Andis Take

Things I have learnt about me, firstly my fear of heights has come to haunt me, I have found with age vertigo has come to get me, assuming then it is bodily preservation with sensibility as a result of older age, I find myself telling Ellen to come back away from the edge....it hasn't worked!



She even takes the bloody bike too!!!



Secondly, dehydration and hunger are the two quickest ways to entering into a mindless navigational pubscrap on the side of the road, we have both found when it is late in the afternoon you are tired, hot and or dehydrated that a quick stop, food and water goes a l o n g way to having a sensible navigational discussion.

Leaving California today (1 November 2012) had mixed reactions, to say farewell to long term great mate Shann was hard, man hugs and hidden tears from me.

Once we hit the road trying to make it to the border as least as late as we can was the mission and a mission, several points of interest going into the "next time" tin due to the lack of time, the one thing I have come to hate is deadlines as this always seems to bring on more stress.

I cried in my helmet trying to get my head around the shit we have been dealt with the bikes, call me a baby but I struggled to ride properly and I didn’t enjoy it despite being on a great bit of road, I feel let down badly by Suzuki and thus my choice of our bikes for our trip has held up our trip and created difficulty for us, not our fault but our problem.

I have to admit the bike issues pushed me hard, so hard that on Wednesday I went for a walk to clear my head, this was after taking the bike back again for the mystery metal in the oil and having lost the G9 comms unit as Ellen did not put it on properly so it was smashed beyond repair and to get personal I had the shits (from being so wound up I think).



I was ready to chuck it in and go home ..... kinda weak thinking but when you are battle worn you start to think preservation or exit mode, something you have to kick yourself out of and step above, this my friends takes strength when you are down.

So back to the story, I walked into a shop as #2’s was calling and time was short with the crook guts, I was hungry and probably slightly dehydrated, after doing my deed I think I exited out a different door and carried on contemplating life, suddenly I found myself questioning which way I was going .... was the sun behind me or in front ... or beside me? :confused1:

Long and short of it I got completely lost and ended up in an area less than ideal, no way of knowing which way to go, all square blocks etc.

I could not think straight so I decided to head one way until I reached shops or something were I could use a phone, as luck would have it this worked, I looked across the road and saw T Mobile so made a B line for that.

I walked in and asked if Shann worked there .... yes, she said so that was a complete fluke which turned out ok., he returned from lunch some 10 minutes later and took me to the Clawsons Honda as they had rung about the bike which was sorted.

People say don’t sweat the small stuff but enough small stuff adds up, if you get 10 x 1 little issue you suddenly have some shit to deal with and when you are relying heavily on your equipment this deepens the issue considerably as it is closer to your heart.

So to finish this section up we are sitting in the tent writing this up two days before hitting the border, today is November 1st, we are meant to be out November 2nd and today to finish it off my headlight blew???.

Not a biggy ... just some more shit to deal before hitting the boarder on an already overtight time table.

Bikes

The Suzukis, our DR650s cost us 6 weeks off the road in six months, if not for the help through the ADV and HU members it would have been 10 fold harder.

Although Suzuki have repaired our bikes they have cost us dearly both time wise and monetary wise, FYI a Suzuki bought in the USA does not have warrantee in Canada even though we are still in North America, that sucks the big one for an international RTW biker, so my advice to all is weigh up who gives and international warrantee not just a back yard warrantee as this is useless of your bike breaks out of the US as we found out the hard way in Canada.

At least a BMW or Ducati which you expect to have issue with still looks cool when broken down!!!

The other thing I have found I miss is cats and dogs ... pets, luckily Shann had a crazy cat ... a spider cat that could climb cupboards in a single bound.




Ellen’s point of view

Some friends say we are on vacation, I would say we just changed our life style, because at least I don’t have a job to go back for so technically we are unemployed and homeless .



It’s also time to reflect who we are, why have we ended up here and to understand ourselves better.

We found the reflection ... but nothing changed!!!



The broken down bike hit Andi hard, but I have looked it from a different angle. We all like to take control of some part of our life, for Andi, particularly, he likes to take control of his bikes and buying Japanese and new you would think we would not have been put in the position we were put in.

That is all good if he buys a bike with no factory warranty, if you have a problem, too bad, fix it yourself. However, paying new price and buying new bikes the liability is on the manufacturer. That means you don’t have that control when the ball is in their court.

That creates the conflicts by itself. If the manufacturer didn’t come to the party as Andi would liked, there is another problem. Therefore, being fussy about quality and not having the total control looks like a beginning of the disaster. If that does not work once, and if you can’t control that part, why not change the way we do things. Maybe spend less money, buy a second hand one, test drive before buy it, if anything goes wrong, take full responsibility.

Next time we might buy a beater ... this looks fairly solid



At least you don’t have someone else to piss you off. Andi might not agree with me, it seems I’m on Suzuki side which I am not, just doing the devils advocate for future trip/shit management.

It’s my fault to lose our Scalar G9, it upset Andi even more when it happened while the bike was not fixed and causing stress, Jamie from Scala Rider kindly offered to replace the unit however we decided to run without helmet comms on this trip, sometimes it is hard to let it go but we had to make that decision, some people are destined not to have comms sets and we are on of them but I have to say we will use them again.

We had spent so much time repairing our bikes instead of traveling around USA, which was quite upsetting, we were off the road for 25% of our time. What we did was to accept what we have and make the most of it. We took the opportunity to visit places we didn’t go at the first place.

We had our most amazing sleeping experience in a Catamaran hull which was cool. Take the whole experience as part of traveling. We might have missed out some places, but we also experienced things which we would not if we hadn’t the misfortune with the bikes.

We learned always be positive for the situation which didn’t go the way you liked it. The moral of the story is: there is always a silver lining of the cloud although sometimes hard to find.

If you feel really bad just cry ... get it over with and feel better for it!!!

In conclusion

Traveling around the world on two motorcycles sounds glamourous and for 99% of the time it is great but you are more vulnerable to outside influences so you have to find a different sort of strength within to overcome the ripoffs, let downs, bad weather, breakages, crashs etc and realise that if you are still alive and well then the material things can be replaced.

Some people say that a bigger budget will stop a lot of problems, to some degree this is right however your inner strength and ability to cope and see normality and see through it will buy you far more ground than money.... however if we won lotto I would not complain .

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Cheers Andi & Ellen .... https://twomotokiwis.blogspot.com/ Two Moto Kiwis Alaska - Argentina - April 2012 -> Somewhere

For us the first few days were a struggle, we have enjoyed ourselves and through good karma and very friendly Mexicans we have had a tremendous amount of help which quite frankly we would have been stuffed without.

Couchsurfing, our 5th since being on the road from Alaska, we made contact with Alberto, we were his first surfers so he did not know what to expect, we didn’t know very much Spanish so we didn’t know what to expect ... what a crowd of geniuses.

We were invited into his home, he lives in a secure compound (not jail) with a courtyard out of sight where we parked up Chiwi and Hobbit, meeting at a local Thai restaurant which was a convenient place we shouted Alberto tea (dinner) for him accepting to take us in for the night.



We planned to stay the night then carry on, some dramas with Insurance and my then starting to weep shock held us back with progress, Alberto with his friendly approach said please stay and get sorted no problem at all. :clap

He left for work, we settled in to get our stuff sorted out and with a quiet house and Wifi it was perfect.

The Mexican insurance gig sent us off the edge so with help understanding what we were getting into Alberto helped suss things out in Spanish, even he had some difficulty which made us feel a LOT better as he is a design engineer so no dumby by any stretch.

That second night we were kindly invited to go to a baseball match with the lads, what a treat not ever having been to a match before so there we were watching two Spanish teams duke it out on the field, most excellent!!

Pictured here Javier, me, Alberto and Alexandro (sitting stealth) (think he was in the dunny)



Javier sporting his support painted tat :evil



These girls kept getting in the way while I was trying to take photos of the grass, sorry guys :wink:



Earlier that day we went shopping for food etc and made very slow progress with one thing and another, Ellen cooked up a Thai curry and one of Albertos mates Javier came and joined us for food, interestingly enough Walmart sell Mexican ADV bikes



You can conveniently buy shampoo too at an arms length :rofl



Given that we had become re-invited overstayers we set too trying to get a phone card, chains and sprockets sorted and my now newly weeping shock, apart from that we had nothing to do except tear our hair out and I don’t have much of that to start with.

Javier’s 41st birthday was on that following evening so Ellen made the famous Sushi, later that evening we went out to a night club for Whiskey, dancing and good times, this closed at 2.00am so they kicked all us oldies out back to the retirement village, Javier had a yummy cheesecake which he insisted we all have some of ... ok.

Sushi .... YUM!!!



Me, Ellen and Alberto



The birthday boy Javier and his good lady!!



Good times :freaky



More mates,



Ouwh old people dancing :eek1



We were impressed with the concrete floor



3.40am we all cashed it in, full of sushi, grog and cheescake ... classic .. not quite what we expected from a one night stay.

Friday morning Alberto was leaving to go back to Mexico city and said hey if we want to stay it would be no problem but he won’t be there, having still very incomplete business we decided to do this.

Saturday we did cruze around Hermosillo after getting mostly sorted, went up to the lookout and really enjoyed the day.

Some general pics











Cell towers



Thess little buggas are everywhere



Neat colours



Hobbit .... still going (touch wood)



Saturday evening was one of Albertos workmates party .... in the courtyard....straight outside our door so not far to stumble.

In true Mexican style we were invited to have Tacos and pasta, we bought a bottle of red wine and duly accepted, this was great talking to these guys, they wanted to know about our trip and we wanted to get local info and enjoy local peoples company only a 1.45 am finish this time.

Head chef and birthday boy



Does not need explaining!!! hmmm can you smell it!:evil





Sean and I having a chat





Sunday we went for a big walk on a local hill mountain bike / walking track, was neat for us to chat (kinda) with MTB locals, the weather was very nice an made it a pleasure, on the way back we stopped in at a supermarkdo and fooded up again for our assault on Copper Canyon as Monday lunchtime we leave, no photos as we forgot the camera.... broke the rules of NEVER leave the camera at home.

Tuna Blanco, this is what this piece of cactus leaf is called, we tried it and loved it, something we have never had before, very nice to eat as fruit.



Now for the credits on this part of our report, I have to be honest and say although we had a very lonely start to Mexico and struggled a bit but the warmth and welcoming of the locals here has been second to none, they have set the bar very very high now.

A special thanks to Alberto, your blood is worth bottling mate and Javier just for making us feel welcome like a local mate, you guys have made our stay just magic.

We are now insured, shipping sorted, have a phone card, fooded and ready and much much wiser for looking learning and listening, if the rest of Mexico is only half as cool as the last few days I am not sure we will leave ... but we have to.

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Cheers Andi & Ellen .... https://twomotokiwis.blogspot.com/ Two Moto Kiwis Alaska - Argentina - April 2012 -> Somewhere