Much Ado About Bicycles

To get around town this week we have been renting beach cruisers, one-speed bicycles with coaster brakes, from our hotel. We also have been looking for bikes for all seven of us (4 Goodwin's + 3 of us) that will be good for riding into the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve. Aimee came up with the idea of traveling in the Reserve by bicycle and Eydie especially latched onto it.

Finding the right bicycles has been harder and more time consuming than we had guessed. Availability of anything beyond beach cruisers is quite limited. The irony of this bicycle experience is that we were able to find more used bikes of higher quality and more bike accessories in Ghana.  Tulum would certainly benefit from a relationship with Bikes Not Bombs.

We’re not sure how the cruisers will do when they are loaded with gear.  The road from Tulum to Punta Allen is only 35 miles but we keep hearing how very rough it can be.  We looked into buying some used bikes but determined that we were not likely to be able to re-sell them. 

After trying bikes at two shops, we determined that the bikes at our hotel are the most comfortable and the most durable.  The hotel owner, Marco, has agreed to rent them to us for a good price for our four-day adventure to Sian Ka’an.  These bikes don’t have front baskets or back racks so we went back to the bike shops to get them outfitted.  We ended up being directed to small operations that were a challenge to locate.  We had to go from person to person for directions, gradually making our way to the right spot.  This made for an interesting opportunity to explore non-touristy neighborhoods and test our Spanish skills.

The bikes that Nelly and Marco rent are too big for Sammy.  He picked up a small kid’s mountain bike that fits him at Braulio’s bike shop.  Braulio has two bikes that he has made into grown up tricycles. The tricycles have a big basket between the two back wheels that is perfect for carrying our bags.  We decided to rent one of these and trade off riding it on our trip.

Riding Rosa
Our tricycle is bright pink (rosa).  Its name has evolved from the Pink Piranha to Rosa el Jaguar to Rosa el Jaguar Borracho (drunken).  Rosa is a beast to ride, always lurching to the left. We had two days of hard rain creating massive puddles making navigating on bicycles fun and the tricycle a chore.  Here are some of our first impressions of riding Rosa:

Brook:  On the potholed and uneven streets the wheels are almost never even. Whenever one wheel goes lower than the other, the bicycle swerves in that direction. It takes a lot of strength to get it back under control and to get it going straight again. In general, it takes a lot of concentration to keep it going where you want it to go. 

Sammy:  When I first got on Rosa I was riding near our hotel in Tulum.  Brook was better than everyone at this point.  He gave me a little push and immediately I went out of control and I almost hit the concrete wall of the little corner convenience store.  The front wheel fell into a deep hole and the back wheel fell into another deep hole.  We got the bike unstuck and I gave the bike back to Brook.

Azor:  On my first ride I went off the road into a big puddle and couldn’t get Rosa unstuck.  My next experience was on the homestretch to return her to her owner Braulio.  My back wheel got caught on the edge of the sidewalk pavement and I swerved into a big ditch next to the highway.

Aimee:  After watching everyone’s escapades and yard sales on Rosa, I decided I had no interest in trying her out.  I stuck with my creaking, clinking, red Italian beach cruiser for the whole ride.