Every dog has his day and today was a 3-dog day. Well maybe 2-dogs? I got up at 05:00am and the other two twinks got up long afterwards. Wotta couple of lazy people, absolutely zero class. As I write this Mac is trying to peek over the back of the laptop to see what I'm doing. I told him I'm writing all sorts of unkind things about him as he's been making fun of my feet. I'll hold off for a bit until I have something really good on him.
Aanyway, after a fast cup of camp coffee off we went at a ridiculous hour to meet up with the Ural dealer who would do the 5000 k service on Mac's Russian beast. Three weeks seems like a reasonable time for that amount of mileage, eh? On the way to the shop we stopped at the local IHop for our morning fat fix wherein Mac ordered a number big enough to feed three people. Shy he is not. Not even. Joe and I sort of ambled out the door...
We arrived at the Ural place 30 minutes early so we had time to off load all the stuff on my bike as I was hoping they might be able to figure out what was causing the fuel problems. Mark Watson, one of the two owners showed up right on time and let us in, making a pot of fresh coffee for us. Nothing like being made to feel welcome!
Mac's bike was first priority so while they started on it we pulled the air filter of the Aprilia and discovered it was as clogged as could be, probably from the super dusty trip up the haul road to Winter Harbour. We called around and located a shop in town by the name of Cycle Therapy who might be able to help out. The owner Tim just happened to own an Aprilia Caponard, the big brother to my Pegaso and was willing to work in a fast repair of the bad filter. True to his word, we followed the GPS over to his place and he replaced the clogged filter works with a foam/oil media that could be washed out as needed. He also provided a spare spark plug just in case and we were on our way back to the Ural shop.
The rest of the afternoon was spent watching Mark perform at his best as he completed the 5000k service. Mac and Joe had wrestled with a faulty spare time/rim issue on the way to Bellingham which turned out to be an out-of-round unit. The issue was resolved with the gratis replacement of a new unit and Mac added two new tires to the mix.
Mark Watson and Stephen McBee are two of the nicest most accomodating guys you could want to know and we're totally grateful for the quality service they gave us today. Our thanks go out to them and Tim at Cycle Therapy for their help and support on our Alaska ride. We're now ready for the real start of the journey, both bikes are fully serviced and should be reliable as can be. Joe's not going with us to AK but may ride along with us for awhile, then he'll head back to Omac, WA and other places of interest for the next several days, then back to Iowa.
Our day ended back at the KOA camp where we consumed huge quantities of memory-making nourishments (aka booze) and Joe performed his KOA dance routine complete with yellow plastic bag-on-the-head. Other campers tended to avoid this particular production. Tomorrow we leave early and know not when we'll be back on line, soon we hope.
Mark Watson and Stephen McBee are two of the nicest most accomodating guys you could want to know and we're totally grateful for the quality service they gave us today. Our thanks go out to them and Tim at Cycle Therapy for their help and support on our Alaska ride. We're now ready for the real start of the journey, both bikes are fully serviced and should be reliable as can be. Joe's not going with us to AK but may ride along with us for awhile, then he'll head back to Omac, WA and other places of interest for the next several days, then back to Iowa.
Our day ended back at the KOA camp where we consumed huge quantities of memory-making nourishments (aka booze) and Joe performed his KOA dance routine complete with yellow plastic bag-on-the-head. Other campers tended to avoid this particular production. Tomorrow we leave early and know not when we'll be back on line, soon we hope.
