Broken racks and frames

Riding threw Mexico can be hard on a bike. We must of went over 10 000 " topez " - speed bumps -
and that means the bikes get a beating, especially when your riding with climbing gear!
Once we got to Guatemala ( with no more climbing gear since I brought it down to Chile on my visit ), the roads turned to dirt, mud and crater size hole. But Fun!! Until we noticed this...
" Cal, your bike seems low" I tell him, "Ya", at first we didn't noticed, but a screw had broken off where it holds onto the frame of the bike.
The other day we looked at it more closely and saw the frame had cracked in 2 place, also on the rack.
~ Cal's luggage rack had been bent a little for a while and one day burnt a hole in his sleeping bag.~ smelled like burnt chicken so threw it out!
In Antigua, we brought it to a welder to spark it up. Spotted his shop while being lost riding around in the city. (very confusing with all the cobble streets and same looking buildings.) Pulled in and asked the guy, Cal gets to work, "possible' repapar la moto, agui broken! " -Si Si - the guy says. So we start taking our bikes apart for major work. We spent 3 hours
chatting away polishing our spanish. They had a blast. " donde va? " one guy asks ... Sur America! Patagonia!! "haaaaaaa ~ hooooo, mucho mucho lejos " (very very far)..." little ways ya"
We filled in their morning with entertainment. They did a great job on the bikes. Straighten the racks, fixed the frames, put it all back together on the bikes. All for a cost of 200 Quetzales ~ $27 us. We were happy, the bikes were happy, greasy hand shakes and off we go......
NOW ! lets see how long the last, ready for more dirt roads...

Little Rain

We've been driving eight and half months now ( approx 17 ooo kms since Jasper Alberta) and some miraculous way we've been able to avoid the rain. In all that time we have faced five days of forgiving rain. Today was different. We left Panajachel at our usual crack of noon start after a bowl of chicken soup and rode our bikes south towards Antigua. The first hour were beautiful with lush green mountains overlooking a big blue/greenish lake with waterfalls running along the side of the road. That ended when we got on the main highway that leads you towards Guatemala city. We wanted to take a back road because those are always shorter and better scenery anyways but locals warned us of the few gangs and Bandidos in the area and taking that road might be risky.

Wanting to be safe we opted for the longer, less scenic, more busy highway than the dangerous but beautiful dirt road. Well after riding about an hour of roads under construction and millions of buses and trucks trying to drive as fast as they can, (not to miss I came inches of running over a lady and her baby when she decided to run across the street at the wrong time! Then my chain popped off my bike. I pulled over and tried to fix it. Alain was ahead of me and didn't see that I was pulling over so I figured he'd realize after a few minutes of not seeing me in his rearview mirror. And so they we were on the side of the highway lifting my bike up on one side trying to pope the chain back on and Al looks at the sky and says....You see that big black sky ....It's coming for us......I thought to myself we better get this fix, get back on the road and ride t'ill we see shelter cause it's gonna come down hard. And so it did. Luckily we were able to ride quite a long time before it did but we were shy an hour of Antigua and Alain had a feeling it was about to explode so he pulled over under a bridge and we sat there and experienced a full on tropical rainstorm in monsoon season in guatemala. We saw a mechanic type shop a few feet away so I rolled my bike under the roof and alain left his where it was and we both took cover in the Local mechanic's shop. It lasted about a good hour and a half. Not only rain but hail came down as well. We watched our bikes become part of a river that started to flow faster and faster beneath them. I was getting worried for a bit but then I realized we could be in far worse shape. We weren't the ones getting medical attention from the two ambulance trucks that went by. We're actually styling in the rain. Somehow we always seem to escape the heavy downpoors. Lets see how long it lasts....