Cambrian Tyres

7 May 2010

The road into the city was long and straight. The surface was rough as a badger’s bottom and the traffic whippet sharp. In Peru you ride with your elbows out and your finger on the horn. You take deep breaths as you overtake buses behinds belching out black smoke. You brake hard at sudden changes

The Philosophy of Erik

In Sicuani Erik, Caroline and I stop in a restaurant on the outskirts of town. The floors are wooden on one side and tiled on the other. Music is playing and the nicely dressed family who run the place ask us if we want tea. We also order chicharon, cubes of pork. "I came here from up the Arequipa road which was dirt and it took me 10 hours. I was cold and I asked this place for a room and I said I would not argue about the price as long as I got hot water and we agreed. In the end they said it would take three hours for the water to heat up so I brought my bike into the restaurant area for safety. I slept unwashed. In the morning a small boy came up to me and said my bike smelt of petrol and I should pay a parking fee. So I said, 'look, you promised me hot water and you did not give it to me and I will not pay for parking, we both make a fault so we are fair,' and with that I left.

The route from Cusco is our third crossing of the Andes. The first 150 kms were full of high mountains and twisting bends. Erik and I led the whole way and was my first time at the front. Intermittent sections of road works interrupted a beautiful stretch of tarmac. In fine weather, this is great ride but in bad rain and wind it would be a journey in hell. At Abancay, Erik and I have a soup by the sign that directs us to Lima, before which is Nazca.

We get a text from Roy telling us the front suspension has broken 20 kilometres from the town. Maybe he hit a pothole, I never found out but Erik jumped up and raced off to find a tow truck. There was only one in town and within 20 minutes he had negotiated a price and he and the driver were soon on its rescue mission. An hour and a half later it brought the back-up truck back down to town and shunted it into his small garage area. The ball joint attached to the wishbone had snapped so causing the suspension and steering to fail. New parts would only be obtained from Lima and today was a Saturday and nothing could be done on a Sunday.

Erik worked with the mechanic and discussed mending the ball joint and when he said it could be done I left him so I could ride the 240 miles to Nazca and connect with the rest of the group.

Roy said the repair was too unsafe and refused to drive it. To be honest I understood his feelings. The Latin American way is not one of the professional mechanic but what was I to do? Not to repair the truck and wait for a new part would lose me three days and that alone would jeopardise our getting to Alaska. This left me with a big problem. I'd have to get the new parts from Lima and ride back 500 miles on the Monday to rescue them. Anyway I couldn't do anything from 5000 metres in freezing fog so rode across the Pampa racking my head for ideas. Maybe my Peruvian biker mate Jorge could help; surely there was a way around this. Stuck in the Andes trying to rescue the back-up and look after the riders. I could feel a headless chicken moment coming on, I was going to hope about the road like John Cleese does when it all gets too much. At Puquial, a half dead village of the damned full if people who had had relations with their brother, I fuelled up and at a restaurant ate and thought about what I needed to do.

Trijullo to Mancara

I had business to attend with all morning. The new race bike, which I needed to be ready for the record ride in August. My original paint design was not liked so it was back to the drawing board. Meanwhile the riders had risen at 7.30am and were on the road half an hour later. The crew left just after and I set off at eleven. Strange though it was to say, considering I was supposed to be leading my project, that as much as I wanted to be part of the group, it was not always possible.

I rode across the small hills that breached the Pan American Highway and rode with the sea rolling big breakers onto the sand. Little dusty edged communities came and went until at Chicalayo.

The hotel at Mancara was built in the sand and blended into the sea. Built as a large beach hut, the water in the infinity pool slipped into air as the riders enjoyed cold drinks under the shade of palm fronds. Saturated by a cooling wind the ambiance was a metaphor for romance. It was the perfect place for a pina colada with a friend; it was the perfect place for a dream. Then Jonny turned up. Shaking and speaking in a very high voice, "I 'ave had an interaction with one of 'em fookin' Tukky Tuk drivers 'an I 'ave flattened the silly basket." He was very unhappy and sat down by the pool, "I was driving along an he turned out across me 'an I rode straight into 'im 'an the fookin police just stood an watched!" Pat said he thought he saw the poor driver indicate he was turning left. He said he waved a few fingers at knee height and then did a 'U' turn across two lanes of traffic, when at that minute, of all days, of all the years that poor man had been driving Tuk Tuks and the thousands of people he had transported, Jonny turned up. Such was his fate.

Someone suggested he put in his hearing aid, which, because it had been hurting his ears, was now in his bag, "WHAT?" he said, "your hearing aid mate," Pat mouthed to him close to his face. "I DON'T NEED A DAMN HEARING AID," he shouted back and continued more reasonably, "but I do need a fookin' beer."

This was all reportage of course as I arrived three hours after the last rider. My EX1 film camera from Sony broke after owning it for five weeks and one of the rear wheel bearings of the back-up vehicle was now beginning to play up. Dr C was also suffering serious toothache and we'd had a conversation about her maybe flying back to London for treatment.

A half moon hung in a very dark sky as if penetrating our world from where it came from. Its reflection shimmered gently on a calm sea. I lay in the hammock with Caroline, a cool breeze wafting across the balcony, music was playing and with the sound of the crashing breakers wondered if this was really just too awfully hard a job?

It was a short 100 kilometre ride to the frontier between Peru and Ecuador, the signposting for which was precise, unlike at any point in Peru. Exiting Peru took ten minutes but due to the diligent typing of our vehicle details into the Ecuadorean transport system it took a further three hours for all the riders to get on the road.

The route heading for Manchala was straight and was lined by banana plantations. In time the road began to climb once again into the Andes and the tall crops were soon replaced by terraced mountain slopes.

As I arrived at the hotel in Azogues, everything seemed fine. All the riders were in and I was happy. I cared for them even though I was in a tough position. On tour, you are only as good as your last show, here it was all down to that days riding. A bad ride followed by a bad hotel and you're in the shit. The converse and you get quite appreciation, but that's ok. Suddenly I got a text, it was from Tim. He'd taken a wrong route, followed his sat nav, gone up some unmade road up a mountain section and then tried to back track over a mountain piste section and broken down. It was the same fault as previous, the one that resulted from him resetting his timing to accommodate poorer quality fuel. He had freewheeled 10kms downhill to a small hotel and was stuck. Poor man, such a great trier until at length he succeeds.

I had a choice of leaving the whole group without back-up whilst we rescued Tim but when Roy turned up he said an oil filter was leaking so badly he didn't think it would make it to Bogota. I needed a positive. Not what we can do is not what I needed, but then he was a mechanic and a realist and I suspected he was right. Erik was a pragmatist and a complete optimist against all the odds, his optimism bordered on poetry for me because he always said what I needed to hear, what soothed me. The vehicle is a shagged out pile of mechanical perversity, it's a jalopy, and it’s nearly dead – Roy and I knew this but Erik was being stubborn.Yet, we have to get to the top of South America. I get Erik to phone the hotel and speak to the hotelier and then get him to speak to Tim. He asks the man if he can arrange a truck to take him and his bike to Zhud, a crossroad town up the way and he thinks he can. We are hatching a plan. If we keep filling the back-up vehicle with oil it might get us to Bogotá where the gearbox and seals can be examined and replaced, it's our best shot. Erik is a mechanic’s nightmare and a saviour to people who hang their hopes on a high wire. By midnight I am asleep, hoping our plan will work.

Throughout the night it rained. A depression had been hanging over northern Andean countries for days suggestive of very wet weather. So far it had been dry. From Cayambe to the frontier of Colombia at Richabamba the map said 100kms, the road signs read 163kms whilst our odometers registered 204kms. After more traffic for the first half of the morning, the road quietened as it climbed.

Rain fell in short bursts and the road dried. Exiting Ecuador was quick but entering 22 bikes into Colombia seemed to overload their fragile system. Ironically the customs official typed my details into the computer and allowed me through but baulked at the amount of work it would take to do this 22 times. Meanwhile Joe had been refused entry into Colombia.

We exited Peru with the minimum of fuss and after a five mile ride into Ecuador crossing the Bridge of Peace; we rode to the Ecuadorian customs. The officials were enormously friendly but it was taking 15 minutes to process each rider, a good time but for such a group it took three hours before the last rider left.