May 29th-30th, 2010

This morning we thanked and parted ways with FullPower and Becky and made our way to Kenai to meet up with Jts45acp; a fellow KLR rider who we bumped into by chance in Glennallen.  We stopped at a local grocery store to pick up lunch just in case if there weren’t any in Kenai.  

Uh oh…I guess I have some explaining to do. 

We were waiting to make a left turn at an intersection that had a designated left turn signal.  We waited patiently for the left-turn traffic signal to turn green, but it never did.  I guess our motorbikes didn’t have enough metal to trigger the sensors beneath us to activate the turn signal.  When the coast was clear, we made our move.  Next thing I hear is that all-too familiar blip that can only come from a squad car and when I looked in my rear view mirror to confirm this, flashing strobe lights were the last thing I wanted to see.  Son of a b*@$h!  We explained our situation about the traffic lights not responding and thank goodness he let us off the hook.  He figured that was why we ran the red light and told us that the reason why he pulled us over was that there were too many people who saw us and for him not to do anything, would look as if he wasn’t doing his job. 

It took some searching, but we finally found the fish camp Jts45acp was working at.  Lape Fish Company!

The season hasn’t started yet, but there was a lot of prep work to be done.

This is the type of boat that they use to catch King Salmon.  I believe this is considered commercial near-shore fishing where they use nets to trap the fish. 

We met the owner’s who recently bought the company from a previous owner.  We were invited to have dinner with Jts45acp and the crew members. 

We asked if we could pitch our tent in the garage and the owners didn’t have a problem with it.  Good thing we asked because it rained quite a bit overnight. 

The following day we rode back to Anchorage and stopped by at Alaska Leather to meet Barb at the request of Paulmer.  She is well known in the ADV community, has travelled to many places on her motorbike, and is quite a character from what we’ve been told.  The store sells all kinds of motorcycle accessories, but is mainly known for its custom made sheepskin buttpads.

Barb and her staff were super friendly and helpful.  Owning a sheepskin buttpad for our bikes would be lovely considering the amount of saddle time we’ve amassed, but is definitely not in our budget.  To our astonishment, Barb brought out a tub full of buttpads that had minor defects to them and charged us $10 a piece!  Thanks to the folks at Alaska Leather, we now get to ride with a little more comfort than just the stock seat.

We rode back to the Harley dealership and had a picnic dinner with one of the guys from Alaska Leather.  Amanda noticed he was wearing an Arai XD helmet and was curious what a $650 helmet felt like.

394 km

Five-O on our tail.

The life of a fisherman.

Relief for our bums.