Into South America by Motorcycle Caracas

Our Journal

23 July 2004

Dear Friends and Family

So it’s the last week of July and we’re still in Caracas. We’ve been asked if we really are going on a motorcycle trip and it has been suggested that we should just cut and paste images and stories about Brazil and create an imaginary trip for our website viewers. The main reason we are here is that the boxes for my bike were just finished today. Ramiro Garcia did an amazing job cutting, bending, welding, and mounting metal to the bike. The boxes came out completely waterproof with security locks, extra safety latches, compartment for the computer, non-rattling handles. I stayed watching him several nights the last week in awe at his concentration and dedication to the project. His wife glared at me the whole time wondering when she would get her husband back. Tonight he finished and as I drove away I reflected on how lucky I was to find him, to have these boxes for traveling. On the highway I could barely feel them on the sides. In traffic I was extra careful to account for the width of the side boxes.

Then, after sitting 30 minutes in bumper to bumper I saw a space to pass a whole row of cars. I gunned it and… BAM! – slammed the sidebox right into the back of an SUV which threw the bike the other direction landing right on top of the other box. The engine revved and I went down softly, unhurt. Before I had the chance to be shocked or tear myself up internally for being such an idiot there were some 10 or 15 bikers making a circle around me asking, “Which car did it?” “Are you ok?” “Can we call someone for you?” “Do you need help?” They helped upright the bike and sped off. The damage – right box dented, left box with partly collapsed side, but worst the frame bent all wrong. Now the shame of having to go straight back to Ramiro and explain that the two week long project, the nights until 2 am, the search for all the right materials, and the endless detail was rammed right into a stationary car 15 minutes after its completion…

Earlier in the day we passed a motorcycle accident and bikers had gathered all over the place. Ramiro explained that bikers in Caracas take care of each other. Many of them live on the bike working two or three jobs at the same time. At stoplights you get a lot of head nods from other bikers. These guys pull some kamakazi maneuvers through traffic and unlike Barranquilla, cars tend to respect your space. Now I understand why. I probably put a good nick in some woman’s SUV and she didn’t so much as look at me unpleasantly.

Caracas for a few more days then and the nerve racking feeling of not getting anything done. Maybe I need to learn the lesson with Caracas that I recently learned with FrontPage. Stop thinking this is what I want the program to do for me, find out what the program’s capabilities are and then go from there. Maybe I should just take a closer look at what the locals excel at – invite friends over, cook up some food, pour out a few cuba libres at a proportion of 9/10 rum 1/10 coke, get the salsa going at a volume above everything else and see what happens next. In the meantime I’ll keep reading about the Amazon just in case things go right.

Un abrazo.

chao, Chris