23 June 2009

Urine bag

Petra. The ride to Petra was a forebode of better things to come. You climb out of the coast valley to the central plateau on the dull Desert Highway. Once on the plateau you take a left for the final kilometers to Wadi Musa. The landscape is an endless undulating sequence of gentle earth colored hills. And so is the road. Until now I only had practiced riding my bike in straight stretches (Qatar, Saudi and Egypt) and I got fairly good at that, which is not difficult of course. That was over, now it was time for the winding roads, corners and switchbacks. And that is where real motor riding skills come in, the ones I don’t possess yet.

In Wadi Musa I settled in a nice hotel. Jordan is a bloody expensive country. So I decided that it would be a good idea to pay a little more for a first class room, than spent 25 euro on a shabby stinking ashtray room. I enjoyed the shower, had a little afternoon power nap, caught up with the world on BBC, went to the barber (I love going to the barber in this place of the world, it is one of the many things I will miss back in Belgium) before driving to Petra for a sunset session over its ruins. Somewhere halfway I lost the clutch. I couldn’t shift gears any longer. It is probably not as frightening as losing your brakes, but a bit similar. I remembered what a cousin once said about shifting gears in a car, if you are over 4000 rpm you can shift gears without engaging the clutch. So I revved the engine and stamped the gear into neutral. I couldn’t go anywhere with the damn thing, it would stall as soon as I put it in first. Hiphoi, and they just fixed the bike ten days ago in Sharm. I took the lever of, fumbled around for an hour. Somehow the problem disappeared. I called it a day, Petra sunset had to wait, drove back to the hotel, just to lose the clutch again on arriving.

With the help of the workshop manual I found out what the causes could be. One: my clutch plates were gone. Two: air in the clutch conduct. If one; get on a plane and forget the damn thing. If two; bleed the system, injecting the conduct with hydraulic oil pushing the air out. Ha, that was worth a try. Only to do that I needed a special KTM tool (number 509.634.187.000). Guess what I didn’t have the damn thing, and the nearest KTM dealer is in Istanbul. Or go back to Sharm; don’t get a 100 euro when you pass Start. For F*** sake. By the time I figured out the problem, three guys had gathered and were discussing the problem in fluent Arabic and before I knew it they were working on the bike in an attempt to get the air out. We tried for three hours, only wasting oil and time.

After a night of worrying and half sleep I decided the next morning that I would change the clutch cable and give it one more try. With the help of a local man I got a syringe, some green plastic tubes (the ones they put up your nose when you are in a coma) and a connector thingie from a urine bag at the local pharmacy. My own proper bleeding system. Loose the saddle, rip off the tank, change the clutch conduct and fill it up. Haha. It worked. Eat that KTM! By noon I had working bike again, once more. I wondered what the next problem would be, and if I would ever again buy a KTM after this trip.
I settled by the pool and savored my own little victory.

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