No puedes controlar la lluvia, cápitulo uno

This is part one of a two part series. Events are factual but the descriptions may be subject to exaggeration, in the spirit of the great Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s style of magical realism.

Soon after leaving San Agustín, I discovered that I controlled the rain. It was pouring when I woke up, so, for the first time on the trip, I donned my full rain outfit: rain jacket, rain pants and useless rain shoe sleeves. The man who opened the gate of the hotel expressed surprise that I would venture out in such weather.  “Lloviznando,” I told him, brushing off the foul weather as harmless drizzle. But as soon as I walked through the gate, the rain stopped. He laughed. “Mejor!”

I didn’t bother to remove my rain gear until later, when sweat started filling the inside of the clammy jacket. When I resumed pedalling, I felt the patter of raindrops on my back. Hoping it was a momentary stray cloud, I continued until I became uncomfortably wet, stopped again, and put back on my jacket, pants, and shoe covers. Once fully impermeable, the rain ceased and the sun shone anew. 

I continued to force the rain to start and stop for several hours as I changed my attire repeatedly, until I was sufficiently drenched by both sweat and rain, at which point my powers dissipated and a steady drizzle persisted regardless of my attire. Still sweating in the Amazonian heat, I calculated derivatives and ran regressions in my head to determine the function of temperature, precipitation, and effort, wherein my overall wetness would be minimized from either sweat with my jacket on, or rain with my jacket off. The math looked something like this:

When I finally cracked the elusive formula, I heard a loud, triumphant pop that sounded like opening a champagne bottle. Two spins of the pedals informed me that the noise wasn’t just my brain. A link on my chain had split clean through the middle. I groaned. The broken chain complicated my day. I was just about as remote as I could be, forty miles from the next town, Mocoa. The rain, the constant change of attire, and the concentration on calculus had slowed me down, and it was getting late in the afternoon already. It may be a long night in the jungle, I thought.

I hastily pulled out my chain tool, removed the broken pieces, and replaced a few links in the sequence needed to install the Magical Quicklink, a part that would attach the two ends of the chain back together. All that remained was tugging the chain on both sides of the Magical Quicklink and watching it snap together. Easy enough. But I tugged and tugged and the Magical Quicklink would not magically snap. I tugged on the chain for two hours in the rain. I tugged until my thumb muscles went limp and the Magical Quicklink fell off again and again, lost in the mud, lost in a stream, lost in the grass — anywhere except securely attached to the ends of the chain where it should be, according to my education in Introductory Bicycle Assembly and Maintenance.

Two young men on a moto stopped to help. They tugged for awhile but also couldn’t make the Magical Quicklink snap. I started waving down cars. Three cars stopped but refused me, due to lack of space, a different destination, and sheer suspicion. A few others simply waved back at me as they drove past. Finally, a family headed to Mocoa took pity on me. I threw my bike onto the truck bed and hopped in the backseat between the grandma and some piles of merchandise they’d bought on their trip to Pitalito. I squeezed my arms and legs together, trying not to drip on anyone or anything. When the truck started moving and I was sufficiently sheltered, the rain stopped and the sun came out, revealing beautiful hills cascading into the Amazon basin below.

The family tried to make conversation, but my stomach was not happy with the change in mode of transportation. Whenever I opened my mouth to respond, I wasn’t sure whether español or vomit would come out. After two hours winding down the mountains, we finally arrived at a bike shop in Mocoa. 

“¡Nos vemos en los Estados Unidos cuando nos extraditen!” the man in the passenger seat said as parting words. I was still dizzy. Extradite? Was he serious? I knew that there were plenty of coca farms in the jungle near Mocoa. And I’ve learned that some Colombians believe that their conservative government conspires with the US to falsify drug trafficking charges in order to extradite liberals. Did he believe that? Did this family buy that huge truck with cocaine money? Were they FARC supporters? Or was he just joking with me? I waved goodbye, confused, “hasta pronto, pues.”

The bike mechanic put my broken chain around the cogs to hold it taut and slammed his fist down on the Magical Quicklink, which finally snapped together. Simultaneous with this devilish miracle, thunder cracked and it started pouring again. I rode the final miles to my hotel in the rain through a dark, damp forest. The rainforest. I should have known it would rain here. 

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