Pat the Prat - Bertha is Busted - 22 Apr 2003
A bad day for Bertha
Frying pan. Fire. Us. Surely not.
Techno bike bodge babble ñ please skip unless bodge junky.
After our trials up to Machu Pichu and back, we were pretty much tired out. We slept like logs and rose early doors read to face the 10 to 15 hour (depending on who you speak to) journey to Nazca. Having forked out so much for our room compared to our usual 6 quid or so, we made sure that we ate every last crumb provided for brekky. We resisted the urge to swipe the towels, though. Having been out of town on the road we needed when we went to Mach Pich, we thought that it would be a piece of cake to find our way. Wrong!
When we eventually found the top of the hill, Bertha showed her unhappiness about being led around the streets of Cusco by letting go of one of her throttle cables. I suppose the mechanical equivalent of spitting the dummy. Cunningly I had a new cable threaded into place ready to be attached in just such circumstances. Isnít it always the same? Best laid plans. It took but a few minutes to change one cable for the other, but every time I reassembled, the end of one or other of the throttle cables sprang from its little orifice. Eventually Hippy got me on the right path ñ ìjust put a bit of insulating tape in thereî I balked at the idea of a gummy mess in the twist grip and resorted to thickening up the nipples with tin foil. It worked. I worried about ìhow long forî for the next 700 miles.
In the end weíd wasted about 2 hours and so I was keen to get a move on. The roads helped. I donít tend to get half as tired on twist roads as when on straight dirt roads and so it looked good for making it all the way to Nazca. Spectacular valley scenery and climbs and falls swept by in a dream of motorcycling heaven.
Dropping down the hill into Abancay, large slides of mud splodged across the road at regular intervals which amazes me constantly. These are pretty new roads and it seems pretty clear that right from the outset, they are beset with mudslides of enormous proportions. Other sections in the bottom of steep river valleys had been undercut to the point of losing all of the tarmac. I rode warily awaiting a new horror at every corner.
I felt like Pat was on a mission. All reports had told us that the road to Nazca was a minimum of 10 hours and we had lost 2 mending the bike. I had already mentally prepared myself for the fact that we wouldnít make it all the way. Pat had seemed to have it fixed in his head, and was riding a little faster than I would like and taking minor risks on blind corners to make up lost time.
I was riding like a god. And then all of a sudden, I wasn't. Rounding a bend, a car was coming up the road just as the front wheel lost grip. Bertha turned into a horizontal missile and plunged front wheel on towards the car which had now swerved away from us. Dear Hippy later assessed the situation and reckoned that the car had been on our side of the road and I had swerved to avoid them at the same time and so I was not totally to blame. I think perhaps that she's rose tinting this one a bit. As with most shocking events, I cannot not say for sure what happened and if Hippy wants to take some of the blame off me, that's fine.
Whatever. We were lying in the road and it was pretty certain that we were both OK as we leapt to our feet straight away without the least whinging. Lying in the middle of the road, adrenalin overrode the fear of the potential danger of being in the road on a blind corner. A nice man helped us lift the bike up and move it to the side of the road. Bertha seemed pretty OK too and after lifting her back onto rubber I set about moving her to the side of the road. It was at this point that it was obvious that not all was well down below at the front. After a bit of wobbling I got her parked up to have a look and was a bit shocked by the outrageous lack of alignment of the front forks. Hmm not sure we can fix this one. The guy from the car was buzzing around and demanding money and proclaiming that he was calling the police with alternate sentences. We havenít had insurance for the last 6 months in South America as we haven't been able to buy it and so the police thing was not our favourite option. When we asked how much he wanted for repairs to his car (two dinged in door bottoms, sill and two lightly dinged wings) he replied that 100 dollars would cover it. I was agog at the idea of someone accepting 65 quid for all this damage and positively wrenched my wallet out to hand him the cash. Sure enough, when he had the money he simply shot off into the distance. Folk at hand told me that he'd ripped us off but considering the alternatives I thought we'd got off pretty lightly. 100 dollars is a lot of money here, but we were not in a position to argue, and I was just glad to see one complication disappear out of the equation.
Now safe from the reach of the law we needed to assess our personal damage and consider options as to how to get to Lima in time for our flight. I wanted to get off the main road and consider things elsewhere and so wheeled away a little. A random bloke trotted along side and told me that there was a bike mechanic a couple of blocks away and this seemed the best option in case we needed to leave the bike here. The geography of Abancay needs to be described here. Clinging to the side of a valley, the main roads follow a gradual slope down the side of the valley. The side roads are perpendicular to these and as a result are extremely steep and rough as buggery into the bargain. With Bertha having the front wheel nearly touching the engine and weighing best part of half a tonne, all was not well.
I managed to get Bertha up the road but the amount of force I had to put in with my arms was somewhat worrying. Clearly the forks were totally shot. There was no sign of a repair shop on this road and I came to an extremely unsteady standstill with the bike beginning to slip backwards with the front wheel locked. All I could do was leave the bike in gear and switch the engine off. As I wobbled, a guy on the other side of the junction waved at me and came over to my aid. I think it must have been pretty plain that I was having problems and he was sharp witted enough to see that the bike was buggered. After a bit of banter, it seemed to the best of my linguistic ability that he knew of a bike doctor.
Poor Hippy arrived on the scene having lumbered up this extremely steep hill in all her bike gear; it was quite warm and she was obviously also a bit shaky from the accident. I was stressed, she was stressed and I regret it but my mind was probably more on Berthaís plight than Hippyís.
I was not only stressed but also pee-ed off. Pat had disappeared up this road and I was trailing behind in full gear not knowing where he had gone to. In an unknown town, with no street map I felt that I was just trudging up a hill, with no idea where Pat was or where I was going. I understood that in the bikes condition that riding up steep potholed roads would be a nightmare, and Pat was clearly devoting all his efforts to staying upright, but I still felt abandoned.
Our saviour, who turned out to be called Hugh, was itching to take me away in his pickup to arrange things with his mate and so I rapidly blathered to Hips (Correction: he ignored me entirely and seemed to be arranging something, and he didnít enlighten me until after 10 minutes of standing there like a lemon I demanded to know what was going on) that we were off in search of this guy, propped the bike against a bit of wall and cleared off in short order.
William (these names are getting a bit spooky, eh webmaster?), the bike doctor, did not seem to be too well equipped, but did at least have a bit of space in his workshop where we could disassemble Bertha and leave her for a while if need be during our trip to Cuba. William gave off an aura of being an honest bodger, which was just what was needed in this case, and so it seemed the right place to hole up.
Frying pan. Fire. Us. Surely not.
Meanwhile, I tried to find a little shade and shed some of the bike gear. The police rolled up and I tried to explain in pigeon Spanish that we had had a little accident but no one else was involved and I was waiting for my husband to return. At this stage I had no desire to spend hours in a police station filling in forms and with the possible ramification of a prosecution for a lack of insurance, for doling out more money in bribes.
Hugh gave me a lift back to Bertha where we discovered Hips in conversation with a policeman. Inwardly I was in turmoil about where all this was leading. Hippy had clearly been playing down the situation to them in an attempt to stall them until I got back and reading the situation at hand I bluffed my way in and said that, yes there had been an accident and that we had reached a suitable agreement with the third party. When Pat turned up I prayed that if I concentrated hard enough I could telepathically fill him in on the lies I had told so that he would not drop me in it. As Pat mentioned the third party, I felt that my lies about us being the only vehicle would now lead us deeper in trouble. But either my Spanish was so bad that that didnít understand me of they chose to ignore it. After many stories that the police were corrupt here and constantly asking for bribes I was amazed that they left merely wishing us luck. There was no way of knowing why these guys had turned up: passing chance or tip off? I shrugged a bit and set about taking all the gear of the bike to make her a bit easier to handle ñ Hugh said heíd take Hippy and the stuff on the pickup. By acting totally nonchalant about the whole thing, the police were fobbed off commenting only that Berthaís headlight was on as they left.
The ride down to the workshop was interesting. Even lightened, it was still almost impossible to maintain a straight line. By locking the elbow on my left arm I managed to hold the bars straight but having to concentrate like this made other functions like changing gear quite a challenge. As for the brakes, I would rather not run back over the thoughts that were running through my mind. After the mile and a half I was much relieved to get the bike up on the stand and ready my self for bike fixing.
I watched with anguish through the rear window of the pick up, as Pat struggled with the bike. The front wheel, wobbled around about ten degrees off true. This would have been bad enough on tar but the road degenerated to potholed gravel and mud. It is strange how within seconds your priorities change; an hour ago the plan was to get to Nazca over 700km in day and pass over the Andes. Now making it half a km to the mechanics would be an achievement.
Techno bike bodge babble ñ please skip unless bodge junky.
In no time we had the wheel off, forks off, forks stripped and the hideous evidence of the crash in our hands. I really never have seen stanchions bent to such a degree. As the doctor pointed out, these stainless steel forks are like putty compared with the stiffer Japanese ones that are decent steel with chrome plating. I had little faith in the straightening potential. I frankly had more faith in that we would not be the first or the last people to crash a bike in Peru and bend the forks and they must have a little man who does, to fix them, because sure as hell they will not be able to afford to buy new ones. My only hope was that the softness of the metal would mean an equally squidgy return to straightness. They were whisked away on the back of Williamís bike as he pointed out that if Mr Gringo showed up at the straightenerís gaff, the bill would instantly triple. When they arrived back they were only a little off straight and I was frankly amazed. The real problem showed up on reassembly. It is in the nature of tubes to take on un-restorable kinks when bent beyond their elastic limit. Now the kinks were pronounced enough to make it impossible to even get the springs back down them ñ never mind the rest of the internals. One step forward 3 steps back. The next trip for the stanchions was down to the tornilador (lathe man) to have a bit of metal shaved out of the middle of the stanchions. I galled a bit at this as the result is to thin out and thus weaken what is obviously the weakest part of the stanchions. Needs must.
During the renovation of the stanchions, I busied myself with checking the rest of the bike. The main worry was the fact that the steering head ñ that bit where the steering turns just in front of the tank ñ had been bent back along with the forks and so even with the forks straightened they were not going to point down at the right angle at the front. With a much steeper rake angle it was going to be like riding a very skittish sports bike. Hitting it with a very large hammer did not seem to work. Compounded with all of the other problems, the notching of the steering head bearings was going to make the whole package something of a challenge to ride. William informed us that here was nowhere in Abancay or indeed anywhere outside of Lima that would be able to straighten the frame. It began to look like we were going to have to truck to Lima and sort everything out there.
Looking back, I do not know how I entertained myself for the five hours that we were there, but it seemed to fly by. There was a full menagerie to divert me: turkeys plus their chicks, two dogs, a spider monkey and a scurry of guinea pigs awaiting a skewer.
Would we be able to do this and still get there in time to catch flights to Cuba? Would we have to leave the bike in Abancay and then go through all this palaver when we got back?
I had gone through several options in my afternoon of thoughts.
Plan A
If the bike was unfixable, we leave it here and bus it to Lima and worry about it later.
Plan B
If unfixable stick it on a truck and take it to Lima.
Plan C
If bike was semi fix-able take it easy to Lima and finish sorting it after Cuba.
Everything was increasing in stress level. We had a very unhappy afternoon. I wanted to kick things (mostly myself) to get out the frustration of having been such a prat to cause the accident in the first place. Hippy was a tower of strength and made practical comments (and some pretty mad ones - OK, too!) about fixing the bike and other plans.
We put the bike together again and it was ready just before nightfall. Not a bad effort but there was one final problem that I had anticipated and inwardly hoped would not rear its head. The front disc was horrendously warped. Iíd figured this as I was riding to the workshop. Donít try this at home kids. We hammered the disc straight using a rubber mallet. By some kind of miracle it worked!
With a little assistance from me, pushing down, as they forced the forks up, we managed to squeeze in the not-quite-straight forks. I had chosen not to mention the fact that during the course of the afternoon my right waist had been stiffening and becoming more painful. I knew it was not anything serious and my whinging was unlikely to be met with sympathy. But as I leaned on the bike the brace it my wrist complained and I ignored it.
A test ride was deemed by one and all to be a necessity and it passed off uneventfully. I was totally gobsmacked as indeed I was when we discussed the bill with yer man. He kept telling us 100 dollars and we baulked and argued. After a while it became clear that in local parlance, dollars is the chosen name for local currency and so we had transformed Bertha from an un-rideable wreck to a wobbly form of her former self for 30 quid. Errr, remarkable.