After Muang Phee Canyon, we hop on our bikes and take a slow, lazy ride to our stop for the evening - another large city called Uttaradit. Total mileage for the day - 230kms. 555! Despite having AirHawk inflatable cushions, the seats on the CRFs are so hard, I don't think we can do any more mileage than that without suffering.
We don't get up too late the next day - around 8AM. But by the time we grab some breakfast and pack the bikes, it's pushing 10AM. The sun is beating relentlessly down on us in a way that we never felt up in the mountains around Chiang Mai. We're in the lowlands now and I have a feeling that as we head further south, we're going to experience the same kind of oppressive temperatures we felt when we first touched down in Bangkok.
After a little discussion, we both agreed that we (meaning I) need to wake up a lot earlier so we can start riding before the hottest part of the morning hits us. By 9:30AM, it's already in the mid 30s and it's just about as hot as it's going to get for the rest of the day....
We haven't even started riding yet, and the bad news keeps coming:
As Neda was packing up her bike, she noticed the rack was a bit loose. Uh oh. That doesn't look good.
The motorcycles have been doing quite well since we got them. They *are* brand new, so we aren't expecting anything less. But the aftermarket racks the dealership put on have been problematic. There have been a couple of loose nuts which have backed out, as if whoever installed them tightened them with just their fingers...
And now one of the braces that supported the rack on the subframe has just snapped. And the other side was missing yet another nut, so the rack was basically flapping up and down, hitting the tail of the bike.
It's not wise to continue without getting this fixed. The rack will vibrate itself off the bike if left in this state. The problem is that we don't know where to get it repaired and nobody out here speaks any English.
Did I mention it is absolutely stinkin' hot outside?
We hit the main street of Uttaradit hoping to find a shop that can fix the broken rack
Uttaradit is a pretty big city. If we are going to get this fixed, we're going to have the most success here rather than forging ahead and finding somewhere else further on down the line. Our first stop was a Honda dealership. Fortunately these are almost as commonplace as 7-11s in Thailand. But we soon discovered that they're just sales outlets. When we walked into the store, the sales person immediately brought out the CRF brochure to find the part. Our rack isn't a Honda part, and even if it was, they don't keep any inventory. Everything in these showrooms is "order-only". Kinda like our CRFs in Chiang Mai...
So all these Honda stores which are plentiful all over Thailand will be of no help on this trip. Good to know.
Next we try generic motorcycle/scooter stores. There's one strategically placed every 200m down the main strip and we hop on and off the bikes in the searing heat. At each place, we knock on the door, point at the broken part, and receive a shake of a head and shrug for our troubles - no luck. The CRF rack is a pretty specific part.
In the picture above, we just came out of a machining shop thinking they could make us a part but they also just shook their heads when we pointed at the broken rack strut. At least I buy a few extra nuts from them and fix one side of Neda's rack so it doesn't free-swing up and down anymore.
Sweat is dripping down my nose as I simply screw the nut on the bare bolt. It's so hot and we've been wandering around for over an hour.
What are we going to do? Where do we go to get this thing fixed?!?
Then across the road we see this place...
It looks like they are manufacturing those caps which convert flat-bed pick-up trucks into Song Thaew buses. After exiting the machining place, I didn't have high hopes, but Neda dutifully trudged across the street to "talk" (sign language) to them anyway. I went off to buy some water at the 7-11 next door (seriuosly, urban Thailand is basically wall-to-wall 7-11s and Honda dealerships) so we don't get dehydrated doing all this footwork. 15 minutes later she comes out with a grin. They'll take a look at it! Awesome!
We wheel Neda's bike into the back of the shop and strip the bags off of it. The lady below is the person Neda was talking to and she speaks a little bit of English. There are about a dozen guys in the shop and they're all working on creating the shells of the caps that fit on back of the trucks. There are hundreds of them piled up on the sides. They must supply the whole country. This was a pretty big operation.
But they still found time to look at our broken rack. One of them told the lady because it was aluminum, they couldn't weld or repair it. He took a piece of scrap iron lying on the floor, cut a small piece off of it and compared it to the snapped strut. They were going to fabricate a new piece from scratch! Cool! And then in the back of my head, I thought... How much is *that* going to cost...?!?! I don't ask. This needs to get done and we don't have any other choice... How expensive can it be? We're in Thailand, right?
This guy is smoothing out the sharp edges of the iron piece so we don't cut ourselves
At one point, there were three different guys working on our tiny rack strut. One guy was using a blow torch to shape the piece. This guy above was smoothing it out. And then the main guy kneeling at our bike above was in charge of making sure it fit. They seemed happy for the distraction from their everyday process. At several points, the other guys in the shop came over and looked at the work and our bikes with curiousity.
45 minutes later and Ta-dah! They even painted the new part!
Made of iron, if we ever ride through a nuclear explosion, this will be only piece on the bike that will survive intact.
The lady that we talked to handed Neda an official invoice for the work. I gulped as I looked over Neda's shoulder. 150 baht. Which is $4 USD. Holy crap! That's awesome! I love Thailand! We chatted a bit with the lady as we loaded the bike and stress-tested the rack. Everything looks great and we wave to everyone at the shop and head out to continue our trip.
I know this wasn't a big issue, but finding solutions to a problem when you're in a foreign place and don't speak the language is such a satisfying experience!
