We’re on the famed Carretera Austral. The gravel is not too bad. The bike floating sideways no longer a cause for alarm, thanks to a little more advanced off-road experience back in Canada, where the trails can be significantly tougher than this one. A shimmy here, a wobble there. Just relax and let it roll. The road is wonderfully pulled under the Honda as it has been for the last 20,000 kms south.

What the fuck is that? The bike shimmies and then aggressively pitches from side to side. I think it’s a puncture. But it’s instant. As we slow, the bike starts wobbling violently back and forth. We weigh almost one ton, something like 950 lbs, and the usually agile bike is now a cow having a seizure. We skitter horribly towards the side of the road, entering deep gravel, but somehow manage to come to a stop. I hear Claire in my intercom “Well done!” but frankly, I have no idea what happened or how we are upright. If it was any skill on my part, it was subconscious.

We drag the disobedient carcass of a vehicle across the road to a safer spot. The flat tire making the bike remarkably difficult to push through the loose stones. Rain starts to hit my head and helmet.

By now, I am fairly sure it’s going to require a tow truck. We have tubeless tires, amd puncture can usually be fixed with tire plugs. But the blowout was instant. Which means either a ripped tire or the sealed tire bead has come away from the wheel rim. Neither of those will be impressed by a small hand pump. Staring at the tire fails to magically manifest a solution. It does not appear to be punctured, and the tire is off the bead. It’s raining harder. Presumably, the known slow leak deflated the tire enough for a pothole to pull it away from the rim. We lost all the air instantly. Lesson learned, but we have no cell signal, and we’re 60km away from anything on a dirt road.

In the previous few days we’ve noticed an Chilean guy on a BMW GS. We marvelled at how much stuff he had with him. He now pulls up in front of us and wanders over with an old compressor he just happens to have on his bike. I hold the two power leads onto my battery, and the Chilean attempts to bring life to the front rubber. As expected, it fails to inflate. Anything going into the valves is leaking out by the rim. He suggests we ride it out on the flat tire. That is not going to happen and an attempt would take forever. We stand there, getting wetter. A little lost as to what to do next other than to wait for a passing vehicle to maybe get a tow truck from the next town they hit.

We look up the road and a faded red Toyota Hilux comes into view containing two weathered workers and a truck bed full of scaffold, concrete and rebar. The Chilean laughably asks them if they have a compressor. Somehow they do and it’s better than the one we’ve already tried. I slip the pump head onto the valve and hit start. Miraculaously the tire seats itself, the rubber muscling the bike a few centimetres off the floor, the pressure needle creeping majestically to 35psi. We’re in business.

Handshakes are shared, smiles all round. At which point another six motos and their SAG truck appear. Argentinians. We’re now surrounded by more help than we could need. The group are on a tour and consider it safer for me to test the tire alone. Claire is kidnapped and placed into the warm SAG truck. Red Hilux guy offers to follow me wth his magic compressor to ensure I am ok.

We head off. I am now 45kg lighter minus my diminutuve navigator. Standing on the pegs and skipping over the twisty Patagonia gravel road I jockey with the tour group riders for views of snow capped mountains and lakes though each others dust. The rain has stopped. The tire remains solid. Happy days.