A Wayward Journey

It sounded reasonable to me…

Our ATM cards were expiring in June. I was flying to New York City in April. It made sense to me to call my bank and ask them to send out new cards so I could pick them up in the USA - much easier than having them sent to Nowhere, Bolivia. Or so I thought.

So when the ATM flashed:

Your card has been kept for security reasons! Please contact your bank.

I panicked. Now what?

I ran over to an internet cafe and hooked up Skype. A few minutes later I was on the phone with a representative from the bank.

Me: I just tried to get money out of the ATM and the machine ate my card.

Her: Yes. I see here that you requested a new card.

Me: I did. But I won’t be in New York for another three weeks. Right now I’m in Peru and we need money to live on.

Her: Our policy is to cancel the old card before we issue the new one. Your card has been cancelled.

Oh cripes! We were in trouble.

But here’s the amazing part: the person had messed up and only sent out a new card for me. John’s was still good. Now the only problem was if we could find it buried in his panniers and if we could remember the PIN number and…

As it worked out, we found his card and have his number so we have access to our money after all. We have no backup card in case something happens, but we haven’t needed a backup for the past 22 months; I’m guessing we’ll get through three weeks without it.

Whew! I was sweating that one out!

PS: Update on bike maintenance: it’s not going well. Lucho has been too busy with other cyclists’ bikes to do ours so we are seriously considering just packing up and heading to Lima. Does anybody know a good mechanic in Lima we could have rebuild the bikes?

Today I woke up on my own again. It felt good. Daryl didn’t though. I was going to pour water on him but didn’t. When he got up me, Dad, and Mom went to the Casa de Ciclistas while Daryl did his science and geography. There me and Dad cleaned the tandem for working on and then me and Mom came back to the hotel to pick up Daryl. We bought food on the way back. We got some really good sweet bread and some chocolate milk. Daryl didn’t eat his share of the bread so I got some. We drank almost all of the milk. Then we went looking for a internet cafe and I am doing my journal.

Today Davy wanted to wake me up. That was strange because today was a
day that I was supposed to sleep in. I don’t know why I had to get up.
Apparently I was supposed to go to the Casa de Ciclistas but then
Mommy and Daddy decided that I didn’t have to. It was strange. Then I
waited in the hotel for Mommy to come back. When she came back she
said that an ATM had kept her card and she didn’t know why. I hope she
can get it back.

Ho hum, ho hum…  No headwinds from hell to battle.  No police escorts.  No riots in the market.  What’s happening here?

We’ve gotten so used to dealing with one crisis after another that this all seems a bit… surreal, perhaps?  Everything is going swimmingly - Lucho and John got Davy’s bike rebuilt today and we’ll work on mine and the tandem in the next couple days.  Everything is going according to plan.  How in the heck has that happened?

Part of me is saying this is simply the calm before the storm.  Another part of me is fighting that with every ounce of my being - this is simply the gods going before us paving our way for smooth sailing.

I guess only time will tell.

Today I got to sleep in (surprise, surprise). Unusually though we went
to the “Casa de Ciclistas”. Actually it is usual for the time that we
were here but not for the entire trip. While we were there Daddy
worked on Davys bike. The problem was that the only half fun thing to
do there was to pet their cat and that got old fast. So most of my
time was spent laying down on their couch being bored. Sometimes we
went out, but not for long. One time we went out to get some “famous
cake” that I never heard of until then. The only other time was to go
to the internet. In all it was a pretty boring day.