Wheres Punky & Lew now?
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Date: Monday Jan 21, 2001 10:18 pm
Subject: Punky & Lew - down again!
Hi everyone: Punky and I again went down hard in a curve riding from Riobamba to Cuenca, Ecuador on Saturday, Jan. 19. My amigo, Ricardo, was riding ahead of us and he struggled to make it around a surprise hairpin curve. We didn't make it and went off into a v-shaped cement culvert and up into a grassy area. Ricardo says he saw me hanging onto the handlebars with my legs flying high in the air. I landed on the pavement on my back and must have had the wind knocked out of me and was briefly rendered unconscious. Ricardo says Punky was laying on my chest, still tethered to my neck, shaken and crying, but was and is OK. I have what I think is a pinched nerve in my lower neck, which causes a numbness in part of my left arm. Other injuries are minor dings. Critter suffered the most with a bent front wheel, 2 broken spokes, damage to the fairing and mounting frame, bent and broken headlight guard, broken instrument pod and headlight turnoff switch, broken front turn signal lenses, bent SU rack, and a few other minor things. Critter and I rode in a truck to the nearest small town and Ricardo found a bicycle shop. Amazingly, they, with Ricardo's direction and help, got Critter rideable in about 3 hours, during which time I laid down and rested my injured body. We then rode through high Andes mountains and thick fog to Cuenca, where we had to wait until Monday to put Critter in the hands of a Kawasaki motorcycle shop. The repair bills were rediculously low. We're ready to ride to Peru, with one stop on the way, in the morning. Ricardo will be returning to Quito tomorrow. It is a sad farewell to this good samaritan to all international motorcycle adventure tourers, who has become like the brother I never had during these last 2 months. I think I'll slow down and try to complete this tour without further mishaps due my own negligence and folly. I am not a racer, just an adventure tourer. It is too easy to get lulled into a sense of overconfidence and false security. These Latin American roads are not marked with dangerous curve signs like we are used to in the USA. A normal fun curve, which can be taken at 40-60mph, may be followed by an extremely dangerous hairpin curve, without any significant warning. I found myself going into a 10mph bad curve at about 40-50mph. No amount of last second downshifting and braking could adequately slow us down. These Andes Mountains are far more spectacular than any I have seen elsewhere and we've got a lot more of them to go through. Punky drew a flock of news media at the Quito airport just before we left. Ricardo and Werner Zwick were amazed at the throng of people eagerly seeking information, a video or a photo or just to view Punky on a motorcycle with his goggles. To me it was just another common incident. Punky and Lew are on the road again. Later, amigos and amigas.
Punky & Lew
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