REPLACING bike motor guts while on the road...
Start - Bago
Finish - Pyay Distance - 310km Words - Johnny Bang |
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We wake up clean, in separate rooms, in comfortable beds (clean sheets and no bedbugs or mosquitoes). It feels weird. Let me explain the predicament of our current luxury digs - Myanmar is a country that a lot of world travelers have had to avoid in the past due to the strict communist government. In fact my internet research leads me to believe we are some of the few outsiders that have traversed it from Thailand to India by motorcycle. Obtaining visas has been very difficult and costly and the conditions are we have had to hire a tour guide, a vehicle (Mitsubishi Pajero), a mechanic (for the Pajero not us) and a government representative to keep an eye on us (he pops out the sunroof of Pajero intermittently taking photos – I assume to show the government we are where we said we would be). The cost of all this is around 8,000AUD which we have split. Expensive but cheaper than freight and a rare privilege. That amount doesn’t include the countless hours of emails and organization. Anyway, it has its upsides (read clean beds above).
To be honest I would rather be sleeping in a field but I tell myself to enjoy the luxury of a cheap hotel because I know it won’t last. I have had 2 showers in as many days. I haven’t been this clean since Adelaide. Also have I mentioned that the support vehicle carries our bags? It feels like cheating. I feel like a fraud. I wonder - do all the tossers that overland on big dollar, big capacity bikes with support teams feel this kind of shame? I doubt it, because the thing about tossers is they never know they are tossers. I have never met a tosser that knows he is a tosser. Hang on maybe that means I’m a tosser and I don’t know it. Snap. Anyway, I remind myself again the arrangements are only temporary and we will be proper adventurers again soon, but it still feels wrong. Or maybe this is all just an emotional imbalance from too many showers.
A cruisy 300 km to cover today. Admire scenery, pass truck, wave at family on scooter, truck, wave, smile, admire breathtaking scenery, dodge truck, repeat. Dan does the usual disappearing act into the distance, I find my own pace and enjoy the ride.
At around lunch time Shaun and I pass Dan on the outskirts of a small village. He is stressing because he has lost his Gopro. I know there is no chance of getting it back – it’s not like we are going to turn around and find it on the road somewhere, so we just ride on. Well, Dan swears heaps and turns off his helmet comms; and Shaun and I ride on.
It’s a hard day on our equipment - there are a lot of irrigation channels today and every 200m or so there is a big bump in the road. The kind of bump if you accelerate into it you can get both wheels of the ground (about as high as you trust your pannier bag set-up). We are all having fun speeding up, slowing down and passing each other with thumbs up and hoots over the intercom. I am watching Shaun speed up behind me. He is riding one handed taking photos and I watch his little DSLR camera bounces past me. I count 4 bounces at about 60km/hr on the tarmac and my eyes follow it into the scrub (knowing this will be an important thing to remember). We stop and about 10minutes of trundling through the bush Shaun emerges with the little camera dinted but intact – no cracked lenses – camera working fine - all our photos there. Our mighty road god has decided to taketh thy goprop but spareth DSLR camera.
Just before we enter Pyay we get a view of the mighty Ayeyarwady River, which we have been travelling near all day. We stop for some photos and run into some local boys on scooters – probably 12-16 years old and most sporting some serious tattoos. Its weird but cool seeing tattoos on kids so young - I think maybe tattoos are a safer bet when they are part of your culture (and less likely to be regretted compared to say, a barbed wire bicep tattoo in the 90’s).
It was an easy 300km. These are easy days. I feel like our adventure skills have been underestimated by our friendly guides, but as the itinerary is out of my hands so I resolve to try to relax and make the most of the lessened workload.
We pull into our hotel around lunch time and have time to enjoy a surprisingly good soup. It must be chicken soup because it has chicken feet bobbing around in it.
The town is pretty big so we take the opportunity to venture out in courtesy of the Pajero for some maintenance items. Shaun looks for a new CDI to see if it fixes all the electricity falling out of the Sherpa every time it rains. I use the opportunity to remove a cracked engine mount and have it repaired on probably the coolest welding shop ever – it was just 2 entrepreneurial young fellas on a street corner with a big gas bottle. They did an awesome job. This industrial estate is so different from home – here it is just streets and streets of normal houses but the ground floor people are doing dirty industry (rebuilding differentials, welding, dyeing clothes etc…). Town Planning at its most organic. Function over fashion. I like it. It smells bad though, but maybe I’m only noticing because I have had like, 2 showers in as many days.
I spend the afternoon pulling out TTR guts and replacing the cam chain and tensioner. Dan helps from a distance in a Luke Skywaker - Yoda kind of relationship, answering in riddles and other questions when I ask for advice (I bought a spare cam chan from home because it was getting a bit noisy and the bike I bought had unknown km’s). After allocating 2 hours for the work in the hotel courtyard we ended up working late into the night. Probably because these Myanmar beer cans are $1. I don’t know how many I have had, but I don’t have much change from $20…
The hotel is nice. It’s more like a resort. Unfortunately for the amenity of all we have totally claimed the prime courtyard to undertake unsightly bike maintenance. The hotel is so nice I feel out of place again - probably because I am dropping oil onto a manicured courtyard. I am trying to minimize oil drop but I know I am making a mess. We have a viewing gallery in no time. At sundown a boss comes out (I know he is a boss because of the body language). He leaves and comes back and I’m expecting to get evicted until he starts plugging in some outdoor lights so we can continue working. I really like Myanmar and its friendly people. I will bring the family back here.
While Dan and I work on the bike Shaun saunters around and eventually pretends he has to go to his room to charge things while we have electricity. I imagine following him and catching him red-handed getting a guacamole face scrub and oil massage.
It’s almost midnight before we finish and begrudgingly retire to more luxury accommodation, but not before Dan quietly confesses to finding his Gopro – it was in his bag all along. I retire having ridden a dusty 300km and covered in oil from bike maintenance. I considered a shower but 2 in a single day seems excessive…
We wake up clean, in separate rooms, in comfortable beds (clean sheets and no bedbugs or mosquitoes). It feels weird. Let me explain the predicament of our current luxury digs - Myanmar is a country that a lot of world travelers have had to avoid in the past due to the strict communist government. In fact my internet research leads me to believe we are some of the few outsiders that have traversed it from Thailand to India by motorcycle. Obtaining visas has been very difficult and costly and the conditions are we have had to hire a tour guide, a vehicle (Mitsubishi Pajero), a mechanic (for the Pajero not us) and a government representative to keep an eye on us (he pops out the sunroof of Pajero intermittently taking photos – I assume to show the government we are where we said we would be). The cost of all this is around 8,000AUD which we have split. Expensive but cheaper than freight and a rare privilege. That amount doesn’t include the countless hours of emails and organization. Anyway, it has its upsides (read clean beds above).
To be honest I would rather be sleeping in a field but I tell myself to enjoy the luxury of a cheap hotel because I know it won’t last. I have had 2 showers in as many days. I haven’t been this clean since Adelaide. Also have I mentioned that the support vehicle carries our bags? It feels like cheating. I feel like a fraud. I wonder - do all the tossers that overland on big dollar, big capacity bikes with support teams feel this kind of shame? I doubt it, because the thing about tossers is they never know they are tossers. I have never met a tosser that knows he is a tosser. Hang on maybe that means I’m a tosser and I don’t know it. Snap. Anyway, I remind myself again the arrangements are only temporary and we will be proper adventurers again soon, but it still feels wrong. Or maybe this is all just an emotional imbalance from too many showers.
A cruisy 300 km to cover today. Admire scenery, pass truck, wave at family on scooter, truck, wave, smile, admire breathtaking scenery, dodge truck, repeat. Dan does the usual disappearing act into the distance, I find my own pace and enjoy the ride.
At around lunch time Shaun and I pass Dan on the outskirts of a small village. He is stressing because he has lost his Gopro. I know there is no chance of getting it back – it’s not like we are going to turn around and find it on the road somewhere, so we just ride on. Well, Dan swears heaps and turns off his helmet comms; and Shaun and I ride on.
It’s a hard day on our equipment - there are a lot of irrigation channels today and every 200m or so there is a big bump in the road. The kind of bump if you accelerate into it you can get both wheels of the ground (about as high as you trust your pannier bag set-up). We are all having fun speeding up, slowing down and passing each other with thumbs up and hoots over the intercom. I am watching Shaun speed up behind me. He is riding one handed taking photos and I watch his little DSLR camera bounces past me. I count 4 bounces at about 60km/hr on the tarmac and my eyes follow it into the scrub (knowing this will be an important thing to remember). We stop and about 10minutes of trundling through the bush Shaun emerges with the little camera dinted but intact – no cracked lenses – camera working fine - all our photos there. Our mighty road god has decided to taketh thy goprop but spareth DSLR camera.
Just before we enter Pyay we get a view of the mighty Ayeyarwady River, which we have been travelling near all day. We stop for some photos and run into some local boys on scooters – probably 12-16 years old and most sporting some serious tattoos. Its weird but cool seeing tattoos on kids so young - I think maybe tattoos are a safer bet when they are part of your culture (and less likely to be regretted compared to say, a barbed wire bicep tattoo in the 90’s).
It was an easy 300km. These are easy days. I feel like our adventure skills have been underestimated by our friendly guides, but as the itinerary is out of my hands so I resolve to try to relax and make the most of the lessened workload.
We pull into our hotel around lunch time and have time to enjoy a surprisingly good soup. It must be chicken soup because it has chicken feet bobbing around in it.
The town is pretty big so we take the opportunity to venture out in courtesy of the Pajero for some maintenance items. Shaun looks for a new CDI to see if it fixes all the electricity falling out of the Sherpa every time it rains. I use the opportunity to remove a cracked engine mount and have it repaired on probably the coolest welding shop ever – it was just 2 entrepreneurial young fellas on a street corner with a big gas bottle. They did an awesome job. This industrial estate is so different from home – here it is just streets and streets of normal houses but the ground floor people are doing dirty industry (rebuilding differentials, welding, dyeing clothes etc…). Town Planning at its most organic. Function over fashion. I like it. It smells bad though, but maybe I’m only noticing because I have had like, 2 showers in as many days.
I spend the afternoon pulling out TTR guts and replacing the cam chain and tensioner. Dan helps from a distance in a Luke Skywaker - Yoda kind of relationship, answering in riddles and other questions when I ask for advice (I bought a spare cam chan from home because it was getting a bit noisy and the bike I bought had unknown km’s). After allocating 2 hours for the work in the hotel courtyard we ended up working late into the night. Probably because these Myanmar beer cans are $1. I don’t know how many I have had, but I don’t have much change from $20…
The hotel is nice. It’s more like a resort. Unfortunately for the amenity of all we have totally claimed the prime courtyard to undertake unsightly bike maintenance. The hotel is so nice I feel out of place again - probably because I am dropping oil onto a manicured courtyard. I am trying to minimize oil drop but I know I am making a mess. We have a viewing gallery in no time. At sundown a boss comes out (I know he is a boss because of the body language). He leaves and comes back and I’m expecting to get evicted until he starts plugging in some outdoor lights so we can continue working. I really like Myanmar and its friendly people. I will bring the family back here.
While Dan and I work on the bike Shaun saunters around and eventually pretends he has to go to his room to charge things while we have electricity. I imagine following him and catching him red-handed getting a guacamole face scrub and oil massage.
It’s almost midnight before we finish and begrudgingly retire to more luxury accommodation, but not before Dan quietly confesses to finding his Gopro – it was in his bag all along. I retire having ridden a dusty 300km and covered in oil from bike maintenance. I considered a shower but 2 in a single day seems excessive…
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