A less than optimized itinerary

The last few days have been a little frustrating in terms of making road progress towards the south. After riding the harsh roads of Alaska, Chad was in dear need of a new rear tire (Caroline having a more durable French tire, a Michelin Road Pilot 2 as opposed to a Bridegstone TrailWing, she did not need a new tire yet). We had a great master plan: we ordered a tire online before leaving for the cruise and had it shipped to a motorcycle dealer in Seattle. As we returned from the cruise and called the dealer, the tire had not arrived yet!?!?

Dealing with tire complications
After calling the shipping company, we learned that the whole order was on hold due to a sprocket which we had ordered as well and that was out of stock. They were waiting for it to ship the tire as well. So we canceled the sprocket order and were told the tire should be in Seattle on Friday. Friday, no tire: it would make it on Monday the earliest as they do not deliver on the weekend. It was stuck in Oregon: we offered to pick it up there since we were close by but that was not an option that UPS could offer. Ok, Monday it will be...but wait, the motorcycle dealer is closed on Monday. We called UPS again and they confirmed that a Monday delivery would not be possible since the business had to be open, otherwise they keep the item. So now Tuesday the earliest: we were stuck 4 days in the area! Not cool at all, especially for Caroline who has less patience for these kinds of delays...

Key maintenance for the bikes

Knowing Friday that the tire would not arrive before next week, we took off the visit Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens and then headed out to Vancouver, WA just north of Portland on Sunday. We were meeting there with Ken and Ted, who had offered through the “Yahoo DL650 group” to help us check our valves and adjust them if necessary. This is a major maintenance check and quite expensive so we were so happy to have found someone to help us do it ourselves. Both Ken and Ted own a V-Strom and were super knowledgeable about how to maintain these bikes. Soon after we arrived, the guys started working on the bikes. Caroline having the oldest bike, hers went first and was fine: no adjustment needed, the bike was put back together 45 minutes. Then it was Chad's turn, which unfortunately needed two valves to be adjusted. The guys worked on it for about 8 hours but finally adjusted it and put it back together. Hard work for sure and at the end of the day, we had two well-working bikes. Ken and his wife Lisa even offered to host us for the night, which we accepted gratefully. We were once again impressed by how nice people are to us.

That Sunday, we were hopeful and looking forward to getting the new tire. This is when we found out it would be another day before it would be there. Triple bummer! We then decided to run another errand that we had postponed for a while: getting Chad a new pair of eye glasses after he had lost them somewhere on the road. He was getting tired of riding with corrective sunglasses, especially in the rain:) That took us another half day, but Chad finally got awesome new glasses and then we drove the three hours back to Seattle. That evening, we got to hang out with Kelly again, who hosted us a few days ago, and share some good Vietnamese eats. Probably would have been a perfect evening if it wasn't for Caroline being sick: she could barely eat anything, with a mean migraine to top the upset stomach. With the heat we were riding in all day, probably a strong dehydration.

The next day, all was better: Caroline felt healthy again and we got our tire mounted, finally ready to head south, taking the same route we had the day before. Sometimes, a road trip is not all fun and can get quite frustrating, especially when you thought you had it all well planned. It also felt like we were losing some precious time, stuck waiting and then riding multiple times the same road back and forth, but when you look at the bigger picture, not so bad. We got a lot done in these 4 days and had the pleasure to see Kelly again. However, it is sometimes challenging to see the bright side right away. Learning patience we are, as the Jedi would say...