June 3 – Tires – Chad Rothacher

I rolled into the city of Osh and location of offroad travel experts Muztoo Adventures. The Swiss natives Patrick & Peter, own and operate a travel company in Osh and spend probably more time than they’d like helping broke down bikers coming through town. Their “garden” as they call it, grows motorcycles of all shapes and sizes with their fleet of rental bikes taking the honors under the covered awning. After spending a little time with the two, they clearly know their business and runs what looks to be a very pro establishment.

I am excited to discuss my previous day’s riding with someone, so I make comment of my journey to Patrick and one of his guides. Their responses makes me feel great, as both were certainly impressed with the accomplishment, most notably riding the route “backwards” and doing it on the touring bike this early in the year. “I didn’t know it was ridable this early” one of his guides comments. “On your touring bike, with all the gear?” another questions for the second time. As I’ve come to understand, later in the year, the route becomes well established and cleaned up so they can run tours through on smaller off-road machines.

I am in need of some long overdue tire repair, so I decide to get my rear tire “hot patched” at one of the local shops and replace my front tire, which Patrik luckily has. After a couple hours of running around town looking for cash, groceries, and a tire shop, I’m back at Muztoo with a new patch on the rear and a provisions for the next couple of days.

After replacing my front tire, I say my goodbye’s and head of out town. Several kilometers from town, I get a warning light that my front tire is low on pressure. I stop and air it up, thinking the last gauge I uses must have been wrong. A few kilometers later, again the warning comes on. I now have a fast leak on my front. I decide to limp my way back to Osh, stopping to air up every couple of km. Back to Muztoo for the repair.

I pull the front and find I damaged the spoke seal on my last repair, so the best option at this point is to install a tube. After popping one tube on installation and needing to start over, I’m finally on the road at 7pm and still navigating my way out of the city. I finally find a spot to camp around 8:30 and quickly hit the sack on a stomach “full” of peanuts and ramen noodles. What an exhausting day.