Her husband told her to wait and came around to put his hand in between the door and Kirk’s bike so that she wouldn’t touch it.
He won our respect right there.
And he talked the entire trip across. They were on their way to Castlegar to see friends and go to a game, and they missed the turn at the junction (it’s an easy one to miss) and ended up in Crawford Bay. So they shrugged and decided to take the ferry and turn left on the other side and get there the longer route. I love that attitude. It’s beautiful country, so they decided to just see more of it. They made an other wise pleasant crossing even more fun. There were two other riders, and we didn’t chat with them until almost at the dock, but they were up from Newport Idaho and doing a day trip loop around the area. Nice guys.
“Balfour to New Denver…..the Road so Nice We Rode it Twice”
From there it was up to Kaslo for lunch at The Angry Hen where, as we pulled din, a group of guys on Harley’s were getting ready to go. Two of them pushed a third down the street so he could bump start as a fourth laughed and said to us that his starter had gone two days ago on their trip so this had been going on several times a day…and that the affected bikes rider was now buying all the beer for the rest of the trip.
The Angry Hen is a great little craft brewery with a limited menu, and it was started and is run by, and mostly staffed by, women. The beer was good, the food was good, the location was awesome. We did a little waterfront walk and poked along the Main Street before being beaten down by the heat and needed to get back on the bikes and get some air flow happening.
The last time we did this area was nine years ago. I recall hating the road from Balfour to Kaslo because it was rutted and patched and just basically rough and awful. I was also a newer rider then, so rough roads wigged me out. I also recall the road from Kaslo to New Denver as being the sweetest stretch of twisty highway I’d ever ridden and I’d wanted to go do it again.
The road from Balfour to Kaslo has clearly been repaved in the last nine years, because it was a beautiful highway to ride. The road from Kaslo to New Denver has not been redone in the past nine years but, despite being a bit rougher, it is still a fabulous stretch.
Although we were doubling back on this stretch, it was a planned backtrack.
We stopped once along the way for a stretch before pushing into New Denver. Around one of the last corners I glanced to my right and saw another flock of wild turkeys ….that I didn’t see until I was right beside them! The things are like giant grouse they blend in so well….and they behave the same too. Kirk didn’t see them at all!
The road was such a nice ride that Wall-E lost his mind….literally. He had it when we’d stopped at the creek….he didn’t when we stopped in New Denver, just 15 minutes further down the road, for gas.
Poor Wall-E.
Is it weird that I feel sorry for a plastic toy?
The road to Nakusp was nice, we found our campground easily and got set up, and then we wandered into town along the waterfront looking for some dinner. Nakusp is a nice little place, kind of sleepy, kind of artsy, very pretty and well maintained, and it seems like a place that one could retire happily and feel like one is part of a community. The last time we were through her we’d had an amazing dinner at the Three Lions Pub….the menu has changed for the worse so we opted instead for the Arrow Lake Tavern Bar & Lounge…excellent dinner! And then it was time wander back to the campground in the dark, drink a bit of wine, and turn in for the night.
Tomorrow we ride for Princeton….probably close to the longest way possible.