| Nicaragua 2008
Photographs by Lois and Don Porter 1/10/2008 |
Bikes
We started looking at bikes as soon as we arrived in Granada, since we observed that most everyone gets around town on bicycles, and the terrain is relatively flat. Lois noticed a bicycle repair shop just around the corner from our apartment, so we stopped there and asked the proprietor, Marvin, if he had used bikes to sell. Indeed he did, and we bought two bikes from him for about $25 each. We insisted that he should take care of any problems that came up. So when Don’s bike had a flat front tire on our very first ride to the lakeshore, we took it back. Marvin did fix it (took two tries). Then the next day, when we got up, the rear tire was flat just from sitting there all night. This time Marvin needed to replace both the tire and the tube, so we paid for that. Also got him to buy and install a new seat (the old one was very broken down). So we have paid for some improvements, but now the bikes work fairly well – except that it take a lot more effort to ride them than it does to ride our bikes at home (but of course those bikes cost 10 or 20 times as much, so they should be better!).
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| Lois with shiny new(?) $25 bike | Don with shiny new(?) $25 bike | First ride to the Lakeshore: See Don's bike getting a flat tire. |