Day #6 July 29, 2007

Day 6
Sunday July 20, 2007

Whitefish, MT to Bozeman, MT
316 miles today (15,387 – 15,703)
1684 miles total

I awoke to a beautiful and cool Sunday morning. I have 400+ miles to ride and am going to have to get with it if I’m going to make it to Billings. I want to see Gerald and Kathy at Big Sky tomorrow.

I traveled the most beautiful highway today. The Rocky Mountains were all around me.
See the map for MT Hwy 83 southeast of Whitefish. Great pavement, very little traffic, and fantastic views. After several hours of riding, I got almost to Avon, MT and was fearful of running out of gas, so I decided to fill from one of my extra cans. I didn’t want to run the carbs dry and have to worry about priming them or something like that. After gassing up (odom 15,571), turning the fuel valve to RUN, and getting half a mile down the road, the bike starts sputtering like it’s running out of gas! What?? I switched to reserve, and it would run fine. I was only 30 miles out of Helena, MT so I rode on reserve to there. Several times I would switch to RUN, and the same thing would occur. I had time to diagnose the problem in my mind and would confirm with Jon Hardisty (my own personal "on the road" motorcycle mechanic) once I reached Helena.

1:15 PM. Hit Helena, MT and it was cooking. Right at 100 degrees. I headed indoors for lunch
where I looked up local bike shops. Of course, everyone was closed until TUESDAY! This was going to have to be a self fix. One of the cooks, who was taking a smoke break out back, directed me to a city park after lunch where I could park in the shade and work on the fuel issue. Called Steve Goddard, then Jon and shared my concerns about trash in the fuel screen. Jon told me how to drop the fuel petcock, and along with my service manual, I discovered the RUN intake screen just wrapped with plastic. Black plastic strips from the new fuel can I brought. Well, that’s a lesson learned: always flush out NEW fuel cans. By 3:30 I was on my way again.

I arrived at the Bozeman KOA just a few minutes before 6PM. Got set up and had my swim trunks on in 15 minutes. This was a really nice facility. Probably the nicest I would stay in. The pool was brand new, and huge. I also sat in the hot tub for a little while and visited with a couple from Michigan. They were both teachers and travel every summer.
Last year, or two years ago, they had been to Bend and Sisters, Oregon and had ridden over the McKenzie Pass. They stayed a while at a RV park in Cottage Grove and really liked it. Their Harley had broken down up a canyon between Bozeman and Yellowstone. He waited with the bike while she hitched a ride back to town and got the HD dealer on the way for a tow. They were picking the bike up tomorrow and then heading home.

Saw some great views today coming out of Whitefish, but the fuel valve issue gave me a scare.