The difference between a trip and an adventure…

It is said that you are truly not on an adventure until something goes very wrong on your trip. I am fortunately still on a trip….but my friend Mark who I met on the big yellow Goldwing in Fairbanks, is officially on an adventure!

Here is an email I received from him yesterday:

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Hello. I am in Smithers BC about 70 miles east of the southern terminus of the Cassair HWY. My new rear tire is being flown in from Vancouver this morning and the Harley Shop in town will install it. I had an interesting trip down from Fairbanks. I only encountered rain in the northern part of the Yukon. After a night in Whitehorse I got to HWY 37 (Cassair HWY- named after the big asbestos mining town that is closed down here near Jade City). I camped out on Dease Lake and headed south after about an hour I decided to put a piece of electrical tape on my face shield to act as a visor for the low hanging sun up here. This is a pretty remote place and no real shoulders on the road so I pulled over on the side of the road opened my saddle bag and got the tape out and as I was cutting the tape I saw my motorcycle go over and I mean over on the down sloping side of the road. I had seen bears on this road and there was no traffic. I tried to get the motorcycle back up and could not. I had picked this motorcycle up once before and its not that hard even though its about 1/2 ton with my stuff on it. So anyway here I am stuck on the side of the road in hungary bear wilderness.  After about 20 minutes of negative thinking and heavy self recrimination along comes my guardian angle diskized as Chuck and Kalyn in a motor home. Chuck helped me get my motorcycle back up and gave me a can of ” fix a flat”. Since they were probably from heaven (they said they did not have a redicence) they sure did know about the flat tire I was to have the next day. Anyway after surveying what is to be about $700 damage off I went to Stewart BC and on over to Hyder Alaska where I got Hyderalized (dank an once of grain alcohol which I needed) . Next day after thinking my tire gauge was broken I discovered that my rear tire was flat. Stewart is 210 miles from the nearest motorcycle tire shop. The guy at the only gas station in town said I could make it to the next intersection and top off the air there and make it on to the motorcycle tire shop in Smithers. I was thinking of the next intersection at 40 miles and he as it turns out was thinking of the intersection at 147 miles. Well when you hear air coming out of your tire you are not going to make 147 miles. I made about 52 miles and was back in hungary bear country with a flat tire no traffic. 3 cars did pass me but did not stop. Later the locals said they must have been tourist. I was able to get the” fix a flat” to finally partially seal the leak enough to get back to where I had seen an abandoned village. There I found an old man who did not speak english but lots of german. He had a compressor and after filling the tire several times and riding back and forth on the road several times to get the tire hot I got the tire to seal enough to make it back to Stewart. I  have Rescue Plus Insurance from the Goldwing Road Riders Organization I belong to and they pay for towing. But they only pay for 100 miles! I need a tow of 212 miles which the Goldwing people said would cost an additional $300 dollars ! So in the mean time I order a tire form Smithers Harley Davidson at $480!!! That’s for one tire. I could live my life in India for that price. Back at the gas station I told the owner who I hadn’t spoken to before I was desperate and he got his tire man on the tire and fixed it in 2 minutes with a plug. Turns out they had had some bad experiences with some motorcycles and weren’t too eager to help I guess. after spending another night at the campground in Stewart and noticing the tire pressure only went down 5 psi I drove to Smithers where I am now. That’s the end of the story. I have been out of wifi range for some time. That’s it. Bye Mark