Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Simon got his motorcylce finally. I wasn't able to go with him to pick it up, which I'm not that disappointed about. He said it was was freezing, raining, and snowing as he drove it back from the city. Yesterday he brought it over to show me.

Finally we were going to have our motorcylce adventure. We started by just taking a quick spin. We ended up in a very weird part of the village that neither of us had ever been to. We found a spooky graveyard. We were then planning on going to scope out this bombed out church in our village but we found people selling firewood. Katie and I have a fireplace but haven't been able to use it because you can't find firewood anywhere. I bought 250 kilos. Simon was excited to see if his bike could make the haul.

It took us forever to unload. The wood is now stacked chaotically in our living room. You'll see a picture when I blog about the living room. When we were finally done Katie had lunch prepared: grilled cheese and tomato soup. Have I mentioned how in love I am with Katie? Is there really a better meal after hauling firewood would in the rain?

After lunch we all took a coffee together in the bakery by our house. We bought some fixings for dinner, but soon realized we would have to travel to the centre ville to buy some cream. (Katie was going to make chicken carbonara with homemade sauce.) Really it was just an excuse to get on the motorcylce again.

We got a lot of weird looks in town because it is weird for white people to ride this kind of motorcycle here. They expect us to be driving a Mercedes or a BMW. I embraced the looks though and started waving and blowing kisses like it was my own private parade.

After the cream, we made a quick detour to check out the bombed out church. We think it is left over from the french protectorate. It is in ruins.

We were heading back home when we came to a fork in the road. Simon said, "Which way back." I told him the wrong way on purpose and soon we found ourself whizzing through the countryside through twists and turns in the mountains. I leaned forward and told Simon I had told him the wrong way on purpose. He laughed and said, "This is good road for driving." And with that he picked up the pace and we were flying.

We were about 4 miles out of the village when we stumbled upon a couple of young boys, probably 11 or 12. They had their thumbs out so soon I found I had company in the back bed. They didn't even say where they were going or their names, we just drove and smiled at each other, as the wind blew through our hair.

Finally we stumbled on a small village called Zawiya, and the boys motioned to get out. We were sad to see them go, but the road was still calling. We drove on a passed many sheperds who all smiled at us and gave us thumbs up. We learned that dogs will get out of the road if you honk at them but chickens and sheep will not. We nearly died avoiding a poor chicken. I had my green communist-Castro esque hat on, but it wasn't Che and Alberto that were on my mind. The whole ride those Petty lyrics kept playing over and over: "It was a beautiful day, the sun beat down, I had the radio on, I was driving. Trees flew by, me and Del were singing, Little Runaway, I was flying."