The day of the good, the bad and the (very) ugly!

‘‘Twas a day of all three! Today is the day we start the westerly trek across the steppes of Mongolia. We leave Ulan Bataar at the early  hour of 6.45 am hoping to beat the traffic build up in central Ulan Bataar. The  strategy works !  We breeze thru an almost deserted city and hit  the road to the west.

Then we hit the bit of the road we were warned about. There had been a wash out of a bridge and big section of the road during a flash flood last week. Yes, there it was. 10 km of sand filled temporary track. The bike started  swerving from left to right and back again quicker than a New Zealand political party! We paddled and slipped and slid thru’ myriad tracks and sometimes just on the grass itself. The choking dust was horrible - sometimes you could see only about 2 metres in front of the bike.    The pictures say all.

To those of you that pick up detail that is not an oil patch on the left hand side of the bike. 

Enough said! 

And then we are thru’ - without a spill off. 

I do have to say the Mitas E07 tyres I have on worked a treat in the sand and were miles better in the sand than Heidenau or TKC70 tyres I have used in the past. 

So having got the good and the bad component of the day out of the way we barrel on towards Kharakhorum - the old capital of Mongolia that was built on the orders of the great Ghengis himself   

Then suddenly the ugly!  There is a ginormous pothole in the middle of the road. We are on it and into it and over it before I could swerve. We hit it at about 90 km per hour. The bike takes one almighty bone shattering spine damaging thump. The dash board light immediately flashes a red warning light.  I stop. The problem - two  flat tyres from the pot hole and two bent rims! It doesn’t get much worse than that - hence now the very ugly part of the day! 

I make a futile effort to try to bash out the rim with a piece of rock .

I suspect this is not an approved technique in the BMW owners’ manual. Nor however is a lot of what else is about to happen 

A nomad family of husband wife and child on a motorcycle come along. They stop to help. After some more futile rock banging the nomad takes off to his ger on the near by hill and comes back with a big steel hammer. We belt hell out of the rim. Nothing shifts. Again it is a futile exercise 

More relatives arrive. We form a problem solving steering committee somewhat hindered by the fact no one on the other side speaks a word of English. 

Then another little disaster occurs. Relieved of one pannier the bike over balances and tips over from its precarious position on the side of the road.  

And this bit of machinery on its side is what has to get us to London !

We right the bike. 

The nomad gets his truck. We load the bike on. 

We go to a small dusty town  30km away and unload the bike at a tyre repair shop. The young fella there does not know where to start and opines as much as we can discern that we have to go back to Ulan Bataar. I strongly disagree and want to get the bike to our destination in Kharakhorum which is 150 km closer and a reasonable-sized town. After about an hour of unintelligible discussion it is agreed that we will do that. We load the bike into a van owned by the nomad’s brother in law - we think.

And off we go 110km to Kharakhorum.

There is a delightful and welcoming  new hotel there Ikh Khorum where the staff speak English. We checkin, unload the bike and explain the problem. 

It is agreed they will try to help next morning (a Sunday). 

Sunday dawns. I gingerly ride the bike on two flat tyres and bent rims to a mechanic’s workshop about 200m away. The wheels are inspected, there is a very long discussion in Mongolian and then the translation comes back that the wheels cannot be fixed!  Then the discussion and inspection continues for another quarter of an hour. The opinion is then expressed  that perhaps the bike can be fixed. Today!!!  So I leave the  bike at the Kharakhorum BMW Service center!

This is what a bent rim looks like. Two sides on the front and two on the back. About 10 bent and loose spokes.

Our mechanic gets to work.

To pass the time we visit the local monestary 

It is dress up day 

9 hours later just on dusk I go back to the “service center”. 

Hallelujah , Hail Mary, whatever!, the bike is on its side stand and both wheels now have air in them (at both the top and the bottom!) and look round in shape.

The mechanic draws the price in the sand. I pay, tip as handsomely as possible, refrain from kissing him on both cheeks and ride back gingerly to the hotel.  The tyres stay up. The front brake does not work which gives me a momentary heart flurry but  then it kicks in. 

All of this makes you think about our throw away society where in almost every case you would aoutomatically throw away the rims and put new ones on. Some German bikers at the hotel are horrified at the thought you would attempt to fix the rims. But, here in isolated Outer Mongolia you just fix things! You have no option. 

We go back to the hotel and have a delightful meal with fellow travelllers of different nationalities. 

Of particular note is Thomas Groothuizen from Auckland who is about 26 and has  cycled from Cape Town, South Africa to Beijing in China overland all the way, and also from the top of Alaska to Patagonia. Wow, what can you say ! 

It looks as if we are on the way again   But let’s wait until tomorrow morning ! 

We do. In the morning I take my pressure gauge nervously down the bike. I check the tyre pressures. Identical to last night! More Halleluias drift upwards  into the heavens! 

We pack up, load up, makes speeches of thanks to the fantastically helpful hotel staff, climb on the bike and head to the next destination - Tsetserleg about 120 km away. We go slowly to let the tyres settle down and to check for any other problems. We are hypersensitive to potholes and road repairs.

And we arrive in Tsetserleg without a hint of a problem with the bike. We check into the Fairfield  guest house run interestingly enough by an Australian chappie. There are flat whites and Roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and ginormous Aussie burgers on the menu. 

Just after we arrive the heavens open and a giant thunderstorm descends on the hotel. It pours with the heaviest rain I think I have seen in my life. But we are dry, happy and very very relieved 

I guess that the moral of this story is that you should not allow yourself to be bent out of shape by a tyre rim that is bent out of shape 

And that dear reader  is the story in this post  of the good the bad, the ugly, and the very good again !