But then I realized that there was still a little rust near the upper part, and I ended up with a big hole and making new cuts and planning a new double patching. And, of course, I found many other spots that needed to be repaired as well. It seemed a never ending story.
Some day I took the Africa Twin and rode to Santiago to meet the Casales. It was an official meeting as we were on an advanced status prior to ordering the sandwich GRP panels from a very known company in Germany to make three living cabins, one for each one of us. Some months ago we decided to join efforts to get panels with the best quality available as we were not convinced about the quality of the panels that we could get locally.
We discussed about many issues on the subject and we profited to examine their 1017 based self-made motorhome and their experience after 17 years with it. There was a lot of thinking, what to keep, what to change, when thinking on building a new living cabin, especially about the size and the type of the windows. We discussed about heating, insulation, space distribution and all the usual aspects to discuss on. A couple of hours later I rode back to San Felipe, to work for a living.
That week was not an exception, and I only had enough time for patching a couple of spots, pretty frustrating.
One day, thursday I think, at lunch time, my brother called to tell me that my father had had an accident and that he went down on the mountains. When you are the son of an helicopter pilot you always wait to hear that kind of news, but after all these years I am convinced that the old man is going to pass away anywhere but in a helicopter crash. Of course he was okay and no passenger got injured in the accident. My old man is an old fox, and he knows how to handle things. He took the picture of the unfortunate helicopter himself and sent it using Whatsapp. Do you believe it?
The next day he coordinated the rescue of the remains and, the day after that, he finished the job he was in as a copilot on another helicopter. Fourty years of flying make strange effects on people. Anyway, good for him.
I am pretty sure that my father’s guardian angel must be as exhausted as mine; that weekend I fell pretty badly on a steep hillside and broke some little pieces of the bike and hurt a little my pride. I realized then that the daredevil teenager was gone long ago and decided to take things a little easier with the bike. No pictures… no pain.
The summer season was officialy over one week before and so Carmen and I profited that everybody was back at work and we drove to the beach to make a nice Sunday promenade by the seaside, and to have a really pleasant lunch in our favorite restaurant in Viña del Mar. The best part of it was that there was almost nobody on the beach, which usually is full of thousand semi-naked, restless people shouting and throwing sand everywhere you look at; unbearable. Now the sunset was spectacular and quiet.
But there were still more things to come, of course. While I was trying to do some progress on the Merkabah, the Africa Twin began to make some strange noises and the clutch became pretty stiff. Inadvertently I did not change the oil as recommended by the manual based on time, and so maybe something went wrong. When changing the oil some metallic micro particles showed up, aluminium particles. The bike needed to be grounded and probably major repair, and I mean major.
I got the manuals from the internet and parked the bike aside the truck. Eduardo helped me to take the engine out, which took me well three afternoons.
The problem with old machines is that there are always some parts that need to be replaced even if they are not completely worn, but just because you have disassembled and you are already there. That was the case of the output shaft where the front sprocket sits, one of the weakest points of the design of the venerable Honda. So we decided to make a complete overhaul and make it worth the effort of disassembling the entire engine to gain access to the shaft.
Naturally, every work on the Merkabah was suspended until new call.
But, as always happens, the big Boss had the appropriate surprise for me, with His exact timing, and the GS 650 F came back to me, after three years, without previous notice. Coincidences do not exist, you know. What exactly happened I keep to myself as it is a rather sad story involving the loss of a friendship but, in the end, I got the bike and it would be very useful while the Africa Twin was in the ICU, waiting for the complete split and the parts got delivered from Japan.
Better than any book - we must be crazy 
