[i:02285]Curses!  I ran out of topic room.  It should be: &quot;Like a party in my eyes, and everybody's smoking&quot;[/i:02285]

May 12th, 2007, 12:00am Santiago time
Pichidangui, Chile (A couple hundred kilometres north of Santiago)
GPS: S32 14.118, W071 52.080
Distance traveled today: 1150 kms

What a grueling day this was.  We'd gotten a late start in the morning because – of all things – we couldn't find the key to the HOTEL room that we'd stayed in that night.  Keys are the bane of my existence.  This was the one key that we couldn't find of all the ones that have been lost.  Finally, in exasperation, I asked the clerk how much just to pay for the lost key.

In Argentina, the peso was comparatively strong – 3 pesos per 1 American dollar.  In Chile, it's a bit different.  The exchange rate is about 700 Chilean pesos per 1 American dollar (Justin likes saying things like “This hamburger is SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS – er, I mean pesos.”).  She wanted 500 pesos for the key, so I ran out into my money pouch and grabbed the smallest bill I could find quickly – a $5.  Was worth it just to get out of there.

Osorno is the first large city we've hit.  Traffic was very busy, but at least the highways were four-lane divided blacktop.  We were all intent on making up for the time lost while searching for that stupid key, so we were all going faster than we should have been.  Even me – the rider with the least experience.  I should have known better when I started getting small speed wobbles every time i passed a large truck (the wind blast from the front of the trucks would always get me started) but I'd been able to control it every time.  

Until the last time it happened.  I'd started getting a wobble as soon as I caught up to the truck, but I figured that I'd get in front of him and over a lane before I hit the brakes to start coming out of the wobble.  Unfortunately, by the time I got in front of the truck, the wobble was out of control.  This took quite a while to build up – i'd say at least thirty seconds or so, from first initial wobbles to full-on tank slapper, with the handlebars ricocheting back and forth across the bike.

I finally lost control and laid the bike down, at a speed of about 100 (i'd managed to slow down before I finally lost it).  Unlike other accidents i've been in, I remember the whole thing – how the glove on my left hand got ripped off the second it touched the ground, and the second where my helmet skidded off the ground (no hard impact, thankfully).  I remember my father telling me that in bike accidents it's the rolling that gets you hurt, so I managed to stop the barrel rolls after about five or six, and then skidded to a stop in the middle of the highway.  I immediately jumped to my feet and ran off to the side, cursing the whole while.  

I was certain i'd ruined the whole trip, less than a week into the journey.  Rob and Justin were both behind me, and had pulled over to the side and were running across the road, dodging traffic, to regain the case that had flipped off the bike, my ipod, and my GPS.  The ipod got run over, and is busted, but the GPS is in tip-top shape.  Garmin makes a kick-butt product.  My case (which, of course, had the laptop in it) now has a big dent in the side, and requires tie-down ratchet straps to stay on my bike.  But it did the job – the laptop is still in 100% working order.

I broke the windshield on my bike, and lost the rest of my signal lights.  Other than that, there's very little damage – 90% cosmetic, and the only thing that stops it from being 100% superficial is a slightly bent brake lever. 

I think Ajoy from Milano for Men saved my life – my jacket took the brunt of the damage.  I came out of it with a tiny scratch on my hand, and a sore thumb.  The jacket is a little shook up, but it's certainly still serviceable.  From the location of all the damage on the jacket, I think that if i hadn't been wearing it, I'd've lost large sections of my left arm.  Ugh.

Dad had been leading, and immediately started to fear the worst when I didn't come around the corner behind him.  As I mentioned earlier, this was a divided highway, and he had to go quite a ways down the road to find a location where he could turn around.  He came flying back on the other side of the highway, and once again had to go on to find a place he could whip a Uie.  

As soon as he pulled up, he jumped off his bike and ran up and gave me a big hug.  Apparently he was quite worried about me.  Justin and Rob both can't believe that both myself and the bike came out of it as well as we did – the bike flipped twice down the highway.  That, I think, speaks to high-quality engineering.  Thanks, Suzuki!

Anyways, Justin did a quick inspection on the motorcycle (i have decided to name her Patricia, so I will refer to her that way from now on) and after checking some metal pieces on the engine (i think?  I'm really good with mechanical equipment), declared it in good working order, to his utter amazement.

Fifteen minutes after I'd wiped out, we were back on the road, slightly shaken.  And short a windshield, which I very much regret.  It is very, very loud without one of those.

Since this road was four-lane divided, we were able to make VERY good time, and got through Santiago as the sun was setting.  Everything we'd read about, and heard from online fellow cyclists is that we should avoid big cities, so we continued on through Santiago, thinking that it would be fairly easy to find a hotel on the edge of the city.

We were wrong.  We ended up riding north for another hour and a half without seeing anything, until about 9:30pm.  Rob pulled off randomly on an exit, thinking to try one of the towns mentioned on the exit signs.  It ended up being a little wide spot in the road with unpaved roads and no signal lights.  And lots of scary-looking men just hanging around.  We turned around and got back on Ruta Norte.

Justin spotted a city called La Carella that looked fairly decent, until we got into the downtown section of it.  People everywhere, bumper-to-bumper traffic with scary-aggressive drivers.  We spent two hours trying to find a hotel.  Everyone we asked kept referring us back to this little hole-in-the-wall, ironically named the Oasis.  It was in the middle of downtown and had nowhere to park our bikes.  We eventually hired a taxi driver to take us to a hotel.  He did, and it was another hole-in-the-wall place, but it did have parking for the bikes.  We were sold – it was getting on to eleven o'clock, and we were dead tired.  

No room.  Heartbroken, we decided to continue on the road to try to find something better.  On the way out of town, rob found a motel.  The front gate had a picture of a man touching a naked woman, and Sean remarked that he'd heard about motels like this, and even thought that the program he saw featured this motel.  It charged by the hour, so we rode on.

Rob was examining his GPS while we road, and found a town called Pichidangui (i think that's how it's spelled, I may correct this later) that had a camping icon on it.  Justin pulled over into the town, but kept on riding past the camping sign, much to my annoyance.  He'd apparently spotted a hotel sign, and followed it to this amazing gated resort, with a pool and everything.  It was even still open, and we got ourselves a cabin overlooking the ocean, with a bigger-than-kingsize bed and two singles, and two bathrooms and a porch.  Cost $110, and we'd've happily paid three times that.

As i'd mentioned, it was a gated hotel, and the owner locked it up after we arrived, so we didn't even have to haul all our gear into the cabin, and they let us park on the sand right next to our door.  Convenience!

Unfortunately, we weren't able to enjoy all the amenities – it was midnight by that time, and we'd had such a long, stressful day that we pretty much dropped our stuff and went to bed.  Except Rob.  He was dead set on getting us a new route planned out that accounted for our excellent time today, and came up with one that has us arriving in Colombia in the afternoon of the 19th, three days before our plane ride over to Panama.  Woot!

Apparently the headlights on our motorcycles are very bright, and people here are very enthusiastic about letting one know that you have your high beams on.  We constantly get flashed driving down the highway – even during the day, at high noon.  I enjoy flicking my high-beams on at those people, 'cause if my regular beams are that bright, my high beams probably knocks the wind out of them.

Also, all throughout the day, all along the highway into Santiago, people were selling... plants.  They'd stand on the edge of the highway, swinging a bag or a flag.  I have seen, many times in my life, signs that say 'Watch for Deer' or 'Watch for Llamas'.  Today, I saw a sign that said 'Watch for People'.  It's true – people just dart out across the highway, all the time.  Four lanes divided blacktop, and they have no qualms about it.  Kinda scary.

And people are burning everywhere, too.  We saw literally hundreds of controlled burns of fields, leaves, everything, right along the highway.  The air between Osorno and Santiago was a thick pea noxious soup, making our eyes water and our throats burn.  Plus whatever pollution is being pumped out by the thousands and thousands of diesel trucks on the road.  Anyways.  One other thing that struck me as odd was that, going into Santiago, every few kilometres we'd pass under this array of purple traffic lights.  I don't know what they were for, or why they were there, but it really gave a festive feeling to the highway.

Time for bed,
Ryan Noble
Pichidangui, Chile