Tales of the Huh What?

It's been like five months now, and I still haven't wrapped up this story? Sorry it's taken so long folks...I've spent a good long while thinking on the end of my tale, and frankly, due to recent developments and a complete breakdown of trust, I am trying to think of the best way to write about the final leg of my journey without sounding enigmatic, or like a bitter curmudgeon...

It's hard to please a thrill seeker, especially when it's time to get back into the real world for a bit and start saving up for the next big trip four or five years down the line. It's too much time for some folks, too much commitment, and like a lot of people out there, if there's an easy way to jump into another adventure, who can blame them for pouncing on the opportunity? The promise of novelty keeps things interesting and exhilarating, but once the initial excitement wears off, there's not much left except the urge to seek out the next big thing, even if it means severing the bonds you've formed along the way.

I don't know...some people just can't pull their head out of the clouds. At least birds know when to come down to rest.

There's lessons to be squeezed from all this besides "don't blindly trust pretty ladies just because they want to bike off into the sunset with you". Give me some time to work on the details and I'll come back to you folks with the last installment of my big bike trip. 

The Best of Both Worlds (Part II: Time's Arrow Prt I)

Some might say it's a little reckless to invite someone along for a long distance bike journey when you've known a person for less than three hours and you've got five liters of dark Mexican amber brew in the belly, but there was something about this gorgeous tapatia that had me falling head over heels the moment she offered to join me on the road. It didn't take to much convincing on Fernanda's part. Fueled very much by the same impulses that got me started many months ago, the desire travel was strong with this one. Our urge to seek new roads arose from an innate attraction to the novel and a mutual fear of settling down into a routine at an early age without the opportunity to reach into new frontiers and see just how small this blue ball really is. There was no doubt in my mind. Our connection was real.

Two days later (and two days overdue on my original departure date) Fernanda and Mina took me on a bike tour forty km's outside the city towards a set of waterfalls that proved to be much further away than originally thought. The scorching mid-day temperatures and a cloudless sky proved to be no match for my prospective companion. Fernanda rode like a champion, grinding through the unforgiving heat on a solid steel beach cruiser twice the weight of the Dreamcrusher, soldiering on with nothing less than great big smile on her face. We got back to civilization before sundown and just in time grab a healthy portion of booze and fries from our favorite bar and get rightly shithoused. 

I caused so many problems, Bernardo (CEO of Casa Ciclista)
forced Izhak into German exile

The next day, after spending all morning and afternoon trying to wake up from one of the worst hang-overs in my life, I realized Jorge and Izhak's prophecy came to fruition. I was already five days overdue on my original departure date and looking at spending a few more weeks getting the materials together for Fernanda's gear, and while I was not the first stranger to stick around in Casa Ciclista GDL for an extended stay, I was pushing the limits of hospitality. Eight months on the road had taken their toll on my dismal manners. I left a trail of destruction every time I walked through the house, and when I tried to make good on the damage, these hungry hands of mine would find some way to cause more problems. Let's just say I don't know how to get stains out of ceramic tiles, or how to sand a steel frame without flinging chips of paint in every direction, or mop. 

As for Fernanda's bike touring materials, we spent the first week desperately searching for choice gear, and with quality panniers already costing an arm and a leg in the States, buying our way to victory was beyond the budget. We drew inspiration from Volks on Bikes and went the DIY route to the best of our ability. A pair of hard plastic water barrels with the same profile as your standard fully loaded Ortlieb pack set us back only a few dollars. With Bernardo's help, we found a metallurgist across the street who poked some holes in a few flat steel bars. In no time, everything was slapped together and viola! Fernanda had herself some water-tight home-made panniers.

Most of the prep time was dedicated to finding and fixing up a decent ride with the chops to make it all the way to the border. Fernanda's family bike was the first candidate, a name brand I never heard with open wheel hubs and rusty bottom bracket. Even with a major overhaul, the bike might make it past the first 300 km's before something major pooped out and we'd be forced to bus it to the next major city with a good bike shop. As I wracked my brain with logistics, the fellas at Casa Ciclista rolled in a few flatbeds full of old fixer-uppers, including a really decent chromoly Diamondback hybrid frame with a working set of wheels, shifters, brakes...the works. Being too banged up for a prospective German cyclist, I promptly swept it up and dove right into the new project. We spent the majority of the next month swapping parts and repainting the frame (a project I will never do again without the help of a professional). In about two weeks and a half, Fernanda had herself a working, solid touring bike that could withstand just about every obstacle the road ahead threw at it.

There's quite a few major events during my month and a half stay that I'm shamelessly glossing over, like gaining twenty pounds of solid lard on a daily chorizo and refried bean diet (so cheap!) and the whole convincing Fernanda's family I was not a serial killer, which--as a story--deserves it's own article and should be written by the madam herself. At this moment, let's just say the whole situation was drawn out because I made a very poor first impression on her mom due my every day biking attire(filthy board shorts, filthy old t-shirt, filthy bandanna, filthy mustache).

Spending all that time at Casa Ciclista allowed plenty of opportunities to observe the city's many bike activists discuss various reforms to Guadalajara's cycling infrastructure, as well as schedule weekly (sometimes bi-weekly) critical masses across the city. The turnouts for these weekly bike gatherings (called paseos) go up into the high hundreds and are always carried out in an incredibly civil manner. The familial atmosphere is present in just about every paseo, with anywhere from a quarter to the majority of the participants made up of families with children of all ages. The incredible support of these frequent paseos speaks to the effectiveness of bicycle advocates in Guadalajara, specifically those I had the pleasure of meeting on a weekly basis at Casa Ciclista, a no-nonsense organization dedicated to a single cause: making the streets safe for all cyclists in Guadalajara. It really is one of the few bicycle advocacy groups out there that takes individuals from all walks of life and gets them working together towards a common goal, working cohesively not in spite of it's diversity, but because of it's wide spectrum of folks at the helm and their willingness to maintain a central headquarters and free place to stay for cyclists. These were people that really went out of their way to help overcome any issues we had with the mechanics and design of Fernanda's new bike.

It was with a heavy heart that Fernanda and I parted ways with Fernanda's family and Bernardo's family at Casa Ciclista. I know Bernardo's sons--Jorge and Izhak--were sad to see us go. It is said the rain gutters at the intersection of Manuel Acuna and Coronado were inundated with the tears of my hosts for weeks after our departure. Anyway, the DreamCrusher and Fernanda's La Golandrina were on the road together at last, fully loaded and heading west on ruta 15 towards Tequila. We spent our first night on the road camping behind a tequila bar, which turned out to be surprisingly quiet, maybe because it was a Tuesday or something.

We spent barely two hours the next day on a downhill run into the famous town of Tequila (which Fernanda told me means "Beverage of Dreams") where we holed up in a reasonably priced hostel all to ourselves. Not even twenty four hours passed and the whole solitary dynamic of the trip was flipped upside down. I couldn't just sit around and watch Lord of the Rings in espanol like I did in Medellin or Quito. This lady wanted to do some serious exploring as soon as we unpacked our things, and what with the Jose Quervo factory right down the street, good times were just a shot and a dash of salt away. Despite harboring a dangerous affinity for Mexico's national liquor, I did not make a fool of myself and actually learned quite about the process of turning giant pineapples into a hangover.

With the lady along for the ride, I finally had a crystal clear window into a world that for so many months was a bit obscured due to the language barrier. We started connecting with people in a way that really allowed the two of us to really get to know our hosts and their friends. It came as no surprise that just about everyone in Tequila knew a bit about cultivating agave and the fabrication process. Definitely gave me new appreciation for the drink itself and revealed just how much I appreciated the language help from Fernanda. As it turns out, my Spanish was realllllllly shitty. For instance, I'd spend thirty minutes listening to a person before asking various agave related questions, at which point Fernanda would pull me aside and say, "he's trying to tell you about the family dog that just died!" This led me to think about how many times I've woefully misinterpreted someone's words over the course of my trip. Probably thousands.

After two days in Tequila, we continued on our way and hit our first major mountain since Fernanda joined the trek. We were looking at a solid 1300 meter climb up some serious switchbacks, and to make matters worse, a derailleur limiter failure on Fernanda's bike caused a near catastrophic failure when the chain wrapped around a few spokes on the rear wheel, forcing us to stop less than half way up and with the sun slowly sinking. I remember the two of us looking a good 1000 meters up the mountain and seeing haulers weave in an out eyeshot. Fernanda said, "We're not going that high, are we?" I reassured her with a dismissive "no".   Three hours later, we were 1000 meters higher and Fernanda was a few heartbeats shy of a heart attack. We stopped at some point close to the summit to let the lady rest. I'd give her the occasional nudge with my foot to make sure she was still alive. The way she spread herself on the grass made it look like I was standing over a murder scene.

We made the summit before sundown and stopped in a small farming town a few miles east of Ixtlan Rio. The boss of the town hooked us up with a sweet camping location inside the town rodeo, which came complete with amenities such as working faucets and toilets filled with poop eating worms. Fernanda passed out almost immediately, only to be roused an hour later by a pansy ass who soaks his bike shorts every time he hears lightening in the distance. We moved our tent to a safe place under the bleachers and finally got some good shut eye.

Fernanda made a full recovery by sun up, so we were lucky enough to get an early start on the road and grab some hearty breakfast in Ixtlan Rio.  We spent the next two days going up and down valleys and dodging quite a bit of traffic. The scenery alongside the road was incredible. However, the number of towns along the way kept the free road loaded with plenty of cars, trucks, and reckless drivers that couldn't give less of a shit about two highly visible cyclists on the right of the road. We were both getting nervous, so sometime on the second day we merged on the toll road and spent the rest of the day cruising on a wide, safe shoulder all the way into Tepic.

Tepic left us both at a loss for words. I forgot why we spent a whole two days in a town with so little to do. It struck me as one of those cities that's just close enough to all the hot sights on the western Mexican coast without the real estate price of Puerto Vallarta. There's a definite ghost town feeling I had a hard time shaking off. The bars closed around nine and all the dinner joints wrapped up shop around lunch time, and as a man who likes his food, this deceptive practice really pissed me off the most. The bit of interesting history had to do with an important textile shop called Jauju that was razed in the late 19th century by a shady French boss because he refused to pay the locals for their labor.

The two of us were all too eager to get back on the open road. The way out of Tepic was an incredible three hour descent down to the flat lands along the pacific coast. We were on our way to Mazatlan a couple hundred miles to the north. the straight line on the map made the route seem like an easy enough straight shot between the two cities with little to no elevation changes. However, at sea level at the end of summer was like riding through a sauna, not the hottest weather to be sure but definitely the most humid we'd ridden through thus far. Fernanda handled it like a trooper, with me complaining most of the way like a little hungry baby.

It took about three days from Tepic to reach landfall in Mazatlan, the promised land of dreams. Here we planned to catch the next ferry over to Baja California and ride up the peninsula from La Paz. We didn't expect to stay in the city too long, but as it turns out, reservations for the boat ride were relatively hard to come by at such short notice. On my first visit to the boat terminal, I was told the next available spot wasn't available for another week. I was freaking out. What the hell were we going to do in this expensive-ass city for the next seven days?

At this point, the lady took me by the hand and pointed to a stretch of land just across the port. I forget where she heard about it, but apparently Fernanda had heard about an island called Isla de Piedra where folks could get away with camping on the beach without paying a thing. We took a boat over and found a nice ocean side patio restaurant to set up our hammocks and nap for a few hours. Fernanda jumped right into meeting the locals, introducing me to Gabe the bartender, another local from Guadalajara.

Gabe was coming from a bad situation as well. He moved a few months back to Isla de Piedra to work at a hotel, only to have the family that ran the joint refuse to pay him for a months of work. From what I remember, they kicked him out for pushing the issue too much, and with nowhere to go, he approached Nancy, the friendliest neighbor in town, for a place to stay, which she was all too happy to provide. After sharing his story, Gabe disappeared for a few minutes before coming back with an invitation to visit the house of Nancy. It's at this point that another pause is in order, for Nancy--sainted figure as she was--deserves much more than just a passing reference at the end of an article. We will get back to her story at the beginning of the next installment...so stay tuned!

Nancy and Fernanda

(The saga of Nancy and onward continued in pt. 2-2)

The Best of Both Worlds (Part I)

Here I am, back in Oakland, trying to figure out what to make of the past year or so on the open road. Can't say I've got an excuse for putting off the final installment of my journey for so long other than good ol' fashion procrastination. There's been a good amount of time to reflect on the past twelve months and try to extract some all-encompassing narrative, yet I'm struggling to find some way to connect it all together into one grand telling. I've been home for a couple of months now, and with my focus tuned back to work and school, I suppose the biggest struggle at the moment is getting back into my nomadic mindset in order to tell this story. I'm curious to see how all this time has affected my ability to recall and interpret the events of the past year. I'm gonna let this play out and see if I can sift the meaning of life out of all this craziness. So, with all that out of the way, let's get back to June 2012...

My last two days in the city of Oaxaca were spent following a few developments in the teacher camps. Urgency is probably the best word to describe the atmosphere at the time, and with national elections slated next for next month (July 1st), educators and their supporters were marching on the city streets in greater numbers, expanding the boundaries of the camp to a few more city blocks. From the safety of my rooftop camp above Luna Hostel, I could see all that transpired below. I think it was Vania or someone else working at the hostel who pointed crew-cut jackboots lining the sidewalks, police officers in plain clothes with pistols stuffed in their belts, looking all too anxious as they watched the teachers take to the streets. As someone else pointed out to me, the last time police officers removed their uniforms was 2006 when officers killed twenty six people over the course of a few months.

As luck would have it, just as the crowds started to swell, the clear blue summer skies turned gray overnight. Heavy rains rolled through the parched valley, putting some hot tempers in check as the summer showers brought a welcome remission from the stifling heat. Protesters sought shelter in their tents while others returned home. The heavy police presence disappeared in turn, and with that, I guess some level of normalcy was restored as a few busy streets opened up to traffic again, though the teachers continued their occupation of the central plaza.

It was time to bail. The skies opened up just long enough for me to roll out on ruta 135, then a sharp turn west into the mountains on a carretera libre towards Nochixtlan, roughly 80km's north of Oaxaca. What should have been a half dray trip stretched out to a day and a half by a steep ascent into the mountains around La Herradura, where I was welcomed by more shitty high-altitude lightening storms and one sleepless night in a staring competition with some base-head losers looking to nab some gear from my camp. The next day was spent speeding downhill for 30 km's before reaching Nochixtlan.

How to describe the next 250 km's...slight climbs, tedious routes on , especially between Huajuapan and Izucar de Matamoros. To be honest, by the time I reached Cuernavaca, I was kind of wishing I'd stuck to the coast. I was skirting along the border of DF and despite staying to the side roads, traffic was a pain in the ass, possibly some of the worst I'd encountered since some of the bigger Central American cities. Other cyclist I met further south insisted a bike trip through Mexico would not be complete without a detour to the Big City itself, but with the southerly approach inundated with fast moving kill machines coming from every angle, it took only a day in Cuernavaca to decide against it. So I cut northwest on a small mountain road towards Huitzilac, followed by a sharp left up some serious switchbackery through Parque Nacional Lagunas de Zempoala, a serpentine route that launched me into high alpine paradise with a dash of mid-summer snow and the occasional ice patch. The road eventually plateaued by noon and from Coyoltepec it was an easy ride on the way to Toluca, a city that sort of crept slowly over the horizon with the setting sun. This was not a bike-friendly city by any means, what with all the four lane traffic and blind merges at every turn. I stuck around long enough for some tacos and slipped out on ruta 15 under cover of darkness, continuing for another twenty kilometers before setting up camp near a moonlit lake.

This guy crashed a funeral service to get me coffee, so
I bought him breakfast

I hit some nice looking mountains pretty early the next morning, nothing nearly as grueling as the road out of Cuernavaca but enough climbing to squeeze some sweat. I'm sure all the volcanic scenery around me would've been absolutely breathtaking if it wasn't for the inveterate rainy season always fucking with my ride. I missed out on some decent tourism, speeding through two ancient towns (Zitacuaro and Ciudad Hidalgo) that each probably merited a day long stay if not for the weather. I was getting fatigued, stinking heavily with the flavor of unwashed towel and trench foot. My frustration with central Mexico's unpredictable climate was hitting a boiling point. I'd been under the impression that the country's infamous heat was bound to be unbearable, yet here I was in the middle of summer in Purepecha territory struggling to stay dry in frigid temperatures, freezing my balls off. To make matters worse, I blew up my alcohol stove and spent an evening digging aluminum shards out of my right foot.  

BORElia

Morelia was a welcome reprieve from the string of bad weather-luck. The skies immediately opened up as I dropped into the valley. I finally had a chance to warm up and dry off on the roof at Tequila Sunset hostel, where I spent the next three days recuperating and chilling with Damian, getting shithoused, and making a fool of myself in front of a bunch of Argentinian backpackers, all in good fun. Biking around this fair city was a blast, but after three days of checking out the sights and with the weather finally at my side, I jumped on the steed and continued west on ruta 15.

Zacapu

The road was BEAUTIFUL. The big climbs through snow capped mountain were finally behind me. The next three days on the road were spent gently meandering through mountain valleys, lake sides and rolling hills. With the exception of an overturned tour bus a few k's west of Quiroga, the route couldn't be better, yet despite the sights and sounds along the way, I wasn't trying to take any breaks. I had one destination on my mind, one place that seemed to be the talk of the town everywhere in Mexico...

Guadalajara: the Spaniards used to call it "City of Dreams"

Fellow travelers are always eager to share their recommendations for places to go when you're on big trips like these. They'll say things like 'check out the thermal baths at yerba buena', 'go feed the monkeys at Portobello', 'come with us to this ayahuasca ceremony' or 'you gotta check out the brothels in Panama City'. I generally don't take recommendations to well, especially when someone's trying to get me to shell out $200 for a day long leisure hike in some enchanted Olmec forest, at which point I tend to fuck off and do my own thing like a cheap asshole. However, if everyone along the way is pushing me in one direction, I might buckle and hang a right somewhere. Other folks spoke of Guadalajara as if it were the nucleus of any Mexican journey, that I'd be a fool to circumvent it as I had done with so many other cities.

First impressions: this place is biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig! Panama was my last big city navigation. Guadalajara proved to be an entirely different monster, albeit equally challenging to a first time visitor. Centro was easy enough to get to, but finding the elusive casa ciclista tacked another two hours to my trip for the day. I arrived unannounced. The fellas working the shop/bike hostel were perturbed to say the least at this grimy biker riding in at the last minute, speaking terrible spanish and asking for a place to stay, but since turning away strangers goes against the inherent hospitable nature shared by most Mexicans, I was hooked up with a bed, a hot shower and keys to the palace in no time. 

Loyal servants of Bernardo

 I was introduced to Jorge and Izhak, an inseparable pair bound to one another by duty, kinship, and a strong, manly love for bikes and bike tools. How to describe this dynamic duo without delving into their clashing idiosyncrasies? I never  thought a techie DJ Tiesto aficionando could get along so well with a luddite who leaves Glenn Frey's greatest hits on repeat all day long, but there they were, working side by side and answering to no one except Bernardo, the unquestionable superior and boss of Casa Ciclista and all cyclists in Guadalajara. One can see by the way Jorge and Izhak lock eyes that this duo was and will forever remain inseparable. Whenever I witness such a special relationship develop between two individuals, I like to leave the magic a mystery and let others witness the miracle for themselves. I haven't spoken to these two since leaving GDL, but something tells me the sparks are still flying.

Speaking of sparks and love and magical adventures, Izhak warned me the last gringo who stayed at Casa Ciclista ended up sticking around for two months before continuing southward. When I asked how this could happen, he spoke of how a fair maiden from the city held my countrymen captive by lust. I dismissed the anecdote and re-assured my hosts I'd stay for no more than a week. They laughed and forced me to mop the floors, a task I performed flawlessly and much better than Izhak or Jorge. I then proceeded to put three bikes together from scratch while simultaneously developing flawless planning measures to develop new bike corridors in the city by the New Year. Unfortunately Jorge burned my plans in a jealous rage.

Five days went by without incident. I collected replacement parts from around the city, overhauled my wheels, degreased the drive chain and prepared for the next and final leg of the journey up to the border. Just as the fifth day was coming to an end, two ladies--Fernanda and Mina--pull up to the shop with brake problems and asked me (not Jorge or Izhak) to fix it, which I did in no time. In return, I demanded they take me to a bar and not invite Izhak or Jorge. An hour later, I was at a bar without Izhak or Jorge.

The night was off to a good start. These two ladies tolerated a few minutes of shitty Owen Spanish before telling me I suck at their language and made me speak in American. No matter what, with so much cheap beer slammed on our table, I was sure to make an ass of myself sooner or later, no matter what language I was speaking. The conversation eventually segued into my journey and how I came across their fair city. As I got into the details of the trip, Fernanda's eyes did the thing my eyes do anytime I see Neo fly into the sky at the end of the first Matrix. She strategically waited for Mina to use the bathroom before she hit me with it. I don't recall her exact words, but I think it was along the lines of, "Take me with you."

As it turns out, Guadalajara is not only the city of dreams, but also the city of love at first sight. I didn't know this lady at all. I didn't know what she was about, what movies or songs she liked the best or what star sign she was, but after Fernanda hit me with her request, I knew right away I'd be sticking around a lot longer than a week...

To be continued

(Part II coming up in a few days)