Asheville to Argentina

We got a good, early start on Friday. The road was paved all the way from Abancay to Cuzco and we were anticipating about a two and half hour ride into town. We´d found a hostel in the guidebook that we were aiming for and I had made a little map of the center of town to help us navigate. Spirits were high as we both were looking forward to a few days off in a nice colonial town after having ridden for two weeks straight on some really challenging roads.

Pulling out of the gas station with a light rain falling, I was in the lead and Shannon was about fifty yards behind. Ahead was a van full of volunteer firemen slowly following a runner with a number pined to his back. We were rolling to Mecca and I had no patience for them. I passed with simple shifting of my weight to turn the bike out and back into my lane. With oncoming traffic, Shannon was caught behind the van as I throttled up the hill. He´s usually faster than me, so when after a few miles he hadn´t zoomed passed, I pulled over to wait. I gave him about ten minutes and then turned around and headed back down the hill expecting to see him at some turn I´d missed, helmet off, wearing in its place his patient look of indulgence. Instead, as I rounded a corner there was crowd in the street. The volunteer fire department van was pulled over and there was an ambulance in the road. A green station wagon taxi was parked diagonally in the wrong lane. I could see Shannons bike upright in the road. A good sign. He was in the back of the ambulance and there were people in red and white sweatsuits buzzing around. A bad sign.

I don´t clearly remember what happened next, but from that point through the next two days it was pure chaos.

Shannon had been riding behind me as I passed the Fire Department van. I threaded back into my lane between an oncoming car and the red VFD van without a thought, but for some reason, the oncoming car didn´t make the left hand curve. It skidded into the right side of Shannons lane. Shannon swerved to miss it, but it was so far over that it hit him head on. He flew over the hood like Superman, landing in the street still on the right of the double yellow line.

The taxi that hit him.

We wear a lot of protective gear every time we get on the bikes; good helmet, a jacket with shoulder, elbow and back protection, pants with knee and hip pads, boots similar to ski boots and heavy gloves. Without all of this gear things could have been really bad. Even with all of it Shannon had a lot of pain in his right hip where he´d made contact after his brief flight, but all the EMS type people were standing around talking and trying to decide what to do next – and the cops wern´t much better. Shannon sat in the back of the ambulance waiting in pain.

He needed to go to the hospital – NOW, we needed a police report and we needed to get his bike on a truck and into safe storage for a few days. All of this seemed to be outside the understanding of the ten or fifteen professionals on the scene. I took some quick pictures of the taxis license plate and the damage to the car and the bike, as well as the people on site. If things started to unravel later I wanted as much documentation as possible.

While I was doing this, a plan started to emerge from the fog of foreign language, stress and inaction. The guy that seemed to be the head cop got in his truck and drove off, leaving a brown Barney Fife to wrap things up. I was told by the VFD in red sweats to park my bike at a gas station and follow Barney to the police station on Shannons bike. Their thinking was that Shannons bike would be safer at the police station…. I took a quick look and the front tire was flat, the handlebars were so far forward as to almost be inverted and who knows what else was broken after a head on. No way could or should this be ridden back to town. I said I´d ride it the hundred yards to the gas station and park it. We could come back for it later. I got on it and surprisingly, it started. A little throttle and I let out the clutch a bit. The engine revved and surged, the back tire spun and the front stayed put, turning the bike in a circle and it fell on its side, then died. We picked it up and pushed it down the hill to park it.

As I walked out of the dirt lot of the gas station the crowd up the hill was breaking up. Barney was in the passenger seat of a taxi yelling at me to run and get on my bike to follow him. I followed the taxi through town and we ended up at the hospital. I´m not sure why.

I checked on Shannon and they had him on stretcher in a room with about 12 beds. He said he wasn´t in too much pain so that was good. I assumed he was in good hands now, but yall know what they say about assumptions…

From here, things got downright Byzantine. I got in the police truck with the two cops. We went to the site of the accident and they wrote down the license plate number of Shannons bike. We all got back into the truck and went back to the hospital. The head cop then took off. Barney and I stood around for a while more. I was told to pick up Shannons gear and take it somewhere else. Where? I´m on a motorcycle and we´ve got no place to call home, so I stand around with a trash bag full of  riding pants and jacket with huge boots in hand.

After a while more, Barney tels me we´re going to the police station and I need to follow on the bike. What do I follow? The taxi. Yes, that taxi, with Barney Fife riding shotgun. We go the police station and I sit around downstairs for while. They call me upstairs, so I go up there and wait some more. After about a half an hour Barney tells me his part of the show is over and he hands me over to Fish.

Abe Bagoda then tells me to wait in this paint peeling, piss stinking second floor office while he and Sr. Taxi go down stairs. I watch incredulous as they get into a taxi and drive off.

I wait. And wait. I go across the street and have a cup of tea. I come back and wait some more.

Three went out, but four return. They went by taxi, four hours after the accident, to have Sr. Taxi´s blood alcohol tested.

Now that we´re all at the police station I nearly get into a fight with Abe “Fish” Bogoda. He wants proof of medical insurance. Its obviously the taxi´s fault, and its his responsibility to pay for EVERYTHING as far I´m concerned and I tell everyone so in my best and loudest Spanish. But things just escalate so I say OK, get me on the internet and I´ll print out Shannons proof of international insurance, but we aren´t paying for anything.

There’s some fast Spanish chatter and plans change. Now we were all going in Sr. Taxi´s car, without results of his blood alcohol test, back to the hospital to have Shannons blood tested too.

We get to the hospital and Shannon is still on the stretcher and all they´ve done for him is insert a port into his arm and take some X-rays. No meds, nothing. Number Four sticks the head of a syringe into Shannons arm and lets the blood run free out the back into an open bottle, for sterile testing at a later date I assume. I tell Shannon I´ll be back when we´re done and I´ll bring him some food then.

Our Merry Band heads back to the police station in Sr. Taxi´s taxi. But first we swing by Number Fours house and he jumps out.  Then, in the middle of a town I know nothing about, they tell me to jump out of the car. Theres an internet house and I can get my things printed there and catch a taxi back to the station later.  And they´re serious. I say “No!, theres an internet place across the street from the police station. I´ll do it there” They argue some but I don´t move.

Back at the station, Fish tells Sr. Taxi to escort me to the internet place and then to help me get Shannons bike somewhere safe. He´ll be back at 5 and we should meet him with the papers then.

As soon as we hit the pavement and are alone, Sr. Taxi starts whispering to me about how poor he is and how if we make him pay for everything his kids won´t eat. Yall know me and I´m a patient man, but we´re getting really close to the end of my rope. I quit listening and just ignore him as we go into the internet place. I sit at a computer and log into Shannonms email. There´s everything we need. I download the PDFs to a USB drive and then open them, or try to. No Acrobat Reader. The only program that EVERY computer has regardless of operating system is Acrobat Reader – except these. I show the lady behind the counter that its a free program and I can install it with no problems. But she doesn´t have administrator access to any of the machines so I pack up and we head up the street with Sr. Taxi crying poor at my heels like an old starving dog.

The next three places are closed. We finally find one thats open! I plug in the USB drive and open the docs. Smooth like a rhapsody. I hit print but I don´t hear anything chugging like a printer. I ask about it and find out they don´t have a printer….  A few more closed doors and we find another place thats open. I sit and open the docs, hit print and… nothing.

I´m there now. The top of my heads popped and I feel the tingly ants crawling as I flail and speak as slowly and deliberately as possible. They take my drive in back and I hear a printer.

OH THANK GOD!

But it stops. And then theres debate from the back room. I´m done. I march in the back and take what the lady has. I don´t care that the quality´s no good. Its all in English and the people I´m dealing with have little education and don´t speak my language. It really doesn´t matter what I have as long as I can wave some papers around.

Marching back to the station in my storm trooper boots, Sr. Taxi starts it up again, but this time hes saying that all we need to do is put air in Shannons tire and it´ll be fine. Its his turn now. Imagine the spectacle of a Gringo, possibly the only Gringo in town, marching down the middle of a busy street, lots of foot traffic, with a broken-down taxi driver in tow. The Gringo is dressed in full off-road motorcycle gear, boots and all, yelling in English and accenting the finer points of his argument by slapping rolled up insurance papers into the palm of his hand.

A lot of people went silent and just watched. Poor old guy. I kind of felt bad for him.

Back at the station Fish is gone, so we get into a taxi. But not Sr. Taxis taxi, because the cops have the keys to that one. Sr. Taxi tells the driver where to go and tells me he knows of a truck big enough to haul the motorcycle. We end up at a mechanics shop and he wants tyo take a taxi up to look at the bike before getting a truck to tow it back down. This getting really ridiculous. We argue back and forth and finally he gives in and calls a friend with a pick up.

I see it rattling down the hill. This can´t be our truck, a beat up blue pick up held together with bailing wire and rope. It doesn´t even weigh as much the KTM. But it is. If Shannon could see what I was about to do with is motorcycle he´d freak, but I was so tired of the round and round at this point that just I went with it.

Two old guys and I crawl into the cab and we start to drive off. As I´m wondering how the three of us are going to get the moto into the bed of this truck, it stalls. He tries and tries, but the driver can´t get it started. So he gets out and walks around and pops the hood. Somebody off the street jumps in the drivers seat and, as the driver taps the carburetor with a hammer, the guy from the street turns the engine over.

It starts and we´re off, up the hill, sputtering and coughing and shifting with a loose leaver on the steering colum!

(to be continued…)