I bought my motorcycle to explore the back roads around where I live in Chiriqui Province, Panama. When I bought it I didn’t know that the driver’s license I had didn’t allow me to ride a motorcycle. Anyone who’s followed this blog knows what I went through (in SPANISH) in order to get legal. I received the endorsement on Thursday. Friday it looked as though it was going to start raining at any moment. It didn’t rain at all as it turned out. The weekends are busy times on the road because people that work during the week are out getting things done they can’t do Monday through Friday, and since I am, at BEST, a novice rider, I figured it would be better to wait for a time there would be less traffic on the roads.
Why do I classify myself as a novice rider? Well, when I was around 40 years old I had an old beater of a car that died. I didn’t have enough money to buy another car, but I saw an ad for a Honda 125 motorcycle that was for sale real cheap and I COULD afford to buy it. I rode it for most of a year to and from work on the back roads of New Orleans. But I never got an endorsement there and I never took any lessons. It’s been 30 years since I’ve ridden a motorcycle and though I passed the Panamanian test for a motorcycle endorsement looking at YouTube videos of what people in several different states in the States have to do to pass I can honestly say I’d never qualify.
Be that as it may, with the weekend over I was determined to go for a ride. The sky’s were heavily overcast, but nothing like Friday, so I got my gear on and went out on a 27 kilometer ride from my house to a place up in the hills above Boquerón to a nothing little place called Bocalatún. I have no idea what that means in English if it means anything.
I took it slow and easy stopping a couple of times to take pictures.
With all the mountains around here, when it rains Chiriqui becomes an immense watershed and there are small rivers all over the place and, of course, bridges.
This is one of only a half dozen vehicles I encountered in the hour I was riding.
Now this was a complete mystery. Just before the road turned from pavement to dirt up around 1,700 feet above sea level I came across this:
Left over from Noah’s Flood?
One More Good Adventure 