March 26 Upto Date

OK. Yesterday I left Oaxaca at 10:30 AM and had a fairly big drive on the bike, getting into San Cristobal about 7 PM. This was a fairly uneventful drive. Some of the interesting things were that it was quite breezey at the coast and consequently the bike was a challenge to drive for about 100 miles. I though that there was more wind on this section of road than on the grapevine, with the main difference being that it was daylight and that I elected to drive at a slower pace. I also managed to suck my backpack tie down straps into the sproket on the rear wheel. This did not effect performance at all as I did not notice that this had happened until I tried to take my pack off the bike at the hostel. The effect of this accident was the straps were just sort of melted and torn up. I repaired the strap ends, and I think they are about 1 foot shorter now than yesterday morning. Using the panniers as a center stand I inspected the chain, rear wheel and the swingarm on the bike and everything looks to be in good shape. This is a strong argument for using relatively week nylon type straps.

After not seeing another gringo on a motorbike since Cameron left for Seattle, I also ran into two motorcyclist in the same afternoon. The first guy I met driving from the coast inland to San Cristobal. Alone on a windy mountain road (and pushing the speed somewhat hard, I felt) a guy screamed by me a big 1200 GS BMW. I waved at him and chased him for a while until leaning hard into a corner I felt my front wheel skip sideways accross the pavement. At that point I decided to let him go, only to find that a mile or two down the road he had stopped to wait for me. It turns out that he thought he was on the coast road (I do not know how this was possible, as we had been gaining elevation for about 25 miles and were very clearly in the mountains), did not know where he was or where he was going. I suggested that we travel together to San Cristobal and he agreed. After coming to this decision he turned on his bike (he did not take his helmet off or move from his seat the entire time we spoke) and immediately roared off as I fumbled to put my helmet and gloves back on. That would be last time I saw the guy on the 1200 GS.

After reaching San Cristobal I met another guy who had just sold his bike, Gage. Gage had ridden from Boston to Seattle and then down to San Cristobal, but as he had an older street bike that we begin to run strange, sold the bike here in San Cristobal and elected to fly home. Gage had met the guy on the 1200 GS before, and said he was a somewhat interesting guy, as he saw him on the side of the road eating three lobsters for lunch, sweaty, with red sauce running all over his face.

Anyway, I am in San Cristobal now. And I think I might try to go to Guatamala tomorrow. Wish me luck!