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Highway 89, Tahoe to Lassen Volcanic NP.
1852 General Store in San Simeon, California.
Shaw Island, San Juan
Islands, Washington
Orcas Hotel, Orcas
Island, Washington.
Hazard 2
That is, until our second problem
occurred. We had just tied up for the night,
gotten something to eat, and I had washed the
bike just as I do every evening. All was well
until, in the morning, I uncovered the bike and
found a 10-inch puddle of coolant under it.
I knew the coolant hadn’t been there the
night before, and two drops were still hanging
on the wet bottom of the front fairing. It had
obviously come from our bike, but the coolant
level still read “full.” Out came the Gold Book
again!
The closest dealer was Honda of Medford
in Oregon, so I added 10 ounces of water to
the bike and we headed up there. They were
great folks, and I can’t say enough about their
helpfulness. But, to make a long story short,
they thought they could detect from where
the bike had leaked, and later determined that
two O-rings and a gasket would be required
to fix it. Problem was, they only had one of the
three required parts. The other parts would
have to come in from Georgia.
Returning to the Gold Book, I found and
contacted Bennie Betsch in Renton,
Washington, who immediately started calling
around for the parts. Unfortunately, we never
got to actually meet Bennie in person. But just
like Tom and John and their wives in Lake
Charles, Louisiana, he was super. He treated us
just like family.
Bennie found one part at South Bound
Honda in Tacoma,Washington, so we picked it
up on our way through.We ordered the other
part shipped from Georgia to Renton
Motorcycles in Renton,Washington.
This allowed us time on our trip, as we
waited there for the part, to at least go
through the San Juan Islands between northern
Washington and Vancouver Island, British
Columbia. Our favorite island was Orcas, with
its 104-year-old Orcas Hotel.What a beautiful
place! And if you ever get to Orcas Island,
don’t miss the Magic Air Tours, where you can
fly all through the San Juan Islands in an open
cockpit 1929 TravelAir biplane. Rod, a retired
Navy pilot, will give you a guided tour over the
intercom. He may even play some Pavarotti (as
he did for us) while flying past eagles and
around clouds that are so close you can
almost reach out and touch them.
Two passengers can sit side-by-side in the
biplane, wearing “old time” leather helmets.
The wind-in-the-face experience and throughthe-prop
views are absolutely spectacular. It
doesn’t get much better than this.
But I’m sure you’re wondering about the
bike.Well, by the time our last part arrived at
Renton Motorcycles, we had traveled over
700 miles without so much as another drop of
coolant leakage.We pondered the risk of having
major work done while 3,500 miles from
home against the odds of the leak returning if
we skipped the repairs and just started back.
By now, of course, the possibility of going
up to Alaska was out of the question. Our
confidence in the bike was being rebuilt, but
not that much.We’d been to Alaska before and
knew that there’s a lot of lonely country up
that way. So our decision was “We’ve enjoyed
our trip so far and, since we have all the
necessary repair parts in hand should we have
more troubles down the road, we’d better
start heading for home.” So that’s what we
did.
If we needed repairs on our return cross
country, we now had the utmost confidence
that Wingers in the Gold Book could help us
find a good mechanic along the way.
On the return trip we saw a lot of beautiful
country through Washington, Oregon,
Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Texas, Louisiana,
Mississippi, Alabama and back to Florida. All
together, we covered about 9,000 miles in 22
days on the bike, and it hasn’t leaked a drop of
coolant since. Go figure!
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May 2007 57