PowerCycle

Not sure why I didn’t leave this morning like I planned but it was probably just because when you put me near good food and internet it’s hard to pull me away. Sunday I leave for sure. I spent a considerable amount of time planning my food needs for the next couple weeks. It’ll take me 12 days to get to the Chile border not including rest days. This assumes a few things like being able to ride across the Salar and not having to push my bike (a lot). If I can make at 40km a day on average I should be fine.

Water I’m a little worried about given how freaking heavy it is to carry and if I break another spoke I’m going to have a nervous breakdown. I’ll have at least 8 liters with me all the time which is plenty for a couple days but if something happens that slows me down that could spell trouble. Money might be a problem too. I won’t hit an ATM for a week and there are apparently no money exchangers where I’m crossing. I’m hoping I’ll find one in the couple towns I pass through on the way to the border. Otherwise I’ll be selling my body on the mean streets of Chile.

And for the depressing news of the day… I was reading the @BreakingNews feed over on Twitter and I see these guys under “Who to follow”: @worldbiking – On a quest to cycle every country on the planet. Cool I thought so I popped over to their site to check out what they’ve been up to since they started riding way back in 2006. A few blog entries down I see this entry.

Back in May of this year they were in Cochabamba, a big city about 60 miles from where I am now. While they were unloading one their bikes, which were both parked in the hotel courtyard, someone actually stole the second bike that still had all the bags attached. They ended up having to fly back to the States to get set up again with new gear since getting anything shipped down here is a nightmare. That’s just UN-freaking-believable to me. Someone stole an entire loaded bike and the crazy thing is not one person working in the hotel or any of the neighbors saw anything. I’m sure someone did but the people that robbed them were professionals and the locals were afraid to get involved (or they got a cut–who knows).

This of course got me thinking about how careless I’ve been on occasion with my bike. There are many times where I’ve gone to check out a room in a hotel and have had to leave my bike sitting outside unattended. In medium/large towns and cities I almost always take my handlebar bag with me and lock the back wheel so someone can’t run off with the whole thing. The thing is I don’t do this 100% of the time but you can bet I’m going to start. The other thing I always try to do is make eye contact with someone nearby like a shop keeper. There’s always someone around and usually if they see me looking worried they’ll wave to let me know they’ll keep an eye on my things.

If I lost everything somehow I’d still go with my current plan of hiring an off-duty local cop and setting him loose to find my things. I’m sure for the right amount of money he’d be able to track everything down. It would be a lot cheaper than flying to Florida and buying all new stuff again. The worldbiking folks wrote this cost them about $6000 plus the flight back to the States. That’s about where I’m at too. Giving a cop $500 US would be a huge savings.

This hotel in Oruro, SM Palace Hotel, sucks. It sucks because the lady here just tried to charge me Bs70 to wash 2kg of clothes after making me wait 2 days to get them back (was told a few hours when I handed them over). It shouldn’t have cost more than Bs20. I hate thieves. I got the thief down to Bs50 but I still got ripped off.