Day 24

When there isn't much to differentiate one day from another, it's hard to keep track of what happened during the day.

Especially if I fall behind in my updates. At least I made it over the border anyway. I'm back in the good ol USA !! Just like John Denver used to sing "My it's good to be back home again".

Got delayed in Canada a little. I stopped at a Petro-Canada for gas and saw something in a display case that I wanted to buy and the girl broke the key off trying to open the case. I spent 45 minutes or so trying to get the case open without success. I gave it up and headed for the border.

The Mounties really patrol that last bit of highway from Calgary to the border. I mean they were all over that highway. They use some kind of special lights on their cars too. When their car was so far ahead you couldn't hardly see there was a car there, you could see that red light flash as plain as day. I'm thinking it must be some kind of laser light. It was REALLY bright. Plus, as they are going down the road on one side they are running the radar on the other side. If someone is just going a little too fast for them but not fast enough to turn around and chase them down, they'll just flick the light for a second or two. As if to say, if you don't slow down I'm coming after you. And, the cars on the other side slow down too. I must have seen them pull over at least 15 or 20 cars when prior to that I'd maybe seen one or two cars pulled over total the whole time I was in Canada. Either people in this area like to speed or they are really tough on drivers.

Meanwhile, I'm beginning to think I'm invisible to their radar. I can't explain why I'm going about 5 to 10 mph faster than most all other cars in Canada and I never see any Mounties. It's like my normal running speed is faster than the rest of the Canadians. Maybe the penalties for a Canadian are so great that they never speed even a little. I go my normal 10 to 15% percent over the speed limit. One thing I know is that unless they are also using a GPS, my speedometer is a lot more accurate than what they have in their car. Not the Mounties, they surely have something as accurate as mine. But the normal car is probably no better than my BMW speedometer and it's off at least 8 mph at 75 mph.

I forgot to mention that when I got my new passport I forgot to sign it. So the Canadians didn't notice it when I left the U.S. and the U.S. people didn't notice it when I arrived in Alaska but the woman working the Canadian border when I left Alaska noticed it so I had to sign it then. Twice I got away without having a signed passport before they caught it. Just went breezing through the border when I got back to Montana without problems. They just wanted to know if I was bringing in any tobacco or alcohol. Now, I ask you, who would pay $14 for a pack of cigarettes and bring them back to the U.S. ?

I saw a different looking trike today. It was on the other side of the interstate so I couldn't see it real well but the back tires looked more like the front wheel of a bike than the normal looking trike tire. I couldn't tell if it was just a two wheel frame that bolted on to the back of a normal motorcycle or not but it looked a little weird to me.

I'm still noticing that the riders in the North West areas don't seem to wave much. I'm not sure if they're Canadians or not but they act like the normal Harley riders no matter what kind of bike they're on. Really strange to me.

Ran into some major wind again after crossing the border. When I would come up behind a truck, it would feel like the wind was trying to blow me off the road. Speaking of wind, I forgot to mention that when I was following the Tire King of Sioux City, Iowa the other day, we hit some major wind near a lake we were going by and he must have not been on his toes because one gust of wind blew him over about a third of the way into the oncoming traffics lane. If a truck had been passing him then, I wouldn't have wanted to see the result. You have to be awake every second on a bike. And this guy was on a Gold Wing. When that wind comes along like that, you have to react to it very quickly no matter how heavy your bike is. Come to think of it, I was probably following a little too close to the tire king. I was at least 150 yards behind him but if there had been a truck passing when he went over into the other lane, the debris would probably have extended way beyond where I was. I'll have to think about that more in the future. Lots of riding today. Ended up in Conrad, Montana. Nice little town with a nice cheap motel called the Northgate Motel.

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