about that "motorcycle"...
When we got to the islands, we called around and finally found a rental place
that supposedly rented motorcycles. It wasn't too far away, so we walked there
last Tuesday and inquired about renting two. It turned out that the only
"motorcyles" that they had to rent -- despite prominantly featuring an older
500cc-ish Yamaha -- were 100cc Yamaha Sigmas. Fine, we said, we'll take two.
We showed our California driver's licenses (to prove we had motorcycle
licenses) and obtained our temporary Cayman licenses, and then the woman
showed us to the bikes. They were shaped just like a scooter -- the gas tank
is under the seat and the front section is scooped out -- but the controls
were somewhat motorcyclish. A right hand lever and foot pedal controlled the
brakes, just like a standard motorcycle, but the shifting was completely
different. There was no clutch; it was apparently "semi-automatic." The
left footpeg was surrounded on both sides by a pedal; pressing down on the
front one with your toe upshifted, while pressing on the back pedal with your
heel downshifted. After a while, Peter figured out that depressing a pedal
was essentially the same as engaging the clutch, and that slowly letting up
on the pedal was like letting out the clutch, but this wasn't really
intuitive.
After riding the Sigmas for 24 hours, we determined that they were not scooters, nor motorcycles, but pure Evil. They were enough like "real" motorcycles so that their differences became downright annoying. For example, there was no tachometer, so we were pretty much guaranteed to always be in the wrong gear. Being in the wrong gear was always a fun game, too, because then downshifting meant locking the wheel and sliding, and upshifting meant popping wheelies. Peter and I were the unintentional badasses of Grand Cayman that day, popping wheelies down the main strip like there was no tomorrow. Just in case that wasn't fun enough, the bike I originally took had the charming personality trait of stalling each and every time that the brake was applied when the bike was in first gear. Since a wheelie was pretty much inevitable whenever we upshifted from neutral from first, I was mighty annoyed by the time we got back to the condo from the bike rental place. Peter offered to trade bikes, an offer I gladly took him up on, since he didn't seem to be as bothered by the stall/wheelie combo. Other special qualities of the bike included a turn signal that beeped shrilly at you until you cancelled it, and a speedometer that went to 140kph (not a problem in and of itself, but I feel that 140kph was a horribly optimistic and frankly ficticious evaluation of its 2-stroke, single-cylinder engine).
At any rate, we rode the bikes home from the rental place (probably around 2 miles), and then from the condo to Smith's Cove (~10 miles) for snorkelling, then from Smith's Cove to the Stingray Brewery (~5 miles) to tour the brewery, and then from the Brewery to the capital city of Georgetown (~10 miles) for dinner. I think that the fastest we ever got was around 70kph, and I was in fourth gear (which was also its top gear; hence the earlier scoff at the proposed 140kph). We handled the riding remarkably well, considering that we were Riding Astride Evil, skidding, popping wheelies, and stalling, all while being tailgated by angry native drivers and riding on the left-hand side of the road.
That said, it was probably inevitable that I dropped my Evil in a Georgetown parking lot as we left dinner. It started up fine, and as I pulled ahead of Peter, I noticed a huge pothole in the parking lot, filled to the brim with muddy rainwater [Note: have you ever driven on a Caribbean road? The potholes could eat your car. The Grand Canyon has nothing on Caribbean potholes.]. My brain engaged, and I steered clear of the pothole; unfortunately, I didn't steer clear *enough*, and the bike went over a pile of gravel right on the edge of the pothole, right as I was accelerating. Plop. The bike went down on its right side, and I sprawled out over it, landing with most of my weight on my left thumb, somehow. I immediately got up and stared dumbly at the Evil, wondering what the hell to do, since some portion of my rattled brain became fixated on observing that the Evil didn't have an engine kill switch. Luckily the bike had the common decency to die on its own before I gave too much thought to it, and by that point, Peter had already reparked his Evil and was telling me to sit down while he moved my Evil out of the way of any cars in the lot. I knew my thumb wasn't broken since I could move it, but it hurt like a summbitch, and I took his orders and just sat down in the middle of the parking lot. I have a vague surreal recollection of a blond Canadian man bicycling up to us and, after being satisfied that I was OK, telling us that we must be British since we were both wearing combat boots. We told him we were American (that's when he mentioned that he was Canadian), and I think he rambled something about Canada at us for longer than seemed appropriate, and then he hopped back on his bike and meandered away. It's sort of a blurry memory, since I think I was still in shock, but I remember that it seemed very surreal at the time. We left my Evil in the parking lot, I hopped on the back of Peter's Evil (which, incidentally, made it the wobbliest vehicle in the free world), and he drove me home. I iced my thumb all night and off and on for the rest of the week; I think that really cut down on the swelling. It's still really achey even now, though, a week later; kind of a dull sharp pain (that sounds weird, but I don't know how else to describe it) in the "core" of my thumb. I wonder if I sprained it or something. I think I'll go to Walgreens tomorrow and just buy a cheap splint to at least keep it immobilized.
Here, incidentally, is a picture of the Evil. It is on a website that is written in a language I don't understand. It probably says something like, "only dumb american tourists rent these death traps while visiting foreign islands."
I was *so* glad to get on the Nighthawk and ride to work today, even with the sore thumb. At least it never popped a wheelie.
kim and i feed each other's sickness.
I spent all day (off and on) on AOL Instant Messenger with Kim, talking about
bikes. We traded URLs of bike crap websites. She talked about the
Targa
fairing she's tempted to get. I talked about the Triumph Sprint that's
for sale in Tucson [the Tucson man, btw, is also evil. He's selling the exact
bike I want, in the exact color I want, with givi bags/heated grips/new tires
included, for $2k less than the next-cheapest Sprint I've seen for sale].
Kim even knows my weakness for Home Depot, which I would have indulged in with
her tonight, but I went to dinner with Peter instead. :P
thus spoke ann.
Ann apparently just noticed that I have a bike journal, and she wanted to
point out some mistakes I had made regarding her life history. ;) She says:
So there. ;)
I'm sure I have more to say, but my thumb hurts. Gonna go give it a rest.