1-5-09 Tulum

We met up with another motorcyclist who had been staying at our campground for 2 weeks.  "Wow, you must really like this place" I noted.  "Well, yeah, I do, but I can't really leave either, got my wallet stolen and am still waiting to get my new credit cards" Charlie said.

Charlie had left from Washington DC seveal months ago and was vectoring towards Alaska when a lady in an SUV pulled out in front of him.  He hit the SUV doing about 50 mph and fared well, but the bike did not.  Luckily, he was able to find a duplicate of his bike nearby in Michigan, where the accident occured and combined custom parts from his old, broken bike with the new one to make the bike he now has.

The 'new' bike is held together with various fasteners-duct tape, zip ties, wire and epoxy but seems to run well most of the time.  He had to replace 3 clutches not long ago after finding out that the new flywheel was not properly aligned.  To fix this, he had his old motor, which was still in decent shape, shipped down to Mexico where he swapped it out.

The bike is the R100GS Paris Dakar, two generations older than mine and is certainly proven for this type of travel. It's got no computer to go in the fritz and trades-in pefromance for roadside fixability.

Charlie, Luis and I decided to head down to Punta Allen, a small fishing village on a spit to the south of Tulum 50 km in search of cheap lobster tails.  The ride was great, a rough dirt road checkered with huge potholes.  There were some cars on it as well, all going slow and trying to dodge the holes but we managed to go quite a bit faster by skipping over the holes and riding on the edge of the road with our shoulders and handguards brushing palm leaves, occasionally having to duck under a low-lying branch.

Charlie, the old timer at 47, clearly out-rode me on his older BMW, I couldn't catch him.  He gave me some good pointers on my riding technique which helped. Basically, by going a little faster you can glide over the potholes quite well. Upon reaching a particularly wide hole, a little crack of the throttle will lift you over it, no problem.

We had a slew of mechanical problems on the ride.  Luis noticed that one of his crucial frame bolts was missing and didn't have a spare.  Luckily, Charlie, who's bike has almost as much hardware as my dad's workbench, had a spare bolt and I had a nut that fit.

Upon installing the bolt we found that it was too long and rubbed on the chain so we shimmed it with some washers and were on our way again.

At the next stop Luis found that his license plate, which hangs off his back fender, had been bent forwards and his rear wheel had rubbed quite a bit of the paint off it.

This has happened numerous times to him and we've always assumed somebody was vandalizing his bike which I justified by saying, "Well, you are Canadian..."  Though this time we realized that when a large bump was hit and the rear suspension was compressed, the back tire would rise up and catch the license plate, bending it forward.

Luis then lost the bolt that fastened his handguard onto the handlebar, we didn't have any replacements, but it wasn't critical.  He also did further damage to his shift lever which was initially cracked during a crash in Washington on an icy street earlier this trip.

Charlie only kicked off one of his carburetors when mounting the bike.  Some hose clamps and duct tape later he was back on the road.

Punta Allen ended up having no lobsters for us this day, but we did find a great little coffee stand where a guy heats espresso with a blow torch, ingenious!