We finally get rolling and the first thing we notice in the next town we roll through is that road signs are now in Russian.
We are less than 30 minutes into the trip. His brand new tubless spoked rear wheel is leaking air! $1500 custom wheels that he just got and he can't keep air in them. Good news...he could go for 2 hours and would need air. Bad news...custom service for mechanicals on Hokkaido SUCK! No one had an inner tube on the entire island and we were looking at a week before anyone could get it. HORSE SHIT!
A picture showing my buddy's appreciation of the hard time I was giving him. Notice the bicycle pump strapped to his pack now:finger2::lol3:
We accept the dilemma we are in and feel lucky that it doesn't fuck with our trip. We still have the next half of the coastline to finish up and at least we can do it with a minor inconvenience of airing up every couple of hours.
We stop to get fuel and this is at the point where we are heading south where we discover certain gas stations sponsor "Hokkaider." This is a program set up to where you can get a flag for $1 and the island is cut up into categories. Ride all 4 categories and get all 5 flags. We already had 3 of the sectors blazed and couldn't go back! We explained to the guy at the station and even got our cameras out to show him...he apologized and said that he was only authorized to have the blue flag because of where his station is...MOTHER FUCKER! We came back home with 2 of the 4 flags even though we rode the damn island!
gas station Bonnie. I brought a 2.5 gallon tank with me but ended up not ever needing it. There were plenty of stations...even up north. Oh well...lesson learned. I guess it is better to have it and not need it than the other way around. The Harleys I was riding with had 5.5 tanks so their range was a lot longer than mine.
I caught my buddy airing up his ride while sitting on my bike. Naturally I got the camera out and started busting balls. He told me he needed some of the Bonnie luck to start rubbing off on him. He wasn't familar with the Bonnies but was EXTREMELY impressed on how the Trumpet was taking the trip. He couldn't understand how he was pushing his Train to keep up with me
We finally get back down to civilization and had to run on the outskirts of Sapporo. I look over and notice a single rider that kept on following us...we would always keep a couple car distance but he was definitely curious with us. Finally, at a stop light while my other two buddies were talking about something, I looked over my shoulder and waved the guy in to join us. A big smile broke on his face and he joined our small pack and we rode for a while in the city together.
We take a break and to his surprise...he sees two American faces as the helmets come off. He told our buddy that he loves cruisers/roadsters but all of his friends are on crotch-rockets and said that he always wanted to ride in a pack with a MC. I told him we were different...we were a VMC; we were all veterans that serve our country so we are working plain joes that love to ride. You could tell that it made his year and he said that he was going to ride with us to Orasu, where we were planning to camp, and then two around and head back home to Sapporo. Sapporo to Orasu was about a 2 hour ride so he went 4 hours out of his to ride with us...good stuff!
This is him trying to call everyone he knew in Sapporo to score an inner-tube but no luck. It wasn't because of the lack of trying though...there really wasn't an inner-tube on that fucking island!
We get to Orasu and discover that this is the hometown for the Japanese astronaut that was on the Endevaur. EVERYTHING in that town had a damn space shuttle!
We pull up to a beach directly facing the Pacific and pitched our tents and slept like babies listening to the waves of the Pacific ocean
