Slowly twisting the throttle back, I could feel the engine surging beneath my legs. It was now or never I thought to myself, looking out at the expanse of concrete before me. After spending the last few days mustering together all of my courage, here I was, about to teach myself how to ride a motorcycle. With the dubious driving instructions of the Frenchman I'd met in the hostel echoing in my head, I notched the gear selector into first and, with a quick glance back at oncoming traffic, hastily let out the clutch. Far from the smooth merge onto the street I had envisioned, the bike rocketed down the street with such force that I felt my body flying backwards over the tail section. Smashing into the curb, I struggled to maintain my balance while the bike streaked down the sidewalk. Panicked, I grabbed at the brake lever, and finally managed to bring the bike to a shaky stop. As I sat there trembling, with steam rising into the cool night air from the locked front brake, I realized that I had come within inches of slamming into a telephone pole.

Need to work on those stop/starts I thought to myself, pushing the bike across the intersection with my legs as if I were a waddling duck. I soon found an empty alley where I spent the next twenty minutes carefully synchronizing the releasing of the clutch with the opening of the throttle. Just as I began to develop the necessary coordination for smooth acceleration, a window opened and a tired and angry Chilean stuck his head out, ordering me to get the hell away from his alley. "People are sleeping!" he shouted.

I slowly pulled away, resolved to do a few laps around the city blocks in order to learn shifting and turning. It did not take long for me to realize I had very little idea what I was doing. I almost hit a car by straightening up the bike prematurely and over-steering, and I quickly lost track both of what gear I was in and what gear I should have been in. Defeated, I knew I had been lucky to not have laid the motorcycle down. As I limped back to the hostel, I also knew that it had been somewhat ambitious to think that I could successfully teach myself to ride a motorcycle in a congested, urban environment like downtown Santiago, Chile, even if it was fairly late at night.

Ever since being offered a sunset ride along the rugged Patagonian coast by an Argentine motoquero, I'd been intrigued by the notion of motorcycle travel. The impressive fuel economy and mobility that a motorcycle offers makes it an almost ideal way to see the world. I say "almost" because a few months later, while crossing the Andes from Argentina back into Chile in freezing rain and snow, I became painfully aware of the drawbacks of motorcycle riding. Yet, as I wandered through downtown Santiago in early March, the weather could not have been more pristine, and small displacement Japanese motorcycles abounded throughout the city. With Chiles low import taxes, it soon dawned on me that these machines could be had for a fraction of their US or Argentine value.

As I stood looking at a collection of motorcycles parked in Santiago's commercial center, a small man came up to me. Introducing himself as Jaime, the man explained that he worked as a parking attendant for the city and cared for the bikes in the lot. After I expressed interest in possibly acquiring one, he rolled a few bikes out that he knew were for sale and began to explain to me the advantages and disadvantages of the different models. However, while Jaime meticul ously demonstrated to me the importance of a broken fairing on a FZR 400, I found my attention focusing on the sleek and sinewy lines of the dark gray motorcycle parked along side it. Noticing the shift in my gaze, Jaime walked over to the gleaming Honda CBR 250, and with a smile indicated to me its impeccable condition. "The owner should be passing by any minute now," Jaime said, his thick Chilean Spanish filling my ears with eager anticipation.

I'm not sure what I expected the owner to look like, but the young, lanky man with bright green riding gloves over his dark, elegant business suit was not what I had envisioned. Holding out the keys, Alvaro Nunez asked me if I wanted to take the Honda for a spin. When I admitted that I did not know how to ride, he grinned, borrowed a helmet from a friend and off we went, slipping and sliding through the downtown traffic with Alvaro's subtle flicks of the handlebars. Astonished, I offered him half of his asking price in cash; we met half-way and he agreed to sign the title over to me.

At first I had been somewhat daunted by the enormous bureaucratic process of purchasing and registering a vehicle in a country that I had literally only been in for a few days. Yet, as I soon discovered, Santiago is a surprisi ngly modern and efficient city, and although the procedure consumed a great deal of time, the actual steps involved were quite straightforward. After squaring away numerous tax-related documents, making several trips to the notary public, standing in mul tiple long lines at the Santiago Centro de Registracion, and asking for advice from whoever was willing to help, I finally had a motorcycle. Of course, I still did not have a motorcycle endorsement, nor even any idea how to operate a bike, but at the time all that was of secondary importance to me.

After my initial night of terror on the Honda, I knew I needed to find someone to help me. Unfortunately, since I had been in Chile less than a week, I hadn' t had a chance to meet many people. After inquiring at local driving schools, I found that no one in Santiago officially teaches motorcycle lessons. Stumped, I pondered my possibilities. Finally it struck me. I would find Jaime. Thinking about our initial conversation, I remembered that he had mentioned helping me learn to ride, but as I foolishly neglected to write down his address and phone number, getting in touch with him would be tricky. He only worked as a parking lot attendant a few days a week. However, two days later, I ran into him in el centro right as he was packing up his things, ready to head home for the day.

It wasn't long before Jaime stood holding a small black helmet outside the Hostel Indiana, an enormous, dilapidated mansion with dark rooms, amiable staff and bargain rates. As we merged onto the freeway, heading towards a large high-tech industrial park on the outskirts of the city, I felt chills run down my spine. The sensation of speed at over 120km/h truly frightened me. "What have I gotten myself into?," I thought to myself, beginning to second guess my idea of motorcycle ownership.

As we pulled into the large parking lot of the business complex, it soon became apparent that the place would be ideal for learning. "This is where I learned to ride" Jaime explained, gesturing towards the various lots and connecting roads that lay before us.

Slipping my legs over the saddle, I gradually let out the clutch and began to slowly circulate through the complex. Praising my balance and coordination, Jaime suggested I begin shifting gears. As I clumsily tried to notch the gear selector into second, while simultaneously letting out the clutch and rolling-on the throttle, the engine shrieked, almost as if it were mocking my lack of finesse. Just as I began to get the synchronization down, however, I forgot to downshift for a sharp turn and entered it with far too much speed. Realizing that I was out of road, I found myself thrown up onto a grassy median, the bike lying on top of me, with the rear wheel still slowly spinning.

Sprinting over, Jaime pulled the bike off me and inspected the damage. It could have been worse; really only the clutch lever, which had split into two, and the left foot peg, completely broken off, were in need of attention, the rest of the bike was fi ne. I picked myself up, my elbow aching from the impact, and looked at the mess of spilled gasoline and metal pieces that littered the ground. "We'lll have to get some repairs," Jaime finally said, after a long moment of silence.

After replacing the broken pieces, we returned to the office complex, and I started out again. This time there would be no mistakes. After four hours had gone by, I found myself able to upshift and downshift through all six gears with ease, having an a bsolute blast in the process. Noticing the progress I had made, Jaime told me he would be going home as he had things to do and it seemed that I had the idea. Although I tried to give him some money for his help, explaining to him that I should at least pay for a cab ride home for him, Jaime refused to listen to any of my offers.

I stayed at the office park for another four hours, until the night security told me that I could not stay any longer. As I rode back through the city to the hostel, I could not stop grinning. The following day I woke up early and practiced riding on the highway for a few hours. Feeling confident, I packed my backpack, strapped it to the tail of the bike and headed towards the Andes, intent on making it into Argentina before dusk.

Of course, I didn't make it to Mendoza, Argentina until almost midnight that night, after running out of gas and having to hitch a ride along rural roads to a filling station, but neither this setback nor the many that lay ahead in my travels through Ar gentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia would discourage me in the least.

END