Trailer Trials

After my bike's leaking final drive stranded us in Rosetown SK, a good friend from Three Hills AB very generously came all the way to trailer my bike back to her place.

If you look closely, you can see my Dad's headlight as he passes someone to catch up with us.  Passing isn't that interesting on Saskatchewan roads.

Sometime after midnight we started to get a bunch of shimmying from the trailer.  When we stopped to check on things, we found that both straps holding my front wheel straight we had failed.  One had disappeared completely, and the other was broken but hadn't blown away yet.  We figured the loose wheel must have allowed the shimmying due to wind, although that seemed unlikely.  Even with a soft cloth placed between the straps and my side panels, one strap had rubbed right through my paint.  In fact, the shimmying had gotten so bad that the bike had almost come off the center stand - we found it sitting right near the apex.  If that had happened, the bike would have fallen over on the trailer.  We re-anchored the front wheel, switched drivers, and continued on.

The shimmying was still there, but now even worse.  We stopped and looked things over again and found a flat tire on the trailer!  It was completely blown out, with tread missing and everything.  Thankfully our Towing Angel had a spare!  It took some trickery to get the trailer up high enough to change the tire, but the spare tire from her car and a bit of 2x4 I'd picked up in a back alley in Rosetown did the trick.

I'm surprised the picture isn't more blurry due to the massive number of mosquitoes that were attacking us as we worked.