My Trip to Ecuador was one wild ride in one way or another from beginning to end. The purpose of the trip was to put on an MX riding school for the riders in Quito, Ecuador, South America, enjoy a mini-vacation with the little lady, take in some sites while we were there, and of-course do some endurance riding in some of the most beautiful and highest mountains in the world. We definitely got our money's worth. If you would like to hear about the trip, some of the best riding in the world, and an amusing story read on.
The first part of our journey is hardly worth mentioning, but now looking back it kind of set the tone for things to come. My girlfriends father kindly drove us to the airport, in my Astro van, and as he was pulling away I noticed that he had inadvertently bumped the parking lights on and I knew he would never notice and probably leave them on when he parked the van at home for one full week. This was not good because the van would have to pick us up when we returned and a dead battery would not be helpful in that situation. Luckily dear old dad had his cell phone with him and we were able to catch him just as he was parking the van at home. He said,"oh boy, good thing you called because I would never have noticed that the parking lights were on and you would have had a dead battery when you got back, so now I'll turn them off, "Click" there now both of the light switches are even, have a good trip" and he hangs up. Well, normally that would have taken care of the problem, but as anyone who owns an Astro van can attest to simply making the switches "even" may not be a good thing, as they can be even in both the on or off positions. Guess which one they were in. Now not only were the parking lights on, but now so were the headlights.
The plane ride down to Ecuador was pretty much uneventful other than this really rude woman (b**ch) who just couldn't wait to get to her seat that had to slam her way past me in the aisle only to later find out her seat was right next to mine. That made the 3+ hr. flight really enjoyable, we fought for arm rest space the whole way. Holeshot elbow experience came in useful there. It was a strange landing in Quito and was a bit scary because there are nothing but mountains surrounding Quito and we were landing at night. I kept thinking of all the stories on TV about how planes slam into mountains all the time down there. Funny the stupid things your mind thinks of at just the wrong times. It was so strange coming in for the landing and seeing nothing but lights all around, below, to the sides, and ABOVE us. I kept trying to see the ground, but it didn't look like we were getting any closer to the ground and then all of a sudden, boom!, we were on the runway. The airport is up on this like plateau, it was like landing on top of a tabletop jump, pretty wild especially after I got out of the plane and saw how small the plateau really was. It really was like a tabletop! Going through customs was a little strange. My girlfriend and I had about six bags with us loaded with bike parts, gear, and stuff which one would think would make the customs guys really eager to search everything. Strangely enough they just waived us through and never looked back. Neither did we! My buddy from Quito later told us that if they would have searched us and found all of the parts we would have been in some trouble. Good thing for us those customs guys were really lazy or we might still be in jail.
The next day, our first day in Quito, was a very eventful day to say the least. We awoke to one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen in my life. We were down in this valley and could see for miles and miles mountains in every direction with peaks that protruded up through the clouds and were covered with snow. The air, what thin air there is at 10,000 ft. above sea level, was so clean, clear, and fresh. What a view, wow! I thought for sure the temp outside would be freezing after seeing the snow on the mountains, but surprisingly the temp was in the 60's. The mountains are so huge that your depth perception is all out of whack and even though it seems like the snow is very close in all actuality it is not close at all and also very much higher up. We decided to go and see one of the MX tracks that was a possibility for us to use for the school. It was an hours drive away so the four of us (my buddy, his wife, my girlfriend and I) piled into the borrowed one day old special edition Mazda mini-van pick-up combination thing that my buddy had borrowed from a friend just the day before to drive us around in and we were off. This truck was like nothing we have here in the States and was a little strange, but kinda' cool, and it had only 50 miles on it so we were set-up. It didn't take long for us to realize that people drive like maniacs over there. They drive however fast they want and where ever they want on the road. They also pass when ever and where ever they feel like it too. This is especially dangerous since the roads are some of the windiest blind roads in the world as they have to wind up and down through the mountains. One of the oddest things about the driving is although the main highways are as wide as many of our expressways here everybody drives right on the center line, which is the only line on the rode and barely noticeable , so as to almost to smack mirrors as they pass. This I later discovered was to avoid hitting cows, dogs, little kids and other animals that wonder out onto the highway on a regular daily basis. Well about 45 minutes into our journey we experienced a bit of a problem. We were coming down a hill that was a blind sweeping right hand turn on a two lane highway that was really a four lane highway without lane lines. As we were making the turn there was a large truck with about 100 people in it and hanging off of it in our right lane so my buddy who was driving mildly fast himself started to pass while still staying on our side of the rode which put us right next to the center line. The instant we rounded the corner the first thing we saw was two more big ass trucks occupying the two left lanes and some moron dead smack in front of us coming straight at us as he was trying to pass the other two trucks on his side of the rode. We were going about 50 MPH and he was going about 45 and we smacked head on at about each others left headlights. The impact stopped him dead in his tracks and as we were taller we careened over his smaller car ripping our 5 day old truck's left front wheel off in the process and taking all of our brakes with it when the brake line severed. We then continued rolling forward turning to the left into oncoming traffic as we only had three wheels and no brakes until we slammed into the side of a passing Bronco with a lady and her four kids without seatbelts that had panicked and froze and failed to hit her brakes and rolled her right over onto her side. We then continued drifting slowly until we came to a stop inches from going over a 200 ft. cliff with no guard rail or anything that would have stopped us. Good thing the Bronco was there to stop us. Luckily there were only minor injuries and everybody walked away. We spent the rest of the day and night dealing with the keystone cops, army guys, and judges (yes I did say judges) and trying to get back home again. What a first day!
The rest of the week we spent organizing the MX classes and taking in some sites and I won't presume to bore you with those details. The MX classes turned out to be a very positive experience and a great success. All the people who attended were very friendly and eager to learn. Over three days we covered just about everything . We started out with the basics of body positioning and motorcycle operation and ended up with a Q & A session where the riders were able to ask about any specific sections of the track they wanted to learn more about. Some guys learned much faster than others, but everyone improved over the three days. A few guys were really funny. One guy was the smallest of all the guys except the kids on 80's, but he had no fear what-so-ever. I don't think I have ever seen someone more out of control so many different times and live to tell about it. He would try so hard to find his proper body positioning and control all the while hardly letting off the gas. When we were doing the Whoop sections he looked like a rag doll getting tossed around by a bull on his YZ-250. One time he flew right off the track and into the thick brush next to the track and kept on going until he popped back out 20 yards down the track. Another time he crossed from all the way left of the whoops to all the way right and back to all the way left again before he was pitched right over the bars. No sooner than he hit the ground did he jump right back up again and was ready to go. Another guy was a hoot too. He was the nicest most polite guy. Whenever he was nervous about trying something he would always try to reason away why he didn't need to go fast on a particular section or get any air over a particular jump. He would say, "Jeff, look here is my philosophy, I feel I don't have to go fast over this tabletop and get any air because I am scared that I might fly off of the bike if I get any air just like Mickael Pichon did in that Supercross last year and I go faster on flat ground anyway. So, I will go slower over this jump and when I am back on the ground again I will gas it extra hard and go faster on flat ground". What a politician! After about an hour of trying he finally made it over the tabletop once to the cheers of the growing crowd of spectators. He had gained his own fan club by the end of the second day.
There were a few kids on 80's who attended the school too. One of the kids attended for the first two days and had to go off to a race the third day of the school. He really improved in the area of holeshots. In fact he pulled the holeshot, which he has never done before, in his race that next day and won the race wire to wire. His dad was so excited that he called us the next day to personally thank me for helping his son so much. That was nice. One of the other kids on an 80 was having trouble with his jumping so we worked on his technique and by the end of the second day he was flying high and scaring his mother who was watching from the sidelines. Now you know that's success when you scare mom.
The funnest most amazing part of the trip for me was the final day when my buddy his friend and I went on an endurance ride up the Cotopaxi Volcano. They tell me that this volcano is something like the 3rd tallest peak in the world or something outrageous like that, I don' t know that is what they tell me. I have no reason to doubt him though, as I could barely breath as we neared the highest point of our journey about halfway through the day which was about 2/3's the way up the mountain. Our day started out at about 9:00 A.M. from my buddies garage. We geared up with full riding gear, water bottles, tools, spare tubes, and cold weather gear. The heavy cold weather gear sure seemed strange in the 70 degree weather at my buddies house, but they assured me that we would need it later as we got closer to the volcano. So, we started out from the house and, crazy enough, simply jumped on the local roads and started on our way like we belonged on the roads with the cars and trucks. This was a little strange as the bike I was on was a KTM 300MX and the other two bikes were a KTM 360EXC and a WR-250 and as anyone knows these babies aren't exactly street bikes. No problems though, hell, people even waved at as we went by. Everything went along fine for about oh......the first 30 minutes, until my buddy right as we were leaving the pavement for the first time rounded this turn and failed to simply look up were he was going and smacked into a closed single bar gate. The gate was at the perfect height so the bar slammed into the levers and then my buddies wrists. The whole thing was quite a funny site. At first he thought he broke his wrists, but he was OK. What a wimp! The controls were a different story however, as he broke both lever perches. Luckily we were able to rig up some repairs and continue on our way. I bet my buddy will remember to look ahead now. We continued on our journey for about an hour and a half more without any real mishaps through some of the most beautiful countryside and mountainous terrain I have ever seen in my life. We traveled down endless volcanic rock trails and past all kinds of animals simply roaming free. Big wild bulls and horses and even dogs that would chase our wheels and bite at our boots as we would pass the little shacks that were mountain peoples homes. One of the first obstacles that we came to was a large rushing river that strangely enough had a sturdy cement slab bridge crossing it. We started over the bridge only to find a large locked gate at the other end blocking our path. We paused for a minute while we tried to figure out what to do then I got an idea and turned around and rode back to the beginning of the bridge and got a good run at the gate. Just as I approached the gate I veered off to the left and pulled up the front end and hopped the bike off of the side of the bridge and jumped to the embankment about eight feet over the rushing rapids. What a cool feeling! My other two friends followed and we continued on our journey through increasingly rough terrain crossing small rivers and abrupt ravines. We continued on for about another 60 minutes until we came upon our next challenge. This one was also a locked gate with an endless huge rock wall and a fast rushing river running under it that completely blocked our progress again. This one was a little tougher as there was no bridge to jump off of and the landing point embankment was higher than our take-off point and we couldn't get a straight run at it, AND we had to jump between a bunch of jagged rocks. My buddy rushed to be the first one to do it this time and almost went over the bars when he landed, it was really funny, he was all excited. Once I stopped laughing long enough I then made it over and then the last guy gave it a shot. He wound his way up to the opening and at the last minute slammed on the brakes and chickened out. So, undaunted he turned around and gave it another shot. He again slammed on the brakes at the last minute and this time he fell over, it was all too funny. To get him over we had to dismantle the rock wall and drag him and his bike up and over the wall and then rebuild the wall after he was over. What a pain that whole process was. We were then on our way again for about 30 minutes, until my buddy nailed a rock and blew out his front tire. We were prepared however, or so we thought! My buddy whips out a spare tube and I put it in. He then pulls out this CO2 tire inflation kit and proceeds to fill up the newly changed tire. He goes through 2 cartridges, but the tire is not holding air. So I take the tire back apart only to find out that the spare tube is the tube that he blew out on his last trip last year. What kind of bone-head brings a year old spare tube with a hole in it a hundred miles from home, amazing! So we patch the tube and I put it in again, but this time when we try to air it up again the air hose blows apart. At this point we are starting to really loose it, we are like the three stooges out in the middle of nowhere. Eventually, after rigging the air hose and going through all nine CO2 cartridges we got enough air in the tire to continue and we continued on.
At this point of the journey after all that had happened so far we eyed our gasoline supply just to see and much to our dismay the 360 was going through gas awfully faster than the other bikes. So I looked a little closer at the engine that was covered with this caked on slimy mess that my buddy said was an old oil leak only to discover that the tank was cracked and leaking gas and not oil like he said. At this point it didn't even surprise me to see this after all that had happened so far, it kind of fit in nicely. The only thing to do now was to continue on, so we did. By now we were beginning to ascend the really steep portion of the volcano and things were really getting exciting. We had to ride on this winding dirt road that was made of volcanic gravel and it was like riding on marbles, talk about an unsafe feeling as it dropped off like a thousand feet if you went over the edge. The further up we got and the thinner the air became the harder it got to breathe and the less the bike would run. My 300 was running like a worn out 200 at this point. We reached this plateau were the winding road kind of ended and there was a gravel path that went straight up the mountain to a base camp house about a mile up in the clouds with snow all around. We could hardly see the house, it was an amazing site. We paused for a minute and then looked at each other and pinned it straight up this path toward the base camp. At first we were going fine and making good progress, but the bikes quickly started to run out of enough air to run. My bike quickly went from running like a 300 that was running like a 200, to a 125, then to an 80, then to a 60, then a peewee, then death about 200 yards from the camp. And the funniest thing was that the 360 quit first up in front, then 5 yards behind that my 300 quit, then 5 yards behind that the 250 quit. It was a funny site to see these three bikes sticking out of the gravel road like tombstones evenly spaced apart along this path. After the bikes died we foolishly continued on to the base camp on foot and it took us about an hour and a half to walk the measly 200 yards to that damn house. I could take about five steps and then I would have to rest for 5 minutes because I felt like I was going to suffocate, or my heart was going to jump out of my chest or something for lack of oxygen. That is a feeling that I simply can't put into words. Once we finally made it to the top (the top of our journey) we had the most incredible view I have ever seen in the whole world, it was simply awesome.
Well the trip back down the mountain and back home again was just as adventurous as the journey to get there was, but I will just touch on the highlights as I seem to be writing a novel here. When we first started back down from where the bikes had died it was so steep that we didn't need our engines for about 40 minutes. Which was a good thing because they didn't run anyway. This was amazing flying down this mountain at speeds up to 60 and 70 MPH at times just by coasting. Heck, we couldn't have gone that fast with our motors. It was kind of like snow skiing swishing along from side to side, not because of the snow that was all around, but because the terrain was this loose volcanic gravel. We even went whizzing past this amazed Swedish tour group on the way down the path before we came to a stop. This was also one of those Candid Camera moments after we came to a stop and this old Swedish guy from the tour group came up to me and asked if he could take the bike back up the mountain and ride it back down like we just did because it looked like so much fun. He even went on to tell me how he had eleven bikes back home and could handle any old 2-stroke any day. I just nodded and said "Ya Ya" about ten times until he went away. He was a cool, stoic looking old guy though. We continued on with only minor difficulties, 2 more locked gates, and the patched front tire going flat along the way back home. However, we had to stop about ten times along the way back home to transfer gas from my tank and the WR's tank to the 360 with the cracked gas tank because it kept running out of gas. We were very tempted to leave him there for being so stupid as to bring a bike with a leaking gas tank and not to even mention the tube blunder a hundred miles away from civilization, but we didn't. The last thing worth mentioning on this ride was how when we arrived back to town completely on the other side of the city from where we started out we simply jumped on the (I-95 like) highway, flat front tire and all in the dark at 8 O'clock at night leaking gas on our dirtbikes, and blended in with traffic like we belonged until we reached our exit and eventually made it back to were we had started out that morning. Who needs trailers, just a good street slick and your set.
The plane ride back home was an experience too. Before we were allowed to get on the plane to come home to my Astro van with a dead battery we had to line up on the runway and place all of our bags on the ground in front of us and back away. These army guys then brought out drug dogs and searched all our bags thoroughly before we were allowed to continue onto the plane. This was a little nerve racking for me, no not because I had drugs, but inside my helmet bag was my helmet that I was carrying with me and a bag full of empenada pastries. That dog went nuts rolling my new Shoei helmet around on the tarmac trying to get at them and I freaked and tried to stop him from scratching my lid. Big mistake! Those army guys were all over me with their guns and started yelling all kinds of gibberish at me and I just said, " hey that is my helmet man, get your damn dog!". Their gibberish and guns were pretty convincing so I put it back down again and backed away and eventually made it home again. That saying, "it's good to be home" really takes on a whole new meaning now. What an experience!
I hope I didn't bore you with such a long story, but there was so much to tell about and so many outrageous things that happened I wanted to tell everything. Thanks for reading in.
Happy roosting,
Jeff at MX SOUTH
