Thank you all who volunteered directly and in spirit to help me with my tire incident. Special thanks to wilguzzi severely member, who would have come over and changed it for me
if I would have let him. He had a slightly different size tire that would have worked. If I had been riding with ITCHY BOOTS, I would have done it.
Weighing all my options, it seemed best to just wait until Tuesday when a motorcycle shop would be open...
Somebody said they wanted to hear the story.
Last Saturday afternoon, driven to the edge of madness by the plague, I decided on a whim just to zip up North about 150 miles on hwy 49/71 to Kansas City, MO, to see my brother Jake. The weather was about 60 or so and overcast. The NT700 was running like a top since its a Honda on that cheap premium 91 gas. I had a good front door and who was going 90, so I just skulked along at the same speed behind him at a discrete distance most of the way. It was pretty nice and traffic was sparse. Till about 5:30.
Encountering road construction at Grandview in S edge of City, where they were rebuilding an overpass, traffic was compressed to one lane and a stop n go crawl. Something felt funny and looking down I noticed my back tire had about 5 lbs of air in it. Driving down the shoulder, I passed all the stopped cars and made it up to an apartment complex and shut'er down.
A Harley guy on a 112CI bike pulled up instantly and told me there was no place near to get a can of fix-a-flat or air and took off. Inspecting my tire, it appeared to have gone low and high speed riding had caused accelerated wear on the side wall and center and the was showing a broken piece of inner steel mesh core coming through. Granted, it was a thin skin when I started out and I should not have run on such a marginal tire, but I was feeling lucky and was almost always lucky in the past. This time the Joker had caught up with me.
My brother arrived a half hour later and we aired the tire up and it held air but I had already called Road Assistance so we just waited. The night before I had taken out Roadside Assistance online with my insurance company and was covered. Hallelujah! If I had been carrying a can of fix a flat I could have been ok because I would have limped another mile to 150th street where there was a bike shop open that had my tire in stock, If I had only known.
Mr Severity here volunteered to come over with a used tire that would have fit, but I decided just to allow myself to be 'stranded' until Tuesday and suffer through hanging out at my brother's with his wife on their sumptuous estate. Severity even called around and found a selection of tires for me and told me where all the best shops were. What a great guy!
Moving on, I was happy to get a Metzeler 150/70 17 for 108 dollars plus 30 for mounting 'off the bike' at Freedom Cycle. Nice looking shop with a ton of inventory. They had a Suzuki W800 in there, a Honda Africa Twin and a CB1100 retro bike. 'Not so happy about when re installing the back wheel, tire was on BACKWARDS! Jake and I had to drive back to Grandview to get it flipped. They didn't even have a promo key ring or a hat for my inconvenience. You have to buy a new bike to get a T-shirt.
WELL, I wrassled that wheel back on and only used about half my cussing vocabulary, then I ate a big slice of my sister in law's home made chicken pot pie
and BOOM. There I was: it was 49 degrees F and I was tanked up and pointed South doing 75 on 69 through thickening ground scud and misty drizzle to Ft Scott KS. Knuckles and toes were getting cold, but no shivvers. Then it lifted a little and the road was dry from Pittsburg on down to Riverton, then through Galena on OL' 66 and home. I saw no other motorcycles, needless to say. I had cornered the market on two-wheeled insanity on that stretch, in that weather, on that day.
The greatest pleasure of travelling sometimes is coming home. Next Time I promise to take the GUZZI. It has good Pirelli Phantom's on it.
The moral: don't drive on thin skins like me and make sure you break down near a relative and forum members like severity
