Day 4: Gremlins! Betsy has gremlins!

(Leah) We decided to go without camp coffee or breakfast this morning and to just hit the road instead. Mistake number one. We did have a (luckily) short ride into Agassiz to a lovely little bakery that sold COFFEE as well as a great assortment of treats. Keith and I both chose a scone and a great big coffee, we sat outside with the old people of town and enjoyed the relaxing pace of the day thus far. Naturally, as Keith is pulling a trailer we try to park strategically to get in and out of parking spots. The bakery had angle parking in front of it, but when Keith pulled across two stalls, he was at the end of the parking area so we had an easy escape route into a parking lot. I went beside him, thus we were technically two vehicles taking up two parking stalls. Let’s just say it was a good thing the parking enforcement wasn’t out on this particularly Monday morning, as we overstayed our welcome a bit too much. As we were about to pull away from the bakery, I hit the ignition on Betsy (my bike) and she gave a sound that I thought was similar to something frying and then the power disappeared. I’d like to say this is the first time I’ve had electrical issues/gremlins with Betsy, but it is not. I suppose the silver lining to this fact is that we knew what the problem was last time. It was the body ground from the battery, we we checked that first. Very similar to last time I had issues, as we noticed the power was intermittently coming on as we were fiddling with wiring. Quick decision was to pull the battery out.

With the battery out we saw that there was lots of corrosion around the negative terminal, and the connection was loose. I took a brisk walk to the local hardware store to get a wire brush to clean up the leads. We also disconnected the wiring for my heated vest that I conveniently forgot to pack. (Did I mention I was a stress-case before this trip?)

Harley has an AWUFL design with this bike, the battery has a silly bracket holding it in that requires a socket rather than a wrench (had that in our stockpile) but to access the negative terminal from the far side of the bike, we needed an extension to our ratchet & socket (did not have in our stockpile), so we did the best we could from the kickstand side of the bike. When the battery is out, the negative cable is so ridiculously short you really need to stick your tongue out, glare at it just right, and swear in the correct language to get the lead back on. Somehow we did just that after cleaning up all the leads and HURRAY Betsy was alive again!

The day was getting hot already and it was 11am or so, we both hit the road in our vests and really enjoyed the cool breeze from the Peter Lougheed highway. The road had some beautiful scenery, plenty of cornfields, tree farms, farms, more farms, and twisty roads! We did a quick fuel stop at a Chevron where we paid $2.20/L for premium, then headed into Foamers Folly in Pitt Meadows. The brewery was great and had pizza that was ready in minutes from their little countertop pizza oven.

The traffic had increased along this route, and it had lots of stoplights on the highway, so we decided to cut across to the TransCanada Highway to just get to the ferry. We had smooth traffic along Highway 1 and were able to take the HOV lane which helped to speed things up. We made it to the ferry terminal approximately 40 minutes before the next sailing and had a coffee as we waited in line.

Well the drama was not about to end there, as we went to start up our engines and prepare to load the ferry first in line (motorcycles still get preferential treatment on these sailings). Betsy did the same damn thing! I quickly hopped off and tapped Keith on the shoulder to let him know and pushed my bike to the side. Oh the shame! A Harley being a typical Harley and breaking down at the most in opportune time! We figured the negative lead didn’t get tightened enough in the morning. Sure thing, that was the issue. I must say Keith and I put on an amazing show for the lady working the coffee booth that Betsy was broken down in front of. 💪 She is a fellow rider and was VERY impressed with the speed and coordination that we worked together to get the tools off of Keith’s bike and the battery out, tightened and back into my bike. I dare say, she called us a Power Couple. 😃 Once Betsy started again we had a good 5 minutes or so to wait to load at the END of the ferry, but we made it on! Woot! Woot!

The ferry ride from Horseshoe Bay to Langdale was quick, then the ride into Robert’s Creek to the drop in Provincial Campground was even quicker. We managed to get one of the last drop in spaces (the whole campground is drop in). Then…ahhh! We can relax! Much like the situation we encountered a few years back, we noticed a solo rider cruising through the campground looking for a space. By this time all the sites were full, so Keith went out to flag him down to offer to set up camp in our site. Plus, HE HAD A PUPPY WITH HIM! Ok, not technically a puppy, Blazer is 10 years old and was a super great companion for the night. He would spy someone sitting down and just jump up onto their lap and snuggle in for the foreseeable future. Oh yes, let’s not forget the man operating the motorcycle that brought Blazer, his name was Dave and he was great!

Keith had wanted to check out a couple breweries that he spotted on our drive from the ferry, we zipped back into Gibsons as our camp was set up, we went to Persephone Brewing, it had a BEAUTIFUL patio(s)! Then to Tapworks where we ended up eating dinner. We grabbed some beers to go and hunkered down in camp for the night. I had started writing my blog post, but after Blazer sat on my lap, it was clear that my “homework” could wait for another day. Instead we finished the great evening bs-ing around the campground over a few barley pops.