BIG BAD BIKERS

Home from the London Bike Show. Fun to meet new people, good to meet old friends. Best is to be made welcome in a community and to discover that my travels encourage others.
However why must a section of the biker community revel in ugliness? Tattoos on shaven scalps and across rolls of fat that pass for a neck - and those massive wobbly beer bellies, especially amongst the Sunday crowd - gross. Where but at a bike show could an ancient overweight toad feel slim?

SPEEDY GANDOLFI

Hey ho and away I go!

PERFECT URBAN ARCHITECTURE

GRANADA, NICARAGUA: JANUARY 30

I am a very privledged guest in Gillian's and Joe's home in Granada. No need for corridors, no need for air conditioning. All rooms open to patios or the road. Through-drafts keep the air moving and cooled by water in the patios. A big room on the first floor between the two patios is open front and rear to stupendou views of the cathedral and volcano. That New World meld of Islamic and Hispanic architecture has never been equalled, let alone surpassed.

BYE-BYE COSTA RICA

NICARAGUA: JANUARY 28
The gale forced me off the road into La Cruz yesterday evening. This morning I suffer both the gale and continual rain. Great. I arrive soaked at the Nicaraguan frontier. No shelter for the bike. The rain becomes a downpour.
Costa Rican officials are self important and understaffed. Nicaraguan officials are pleasant and understaffed. Transiting a truck across the border wastes twelve hours.
My photocopies go to the man in charge of issuing vehicle import permits. I explain the loss of the originals in Argentina. Lunch hour and two of his staff take a break. The boss processes my paperwork himself, moving from desk to desk. A thirteen-year-old boy carries my briefcase and laptop and crash helmet. An elderly cop behind teases the boy in a kindly manner. Ninety minutes and I have my papers.
I chat with a US biker on a 650 trail bike. He and a band of brothers took the wrong road yesterday, more of a river bed than a track. He came off seven times. Heartening this further confirmation that I am not the only biker who ends on his butt.

DUST AND WORKING GIRLS

TO QUEPES, COSTA RICA: JANUARY 26
The Pan American Highway follows the coast. Flat land is given over to oil palms and billboards. Hillsides are forest interlaced with billboards and subdivisions. Glimpses of the ocean are small compensation for such cross-cultural horror. I intend sleeping the night in Quepes. The final 47 Ks are dirt. Massive trucks drag dust clouds. Construction machinery looms out of the dust. Rocks kick the front wheel and the rear wheel. Gritt fills my eyes. My butt is numb. My thighs cramp. More dust. A sign appears out of the dust. The sign warns of a bypass round an uncompleted bridge. Miss the sign and you hit a dead drop of twenty feet. This is not fun...