Monday, August 10, 2009 (Day 15)

The last but not the least day.

Lillooet Circle Tour

We left Williams Lake in good spirit, and good weather. The planned route was down Hwy 97, then Hwy 1 to Vancouver. Several of us were thinking of going on Hwy 97, then to Hwy 99 and coming back through Pemberton/Whistler way for a more fun twisty ride, and more importantly, not so hot in temperature. I was all set to do that for the final leg.

Therefore, Granny Don, I didn’t go through Cache Creek. Sorry, no answer about Jimmy’s Restaurant for you.

Lillooet Panorama View

About 30 Km south of Lillooet, my onboard computer was flashing red warnings. I knew something was serious wrong. I was on slopes and fairly high speed. By the time I had stopped at the side of the road, I had identified it as a tire puncture. Then I saw, Dr. Mike Whitfield, the Paediatrician, riding by. I flagged him but he didn’t see me. I got on the bike and chased him through the hills for 2 Km (on a flat tire) and passed him and forced him to stop. The reason I was doing that was because for 2 weeks, he had made it known that he carried a tire repair kit and a tire pump. I thought that he might have been my saviour. He helped me using the mousse/silicone stuff and pumped up the tire. Unfortunately the puncture of the rear tire was simply too huge.

We were not in cell phone signal area.

Then John Valk rode by, and we flagged him down. He rode back to Lillooet to use land-line phone, trying to contact Randal in the support truck. Remember the support truck was going along the planned route of Fraser Canyon. Well, Randal’s truck was not in cell phone signal area. After a long while, John got hold of Randal on the cell phone, and re-routed him over to our area. It was very nice of John & Mike to stay with me under the 30C sun and clouds of insects for 3 hours waiting for the support truck to arrive. The reason the support truck was late was because it had its own transmission problems which wouldn’t let it accelerate properly.

Anyway, we loaded my motorcycle onto the trailer and tied it down. I was riding in the truck with Randal all the way to Vancouver. We arrived, truck and all, at about 7:45 pm. By the time Margaret took me home, it was almost 8:30 pm. The journey has ended. The “new” tires only lasted 3 weeks and almost 6,000 Km. You can imagine that we rode through some pretty rough terrains.

The bike was in John Valk’s shop, and hopefully, tomorrow they will do a do-over and replace anything that needs replacing.

Insight of the day:  Stay in cell phone signal areas. Stay in well travelled and serviced routes.

Ah, sleeping in my own bed.