The Ural, an update…
(Mike here for the first time in a few thousand kms..) Here in Lima, we have found ourselves at Moto Performance.
– a brand new, all singing, all-dancing motorbike hotspot. It’s here that I have found out that I have been using the wrong word for Motorbike for the last 10,000km. “Motobici” means nothing. It means “Motorbicycle” which is embarrassing, given how many times I have used the word every day, and in national newspapers and TV interviews. Many people we met before arriving warned us before arriving – “Get out of Lima as soon as possible, it’s a dump”. Did we listen to them? Or did we stay in there for longer than any other city in the Americas?
We have stayed here for a pit-stop. And not a Silverstone style pit stop. A spectacularly slow and contorted exercise for various reasons. Firstly, the tires. The Ural tires are an unsual 19 inches. Instead of shipping out a set of Duros from Seattle in advance (the sensible, but expensive solution), we spent a few days asking around town for the place to go. Finally, after a few garages, we ended up at Direlli tires (who sell Pirelli funnily enough).
These guys know their stuff, found me some 19” road tires, and gave me a T-shirt to boot. “Se necesita jockey para estos 100 caballos de fuerza” (“you need a jockey for these 100 horses of power”) Which I will wear with pride (despite the Ural only having a perfectly capable 40, it’s not a race-bike after all) . After an afternoon at a Taller Mecanico in the La Molina (the kind of place the pizza-delivery boys get their work done) – we changed the spark plugs, cleaned the carbs, and the air filter, and the oil (including the 80/90 transmission oil at the back – though he over filled it and spent a happy half hour sucking it out with a short tube, spitting it out into the street and wretching like a cat with a fur-ball). We left him spluttering, on a spluttering bike and came back immediately to have him attach the gas hose to the carburettor. Not an authorised Ural dealer…
Back on the main drag of mechanics in Surco, on Av. Republica de Panama, we met Ricardo, a lofty fella of German (and British) descent, at his shop Moto Performance. He not only took us under his wing linguistically (with the clarification of the word Motobici) , but had a chat with boys in the workshop who agreed to work on our bike free of charge. Amazing. We (they!) changed all the tires, balanced the carbs, and cleaned the bike so well you can now cook an egg on the valve-cover and eat your dinner off it. Which may be necessary when we break down in the Atacama.
We also bumped into a Venezuelan called Carlos, who drove south to Ushuaia in winter with his girlfriend, and came back without her, again proof that long motorcycle journeys make or break relationships. After chatting to him for a while, we decided to change our route. He reliably informed us (having driven both routes) that the Central route (Bolivia and Northern Argentina) is better than the Western route. Northern Chile, despite being an impressively beautiful expanse of the planet, is still a desert. A bit like northern Peru, but with even less in it. Bolivia is an entirely separate culture, and Northern Argentinian vineyards have more to offer the alcoholic traveller than the Atacama. So, like that, the next 7,000km have changed…
And we met with a retired Canadian military engineer, Wallace, who has been driving South from Edmonton in Canada – covering nearly 30,000km so far (with a few more detours than us). He got as far as Ica, a few hours south of here, and parked his bike in a hotel car-park overnight. The next morning, he found that it had been dragged, in gear, around 9 feet across the carpark. The transmission, the gears, the sidecar alignment etc, are all shot, and he has begun the lengthy process of taking the hotel to court over the damage of his bike. He (seemed!) delighted to get his hands dirty on a working Ural, and he accurately balanced the carbs, and checked the timing, and the sidecar alignment. He has also very kindly, supplied me with a new oil filter.
I also thought it may be time to pick up a bike jacket too. Not only are we heading into the cold, but Ricardo was shocked that I hadn’t been wearing any protection so far, and pointed me in the direction of a jacket that didn’t look like I was planning to drive a Kawasaki Ninja for the rest of the journey.
December 16th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Hello Mike and Alanna!
It’s deep winter here in Alaska and I am doing some armchair Uraling, catching up on the travel blogs and forums.
You are making great progress in your southerly travels. I am glad to see that you are spending much time off the road to explore and get acquainted with the peoples and landscape, well done!
You are taking good care of the Ural and it seems it is taking good care of you. How many miles or kilometers now? Any surprise breakage that I missed? Someday Michael, you will have to tell me how you fixed the splines of the rear drive. Remember way back to that Utah desert? It seems so long ago.
Your travels have encouraged me to plan for a longer journey. I am going through the bike this winter, checking everything and preparing for next summer. I don’t know yet if I will follow you south, or if I will head across Canada to Newfoundland, or both, hahaha!
Have you wondered what life will be once you complete this journey? Will you ever be able to settle in one spot? Will your eyes always be looking down the road, to the next horizon?
I am following along with great interest.
Your friend,
Lester
December 20th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Hello Lester!
And thanks so much for comment on the site! We are indeed doing more “people tourism” than “places tourism”. The people here in Peru have been fabulous, and we have spent an unexpected amount of time in Lima trying to interview presidenttial candidate Keiko Fujimori.
We’re on 25,000km, and the bike has behaved impeccably. In the whole journey, three things of note (which I have to write up in more detail at some point – but Alanna’s writing the blog most of the time, while I’m handling the huge amount of data that we’re collecting on the cameras). But I’ll write them here to get things started. Maybe I’ll post them separately after this.
Surprise Breakages for Lester:
Firstly the spline on the back wheel shattered in the Alvord desert in Oregon. I think it was defective, but at the same time I temporarily lent the bike to a fella who lent us his land-sail (like a windsurfer, but with three wheels) He took his wife round in a circle, came back to the start, and when he stopped he let the clutch out too quickly. The spline just went, and after some fannying about (the correct British term for not knowing what the hell had just happened) – I just changed the wheel around, and drove to Salt Lake City without a spare wheel! We finally got a replacement in Santa Clara with Ski Jablonski – the owner of Triquest motors – the biggest Ural dealer in the US. Ski serviced the bike superbly well – and helped with my weird request of building a tripod case at the back of the sidecar. He also put an extra side light on the car – because we were not clear enough at night time. After So.Cal (as they say down in Southern California) we headed for San Diego, where we kitted the bike out with Mace and some extra reflective strips in an attempt to prepare ourselves for Mexico. We avoided crossing into mexico for a while – so headed along the border to cross down at Nogales.
Our second problem was just outside of Tucson, near the town of Yuma. We were heading East at night time – just after deciding not to spend the night in Yuma. Yuma protested. It felt like a puncture, I stopped at the side of the road, and saw that the structure of the wheel had given up. Two of the spokes had snapped, and the tension had gone, such that again the only solution was to fit the spare wheel. By strange coincidence, we were only a couple of hours from a Ural dealer in Sierra Vista – where we met an elderly but wonderful mechanic Red Hartman. Who gave me his only spare wheel, that sat atop a brand new red Ural Tourist. We also did a service – timed the carbs, checked the spokes on the other wheels, and checked the alignment of the car.
Our final surprise was a puncture, again in the dark, just through the border of El Salvador. Aside from the half hour of wrestling with the Carter key (my fault for bending it out of shape right at the beginning). Many people had warned us of the crazy folk in El Salvador who would most likely rob us and kill us in the dark. In 15 mins, no less than 3 cars had stopped to ask if we were OK, and if they could help. We got the spare wheel on, and got to our destination without any difficulty. I took the tire to a Llanteria (tire shop) the next day, and for $2 they removed a metal staple that had caused the puncture and repaired the hole (which has lasted since Oaxaca).
So that’s really it for problems (although I don’t think the last one counts) So far. Even though we still have 8,000 kms to go, I’m feeling incredibly confident about the bike, it’s just such a solid and “dependable friend” (as my friend Austin said in his song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toDc7jVd5jg )
Life after the journey will be so different, I’m trying hard not to think about it too much. But everything about it has been unforgettable, and so worth the time out and the money we have spent so far. You’ll have a blast. Though start learning Spanish now – as we improve it’s making a huge difference to our journey.
Keep on planning, it’s half the journey! So glad you’re following our updates, always good to hear someone’s reading.
All the best,
mike
December 27th, 2009 at 9:56 am
Hello my dear friends,
i hope u both had a happy Merry Christmas, on the road maybe, but happy….Thanks for your words Mike and very pleased for that. Big hug for you…hope we see each other again. Dont get lost….Chau amigos. Buen viaje siempre.