Jeremy's Bike Blog

Rodney comes back to his bicycle shop, as he said he would, not long after I finish my last post.  He has a couple of younger folks trailing him in a different car.  They’re from the local news station and are there to get some footage of him expressing his views on marijuana in Nogales, and whether Nogales should have a medical marijuana dispensary.  He proclaims to the camera that the entire town has been a dispensary for at least the last 25 years.  The interview goes on for about 5 minutes and then the reporter and her cameraman leave, and Rodney and I chat over a couple of beers, mostly about bicycles and Mexico.

He leaves and I have his shop to myself.  I set my bike up in one of the shop’s stands and go over it.  My front tire has yet another slow leak, so I apply my 3rd patch in 24 hours to the tube, and thoroughly inspect the tire for any other possible embedded thorns.

I get to bed by midnight, and am up and packing when Richard and Rodney return the next morning at 9.  More puttering and shit shooting over shop coffee and some grapefruit that Rodney’s brought from his place.  At one point the topic tangentially involves guns, and Rodney says something that suggests he’s packing heat at that very moment, so I ask him if he is, and he reveals his holstered pistol.  Richard follows suit.  By this point I know them well enough to not feel discomforted by the fact that they’re packing, but I probably would have been had I only just met them.

We bid each other farewell and I head down to just before the border and grab a grilled chicken salad from a Jack in the Box (my last chance for true blue American fast food for a while), and fill up on water.  I saddle up and cross the border, coasting through the checkpoint.  A taxi driver flags me down, and I’m tempted to brush him off, figuring he wants to sell me something.  But I hear him out, and after a little pantomime and broken Spanish/English, I realize he’s telling me I need to go through a completely miss-able, inconspicuous door to find the Mexican border agents.  So I do, and I’m guided through a process that seems a bit inefficient and un-streamlined, but not too onerous or time consuming.  At one point, a guy in a glass booth that took the money for my visa, instructs me to disregard the official looking “No Entry” signs on a heavy duty gate in order to get back to the first border official.  He gives me a big smile and thumbs up after I reached through the gate to unlatch it’s door, and then look back with a “are you sure this is right” expression as I close it behind me.  $23 and 10 minutes later, I’m in.  The original taxi driver is there to congratulate me on my successful completion of the process, and shakes my hand, pats my shoulder and wishes me well.  He never does try to sell me anything.

I’m not quite flustered, but there is a lot to take in on this side of the border.  I’m excited to be in a foreign country and my senses seemed heightened.  I find a money changing station, and when I pull my bike up the large (10 inch) curb, I insert 4 teeth of my largest chain ring into my right calf.  I already have several people who are standing around, tending to carts or counters, or just hanging out, staring at me, so I willfully stifle any outward reaction to the literal stabbing pain and proceed to the counter of the money changer I’ve chosen.  Onlookers may or may not be taking notice of the not tiny, but also not pulsating stream of blood running down my calf and squishing in my sandal.  It, and they, are not really a problem I need to address, I reason.

I’m doing well, slowly navigating the distinctly less organized mass of cars for about 3 minutes when my pedal clip intersects with the fender on my front wheel, a problem I’ve been dealing (mostly trying to avoid through careful coordination between sharp turns and pedal strokes).  This time my fender rips off partially, and jams up my front wheel.  Ok, this is a problem I do have to address.  I also have to account for folks observing me, as they’re in cars that I had nimbly circumvented, and am now blocking.  So at this point, I probably do look a bit disheveled, struggling to hoist my fully loaded (with all 7.1 L of water) bike out of the road, while the back of one of my legs glistens with fresh blood.

I manage to, and then regroup.  My chance to enter the country without making any scene has come and gone, but that’s fine.  I’m here, on a street corner, dealing with a bike snafu, but the people with the best seats for gawking have either gotten tired of it, or, just as likely, doing me the favor of letting me be as I deal with what has obviously been a sub-optimal couple of minutes.

I take out my tools to remove my front fender, but then it occurs to me, I could leave it attached by just the point under the stem, and complete the tearing off of the portion that intersected with my pedals.  I do that, swig some water, and get underway again.

I’m feeling pretty good about pulling through that, and back to being excited to be in another country, and maybe showing it with my expression because it seems like everybody I make eye contact with is smiling at me, many of them giving me two thumbs up or a wave.  It’s incredibly heart warming, and the one time it’s a particularly beautiful woman, stomach churning (the good kind).

I’ve scouted out a route to take me off the highway ASAP, and stop at a service station at the edge of town for a coffee and to buy a map.  They have neither, and while I’m consulting my phone’s maps outside, a guy that I’m guessing the women inside have summoned comes out to ask, in English, if I’m lost and if I need any help.  I say I’m not lost and I’m fine, but thanks for asking, and he says it’s no problem, and to not hesitate to ask for help if I need it.  I’m not sure if he means specifically there and then, or in general, but it drives home this feeling that everybody is rooting for me and happy to support me.

Obviously, I’ll find some exceptions to this rule…I have since (in the subsequent 24 hours) encountered people in sour moods and that have not returned my smile, but the clear default is, people are happy to see me and eager and excited to interact.

I get out into countryside very quickly, and then I just don’t see anyone.  Well, not quite.  I meet two different guys on the road, one walking, one biking.  Both have a lot to say to me, but I only understand the tiniest fragments.  They both shake my hand and smile and seem to be welcoming me.  The second one, the one biking, offers to share with me some “vino” which I gratefully decline (I’m having a hard enough time staying hydrated as it is).

I’m deep into some sparsely trafficked gravel road when I decide to call it a day.

I find a good spot to pull off and am dozing off an hour before sunset before I can even pull out my sleeping bag or pad.  I startle some cows and a horse by coming to, and after they canter off a bit, they regain their nerve and approach me slowly the way livestock does.  I lie there on my side, for 20 minutes or so, looking at them looking at me, while the sun sets.  Traffic increases during this time, I guess it’s a commuter road for ranch workers, but nobody slows down enough to suggest anyone can tell I’m there.  I’m not particularly well hidden, but I’m low and apparently blending in.

Sleep is good, though my hips regret my decision to forego getting out my inflatable pad in favor of using my Z-rest alone.  I wake up with the sunrise at just before 6 and am on my way maybe an hour later.  My food and water are both plentiful, and the gravel road is bumpy, sandy and formidable, but my legs feel eager to take on the day.

A small work truck pulls up and slows down. The guy in the passenger seat asks me something I don’t understand, and when I respond in english, the back sliding door opens and a guy that knows some english asks me what I’m doing. I say I’m biking, and he asks if I’m being safe. I say, yeah, I have a helmet and a mirror, and he says “do you have a gun or a knife?” I say I don’t, and he says “so, just rocks then” meaning the rocks all around us. I say, yeah, I guess. I get the sense he’s sizing me up a bit, but I’m not feeling particularly threatened. I think he’s just being a bit melodramatic. I ask how far it is until the pavement starts again, and he says about 3 miles. I thank them for stopping and they take off. The paved road is, turns out, only about 300 yards away.

To avoid the highway, I went down a river valley that is the next one over from the one where the highway is, and that I now need to reunite with. So, I have a ridge to climb.

I’m not sure how much climbing it is (no bicycling directions from GM with elevation profile while offline), but it is steep, pretty narrow in parts, and trafficked heavily by trucks. It’s steep enough and the trucks are large enough that some of them are barely going faster than I am. I catch up with one after it passes me and think “it would be great to grab on to this thing!”. The next one I catch up with, I actually do grab on to, but I’m on its driver’s side and when the driver shifts gears, I worry that he’s stopping to get out and yell at me and I let go. But I couldn’t stay there, I’d be fodder for oncoming traffic, so just as well.

I find a piece of rope a little further up, and the next slow semi to pass is not too hard to catch up to, but I just can’t get the rope out in front of me far enough to get on the hook I’ve chosen.

Then I find a plastic traffic cylinder. It’s about 3 feet long and after riding awkwardly with it in tact for a bit, waiting for my next chance and thinking about how best to modify it, I pull over and take my knife to it:

I keep the part on the left. The handle is the handle and the hole is the ‘lasso’. Unfortunately for the timing of this experiment, I’m close enough to the pass that the road is leveling out and the trucks are going intractably fast. Not to worry, with my new mod, I can fold it in thirds and place it with my growing collection of random stuff on my back rack. Having what looks like (and arguably is) random garbage strapped all over your bike is also, I find, not a bad way to blend in, in developing countries.

I get to Imuris, my first town since Nogales (MX) at the border, and roll up to a restaurant with a guy out front leaning against a minivan. He’s smoking a roach which he says is marijuana, and would I like some? I haven’t bought marijuana illegally since my home state legalized it years ago (IIRC), and I’ve been fortunate to be gifted it throughout this trip, to the extent that I re-gifted some the day before rather than risk crossing the border with any. So, yeah, I wouldn’t mind, if I’m honest. But I’m not honest with him…I think I should acclimate for a bit longer before indulging in any of that. So I thank him but decline, and ask where to get lunch. He points to the restaurant, and it’s then that I learn that he’ll be my waiter and cook. He goes to some lengths to get me coffee, which I asked for, and even greater lengths for sugar, which I didn’t, but I use anyways so that his efforts are not for naught. He makes me 4 tacos carnitas, and I’m not entirely sure my immune system is ready for this, but no point in beating around the bush, and they look absolutely delicious.

Continuing on after lunch, I get some more coffee at the Oxxo (the coffee from the restaurant was a small cup of instant) and then I’m thinking I’ll try out the highway, but I’m repelled from it like a magnet with the same polarity, and I take a secondary road through a quaint town, then find that I can continue along it and add only a couple miles to the trip from here to the next town (Magdeline de Kino). I’m descending down a cobblestone road and I get my first chase by an unrestrained dog of this trip. Two of them, actually. I slam on my brakes and dismount and they disarm immediately. I walk down the cobbles, and after pedaling through a washout with 3-5″ of water, I’m on a stretch between a railroad track and a small canal.

I get to Magdeline and cruise around town for a bit, then when I notice that hotels run only about $25 a night decide I’ll do one more town for the day and then get a room if that town also has them for so cheap. I haven’t showered since Tuscon and I’m curious to know what combination of dirt- and sun- browned I am, and eager to smell a little better.

I get to Santa Ana and the first hotel I spot has rooms going for that acceptable rate (450 pesos) so I take a room, a wonderful shower, and then go out for a delicious chicken dinner. Afterwards I scope out a super market and get a few morsels for dinner #2. I think stocking up on non-garbagey road calories might be a bit of a challenge, but I’m up for it. I’ll also lean towards getting hot food roadside as long as my luck holds up. I’m not gabling with water, and it’s a bit of a bummer to be in bottled water buying mode, but I’ve been in this mode not long ago (Poland, Albania) and I’ll get over it.