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.

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