So a few days ago after finishing a section of gravel road, we pulled up under a tree next to a farmers hut to reinflate tyres and lube the chains.

(Low tyre pressure is more comfy off-road, improves tyre wear and gives more grip, the opposite applies on the tar, so we go from 33psi on tar to 21 on dirt).

Anyway, so we’ve settled into a routine where we hit gravel, stop, I let down Sal’s tyres while she stays on the bike (she’s VIP), Sal rides off into the sunset while I let my own tyres down, then I play catch up for ten minutes.

On the other end of the dirt we park the bikes parallel to each other but facing opposite directions, with the rhs of the bikes facing each other.

This is so they lean away from each other allowing access to tyre valves, and so the pump that needs to plug into my bike can reach all 4 tyres without moving anything.

Neat.

So there we are, eventually, parked correctly.

‘No Sal, the other left side. No the other way!’

I get out the pump and connect it up while Sally removes 4 valve caps.

It was at this point that Sal realized we were in a midgey frenzy. About a million little flying bitey annoying things were hovering around our heads.

Babe can we do this further down the road at that closed petrol station, there are all these insects here?

We’re here now, hopefully they don’t bite… It won’t take long. (At this moment I made the v wise decision to leave in my earplugs).

Well… They bit alright. And they really seemed to like our ears. A LOT.

These things are driving me insane! Fuck shit fuck!! Little fuckers, fucking ass hat shit balls cu#t… why the fuck are they trying to get into my ears the little fucks (Sally swears quite a lot when agitated)

While Sal did the tyres and swore, I put some oil on the chains and danced around like a crazy man trying to stop the little bastards from biting my ears.

Unsuccessfully.

By the time we were done our ears were red raw and itchy as hell.

That was five days ago and we’re still scratching.

It’s the little routines like doing tyre pressures, hauling gear and loading up in the mornings and that you get into a pretty good groove with after a couple of months moving, and we’re definitely in that groove now.

Sally puts our intercoms on charge every night. I oil the chains each day. We have a fuel routine. We take turns cleaning visors. i make coffee. Sally does the toast. We both do washing. I put padlocks on and off bikes, and Sally does pretty much everything else.

After the mauling, we rode some long days up the Ruta 40 stayed in a couple of nice quiet small towns, eventually arriving in Mendoza for New years…

Crickets.

Turns out the centre of Mendoza is NOT a great place to spend New Years, we passed midnight on our own standing on the roof of the 8 storey building we were staying in, watching fireworks going off 360deg around us, but all more than 10km away off in the distance, with not another soul in sight.

It reminded me of the opening scene from 28 Days Later.

Fuck it my ears are STILL ITCHY.

There was a Voge spare parts place in Mendoza so I managed to get oil and filters and did a service on the bikes while we were there, so not a total waste of time.

The riding north of Mendoza has been a combination of utterly amazing, and completely boring in equal measures.

Tonight we’re in Cafayate, wine country, where I just got this brilliant picture of Julie and Keith, quite oddly Julie asked me not to write about her, so I’ll just post the pic instead.

After two months on the road we’re traveling pretty well, but some things are already showing signs of fatigue. The zips on my rear bag are only zipping some of the time, my boots leak water, the bite valve on my camel back drips constantly, my visor won’t stay open and the final drive on both bikes is pretty worn out.

Sally has thrown away several items of clothing, the zip on her tank bag is frayed to the point of no longer removing it overnight, and the undertray of her bike is held together by pieces of wire, some duct tape, a plastic softdrink bottle I cut up, a few zip ties and a beanie to stop dust entering the air intake (take that Magyver!).

But this is all pretty normal stuff for a bike trip 😀

Back to the itchy ears…

So now we’re on the road just north of Mendoza, on one of the fairly boring stretches, except that the road passes along the base of a sizeable mountain range (the Andes no less), where rivers run down the mountains and across the road at regular intervals, so maybe every 500m there is a really deep dip in the road to allow the water across. So it’s a bit like a roller coaster, up, down, up, down for about 100km this goes on. No kidding.

In every down bit the flood water has brought sand and small stones across the road, so we need to continuously negotiate these at the bottom of a blind crest.

To make it more interesting, we find ourselves sharing this bit of road with about 30 triaxle trucks (v big ones), who are travelling in convoy, at about 80kmh. Ffs.

Since we’re trying to do 100, we need to pass these trucks but as the road is full of blind crests this is difficult. More difficult because the trucks kick up a lot of dust at every dip where the sand is, so following close behind it’s impossible to see what’s coming the other way, also because it’s blind crests as far as the eye can see. To be fair, it’s impossible to see very much at all really.

The solution? I try to get a run up on one at a time and take my life into my hands, pass one blindly, then get enough clear road to tell Sal in the intercom that there’s no oncoming traffic so she can pass safely. She is vip after all.

Repeat.

Having passed 25 or so trucks on this dusty blind rollercoaster I hear panic in the intercom…

Shit shit ouch ouch, fuck I need to stop, something is biting me, OUCH AHHH

Really, um… you need to stop now? (and let all these frikkin trucks back past us?) (I didn’t say that last bit out loud). Okay, so pull over. What is it??

No no I’m not stopping, just keep going, I think I’ve killed it.

It was a wasp, and out here they’re big and scary looking critters. That was two nights ago, and Sal’s arm is still really swollen, bright red and itching like hell.

It’s cured her itchy ears though.

xo