That's it, I'm blowing this popsicle stand

A couple days in Cancun...ya I'd sleep too

12/8/16

Cancun, Mex.

10.3 kilometers ridden.

There isn't anything quite like five hours of sleep after a night of adrenaline fueled night riding. Not from some fun track but cause someone decided to hit your parked motorcycle...

I got woken up because I was a bit late for getting ready to make practice. It was a disorienting wake up where the world seemed to be nothing by streaks of bright light blurring my vision and drunk like stagger to answer the knocks on the door of the room I was staying in.

I got gear prepared and packed in just a few moments once I was able to jab contacts into my sleep-crusted eyes and find focus outside the few clear inches in front of my face. While I prepared and got out to the corner with my host to grab a cab, the events of the last 24 hours still felt surreal. The only thing to remind the nightmare was real was the sight of my damaged bike in the middle of the living room as I went by.

The cab ride to the practice venue was simple enough and I got to see a little more of Cancun as we zipped by. Practice was held in a city park under a large sunshade covering  a cluster of basketball courts being used by many varied groups of people.  While we had gotten there essentially on time, others weren't and myself and a few of the skaters opted to wait around a bit to see if others showed. Only one more came in the almost thirty minutes that we waited so we got started at close to 10 am. The warm temps and high humidity meant I was sweating long before we even began our warm up but thankfully the shade and movement breeze once we got on skates was able to keep me from being overly hot.  Practice went well and all the skaters seemed to enjoy what we were doing and appeared to be learning lots.

Following practice we got a ride back to the apartment in one of the skaters bright yellow VW bugs. It was a blast and really made me feel like I was truly in Mexico as we buzzed in and out of traffic in the little yellow beast.

It was time for me to get the inevitable out of the way and go see what the insurance companies shop said about the bike.

It was only a few kilometers to the shop but that didn't make me feel any better about the place when I arrived. It looked like a chop shop for motorcycles with half deconstructed bikes strewn about the small space beside the street that would have been the lawn.  The young guys in the shop working on the bikes were working in near darkness with lit cigarettes hanging from their mouths and one even had a claw hammer in his hands as he walked back to a bike I could only see the rear wheel off and began banging on something. The guy in charge did nothing to assuage my fears when he immediately began talking down to me like I was an idiot and explaining "how the Mexican repair system worked". Handing over my keys to him so he could do an assessment ride was terrifying. When he came back it was the same story of talking down to me and telling me what they would be doing to the bike. I finally had to put an end to it and began to tell him what was wrong and what parts he would need to use to properly repair the bike.  That finally stopped the condescending attitude but didn't do anything to make the process smoother.  Final verdict was that it would be a week for him to get a response from the insurance company, another week to wait for parts, and week to complete the repairs. I got photos of the completed insurance form that he said he would need to keep and rode back to the apartment.

I spent the rest of the day just getting by with a food run, calls to the insurance company, and generally fretting. It all went well enough but I was a bundle of nerves about waiting almost three weeks for the bike to be ship shape and my fight with the insurance company was already beginning.

The next few days were spent leading practices and generally just trying to deal with the insurance company. Now that I had the document of what was wrong from the crash, I went ahead and repaired as much of it as I could. I straightened the forks, bent the rack back into place, and fixed the hand controls and bark busters. It took me less than an hour to do what the shop said would take three weeks for them to accomplish, and no claw hammers were involved. While I will need to replace the steering head bearings to fully repair the bike, it is more than enough to be ready to move on.

12/10/16

Cancun, Mex to Chetumal, Mex

392.6 kilometers ridden.

Woke up and prepared the bike to leave. I am tired of waiting on the insurance and won't let waiting for a pay out to hold up the trip for me. I got out of town around noon and just made the road slog south to the town closest to the boarder. The ride was pretty as it went along the coast and was a nice two lane affair.

My stomach seemed to have turned from my last night in Cancun's dinner. I tried to hold out between towns but at one point simply couldn't hold it in. There had been no cars either way for the prior thirty minutes so I opted to wing it and just use the thick bushes off the side of the road.  When I got there it looked to be poison ivy spread among the thick bushes so I just squat down with my ass to the bushes. As soon as I got settled a parade of cars coming south behind me came by driving slow, honking horns, and waving at me squat beside the road.  Travel is all about timing....

I got to Chetumal and checked into the Casa Blanca hotel. While unloading I had a nice chat with a guy who had driven most of south America. He had some good advice for me about roads to take and places to stop. I got all settled into the room and then walked a few blocks to the Ocean where I had a decent contemporary meal of chicken cordon blue while watching the waves crash upon the beech. I even splurged with a dessert.

I walked back to the hotel and worked on file transfers and video uploads till way too late. While there was no big fanfare it would be my last night in Mexico, tomorrow I would enter Belize and begin the Central American portion of my odyssey.