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.
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| 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.
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.
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.
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!
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| Nancy and Fernanda |
