7/31/98

The morning is of no importance.

A quick note to tell you what was wrong with the bike. It turns out that one of the carb floats was not floating. I've never personally heard of this happening, but the mechanic says it does sometimes on bikes that have sat for extended periods of time with gas in them (as this bike did with the previous owner).

Anyway, I was at least pretty much correct. It was flooding, certainly the needle valve and crossover tubes were likely, and the mechanic checked them both prior to determining the problem. It was somewhat comforting to hear that it took the mechanic some 8 hours (or so they told me) to determining the problem. I spoke to him afterwards, and he even said he had the carbs off and on again twice before nailing down the problem. Btw, it turns out that the mechanic is a racer too, and several years ago raced at Sears Point with the AFM. Small world�

The fix was easy, just install a new float. The problem was getting one. I don�t know much about Canada, but if you were to believe the parts dept. at Blackfoot Motors, there is no such thing as overnight shipping in the country. It took 3 days to get the part from the Kawasaki warehouse in Toronto to the dealer in Calgary. I personally think they are full of s#!t, but what could we do? We just waited for the part�

So finally, five days later at 5pm, we left the dealership on the bike!!! We are back. We headed straight for the US. Despite the 30 percent discount that we get in Canada (due to the strong dollar), we could not wait to get back to the states. I'm not sure why, Canada is a great place, great people, but we were done with it. And completely frustrated in general.

Anyway� It was a wonderful ride down, some rain, lightning, geougeous mountains and the setting sun. We hit Montana at about 9pm, and drove 20 minutes to St Mary, right on the entrance to Glacier National Park and the Road to the Sun. Spent the night in a private campground that was really nice. It was dark by the time we got there, but they had plenty of space, and grassy sites.

david.

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