My brother John and I have been planning for months to ride our motorcycles to Deadhorse, Alaska, and back. Along the way, we were going to visit the mine at Kennecott, take the ferry to Whittier, and swing through Homer, which we had missed four years ago when last in its vicinity. We hoped time would permit stuffing our bikes in a corner of Deadhorse long enough to take the tour bus out to the Arctic Ocean and dip our toes for a photo opportunity. Last Friday, the time came to pick up the kickstands and go.

We got started from Duvall under cloudy skies and made an uneventful trip up State Route 9 to the U.S./Canada border at Sumas, where it took more time to put back on our helmets and gloves than it did to pass through the Customs station.

The United States and Canada share the longest border in the world, and while there are many places within a few hours of our homes at which to cross it, we tend to use Sumas because we can easily stay off the freeway in order to reach it (freeways being boring to a motorcyclist). For reasons of trade and climate, about 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the U.S. border, so upon initially reaching Canada, we expected to encounter, well, most of the Canadians.¹ Our journey once in British Columbia led through Hope, and the stretch there from Sumas is unfortunately a good old slab full of our neighbors, so there was little to do but sit still and wait for something more interesting to develop.

We stopped to eat our sandwiches at a pullout on Highway 1 near Hells Gate, which is the point in this region of the highway where the ride becomes enjoyable when heading north. The road descends to the Fraser River, where it winds along the terrain with it, alternately climbing in and out of its tributary canyons, all lined with the peaks of the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains.

The weather through the early afternoon was sunny and in the 70s, but as we continued north, it began to cool down, and we eventually found rain. I noted somewhere along the way that the thermometer on my bike indicated 48° ambient temperature, and while I was not looking, things cooled down enough for us to ride for a mile or two through a hail storm. Nothing about riding a motorcycle through hail qualifies as fun. Challenging? Yes. And hail stones smacking an exposed neck at 60 MPH sting.

We did get out of the rain before dinner at Begbie’s Bistro in Quesnel, after which it was not too much further up the road to Ten Mile Lake Provincial Park for the night.

It rained off and on during the night, which was pleasant enough to listen to while tucked into my sleeping bag, but rain always creates a mess for packing up to move on in the morning. We were on the road shortly after 7 AM, and did not have to travel far to catch up with the rain. We stopped for pastry and caffeine at Prince George and, with a comparatively short‐mileage day ahead of us, continued west in search of better weather.

Somewhere west of Vanderhoof, the battery charge indicator began to worry me with an implication of a discharging battery. The bike was running normally, but the idiot light was getting my attention. Shutting off the heated grips and my heated jacket and pulling the charger on my cell phone seemed to improve the situation, so I rode for quite a while in the rain and cold without heat. We stopped at Topley to stretch our legs, whereupon my bike would not start, giving the conventional suggestion of a dead battery while trying to crank the starter. I carry jumper cables, and after fiddling with the many infuriating Torx bolts that attach the battery cover, got the bike started with a jump from John. We headed up the road to Smithers, which was our planned destination for the day, and while distractedly eating a sandwich in the local Subway, talked over the problem. Our conclusion was that because the bike had started readily after being tested at the curb outside Subway, the problem was the battery itself, as the broader electrical system seemed to be producing a charge. We called around and found a NAPA store down the street with a battery on hand that would fit my bike, and after pitching tents at Riverside Municipal Campground, I installed the new battery in the bike, which then started and ran fine on its way to and from dinner at Alpenhorn Bistro.

The only moment of amusement for me this day came from John. His riding overpants were evidently not doing a good job of keeping rain from penetrating to his street clothes, and he had been sitting in a puddle of wet underwear all day. After changing into his camp clothes for the evening, he mentioned that his junk looked like it had been in a swimming pool for five hours.

Sunday morning, after a night of rest ruined by horrible campsite neighbors, we continued on our way toward Yukon, which we planned to reach the following afternoon. The battery charge indicator was quiescent, and I had begun to relax somewhat, thinking the new battery had been the right thing. We stopped for gas and a photo opportunity at Kitwanga, which we knew was the last outpost along our route anywhere near cell phone coverage until we approached Whitehorse 24 hours later. We had done business with the gas station in Kitwanga a couple of years ago and were looking forward to moving past familiar territory.

Somewhere north of Meziadin Junction, the battery charge indicator stopped giving good news. Our planned gas stop was up the road at Bell 2, and we made it there, where we started pulling apart my bike. (Bell 2 is the name of the lodge and gas station. The location is cartographically known as Highway 37 North, km 248, British Columbia.) John found a local with a multi‐meter he could borrow, and used it to confirm that the battery was not getting a sufficient charge from the electrical system. We looked for obvious loose wires, disconnected the aftermarket accessories (Gerbing, GPS, and so forth) against the possibility that one of those components was causing the problem, banged on the voltage regulator with a wrench, and came to the conclusion that it was time to turn around. The same local let us borrow a high‐amperage battery charger, which we used to put a full charge on the battery. I disconnected the headlamp to eliminate that drain on the system, and, on the premise that we had made it from Smithers on a fully‐charged battery, we made Smithers our destination and headed south.

An hour or so later, whatever had been failing then failed catastrophically, as the bike shut off completely as I drove down the road. I was fortunate that the bike stalled several yards uphill from one of the few wide spots on that 100‐mile stretch of highway — which for the most part has no shoulder to speak of — and turned it around to coast it into the Nass River rest area, located where the highway crosses the river via the Nass River Bridge.

My bike would start with a jump but would not run once the cables were disconnected (at the least because the fuel pump is electric). A moment of contemplation sub specie aeternitatis helped me appreciate the comedy of it all but did nothing to solve the temporal problem, which was foremost on my mind and about which I otherwise was struggling to find anything to amuse. I wish I could claim that at the moment it occurred to me to make a more rational assessment of the situation than I had, and these things did eventually register with me, but during the initial minutes standing there I did not embrace the good news that, in addition to one broken motorcycle, an accounting of the situation included:

• Fully‐charged Iridium (satellite) phone
• SPOT location‐tracking device with 911 feature
• A couple‐hundred US and Canadian dollars in cash
• Credit cards
• Warm and sunny weather
• An inexhaustible source of fresh water within 100 yards
• Tent, sleeping bag, ground cover, thermal underwear, and motorcycle garments proven capable of keeping me dry in a downpour while moving at 80 MPH
• Safely off a relatively well‐traveled highway next to a pit toilet
• Kirkland Signature® toilet paper
• A second, functional motorcycle
• No one was bleeding
• An RCMP patrol car in the vicinity. We knew this because we had driven past it parked on the shoulder of the road within 30 minutes of my bike breaking down. He or she was operating a Ka band radar.

These many useful tools and favorable circumstances did little to relieve my distress. I was frankly ill at the ramifications for our trip of my having a broken motorcycle, nor was I to retake complete possession of my wits for a while. One of my early impulses was to push the bike into the river and hitchhike to the nearest airport, but that was a velleity.

We had not been stopped for long when a very nice couple on, ironically, BMW motorcycles pulled in for a break. We talked to them for quite a while, and I wish we had been able to talk to them longer. Their story was that they had been successful enough financially to be able to dedicate themselves to having adventures, and they were in the middle of trying out life on motorcycles, with an eventual destination of Tierra del Fuego. He in particular seemed familiar to me, as if I had stumbled upon his blog at some point, but we never did get their names, so I have no reference with which to work now to try to identify them. John carried on most of the conversation while I made phone calls home, trying to develop an idea of how to extricate myself and my motorcycle from the situation in which we found ourselves. The BMW riders described an Adventure Rider road angel in Smithers, promised to encourage anyone they met on their way north with a pickup to stop and help, and we parted company. Before leaving, they recounted an observation a friend had made to them over the phone as they were in the third day of being stuck on the side of a road in remote Nigeria with a broken transfer case on their Land Cruiser: One thing is certain: come what may, you will not still be sitting there when you’re eighty years old.

The BMW pair had not been gone long when John wandered out to the highway and stuck out his thumb. The very first car that rolled by stopped, and ten minutes later, with all but the tail bag stripped from my bike and stuffed into the back of their SUV, I was enjoying an air‐conditioned ride down the road in the company of four extremely nice people, while John followed on his motorcycle.

During the next few hours as we made our way to their community of Terrace, I learned that the pair in front were a husband and wife from Australia. Of the two in the back seat with me, he was also from Australia, and she from the United States. They had spent the weekend in Stewart, and were returning home to be in time for work the following day. In addition to being racously funny, they were avid conversationalists and embraced my presence as if I had not been a stranger only moments earlier and was no longer so. They helped me with planning to make due for the night, going so far as to call ahead to a hotel in Terrace and turning over the phone to me to reserve rooms for both John and myself. It was there they deposited me, and only after waiting for me to visit the front desk and secure keys to our rooms did they wish us farewell.

John and I agreed overnight that the disruption to the trip schedule was sufficient to cause us to abandon the original plan, so the objective had become to return home. The following morning, I walked down the street from the hotel to National Car Rental, procured a crew cab, long box, turbo‐diesel Ford pickup, and returned with it to the Nass River to retrieve my motorcycle. To my utter amazement, the bike was sitting there completely unmolested. We took advantage of an offset between the grade of the highway and that of the parking lot to ease the amount of lifting needed to shift the bike from the ground to the truck, and, after about fifteen minutes dragging it onto the truck and securing it with the tie‐down straps I had under the seat of my bike, we were on the road to Prince George.

Why Prince George and not back to Terrace, or, better yet, home? We knew there were no BMW service facilities within a one‐day drive. I was obliged to take the truck no further than the Prince George airport, so home was out of the question, and as the largest city between the Nass River rest area and the United States, Prince George, known as the Northern Capital of British Columbia, is the service and supply hub for the entire region. Prince George as a destination also advanced the bike a few hundred miles closer to home, and, as I had not been able to determine the whereabouts of the Adventure Rider road angel in Smithers, Prince George seemed most likely to feature the resources needed to get my broken motorcycle the remainder of the way home — either fixed so I could ride it or carried on a truck — so Prince George became the destination for the day.

My pit crew at home had in the meanwhile been busy working the internet and the phone, trying to puzzle out a means of accomplishing the goal of getting home. We knew that I had been fortunate to find a one‐way truck in Terrace, as there were none in Prince George to be taken in the direction of the United States. The most hopeful progress made along that line of inquiry was U–Haul, which would have a truck available in ten days that could be driven to Vancouver, BC, and deposited there. I spent an altogether sleepless night in an EconoLodge room surfing the internet on my phone, making lists of resources to consult the following day, but by sunup really had only one firm idea, which was to circulate among the motorcycle dealerships in the city in search of one with either an interest in fixing the bike or experience getting busted motorcycles and their American owners out of Canada.

Now Tuesday, John and I had coffee at 7 AM, and he got started on the way to his home.* I had a rented pickup truck with a 400 pound motorcycle to unload. My first stop was at the Yamaha dealer not too far from the hotel, and although there were folks there setting up business for the day, none were inclined to work on a BMW or take an interest in the question of what I might be able to do to get out of Canada with it. My next stop was Harley-Davidson® of Prince George. The scene was this: five minutes before eight in the morning, and the dealership does not open until eight thirty; I figure I will mill about for half an hour and present myself once their Open light has been switched on. At eight o’clock, one of their service technicians pulls into the parking spot next to me in the truck, gets out of his vehicle, lights a cigarette, and says, Hello. Having a problem?

Within fifteen minutes, as we sat around the picnic table outside their service gate, a gathering group of Harley–Davidson technicians agreed that, while they would happily start ordering parts and slapping them on my bike, hoping to fix whatever the problem was, the better idea was to have a BMW service center troubleshoot it and fix it the first time. They confirmed no one in Prince George was equipped to do so and that the nearest such place was the Vancouver BMW Ducati dealership. By the time they opened for business at eight thirty, the owner had introduced me to the front office folks and instructed them to let me take advantage of his rates and reimburse his freight account to ship the bike to Vancouver (oh, and to make all the arrangements for me), had the service guys dig out a shipping crate and loan me tools to assemble it, and pointed to the coffee machine. After briefly exploring the idea of shipping the bike all the way home and realizing I lacked the paperwork to get it through U.S. Customs (I did not, for example, have the title with me), I spent the remainder of the day coordinating delivery with the service manager at Vancouver BMW Ducati, packing the bike, and more or less agog at the help I was being given by yet another group of complete strangers.

At four thirty that afternoon, I watched as the freight truck pulled out of the parking lot, the BMW on its way to Vancouver. I planned to fly home to Seattle but had not made arrangements to do so, as I wanted to first be certain the bike was well out of the way of the folks at the Harley–Davidson dealership. Despite being dirty, sweaty, and dressed in camping clothes I had been wearing for five days, I drove to the airport and bought tickets for home the next day, having just missed the last flight I might have taken that afternoon. WalMart solved my clean underwear problem, and after spending another night at a hotel in Prince George, I was home by three o’clock Wednesday afternoon.

What to do with a dead horse? In the immediate aftermath of this escapade, I realize that future trip planning should include better anticipation of mechanical breakdowns that cannot be fixed at the side of the road: take the trip plan, divide it into 100‐mile segments, and for each segment, answer the question, If it breaks within this stretch of road, what am I going to do to get it fixed? The satellite phone I took for emergencies while out of cell phone coverage was only marginally useful once the bike had broken (although it was invaluable to let my wife know that I was OK even if the SPOT indicated I had stopped moving), because I had not made such plans for major repairs, could not use it to surf the internet for local information, was guessing about who to call, and did not do a good job of it. I went from stranded in the middle of nowhere a thousand miles from home to a bowl of Häagen–Dazs® on my couch in three days because my brother did not lose his mind the way I did, and through the generosity of strangers. I grant that having credit cards eventually went a long way toward solving the problem, but it does turn out that money cannot buy everything. I knew that, of course, but I got some needed practice at humility this week.

I have not yet revisited the choices made once I sat down in the hotel room in Terrace Sunday evening. With more time on the phone, could I have found the Smithers road angel? Was there a means of shipping the bike from Terrace? Or Smithers? Both Terrace and Smithers have airports; I presume I could have departed for home once the bike had been sent on its way, if so. Other possibilities seemed correct to dismiss at the time, and continue to seem that way. Parking the bike (along with my gear) in an RV storage lot, then returning from Seattle to retrieve it, seemed like an onerous and unnecessary round trip, assuming any storage facility would have let me do such a thing with the few documents about the provenance of the bike then in my possession. Nor has the story been brought to a conclusion. The motorcycle is still broken and awaits repair in what, to me, is a foreign country. I managed to temporarily decouple the welfare of the bike from my own, but soon enough I will have to reunite with it in order to bring it home where it belongs.

* John arrived home safe about twelve hours later.

Update July 12, 2015
The BMW has been repaired and is once again in our garage. The part that had failed was the stator, which on these bikes is notorious for doing just what mine did. The service folks at Vancouver BMW Ducati did not require prompting to use an ElectroSport aftermarket stator for the repair instead of the infamous (and expensive) OEM part: they had an opinion about the BMW component that was not as profane as my own but was equally unfavorable.