December Summary
December Summary
Dec 14-15 - Replace steering head bearings. They had developed a significan notch at center, and since I found a replacement set locally, and I had the clubhouse to work in I decided to replace them.
Next thing I knew I'm on top of a document check point, 10km or so from th border. With my mind on things other than riding the bike I hadn't seen it. I grab too much front brake, the front wheel locks up on the wet pavement, possibly augmented by oil on the pavement from other cars stopping at the checkpoint, and just like that the bike is down on it's right side sliding along the road past the guards. I slid a while and cam to rest in time to watch the bike slide off the side of the road onto the shoulder, have the tires hook up enough to have the bike stand itself up, totter there for a long second or two, then fall over onto it's left side. If I had been quicker onto my feet, I could have caught it as it tottered there, and then claimed the whole thing was a planned stunt.
As it was, with the guards looking on and wondering what the hell this crazy gringo was doing, I stood up, took a deep bow, which got a laugh out of the guards, and rushed over to the bike and had it up on two wheels before the guards could even approach. The guards were pointing to my arm and legs and asking if I was OK and a quick check showed I was. The wet pavement provided a nice lubricated surface and I couldn't even find any damage to my Aerostich. Fortunately because of the rain I was wearing the Aerostich pants as well, something I don't always do when the weather is nice. On the other hand if it hadn't been raining I might not have locked up the front end. Who knows.
As for the bike, it too came out relatively unscathed. The right-side crash bar had a slight crimp in it where it had been bent back around the valve cover, but a few well-placed kicks got it back into a reasonable position. Some scrapes on the bottom side of the valve cover but no structural damage to it. The bottom beveled side of the right-side Jessie bag had a fist-size dent, about an inch deep, in it, I believe from when it slid over the edge of the pavement. That was it.
But I was fortunate. It could have been worse, both for the bike and me, and I certainly can't expect to pull that kind of stunt again and get off that easy. This time the main damage was to my pride and self-esteem. Now, in addition to the thefts, I had another reason for self-flagellation I hoped this wasn't the 3rd strike, as in 3 strikes and you're out.
I showed the guards my papers, waved bye, and headed south.
The cop takes my papers, motions me to pull over to the side of the road then he holds my papers for 5 minutes while talking with the driver of a pickup truck he stopped going in the other direction. Other vehicles goin in my direction were waved through. This whole time he hasn't looked at my papers.
Finally he hands them to his partner, who motions me to follow him over to his patrol car. He says he has to write me a US$25 ticket for speeding and points to the radar gun lying on the hood of the car, which reads 75 kph. Now one, I knew I wasn't speeding because I had been very careful after what Peter had told me. Two, when I was approaching this speed trap I had been following another car and there is no way he could have got a reading on me. Three, Peter had said that most of the radar guns don't eve work and from the time I pulled over till now, the radar gun had been lyin on the hood of the car and I suspected they just left the 75kph reading on it all the time.
In my lousy Spanish but in as respectful a manner as I could muster I said I wasn't going that fast, and that another car had been in front of me and that that couldn't be my speed. I didn't know if that was the right tactic, but there is never one approach for all situations and this seemed the right approach at the time. He asked for my drivers license and I handed him my Inter-American Ddrivers License, since my California license had been stolen in San Jose. For good measure, as I handed him the license, I repeated "Senor, por favor, no voy ese rapido," and let it go at that and waited to see what developed. He handed my passport and bike documents back without even looking at them, but proceeded to write information from my license into a notebook. Then we walked back to the bike, and he started asking questions about it and where I had been and where I was going. That was a good sign, as my experience is that once that happens you've crossed over from an official interaction to a more personal one. After talking about 5 minutes, he handed my license back an said I was free to go. I thanked him and was on my way. Nothing more was said about the ticket after his first comment. I think he knew I knew, by my comments, that he hadn't clocked me on his radar.
Later that day, another two motorcycle cops, with 2 BMWs parked nearby, waved me over. They didn't even make any attempts to make this look like an official stop, and didn't even ask for my papers. They just wanted to look at the motorcycle and talk about it and my trip. They suggested my valves needed adjustment, which was probably true since I was about a 100 miles from my next scheduled maintenance interval. After about 5 minutes they waved me on.
December
1-4 San Jose, Costa Rica 5 David, Panama 6 La Chorrera, Panama 7-18 Panama City, Panama 19-23 Bogota, Colombia 24 Tunja, Colombia 25 Cucuta, Colombia 26 San Cristobal, Venezuela 27 Cucuta, Colombia 28 Puerto Boyaca, Colombia 29-31 Medellin, Colombia
Doug Ruth
druth@bayarea.net