I worked a special assignment at work yesterday and knew I would be working late so I took today off. I had planned to leave home just after daylight and ride down route 800 to Fly Ohio and then down to Kentucky and back home. After looking at the route and realizing at was going to be about 580 miles I decided to cut it back with the cold temps and limited hours of daylight.
I was up around 0700 and saw we had a heavy frost. I hung around home hoping the sun would come out. I left home at 0900, still a heavy frost and 27*F and no sunshine. I rode two hours before the frost started to clear and the temps started to rise and sun came out. At 1130 I made my first stop. Frost was gone and the temp was up to around 37*F. I had a grilled chicken wrap and Hot Chocolate for lunch. I saw alot of great photo ops but was enjoying the ride too much to stop.
I made it to Fly, Ohio my original destination. I stopped for a photo and was going to take the ferry across the Ohio River and head north on State Route 2 in W. Virginia, the ferry was closed so I headed north on Route 7 then west on Route 148 and then north on Route 9. These are all state routes but are one lane each way with lots of curves and hills. Once I got down to "50 miles to fuel" I started looking for a gas station, another 30 miles up the road I filled up. It was the only station around so I was at their mercy and had to pay $3.33 per gallon back home it was only $3.16. So enjoyed the rest of the ride until I got near the top of a hill and the bike felt weird in the rear end. It wasn't but a moment or two and I knew the rear tire was flat. There was not place to get off of the road (i.e. no shoulder, driveways, etc) I had just crested the top of a hill and could see a driveway about 3/4 to 1 mile away down the hill and partway across a valley. So I continued slowly about 10-15 mph until I could pull in the driveway and get off of the road.
I checked the tire and it was definately flat. There was a wear strip around the tire and it was down to the cords. So I decided I wasn't going to try and plug it with the cords showing. I finally got through to AAA, there computers were down and I was on hold forever or so it seemed. After being on the call for 21 minutes they said they would be sending a truck, they said it would be there within in hour, it took about 40 minutes.
So the driver got me home. If you don't have AAA plus you should get it. With the plus they tow up to 100 miles, no extra charge. This is the second time this year they save me. The first time was in June when we were in Kentucky and had two tires blow out on our camper on a Sunday Evening.
So now I'm going to have to call the Keel Brothers and order up a new tire. Then try to find someone local to install it. As I was looking at the pictures to attach to this I think I see a wear mark on the rear tire in the picture by the sign for Fly. I'm going to have to look closer as it may have worn sooner and I didn't notice it. By the way the rear tire had about 8000 miles on it. This is the first tire that went flat while I have been riding a motorcycle, it wasn't as bad as I thought. I did check the rear tire and found that there was a cut in the center of the tread, most likely caused the flat.
