Worst vacation ever, including the trip I took in 1978 with my family from Orange County, CA, to Dallas, TX, when my parents made me listen to Barry Manilow and Neil Diamond the whole way.

  • Several electrical problems plagued (and still plague) my bike
  • Day One saw rain most of the way to Thompson Falls
  • Day Two involved trucking my bike to Spokane from Thompson Falls because it just wouldn’t run
  • Day Three was probably the best, picking up the bike in Spokane, riding back to Thompson Falls, loading up and then straight on to Nelson, BC, skipping Jasper and Kamloops.
  • Day Four saw more electrical problems, running on one cylinder
  • Day Five brought a speeding ticket, 118kph in a 90kph zone. After early payment discount and exchange rate it should be about $100USD.
  • Day Six made me watch my good friend total his bike in front of me and nearly total himself
  • Day Seven was loooong, going through Spokane to see said friend after he was air lifted there the previous night for surgery

The actual route definitely looks a lot different than the planned route.


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Of course, one and a half of those trips between Thompson Falls and Spokane were in a truck, not on the bike.


Here’s my report on the accident, posted on BonnevilleAmerica.com:

Yesterday, mid-afternoon, Freedom crashed between Kaslo and Nelson, BC, a few clicks south of Ainsworth Hotsprings if you know the area. I was right behind him when, during a low blood sugar diabetic episode, he drifted off to the right into the ditch. His front wheels caught on the rocks and he was catapulted over the handlebars, coming to rest in the middle of the road about 30ft past the bike.

His pelvic bone was fractured and his hip joint, though intact, was shoved up into his abdomen. He has a huge gash in his chin (open face helmet) and a chunk of his lower lip is missing. He was taken by ambulance to the hospital in Nelson then transferred last night by helicopter to Spokane.

Zmilin and I stopped at the hospital this afternoon but John was in back-to-back surgeries for his face and pelvis. I just got home and talked to him on the phone. Neurologically he is fine. No paralysis, no cognitive issues. He has at least one more surgery to go. He is missing two front teeth.

He was very, very lucky. Lucky that at the rather remote crash site I had cell signal to call for help. The first car to stop had an ER nurse with a big first aid kit. Several Triumph riders attending the Kootenay Raid were in the area, stopped and helped with traffic and such. He didn’t hit the rocky cliff face on the right. He didn’t go over the rocky cliff drop off to the left. Didn’t hit a tree. Another car wasn’t coming right when he flew into the middle of the shoulderless two-lane road.

The bike is absolutely totaled. The front end was ripped clean off. The front wheel is a pretzel. It was leaking gas out the cap but when the RCMP officer and I lifted it upright, gas poured out the split bottom of the tank. Not a surface on the thing remained untouched.

I don’t have the hospital address but maybe someone could look it up for me. He’s in room 425 of Sacred Heart Memorial Hospital in Spokane. He’ll be there at least a week if not three.

This was a horrible end to a the worst week of vacation I’ve ever had. It started with other problems that I will describe in another thread.

Here is my post on BonnevilleAmerica.com about my technical issues:

I had the perfect week from he||. The worst is detailed here. But leading up to it I had electrical problems and my chain is dying I think.

First, I rode in the rain most of the day on Monday from Helena to Freedom’s house. During a stop in Missoula, a bit over half way, it wouldn’t start for several minutes. After that it ran without fail the rest of the way to John’s.

Tuesday morning after gassing and loading up, it would die, it would miss and pop through the carbs and exhaust then die. It would run ballz out for 10 minute and just shut down, then not restart for about another 10 minutes. Mind you, we were leaving Freedom’s house for a little (?) tour of British Columbia. I couldn’t trust it.

So we trucked it over to Empire Cycles in Spokane (Tingley’s in Missoula didn’t have a mechanic on duty all day). We left it for them and they got right on it (I’m pretty impressed overall with Empire), but we returned to T-Falls. The mechanic started tracing out and testing every circuit. He found “a resistance” and repaired some corroded connections in the neutral light and/or kickstand kill switch circuits. He said he noticed that the neutral light was now much brighter. Early Wednesday morning we went back to Spokane and I rode it back to Freedom’s so we could load up and salvage some of vacation. We made it to Nelson without any problems.

Thursday morning on the way to do some laundry it ran like crap. Right cylinder wasn’t firing at all. Exhaust was dead cold. I was freaking out by now. Thinking it was the coil I started calling all the dealerships in the NW that could’ve had people coming to Nelson for the Raid. They insisted that the coils generally don’t go bad and they don’t even stock them. After fiddling with it and trying to swap coils (at the laundromat) to test it and having no joy, I put everything back and limped it back to the hotel and started poking around some more. A new friend from Wyoming started helping me and wonder of wonders, he found the right coil wire wouldn’t stay in the coil. So that was fixed. Zmilin said this happened on Karen’s bike. Bike ran great after that.

Also, I ran without my fog lights turned on because they keep blowing fuses.

The last electrical problem manifested itself today on the way home from Spokane. The tach needle is going CRAZY. It’s bouncing around all over the place. Nothing else seems wrong.

Next, my friggin chain keeps stretching. I kept adjusting it, probably 3-4 times in the last week. It’s sagging a ton right now. I’m assuming that means it’s worn out and the o-rings are toast. One guy in Nelson said I should’ve dropped it in a can of oil when I put it away in 2003 after installing my belt drive kit. Thing has less than 10k miles on it total.

Anyone care to comment on any of this? I’m amazed, after the week we’ve had, that it got me home. The upside is that the engine is running like a bat out of he||. Basically I’m going to tear the bike apart and go through everything if I ever want to take it out of town again. Probably get a new chain and sprocket set and Nology coils and wires just to be sure.

Eff Lucas.