We had to change planes in Jakarta. We saw none of the city at all. In the airport we ran into Ted and Marilyn again. We toured Borobudur with them. We ate a bland fried rice that cost 4 times what it should have.

From Jakarta to Padang we flew in a puddle-jumper. This enhanced my concern for the bikes. Would they fit in this small plane? Joan was more worried about her life than the bikes. We talked to Ted and Marilyn about the Air Garuda crash in Sumatra a year eariler. It was air traffic control's fault apparently. This didn't ease Joan's concerns.

We hit some mild, very brief turbulence. It was a normal flight They even fed us.

Padang has a one- gate airport. You might say it has a 1 room airport. Joan was relieved to be on the ground, but I was very worried about the bikes. What if only 1 showed up? What if a wheel got mangled? If they didn't arrive, could anybody here help us try to track them down?

We watched the single baggage truck drive around the plane towards the terminal and there on top of all the bags, I could see a couple wheels. And they looked round! It appeared the bikes got a good beating, but survived. My shifters were slighty twisted and Joan's handlebars were cockeyed but other than that they looked okay. It took us 15 minutes to load the bikes. By the time we finished, the security guards were waiting around for us. The airport was completely empty otherwise.

Padang is the only city we have visited in Indonesia that actually smells bad. I detected just a slight, unidentified odor most of the time. It didn't help that we arrived late on a cloudy day, but we got a bad feeling about Padang. It seemed so dirty.

We rode about 10km to the city. The first hotel we looked at was full, the second dingy. We stayed at the third place, called The Backpackers. It was not a great place, but sufficed. We had dinner with another tourist staying there, Diane from Canada.

Near the Backpackers is an incredibly filthy canal. The water is as black as tar and is lumpy with garbage or something. I literally could not bare to look at it for more than a few seconds.

We found out on the ride from the airport that the bikes were not quite as healthy as we first thought. Joan could not shift the front derailer at all. It was okay for the flat ride from the airport but would have to be fixed for the ride we planned up a mountain the next day.

So the next morning we started working on it. We worked and sweated for an hour. I found a crack in the one plastic part on the derailer but it seemed to function fine anyway. It would shift on the top two gears okay but it would not shift down to the granny gear. I removed the derailer from the bike and cleaned and lubricated it. I removed the shift cable and cleaned and lubricated it. After that I got it to work a little when I test rode it but Joan couldn't get it to work at all. We never did get it to work right. I think the slight crack abosrbs some of the energy from the springs. We will have to replace it.

It was unfortunate that we had to spend an hour fixing the bike because we had a long ride with a 3000 foot climb at the end to do.

We liked Sumatra much better after we left Padang. The road was very flat the first 40km and though it had a lot of traffic, it seemed just a little saner than Java. One bus did run us off the road, but that was all. Somehow, the road didn't have the frantic feel of some Javanese roads. The buses sometimes actually stop if they don't have room to pass.

The little road side stands displayed their cigarettes, packages of cookies and potato chips, coke bottles, fanta bottles, etc. with remarkable neatness. Everything is evenly spaces and lined up according to color and size.

There weren't nearly as many becaks and the becaks here have a sidecar instead of the passenger-in-front becaks of Java. Sumatra has a lot more horse driven carriages. The horses are small and nicely decorated. They seem very attractive to ride.

We were bad tourists at a lunch stop. We stopped at a restaurant that had a moat around it. We saw several places like this. It means, I think, that the restaurant serves Padang style. In Padang style, you sit down and they bring you dish after dish. You eat whatever you want and that's all you pay for. We heard about this before, but didn't quite comprehend. We did not actually want a full lunch anyway. We just wanted white rice.

Of course, the first thing we do is ask the waiter for a menu. We ask in Indonesia. He seems baffled. Really we just wanted to know how much things cost. Finally he showed us a food list of sorts. We told him we just wanted white rice. He brought white rice. Then his boss, I think, brought by a few other dishes, all of which we sent back. We did ask for Gado-gado but they were out. We must have seemed strange to them, demanding a menu having only white rice.

Shortly after lunch we began to climb. We would continue to climb for the next 40km. A railroad track with an unusual center rail followed the road. The center rail looked like it meashed with a gear on the bottom of the locomotive for better traction.

We passed a pretty waterfall surrounded by souvenir stalls. Most of the visitors were Indonesian.

The hill got steeper as we went, like most volcano climbs. At one especially steep turn a teenage boy immitated my heavy huffing and puffing. I laughed then he pushed me up the hill.

Just outside of a town called Padangpanjang, Joan stopped to take a picture of some people at a bus stop with the classic Sumatran pointy roof. Instead, they all crossed the street to talk to us. A young man spoke English fairly well. He told us his name was John. Joan told him her name, which always confuses people here because they pronouce John "Joan." They can't distinguish very easily so Joan often adds, "sort of like Jo-ann." After that John said, "John Henry." We thought he was trying to say, "Joan Henry." We racked our brains trying to thing of a Joan Henry. Eventually we realized that "John Henry" is his full name. It seemed so unlikey, we couldn't imagine what he was talking about.

By the time we left John Henry (we exchanged addresses) it was 5pm. Darkness is at 7pm. We had 20km more to go. In the north, the way we headed, we could see dark clouds. I almost suggested we stay in Padangpanjang for the night but didn't. Joan almost did too but decided to wait until I asked if she wanted to stop. In this way, we continued towards Bukittinggi.

We hoped Padangpanjang was the top of the climb but it wasn't. We continue to climb fairly steepily. We were going about 8kmh. After 4km, I was thinking maybe we should turn around so we don't get stuck up here after dark. I didn't want another night like the night we arrived at Good Karma on Bali. Joan had similar thoughts but neither of us said anything at the time. We just kept climbing. We were riding over the saddle between two tall volcanos. Finally about 12km from Bukittinggi it levelled out. Then at 10km it started to descend. It continued to descend all the way to our hotel. The sun even came out around the volcano to the west.

Next: Bukittinggi

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