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All last week I spent various amounts of time preparing my Mercedes Benz for a 600km trip (cross country) which takes around 10hrs of driving, due to the poorly maintained roads, and the two screaming brats, sorry, my adorable kids who occupy the back seat and demand bathroom breaks and so forth. Anyway the car is all ready to go saturday evening after a couple of hours wringing out a wiring problem causing all the lights to intermittenly fail. Not what you need.
I had also changed two tires, and put the newly balanced rims up front. The significance of this will become clear...
Onto the trip, about 300kms we make our first stop after about 3hrs on the road, so we averaged 100kph on two lane blacktop. Nice. After this things go downhill fast and while travelling at 120kph on the single lane road that makes up the interamerican highway I plough though a hole in the road that must be 6inches deep and a foot wide.. I slow a little and, think other than the obvious, no problem.. about five minutes later i can hear a destinct noise coming up from a rear tire, which is increasing in volume by the second. We stop when the noise is really a noise and needs attention, and I find to my horror that one of the treads has started to seperate from the steel belt, so after ten mins emptying the cavernous boot to get to the spare the wheel is changed out and we are off again. I am much more alert and looking for holes, and I tuck in behind a SUV and we move along at about 120kph up into the first real range of mountains. A couple of other cars tuck in behind me and we are all making great time.. Just as we go onto a bridge I hear a loud bang and realise that a blowout has happened on the other rear tyre, so I stop with caution on the bridge, then decided it would be bad to change a tire there, and moved off and had to resort to putting on the tire that had already been taken from the car, as we are miles, like 150ks back and 100k forward to anything like civilization. After putting the stuff back into the boot and suffering from sunburn for sitting on top of a mountain with no shirt changing tyres in the tropics we roll off at about 40kph, as the closer we get to a town, the less distance I will need to walk! Anyway, after a few minutes part of the tread breaks off and we get a nice flapping noise as this tread is whipping up and hitting the wheelarch with every revolution.. Then it breaks off and the same process starts again as another peice of the tread breaks loose until about 60ks from the town all the peices of tread are gone and I am riding on the steel bands, which, take it from me make driving really interesting even at low speeds, as every command from the steering wheel or brakes are amplified and the car all to easily breaks into a slide...
Anyway, after two hours of driving on these steel belts we reach the last town in Panama before costa rica and find a store open that sells tyre.. I bought two more new tyres for the trip home, and we went onto our destination, 15mins from the nearest paved road, 6000m up, with no electricity and internet and phone by satelite link.. Which you have to think is cool.
This house is in the middle of the rainforest and as far as you can see in any direction you see trees. There are no neighours. I am having a relaxing holiday now, and I am not looking forward to the trip home.
I have however, found a 10km road that is paved and has double yellows and while marker lines all the way around (it forms a loop and is paid for by a coffee company (coffee is made here and it makes columbian coffee look like the crap americans generally drink, that is, it is good, perhaps the best in the world) it is full of hairpins, blind corners, all on a mountainside with sheer drops or tree lined. Once I am back to the city I am saving up for weekend trip to go scratching this road. It looks like a Norfolk back road, only with a billiard table smooth surface and some pretty mean 1:1 hills..
Oh, and in the last two days I have seen not a single traffic cop. The bike is coming for the next trip, and I am trying to convince my wife to let me take the night bus home to pick it up tomorrow... She is still annoyed that I put it inside my house for the vacation!!!
I had also changed two tires, and put the newly balanced rims up front. The significance of this will become clear...
Onto the trip, about 300kms we make our first stop after about 3hrs on the road, so we averaged 100kph on two lane blacktop. Nice. After this things go downhill fast and while travelling at 120kph on the single lane road that makes up the interamerican highway I plough though a hole in the road that must be 6inches deep and a foot wide.. I slow a little and, think other than the obvious, no problem.. about five minutes later i can hear a destinct noise coming up from a rear tire, which is increasing in volume by the second. We stop when the noise is really a noise and needs attention, and I find to my horror that one of the treads has started to seperate from the steel belt, so after ten mins emptying the cavernous boot to get to the spare the wheel is changed out and we are off again. I am much more alert and looking for holes, and I tuck in behind a SUV and we move along at about 120kph up into the first real range of mountains. A couple of other cars tuck in behind me and we are all making great time.. Just as we go onto a bridge I hear a loud bang and realise that a blowout has happened on the other rear tyre, so I stop with caution on the bridge, then decided it would be bad to change a tire there, and moved off and had to resort to putting on the tire that had already been taken from the car, as we are miles, like 150ks back and 100k forward to anything like civilization. After putting the stuff back into the boot and suffering from sunburn for sitting on top of a mountain with no shirt changing tyres in the tropics we roll off at about 40kph, as the closer we get to a town, the less distance I will need to walk! Anyway, after a few minutes part of the tread breaks off and we get a nice flapping noise as this tread is whipping up and hitting the wheelarch with every revolution.. Then it breaks off and the same process starts again as another peice of the tread breaks loose until about 60ks from the town all the peices of tread are gone and I am riding on the steel bands, which, take it from me make driving really interesting even at low speeds, as every command from the steering wheel or brakes are amplified and the car all to easily breaks into a slide...
Anyway, after two hours of driving on these steel belts we reach the last town in Panama before costa rica and find a store open that sells tyre.. I bought two more new tyres for the trip home, and we went onto our destination, 15mins from the nearest paved road, 6000m up, with no electricity and internet and phone by satelite link.. Which you have to think is cool.
This house is in the middle of the rainforest and as far as you can see in any direction you see trees. There are no neighours. I am having a relaxing holiday now, and I am not looking forward to the trip home.
I have however, found a 10km road that is paved and has double yellows and while marker lines all the way around (it forms a loop and is paid for by a coffee company (coffee is made here and it makes columbian coffee look like the crap americans generally drink, that is, it is good, perhaps the best in the world) it is full of hairpins, blind corners, all on a mountainside with sheer drops or tree lined. Once I am back to the city I am saving up for weekend trip to go scratching this road. It looks like a Norfolk back road, only with a billiard table smooth surface and some pretty mean 1:1 hills..
Oh, and in the last two days I have seen not a single traffic cop. The bike is coming for the next trip, and I am trying to convince my wife to let me take the night bus home to pick it up tomorrow... She is still annoyed that I put it inside my house for the vacation!!!
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