Locked up abroad

    So the day started off innocently enough, been riding for 10days straight kinda needed to stop and put the legs up for a day or so.. been trading emails with this fellow gringo loco we will call ¨SWRN¨ (someone who will remain nameless) whos on a similarily hell bent mission to ride a bike from north to south america.. Anyway, after a few weeks of trading emails we finally link up in a small town in central Argentina called Chos Malal..
        Like any self respecting bike tourists would do we procede to get bum drunk around the BBQ all in the name of good fun (total of 9.2liters of wine and 8liters of beer).. well we are new to Argentina and maybe we dont quite know the customs like we should, but here everyone and i mean everyone takes a siesta from  about 1pm till 4pm.. well being gringos and gringos who ride a bike all day we are not used to, or prepared for such a custom. Naturally we just sit around the BBQ getting hammered, well as you can imagine this causes quite a problem with the locals.. We kind of shrugged off their suggestions to be quiet naively thinking we were not being loud nor disturbing anyone.. this is where the problems started..
        ¨Officer Friendly¨ comes on duty at lets say 6pm.. and mind you hes not acutally an officer but mearly a security guard employed by the hotel ¨SWRN¨ is staying at (I am staying with the fireman because its free), so he comes out pissing and moaning about us being loud for the umpteenth time and keeping folks up during siesta, so us being the respectable gentleman we are kindly move our poco fiesta to the outside parking lot, and mind you this outside parking lot is at a minimum several hundred yards away from the hotel and plus by this time its after dark and everyone is awake anyway.
          Well apparently this is not enough for ¨officer friendly¨ and he comes out with the hose and soaks all of us and our gear and grabs said gear and hucks it over the fence out into the street.. well ho ho i say this will not be tolerated, so in my inebriated state i decide to pick up a golf club (just for protection mind you) and wouldnt you know it, ¨officer friendly¨ is quite keen on stick fighting, so he picks up a big ol stick and we square off.. well I regret to inform you I did not get the better of this situation and ended up out on my ass in the street with a nasty cut on my head from the stick.. and a nasty bruise on my arm (still not sure how that happened) so Im out on the street and my cohorts deem it a great idea to pour red wine all over a nice white classic car who we for sure think is the security guards.. turns out its not.. some poor bloke comes running out of the hostal absolutely full of piss and vinegar screaming (in spanish) ¨why the fuck did you pour red wine on my car??¨ all we can manage is ¨no entiendo¨ although we clearly did understand we deemed it best to just pretend we didnt..  so this is where the story gets good, ¨SWRN¨ decides hes had enough with this bullshit hostal and he will come stay with us at the fire department, so he tries to get his things and leave.. well wouldnt you know it officer friendly wasnt having that and they square off in the doorway, fortunetly SWRN knows some kung fu and gets the upper hand, even retreving his wallet that officer friendly had taken from him.. so it takes a good 5mins to wrestle SWRN´s bike out the hostal door but we do it and we walk back to the fire department to spend the night..
         So the story should end here, however it does not.. we get back to the fire department and SWRN realizes someone has messed with his bike, well hi ho we say this will certainly not be tolerated so we make our way back to the scene of the incident (just to retrieve the bolts mind you) and wouldnt you know it, officer friendly is there taunting us!! well SWRN pulls out his knife and rolls up to the door which was now obviously shut and begins to rap it on the window in quite the meanicing fasion, me being the clown i am think it a good idea to go ¨rev the engine of a motorcycle¨ parked out front, just to look tough you know.. well turns out this is not a motorcycle but rather a moped belonging to the local pizza delivery company and wouldnt you know it when u ¨rev¨ a mopeds engine the fucker just takes off!! so there i am, ive just ghost rode a moped into crashing rather severily (spilling pizzas and whatnot everywhere) my buddy SWRN is meanicing this security guard with a 8in blade and i realize perhaps we are in the wrong in this situation.
        So we all take off in different directions figuring someone has surely called the cops by this point and I make it maybe a half a block and see 8 policias coming right at me, ¨you gringo, on the ground¨ oh fuck i think here we go.. ¨que es problema??¨ I utter in my half broken spanish.. ¨you didnt pay your hotel bill¨ phew I think, im not staying in a hotel im staying with the firemen surly they have the wrong guy.. well turns out they are looking for SWRN who they mistake for me! Im cuffed and stuffed and once they realize im not the guy they were looking for they began to question me as to who my friends were, well being no stranger to dealing with police I simply said I do not know, I just met those guys.. Well this did not go over well, they chucked me in the back of the police car and paraded me around town for about 90mins looking for my accomplices.
           At some point we drive by the fire station I was staying at, well my friends were there and as soon as they saw the cop car obviously put their heads down, fortunetly the fireman saw me in the back and said ¨hey isnt that Matthew??¨ turns out it was, so now atleast my friends know im in the clink, they come try to bail me out to no avail (thanks guys) so finally im booked and tossed into a rather nasty cell, and meet one of the coolest people ive met in south america thus far, his name is Juan and he doesnt speak english so we dont quite understand each other, we become friends after a hand shake and a few words mainly him saying ¨policia es putas!¨ I agree and we get along fine, he uses the button of his pants and draws a rather gripping image of a police officer in the fetal position labeling it you might have guessed ¨policia es putas¨ so all in all a good nights sleep, didint have any water, food, or acess to a bathroom but i did have a shitty foam matress (no blankets)  so i slept okay, and the next morning after a bunch of paperwork i was relesed into my friends custody so after a rough and tumble night with the police and an overzealous security guard I can now declare with pride i have been ¨locked up abroad¨

Here we go...

         Its always strange to start something new, before i started this crazy adventure by bike I was nervous, scared, apprehensive, and didnt really know what to expect but once I got rolling it felt like the most natural and easy thing to do in the world..
           Im really hoping this blog venture will be similair, as I sit here, alone, half way through a bottle of pisco in a hostel in Chile Im kind of at a loss as to what to write about despite the fact I´ve been on the adventure of a life time the past 4mos. So bear with me and hopefully once I get rolling with this blog thing itll become as easy as bike touring did for me.
           Not to say bike touring was easy from the get go, I distinctly remember cracking like an egg 30k into my first day on the bike, and wondering what in gods name did I just sign myself up to do.. but after 3mos on the bike I thank my lucky stars not only was I afforded the time to do this but that I didnt give up on it like I REALLY wanted to those first few days, this will sound sappy but without the support from first and foremost my family (Don, Lynn, Janna, cousins etc.) and friends (Kam, Nat, Pilgrim, Mallory, etc.) I absolutely never would have got this thing off the ground.
           So a big thank you to everyone who supported this whole idea into becoming a reality, I honestly could not have done it without you.. It feels right after 3mos of riding (Ushuaia > Santiago) to let these folks know how I feel, Im sure you all do but I wanted to say it anyway, because honestly I wasnt quite sure myself thatd Id be able to do this so now that I know I can (and will) finish what I started I thought itd be a good time to say thanks to everyone who believed in me through the good and the bad.
          Anyway, enough with that, I must say Ive got some pretty interesting stories from the past 3mos of riding, arrested in Argentina, robbed in Lima, damn near frost bit in Tierra Del Fuego, but we will get to all that later.. for now I just wanted to say thank you and get this first blog post up and out there, like it (or dont) its mostly for me so I can remember the cool (and not so cool) parts of this trip. Feel free to comment and tell me what u liked (or didnt like) and ill try to make the next post more interesting than the last.. Thanks for reading..