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Abricots

On Thursday I confidently drove to the Jeremie airstrip to pick up Mica and Clara (a Spanish girl back here on holiday). The confidence was fueled by the fact that my two year old, 5000 km pickup was riding on five new tires installed a month ago.

The plane was on time, the ladies in fine shape and all was well with the world until shortly before Bonbon when the disordered lurching of the car signaled a flat tire. Out with the jack (it folds up nicely for stowage but I now plan to replace it with a hydraulic one at the earliest opportunity) and on with the spare tire.

Off we go again, the ladies still in fine shape but yours truly slightly bedraggled and worse for wear. We cross the Bonbon river (a mere creek by Canadian standards) and have hardly climbed the bank when the lurching starts again!

Malediction, xqz bfk zxy and other assorted expletives greet another flat. Most villages house a tire man. Bonbon has none and anyway my tires are tubeless and not repairable by local means.

Fortunately whilst we are pondering the situation a motorbike appears. The rider, who is a member of Mica's bee keeping program agrees to carry me to Abricots.

I should have walked (after all its only 5 or 6 miles although mostly up hill) as the ride was sheer torture. It was like riding a horse cross country without stirrups. The pedals for my feet cunningly sloped downwards so that it required a constant pressure of my knees against the frame of the bike to keep my balance as we bucked wildly from stone to stone. The driver must have wrists of steel to maintain control. I am still undecided as to whether uphill or downhill travel is the worst, but by the time we arrived at the top of the hill where one track leads to the village and another to my house I had enough. I thanked my benefactor for the ride and told him I would have his name jumped to the top of the list of recipients for Mica's next batch of beehives and staggered down our one mile driveway to the house.

A glass of ice cold water and a handful of candies revived me sufficiently to order the houseboy to carry my sixth wheel and tire (prudence does pay off) down to the village. I followed with an armful of old inner tubes and slipped and fell and skinned my shin and croaked my plea to the good Canadian sisters who agreed to lend me their car for my rescue expedition.

You will hardly credit this but on arrival at the scene of the disaster I found to my shocked amazement that the ladies, relaxing in the shade whilst chatting with the admiring locals, had made no attempt at jacking up the car!

Bfz.xx.y?!pq and other choice remarks accompanied by another gallon or so of my perspiration and we were off in convoy. I followed Mica whilst anxiously peering at her tires bouncing from rock to rock in the expectation of another fatal flat that never materialized. On arrival at the fork in the road I naturally expected Mica to volunteer to return the sisters car and walk home from the village whilst I rode down in ours. Hypocritically she claimed that the good sisters trusted me with their precious vehicle but would look poorly on it being turned over to a less competent driver!!

Who was it said "God protect me from my friends and I will look after my enemies".

Patric de Verteuil
Paradis des Indiens

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