Thanks Cormanus, you are a real Champ (and a mate).

[Cormanus]

Another pretty cool thing about our little corner of the Internet.

[url=http://cb1100forum.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=3294&highlight=wintersun]Here and [url=http://cb1100forum.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=3324&highlight=wintersun]here, Sea. Sorry I wasn't near a computer this morning easily to unearth the links.

The still-told part of the story is that both of our wives asked us independently whether we were sure we weren't heading off to meet axe murderers. So far so good.

Tell you one thing, that is no ordinary wear mark.

Observations: Tire is covered with dust except in the area that is abnormally damaged; a few punctures around the area; the damage is not along the center of the tire but angles off to one side; damage is striated in an unusual way.

Looks like a sudden event, perhaps a piece of luggage came loose and got caught under the tire. Or debris from the road was flung into the fender well. Maybe the chain cam off and was caught in the tire.

Strikes me as odd that y'all are creating this big mystery. Someone get hurt and law enforcement is involved? I suspect yes. I surely hope the whole thing is minimal and nothing too bad resulted from the damage.

Ulvetanna, tempting though it is to drag out the suspense, there's no one incident I know of that caused the damage. There was no broken chain or off or curious road surface. I rode the same roads and my tyre is fine. When Pterodactyl first noticed the problem were were on a ride with others and, bar one, no others had tyre problems.

I say bar one because one of our number on a Goldwing had a rear tyre that split in one wall. He noticed it when we stopped for fuel. While we figuring out how to get him another tyre, Pterodactyl wandered off to look at his tyres and noticed the beginnings of the wear. It got worse during the course of that day and he (wisely) decided not to ride further on it.

Now, there was a period where he fell behind after stopping to take a photograph and was out of sight. Some curious thing may have happened then, but it didn't involve a chain; nor, I suspect, did it involve gentlefolk of the law as he quickly caught up with us.

Guth, one of Pterodactyl's many skills is pondering. He does a good deal of it in the evening after a day's ride, so I guess he's well practised.