Canada Alaska 2008 Motorcycle trip Day 39

Day 39 -
View Larger MapWe had set our little Digital Watch alarm for 06:00, but at 05:30 we were woken to the sound of our noisy neighbors in their tent waking for the day. At 06:00 an announcement was made that we were now an hour from arriving in Bellingham Washington. Immediately we started packing up our things.
At 07:00 the ship docked. We collected our things and went to the car deck. Just as expected, Jennifer's back tire was almost flat, down to 15 PSI. Using our portable compressor we filled the tire and moved our bikes to the shore where we took some time to rearrange our bags.
We asked a local police officer at the dock where the nearest Auto Parts store was. After receiving directions we rode to that Auto Parts store (luckily with a Motorcycle Parts store, more of a Harley Store, across the street). No luck at the Auto Parts store but Eric bought the very last bottle of “PJ1 Flat Shield” at the motorcycle store to give it a try. It was a approx. 8 oz. bottle of goop that you put inside your tire. You remove your valve stem, squeeze the goop all in, replace the valve stem, re inflate the tire, and then start to ride to spread the goop around inside the tire (to get it to go into the hole and hopefully seal the leak). The MC store did have the correct size tire but it was a different brand and $180. While we were working on the tire at the curb a local resident, Bob, saw us and stopped to see if he could be of assistance. Turns out that Bob is the owner of a Versys and was excited to see another one that had been used for more than just short trips! He is an Electrical Contractor and had his shop a couple of blocks away from where we were. He offered his shop if we needed any tools. We were very appreciative, but the No Flat seemed to hold so we said our thanks and were on our way.
We filled our fuel tanks before getting back on the highway and drove straight south through the Seattle area. The traffic through the Seattle area was horrible. Stop and go for 50 miles and Washington State doesn't allow filtering/splitting lanes. How could anyone ride very often in that??!! It was hard on the body and the bike.
We didn't stop until Centralia, WA where we had Taco Bell for a late lunch. We filled our tanks and were on the road again at about 17:00. We rode through the rest of Washington and the Portland area.
On the south side of Portland we saw another traffic backup so, using our GPS we took small back country highways and aimed for Salem. We eventually got back to HWY 5 heading south and stopped at the same Rodeway Inn that we were stuck in before (on our way north waiting for Eric's bike to get fixed). We again stayed for free on points.