Picking up the new bike, and the first adventure

So in my previous post I mentioned that I caught Lisa in a moment of weakness and somehow managed to convince her to let me purchase a motorcycle. I'm still not worrying about the why - but at the time I was only worried about how I was going to get the thing bought and delivered before she came to her senses. Luckily, with the help of friends and roommates the process of tracking down a decently priced bike was a relatively quick one..

First on the list was trying to make sure I got a valid motorcycle permit / license so that when you inevitably get stopped at a police checkpoint you don't have to worry about getting thrown in jail or asked for a bribe. Well, they'll still ask for a bribe, but refusing with the proper paperwork significantly lessons the chance that they throw you in jail. I called in a favor with a fellow that works with me who I'd imported a laptop for previously and he was able, after three weeks of back and forth with the Malagasy equivalent of the registrar to get me a license. Had I known it was just a pink file folder with my picture riveted to it I may have taken a different... shall we say craftier route...

Regardless, the license hurdle had been leaped and it was on to finding "the bike". There isn't exactly a Malagasy Craigslist or Kijiji that a guy can hit and look for decent used bikes (or at least not one in a language I read or write) so I turned to some friends here and was immediately pointed at Erick the French bike guy. Turns out he isn't just some guy but rather some guy with a bike shop at his house (and a nice one to boot) that works with pretty much every local motor dealer in town and can find you anything you like. He's also used to dealing with clueless foreigners, so that helped too.

My roommate and I snagged a ride over to the shop to check out what he had in stock and to discuss pricing.

It must be official - the name is painted on the wall!

 
Between the tiny bits of French I remember and copious amounts of hand signals and writing down of numbers on paper a decision was made. No way in hell was I paying $7,000 for a "Nippon" bike as he calls them, but yes, I'd certainly love to check out his stock of Chinese made, Erik assembled, dirt bikes. Low and behold, days later I was the proud new owner of a Kinlon Motors branded, Zongshen powered, 250CC Chinese Honda knock-off. Awesome. All for a steal of a deal too (actually cheaper than the same bike in Canada).

So, on to robbing the ATMs for a week in order to put together the $1,400 CAD worth of Malgasy Ariary required to pay for the bike, a helmet, and insurance and registration for the entire year. Yeah... like I said, cheap.

This is what ~3.5 million MGA looks like in 10,000A bills... Numerically - this is way more money then I've ever held before. :)

 The big day arrived. The bike was ready to go. We snagged a ride from a residential friend nice enough to provide and brought along our trusty French speaking accomplice to translate. Upon our arrival a quick creepy peek over the fence revealed the trusty steed in all it's radiant splendor assembled and ready to go.

OK maybe it wasn't that dramatic but come on! It's a freakin motorcycle!

I bet the airline was shocked that they were violating a Chinese Motorcycle company's KLM trademark.... :)

A quick test ride showed all systems go on both bikes and we were both ready to hop on and enjoy. The only problem was we had to count the money yet... The downside to paying millions in 10,000 ariary notes is that it took about an hour to count out the nearly 8 million worth... Good times. Payment out of the way and sweating profusely due to the heat, it was time to get some wind through the ole' pits and head out.

The first adventure was thus far the most challenging, getting back to the camp on bikes from the other side of town in Sunday afternoon traffic, during political rallies.... Not our brightest timing. Two vazah riding through a half dozen side-of-the-road election rallies on brand new bikes did not make us the worlds most favorite people. Hindsight being 20/20 we may have wanted to take a different turn but it all turned out in the end.

Quickly losing daylight we took a spin out to the ocean and found that riding in sand is much more challenging than originally thought but managed to snag the last picture of the bike you will ever see where it is this clean.

Just look at that splendiforous helmet hair and awkward "I'm not sure how to stand next to a tiny motorcycle" pose. Statuesque!

After having hit the pier (and with dark clouds rolling in) we decided to see how far down the trail from the plant site we could get before getting soaked. Turns out that about 5KM South of the main site there is a tiny village, that was both delighted and not so delighted to see a bunch of idiots show up mid Sunday dinner time. The little kids we're laughing and hollaring and excited to see us, but the older folk were not so pleased. Queue awkward waves, a quick "Salama" (the formal greeting) and turning the heck around. It was a good thing too - as the sky promptly opened up and soaked both of us and our beautiful chariots.

And so came the end of the first ride, having only covered 30KM on the first day we were both affixed with a shit eating grin and the conclusion that purchasing bikes had been the smartest move we'd made in a while. I promptly left on rotation the following week and have only been able to make one trip since being back (as I've only had one day off) and man - is it ever cool. More pics and another short adventure in the next post.