The Plot Thickens

Yesterday, the driver that went to the city for the new clutch parts for my bike called in the afternoon and informed us that the new parts were not the same as the old parts... It is "standard procedure" here to compare the new and old parts at the point of purchase for compatibility (before handing over the cash).
So we thought about this for a while and then called the Suzuki people directly. They informed us that the version of the clutch that I have was only released in Canada and USA and that I would therefore need to get new parts shipped in from there.
This would take the Suzuki people a month or more!
Alternately I could get the parts couriered in from my bike shop in Vancouver. This would probably take about a week but would also cost quite a bit for couriering. So then we thought up a third option. My mechanic has a sister coming to visit from the USA in two weeks and she could bring parts in for free (well, no courier costs anyway.) This is a slow solution, but I figure in the mean time I can put the old clutch back together with a field fix and then go pottering around and see the rest of the sights in Guatemala for a week or two. Then I come back here and install the new clutch parts and move on :)

So this is the option I have selected for the present, but there is of course a reasonably high probability that the plan will have to change again, not least for the reason that the new parts when they arrive may not be right for some other reason... Oh well what can ya do!

I´m a bit "at the mercy of the gods" on this one... I guess I´ll see what happens.

Back to School

I decided to take some Spanish lessons while I am waiting for replacement parts for my motorbike clutch to come in.

I have signed up for five days of lessons for four hours a day. It is one-on-one instruction with experienced teachers. The teachers know a decent amount of English but we almost always talk in Spanish. I´m hoping it will greatly expand my verb vocabulary and also help me to construct grammatically better sentences. The conjugation problem is far bigger than I could possibly tackle in a week but I can probably get better at regular verbs this week as well.
The classes are in the morning, so this leaves me with the afternoons to fill in with activities around the place. I´m on my own there and on foot since the riding friend that I met at the boarder departed on his way south this morning, and my bike is disassembled in the shop at present. I figure some walks and some kayaking and a couple of boat rides over to neighbouring villages will fill the time OK (not to mention a bit of homework).

A Minor Dental Dilema

A couple of weeks back, I was repairing my broken indicator and I needed some glue for the broken lens. I had a tube of suitable glue in my repair kit but it had been used before and the cap of the tube had glued its self closed rather firmly. I was unable to undo it with my hands so I used my teeth to get a better purchase...
This worked fine but in the process, I felt a slight "crack" while I bit down!
So I suspected I had loosened a filling there but figured it'd be OK for now.

That worked fine for a couple of weeks but yesterday while eating, a piece of that tooth decided to come off (to be expected sooner or later).
The piece was an outside edge of a molar and there were a couple of quite sharp edges that rubbed against my cheek. I tried putting up with it for a day but it was slashing up the inside of that cheek, so this morning I did something about it. I got the file on my Swiss army knife out and used it to file off the sharp edges of the tooth! This didn´t feel that comfortable and I´m sure a dentist would not be pleased with what I did either but it was a filling anyway and it means I wont have to find a "dodgy dentist" in central America to do nasty things in my mouth :)

Problem solved for the time being!

First Impressions of Guatemala

I got up early and set about trying to find some breakfast.
This was not easy... It turns out that I am now getting up in the morning well before any of the shops are opening. I´m not sure if this is me getting up really early or just the locals starting their days really late. The end result was that I simply abandoned the idea and just loaded up the bike and headed out of town. I stopped on the highway after about half an hour and got some milk and cookies from a little roadside store.

I got to the boarder at about 8:30am and found that it all went smoothly. It was actually easier than the Mexico boarder and much cheaper (cost about a total of $10). I got a 40 day visa though I only really have plans for two or three weeks here.
Then I set about waiting for Teryk to show up as the heat of the day started to settle in on the boarder town.
The town of Mesilla is a lively little place with the main road being completely lined for about a km from the boarder with every kind of little shop selling "stuff" that you can think of... Obviously there is quite a cross-boarder shopping habit here.

It took a couple of hours, but Teryk did show up at about noon with another rider (Maria) who also had some boarder issues to deal with. It took a bit over an hour for them to get sorted out and then we had a chat and it was decided that we would all head back to where they had come from, which was a small village on the shores of Lake Atitlan (One of about four places on my list of things to see in Guatemala).
We headed off and I followed them (while nursing my clutch and trying to keep up).

The journey was going to take about four hours and I was happy to follow along and not worry about the navigating. My initial impressions are that Guatemala is in fact more wealthy than Mexico.- Most of the vehicles on the roads are newer and in better condition than in southern Mexico. All the public works equipment (dozers, trucks, and diggers etc) are far cleaner and in better condition. The villages are neater and the roads are all paved and seemed in very good condition - not much dirt here (that I have seen yet anyway). There are also far more villages and lots more traffic than most of Mexico. This is only my first day here but this is how it seems.

I´ve thought about it a bit more though and it is probably partially due to the size of the country - it is very small. So small in fact that if I fully unfold the map, I would use up about half the countryside!... OK, a bit of an exaggeration but you get the point. It would only take two days to ride the length or breadth of the country. So, I think the apparent wealth of the place is more a product of not having to spread the money over the very large size of a country like Mexico. I also figure that the better road paving is probably a product of the high rainfalls that must fall here (the whole place is jungle and mountains and gorges). If the roads are to last more than a year or so they must be well made and have good drainage systems. So that at least partially explains things. I note also that there are still lots of people around who appear to be dirt poor as well, and the buses here are more like converted school buses rather than the big coaches of Mexico - Probably also due to the smaller distances traveled here.

Anyway, we rode on for a few hours but there was lots of road work on the highway and we were not going to make our destination before dark. So we turned off and headed into a small city (the second largest in the country) and then found a place to stay for the night.

A good day.

Rest and Repairs

I spent a day in Palenque after my fall and I worked on the bike.

Most of the damage was superficial, but I did have to find a metal shop to cut off the broken brake pedal peg and drill a hole so I could use a bolt to make a new peg... Real off-road machines have brake and gear pedals that fold out of the way when the bike gets dropped but my bike is really just a street tourer that has had a bunch of protective equipment added to it along with luggage carriers and knobbly tires.
The other major fix that needed to happen was to re-attach the latch mechanism to the side luggage case. Luckily it had simply sheered off the 4 pop rivets that were holding it on. I managed to find a shop to sell me some rivets (for all of about 30c) and after using a vice to straighten the slightly bent buckle hinge I simply pushed the old rivet stubs in and re-riveted the latch back on - good as new... apart from the ugly gouges in the outer plastic!
Then I straightened up the mirrors and the hand grips and re-glued the indicator plastic back together.
The only problem left then was the clutch.
I thought I had fixed this from a couple of weeks ago but it was back and getting progressively worse. A friend had suggested (via email) to change the oil - which was definitely rather nasty black after the frying I gave it, but that wasn´t going to fix it I decided.
 So, I was resigned to having to crack open the engine case and see what was really wrong (even though I know nothing about these things). I had a look around in Palenque but I didn't like the feel of the mechanics shops, so I decided I would limp on to a bigger better town before attempting this one.

After the mechanical work in the morning, I rode about 10Km out of town to the Maya ruins that the town is named for and spent a couple of hours looking around.
I have to say that the ruins are impressive in both their setting and their scale. It is quite hard for me to imagine how the society managed to achieve such large structures and earth moving just with manual labour. How the heck could they devote so much time and effort to these structures and still manage to feed themselves?

That was about it for Palenque, so the next morning I headed out of town and spent the day riding along a route that hugged the Mexico-Guatemala boarder to see what the country was like - Answer: Very "jungly" with quite a few very small and isolated villages... and Oh yes, about a dozen military check-points (clearly interested in drug trafficking) - I had no problems with them although I always had to stop and take my helmet off and chat with them and show them the contents of my bags - I guess they get a bit bored out there in the middle of no-where.

Eventually I arrived at a large town near the boarder (Comitan) at about 4pm and found a cheap place to stay without much problem. Then I wondered around the central district and looked at the twenty-odd modern stainless steel sculptures that they had - very good!
Then I had some food and checked in on the Internet.
It turned out that Teryk whom I had met in Creel (northern Mexico) was going to be coming to the boarder crossing where I was going to cross on the same day (tomorrow)! It would be great to see a friendly face and discus my clutch problem, so I sent him an email saying I would hang around at the boarder till noon and hope to see him there.

Then I went and got some sleep, since my body was as stiff as a board - to be expected two days after the crash.

Bit of a Bingle

Somewhere back on the coast a day or so before, I had managed to pick up a bit of a head cold and the day wandering in San Christobal was also spent continually wiping a runny nose. Overnight, the nose had got a little better but I had a bit of a headache and had not slept well so I ended up getting up late (about 8:30). This was in fact good since it meant there were some helpers to get the bike back onto the street. This was a far quieter and less exciting effort than when we got the bike inside. With the bike in the street I loaded up my luggage and then headed off.

The sky today was looking very grey and as I headed out of town and started climbing in the hills again, I got some light drizzle - So I slowed down and rode more cautiously (This was the first rain I had had since Utah).
And that nose of mine was being a problem too... It was both blocked and running at the same time which is not pleasant at the best of times but when you have a motorcycle helmet on it can get down-right disgusting!

Anyway, about half way to my destination (Palenque) there was another small town with some ruins there so I stopped and spent an hour wandering around and then got back on the bike and kept going.
I´m in real alpine jungle now, and there are lots of vines, and bromeliads and orchids seem to grow like weeds on every available tree branch - quite exotic... Not to mention hot and humid!
I stopped for some tacos for lunch at a road side stall and then headed on with only about an hour and a half till I reached my destination, with one planned side trip to go see some water falls at Agua Azul.

The drizzle is on and off but its very light and more mist than rain... but I am cautious anyway. The road surface is excellent with good texture, but there are still plenty of tight and blind corners.
I´m headed down hill around one tightish corner and am well within my lane and going only about 60Kmh when all of a sudden my front wheel goes out from under me. My reflex is to straighten up the steering and this gets the bike back in control but I´m now heading through the corner rather than around it! - I try the turn again but it immediately slips again... This time with both wheels!...  And this time we "go down" (me and the bike that is)!
So, there I am sliding along the road with my bike and wondering how this can be?... I don´t spend long on that thought though since the sliding is continuing but the bike and I are also twisting. I had started the slide out by being behind and free of the bike (good situation - typical for this type of slide out) but pretty quickly, the bike and I have switched positions and I am in front of the bike and slowing up more quickly than the bike. So now, the bike is up against me and in fact starting to "get on top" of me ... not good! This means that if we come up against an immovable object, the 250Kg+ of the bike will likely "squish me like a bug"... between a bike and a hard place!
And that's another thing!  Why are we still sliding? The road is really "grippy" and I can feel it really grinding into my left shoulder as well as making all sorts of nasty noises as the bike panels and protruding bits take a real grinding! I struggle away but the bike and I remain "locked in combat"...
 But, eventually we do come to rest... Upside-down and back-to-front and in the bottom of a steep concrete gutter on the opposite side of the road and the far side of the bend!

It takes me about 30 seconds to get out from under the bike as I was pinned by one hand with the bike partly on my chest...
OK, Am I alright?...
Seem to be able to move everything...
Right hand hurts a bit and so does the left hip...
Visual check...minor scrape to right wrist - no problem...

All my favorite fingers, limbs and joints (ie all of them) accounted for and functioning normally....phew!
What about the bike!, the bike!... Yep, upside down in a ditch!

A little collectivo (a pickup that locals pay a few pesos to get from A to B) has passed by and everyone is looking at me. They pull up about 50 meters down the road and they start getting out and coming towards me with their very big knives! Actually, Its no big deal, everyone here has a big knife... including the women and kids! - They need to keep the jungle at bay somehow. They come over and I jibber away in broken Spanish and ask for a bit of assistance - After indicating that I´m fine and the bike is the one that needs the help, we manhandle the bike upright... I start the engine and it fires up but blows quite a bit of blue smoke (to be expected after a couple of minutes in the inverted position). The smoke dissipates and I ride down to where their truck is, thank them and then they head on their way and I "take stock".

Bike damage report:
Broken indicator (a-$"&%*+ing-gain!), broken brake pedal, deeply gouged right luggage case and missing latch mechanism, skew-wiff instrument panel, gouges in paint work, broken right mirror, twisted up right hand set (not broken since I keep the bolts a little loose to allow for this sort of thing)
- All in all, not too bad considering.

Personal gear damage report:
Broken camera case strap, broken right boot buckle, torn and abraded right hip pocket of trousers, hole worn through right glove at wrist, tears and abrasions in jacket back/skirt, and one hell of a nasty big abrasion hole in the left shoulder - well into the hard armour protection - Yep, I could feel that happening. No marks on helmet or hard armour knee pads.

Personal damage report:
Scraped right wrist, bruised hips, stiff neck and slightly pulled groin - no big problem, this injury is not unfamiliar to me ;)

So, I limp back up the road to see if I can find that luggage latch and to see what caused the slide...
It turns out that some generous soul (it would have been an accidental spill of course) has liberally coated the entire corner with gasoline or diesel! You can see the sheen on the wet road from the downhill side but not from above.
So, there was really not a lot that I could have done other than going at sub-30kmh speed for the whole journey. It is a truly treacherous corner in this drizzle... and just to make the point, while I am standing there a big truck comes around and gets half sideways before the driver gets it back under control. I was right in his path and I could see his eyes get all wide - as did mine! :). So the corner is clearly bad even if you have four or more wheels... but lethal if you only have two...
I smarten up and get the hell out of there after quickly locating the missing latch.

I have security straps on my luggage cases so that if the latch fails they don´t come off completely (Thanks for the suggestion Ron) so I just lash things up tight and then ride on gingerly toward Palenque.

I stop at Agua Azul and limp around looking at the lovely cascades for a bit (but I admit I`m having a bit of a hard time appreciating them at the moment). While I am there, the clouds decide to get enthusiastic and instead of the wishy-washy drizzle, they really open up with a tropical down-pour... Oh well, at least its not freezing cold!
After about 45min, the rain lightens up a bit but doesn´t look like stooping so I decide to ride on to my destination and get a dry room for the night.
I ride on for an hour or so (slowly and carefully are a bit of an understatement here!) and I get there fine and I find a room and I get some food and things are more or less back under control.

Not much I could really have done about this one, but I am very glad there were no hard objects to hit and no traffic coming the other way - or ít´d be "Game Over"!
I´m also very glad that I have been toughing it out in this tropical heat and am always wearing my full set of hard armour and the gloves and the big jacket - Definite life saver this time!

Not a good day, but then, they don´t call it "Adventure Touring" for nothing!
Suck it up winner! ...Ride On...:)