Snow can't stop biker
<p>Coeur d'Alene's Troy Chandler uses 250 studs on his two motorcyle tires, allowing him to use his Kawasaki KLR 650 year around.</p>
COEUR d'ALENE - Those two tires have rolled across Death Valley, cruised the Las Vegas Strip, traversed Hells Canyon and now, thanks to 250 studs Troy Chandler put in himself while watching television one evening, are crunching over the snowy streets of Coeur d'Alene.
"Every year I mean to buy truck ..." said Chandler, Bonsai Bistro chef, who moved to town with his Kawasaki KLR 650 motorcycle in 2004.
"You can't get me off the bike," he said.
Some 80,000 miles across six states after Chandler bought his bike in 1996, and he is still on it.
Even during North Idaho's winter. Snow, sleet, ice - doesn't matter.
"This is the first time I had to take action to stay on the bike," Chandler said, meaning he wasn't used to snow after spending so much time in Portland, Ore., and Las Vegas before coming here, so he had to figure out a way to make that happen.
Which is when he came across Kold Kutter studs online. He purchased them, put them on, and now he keeps his 2-wheeled commute the same regardless of the weather.
Out on the road when it snows, and other motorists do double takes.
"I get a lot of looks," he said, repeating what he has heard before: '"You're crazy, you're gonna crash!'"
At stoplights, some will roll down their windows and ask him, what the Sam Hill he's thinking.
They ask him if he's cold. He's not, the same way skiers stay warm going down the hill.
"You have to dress for it," he said.
Plus, there's a certain thrill being closer to nature when he's out in the cold driving next to the lake and seeing the eagles diving to the water. And he hasn't crashed, the 45-year-old said ... the traction is superb.
"At the end of the day you're still on ice and you have to be careful," he said.
That wisdom comes from a lifetime of riding. He has had his Kawasaki since 1996, and has been riding since he was 6 years old, "but legally since I was 16," he said.
Now, with winter nearly halfway in the books, other drivers are used to the sight of him on two wheels as the flakes fly.
"They look at me and give me the thumbs up," he said.
Maybe the truck purchase can wait another year.