June 1st, 2007
Shelby, Montana
GPS: coming soon
Distance Traveled: coming soon

Hard to pull yourself away from family, especially when you've got relatives like ours.  Everyone had agreed to meet at Hickory Kist for breakfast that morning at nine am – but do you really think that we were capable of making it there on time?  

Of course not.

Finally got our poop in a group and made it to the rendezvous about 9:30, which wasn't too bad, considering.  Apparently since i'd mentioned that I would have happily killed for a Hickory Kist sandwich in one of my earlier posts, the owner of that fine establishment was going to buy us four breakfast.  A free breakfast is always awesome, in my books, and a free breakfast there is great.  

She neglected to inform her staff, though, and when Justin and I ordered, rather than make a fuss, I ponied up for my sandwich &amp; Justin's cinnamon bun.  I'd forgotten how big the sandwiches were, and when it arrived, i'll admit that I was a little bit worried that I'd be able to finish it.  Fortunately, I was able to man up and save face in front of Casey &amp; Bobby – I even managed to polish off a slice of awesome bread.  I was even able to squeeze a half loaf of bread into my topcase to take with us – nice little treat along the road.

Shortly after we finally got rolling, Robbie decided that he'd test out his ABS, make sure it was working properly.  Normally, I'd assume that someone testing out something like BRAKES would try to make sure that they weren't close to other people before coming to a sudden and unexpected stop.  Robbie likes to keep us on our toes, however.

Justin was leading, as has been typical for much of this ride.  Robbie pulled out in front of Justin – immediately in front of him, and led the way for a few kilometres, when WHAM there's lights flashing and surprising amounts of smoke whipping through the air behind Justin &amp; Robbie.  He'd done this immediately in front of a minor intersection at which a car was waiting, so I immediately assumed the worst and thought he'd blown a tire and wiped out or something.  He apparently came very close to wiping out when he locked up his front tire and Justin had to resort to extremely drastic maneuvers to avoid driving clean through Rob.  We all came to a shuddering halt and stormed over there to yell at him.  Despite our best arguments and much shaking of fingers, Rob refuses to admit that his testing method left a little something to be desired, and still won't admit that he did anything wrong, or that he came anywhere close to losing control.

About lunch time, we met up with our first ride-alonger – our uncle Paul!  We met up with him about an hour and a half out of Pocatello, and rode along the highway to the public pool there, where our aunt Teresa and cousins Hayden &amp; AJ were waiting for us.  Apparently Paul's 650 isn't as fast as ours, and we forced him to keep his throttle pinned the whole time he rode with us, which killed his fuel economy.  Even though he'd filled up prior to joining us on our ride, he had to switch to his reserve tank shortly before making it into Pocatello.

After much hugging and 'i can't believe you guys actually made it', Teresa and Paul offerd to buy us a quick lunch, so we headed over to this little fast food diner down the road that happened to have pretty dang good burgers.  We felt a little bad about burning all of Paul's gas up, so we dumped one of our spare cans into his bike so he'd at least make it to  a gas station before he really ran out of gas.  After lunch, we stopped for some gas, and Justin and I both noticed a strange new noise coming from our drive trains.  Justin pulled out his tools to check, and shortly before he announced that we all needed new front sprockets &amp; chains, Paul pulled up to top off his tank.  

His bike must have a pretty small tank, 'cause one of our jerry cans (which is a little less than half a tank for us) pretty much filled him up – he managed to squeeze about ¾ of a gallon into his tank, just shy of $2.50.

After that, it was a pretty uneventful jaunt to Shelby – we got in too late to really enjoy the company, though.  Bradley from Race Trac Gas – one of our major sponsors was there to greet us and he brought along some nice hats for us to wear.  Ajoy from Milano for Men also rode his Harley across the border to meet us, and brought along some wonderfully clean t-shirts.  And, last but not least, Patrick 'The Deliverator' Langlois was there as well, having cheerfully couriered myself a new set of motorcycle armour, courtesy Ajoy, and the original windshields for Justin and I.  After nearly eighteen thousand kilometres, once again I would have a windscreen.  I nearly teared up.

After some handshakes, story telling, a beer &amp; some cookies, we headed off to bed – it's been a long day, and we got a busy one for tomorrow.

Ryan Noble,
Shelby, Montana