Medellin!

There are no straight roads in Medellin, there are more motorcycles than cars, the weather is awesome, and the cuisine is incredible.  If that doesn’t sound like heaven to you, well, you need to rethink your concept of fun.   Colombia, folks!  On an RX3!  What an adventure!

So today is Day 1, we put a couple of hundred miles on the AKT Moto RX3 motorcycles, and we haven’t even started our journey yet (it officially begins tomorrow).   My good buddies Juan Carlos and Carlos (there are a lot of guys named Carlos over here) set today aside just to let me get used to riding in Colombia.

Here’s a shot of me with my two moto buddies in a village somewhere in the mountains surrounding Medellin…

Back to the RX3 designation…AKT Moto is one of Zongshen’s largest customers, and they sell a carbureted version of our favorite motorcycle called the RS3.  It’s a cool bike.   Here’s a shot of mine…it’s the one I’ll put 2500 miles on here in Colombia in the next week or so…

And that village?   It’s actually called Mesopotamia.   Folks, I can’t make up stuff this good!

Motorcycling in Colombia is substantially different than what we’re used to.  For starters, there’s the prevalence of motorcycles.   I’m not exaggerating.   I saw far more motorcycles today than cars.   It seems to be the national pastime.   There were thousand (maybe tens of thousands) of riders in the hills this morning.

More interesting facts:

• Motorcycling is predominantly a social activity here in Colombia.   We must have stopped at 4 or 5 coffee houses and restaurants today.  The pattern is you ride for 45 minutes or so, and then stop for coffee.   Hey, is this what café racing is all about?  Juan Carlos knows everybody at these coffee stops, and they all know him.  Juan Carlos founded the only motorcycle magazine in Colombia (DeMotos), and he’s an icon over here.   Any you know what?   Some of these guys recognized me!   Juan Carlos ran a feature story in his magazine on our Western America Adventure Ride, and these guys were all familiar with it.
• The bikes are predominantly in the 100cc to 150cc range, and these folks are all happy with that.   Small bikes rule over here.   We saw people dragging their pegs on these things having as much or more fun as we do on the big bikes in the US.  Nah, scratch that…they were having more fun!
• I asked about freeways and the guys laughed at me.   They pointed to the winding set of twisties just outside the restaurant and told me, “that is our freeway.”  These are my kind of people!
• There are elite riders over here on Triumphs, Ducatis, BMWs, and MotoGuzzis.  There are lots of large Yamahas over here, too (or, is they say in Colombia, Jamahas).    They’re not arrogant.  We had coffee with a bunch of them, and they were all great guys.  The photo below is a typical roadside restaurant, and they all looked like this.   What a place!

The food is awesome.   Here’s a shot of my lunch at that restaurant above.  The dish is called Capresse Buenaventura…

Ah, let’s see, a few more photos from some of the little villages we rode through today…

Juan Carlos picked up his cousin Heronimo (you gotta love their names!) and he rode with us in the afternoon…

After I took that shot above and Juan Carlos and Heronimo pulled out, I saw a cool police bike painted in fluorescent safety yellow (or is it a green?).   I always wondered what a bike would like painted in that color…

Bikes are both sporting propositions and utilitarian vehicles down here.   I saw bikes carrying all kinds of cargo (no photos, but I’ll get some of those later), and I saw a few bikes that had to be 20 or 30 years old and were still doing hard time…

One of the guys I met at one of our coffee stops is a retired US Army Colonel named Miles.   I liked the guy immediately…he’s a dead ringer for Lee Marvin and he even sounds a little like him.   Talk about stories…this guy has been everywhere and when he retired, he decided to hang his hat in Colombia.   Here are a couple of photos of my new buddy Miles…the first one with the guys listening to him in Mesopotamia, and a shot at yet another coffee stop.   I sure drank a lot of coffee today!

Well, I think that’s enough blogging for Day 1.  We’re rolling out at 4:30 tomorrow, and I want to get a good night’s sleep.   The altitude bothered me a bit yesterday and I didn’t sleep too well, but I think I’m used to it now.   The plan tomorrow is to put 300 miles on the bikes, and like I said, there are no straight roads in Colombia.   We’re climbing up over another mountain range and headed for the coast.   It’s going to be fun!