vagando

Category: journal

  • No, I Don’t Want to Buy a Jaguar Cub or Cocaine.

    Puxmetacan, Oaxaca to La Mixtequita, Oaxaca

    I toss and turn, the night too warm for anything beyond the clothes that I wear to keep the mosquitoes off of me. The town comes alive with the rising of the sun, its rays piercing the clouds that fill the valley and buffet the mountains. A rooster’s talons click on the zinc roof as it struts and crows. An orange trees blooms and stirs outside the window; hummingbirds dart and stab the pungent pistils. I somnambulistically descend a foottrail down the steep mountainside to buy fruit from a woman’s living room. Here a man teaches me how to greet in Mixe, phonetically it is pronounced ‘mi-gep-ay.’

    ‘Puro Mixe.’ He repeats over and over again with a  smile on his face.

    We disrupt some festivities as we leave town, parting the crowd as we walk our bikes through. After giving a brief speech thanking everyone for their hospitality, I awkwardly wait for the tickertape to rain down upon us before realizing that it is Sunday and the stock market is closed.

    I sound like a dumb infant as I leave town, perpetually saying the same word over and over again. Mi-gep-ay! Everyone loves it though. We begin a general descent, with frequent interspersed climbs. The jungle is thick and the air stagnant. I dodge treacherous patches of marble sized rocks with Damien on my side doing the same, leading to several near disastrous incidents as we race into turns. Several pickup trucks loaded with passengers pass, dozens of eyes inquisitively fixed upon us from the bed.

    The forest filled with strange bird calls and rustling bushes gives way to land co-opted for cattle. The approach of civilization is always apparent. I eat bananas, mangos, mandarins, guayabas, peanuts and chocolate as the next town remains ever elusive. It doesn’t exist on our map, only as a rumor. I ride in a ravenous haze in the early afternoon.

    Scale in Service.
    For Sale: Semen and Insemination. Restaurant and Supermarket. Toilets. Ice.

    Then I hit pavement and give out a loud whoop and pump my fist as a few bewildered locals timidly gaze from the back of a truck. The pavement is so smooth, so easy…so unsatisfying. We limp into a roadside restaurant where I collapse into a chair and sip on a glass of agua de tamarindo.

    ‘Hey man, what’s up man?’ I hear in heavily accented, drunkenly slurred English. Fuck. I wince and slowly turn my head towards a nearby table.

    ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ I slowly respond.

    ‘Yo man, you from the United States?’ I am convinced that most immigrants learn their English from early 1990’s action films. Maybe Scarface?

    ‘Yeah….from Utah.’ He doesn’t pick up on my exasperation.

    ‘Oh yeah, Utah! I was a drug dealer in Indianapolis for four years. Mucho cocaina man. Haha!’ He is glassy eyed, stoned drunk. I hope this stops soon.

    ‘….until they deported me for no papers. I am going to go back soon. Fuck them man! I have fucking money man, those are my fucking papers! Hahaha!’ Would an immigrant to any other country than America proudly tell a citizen that they came there illegally, dealt drugs for a living, got deported and plan to return? How am I supposed to respond to this? I don’t say anything.

    ‘How much do you make man?’ He asks aggressively, his bloodshot eyes bulging forth.

    ‘Not much.’

    ‘How much does that fucking bici cost man?’

    ‘Enough.’ Damien and I try to maintain a steady conversation amongst ourselves to put an end to this.

    ‘See you later man! Hahaha!’ He stumbles out the door and hops into the driver’s seat of his taxi.

    The waitress intentionally overcharges us. Trucks thunder past, vexing my delicate senses with dust. Children stare vacantly at a television. These people are materially richer than the people in the mountains, but infinitely poorer in another way. I want to go back to the mountains.

    We arrive in La Mixtequita at dusk, interrupting a futbol game as we ride up. I ask about a place to stay and am told to talk to the police who are on duty for the night. We ride down the road to a restaurant with a hilarious old lady, her drunk illterate son, a 3.5 kilo rooster and a drunk midget who insists on speaking in English that I cannot understand. We stay for a while in good company. The head of the local police hears about our arrival and comes over to talk, offering us permission to stay in the town’s municipal building.

    We stop to get snacks and a girl disappears for a moment before returning carrying her five year old sister who is fighting in terror.

    ‘They aren’t going to eat you!’ She declares amidst laughter, holding her sister out towards us before setting her down. She takes off running.

    Nobody ever arrives to open the municipal building for us, so we sleep behind it, under a metal roof.

    La Mixtequita, Oaxaca to Palomares, Oaxaca

    A cow bellows in the corral attached to the municipal building long before first light. A group of men are already working on a pickup truck and howling in laughter. As we pack up they come over to talk. We quickly move from our trip to more pressing matters.

    ‘Haha… Look at the Australian’s bike, he is so poor that he cannot afford disc brakes!’

    ‘Why didn’t you bring down a white girl? You know? A little thing.’ He makes an obscene gesture with his hands that is appears to be universal amongst Latin American men.

    ‘You should come to San Juan Mazatlan in the mountains, where we are from. There are waterfalls and beautiful mountains and lots of wildlife. We caught a baby tiger up there the other day.’ He says casually.

    ‘A tiger?’ I play it cool as well.

    ‘Yeah, a baby jaguar.’ He holds his palm about 30cm off the ground to show me the size of the cat.

    ‘How did you catch it”‘

    ‘Oh we used a trap. Do you want to buy it?’

    ‘How much do you want for it?’

    ‘One hundred dollars. It’s  cheap. There is a guy coming down here from Chicago to take a look at it in the next few days.’

    ‘Oh….’ This jaguar is as good as dead and I cannot think of a way to change this outcome. In the next few weeks I tell several government officials and police officers about this exchange. Here is a typical conversation:

    ‘That is definitely illegal.’

    ‘Is there anything you can do about it?’

    ‘Oh, well somebody should. It isn’t my job though.’

    We ride 20km of rolling hills into Palomares. We cross paths with the chief of police from La Mixtequita at a restaurant with a few friends. One of them lived in America for a while, so we have a fruitful dialogue about cocaine, banging white girls, getting drunk and eating at buffets. Somehow in the course of all of this he managed to get a DUI and was deported.

    ‘You guys want to buy some cocaine? Only one hundred pesos.’ He leers at us.

    ‘No. I am trying to lead a healthy life.’ I try to tactfully decline amidst rising frustration with conversations like this.

    Cocaine and jaguars. Welcome to the Isthmus.

    Palomares, Oaxaca to Poblado Doce/La Horqueta, Veracruz

    One of Damien’s tires looks like it has leprosy with several sores and missing chunks. There is nowhere to get a spare that will not cost us several days, so we switch the front tire with the back and hope for the best. We stock up on supplies before heading out into the unknown. The entrance into the Ishtmus of Tehuantepec is called La Boca del Monte or The Mouth of the Wild. The road on my map is shown as nothing but dirt as it snakes through several small towns named Poblado 1-14 or Population 1-14. There is nothing in this region on our maps other than what lies along this small road until one reaches one of the two coasts.

    The road stays paved as we pass through the final frontier town that  bustles with activity from the natural resource exploitation beyond. I receive varying and conflicting answers regarding the road ahead, but almost universally we are told that we should turn around and head to the coast. The air is filled with a miasma of decaying organic matter, cow shit and dead animals. Development?

    We continue on a concrete road through pasture. Where is the adventure and rugged country? The swarthy savages clothed in loincloths that jump out of trees onto animals backs to stab them to death? The jaguars barking at us? The monkeys flinging shit at us?

    What is it like to live in a town called Population 2? There is a sign out front built out of scrap metal with the village name spray painted over rust. Orange trees overburdened with fruit line the road.

    We cross into Veracruz and are questioned by curious assault rifle wielding police. I keep my answers concise and we are sent on our way. The jungle slowly thickens, swollen beautiful rivers whisper to us from below bridges. In Plan de Arroyo we are flagged down by a local and I stop in confusion. He points at some vibrant orange and green iguanas tanning their scales in the sun. The town’s name either translates to River Plan or Gutter Plan, I prefer Gutter Plan.

    We resupply in one of the populations between 5-8. Our map shows a town called Las Carolinas where we plan to spend the night and resupply on water. We are tired from the heat and the day loses its luster. We ride hard through interminable rows of rubber trees. The remote mountains of the Chimalapas lie to our right as we pass their flanks. I flag down a truck in frustration, the driver never having heard of a town called Las Carolinas. Over the clang of the diesel engine he tells us that we are only a few kilometers out from La Horqueta/Poblado Doce. We cross paths with a man on horseback a bit later who directs us to keep riding a bit further, town invisible in the incipient darkness. 117km later.

    I ask for a place to stay at a small store, a woman who’s mouth has corners perpetually downturned into a frown offers to rent us her son’s room for the night. We spend an hour laying out all of our different maps on a concrete slab in front of the store for dozens of locals that encircle us under a dangling, dim lightbulb. I talk about our trip, waiting for the woman to show us to our room.

    We eventually carry all of our gear through the living room, the rest of the family quietly taking stock of us. I quickly head out back and bath myself with bucketloads of water. We pass the evening chatting with the family about our trip and the area before cooking dinner on my small stove out back. They give us cilantro, oranges, chiles and plantains to add to our dinner. Our evening here is incredible, despite the matriarch’s defect of frowning at all of my jokes. The walls of the house are lined with dozens of photos of frowning family members. I want to make a joke about this, but I know how it will be received.

  • unknown road to unknown road

    The year previous the front of the municipal building in Oaxaca de Juarez was occupied by an indigenous group called the Triquis. I added this pigs head to draw you in and get you to read an otherwise biased and rambling rant about another repressed indigenous group. I am not sure why I am writing about this, other than the fact that I passionately told the Triquis that I would do so. I remember walking past and not thinking very much of the shanty town in front of the government building, my Spanish likely insufficient to understand anyways. I choose to stop this time as I walk past and figure out what is going on. I am quickly drawn in and told a harrowing tale. Many simply look on as I speak with one of the leaders as they do not speak Spanish. The group initially drew the ire of the Mexican government and the state of Oaxaca by declaring their desire to live autonomous from the state, in accordance with their customs. A demand similar to that of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, where several indigenous villages have lived independent of the Mexican government since the revolution in the mid-1990’s. This declaration made San Juan Copala politically unpalatable and divisive, but the Mexican government had a response derived from the Zapatista rebellion: use paramilitaries instead of actual government forces to wage a proxy war. Through promises of land, political power, weapons and money the government convinced members of another nearby village to form a paramilitary group called MULT to assail the village. Dozens were murdered in cold blood, their bodies littering the bullet riddled town square. The population of the village was forced to flee, seeking refuge in the city center of Oaxaca de Juarez with the hopes of seeking justice and recovering their village. Both state and federal governments have conveniently turned a blind eye.

    Several military and police assaults have attempted to violently evict the blight that the occupiers pose. The night before Christmas Eve police forces descended upon the makeshift slum with force, literally beating the hundreds of homeless people away in preparation for the celebrations in the square. After another year they still huddle on a sidestreet during the cold nights, pictures of bloodied corpses taped to the plastic tarps flapping in the wind.

    Oaxaca de Jaurez, Oaxaca to outside Cerro Pelon, Oaxaca

    We set out in the morning to a flurry of goodbyes, it is strange when you get to a place and all the right people come together. Energy builds rather than dissipating. After two weeks in the city, a diaspora sets out: April and Chelsea on their bikes towards Palenque, Kyleen and Chris towards San Cristobal. The feelings of doubt and exhaustion have lead me to reevaluate my approach to riding, to eschew goal oriented thinking and focus on simply being mindful. To honor the piece of me that revels in connecting with people, of staring in wonder at the world that abound in life and beauty, to commit myself deeper into this trip than before, to lose myself in it. GO.

    I do some research on the hypothetical route that I have seen only vaguely traced in my map through towns with names like Poblado 1-14. There is not much to be found, beautiful. The other options are riding either on the Carribean or Pacific coast highways, either of which sounds like a boorish slog. Damien and I set out together planning to ride the following route through the Sierra Mixe, through the center of the Isthmus de Tehauntepec and on backroads into San Cristobal. Google titles the map: Unknown Road to Unknown Road. We don’t discuss it too much, we simply agree to leave one morning.

    We will try to follow the faint lines that wander through the jungle, not overly concerned about where it leads us. Turns are subjectively judged wrong only by certain premises, viewed with a different perspective they are whatever you want them to be. Pay attention. Confused readers or family members begrudgingly wading through my musings through some sort of obligation stemming from your desire to avoid awkward Skype phone calls: in all of my writing I am trying to share a philosophy that does not simply apply to cycling or traveling, it applies to every facet of life. It is my life’s work.

    The city characteristically challenges our egress through traffic spilling uncontrolled and violent from arteries radiating from the city center in a blur of glass and steel. We ride shoulder to shoulder to continue conversations that seamlessly sweep from Noam Chomsky, finding meaningful happiness, economics, topes, Spinoza, agriculture, cycling, indigenous rights, environmental degradation, inequality, interconnectedness, mining, literature, our feces, globalization, the impossibility and undesirability of unconstrained growth, Wittgenstein. The challenges of our generation. Damien unselfconsciously unleashes a contagious roaring laugh at the world as he passes through it, whether canoeing through the Yukon Territories, walking the Pacific Crest Trail or cycling through the Americas. Cars narrowly pass with Doppler shifted horns wailing, protesting our egregious occupation of an exorbitant extension of the thoroughfare. This leads to more laughter.

    I lead us to a mescal factory, called El Espadin, outside of Mitla. A mule tows a massive stonewheel in circles which grinds roasted maguey over a stone slab, the juice is collected for fermentation. We knock back a few sample shots that give the morning a strange texture. The walls are lined with jars of mescal with snakes neatly coiled inside, scorpions arching in a final death throe and tarantulas preserved in poise.

    ‘We need to shake it mate!’ Damien exclaims with a grin. (I am going to give Damien a more Australian accent for my own amusement.)

    ‘Why?’

    ‘I reckon if I stay here any longer I will wake up here in 20 years with an ungrateful wife and a half dozen children that I struggle to support with a corn farm in the desert. Mescal will give you roos loose in the top paddock.’ He roars.

    This mescal factory served as the starting point for several adventures the previous year. I am riding a nostalgic road, one that lead to one of the stranger experiences that I have had on the road: a predawn gringo hunt in the woods outside of a small town called Cerro Pelon that lead to some sort of loose imprisonment for the night.

    As we eat a woodfire cooked chicken on the roadside we laugh as a big white dog with something stuck in its foot prances instead of walking, all the while viciously lashing out at other dogs on the street.

    Deciduous trees dot the mountainside of the Sierra Mixe, smearing brilliant reds and yellows across the landscape. Water cascades in waterfalls, trickles from cracks and slowly rolls off the points of leaves of grass. The chaos of the valley fades behind and below.

    We crest a pass and are sent on a precipitous, curvaceous downhill marred with irregular deep potholes. I am nearly bucked off my bike several times, holding my breath as it miraculously does not explode on impact with the unavoidable. I keep my eyes on the road, reading the map of the surface. A driver approaches doing the same, she swerves completely into my lane as I silently approach at 45km/hr. I cut hard right and nail the brakes, adrenaline instantly coursing through my veins as I struggle to regain control of the bike.

    After 15 minutes we are ejected into a small town that appears to grow nothing besides tomatoes. I harass the driver of a potato chip truck about the route forward. Coca-Cola, Frito Lay and beer penetrate into every crevice and niche of this country, and likely the world, that is accessible by bike. This is the reality of our world, making the drivers are a valuable resource. He draws a detailed map for us of the road ahead, far more detailed than the blurry, discontinuous lines on Google Maps.

    We begin climbing again. The afternoon heat radiates off the pavement, each breath seeming to heat my body further, stoking me like a furnace. Pines dominate the landscape.

    I find myself once again outside of Cerro Pelon with the night closing in upon us. I debate boldly entering town with a smile on my face and asking the head of the agency if we can stay in the cell where I slept last time. We ride on until spotting a small trail cutting up into a canyon. We pass the bikes over a guardrail before cooking one of my signature questionable dinners cobbled together from random items we bought on the roadside. Sardines, beans in a bag, rice, butter, bullion cubes full of MSG, chiles…..

    Outside Cerro Pelon, Oaxaca to Santa Maria Alotepec, Oaxaca

    I awake to a sky filled with shifting and rising clouds, the sun occasionally winking through. We hit the steep gradient as soon as we pass the bikes over the rail. We reach San Pedro and San Pablo Ayutla where we restock and eat breakfast above the gaping chasm that the city is anchored above. I seek out deep yellow handmade criollo tortillas, my journey leading me to a small lady at the end of an alley. She claps out tortillas in a smokey room so small that you couldn’t spin a cat by the tail without hitting one of the fire-darkened walls. She cackles as we talk about tortillas, her face hovering over the comal as the corn rises on the heat of the red embers.

    We take a right hand turn on the outside of town that cuts steeply upwards. The towns water is supplied by pipes that funnel water pouring off of a sizable waterfall, as it should be.

    I paperboy up the precipice that leads to Tierra Blanca. Chickens and turkeys disproportionately react to my incredibly slow approach, scattering in a racket. I build a map of the cloud shrouded sierra as my tires traverse the serpentine jagged spine: it looks like a mad tangle of yarn with little to no order. A man seems to be climbing a cliff with corn growing out of it, I gasp as he risks loosing his handhold on the surface as he waves.

    We ride a road that is simply a gash cut into the mountainside by machinery, the road littered with rocks and debris from above. A town looms ahead on the spine, its sky blue church catches my eye first. We roll into Ascencion Cacalotepec where we lunch in a small shack that hangs over a cliff, we look down through cracks in the irregularly planed wooden floor to see clouds below.

    A little girl of eight brazenly and uncharacteristically approaches us while her mother heats tortillas for us. She has never spoken to any foreigners before and asks us about what it is like where we live and why we are riding our bicycles. She hands us some fruit as we set out, the whole family coming out to wish us the best.

    A descent begins here that is strewn with potholes, landscape debris, animals and all manners of hazards that we navigate as we pedal and lean through the turns. What lies ahead is unknown. The mountains here are the most rugged and steep that I have encountered yet. There are gradients that deceptively lead into medieval tope traps. We cross a saddle that is just wide enough for the road, sheer drops on either side. I frequently brake and stop to take in the rugged landscape with bold outposts of civilization dotting the flanks. I am far away.

    We pass San Isidro Huayapan, drop towards Estancia de Morelos in the river bottom below before winding our around the mountainside to Alotepec. A man who has returned home after 15 years in the United States chats with as for a bit at a fork in the road.

    ‘It is great since I have been back here. You have to pay for everything in America. Freedom to me is owning your own land, having free water, producing your own food, owning your time.’ He passionately explains. I vehemently nod my head in agreement.

    The landscape at the river bottom is comprised of coffee and banana fields. Flowers waver around the small homes with coffee drying out front.

    We pass men and women returning from the fields, wrestling loaded bags  of coffee with machetes dangling by their side. Laughter emanates from the rows of coffee trees. This sierra represents a surreal paradise to me. On the final climb into Alotepec I am pursued by a burro burdened with wood, I struggle to keep ahead. Several men emerge from the trees on the roadside carrying rifles, giving me a little bit of anxiety as they stand in the roadside and stare out at us from behind blank faces hardened by life here in the mountains. At one point more than half of the road has been consumed by the cliff that it dangles over, a gaping hole into nothingness. The white church of Alotepec stands like a beacon in the distance.

    I ride into the town square and make a few circles in front of the municipal building, before sitting down sweatsoaked to shiver and wait for Damien. The sun has been lost in the gray sky.

    ‘Where can we sleep?’ I ask a few men sitting on the steps of the municipal building.

    ‘Anywhere? Over there?’ An old man in a cowboy hat points to some steps in front of the municipal building.

    Friday night unfolds in a cacophony of dog barking, music, giggling teenagers as we cook dinner and relax. People stare at us and talk amongst themselves in Mixe. I feel like an exhibition, a representation for gringos in general. What rumors will start about gringos based upon my behavior? What if I ate an onion like an apple? What if I Damien and I did headstands and carried on a conversation for a while? What if I sacrificed something? Or build a shrine to an inanimate object?

    They move us into the police station as night falls, the police sleep by our side waiting for….. I am not sure. We sleep under a mural with a quote from Benito Juarez that says the following: ‘Damn those who defend the town with their words, but betray it with their actions.’

    Alotepec, Oaxaca to Puxmetecan, Oaxaca

    Someone pounds on the door until the policemen wake up, which disconcertingly takes a few minutes. I stroll out to have a leak and am greeted with a luminous blue sky. The towering cliffs that back the town are illuminated. I stand transfixed with genitals in hand. I spend the next hour or two answering questions about how expensive my bike is and doing alternating impressions of the billowing loudspeaker that presides over town. The quality is mediocre and the Mixe sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher. Here is a rough translation from what I could gather, ‘The white devils have arrived and have arisen to drink the blood of the pure. We must eliminate them before the ball of fire in the sky reaches its apex. Assemble in the town square for the reckoning. There will be free flan courtesy of Mrs. Martinez. Juan, your mother called to notify us that you left your sack lunch at home.’

    Turkeys and chickens peck the square.

    I look at Cotzocon in the distance in sheer bewilderment, unable to discern a way. There are several ridges and valleys separating us. We start with a descent down a loose rock filled road, my hands cramping from perpetual braking. In Cotzocon we stop in front of a school to ask directions, the small schoolhouse empties rapidly. Dozens of children stare at us, refusing to answer any of our questions.

    Over lunch I try and learn some Mixe words from the locals, they fade from my memory within minutes. Wizened old men burdened with coffee beans and firewood smile as we pass. We dismount and walk past packs of wary donkeys.

    The road is wet red clay that sends us sliding occasionally. Damien falls to the ground several times on one descent, laughing the entire time. We rattle over solid limestone slabs in dark verdant tunnels. The air is fragrant with flowers and the smells of the jungle.

    We reach our nadir for the day, Rio Puxmetecan. We peer off the bridge as a few men walk upstream in their underwear wielding spears. We ride down to the river and swim in the cool water of the river, white flowers dangle over its surface and drop petals. The young men show me a bag of fish they speared. A truck crosses the bridge, a rare bit of traffic on this stretch of road. Everyone starts screaming and running in their underwear up the river bank after the truck.

    ‘Watch out for the crocodiles!’ One of them shouts as he takes off. They catch a ride back to town.

    We make our final approach as the sun cuts horizontally through the trees, slogging upwards towards Puxmetacan on a distantly near ridge. The sun sets as we ridge into town. I set a group of girls hysterically laughing by merely saying ‘hola.’ The gringo payaso.

    2000 miles.

    We ride up to the municipal building drenched in sweat and delirious. I take off my bandana and comb my hair with my hand. I straighten the shirt that is stuck to my skin. I suavely explain to a group of men who we are and that we need a place to stay. I am told that I need to speak with the authorities.

    I am ushered upstairs in a very formal manner, where I am told that I have to wait until the authorities are ready to see me. I am given a plastic lawn chair. I wait a minute before I am brought into a nice office with four men sitting behind hardwood desks with stacks of paper on them. They wear collared shirts like me, a sign that we are all respectable and trustworthy. I greet them and then give my story, being as polite as possible. They say that they have a spot for us and that we can wait below until we are notified that it is ready. I thank them and say a few kind words about the village.

    ‘Also, a kid told me that there were crocodiles in the river while I was swimming, are there?’ I ask hesitatingly.

    ‘No.’ They all laugh at me in a way that says hopeless gringo.

    We wait on the municipal steps and watch young and old play futbol, basketball and light of fireworks. The futbol pitch overlooks a steep drop, it is the centerpiece of town. We are lead to a freshly cleaned house with matresses  laid out for us. We cook dinner and make hot chocolate, we accept many visitors who we regale with tales of our distant lands.

    ‘I am from America, but he is from Australia. The other side of the world! There are kangaroos there and women three meters tall. There are more toads and sheep than people and there president can’t read.’ This is generally how I shift conversations over to Damien so that I can write or read after a long day of riding.

    The town, like most Mixe villages, operates relatively democratically. Land is communally held through the ejidal system, there is no buying or selling. It is given with the explicit agreement that one will serve a year working for the municipality for one year out of every two or three performing a variety of different functions that are randomly given. Although the nature of the job rotates, one stature or rank within the municipality increases over the years. The townspeople work together constructing houses, planting and harvesting. All community gatherings work like potlucks, with everyone contributing. It is hard not to idealize this place.

    ‘Can I live here?’

    ‘If you agree to work we would give you land.’ One of the village leaders sincerely tells me.

    Massive moths circle the room and a gecko clicks on the ceiling. The PA here is preceeded by a futuristic sound effect, which is where most of its authority is derived from. The monotone Mixe message that follows seems inconsequential after such a regal introduction. Damien rolls around on the ground laughing everytime. I think about accepting the free land, but the PA system really lowers real estate values.

  • the whirl is why i wander

    Tehuacan, Puebla to 30km outside Teotitlán de Flores Magón, Oaxaca

    It is raining when I wake up, something that inevitably slows me down. I am run down, I am sick. I meditate for awhile, again watching my mind wander to changing my plan, rather than letting myself be and letting each day come as it may. I stand up with some sort of vague decision to let myself be free and revel in the moment. As I write this and think about my previous writing, I feel like some sort of directionless, depressed, single, jobless, middle aged man desperately reaffirming himself and his life through vague and alternative mediums as his life is a failure in the objective measures of society. I am not middle aged. I stand on an old brass scale in the courtyard of a hotel in Tehuacan, grunting and cradling my bike as befuddled diners stare. I am probably sweating already for some unclear reason.

    Me: 72.5 kilograms (150 pounds)
    My bike: 53 kilograms (127 pounds)

    This is the weight of my bike with 8 litres of water and a days worth of food. I have absolutely zero clue how the weight of the bike got this out of control. I solemnly vow to mail my slingshot home against my own best instincts.

    I struggle down a gradual slope towards Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca: the mezcal, chapulin and mole negro capital of the world. My mind and digestive tract have conflicting opinions on this region of Mexico. I crane my head to check out the cactus lined mountains that are shrouded in a patchwork of clouds and vegetated limestone cliffs. I cover 95 kilometers in six hours with at least an hour and a half spent procrestinating (avoiding something with the ostensible purpose of resting).

    30km outside Teotitlán de Flores Magón, Oaxaca to San Francisco Telixtahuaca, Oaxaca

    The night passes strangely as a chestnut mare and her foal traipse the rocky hillsides, we mutually spook one another several times.I sleep fitfully and am awakened by a fourwheeler passing by the grassy ditch where I sleep partially obscured by a trees. I pack quickly in panic that he wants to steal my slingshot or bicycle like a childhood nemesis

    Horses and donkeys clomp down the pavement, the old Mexico.  Banana trees promise heat. I arrive in a town called El Chilar, a small town where I spent a night the year before as I hitchhiked through.

    As I park my bike and awkwardly approach a house that evokes blurry memories, from the year before, of  drinking home made moonshine called mata ratas, or rat poison, out of coconuts with a man who was collectively referred to as Bill Clinton due to his, albeit swarthy, uncanny resemblance to the former president. The evening is also notable as the second time that I got drunk with an on-duty police officer in a one week period. Ever yells MATA RATAS! and grins as I amble closer. We both crack up laughing. We do some catching up, Bill Clinton is well…

    Over the past few days the palms of drivers have gushed sweat as they recounted their experiences climbing from here to Oaxaca; prediabetic families collectively shudder and let tortilla masa tumble from the corners of their mouths as they speculate about the climb. UNA BICICLETA?

    As I start climbing from Dominguillo I see an old, banner covered truck loaded with people and a bunch of spandex clad cyclists scattered about the shoulder. I stop to find out that they are on a cycling pilgrimage from San Migel Ocotenco on bicycle to visit La Virgen de Juquila in Juquila, Oaxaca. Juquilita is a 30cm tall statue was brought to Amialtepec, Oaxaca from Spain in the 16th century. In the 17th century Amialtepec was destroyed by a fire, along with the church where Juquila resided. She rose from the ashes, her skin darkened to the color of her devote indigenous following by the fire, to perform countless miracles. We don’t know what kind of miracles she performed, but the fact that she did so is not in doubt. She was then moved to gilded surroundings in Juquila that are befitting a statue that is, ounce for ounce, the most benevolent, charismatic and compassionate that the world has ever seen. You might find yourself asking: Has she ever been stolen only to return? Yes, countless times.

    I leave the pilgrims in my wake. At least until they pass me, one by one, under their own power or holding onto the rope of a motorcycle. I begin to feel the climb, the mountains seem to reach endlessly into the sky as I look upwards through sweat stung eyes. Eight kilometers an hour means 7.5 minutes per kilometer. The key to suffering is to just keep doing it. I arrive last to the first break and am greeted with a mountain of mandarins, watermelon and questions. I walk around like a drunk, red faced and delirious. I am feeling the climb and look downwards into a canyon that doesn’t seem very far below. I ride off first, only to be passed by a peloton of cyclists in the next few minutes.

    The profound thoughts that resonate through my incomprehensibly complex mind capable of infinite combinatorial thought: Yes! The top! Oh, No. Yes. Maybe. Wait….no. All the other cyclists have left when I arrive at the next break point, the truck starts its engine and the passengers shout for me to keep riding. I pedal past the only place eating establishment for many kilometers, skipping lunch. Plants grow in stature, become more verdant. A brilliant caterpillar crosses the road. I wince as a car nearly runs it over and then move him to the side of the road. I ride away worrying that he will walk out into traffic again, filled with genuine concern for some reason. I decide that he is a sentient being and it is his prerogative to commit suicide.

    I stop and stare at the rockwall where the road gashes the landscape. A cactus guarded in intricate whispy spines crowned with brilliant flowers grows from a crack in the otherwise dismally grey wall. I am almost hit by a car as I wander out into the road to look at some flowers waving to me in the wind. Am I unconsciously taking an uncharacteristic interest in the flora and fauna solely to take breaks?

    Up. Up. Up. I have sweated out all of my vinegar from the smell of it and there certainly hasn’t been any piss for quite a few hours. Clouds overtake me, the air takes on a chill. I desperately need a break, but I worry that the other riders are waiting for me. I find everyone shivering near a false summit, huddled in a Juquila shrine.

    We ride with the dying of the day, under orange rays creeping out from under the cloud blanket, on a ridgeline at the top of the Oaxacan Sierra that fades out into the horizon. I mark the top at 47 kilometers of climbing. I lament my exhaustion as I seem to float down the backside of the sierra in a pothole hitting daze.

    In San Francisco Telixtahuaca I stand shivering in the dark, in a state of exhaustion that I have never reached before in my life, as several men try to find a new clutch for the truck. After an hour of waiting we follow the truck to a large church courtyard where I will sleep with the pilgrims. I eat a few snacks and lift my spirits a bit. I talk about my trip and juggle. Several women compete for my company, so I graciously eat several dinners.

    I pull a bag of cookies out that I bought for everyone in town and pass another strange night under the Oaxacan sky. I wake up at some point in the night in the midst of a strange dream where I am dying and the halogen floodlight that shines down on the courtyard calls me onward.

    San Francisco Telixtahuaca, Oaxaca to Oaxaca de Juarez, Oaxaca

    I wake up to women mixing up atole under starlight. I pack my things and am ready to leave at 5am as we had planned the night before; we leave in typical Mexican fashion at 6:30am in the dark. My breathe is visible in the headlights of cars as they pass. My whole body shakes from a profound exhaustion, my vision starts to close in from the sides and I worry about falling unconscious into traffic, snot freely runs down my face and it isn’t even funny to me.

    The sun glows behind the mountains before warming hitting me directly and seeming to finally wake me. I wish everyone my best as I ride into a city that stands as a massive mental milestone.

    Stress has insidiously crept upon me, physically and mentally. I am on the verge of complete and utter breakdown. I am cerebral and disconnected. This trip has become too goal oriented. I imagined myself months ago tipping my helmet to mounted cowboys on tranquil cactus lined country roads before stopping to swing in hammocks and write as the day’s heat fades in the lonely desert expanse.

    Our minds are strange; my mind projects into the future a labyrinth of forking paths, each turn beset with consequences, implications and rewards. The labyrinth is constructed from our personal experience and our unique perception of the world. We set about living as if this mentally constructed labyrinth were reality, only to for the entire edifice to change at the first turn, only to be reconstructed infinitely. We often wander in confusion, unable to connect our choices to their outcomes.

    I had many expectations about this trip and it has gone very differently.  I am not enjoying myself at this moment, but learning is very rarely pleasant.

    This is hard to perceive this without slowing down for a minute.

    I lay exhausted on my bed and then begin to write.

    the sea vibrates.
    an energy coursing through its uncharted depths, its origin unbeknownst.
    as it takes form and swells, pelicans float on the air rising off the surface,
    it winks in the sun as it morphs and races forward,
    the concave face inevitably collapsing.
    white froth pours across the fathomless plain of sand
    that is swept continually by a breeze similarly emergent out of boundless chaos.

    trees and grass stir in the breeze,
    imperceptibly growing; their colors gradually changing
    as we orbit the sun and the seasons change.
    greens turn to browns, buds turn to flowers,
    flowers wilt in the cracks of rocks that crumble.

    we are carried by a whirling frenzy,
    our direction is unclear, our compass spinning as we float onward
    carried by a force that lacks purpose or intent.
    we try to navigate by philosophies, ideologies, religions,
    all failing to guide us toward any end.
    words ring hollow.

    the means become the end.
    we turn our eyes from the blinding sky toward the ground.
    we build towers of steel, ensnare the world’s surface
    with a net of wires and pavement.
    we frantically cut, dig, level, extract, refine, replace, buy, sell, exhaust.
    the scale ever grander, ever more complex.

    a steadily rising tide, a gust, a phantom wave.
    events occur and post hoc explanations come forth.
    individual particles colliding, careening, amassing.
    we are steadily whirling,
    confusing having an explanation with having control.
    knowing that we are spinning clockwise does not mean that we can stop it.

    watch the world around you.
    watch the ceaseless undirected activity.
    watch the moments slipping by,
    passing through your mind like sand through your splayed fingers.

    feel the air passing into your lungs.
    the water coursing through your body.
    relish the flavors that wash across your tongue.
    warm yourself by the rays of the perfectly distant sun.
    watch the birds dancing on winds of chaotic birth.
    live conscious of the vast world vibrant with life.

    a beautiful serendipity in the universe.
    as i look into your eyes i know you as i know myself, what it is to be human under the vast sky.
    i judge not and forgive all.

  • I feel like I am flying, sometimes.

    I feel like I am flying, sometimes.

    After a couple of weeks off the bike, I dread getting back on. Cycling is like many other things in life, you need to just get back in the saddle and go.

    The riding is initially not too bad as I make my way out of Mexico City’s boundless sprawl. I get fresh pollution straight from the source as I ride an eight lane highway out of town, none of the stale particulate matter that fills the rest of the air hovering over the city. I say ‘an eight lane highway’ as I am sure that this is not the only one. I am working my way towards Amecameca where I will ride my bike through Paso de Cortez between Itzataccihautl and Popocatèpetl, some of the highest volcanoes on Earth at 5230m and 5426m respectively.

    As I pick my way through the artificial landscape I realize that I am free from this point on. I am going to abandon any goals that I had as far as destinations or time. It makes no sense to me to push onwards towards a distant and meaningless destination. No more timelines, no more destinations. No definitive goals. I will just keep rolling until I stop rolling.

    Amecameca, Puebla to Paso de Cortez, Puebla

    I am on a new schedule: I spend the morning reading and juggling. The saddle of the pass lies 23km away, nestled between the two volcanoes. I approach through fields of cornfields with the remnants of the corn harvest neatly stacked into golden cones as animal fodder for the winter. Popocatèpetl emits a steady stream of smoke from its black conical form; Itzataccihuatl lies long, its form jagged and colorful. I enter a pine forest that provides glorious shade and obstructs my view of the daunting climb ahead; I settle into low gear and make my way upwards.

    I ride my bike around the saddle, a common stopping point for tourists, and feel like Cortez on his iron horse, my thrist for gold and blood only slightly less than his. I think I can safely blame my thirst on the altitude though. La Malinche and Pico de Orizaba are visible on this perfectly clear day. The black icy flanks of Popocatèpetl glisten in the sun.

    ‘Is the volcano more active than last year?’ I ask one of the park rangers.

    ‘Ever since Peñanieto (the current president) was elected, it has been angrier than normal.’

    I devour fruit and peanut butter as the day passes, finally setting out down a sandy road that sends me swerving until I find a gate on the right side of the road. I pass my panniers and bike over once more and disappear into the forest. I set up camp in a meadow below a stand of pines on the flank of Popo. I set up my tent for the first time this trip and stretch under a full moon as the pines sway in the breeze overhead.

    Paso de Cortez, Puebla to Cholula, Puebla

    The sun shines on me through the octogonal porthole of my tent. It looks like morning, but I am not dumb enough to fall for it. I worm my sleeping bag back onto the pad and sleep for another hour.

    I feel like I am flying sometimes, it is a feeling of freedom and weightlessness that has nothing to do with wings. I fly this morning, my bike leaving a trail of dust behind me as my panniers rattle, my hands ache and I fishtail on a steep sandy stretch; almost laying my bike down. I am not sure if flying like a bird is more interesting out of the freedom to travel with the wind or in the physical sensation of flying for most people, for me it is the former. Chainsaws hum and shift pitch in the distance.

    I hit San Nicolas de los Ranchos where I eat a sandwich loaded with the following: pig leg, breaded chicken, hotdog, chorizo, egg, avocado and cheese. It isn’t impressive due to the number of animals involved in its production, as a hotdog covers all three itself, but rather in the sheer diversity of ingredients.

    I ride into Cholula, passing many of the 365 churches to which the city proudly lays claim. There are exactly 365 too many for me. I find a cheap hostel called Hostal Cholula that smells of cigarettes and mildew; the receptionist eyes me suspiciously as she moves other peoples luggage out of the room to make space for me.

    As I roll my bike into the room, I notice that a screw rattled loose from one of my panniers. I set about finding a duplicate, a task that proves impossible. I eventually find myself fabricating screws in an aluminum window frame shop run by a man named Antonio. We devise a solution and then I stumble into the market in search of food. Smoke dims the interior, blenders resonate in every direction, knives cleave against wooden blocks, sellers shout out prices. I find a piece of fruit that I have never seen before called chiramoye.

    Our language is severely deficient in words to describe flavors.

    Sometimes I feel like I am dying, that my soul is weighed down. This is the antithesis of the sensation of flying. It is the feeling of acquiescing to things that one stands against. The fight gone out of the dog. I want to be inspired and want to inspire.

    Cholula, Puebla to Outside San Juan Atzompan

    I have a mental map of how to exit Cholula and skirt around Puebla in my head, but I end up spending two hours navigating unmarked roads that lead me into the concrete labyrinth of Puebla. The physical map that I have doesn’t even remotely correspond to reality. I cross several rivers that burbles and bubbles with a frothy deep brown mixture of raw sewage and chemical waste that looks incompatible with life. As I pass the river Tepanene there is a sign with a skull and crossbones saying that drinking the water will cause harm or death. (I hope in twenty years I can look back on this writing and this will be laughable.)

    I get out my map frequently to get directions and no one is able to point out where we are without my assistance. I ride through rolling foothills of cactus until I reach a fork in the road, where I diverge towards the city of Tepanene. As I stop to take a photo of a tope, a man named Hector sidles up and we spend half an hour talking over apricot juice. About America, about Oaxaca, about life.

    I ride out of town on a dirt road that begins to climb into a towering forest of Joshua Trees and lush desert vegetation. The road is devoid of cars, people and barbed wire fences. Paradise. The vegetation grows more varied, trees of the sort that I associate with African savanna appear. I slowly climb and then coast downhill, lost in the landscape. I don’t look at my computer, I don’t think. I finally arrive in a small town, where two guys wrestling a large piece of plateglass in the wind give me directions to San Juan Atzompan. I hang a left at the fork to La Magdalena and then climb some steep dirt sections that leave me gasping.

    Towering cactus appear, flowers line the roadsides, agave are scattered across a landscape cut with several small clear creeks. I buy tostadas in a small village from a woman who asks me the following:

    “Are you a Catholic or a Christian?” Fuck this sounds like a trick question. Think fast…Oh god… she is either a rabid Christian or a vicious Catholic, but wait Catholics are Christians.

    ‘Uh…Christian?’ Brilliant!

    ‘The Evangelicals here say that the Catholics are not Christians.’ She bursts forth.

    ‘Uh….well… Catholics are Christians.’ I try and defuse this one, it just shifts her tangent.

    ‘We welcome you here with open arms and will help you along your way, yet if a Mexican goes to America he will be arrested and thrown out. Why don’t you want us in your country?’ I am not sure if this conversation quite constitutes welcoming me with open arms.

    ‘Blah blah blah. Diplomatic rhetoric. Blah blah.’

    I ride out of town on the hunt for a place to sleep, many men are still in the fields working. I see a beaten double track winding into the hills of cornfields and dense desert scrub. I push my bike uphill and take a few forks to help disappear myself. I set up camp in a small grassy spot next to a corn field. I hang my clothes on the thorny acacia tree to dry, clear the ground of things that want to penetrate me and sit down to rest in the golden afternoon light.

    I sit in the darkness writing under the tree as wind whips the pages of my notebook. The lights of the scattered villages shimmer in the distance, the stars wink and the crickets sing. I sit thinking what often comes to mind, why am I not at home with my family and friends? Secure, indoors, good food… The answer is manifold, but one thing that comes to mind as I sit with my thoughts about being robbed, killed and then posthumously violated tonight, is that I feel alive right now. Taking risks for something you love is living. Whatever fate befalls me, at least I know that I chose it explicitly.

    Outside San Juan Atzompa to Outside San Juan Ixcaquixtla

    I hang all of my dew soaked gear out to dry and juggle to stay warm. Wind builds early and scours the rocky ground. As I shift direction, it somehow seems to do the same. Grass is laid horizontal and trees sway at the trunk. I find one slight downhill where the wind is blowing so hard that I am forced to pedal my way down.

    I ride into San Juan Atzompan during Sunday morning mass that is broadcast throughout town on a shrill PA that makes the preacher sound incredibly angry. I have an American aversion to loudspeakers, who decides who gets to rant? We all want to rant deep down inside. The preacher boils over as I sit casually sipping atole de maiz leaning against the church fence. The town police chief comes over to talk and then goes to tell my story to the mayor. The mayor radios down from an office 20 feet away to wish me luck and notify me that the town is at my service. I radio back and thank him with the mirth I get from remembering childhood when we I had walkietalkies that we used to communicate over equally ridiculous distances.

    I climb against the wind out of town at 7km/hr. I ride over a river outside of town on a bridge called the Bridge of God.

    ‘Don’t drink the water from the river.’

    ‘Don’t worry, I won’t’ As I look down at the filthy frothy flow.

    ‘Local devil worshippers go up to that mountain over there to make offerings to the devil.’ He points at a mountain in the distance.

    ‘Have you ever been there?’

    ‘No.’

    I overeat in Molcaxa and then stop at a small roadside store to charge my Kindle. What a weird world?

    On a big climb a spandex-clad roadbiker strains and passes me without saying a word as he jams out to his Ipod. He spends the next twenty minutes off the seat of his 9kg bike, constantly looking over his shoulder to gauge his distance from me. The only thing that allows him to gain any distance may be the air that I lose laughing.

    I crest the climb and ride out into open plains lined with rows of corn. I stop at an incredibly nice hotel in the middle of nowhere, a very Mexican concept, for directions. The owner is blind drunk and rambles on frankly about life. The wind howls outside, so I sit down on a couch and the contagious laughter of this drunk spreads over to me. Everything in the world is suddenly amusing.

    I ride out of town, quickly give up and lay down under an acacia tree.

    Outside San Juan Ixcaquixtla, Puebla to Tehuacan, Puebla

     A terrible night sleep, precipitated by the glare of a full moon, the incessant traffic and the disgusting dinner that I made and was unable to finish. I am scatterbrained as I pack in the morning, moving things from one place to another and then back. I breakfast in Atexcal, a city with proper buildings and streets, but completely devoid of cars this morning. It is serene as bikes click past and gravel crunches under feet.

    I pass an unknown town, a few idle men near the entrance peer out from under their hats as I pass. I enter a surreal micro ecosystem unlike anything I have ever seen before with forking cactus, massive drooping bulbous cactus and Joshua Trees flanking the road. The splendor fades after a few hundred meters.

    I am accustomed to the omnipresent wind here. I pant over a ridgeline and the glaciated conical form of Orizaba looms in the distance as a mirage radiates off of the sweltering pavement.

    Suddenly I am in Tehuacan, a cosmopolitan city booming with New Years Eve fireworks.

    Tehuacan, Puebla

    I wake up feeling a little rough and decide not to leave. There are two churches nearby, both sharing the same Catholic belief system. They are unable to agree on the time though, consistently ringing their bells several minutes apart.

    I take my shirt off and lay down on a towel on the cold tile floor. I let my thoughts rise, observe them and let them pass. My mind is filled with thoughts about doing, yet no matter how much I accomplish in a day, my mind is always there with more. The taste, smell, feel, color and energy of this very moment is all that I will ever have, can ever have. It is one thing to understand this concept and it is something wholly other to embody it. It means nothing other than experiencing. It is exceedingly difficult, yet infinitely easier. I may be the person who understands this idea the best, yet spectacularly fails in practice as I rush to and fro in search of something that I know only resides within myself.

    Inhale, exhale. Every part, every molecule of my body is tingling as if I am vibrating from head to toe. I can feel every part of my body at the same time, a feeling pleasantly overwhelming. It increases steadily, I am purely focused on feeling every nerve in my body and breathing as if air is pouring in and out of every pore of my body. The feeling is electric. My focus is broken by the thought that I might have a seizure. I start shivering in a way as the energy courses through my body, but I feel almost paralyzed. I feel like I am just watching. It peaks with every inbreath and falls on outbreath, but each time higher than a moment before. I feel the blood coursing through my veins, the air filling my body. My closed eyes see the reddish glow that builds behind your eyes normally, but it builds into a glaring consistent white light with a reddish tinge that fills the entirety of my vision behind my eyelids.

    I am mesmerized in this state. I hold it for a while and then it is strange. I take an inhale that seems to last an eternity. My ears ring. I swallow and it echoes through my head. I feel every muscle and organ in my body as I let air out for another eternity. My heart thumps slowly. All of these sensations are happening at the exact same moment, they cannot be ranked or separated.

    Then I open my eyes and I sit catatonic in a way. My mind is completely blank. I feel everything, yet continue to feel paralyzed as I stare out. This goes on for a while and then I decide to sit up.

    I stare at the intricate stains on my pants, I hadn’t realized they were so dirty. My stomach looks strange and I am amazed as I watch it fill with air and deflate. I notice the texture and stains on the walls for the first time. I see the hand prints of the workers who built this room in the plaster. I smell the mandarin rinds in the trash. I look at my bag of dirty clothes, it is purple and the surface consists of complex folds and shadows. I see how the door was constructed from multiple pieces.

    I eat at a stall in the market where a few women sit talking. An wrinkled and wizened old lady listens on as I tell my story to the woman serving up my mole. She suddenly turns on her stool and looks me in the eye.

    ‘Why are you traveling?’

    ‘To see the world and learn.’

    ‘Yes, but what are you looking for?’

    ‘Uhm… I am not sure.’

    ‘Then you will never find it.’

    Someone can say the same thing in a different moment and its impact is completely different. I had this same conversation a year before and had a definite answer: there is nothing to look for, it is all equal, I am just watching the world go by. Today I know that this is not true. We talk for the next hour, profoundly about life. She says the following about her son who set out on his own for the United States and has never come home.

    ‘What does he want other than his family, food and a roof over his head?’

    ‘Good question. What more do any of us need?’

    As I get up to leave she says the following with tears in her eyes:

    ‘I am a mother of a son like you. A mother is a mother to all sons. I wish you the best on your journey and may good be with you every step of the way. Don’t forget your family and take care of yourself.’

    She hugs me, as does her daughter and granddaughter. The granddaughter blushes as she is forced to hug some strange sentimental gringo.

  • Auctioneer/Professional Boxer

    Guanajuato, Guanajuato to Celaya, Guanajuato

    Breakfast: one can beans, four eggs, two tomatoes, one potato, one bag of salsa… All of it sauteed in a disgusting amount of oil. Preemption. I climb the cobblestones and exit the city through a dark tunnel that resounds with the roar of cars and chokes with putrid exhaust.

    I ride by myself, at my own pace and rhythm. I gained a bit of weight with Brin’s departure and it makes itself known. I ride slower than previously, while still stopping regularly to eat fruit, but my breaks are never any longer than a minute or two as I climb towards Juventino Rosas.

    I stop for lunch and eat with men painting lines on the road. They have built a fire and alternate heating beans and tortillas on the comal.

    Juventino Rosas sits in a valley hazy with smog. I drink a bottomless glass of pineapple juice at a roadside stand and I am sent on my way with a gift of Mandarines and a ton of advice.  Celaya defies my expectations of an industrial hellhole strewn with powerlines and clogged with traffic. I effortlessly cruise into the city center where I eat several dinners.

    I am not relaxed as I ride, I feel like I am lacking confidence in the world. I fight away the day, my mind constantly thinking about food, water, how many, what time, where, never thinking that it will all turn out alright and that I have limited control. The day seems lost to me.

    Celaya, Guanajuato to Maravatìo, Michoacan
    I awaken in a strange place that I occupy for only a few hours. Everything I do these days has a surreal quality, a detached feeling. I lose myself in thought frequently, apart from where I currently am. I am riding my bike on rural backroads of Mexico, crisscrossing the sierra. It seems like more of a concept than a reality. I don’t know how I got here, what I am doing, why I am doing it, where I am going…. I am not sure if I can answer any of these questions for anything in my life. I could give you a contrived answer. I thought I wanted time to think, time by myself?

    Letting my mind free can be dangerous, there seems to be very little that it cannot deconstruct and bring into doubt.

    I head once more again into the fray. I hope to beat some of the morning traffic as I have to ride on the highway for 20km to Apaseo el Alto. I have no such luck. I refuse to eat breakfast until I get off of this nightmarish stretch.

    The road to Jerècuaro weaves through town and then begins to climb steadily, the theme for the day. Cliffs tower in either direction and the landscape is filled with cactus and wiry trees. Drivers on this road are vicious as there is no sholder, I am run off the road several times. A bus goes flying past me within inches, not an ounce of recognition.

    A long straightaway climbs into the distance, I shift my hands to my drop bars and put my head down. Why do Mexican businesses cluster together? On the highway before Apaseo El Alto there was a 10km stretch of businesses selling caramel, hundreds upon hundreds right next to one another selling caramel at the same price. Aftwards came the pallet district, 4-5 kilometers of businesses buying and selling pallets. How does this….Holy fuck! An oncoming Coke truck wakes me from this reverie as it passes another truck and misses me by inches, the gust of wind almost knocking me over. Adrenaline courses through my veins.

    I sing songs as I ride, parodies of Mexican banda music that invariably include the following lyrical constants: beso, labios, corazon, madrugada, alma, amor, cariño. I ride and sing with pride, regardless of my audience.

    A Monarch Butterfly flits past me, dancing across the road. Maybe they are migrating right now? I ask around and I am told that the butterflies are around and to ride in the direction of Melchor Ocampo. After eating a half chicken in Jerècuaro, I set out in the direction of mountains and the town of Puro Agüita.

    A man with a table full of coconuts? I slam on my breaks. I start to feel far away from home as I recline on the roadside and sip a coconut after the top is hacked off with a machete.

    My cadence is roughly 80rpm, an average day is five hours at an average speed of 20km/hr. 80 x 60 x 5 = 24000 rotations. Sweat pours down my face as I climb in my highest gears. I ride into Maravatìo and feel like quite a spectacle as I ride around in search of lodging. I resist the recommendations to head out to the bus station, semen spraying rendezvous come to mind. The hotel turns out to be alright.

    ‘Hey, what’s up man?’ I hear from a guy examining the engine of a semi truck as I walk towards the city center.

    Antonio tells me his story in perfect English: He moved to Santa Ana, California from Mexico 20 years ago since there were no jobs and too much corruption. He married another illegal immigrant and had two kids that were natural born citizens. Two years ago while driving his kids to school he was pulled over and obviously had no license. He was shipped back to Mexico with his family following soon after. He talks about each of his kids, enumerating their hopes and dreams. It is heart rending to hear these stories, to put a face to the ‘immigrant problem’ in America. The immigrant problem in America that consists of people who are in a sense more American than many natural born citizens, immigrants who want a better life and are willing to leave everything they have to pursue it.

    The windows of my room rattle from fireworks and strobe from Christmas lights strung in the trees outside. High heels click down the hallway all night long.

    Maravatìo, Michoacan to Melchor Ocampo, Michoacan

    The champurrado that I drink on the roadside makes me breath steam in the cold air. I come across Antonio again as I am leaving town and we wish another well. I receive several distance estimates to Irimbo that are all various shades of wrong. As I climb out of the hazy valley where Maravatìo lies , the landscape moorphs as the mountains become steeper and their flanks are lined with pines. I know I am nearing my destination when every business, confusingly, is prefaced by the word Monarch. Irimbo is a strange town that gives me the impression of being on a slant, but a slant relative to the ground. Tilted in a way that makes no sense.

    The mountains tower in the distance  as the road wraps around their flanks, beams of light cut through the air as they energize particulate matter. The trees are thick and lush, water runs off the mountainside. I find myself in Ocampo, check into a placed called the Hotel San Carlos and catch a collectivo  to the butterfly sanctuary.

    At the sanctuary I am forced to take a man with me from a pack of loitering shiftless ‘guides,’ after 15 minutes of arguing. His claims of having attended school to learn about the area are dubious. The trail is cordoned off by ropes along its entire length, making it virtually impossible for even a person destitute of vision to get lost.

    ‘Why did you tell me that people get lost here regularly? Who could possibly get lost? The idiots from Mexico City that have never seen a forest before?’ I ask in befuddlement and irritation.

    ‘Yes! It is always people from Mexico City.’ We share a good laugh.

    We get to their….roosting grounds?…. The air is filled with butterflies, they cover the abundant Oyamel Pines and every other extant surface. The sanctuary exists within old growth trees that are virtually nonexistent in a country whose existence has been perpetuated by the hemorrhaging of natural resources. The trees vibrate with life, their branches grow and shape shift. The only audible sound is the fluttering of their wings as they flutter through the air and jitter on the branches that sag under their weight. They gather together in the afternoon to cluster together through the night and conserve warmth. They take flight in the morning at a time adjusted to the temperature and strength of the sun. A Monarch while migrating can cover roughly 120km on a clear, warm day and as little as 60km on a cloudy, cold day. A pattern very similar to my riding patterns.

    As a couple of other tourists depart, I am left with one crazy Canadian named Dev. Dev is from British Columbia and is on his way to the End of the World Rainbow Gathering in Palenque, an event I will discuss later. The guides drop the rope and allow us to walk through the colorful trees, we walk mindfully to avoid killing any of the thousands of butterflies that litter the ground.

    Have I ever seen millions of an individual thing at once before? I am
    not sure if I can think of an instance, but it is impressive. Bark is barely visible on several trees. One lands in my hair and gently flaps its wins as I walk.

    I catch a ride back to Ocampo with Dev and we grab some food in town. We walk through the central square in town and suddenly find ourselves running for cover as a group of kids rain fireworks down upon us. As I run from the square I ask one kid where I can buy fireworks and I spent every last cent that I have on fireworks, immediately a strategy comes to mind: Shock and Awe.

    We light a mortar, in the middle of the square, which tips over and fires a horizontal fusillade of red. An all out war breaks out on in the plaza, resistance is more fierce than anticipated. The kids shout anti-American propoganda and are funded by shadowy figures on the periphery. Their small stature adds to their agility and ability to conceal themselves. They employ unorthodox tactics, such as running into stores, that lead to munitions lighting a towel on fire. Smoke and screams fill the plaza. I am the first to be injured, suffering blisters on my hands from letting the fuses burn down on entire fistfuls of fireworks, as I try to minimize my opponents ability to dodge  them. In the end we clear the plaza and hold it until a group of well armed adults appear and we are forced to retire.

    Fireworks are incredibly self-promotional.

    Melchor Ocampo, Michoacan to  Toluca de Lerdo, Estado de Mexico

    I set out in my warmest clothes at 2500m. A relatively even landscape drops off into Zitàcuaro on switchback turns. I replicate the Doppler Shift to give pathetic peripetetics an even greater impression of my velocity. I slam on my breaks going downhill as I see a sign for Atole de Galletas, a soupy blend of crunched up cookies and milk that is everything its name promises. A modern day spin on a drink with thousands of years of history.

    I always seem to find myself riding the wrong way in cities, something that bothers me far less than police and motorists. I hop onto the tollroad, weaving around the tollbooths with unstoppable confidence. I hope I get pulled over.

    As I tackle an 18km, 1000m climb sweat cascades down my face. I aim it off the end of my nose into a crevice on my framebag, creating a small pool.

    Michoacan is notable for the following reasons:

    -A remarkably diverse number of dead animals on theroadside, their bloated bodies befouling the air to such a degree that I have come to associate the smell of rotting flesh with this state in particular. I try to study the smells, believing that I can honestly identify the scent of a dead dog before seeing its rigid carcass.

    -Amazing food.

    -Stunning scenery. This portion of the Sierra Madre has not been as deforested as in other areas. Rugged mountains rise over 3300m in all directions.

    Climbing…climbing…climb…  I reach the summit and the border between the two states. I see a 55 gallon drum billowing smoke with chicken carcasses splayed out across the top. I pull over and start shivering uncontrollably as soon as I get off my bike. The lady notices and invites me inside where she builds a fire. I change my clothes and savagely tear at the half of a chicken she places in front of me.

    All ascents must come to an end at some point and after I eat I descend and hit a new highspeed at 73.6km/hr. I am run off the road at 45km/hr by a semi truck and narrowly maintain control in the loose rocks with my feet on the ground.

    As I continue downhill a pickup truck follows behind me with its lights flashing, I ignore it. Eventually the driver pulls around me and then stops his truck to block my advance. I am flagged down and told that I am breaking the law, that bicycles are not allowed on the tollroad.

    ‘Sir, you a breaking the law. Bicycles are not allowed on the highway. It is too dangerous.’

    ‘Actually they are allowed on the highway. There is no other way for me to get to Toluca.’ I have no basis for this claim.

    ‘No they are not, it is too dangerous.’

    ‘I have never had a problem before, everyone has told me it is completely fine.’ A complete lie.

    ‘Sir, put your bike in the back of the pickup. We will give you a ride to Toluca.’

    ‘No thanks.’

    ‘Put your bike in the bed, please.’

    ‘No thanks.’ I absolutely love confidently asserting what I want, making it clear that I am immovable. What are you going to do? Taze me bro?

    ‘I am going to get my boss out of the truck, hold on.’ I take this moment to refine my obstinancy and argument, I will throw in a romantic twist to my appeal.

    ‘Sir, what is the problem here?’

    ‘Look, I am riding to Mexico City to meet up with my girlfriend. I rode 2200km to get here on my bicycle, using my own power. I am absolutely certain that I will not get into your pickup. Thanks for your concern over my safety, but I can assure you that I am more concerned with my safety than you.’

    They speak amongst themselves for a minute.

    ‘We aren’t going to call anyone else about this, but we cannot tell you that you are not going to have problems further on.’

    ‘That is fine. Thank you. See you later!’

    I get my wish of being pulled over.

    I find myself in the hellish sprawling madness of Toluca. I veer wildly around buses, taxis and cars. Car doors open, cars back out, buses  merge, taxis stop. I run red lights, I swerve, I yell, I hit my brakes, I stand on my pedals, I spray black sootsnot out of my nose.

    I eat ice cream and look at my map; I am going to center punch Mexico City on the 15. The main highway.

    Toluca de Lerdo, Estado de Mexico to El Distrito Federal

    I sleep like shit as Christmas lights, exterior to my room, cast their annoying glare upon my precious and fragile self. The liter of ice cream that I ate before bed is likely the actual culprit. I just can’t hold my choices or ice cream responsible for my restlessness. I cough up something black into the sink and leave it there. It tastes acrid with carbon and chemicals. The smog is so dense that I never see the 4700m volcano Nevado de Toluca.

    As I nimbly weave through the rush hour traffic, I give in. I didn’t think it would ever come to this, it just wasn’t supposed to be this type of trip. My mom warned me though, and I adhered to her advice out of my respect for elders and family structure. Conditions change, your perspective must mature and aquiesce to the capriciousness of life. Life simply cannot just be about looking good as you valiantly cut through blunt machines manufactured for murder without a modicum of protection. I don my construction worker’s vest. Neon orange stripped with neon yellow reflective material.

    I drink an orange juice blended with raw Quail’s eggs. Vamanos!

    Speed is your friend in congestion. I feel like an auctioneer that is also a professional boxer. I am ducking and fluttering, confusing my opponents by shouting utter nonsense. I begin my climb into the mountains that cradle Mexico city.

    I am passed by a road biker who looks like a factorymade  chorizo in synthetic casing. He doesn’t wave at me or say anything as he barely manages to pass me on his carbon fiber bike. He is constantly looking back at me as he pedals hard, judging himself against someone on a bike that weighs 62kg.

    I race a truck that is belching carbon, a more fair opponent. I stand up and pedal hard and put some distance between us. I finally slow from exhaustion, hooting and shouting pour out of the truck cab.

    I reach the summit. I made it. I sit in disbelief and eat fruit as cars stream past. The real fruit though is the 10km descent into the city, I take over an entire lane with complete disregard for the angry muppets who pass me. The city suddenly expands in all directions, smoldering in its own effluence. Several potholes have metasticized to entire sections of the road and I am nearly airborne.

    I split lanes. I diverge off the thoroughfare and find myself in the leafy neighborhoods of La Condesa.

    At the hostel I bore the living shit out of some unsuspecting backpackers with stories of my travels and my self importance.