Melbourne heading to Barcelona with a redrocket bike

intermission

mariana delas — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:58:42 +0000

so, after thinking, and thinking,
there had to be a day,
money, and uni ties and all that, were becoming too strong conditionates
so i had to come back to spain for a while…
let postie rest a bit…
she is in good hands, over in kuala lumpur, jan became her new caretaker
she gets to be ridden up and down kl and i think they will soon bond well
so she is having a good life,
and hopefully soon, after a few motorless months down in barcelona i would be able to go back and finish the ride from kuala to barcelona….
looking so foward allready
but spain has good things, little horse savanah was waiting for me…
and every time i rode her, i thought of postie
every time i ride i think too much
and its seem like so long time ago, eventhough it was only 7 days ago
so , the union between a day i felt sick and no internet countryside days made the video
a bit messy,… but i feel a bit messy aswell
maybe jan one day can post us how postie is doing around malaysia with her honda 90 cousins
i will also use these days to post more pics and videos and tighten up the web
well be back!

many things many

mariana delas — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:52:39 +0000

and then there are days…

mariana delas — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:11:12 +0000

and then there are days in which after a smokey driving day through packed java you stroll down alleways with lots of singing birds
in where trickshaw drivers play chess while waiting for customers
and where there is an obsession with old (push and motor)bikes (those cool old non-cable break ones.. and the tall ones.. amaziing)
and you meet vespa riders who have a 700 member club , old restored vespas… and dont think wrong, this guys are not about ben sherman, target sign, and pop pins on their jumpers
they are riders,
and they made little red a set of new number plates (one less lie to policemen..no more fake outback number)
and they took me to where they restore them… and stayed the morning looking how they fixed and old lambrettino, seemed like good old mallorca mobylette times
and had wine and wine
and nice conversation about my stuck aura
and got a stroll on a vespa… seemed like caro diaro… only that the streets hmmm a bit different
and im up, very up and will be riding like this forever
but because not too much blog action and no pics yet
too keep your summer days going… (or winter…sorry melbs)

what indos sing to me….

what i felt like in jogya…

and where im going tomorrow…(jakarta reggae party today)

bsbsbbs

west is more, west is worst

mariana delas — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 12:07:08 +0000

more goats, more buffaloes, more chickens, more horse carts, more bicycles, more more more more people, more more and bigger trucks
and specially
moreee and more smoke, coming from everywhere, lots of trash burning, huge old rusty trucks, black smoke coming from all the exhausts
dust from everywhere
because you know, the road does not end where the bitumen ends, but when the houses start so lots of gravel parts trucks that lift sand up
crazyy
i had to get a pair of raymond bensen (who said ray bans were cool) sunglasses because my eyes were dying, and they are sooo classy
java is horrible horrible… want to cruise it fast to get soon to sumatra but its soo big and so much traffic that it is exhausting
trucks and buses dont care a shit that you are there, they dont , they just overpass you and you literally you have to pull aside from the road to let them pass… because you dont want them to crash you
no no no
mad people mad mad mad

but its not been all so bad, only today im grumpy because i just arrived java, adaptation i tell myself, adaptation nana adaptation

but lombok bali has been soooooo cool
little red finally broke down, i say finally because finally we could fix her completely,
was in ubud, nice bali city, chose wisely my mechanic victims, now im becoming picky on the mechanics because i know what i want which is cool because i feel so confident slicing little red up

i took her a part…. showed them the piston and then they knew what was wrong, so oiled and oiled it, changed a ring and back to postie
and now she can go up the everest!! so cool cool, took us two days but i spend them with the mecanics
they were hindu you know, so went to ceremonies, stayed over their place and was very nice, gave cookies, sugus and rice to the gods every two hours approx
the gods should be happy, balinese people take care of them a lot, when its not food is incense, when not incense flowers,they get dances every saturday and grilled chicken every six months…plus everybody dresses supernicely to go to see them to the temple, mmm i want to be a balinese goddess

….and sunday was the sixmonth hindu celebration, and i was lost in the west coast of bali, accomodation all full, so got hosted by a Hindu Buddhist family which was really nice, and had grilled chicken on palm sticks and lots of whiskey with the adolescent son and friends,
and was really cool because i got treated like a village kid and not like something special
so i got to eat with my hands and sit on the floor
the good life
and nobody was staring, nobody was treating me over nicely, they were just cool kids which liked to tune up their motorcyles and go surfing so the next day went to the beach and rested a bit
and bali is cool, if you dont make the mistake that i did to try to see the temples and all that, because then its dissapointing, too many whites too many short skirts and sunburned bodies

well im going to have dinner, some noodles or rice just to vary a bit, have a bucket shower, im literally black from the dust,
and literally is literally
and wake up tomorrow in a nice and happy mood ready to win the java battle
bsbsbsbbsbs

the Quetzalcoatl complex and how to push a 90kg postie up a volcano

mariana delas — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:19:15 +0000

its not easy, i tell you, when you are in the middle of a 70 degree hill and your little baby just decides to stop, and you have to break it with both breaks, hand and foot because if not its slides down… and you have to kickstart it again with the same foot you are breaking with
and you are there… looking up, looking down… stopped, almost vertically, the concept of doing more turns to save a mountains hill doesnt exist… if we can draw a straight line up , why not?
what do you do??
well… you slide down, then you start it, you move down, and then you run up the 2500m volcano with a leather jacket at 35 C pushing little red, hoping in vain she does not decide to give up in the middle.
its my biggest amount of excercise ive been doing since i started riding
exhaustiiiinggg
desperation
4 hours 5 hours crazy amount of hours to get out of the nice, and pretty and peacefull lombok valley
buttt rewarding at the end, and i dont know whats wrong with her, but she was a beast up other mountains… took her to the hospital, but nobody knows…
well hopefully she gets better,….. because i want her with me

and then… it was dark very dark and i stopped at a little road place for dinner, and the family didnt let me go.
you are not riding at night… you are a woman … you can get killed the say
you are staying here… so there i stayed with the nice sasak family, a muslim lombok type…

and i was their monkey…

all the town, all the village, all the kids came to see me, to say hi to me… the mothers brought their little babies which starting weeping and crying when they saw me… the grandmothers walked from all over to touch me, they looked they stared at me when i ate… they looked and stared when i smoked… and then i started playing some seed sasak games (reallyyy fun) with the kids that showed me and suddendly i had all the town as my groupies
they clapped if i won, said big Ohhhhs when i lost, everybody offered me coffe and food, and of course its bad education if you say no, so there i was eating and eating like i never did before, trying all the dishes they knew how to do, overcaffeined by the amount of coffees by body was consuming,
then everybody started to talk to comment, and they all left, leaving me with the single men of the village, my own single men caravan

because you know, here after the basic common questions of whats your name, and where are you going, the mothers always ask

do you have a honey?
do you have a darling?
do you have a husband?
and all the unimaginable synonyms for it…

to which of course i say yes, i say that he is working very very very hard and that’s why he cant join me
to which they answer
so when are you going to marry him?
to which i say… well not for now you know im still young…
and then its when they call all the marriable men that sell themselves as great husbands
and they are soooo shy soo shy, but we ended up watching an indo magician on tv and playing other seed games which was nice and then they were more relaxed and even talked to me, (a few knew english)
and next morning the families kid took me to see how the uncle slices up a buffalo and skin its
which was coool very cool
hmmm but im getting worried if i will get used to all this attention, they day i leave any market in barcelona and i dont see 300 people staring at little postie and eager for conversation, what will i do? what will happen to my ego?
hmmm maybe i just dont leave indonesia
time clicking and been ages at this internet
haven’t said but im in bali today… sooo many bules (what they call the tourists, it means albino, isnt it a cool word… i love it) and the whites dont care about me, and they all know english
i have to move to a village
bsbsbsbsbbsbs

midnight river showers, alcoholess pool gambling and other indo stories….

mariana delas — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:20:30 +0000

lombok now,
this is white land.. im even shaked, nervous, so many tourists with big backpacks, what do they carry?, where do they go, im about to ask them like they do here all the time… keee mana???
but to come here its been fun,
fun fun days
one day the whole city i went to was completely full in accomodation, there was a conference going on, i asked lots of people, and a man Peter took me to his family, we drank beer, we played guitar tunes, from michael jackson to celine dion.. (titanic song is still a hit) and then… and then they started playing holly night, religious music and asked me to play them some spanish religious music… which which…. hmmmm i have no idea, they were shocked, and they made me sing holly night in spanish… and ohh poor family i couldnt remember it, made something reasonable up, and now.. the have it written,posted on their wall, and they played it and replayed it….the little girl singing it so proud, oh i feel so bad, the new nanaversion still talks about angels and babies but if only they knew…
well and all that was after they gave me a towel, a bucket and a piece of soap and told me at pitched black night with beer tipsiness,
ok now you can shower in the river
no people looking, go , go
… in my head only annas voice whispering ….TIFUSS…. MALARIA… and all the sicknesses you can ever get, was so clumsy couldnt see a thing, throwing freezing buckets over and over the river looking doubtfully clean…. welll it felt good afterwards soooooo blablaba

and then the next day i got the ferry to sumbawa to another island and on the ferry met two indonesian english teachers who then took me out to the city for a pool game.
Ok, pool game, the day before flores was catholic land, this was muslim land, soo pool game 20 tables , random rules, only woman in there i think in the history of that place , or so it seemed as i had the biggest crowd of staring people ive ever had. if i moved, they moved, if i stopped they stopped, crazzzyyyy but was fun,
after a few games, my lungs were getting over over over smoked and told my friends… so lets go for a beer no?
hahahha i allways mess it up allways, and one looked at me and then asked…. are you alcoholic?? when trying to explain that well i was just used to that question and blablalba we at then end had 3 coffes at the beach which was nice, and religion occupied the major topic of conversation
so this comes into the thing that ive been thinking about of indos, ok they all live together , the catholics the muslims the hindus… all of them, but legally they cant intermarry, appearently they can change relgion but cant intermarry,
on their passport under name, age, sex there is relgion….
and then whenever ive been talking a bit more to them conversations are allways about religion or soccer
by the way, in case you didnt know… im the biggest barca fan ever…. hahaha if only they kneww….
well but yes, my hands are burning and are literally black, i have to get some gloves or ill loose them
balablablabla will post pics… someday when wireless appears

flores is hilly

mariana delas — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:38:11 +0000

so today just to vary a bit its going to be fast
because im very very hungry
because i drove 9 hours straight Up up up a mountain, down down, up up again like a constant loop, from 1200m to 0 to 1000 to 0 to 2300
it was sunny, it poored rained a few times, it was very foggy, then was very bright, so had everything
but the views were awesome,… ahhh oohhh all the time… really nice like postcard nice all the time
hmm this white skin i have makes it good many times and a bit annoying others, i guess you cant expect to be unnoticed when driving a motorcycle, i was thinking, indeed, and its like if there was a pitch black girl driving a motorcycle through extremadura,
she would be poiinted at
and looked at, i would do both so yepp just getting used to the fact that anywhere i stop, anywhere, whether there is people or only goats,
in 2 seconds i am surrounded by men women and lots of kids but its alright the only problem is that i should learn bahasa indonesian, next time, i will learn the language
but for the other part, been treated really well, lots of free foods, free accomodation, got another puncher in the middle of the mountain but a family took me to their place to have coffe and lunch while the send a few guys from the village to fix it, so really they cant be nicer to me so its good , i dont know if they are so nice to me because i smoke rolling tobacco and here when smoking that it means you are homeless or its something natural, but one to one treatment is nice, just the whole ‘HELLO MISTER” shouted constanlty from random people gets a bit exhausting
but good good, and every time i encounter the police , and i give them all the paperwork, which none of it is coherent (different number plate, different transit way…well many things) they look at me, they look at the paper, me again, i am like shithiitit they are going to find out,
and then seriously they ask,… do you have facebook?
so yes… this is indo not too different to spain, just lots and lots of people
im very hungry

dadedadadeadaedadeda
rice or noodles, that is my friends the crucial question…

picspics

mariana delas — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 12:14:50 +0000

Dili dili dili Indo indo indo LALALALALA

mariana delas — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:57:29 +0000

hehehe im hereee made it to indo
well i could write a whole book about how bureucracy works, or how it doesnt work or how to make it work. sooo, if ive learned something about it, and hopefully i did because its been my major occupation the last couple days.., is that one has to be in constant TRANSIT… you know people look at you with mean faces, NO motorbike, NO motorbike no passport for motorbike NO go in my country… and then you say TRANSIT and then … their faces glow, you can see the shinny tooth (not teeth, tooth) behind the lips…
life in transit means that somebody else will deal with it
it means no custom taxes, and it means that their amount of paperwork reduces considerably… and that they can just relax and enjoy a cigarrette with you
well to get into timor it wasnt that easy, still transit but had to deal with port people, agency people, government people… but indo hahah everybody scared me , no pass morobikes in indo… and i even had time and confidence to make myself a couple of pics with the police officers
ahhh its great ahhh
SO…. this last week
TIMOR; was random.. its a mix, UN people in one side the rest in the other… its a weird country indeed, everything has to be redone, indo invasion left it all a bit burned and raged… but there was tim who showed me around, took me to a michael jackson party full of UN soldiers dancing to heal the world… was really really fun.. the police troops all fit and abexploting with the pale anthropologists all together in a pseudoaustralian type bar… reminded me of summer camp, in where the last day everybody has to make out with everybody because they will never see each other again… ahh good times, and good dancing too. no slow song at the end… but well fun fun to see… and annoyed i couldnt explore the east side of east timor which appearently was very nice but paper work took too long….but actually felt sad when leaving dili, one whole week in the same place it pretty much seemed like i had been there for ages, and its not to overoptimize people but everybody i met there was nice and chilled and good to hang out with.

and and and and today its little reds 30th birthday!!! she passed the 30 000 km barrier… i love her age counting because its relative to her work. So if she has a hard life, like she is doing now, then she ages quickly, but as soon as she retires in the arid lands of mallorca she will age slowly and calmly so yes! 30th birthday and i got her a new set of lights.. her old ones exploded some day ,so now she can see at night, which is actually pretty helpfull…

and now indooo!!well yesterday night i stayed at carmelite monastery which boosted up my spirituality, joined a party with 30 seminar priest students, had a big feast but at 9 o clock no more talking…it was actually good too much paperwork stress so it calemd me down,
well but now im actually excited , lots of people, lots of motrocycles, roads are crazy through mountains, you go up, you go down you go up again 60 degree hills that if you stop in the middle and only break with the front break you slide down… crazyyyyy roads stop, gravel beggins, road appears again… and tomorrow ferry to Floress dadadadaadadada the loong and winding road… the beatles hmmm the beatles
tomorrow music again, i made myself two days with no music when riding to adapt to the overcrowdness but now again musicicicic
today sleeping in a hammoc in a bar.. because the hostal i wanted to go was full, and really not too much effort in exploring kupangs hotel offer so the bar im at offered me a hammoc with sea views.. and it couldnt be better…
little red is enjoying the beach breeze and i will enjoy the mosquitos
we were made to be together

petrol is for washing parts, alcohol is for drinking, nitro is for racing

mariana delas — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:05:58 +0000

sorry! sorry! it has taken me ages to write.. im becoming lazy, thats only because little postie has left me on her cruise through the timor sea while i stayed in darwin making time.. but what a time..
i thought I had too much spare time.. but its been great
so
to make it quick

after alice , postie got quickly recovered form her puncher, on the road met all the dragracers that were cruising up north to the darwin race final… I road, they passed me, i saw them having a cigarrete and relaxing under the sun at the service stations, they then passed me again… it was fun,
and because all the good things on the road happen at the petrol stations, i was filling up posties bellies when I bus full of lets say “tipsy” kiwi dragracers offer little red a lift to take her to where the party was, she actually needed a party after so much outback introvert riding, i actually didnt know what else to debate with my innerself so it did us both good.
the daryl waters night was great lots of aussie stereotypes aswell, motrocycles, a cowboy playing the waltzing matilda (of course what else?) with his wip, hmm this would be taken wrong but well all healthy, beer it was all good, motrocyclist are good, and they felt compassionate about little red aswell so it was great they helped her out in every way they could
next day continued cruising and camped with another dragraceteam, the harleys this time, ahh and it was the only day the aussies can buy and throw firecrackers so it was quite funny to see the exciment that firecrackers provoke to people because they are considered explosives any other time… crazy aussies if they ever went to Fallas in valencia….they would flip out
and postie was behaving so well and she got a clean carburator aswell and she was cruising smoothly ,so we did a 80km detour to some waterfalls was great.. but then i had the brilliant idea ahh i amaze myself sometimes to go back to the main road through a gravel road
i asked, they said it was 30km
it turned up to be 30km of sand, pure sand
and 60 more of gravel.
took me ages.. but made it.. and just while I was dancing the conga because darwin was only 20km from darwin my little baby little red decides to stop.. and to never go on again..
stress it is night, i m in the middle of the highway, of course powerless no phone because of camping
some people gave me beer, some people just whistled, two motrobikers helped me change the sparkplug.. but nothing.. i was stranded
just when i was starting to loose my hope and planning to camp in the intermediate grass… the bertrams accepted to give me lift and then, they were so nice that they also gave me a dinner, a shower a bed to crash on and some bundaberg rum…mmmm rum
it was nice and cozy
then the next day.. it was deadline day 3.. they took me to the port, pushed little sick red to the port and off she went.. but i will fix her.. i dont know how but in timor she will reunite with old friends (heard she has many cousins around) so she will be back and running….
ayyy its getting too long , thats what happens when i dont write more often
so yepppp my motorless days in darwin were saved by going to the dragmotorcyle races and see how motorcylcemotors do not end at 70km an hour… but that in truth there are bikes that go to nearly 400km an hour in around 7 seconds…
that was a change
but it was coool

////so to wrap up/// im leaving tomorrow to dili/// will reunite with little red on friday and hopefully fix her soon to keep on cruising/// im craving to be back on the road…
will promise to put some more pictures soon.. im working on a flickr account aswell but im slow…