Boom! Goes the dynamite!

     Having fueled our bikes and bodies, we headed off towards Chicago!  Around 2:30am, at about 70mph , the bike started to weave again.  I did my usual methods to try and tame it and nothing was working and it was rapidly getting worse!  I started working my way to the shoulder of the road as the bike tried its' best to go into a full-fledged tank-slapper!  When I got pulled over, we discovered the tire was completely off the rim!  This is not good.
     We turned the bikes around to face traffic and turned on our accessory lights which are LED's we installed before the trip and Mark had a high-power flashlight which had a flasher mode and put that on his bike as well to try to give as much warning as possible to the numerous vehicles that were flying by!  We were only inches from the white line even though it doesn't look like it in the picture.  Although I wasn't looking since Mark was keeping watch, I did see at least one big truck that actually changed lanes from the left lane over directly to the right just as he was approaching us!  Idiot!
     Before we left my wife asked me, "What are you forgetting?".  I told her we would know when we needed it!  As always, I was right!  We dug out the tools and realized I had left my tire irons at home!  So, I got out some box-end wrenches and used those!  When we got the tube out of the wheel, we discovered the tire had been creased when it was installed and at least a foot -long section had been folded and the part that was in the middle of the crease had fatigued and had about 5 ,1/2 inch long splits that were doing a poor job of keeping in the air!  I broke out my trusty patch kit I've had for uh....uh...a long time and proceeded to patch said holes.  We then used my portable pump to  air up the tube and check for leaks.  Good thing we did as there were more!  We got those patched and put the tube back in and pumped it up and got that wonderful, satisfying POP of the bead seating!  Success!  We then loaded up our crap and started to turn the bikes around to leave when the state troopers pulled up!
     They got out and the female officer who looked a lot like Joe from Eureka (sci-fy network) walked towards us so, I walked towards her and said "Now you show up!".  She said with only one car in 50 miles, you're lucky we got here at all!  We told them what had happened and they said they would stay there to block for us as we got out on the road and we pulled-out and they followed us for a mile or so and then went on.
     We rode on without further difficulties other than having to make a U-turn when we missed our exit in Chicago and finally arrived at the hotel at about 5:30A.M.!
     We unloaded our bikes and hauled everything to the room and I took a shower while Mark did his best coma patient imitation!  Quite realistic actually!
     We had ridden for 19 hours and had been up for 25.  In the past two days, I had had 2 hours of sleep thanks to the late nights working on the bikes!  Good times!  Good times!