August 19
Cold but sunny start....we arrived in Grande Prairie by 0900...but we lost an hour yesterday as we crossed into Alberta...so it was now 1000. I sat inside Starbucks whilst John wrestled changing his front tire and told the world the story of our trip. A trip across town to a Yamaha dealer - i spent a hour explaining our story to various people whilst John fitted a 40 tooth sprocket!!! A faster ride to New York now!!!??
It was 1500 once we had eaten, dried the tents and gassed up.
33.5miles out of town, John stops. His bike is hot and sounding rough. We check the oil and top it up....with almost a liter!!! She start and dumps most of the oil on the road. 2 hours later, with a fair number of bolts removed, we get the rocker cover off....it looks like the 'gasket' had gone. There was no gasket...it had been sealed with 'instant gasket'. John hopped on my bike and rode back to town - in search of instant gasket. I sat at the side of the wrote and wrote emails on the laptop and waited for the plethora (sp please Mr T) of people to stop and help out. Only a few people stopped....some people slowed down to have a look and once they saw i was tapping away on a laptop, they passed by. Dave did stop - a really nice man with a ranch and tools only 1 hour away....he was willing to come and pick us and the bike up if we could not repair it!!
2 hours later (and the GPS showing John was leading the score board having hit 97.4MPH on his trip into town) he returned and we put the XT back together with the instant gasket. In Russia we had seen truck drivers with whole cylinder heads laying in the dirt as they replaced pistons at the side of the road - we felt Russian - bodging the engine back together with a good amoun t of dirt getting in everywhere. However, we were sober and not wearing slippers - the two main rules of being a russian truck driver.
The instant gasket took 24 hours to cure - we started her up after one and guess what....she started 
and kept the oil inside the engine!!!! I could not believe it!!! I had visions of us living in Grande Prairie whilst we waited for parts to be shipped in!!! We headed back towards town...very slowly. It was a painful ride because 1.doing 40mph 2.it was the wrong direction!!!
We stopped short of town and found the worst campsite ever. Slopped, deep grass, bumpy and next to silver birch.
- Posted by mark stowe on 24/08/2006.
- mark stowe's site
Please sign in or join etribes to add comments.
