Crisis! (Nathan)

It may be worth briefly relating this tale from today: it is hot. Very hot. The sun is beating down. We are three days into Baja and we have yet to see a cloud (that came later today). We pull over, 20 kilometres outside of La Paz, our waypoint before the final push to Cabo today. We get gas after a long haul through the desert. Suddenly, Brett has a crisis. He is mysterious about it at first. He has a problem, he says, that he needs to fix. Something is leaking. I begin to worry. Is it gas? Is it oil? Brake fluid? Coolant All of these things could seriously hurt our trip. And as we discovered when we met the intrepid B.C. dirt bikers (see below), we know nothing about either zen or the art of motorcycle maintenance. By which I mean to say, if something goes wrong with our bikes, something goes wrong with our entire trip. So, I'm worried.

 

But the worry is muted when Brett reveals the source of the leak. It is, he believes, the bottle of premium tequila he has purchased for our Mexican enjoyment. He has stored it in a drybag, and that drybag is leaking. I take a picture, because I think it's hilarious. He goes through his drybag, pulling things out one by one. There's something you should understand about Brett: he has a magic with packing. I throw my stuff into hardbags that look like mini-suitcases. Brett has hardbags, too, but he also has a bunch of stuff in canoe-camping drybags that he somehow lashes on to the back of his bike. By the time he is done, the lashing job looks like something one of those crazy cubist artists might have dreamed up. It is pure, unadulterated beauty. The problem is when you need something out of the drybags. Then the cubists start to go mad, and the whole thing unravels.

 

This is the problem Brett faced. He paid a 40 per cent premium over the Cuervo for good tequila. And it was leaking. He had to get things apart.

 

So he did. First came the tent, then the fly, then the pegs, all dripping, all quickly pulled out of the drybag and tossed on to the desert ground near the Pemex gas station. Then -- oh, what's that? The tequila bottle! Intact! Life truly is beautiful!

 

As it turned out, it was the remnants of last night's six-pack (or, to be more factual, eight-pack: everything really is better in Mexico) that had begun to leak. Catastrophe averted! The tequila is preserved!

 

We have a very strict no drinking and driving policy on this trip, so we did not do a celebratory shot. But if you felt North America briefly warm up this afternoon, it was the glow of Brett's happiness, secure in the knowledge that his tequila was there for his enjoyment at a later date.