Give me fuel give me fire

What a rough way to start the morning!  Dead bike, drenched with cold freezing rain, and exhausted from pushing the bike up and down hills.

Only dedicated motorcycle parking in one of the countries biggest National Parks

So far on our trip we have used our Coleman single burner lantern and our little Coleman stove almost daily, usually several times a day at morning and at night for cooking and to keep warm.  We had taken a small spare can of Coleman fuel for them and with all of the heavy usage we’d already burned through it so last night I unhooked the gas line from the bike and refilled everything.  I can already hear the bikers in the audience snickering at what happened next who’ve all experienced it themselves.  I FORGOT TO HOOK UP THE GAS!

I love these old metrics a trio was riding cross country, both guys were bike mechanics.

Arg! so embarrassing!  Sure I’ve left the gas off before and when the bike sputtered and died a few mins later after starting it up I always realized it right away.  What made it so bad this time was how hard it was raining, and how miserable we were back at camp, we wanted to get out of there right away and the bike would not fire up. What the heck?   Full choke, nothing.  The bike would just crank and crank.  I thought it had to do with being parked in a rain forest for hours of steady drizzle all night just above freezing and kept trying to start it and fussing with the choke.

Eventually my battery gauge was reading low, oh great this cant be happening!    We had to resort to trying to push start it down the hill from our camp site.  No dice, push heavy loaded bike back up the hill and try again..   I dont know how many times we pushed the bike up that hill, I was seeing spots by the end and about to collapse.  Taking a break some park workers came by to take out the trash from the bathrooms and we checked if they had cabled for a jump.  They radioed someone and found some a 1/2 hr away and said they’d be back after finishing their rounds in the area if we were still here.   Most of our neighbors had left early that morning to escape the rain and those who were left did not have jumper cables.

Our new Biker Companion, complete with leathers

After the break and the rain letting up a bit I decided to give it one more go.  I reached down to turn on the gas and I heard a trickling sound, gas was pouring out all over my boot! ARG!  *facepalm*  I was sooo mad LOL.   Idiot! All this time the bike just needed gas!

Hooked up the gas line and hit the starter again with only 1 red LED showing and she fired right up!  Hallelujah!   Lets get out of here!

We had to thank the workers on our way out for their offer to help. They were impressed that I’d managed to get the dead as a doornail thing going again, no I didnt tell them that I’d just stupidly left the gas disconnected.

After the second soaking cold and miserable morning Cece finally agreed with me that we should abandon camp and go a few miles north where it was drier.