Kitty.

I'd grown accustom to her eccentricities a bit, but she was getting unnerving. Even incense couldn't make her get into the spirit with 75ccs? of raw power and 33,000 kilometers to her name. She had taken to stalling unexpectedly and at all the wrong times. I went for a ride up the west coast of the island one day and a local at one of the beaches I stopped at actually was feeling the front tire and laughing. The nail in the coffin (thank got it wasn't mine) was when a bike cut in front of me, to the inside of a dump truck and tossed a pop bottle poorly into the back, missing miserably. A real hazard at 60km/h, no real breaks, bald tires and a machine that is operating at its diminished limits. Not really a relaxing way to spend my afternoon. I missed it barely. One day it took me 2,5 hours to get home. She also got a thorn in her back paw (thankfully only a few hundred metres from a handy tire fixit stall - only $2 for a new tube, installed in 20 minutes flat). I was happy to say goodbye to her limp, physically and mentally challenged body. My distrust had made me timid and THAT is what was going to surely end up in my premature ticket home.

There is a new bike in town. I've affectionately called her Blu; less of a donkey and more like an ox. You can rent anything up to a huge Harley here if you have the money and the skill, but I had shied away from manual bikes because I figured that I had enough to concentrate on and I am a far cry from an "expert". I didn't realize that most of the "manual" bikes here are actually "semi automatics" where you need to select the gears, but there is no proper clutch. Her brakes and gear selector are in the proper places, her brakes brake and all!, she has compact car sized tires, two mirrors that actually work (I am not simply checking to make sure that my left love handle is still where I think it is). American hard iron power of 125ccs (the extra power is much appreciated and it is heavier. It doesn't get buffeted in the wind to the same extent). I still find myself reaching for for a phantom clutch at shift time, but being able to down shift if needed is probably safer in the long run. A huge improvement to what the death trap had on offer. My commute is a reasonably pleasant drive with about 30% of the traffic. There are no Polisi huts and I am SO safe that I am "remounting" my role as Peter Fonda in Easy Rider, with my greasy locks swaying in the breeze (sorry mom).