It’s Day 95 and Pat Sherwood and Ian Wittenber are in Tucumán, Argentina. About 30 miles into this leg of the trip, Sherwood’s motorcycle goes kaput.
With the help of Max Benejam of CrossFit San Miguel de Tucumán, he’s able to get the bike to a mechanic. The diagnosis isn’t good.
“They kept saying this word fundido. And they’re like, ‘I think the motor is fundido,’” explains Sherwood. “And I’m like, ‘Fundido, like, I don’t know that one,’ and so as soon as I got Internet and I looked it up in my little translator, it basically means ‘completely and utterly screwed’—that your engine is just baked. It’s done.”
Baked engine behind them, Sherwood and Wittenber head to Buenos Aires not on motorcycles but on a plane, with the future of Sherwood’s bike in limbo.
“I have no idea what’s gonna happen,” Sherwood says of the final legs of the planned motorcycle adventure from the U.S. to Chile. “It feels really bad to be getting on a plane to Buenos Aires.”
But his troubles are forgotten as he watches 87-year-old Domingo Paradiso train at CrossFit Tuluka in Buenos Aires under the watchful eye of coach Yasmin Blale.
“This is what we see everywhere we go: people having a blast; genuinely giving a shit; and caring about other people and making people better, improving their mobility, longevity, health; building community; laughing together; goofing off,” Sherwood says.
Video by Ian Wittenber.
7min 25sec
HD file size: 137 MB
SD mov file size: 51 MB
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Additional reading: Riding With the Reaper by Pat Sherwood, published Nov. 18, 2013.