Yakity Yak the Parkers Talk Back

This is our motorbike. Usually Ryan and I ride it together but on this particular day our upstairs neighbor (he's 5) wanted to go for a ride with Ryan around the block (that is our driveway and the side of our house also in the picture!). We have many wonderful experiences on our motorbike. We are so thankful to have it. This week we had an incredibly memorable experience with the bike. We were driving along and it was a pretty nice day and then all of a sudden it clouded over and the sky looked black. The next thing we knew we were on the bike in the pouring down rain and it started to HAIL!!!! We stopped the bike and thankfully this Nepali family let us come into their small shop and wait out the hail. By this time though we were completely SOAKED!!! When the hail stopped we thanked the Nepali family and went back to our bike. We got on and tried to start it and it would not start. There are many ways to draw a crowd in Nepal and trying to start a bike that wont start is definately one of them. Nepalis are generally very nice people so of couse they all wanted to help. The bike that Ryan drives is bigger than most bikes in Nepal so it was so great to watch these small Nepali men try to hop up on this big bike and try to start it. One after the other would look at the bike (we are still in the rain) and try to figure out what was wrong with it. Finally they said they did not know. Just then another Nepali man who spoke very good english (turns out to be a journalist) stopped and of course he had to try to start it too. When his (very kind, but futile) attempt failed yet again he said walk your bike with me I will show you to a bike shop. So we did just that and we followed this very nice man to the nearest bike shop about 1/4 of a mile away (how convienent!). The shops here are right on the side of the road and when we arrived at the shop instead of pulling the bike into the shop the workers just started looking at it IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD!!! It was so funny. It was also so amazing because when our bike came to the shop they stopped everything else they were doing and all worked on it. After some troubleshooting they figured out that it was the spark plug and within 15 minutes and $1.25 later we were off. How is that for service!! That is one thing that really amazes me about Asia...the service industry. Everything is done so quickly around here and the labor is so cheap. Another great experience to add to the list!!!