My first long motorcycle trip was in 1977. I rode 5,300 miles on my nearly new KZ-900. I went from Colorado to New Jersey, returning through New York, Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Along the way I had flat tires and a dead battery. But I was never stranded.
In upstate NY I had to replace a poorly wearing front tire in the parking lot of a motorcycle shop. Later that day I got a rear flat just outside of Lake Placid. Those were the days of tube tires, so I carried spare tubes and a few patches inside the fairing. Those Vetter Windjammer fairings had enormous storage space inside.
To inflate both tires I used a 'spark plug inflator'. These consisted of a hose with a fitting for your valve stem on one end, and an air intake and pump on the other. You threaded the pump into a spark plug hole and ran the engine at idle. A diaphragm and one-way valve made sure you inflated the tire with fresh air, not fuel. It worked very well and inflated a tire in a minute or so. The device is shown below, and still sits in my garage.
In Michigan one morning my battery was dead. Upon inspection I found it to be completely dry. I filled it with water to no avail, and later discovered a bad diode on the rectifier board that overcharged it.
But that didn't interrupt my trip. Some of those early bikes with electric start also had a kick starter, partly because traditional bikers didn't trust that new tech stuff. So I continued my trip through Upper MI, WI, MN, and NE using the kick starter. The bike ran just fine.
