I Heart Mechanics

The repair of the Minsk after fouling the tank with generator fuel was nothing compared with explaining the problem to a crew of keystone mechanics.

It would be wrong to bore you with another story of my ineptitude, so I'll keep this one short. After sticking eight litres of the completely wrong sort of gas into the tank, my motorcycle went about half a kilometer and with a huff and a knock stopped operating. I quickly deduced my mistake and rolled the bike to the nearest repair shop twenty meters away.

The lone mechanic and his posse of hangers on pounced on the bike, cranking tools in an effort to beat the quickest complete disassembly of a Minsk record. Actual bodily force was required to maintain the integrity of my bike. One hour later, through the usual combination of Cranium tactics, I felt that I had adequately explained what happened and what I wanted them to do. Of course just like Cranium my audience had no idea what I was humming, pantomiming, drawing or pointing at. These guys were the most unreceptive I'm met so far. Somehow they had already decided that it was an electrical problem and were chomping at the bit to remove the electrical box and start soldering or something.

After what seemed like an eternity of frustration and near fisticuffs, I drove the mechanic on his moped to the gas station where I bought the bad juice. We had a pointing and shouting match, I bought five liters of good juice and then we returned to the garage.

The mechanics were kind enough to drink tea and smoke cigarettes as I siphoned out the bad fuel into a growing collection of coffee cups, empty cans, baking pans, etc. When the eclectic container collection was full the resident old man dumped them ceremoniously into the dirt patch immediately next to the driveway we sat in. The old man was hot for my fake watch and for most of my visit repeated a little routine that went like this: Point at my watch. Point at himself. Point at his wrist. Make eye contact. Smile, showing off his collection of pearly whites which consisted of exactly one stalagtite gold tooth, slightly left of center.

The mechanic jumped in once the tank was relatively empty, cleaning out the carb and draining and refilling the gearbox oil at my request. With a new reserve of real gasoline and a half a liter of oil in the tank the bike started right up. Everyone took a turn test riding it, some of them leaving for twenty minutes or so. The bill was a little over three bucks for about 4 hours of our mutual labor.

I borrowed a Vietnamese phrase book from the bungalows, and while it didn't help at all concerning motorbike repair, it did give one of the hangers on a good half day of entertainment. He'd find Vietnamese phrases like "This is very expensive" and attempt, with my tutoring, to say the equivalent English phrase. Usually he actually meant the phrase he was saying too. Like, "I would like to borrow ten dollars" or "We do not accept credit cards."

During the whole operation the mechanic was eyeing and fondling the big Chinese-made crescent wrench from my bike's toolkit. I figured that if everything worked out, I'd give him the wrench - it's probably difficult to get tools and parts on the island. In the end he beat me to the punch and deftly removed the wrench when he returned the kit to its place inside a small compartment above the motor. I only noticed because I always have a hard time getting the tools to fit into the compartment because the wrench is so long. Seeing him get the kit stashed so quickly made me curious. I bent down to open the compartment and the mechanic ran up, saying no, no. Brushing him off I opened the compartment and realized the missing wrench. My eyes shot to his, he blushed and without a word went inside his shop to retrieve the tool. In the end I still gave it to him, more as a sign of goodwill than anything else, but I felt kinda yucky about the whole deal.