How I spent my summer vacation - Part II

I left Chateau Balought high in the Colorado Rocky Mountains a little after 7 a.m. Thursday with Dom LoDuca and headed down Colo. 9 to Fairplay.
Dom turned left toward Denver and I turned right toward Colorado Springs as we headed to our respective homes.
Dom's goal was to ride to Marysville, Kans. on U.S. 36 and mine was to reach a Motel 6 at Topeka sometime around nightfall.
I picked up Colo. 94 eastbound from Colorado Springs and headed out across the wide- open, mostly empty spaces of eastern Colorado. The road connects with U.S. 40 and eventually would take me to I-70 at Oakley, Kans.
But it didn't work out that way.
As I slowed for a construction zone about 6 miles west of Kit Carson - some 113 miles east of Colorado Springs - I heard a disturbing noise from my rear tire and felt it go mushy. When I came to a halt near the flagger girl, I tried to put the bike onto the sidestand to inspect the back tire. I found the back of the bike was suddenly so low that I could barely deploy the sidestand. Oops.
When I finally did get it stabilized and dismounted, I found my back tire completely flat and too hot to touch.
So there I was, in the precise middle of nowhere - Kit Carson was the nearest town and it has an impressive population of about 300 and no significant services - under a blazing summer sun with the temperature well into the 90s.
I dug out my tire plugging kit and, with the help of CDOT worker Tom Richards, found the puncture site. I roughed up the puncture location and jammed a rubber cement-smeared plug into the tire. I'd done it a couple of times before on a practice tire at an Indianapolis BMW Club meeting, but never for real. In the meantime, Richards hunted up a tank of compressed air, so I didn't have to use any of my CO2 bottles.
I didn't feel confident that the plug would get me home to Arkansas, so my next choice was to find a new rear tire. I didn't have a way to shop for a tire at non-BMW dealerships, and my BMW dealer choices were BMW of Colorado Springs (113 miles west) or Engel BMW in Kansas City, Mo. (more than 500 miles east).
So I concluded the wisest course of action was to use my BMW/Cross Country Motor Club membership that I renewed earlier this year.
I got a cell phone call through to Cross Country and they dispatched a recovery vehicle from Colorado Springs, telling me it would be about 2½ hours. This was at 12:09 p.m.
Tom Richards escorted me through the construction zone to the Trading Post Restaurant in Kit Carson where I called Maria and reported my dilemma. She called BMW of Colorado Springs and confirmed that they had a rear tire to fit my bike and I settled in with a grilled cheese sandwich, a bag of chips and several glasses of iced tea.
Jeff (can't recall his last name) arrived about 3:20 p.m., having been held up by the construction zone west of town. He slid the flat bed of his truck to the rear and tilted it toward the ground while I rode the bike up the inclined surface until I had both tires aboard. Then he leveled it, moved it back forward and I rode to the front of the bed where he strapped the bike into place.
I told Jeff I needed to get to the BMW shop before they closed at 6 p.m. and he hauled ass across the lone prairie at 70-75 mph while I watched the bike nervously in the side-view mirror.
I called Jim Basset at the BMW shop as we approached town and told him we'd be a little late and hoped he could wait for us. He did.
The techs had all gone home, but Jim did the preliminary paperwork and I signed off on a $404 recovery truck bill that Cross Country is presumably paying. Then I rode to the nearby Travelodge where I booked an $84 room, had a quick Wendy's dinner and hit the sack.
I was at the BMW shop 15 minutes ahead of their regular opening time of 9 a.m. and Service Manager Larry Anderson had my bike on a lift by 9:10.
Larry is a year younger than I, was raised in Chicago and was delighted to learn that I live in/near Jonesboro because that's where he spent summers with his grandparents when he was growing up. Since I grew up in northwestern Indiana, Chicago radio station WLS provided the soundtrack for both of our pre-teen and teenage years. It was kind of like finding a long-lost brother as we batted back and forth names of WLS personalities and features, interspersed with his memories of Jonesboro.
I finally got back onto the road with two new Metzelers (Jim opined that my front tire was cupping and needed to be replaced) about 10:30 a.m.
I gassed at a Diamond Shamrock station on the east side of Colorado Springs and took U.S. 24 up to I-70 at Limon. From there it was an easy drone east to Goodland, Kans. where I stopped for a Wendy's lunch and discovered that my driver's license had vanished from my wallet. I'm reasonably sure I dropped it at my previous gas stop, but there was no point in going back for it. I resolved to ride conservatively the rest of the way home, so as not to attract police attention.
I rolled into the Topeka Wanamaker Road Motel 6 parking lot at 9:15 p.m. local time and noticed three sheriff's department cars in the lot. The desk clerk said they were there to handle a problem with a guest, which made me wonder if maybe I should have picked another motel.
I stripped the bike of everything valuable - GPS, tankbag, saddlebags, etc. - parked it in view of the office, put the cable lock onto the front wheel and hoped for the best.
I was awakened about 5:20 a.m. by the sound of Mexicans carrying on a very loud conversation right outside my door. I dressed, loaded the bike and thumbed the starter button at 6:06 a.m., riding into the hot steamy Kansas dawn.
Breakfast was at the Hardee's at the Topeka service plaza on the Kansas Turnpike.
The rest of the day was mostly a blur as the GPS led me around the west and south sides of Kansas City and southeast across Missouri.
I dropped my sidestand in my driveway about 3:15 p.m., gave my wife a kiss and slammed down two Beck's Dark beers to celebrate a mission accomplished.