Looking down to get my phone out of my leg pocket, I notice two wet patches in the sand beneath my bike.
Then three. Then four. Then ten!
****! My bike is leaking something.
****! It’s coolant.
**** ****! This is NOT good.
Houston, we have a problem… and it’s not the leaky pipe attached to my radiator… it’s the crazy man sprinting towards me like a zombie in a zombie movie.
I kid you not.
One of the plantation workers is sprinting towards the fence that separates us. Something is not right in this scene.
His eyes are bloodshot red and his dreadlocks flapping madly in the breeze and he yells something at me.
“Are you American?” He shouts as he reaches the fence.
“No, South African” I reply while trying to assess the situation and watch my radiator hose leak more precious coolant.
“German?” he yells, more insistently.
“No, South African!”
He starts parting the fence and trying to climb through it.
Now normally, I’d be cool with chatting to locals, even if they were drunk. But this guy was clearly high as a kite on some drug and was not wanting to make friends.
After frantically climbing through the fence, he makes a mad dash towards me.
Is he going to attack me or hug me?
I’m looking at my radiator leaking more and more of my precious coolant onto the sand. I look at the crazy guy and I have to make a choice fast.
Do I stay here and not waste any more fluid, but risk being attacked (or at the very least harassed), or do I ride away to safety, but lose more radiator fluid and potentially overheat my bike.
I start the engine and spray sand everywhere as I pull away as fast as I can. I’m acutely aware that every second I ride I am losing fluid, so I get about 700 meters from the crazy guy and pull over under a shady tree. I cut the engine and get off the bike to inspect the leak, looking over my shoulder just in case the crazy dude has followed me.
He hasn’t.
The leak isn’t too serious. Looks like the radiator hose is sliding down off the radiator.
I can fix that!
So out comes my Leatherman and I attempt to push the hose back onto the radiator.
Instead, I manage to pierce the hose with the Leatherman and boiling hot fluid comes spewing out in my face.
Fuuuuuuucccccckkkkkk! Nooooooooooo.
This is more than bad. This could be the end of the trip!
I’m such an amateur. Why did I poke a hole in the bloody radiator hose? Why????
I just made a small problem a big problem. No bueno.
I throw the bike onto its side to stop the leaking when Marc and Jan Lucas arrive looking for me.
They can see from my face that I’m concerned.
After about 10 minutes of throwing around ideas for how to get out of this mess, we come up with a plan.
A pretty fantastic plan, actually.
I figure that it’s a rubber hose, so it can be patched with vulcanizing glue and some tire patches. The problem is that the pressure of the coolant will surely blow off the patch within seconds.
Marc comes to the rescue with a genius idea. He whips out a roll of inner tube cut into a long strip.
I look at him as if to say, “And now?”
He slowly wraps the inner tube around the radiator hose and over the patch I’ve vulcanized to the hose. He then uses cable ties to keep the inner tube in place.
“This might even work” I think out loud.
We start the engine and our fix holds.
Phew…
Thank you, Marc!
So, now I’m down to only one fork with oil and a potentially dodgy radiator hose, but other than that the bike is running fine.
ot:
