Day 4 - It keeps getting better
On Tuesday morning, day 4, Milton's arm was doing a little better. He could bend the elbow, the arm didn't hurt too bad and actually seemed okay without wearing the splint. So the decision was he would ride with us for a ways and see how the arm held up. Unfortunately, Milton's bike wasn't happy and refused to co-operate. The large puddle of gasoline beneath the bike alerted us that there was a problem.
In a remarkable show of DRZ Solidarity, JT's DRZ join in the protest with it's own puddle of gasoline.
Hmmm, the two DRZs in the group leaking fuel from their carbs? What are the odds? The guys theorized that it was aged O rings in both their gas tank petcocks and carburetor float bowls and the lack of Ethanol in Mexican gasoline that was at the heart of this mystery. As I understand it, ethanol makes o rings swell more than pure gasoline. Neither JT or Milton had new O rings in their carbs and, perhaps, they weren't as pliable as new ones. So, with no ethanol in the fuel, the o rings in both the petcocks and the carburetors shrunk and lack of pliability prevented them from then being able to maintain a tight seal. The petcock o ring allowed gas to leak down from the gas tank into the carb. The float seal in the carb was not able to seal and stop the the flow of fuel and, viola, gas was running out of the carb overflow tube and, in Milton's case, filling up his cylinder with fuel and hydro-locking it (as it did back in Tula).
The short term solution was to pinch the fuel line from the gas tank to the carb whenever the bike wasn't running. JT had a couple of hemostats in his tool bag for just such a use.
Unfortunately, Milton's bike was hydro-locked again. It wasn't a hard problem to solve but it would take time. Milton had the tools and know-how to solve the problem so the decision was made for the group to head out and for Milton to catch up to us later in the day once his bike was working again.
We suited up, waved good-bye to Milton, and rode out of town, unaware that fate had different plans for us and that we wouldn't see Milton again for three days.
Our plan for the day was to ride west to a small town called Agua Zarca and then search for a dirt road that would take us to the town of Pisaflores. The dirt road we were looking for was one of those roads that we weren't entirely sure actually existed. It was shown on two of our maps but not shown on the other two. Of course, there was only one way to find out if it actually existed so off we went.
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