First off, she’s OK… I know, I know, Déjà vu
But, I am not going to get into that yet. You have to read the story. Now don’t skip ahead, just follow along.
We are in the first day of our trip. It is Me, Lori , John and Gina on our motorcycles and heading towards the Yukon territory. Lori and I are on our Yamaha's and John has an older (classic) Honda shadow 1100 and Gina has a new Honda Interstate.
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The day started off as a typical Seattle summer day, sunshine, mid 70’s, overall a great day.
We head out to John and Gina’s house and the four of us head for eastern Wa over Hwy 20. We do the typical stop along side the road at Ross Lake, and that’s when the day started off for real.
I had to use the Restroom (pit toilet) and as I walked in, it was dark so I moved my sunglasses to my head and went about my business. I glanced down ( yah, yah, I know you look too) and my glasses fell off and were falling straight towards the opening in the toilet. I tried to catch them and couldn’t. The only thing I could do was to swat at them and send them flying across the toilet. At least they didn’t go in…
Little did I know that was the way the whole day was going to go.
By the time we got to Winthrop, the heat had begun. We stopped at Twisp to take off the coats and it was already into the 90’s. So we decided to go ahead and get some lunch before heading north into the Okanogan. We stopped at a pub along the hwy and have a good lunch, but right before we got ready to leave, Lori went in to use the restroom and when she came bad, she was real quiet. I asked, “what’s wrong” and she replied “ I just lost my bike keys down the toilet”.
In my mind I am going …What???!...
She said, yes, just as I reached over to flush the toilet the keys fell and went right into the toilet. Yep, they were gone. The poor guy at the pub tried to get them back, but they were gone.
Good thing I carry a spare key for her bike. We tried to find a place to make another key in town, (just in case) but no one could.
As we were leaving town, John lost his Leather doo rag in the middle of the road and had to go back and get it.
So we headed north towards Canada. We did find a place in Omak to make another key, so we are good, but John lost his leather doo rag in the middle of the road again. I told him if he dropped it again, I wasn’t giving it back to him.
We cross into Canada and John and Gina cross though pretty quickly. Lori gets up to the guy in the booth and he checks her ID, ask’s the typical questions and then proceeds to lecture her on the fact that she was not wearing proper riding gear. Now it is bouncing between 103 and 108 degree’s and he wants her to be wearing full gear and gloves. He finally lets her go and I pull up.
Got any guns?... No
Got any alcohol? … No
Going to leave any thing in Canada? … No
Fine have a nice day… Now I was wearing the same as Lori (jeans, chaps and a shirt) and not a peep…
We are now hot and cranky (at least I was) and we headed North. We get through Penticton and was just following along the Lake and dealing with traffic, when……..
Now picture this in your head. Try and visualize it as I go along.
We are heading into sweeping downhill turn to the right with a traffic light placed just as the road starts to straighten out. The light changes and the car at the front does a fairly quick stop. John is right behind him and also makes a fairly quick stop.
Gina on the other hand is right in the middle of this sweeping turn and sees John making a stop and she hits the brakes. A little hard. In the middle of the corner…
Yep the rear wheel locked up and she started to slide sideways. The rear tire swung out to the left and it looked just like she was flat tracking it. The bike was sliding sideways, smoke was coming off the rear tire and she was riding it out like pro. I was impressed. She had it balanced, it was sliding and it looked like she would be OK.
BUT… as those of you that know tires and motorcycles, you will realize that as you slow down the tires get more traction. Yep, the rear tire grabbed when she was doing about 25 mph and the bike straightened up and then the rear tire crossed over and the bike went the other way. This time it went down. She was on her side and sliding. The bike did a complete 180 in the middle of the road. Thankfully Gina has the instinct to stay on and ride it out. The bike slid to a stop on the Hwy bar and the left saddlebag. She finally was able to let loose and do a graceful little drop of about 6” onto the asphalt.
She was OK, not a scratch. She had tucked her leg in and just hung on until it was over.
Lori and I were following and saw the whole thing. We managed to stop all the traffic and block the lane until John came roaring back, made sure she was OK and could get the bikes off to the side of the road.
It took a few minutes to make sure she really was Ok, to check out the bike and calm some nerves, but it was all good. The hwy bar has some rash and the leather on the saddlebag is torn, but there is no serious damage. We are so thankful for that…
The rest of the trip into Kamloops was pretty uneventful with the exception of a bee sting, but we were taking it easy. We wanted to get into our room and relax in the hopes that tomorrow will be a better day..
Until tomorrow……