I went out for a ride tonight to relax some and get time on the bike which I haven’t really been able to do for a few weeks or so now.  After only about 20 or so minutes of riding the front end went all soft and handling crapped the bed.  I quickly pull it over to discover the front tire flat.  That was just a completely awesome ending to the stress of the last few weeks.  Sitting on the side of the interstate I inspected the tire the best I could in the dark and couldn’t find anything stuck in it so I was at a loss as to why I lost air.  Put in a call to insurance and apparently I neglected to have roadside assistance on the bike’s policy so it was an $80 ride home after sitting on the side of the road for a couple hours.

It then gets better.  The wrecker’s deck was coated in oil from a previous accident tow he did so when we went to back the bike down, I lost my footing and the bike got dropped.  A quick look and it seems the only damage was a broken bar end mirror.  I’ll have to take a better look once it’s light out.  Though I did find the reason for the air loss once I got it in the garage and on the stand.

So it looks like I’ll be pulling the wheel to have a new valve stem installed next week.