Friday, April 25

I'm leaving Barcelona later than I planned. The plan for the day is to arrive to Almeria during the day because the ferry to Melilla leaves at 23:55. It's a long trip, about 850 km, but I had plenty of time. But, just one hour after, everything went wrong. Suddenly, the bike became impossible to control I could see a long white smoke tail behind me. I did stop immediately, just to see a spurt of brown liquid coming out under my bike. I was astounded. Looking under the bike I could see that the oil plug (the one used to empty the oil) was missing. All the oil was on the floor and worse: on the rear wheel. Really dangerous! After a moment of very low mood, I did call my assistence and I asked my sister to find a Suzuki service nearby. She did find one but they were closed until 4 pm and I had to wait. Ouch!
Fortunately they managed to find a new oil plug and to somewhat remove most of the oil from the rear wheel and the brakes and at 5pm I was again on the road.

But now I was really short on time. Still 750 km and just 6 hours before boarding. I considered calling the ferry company to change my reservation to Saturday but, at the end, I decided to take the risk and go on. It was the right decision and with even two or three minutes left I managed to take the ferry. Uff!

The ferry was plenty of bikes going to Morocco for off-road. I meet four guys from Sevilla and they proposed me to join them. They wanted to cross the Plateu de Rekkam completely off-road, by easy trails. The idea did appeal me a lot, but I was not prepared for off-road and I decided to postpone my decision.