I went out to load the bike this morning while I surveyed the three steps I would have to ride up in order to get out of the hostel. Tiggrr was so big sitting in the courtyard, I wasn't sure I could even maneuver enough to manage the angles involved. I decided to go to breakfast before attempting anything.

For breakfast, I had an unusual hot milk soup with chunks of bread and a poached egg in it. It was really tasty and hearty. As I lingered over my second cup of coffee, I decided that I would have to take all of the luggage off of the bike and re-load it in the street after I got up those stairs. I went back to the hostel.

If you look at the photo "Exhibit A", it probably doesn't look like much to you so let me explain it. I needed to be able to hit that step hard enough to get both the front and rear wheels up on that walkway. I would have to hit the step at right angle and to complicate matters, the distant from the step to the wall is a little shorter than the bike. This means I would have to pop the rear tire up and stop the bike at the same time (before hit the wall preferably). What could go wrong? Fortunately I found a brick in the street and I placed it about 8" in front of the step. This would help lift each of the tires slightly, reducing the impact of the tire hitting the step directly. I fired up and performed an awkward multi-point turn in the courtyard to position the bike. I had about a 2 foot run up to the step so I needed to punch it (and then not hit the wall too hard). I revved the engine a bit and dropped the clutch quickly to lift the front wheel as it struck the step. A half a second later, I was on the brakes as the rear wheel bounced up and the front wheel hit the opposing wall. The bike came to an abrupt halt. From there, I had about 3" of maneuvering space to execute another multi-point turn so that my bike was now parallel to the walkway. The manager of the hostel opened the front door which by the way was slightly narrower than my handle bars. She put a wooden plank bridging the two steps up to the street. The door and the plank were at about a ten degree angle off my path and there was a 4x4 post that I needed to avoid as well (I had hit that yesterday on my way in). I quickly visualized this maneuver in my mind and again made a quick acceleration up the plank, pulling in the clutch to allow momentum to carry me onto the street. BANG! My right hand guard struck the doorframe as Tiggrr made a wobbly entrance to the street. That's one way to start a ride.

After loading up, I headed north, up into the mountains. It was a beautiful day. Only 66º above 8500ft. The road was perfect... well... "adventure" perfect. Narrow, sweeping twisties with fantastic mountain scenery. It was definitely a road with little room for error. The pavement was unpredictable. Potholes, gravel, unpaved sections and slipped sections which produced irregular shaped tears in the road surface, sometimes dropping more than a foot. I was either turning left or turning right. Either in first gear or second gear. Either slowly rolling on the throttle or gently applying the brakes. It was exhilarating (but really not that fast). A couple times oncoming trucks caught me by surprise and I grit my teeth as they only allowed me about 3 feet of road between them and a "I don't want to look down" edge. There were several unpaved and uncontrolled, single-lane sections in which if you met an oncoming vehicle... someone was going to have to back up. Fortunately, I managed all of these sections without any other traffic. The last 30 miles of my day, I descended out of the mountains back down to 400 feet. You can image what sea-level feels like when you are this close to the Equator. The temperature shot up to 98º. By the time I found a hotel in Puerto Berria, I think I might have had a little heat exhaustion. I collapsed on my bed and drank two liters of water before feeling like I could move again.