Day 78

Odometer  32,464- 32,466 — 2  Miles (9766 Miles Total)

Medellín, Colombia

This hostel is ruining me. A comfy bed, a hot hot shower with plenty of water pressure. That was the nicest shower I had since I left Austin, Texas. I want to move here. I have a lot planned today so I needed to get moving straight away. I rolled out of bed and did my thing. I went downstairs to get breakfast but all they had as cereal and fruit so I bailed on it. I went to the parking garage and got my bike. I had 1.5 hour until the walking tour started so I had to get moving to BMW. I got to the dealer and waited a few minutes for a mechanic to come out. I had Alex on the phone ready for him to translate but one of the mechanics spoke great English. I explained to him the overheating problem and he said $75 and it will be done today. Perfect.

I figured this wouldnt do anything but I mentioned the Panama story to the mechanic about how the ABS pump was broken and its $1600 for a new one. I asked if they could scan the computer again to double check to make sure its the pump that’s broken. The next words out of his mount I couldn’t believe. He said this is a common issue on this bike if you go off roading without the ABS turned off. They have this happen a lot. Usually the bikes only go 30K miles before that happens. How the fuck does BMW advertise this bike to go around the world when this is another common issue? These guys have their heads up their asses. This big German company known for quality and their stuff is breaking left and right for everyone. Yamaha and Honda make way better motors and motorcycles in my opinion after dealing with all of this bullshit.

What he said next flipped my day around. He said they are able to take the ABS pump apart and fix it for a whopping $350. I couldn’t believe it. I hope they’re not lying to me and just screwing with me. Why hasn’t any other dealer offered this? I told the guy to take my money as fast as he could! He said it would take two days. I don’t care if it took a week I told him. They rolled the bike in and told me they would call me if they found anymore issues. I heard another guy speaking perfect English there with a little 310cc BMW. I asked him where he was from and he said NY. I asked again where and he said Long Island, once again where, he replied with patchogue! What a small world this guy lives down the block from where my parents live. He has a shoe warehouse in Ronkonkoma as well even closer to where my parents live.

We chatted for a while and he was telling me how he just moved to Medellin a few years ago and he goes back and forth. What a small world. I got his number and we will keep in touch. I started my 20 minute walk to where the walking tour started and chatted with Alex for a bit telling him the good news. I got to the walking tour and I was the third person there. I gave Julio the tour guide my name. A minute later he called another guy Marko by accident and that was his name too. Turns out the guy is from Croatia and we start speaking Serbian to each other. We were cracking up.

The tour was a good one. It lasts about 4 hours. We got to learn a few things about Medellin and the history of it. We all had a blast. A few interesting things we learned we would have never known if we didnt do the tour. In the center there’s a bunch of old men usually that show up and just trade watches. One guy likes another guys watch and they will trade. Some of them have more then one watch on their wrist. Some guys have 20 on them and try to trade them for others. if one guy doesn’t like another guys watch he will actually throw it down and fight the other guy! These guys are nuts! Also these guys are all old and retired so this is what to do to keep busy! We finished up the tour learning about a lot of bombings they had in the city. Its pretty wild how much of a bad place this city was in the 80’s and 90’s.

I met a few people from the tour at the end and we all exchanged info to keep in touch. I just made alot more friends to hang out with here in Medellin! I had a 1 hour long walk back to the hostel before I went to my 90 minute salsa class I booked yesterday. On my walk back I grabbed a taxi and got dropped off at the hostel but decided to walk right to the salsa place to get lunch around there. I found a laundromat that was able to sew my pockets back on my workout shorts. they charged me $1. I looked for a few places to do it back home this summer since I sold my sewing machine and they wanted $15. Im not paying that. I should have brought more clothes here to get fixed!

I got some lunch and worked on the blog. I decided im going to just save the drafts on the website and publish the day once I get the photos up with it instead of posting for the day and then going back a few days later to add pictures. I made my way over to the salsa class and damn im so happy Im doing this. I had a lovely girl named Angie and she is a great teacher. The way she teaches was at a much faster pace than what I learned in Guatemala. She was picking the pace up for me a lot. I learned a few moves for foot work and then a few spins between her me and then both of us. The music was so fast and when she stopped with the count while the music was playing it threw me off so bad but it was so much fun learning. I havent had sensory overload in a long long time and it was so hard for me but she said I nailed it and was progressing really fast. She even lied to me and told me I had great rhythm and could move my body. I don’t know if I believed her. I reminded her I was white and she was cracking up half the time. We had a blast. I have another 90 minutes tomorrow with another person and then 2 hours with her on Friday again.

The movements are so easy but so fast to the point where I can’t even get ready to spin her on the 1,2,3 count so I just keep repeating the 123, 567 foot moves. I hope I catch onto this even more and it gets easier. My brain hurts from thinking so much! We stopped a few minutes early because we were so tired. I got into a 20 minute conversation with the woman working at the counter when she found out about my trip. She wrote in my phone in the translate app “You are a warrior, not everyone does that, Congrats”. That put a smile on my face she was very impressed with it. I got out of there and Walked back to my hostel to shower and then I found a dry cleared that can wash my white linen shirt since it is absolutely filthy! I went out for some tacos and worked on the blog.