May 31th, 2007
Spanish Fork, Utah
GPS: coming soon
Distance Traveled: coming soon

This morning i'd posted an update to the post indicating that we'd encountered some problems with Dad's rear sprocket, and had to make a detour through Durango, NM to pick it up.

On the way into Durango, Justin stood up on his pegs to get a better look around the city and see if he could spot the dealership.  He did this immediately in front of one of New Mexico's finest, who turned on his disco lights.  When Justin stands on his pegs, he can't see in his mirrors, so did not have any idea that a police officer was asking him politely to pull over.  He also had his music playing through the earphones, and thus could not hear when the siren was turned on. 

Eventually, though, he noticed, and pulled over a mile or two down the road.  The officer didn't ticket him (thankfully), nor was he speeding – just wanted to make sure that Justin didn't stand on his pegs while in town.  Justin asked him for directions to the dealership, and the nice officer went back into his car to ask on the radio if any troopers knew where it was.  One did, and he directed us in the right direction.

The dealership (name of Fun Center) there was great – they had the sprocket we needed, and even loaned us a bike lift so that we could get the sprocket changed out, and let us do the maintenance in the parking lot.  Justin managed to lose the 19mm socket, so dad took off on Rob's bike to grab us some lunch and pick up the socket at the Wal-Mart in town.  

Rob and Justin are the heavy-lifters in terms of mechanical aptitude.  When greasy things like this are going on, I do my best to stay out of the way, or do helpful things like hold brake levers or fetch shop cloths.  That sort of thing is about my speed when it comes to the physical reality of motorcycle maintenance.  While I was killing time, I realized that I still didn't have any signal lights, so I picked up two replacement sets – two lights for the front, and two for the back.  I figured I'd just pop the old ones out and slide the new ones in.  I should have spoken to Justin about this before I spent the money on them – turns out I pretty much have to take every bit of fairing off the bike in order to replace the signal lights, and that's currently beyond me.  The lights are currently in a net bag in my topcase, unusable until I can convince Justin he needs to replace them for me.

We lost about three hours to this little bit of maintenance – just once, I'd like to get us a day where we can make 1000kms without having something bite us in the butt and slow us down.

We did find out something bad, too.  Apparently the front sprocket is listed incorrectly in parts catalogues for our motorcycles.  Our sprockets &amp; chain are all 525 width, but parts catalogues have our front sprocket listed as a 520.  This means that the front sprocket is just a little bit too narrow for our chain.  We've run, by this time, 18,000 kms on the wrong sprocket, and all of our drive trains need replacing.  However, the three sons are doing all right, and we'll make it to Red Deer on what we've got.  Dad's, though, is another story.  His front sprocket pretty much shredded his chain, and it wore down his rear sprocket so much that the sprocket teeth are razor sharp.  Justin had to be very careful while swapping it out so that he didn't slice his fingers on the sprocket teeth.

Once we got back on the highway, we passed through Moab, Utah, which had some pretty amazing badlands-type scenery.  Near there is also a place called Hole-N-the-Wall, which we initially thought might have something to do with Butch Cassidy &amp; the Sundance Kid (dad's favourite movie) but it was not – turned out to be just a house built in a cliff.  Wooo.

Because of the detour we made to get through Durango, we had to cross over a mountain pass in pitch dark to get to Grandma's house.  The temperature (of course) plummeted, and we damn near froze to death getting to Grandma's.  We were all flying down the highway to get to the warmth, and I got pulled over exactly 183 yards from Grandma's, doing 46 in a 30.  I explained to the cop exactly HOW CLOSE I was to where I wanted to be, and he let me go and wished us all good luck on our journey.

It was awesome to finally see some familiar faces, even if it was very late at night.  I got to see my new baby cousin Belen (sorry, Tadds – i cannot for the life of me remember how to spell her name), which was super cool, as well as the rest of the fambly – hello now to Casey, Lindsay, Grandma, Grandpa, Carolyn, and – last but not least, Bobby!  Unfortunately, Trav had to get his beauty sleep &amp; took off about half an hour after we arrived at midnight.  After a quick dinner, some hugs &amp; conversation, us Nobles were given some time to soak in the hot tub, and then time for bed. 

Ryan Noble,
Spanish Fork, Uah