I discovered last night that my rear brake pads on my R1200GSW are shot. Shot as in I need new pads pronto. Calls around the GTA, then Southern Ontario proved useless. Nobody had these pads. The closest I could find a set was in Detroit.
Great little BMW shop, after confirming that they had them in stock "You have your hands on them, right?" and telling them that I'd be coming down from Toronto on my way to Kentucky, there was a pause on the other end of the line and then "Well, I'm looking forward to meeting you!"
I rolled in this am, and was received warmly. The pads did indeed exist, and 10 minutes later they were installed on the bike. There was only about 2mm of material on the old ones. Shot the breeze, made some friends "you rode from where?" and was on my way.
But the weather day was miserable. The warmest I saw on the bike was 12C, and that was at 6:30 am in Toronto. It was downhill from there, between 6.5C and 10C, overcast and cold, hard rain for most of the day.
My gear did it's job - every time I find myself in foul weather I'm glad I sprung for the Gore Tex. But it was miserable going - my old Widder heated vest kept my core warm, but the damp crept in and I found my hands cramping up, despite the thermal gloves and heated grips and handguards. I know when I'm beat, so I stopped short of my goal of Corbin KY by about 200 miles. Hunkered down in a Drury hotel (love these guys) to warm up and recover.