19-Jan-2010

Damage assessment.

Mark. Swelling seems to be down a little in the ankle. I can move it OK. I only whined a little through the night. I can walk on it with only a little pain. I think its gonna be OK.

Bike. Right front turn signal busted. Right engine case guard bent and loose. Right damaged case is damaged some more. Windscreen screen scraped up a little. All in all, I got off pretty easy. My biggest concern, of course, is that after spending money to stay warm, why was I freezing to death last night. So I tackled that first. I ended up removing the very cool thermostatic setup that controls the temp to my heated jacket and gloves. Now I get to control the temp by plugging it in when I get cold and unplugging it when I get hot. Oh well, better than nothing. Now that the highest priority is fixed I can start on the others. Electrical tape fixed the turn signal. Some creative bending fixed the engine case guard and deciding that the right side case just had a little more character now and was going to be OK, fixed that.

On the road again by 9:30. I'd say I got off real lucky. We rode the 200 miles to Cuzco. Very curvy, so much up and down. In that 200 miles, we covered about 30,000 feet vertically. Absolutely amazing country. We were in and out of the rain gear a couple of times, but it was never as bad as yesterday. The roads were wet in places and my paranoia level was certainly higher. But we are just wiped out when we get here. That kind of riding is damn hard on you.

In Cuzco in the last couple of pics. Sometimes putting the bike away is a challenging part of the day. The last pic is of an Incan wall right across from the hotel. The bottom layer is built by the Incans 1-2000 years ago. Very fine stonework. The rock on top of that is poorly done by I don't know whom and then the work on top of the rock is Spanish Colonial stuff from the 1500's. The Spanish used the Incan walls as foundations for their structures. Pretty cool. We have arranged for a trip up to Macchu Picchu tomorrow. It will be interesting. Nick has been studying the history. Which is adding a lot to this experience.

I think Nick and I both have this psycological disease. We can ride hard all day, get to a new place, go "wow, its cool to be here", and then say "let's go", almost in the same breath. We are fighting that tendency to stay here in Cuzco a day or two, at least long enough to see Macchu Picchu and some of the other cool stuff around here, but I'll be real surprised if were not out of Peru by Friday. Is there a name for this mental malfunction?