Part 11
6 Sep 2010
Part 11
At the Nicaragua frontier the truck drivers recommended I stay at the border, shelter until the winds abated. They said it was going to be a bad one and that the rain would be heavy. I dearly wished to climb into a sleeping bag in a tent and feel such impact as I slept, cosy and safe. They said I should not go, that the drivers become stupid when the weather changes, that they wish me no harm but accidents can happen. I nod no. It is my destiny to pull on my breeches each morning and set off to work. It was still dry so with unabated optimism that it would not change, I set off. Such is the force multiplier of optimism that it sets you off on journeys where you shouldn’t really go. Where for some, what passes for optimism can only be considered the effect of an intellectual error. With the engine sounding so sweet and the build of the bike still muscular and taut, I began to ride hard across Nicaragua. Within a mile the rain started to fall, slowly, hesitantly at first, big globs of water. Travellers are fantasists and seers, merchants of make-believe and what they want to hear. They see in a round object not a stone but a crystal ball and for them the tea leaves at the bottom of their cup foretells the future. I had been wearing a pair of jeans so stopped beside the road, devoid of traffic, and completely striped off. The fall of the rain was accelerating and I am naked by my bike. I pull on my Held undersuit and then my leathers and the oversuit and finally my boots. Gathering speed at an exponential rate the rain is beginning to soak and this is just the start. There is a theory that operates on such a situation, and it says that optimism must bear the cost of a deliberate distortion of that present reality and yes, I had got myself re-dressed just in time.
I rode into a bucket of water. The rain bounced back off the road higher than a standing man and so hard did it hit my helmet it completely drowned out the sound of the bike. Skittling along it was imperative the Road Attacks coped with the dispersal of water. There were no cars or trucks just me and donkeys I passed standing still, afeared to move. I had the road to myself and reasoned that the sooner this ride came through to the other side of the storm, the sooner I could start to reclaim some of the lost schedule. I rode so hard, putting the bike precisely where I wanted it to be. It squeezed through spaces few vehicles dare go and accelerated out the other side. Hard rain turned to spray and the day turned to night and still I was on the road to Managua. This is the capital city of a country where everything goes in a long line of traffic, pushing, shoving ready to kill to get one car place in front. I had to ride 1250 miles in 36 hours and cross five countries to get to the plane in time.
