Alicante and bike maintenance

Finally we came to some warmer climate. Since we decided to skip most of Spain and Portugal it was for us now more like riding km and getting south towards Africa. We decided to spend over a week in Alicante to receive some parcels and do major maintenance on both bikes. Thus this is again mostly a "speak by picture post". Enjoy!

The days in Alicante were warm and it was almost hot when there was sunshine. The nights and mornings were still chilly and the temperature was sometimes below +10C.

Finally - beach, sun and warm

It was also time to do major maintenance and some repairs on both bikes. I did not want to do the oil changes at the hotel parking lot and I asked in Facebook for some advice/help. Thanks to Fanney from the Motorbike Riders Spain, she advised me to visit the Motocenter Levante in Alicante - they were some 4km away from the hotel - a convenient distance.

Motocenter Levante, Alicante (picture from the google+ page)

At this point I would like to say big thanks to Antonio, Cesar and the other guys from the Motocenter Levante who helped me. I was able to do the work on their parking place as well as borrowing me some not-so-typical tools.

Oil changes in the car park of Motocenter Levante, Alicante.

Plenty of metal from the gearbox - I'm slightly concerned.

The rest of the maintenance I was able to do at the parking lot of the hotel.

Skippy's chain oiler leaked somewhat (yes, Ralph from the extension tube connection)

Lucky me, I still have a little bit of silicon with me - that shall do.

And then I got a friend

More friends over there

Hurray - my new rear shock from YSS came

And right away into the bike. That was the last piece of the basic building part of the hack.

And we got stormy weather

with plenty of debris and plastic inside there

We had many nice walks on the beach and we played also a bit with girls there. Typically Ulpu does not look back, neither left nor right and thus she did not see the bigger wave coming from behind. Skippy needed to step into the water to save Ulpu from being almost washed away. She was in total shock after that, all wet and freezing and Skippy carried her home quickly.

Ulpu after a hot shower to wash the saltwater away

We got more stormy weather

and nice and warm days as well

Laundry day

So much ham, poor pigs

We got our enjoyment from delicious fruits

My version: The guy on the left stopped to admire my bike and thus the ladies hanged around there waiting. The guy on the right came along and tried to sell his bags to the waiting ladies. Then he used my bike as a table. Skippy said, that nobody admired my bike and the guy only used my bike as table... I like my story more.

 When there is a kitchen, Skippy cannot resist to do some tasty warm food.

Our "pikkujoulu": smashed sweet potatoes with cardamon and cinnamon, garlic mushrooms and Falafel (bought ready)

"Chili con Sesamo" a.k.a. raw chili with sprouted chickpeas and raw garlic tahini sauce (Skippy's recipe).

Lyra is totally bored... when do we play again?

Back to maintenance... in the end I ran out a bit of time and had bad luck with a stuck screw. At least there was something to do in Tarifa as well :)

We were in good mood - heading towards Tarifa and going to Africa.

~ Wolfi