The Cracks

June 30th
It wasn't raining when I woke up and I didn't get a drop on me all day. After talking to friends in Helena and realizing how much time I had, I decided to cut my trip a little short. Instead of heading up the Washington coast to Olympic National Park(where it was raining), I crossed the state heading NorthEast for Coeur d' Alene. Olympic was a big reason for doing the Coast, but having a extra day in case of weather or a break-down was what I needed. My friends in Helena bought me tickets to an outdoor music fest going on the next night, so I hauled ass towards Montana knowing what was in store for me.

Here I am crossing the state of Washington at around 100mph most of the day, beautiful weather, with the bike running great. I'm 70 miles West of Spokane when I set my hand down on my gas tank... and it moves. I looked down and thought "well that ain't right", got to my next stop at Ritzville and checked it out. Cracks.

I had what seemed to be cracks in my front tank mounts, and my rubber isolators were shot. It looked as though it was only in the bondo, but I wasn't sure. With no rubber separating the mounts and mounting bolt, they were rattling against each other. I got on the horn to Rich and started planning out where I could make it for the night without doing any more damage. Rich and I talked it over and came to a temporary fix. With night creeping in fast, I un-bolted my front tank mounts, stuffed a couple shop-rags between my tunnel and back-bone and taped my tank down to the frame. I brought a bunch of electrical tape with on this trip, so I taped the fuck out of it. No rattling, no more cracking, and I was back on the road.

I called my friends in Helena, Leny and Murna, and told them the news. Now, these are some of our good friends from Sturgis, almost family. They weren't gonna take no for an answer, so they forced me to allow them to come meet me and help get me to Helena in one piece. I agreed, even though I probably could have rolled all of the way back to denver with the way I had it set up at this point. But, even though I said that I was pretty sure I could make it, they assured me that they were going to see to it that I definitely made it to their place the following day. I told them I'd call them when I stopped for the night and we'd figure something out.

I made it to Spokane with no problem, then on to Coeur d' Alene for the night. Gave Murna a call and planned out the next day. Leny was already passed out and was planning on getting up at the crack of dawn to come save the day - we call Leny Captain Marvelous, for obvious reasons. I passed out that night around 1 a.m. only to be awakened by a phone call from Leny at 3:30a.m.... Mr. Marvelous was on his way...