Drugs, Rapists, and Some Good People Too: Part 2
La Barra on her side during my first serious repair.
I'm not overly worried, however, it is suddenly much more prominent in my mind that this route is referred to as "La Carretera de la Muerte" meaning "The Highway of Death."
BLOG POST #013 - The Border and Some Good People Too: Part 2
How I learned to ride a motorcycle, speak Spanish and not die. Riding solo in search of adventure from Detroit to Argentina.
As a police officer once told me in my teen years, "Respect the threat - don't fear it."
I'm not overly worried, however, it is suddenly much more prominent in my mind that this route is referred to as "La Carretera de la Muerte" meaning "The Highway of Death."
The stretch of road from Nuevo Laredo to Monterrey I'm currently riding is known for several hundred disappearances in the past few years. These are not murders or kidnappings. They are completely unexplained, unsolved, and even un-investigated disappearances. There's nothing to look into when someone is just gone. One article said that six of the cases from the prior year were gringos.
I used to assume that we carry some special status as Americans, not to be messed with. In more recent years, I have learned that this is a complete fallacy.
In many places around the world, no one cares about you as an “American.” It is every person for themselves.
I don't see anything unusual on the bike. A minute later, La Barra revs back to life. I am cautiously on my way at speed again.
"¡Siempre al Su....sh**tttt." Then she stopped again.
Five minutes after that, she is running again. Then stopped. Then running. Then sputters, but still going. Then stopped.
I need a new strategy. I'm going to find somewhere to pull over and really tear into this problem. I texted three friends back home who were all experienced riders. Before I left, they looked over all of my gear and gave me lots of advice.
I now refer to them as my “Biker Council of Grand Elders” (The "BCGE"), who would be the tech support lifeline for how to ride or how to repair La Barra.
I rode further, sputtering, hobbling forward best I could, scouting for somewhere with cover from the main road.
I need a new strategy. I'm going to find somewhere to pull over and really tear into this problem. I texted three friends back home who were all experienced riders. Before I left, they looked over all of my gear and gave me lots of advice.
I now refer to them as my “Biker Council of Grand Elders” (The "BCGE"), who would be the tech support lifeline for how to ride or how to repair La Barra.
The tree cover I was aiming for provided the aforementioned shade, which meant that the ground did not dry out as fast, which also meant it was incredibly slippery. I rolled in at four miles per hour and slid the bike flat sideways to a stop in a patch of black mud. Just to add insult to injury, the chain popped off.
"Great." I muttered.
The list of repairs is growing.
The slime was so slick that I couldn't get La Barra back up again. There was nowhere for my shoes to get a good grip to pull up vertically on this five hundred pounds of motorbike and baggage. After a few tries, I ended up dragging La Barra by the back tire horizontally to maneuver her chassis toward the edge of the mire, before I could finally hoick her upright.
This was not a “crisis” situation.
This was a possible “pre-crisis” situation, and one to be taken seriously.
However, that doesn't mean I don't have a jocular voice in the back of my head that enjoys the slapstick of it all. Maria was going to love hearing about this, involving her favorite word at the center of the story, "moodth."
Then, there is the irony of "the best laid plans of mice and men."
I rode all that time in the United States first, so I could debug the system, figure out what I was doing, and make sure the bike ran well before I found myself in a foreign land where I don't even know the word for "gasoline." The motor ran flawlessly for 1,622 miles, until just past the border, where it decided to die.
"Crapppp."
Kevin was the first BCGE elder I got on the phone.
“The Bike Council of Grand Elders”
“Hey man, I think I have a problem,” I said after he picked up the phone.
This was good because he had owned a Kawasaki KLR650 just like La Barra. He was a kind and patient man. I wasn't too worried about the chain right now. My primary focus was on engine trouble because that was the more unknown issue and likely threat to my mission. Kevin and I talked through some possibilities, and I sent pictures. I checked for an arc on the spark plug, which means it has electricity, and all seemed normal.
For a moment, my shoulders slumped. I was feeling useless. I really didn't know what I was doing. I had no experience with this. I was out of my league.
Engine problems have me dead stopped. The chain needs to be re-assembled. This is not a safe place to be. I have no resources, friends or knowledge of the area. I can't really communicate, and it will be an extremely bad idea to stay here after nightfall in a few hours' time.
But then I remembered — this is the very thing I'm good at.
I am an expert at NOT being an expert on a task.
I am extremely comfortable being in uncomfortable situations. I am at my best when I'm figuring out a problem I have no business laying hands on. All the world is simply a set of obstacles to navigate and riddles to solve. I will move carefully and work methodically.
One of the biggest ways I go about this is by not explicitly trying to "fix" one thing. Instead, I focus on "understanding" lots of things.
I observe. I take things apart. I look for telltale signs of wear, broken parts, or leaks.
Answers and fixes are great. But if I understand a system, the result I want tends to become obvious as I wander. The most important part is the sheer willingness to fling myself at it and see what I can learn, without judgment of myself, or panic about the situation.
I recall a mechanic friend of mine telling me to check for the big three: spark, gas, and air. This is one of the reasons that the KLR is so highly revered. There are no complex on-board computers and such. It is a simple machine, made for getting beat to hell by wind, bumps, river crossings and fender benders. There have been eight hundred tweaks to the design since 1987, with the goals of making it robust, reliable, and easy to fix.
"Let's get this money." I mumbled to myself as I began to understand my bike better.
I started by slowly removing random covers, connectors, and tubing, learning as I went. There was a drain line that looked suspicious because it was plugged with a rubber stopper and full of water. It was not obvious to me why they would design in a drain only to put a plug on the end. I emptied it and left the plug off. This seemed to help, but that was not super conclusive.
She ran significantly better now, but I wanted to be more thorough. I had to remove the seat and almost all of my gear to get at the guts of the bike. So, if I put it all together again, just to break down in another half mile, that would be a lot of wasted time. There were parts and tools all over the ground, and this was a good spot to work. Heat from direct sunlight would have been un-bearable, so the shade right here was key.
It is amazing how much I can learn in only an hour and a half. So far it hasn't put me behind schedule. Whether I fix it or not right now, this is time well spent gaining knowledge being that I expect to have a relationship with La Barra for the next 10,000 miles.
I mess around in this haze, randomly cleaning and inspecting everything. I start to think that maybe eight or ten little incremental improvements will get me back on my way. There is a lot of wondering, assuming and vagary going on.
Then I open up a plastic housing and, "That's a bingo!"
A extremely dirty air-filter and a brand new one.
The yellowed foam air filter is stained brown to black in color and soaked with moisture. That explains the tube full of water that connects here. This is super annoying because I bought the bike used from a dealer that included a thirty-five-point inspection. They put on nice new tires with the rubber extrusion nubs still there, which indicated they have not been ridden on yet. But this was all for show.
"They didn't check the fifteen-dollar air filter?”
“ Come on."
The hard part is not fixing the problem. The hard part is knowing what the problem is. Now that I have my answer, my mood changes in an instant. There's still a bunch of work to do, but I have a rush of confidence that I'm back on track.
Primitive survival programming somewhere in my brain only seems to see in binary mode, perceiving the world as all “good” or all “bad.”
In a stressful situation, I tend to feel either abject failure or else glorious success. Right now it is all good. A flood of dopamine washes over my brain with a triumphant euphoria that everything is going to be ok.
It's time for a break.
I walk away and go explore the abandoned gas station to clear my head. There is a section for truck refueling, and there are oil-change bays with channels cut in the concrete for access from underneath the ground. Some of the electronic components on the pumps look pretty new and high tech. It has a post nuclear war feel to it like everyone left in a hurry, or possibly everyone was vaporized in an instant.
As I walk around, I'm lining up my next moves on the bike fix in my head. I ate a little of the fruit and crackers I packed for the ride. I relax for ten minutes, laying in the shade with my biker jacket rolled up for a pillow. Then, I spring back into action with my imaginary motorcycle repairman cape on.
I squeeze out the spongy air filter best I can, to get rid of as much fluid as possible. This thing is in horrible shape, and I will replace it at the soonest opportunity. But I don't have much choice right now. I know I improved it by twenty or thirty percent compared to when it ran fine yesterday, so I'm sure it will suffice.
As I fire up the engine, La Barra sounds smooth, and I shouldn't have trouble getting to Monterrey now.
Monterrey, Mexico.
I made a mental note to book motorcycle mechanic service time in the big city. I am happy to pay for an all-over tune-up, having them look for stupid stuff like this. I'll see if I can charm my way back into the shop with the tech and watch everything they do. I need the bike serviced, but I also need to learn more about fixing it myself. Maybe I'll ask for a “thirty-six-point” inspection this time. I'm cursing that dealer back in Michigan, in my head.
Re-assembling the chain was tricky. But as I had presumed, it didn't take me long, because there were no unknowns. I adjusted everything into place, sending text pics for Kevin's final approval. Soon, I was ready to ride once more.
I had left Laredo early, crossed the border, and rode sixty miles, in what should have taken me an hour and a half maximum. But with an ATM stop, and my initial relaxed pace, lots of time had ticked past.
Accounting for all of the repair delays, I found myself back on the road at one o'clock, about five hours after I left the hotel for the morning. I calculated that I had another two hours to go, if I didn't have any further problems.
At this point I was all business, with no interest in poking around or veering off path. I can definitely feel the engine improvement. La Barra is like a racehorse that wants to run, as we burn through the next few hours toward Monterrey.
I had originally told my hotel that I'd be there much sooner, but now I sent a message that it looks like four o'clock in the afternoon. Antonia, the hotel owner, seems quite friendly, welcoming, and fun. She keeps reminding me to travel safely and instantly takes a mothering role with me. I like her spirit and her energy.
Riding into Monterrey, the view was a rich mix of beauty and contrasts. A vast patchwork of working-class human habitation stretched out through a wide and winding valley. The whole city was hemmed in by jagged rocky mountains longways on either side. The stone walls rose up almost straight vertically, with peaks of ragged, bare rock at the top. Viewed from afar, it almost seemed like an ancient village surrounded by crumbling castle walls.
Fifteen years ago while working in another part of northern Mexico, I had heard that this town was an amazing place. As far as my first impression went, Monterrey did not disappoint. Downtown looked well-kept and clean with elevated freeways and shiny skyscrapers in the genres of postmodern and international architecture. It reminded me of a tropical Salt Lake City, framed by those gorgeous mountains all around.
This is a perfect start for my first foreign outing of the Biker Ferper Gringo trip because Monterrey is very much "Mexico-lite". It is quite modern and wealthy, with a strong English-speaking population of well-dressed beautiful people. It is considered one of the safest cities in all of Mexico.
NEXT POST COMING SOON: November 6, 2024
