Jeremy's Bike Blog

It’s really funny how some prejudice mixed with a little lack of friendliness can taint an impression of a place.  Yes, Sinaloa is home to the worlds most powerful cartel, but does that mean that it’s a bad place to tool around on a bicycle?  I think I was reasoning “well, it can’t mean that it’s a *good* place to tool around on a bicycle.”  Oh, but is it ever.

I must have misunderstood Alfredo about the jet ski event, or it was also an ATV event, because there were a half dozen ATVs being lined up on the beach, with massive coolers being hauled out as I ate breakfast and finished loading up my bike.  I think if my Spanish was stronger and/or if I had my wits about me a bit more, I might have stuck around to see what it was all about.  But I had just eaten a cold can of diced vegetables, and was out of food and nearly out of water, and didn’t want to have to depend on the generosity of my hosts even more.  That said, I gladly accepted a small bottle of water from one of the coolers that had been pulled out onto the beach, by one of the pullers.  Shortly after, I said my goodbyes and started making my way back to Los Mochis.  This was pretty uneventful, though there were stretches of fast road with no shoulder.  One guy honked as he passed too close and fast, to which I threw up my arms like “what do you want me to do?!”, to which he threw up his arms while looking in the mirror and slowing down.  His passenger rolled down the window and they were yelling something as I pulled down my balaklava, nearly caught up and was trying to think of the spanish to approximate “so, you don’t have time to slow down before you endanger my life, but you do have time to afterwards to yell at me” which was a hopeless prospect.  Just as well, they didn’t slow down enough for me to catch up, and then I remembered that I’m in cartel country and by the accounts of some, I’m dumb to even be here, never mind riling up the locals.  I mean, this has been in the back of my head, and I think it’s been good for keeping my entitlement in check with respect to flaming off at aggressive or careless drivers.  Even in this case I was basically just saying “what?!” not anything actually antagonistic.

That has me in a little funk for a while, but this is negated (positivated?) by a series of very nice interactions with locals.  I think my perception of unfriendliness the day before was both motivating and motivated by the plan to ferry past a large stretch of Sinaloa.  WIth this off the table, I can’t deny that the vast majority of my interactions are either obviously positive, or neutral, the latter case based largely on confusion on the part of the other person at seeing me.  One guy pulls over, hugs me as I go to shake his hand, and gives me a can of vitamin water.  The hug is a bit awkward, as I’m self conscious about the fact that I’m drenched with sweat, and I’m straddling my bike, and he seems like maybe kinda a gym buff, not someone I would guess is a hugger, but he’s too excited to not go for it, and I’m happy to oblige.  We chat for a bit, mostly in english, but my struggles with spanish are paying some dividends, then we part ways with another awkward but awesome sort-of hug and fist bumps.  Next, I meet Eduardo, who catches up to me when I take a water and snack break in the trapezoidal shadow of a street sign I’ve pull up next to.  I’ve gotten good at squeezing shade out of unlikely objects.  He’s wearing a radio on a cord around his neck, and after we talk for a bit, he says ‘OK, let’s go!’.  We’ve already established that he’s only got until the next town 9km ahead, but it’s nice to have a cycle companion, if only for a few km.  I draft off of him for a while, and then go to return the favor, but he drops back really far.  I doubt he’s unaware of the advantage, so I guess he’s just not into it and I let him pull ahead again and draft some more.  He’s rail thin, but still enough to put a dent in the 45 degree head/side wind…maybe because it was an angle wind.

The town he pulls of into is Guasave, and the strip of businesses that run along the highway a short ways later include a bunch of american fast food restaurants.  I haven’t done one of those in Mexico yet, I’m a touch taco’d out anyways, and something fast is exactly what I want so I can keep going.  I feel on a roll but it’s getting to be early evening and while I’m at 50 miles for the day, only a little more than half of that represents forward progress, what with my beach detour.  So, I drop into burger king and get a double whopper.  I regret it as soon as I start into it, but calories are calories, I’m getting a much appreciated AC cool off, and I’m back on the road in under 20 minutes.

My spirits are high and I’m making good speed when I hear something that sounds like it might have come off my bike.  I turn around to look for it, and I overcompensate for not drifting in that direction (left) and drift to the right, off the pavement and into some sand that comes out from under a guardrail.  There’s a lip to get back on the pavement and I know I can’t make it with the narrow lane the guardrail leaves me to work with, and the bike is sliding under the guardrail slowly, wheels first.  The sand has slowed the bike down from 15mph to no more than 5mph, and some kind of instinct kicks in.  I push off the bike leapfrog style over/around the handlebars that are getting lower as the bike keels over to the left (the wheels sliding right, under the guardrail).  The shoulder is about 3 feet wide, and I’m thankfully able to disregard the car factor.  The bike comes to a crashing stop but I still have momentum as I land mostly on my feet, but also kinda gorilla like, with my hands helping me from splaying out on the gravel strewn pavement shoulder.  I’m letting out an involuntary sort of grunty ‘errrgh’ of exertion and bracing for pain from the impending roll, but then I stop, still on my hands and feet.  One of my fingers got pinched on the nail pretty badly, but a quick body inventory confirms I’m more or less unscathed.  Next I instinctively start saying “oooh buddy” sympathetically to my rig.  The front fender is all bent up, but that thing’s on its last legs anyways.  My handlebars are turned a full 180 degrees…I have a super tall stem that allows this (with some forcing) even though I have dropdown handlebars because it seems the bike (which I got for $400 off of craigslist) is a few inches too small for me…but those pop back around.  One of my front bags has been pried off partially, but it’s still in tact and goes back on.  I unbend the front fender and then spin each wheel slowly to test that they’re still in good shape (and not rubbing).  I check out the drive train and breaks, and they’re fine too.  All systems are go, and I thank nothing in particular (atheist) for my good fortune.  I think about how much luck was involved, and if some subconscious part of me calculated the risk of that happening, factoring in my chances of reacting as effectively as I managed to.  I decide one takeaway is that maybe I should call it a day, and just then I see a sign for a Hotel.  It’s the first in (and very likely to be the last for) some time.  It looks like it’s also a sort of truck stop with an Oxxo about 100 meters down the way.

I find out they have a room, and the price is 200 …no make that 250 pesos ($12, no $15).   The room is a pit, but it’s a family joint, and they seem nice, even if I’m getting a gringo rate (can you blame them?).  I take it and take a shower under a stream of water dropping from a headless shower pipe 4 inches from the grimy wall.  I don’t care, it feels great to cool off.  And the AC works.  I figure out that the TV shares a tuner with the one the kids are watching in a living room/passage way I have to walk through to come and go.  I go to the oxxo and get some cookies, yogurt and banana for dinner, and eat it out front.  A guy that looks like a skinny version of the actor who plays Machete pulls up in a truck, goes in, and comes out with wet hair about 10 minutes later.  When the sun has tucked away and the mosquitos come out, I go to retire to the room and discover little signs that the guy likely showered in the bathroom of my room: the bathroom door not shut completely at it was when I’d left and the toilet that I’d peed in but not flushed is flushed.  But there’s no indication that he touched any of my things splayed out on the beds, so no point in making a fuss.  I go into the main area and the kids are done watching TV, and with the daughter’s help, we tune the TVs to some soccer game and I go back to my room and really retire for the night.

In the morning, it’s Oxxo for coffee and biscuits for breakfast.  I randomly check out AirBnB for the town of Culiacan, having noticed an abundance of cheap hotels on booking.com and realized that it’s a city large enough that there might be some.  Sure enough, there are a couple of inexpensive, and nice looking places.  Pitty, the woman with the least expensive one gets back to me very quickly. I say that I’m 140 km (87 miles) away and will book it once I get a bit closer.  I decide that if I manage to knock off the first 40 km by noon, then doing another 100 km between noon and sundown is viable and I’ll book it then.

I stop for some fruit and some ‘cooler burritos’ in Guamuchil.  The interactions are a bit odd with both vendors.  The old man selling fruit (2 oranges, 2 bananas and a mango for $0.70) is speechlessly transfixed by my bike.  At the burrito stand, the guy doing the transaction a locks me into a steely and disconcerting stare.  He won’t look away, he wont show any reaction to smiling or anything that’s not essential to the transaction.  It’s eerie, but at the same time, there’s a few guys hanging out around the stand that are all smiles and friendly questions, so whatever.  I decide maybe the vendor guy (who’s probably late teens, early 20s) is on some kind of zombifying drug.  Or he hates me.  Oh well, you can’t win them all…

I get to 100km remaining at 12:08, decide that’s close enough, and book the room.

For me, in the absence of unfavorable conditions (headwinds, long/steep inclines, etc) going between 12 and 14 mph is not the hard part.  The hard part is the hours per hour that I’m actually moving.  Once I stop, 3 minutes can turn into 20 in what seems like the briefest moment of zoning out and enjoying the fact that I’m not pedaling.  With fees, the airbnb put me out $15, so it wasn’t high stakes.  But the land is far less arid as I’m getting farther south, and becoming cultivated (mostly corn), and camping on the edge of cultivated land is not great.  Plus, Culiacan is evidentially large, and there’s a distance into a sizable city’s metropolitan area after you’ve gone where you’re kinda committed to staying indoors, or having a sketchy night camping.

So, I resolve to make my stops efficient.  One problem is, the ‘old’ highway, 15 diverges from 15D, the new toll highway, and no matter what, Google Maps absoulutely refuses to give any bike route (even one for two nearby points only transitable via 15D) that has the bike going along 15D.  I figure Google Maps has it’s reasons and take the old highway.  I’ve gotten used to the ubiquitous Oxxo stores being spaced along the highway, never much more than 50km apart, but this isn’t the case on the old highway.  I don’t like Oxxo-ing for food, but I do like Oxxo-ing for gallon jugs of water and keeping myself in good supply.  I’m down to my reserve 1.5L bottle when the town that has been advertised for some time as the next opportunity for services, fails to produce an Oxxo, or even a Six (mostly a beer counter chain, but carries water in 1.5L too that will do in a pinch).  I see two older men sitting near a table lined with yellow liquid in coke bottles and ask them for some water.  One of them puts out his hand for my bottle, and I give it to him.  He takes the only non-yellow-liquid containing bottle on the table, a plastic jug, and empties it into my bottle. I thank them and pull out 20 pesos, to which he points to the other guy.  I hand it to him and he thanks me and encourages me to sit down and cool off.  This is not in my hours per hour optimization plan, but these guys seem pretty great, and I have a mango burning a hole in my saddle bag.  We struggle to understand one another, my brain somewhat heat scrambled, but they’re patient, and we share some good laughs (one about how the one guy’s wife bosses him around, another about what a piece of shit Donald Trump is).  They’re brothers, and they live right there, basically, if I understand correctly, and maybe one of them is a truck driver.

After about 20 minutes, I get their photo, and hand them the slips I had made, to which they point to their flip phone and have me write my phone number on the back of both of them.  Then I’m on my way.

I’m down to about half of this 1.5L, my last water, when I pass through another town with a taco stand.  It smells delicious, but I’m now tracking to get in 20 minutes before sundown, so I ask for just water.  The guy working the tables takes me over to their big 5 gallon bottle, which we use to fill up my narrow mouthed bottles by tipping, wasting a lot of his water.  He doesn’t seem bothered, and he smilingly waves off the pesos I try to give him.

Now it’s just me and 60 more kilometers, ample water, and, let’s see, some “sin azucar” strawberry jam.  I pull that out into my handlebar bag and decide when, based on the next likely quick food opportunity, I’ll be spooning it into my mouth.  I’m not even that hungry, really, but I can tell my legs would appreciate the boost.

It all goes as planned, with my quick food stop being for just a fantastic pineapple popsicle full of big chunks of actual pineapple.  Driving in the city is a bit hectic, but Pitty is awesome at guiding me to her place over the AirBnB messaging app.  She even sends a google street view view of her place to help me find it specifically despite some strangeness with the house numbering system.  I message her when I get to it, she comes out to meet me, and shows me the place.  It’s really quite beautiful, and she has a handwritten note for me with the wifi password, an apple, some grapes, a cold liter of water, and the AC already doing its magic in my room.  She introduces me to her lovely family, and I feel like I’m in heaven.  I already think I might want to stay an extra night, but I don’t want to mention this and then change my mind.

I take an amazing shower, and feel just great, but the hunger is now coming (maybe triggered by the grapes and apple I’ve inhaled), so I ask Pitty for dining out suggestions and about the advisability of me being out and about in her town at night, which I’ve just learned is the capitol of Sinaloa and headquarters for the cartel.  She gives me good suggestions and assures me that I’m fine in the city core and her neighborhood.  I end up at a place called “Salad In Box”, which is, I gather, a regional chain.  It’s absolutely perfect.  I get to pick 2 proteins, 4 vegetables, and dressing and other garnishy toppings that are tossed into a large serving of leafy greens and comes to about $7, easily less than half what it would be in Seattle.

On the way back, I stop by a supermarket and pick up dessert/breakfast makings of yogurt, fruit, and granola.  Back at the house, Pitty is watching Game of Thrones (broadcast, it’s Sunday night) with her sister, but takes time out to chat, make sure I’m settled in, and attempt to get her 18 year old son who speaks english fluently, but is a bit shy (and I’ll learn the next day, living with asperger’s) to engage with me.  Pitty speaks basic but solid english.  Her sister speaks none.  Pitty will leave for work around 7:30 in the morning, but her sister will be there.  All in all, I feel completely at home.

The next morning, sure enough, my legs are crying uncle.  I’ve been doing 60-80 mile days since Hermosillo, so 7 days back-to-back.  I think it’s time to give the pistons the day off.  I’m also IMing with a local woman fluent in english on Tinder who is interested in sharing a dinner just based on it probably being interesting to hear about my trip and stuff.  So, I IM Pitty and she says “sure, don’t worry about it”.  I’d learned that she had long since been a host on couchsurfing.com, and that I was only her second AirBnB, which she had just finished setting up a week earlier.  For the amount that she’s charging, I definitely prefer the AirBnB arrangement over having to worry about being sufficiently appreciative the whole time.  I tell her I insist I’ll pay for the second night in cash (save us the AirBnB commission).

I check out the Jardin Botanico, a park along the river, find a bookstore proper and finally get a fold-out paper map of Mexico, then hit the Forum mall and get good wifi for my first time in Mexico at a coffee shop called “The Italian Coffee Company” or something like that, along with some mega whey protein powder stuff at a GNC to throw into my calorie reserve bank.

Riding around the city without any bags is exhilarating.  A couple of drivers couldn’t have come closer to taking me out had they been trying.  In both cases they pass by me on the left, as I’m riding with traffic on the right side of the road, then cut me off while stopping suddenly, leaving me with no option but to apply my breaks as suddenly, or careen into the side of their vehicle.  I suspect that at least the second one wasn’t trying to take me out because I turn to glare at him as I pull around his vehicle, and he’s messing with something in his passenger seat, oblivous to the world around him.  I give up on him noticing my glare and start tsk-tsk nodding my head and chuckling for my own benefit when I notice another driver, waiting to pull into traffic has been watching it all go down.  He and I make eye contact and share my chuckle about what an idiot the oblivous driver had been, and by just having another person to share the moment with, my fear and anger immediately evaporate.  I think, in general, Mexico has been very theraputic for me in that regard.  So many crazy things happen around me every day, many of them things that would usually anger me, but that’s just not part of the social norm.  “Esta bien, esta bien”, or “it’s fine, it’s fine”, is the mantra.  Crazy, or infuriating, is in the eye of the beholder, and there’s really nothing to be gained from beholding it.  Conversely, I feel free to do things from which I’d usually refrain for fear of being considered crazy.  It’s a very live-and-let-live vibe.

I get back to the flat for a pre-dinner shower and a cat nap in the AC.  It’s a ridiculously hot day outside, but thankfully a bit cooler when I head to Cabanna to meet my dinner date at 7:45pm.

She greets me with a kiss on the cheek, european style, and the conversation is easy.  She’s been trying Tinder for a few months, and has chatted with a bunch of connections, but I’m the first one that she’s met in person, for which I feel pretty honored.  She’s moved back to Culiacan and in with her family.  She has three brothers, and generally it sounds like, at least in this part of Mexico, things are a bit traditional/conservative wrt expectations and norms around interactions with guys.  That is, women are routinely given a hard time by their families and boyfriends about how they dress and who they talk to.  We chat for about 2 and a half hours, and then call it a night.  I grab some cookies and ice cream on the way home for a late-ish night snack.

PItty had filled me in on her morning schedule the first evening that I’d gotten there, and the next morning I make sure I’m up and downstairs in time to say goodbye to her in person.  She’s heating up some tamales and sauteed zuchini for her breakfast.  She offers to heat some up for me, and it’s delicious.  We look at photos of her world travels, with her, her two sons that I’ve met, a daughter that’s off to college, and an oldest child, a son, who she says is dead.  Pitty is such a engaging person, clearly incredibly invested in her children, and so learning about her eldest son is pretty heartbreaking, but I don’t want to pry and we leave it at that.  She’s got over 40 endorsements from guests she’s hosted via couchsurfing.com, and she proudly shows me some of them, and recounts some of the more endearing ones.  Then we wash some dishes together and then it’s time for her to head to work, so she shows me how to get the keys into the house after I let myself out and lock the door behind me.

I ride a half mile to a coffee shop I’d spotted the day before and grab a coffee and review my route for the day.   I’m cycling out of town when I spot a street performer who has painted himself silver, set up a stage consisting of a 5 gallon bucket in the middle of a busy intersection, and for each red light of one of the directions, ignites 3 batons, juggles them a bit, and then extinguishes them to leave himself time to collect his contributions before the light turns green.

The terrain is definitely hillier than it’s been since getting to Mexico, and the going is a bit slower.  There’s also the first hint of moisture in the air since crossing the border, and the landscape starts to turn greener.  Aftter about 50km, I get to a town which is my first opportunity for lunch.  As I’m scoping the town out, a woman in the passenger seat of a car coming up besides me calls out and is holding out a dewey-cold bottle of coca-cola.  I gratefully decline and ask if she has any agua instead, and she says ‘si’ as she hands me a 32 ounce styrofoam cup with a green straw sticking out of the plastic lid. It’s about 2/3 full, and when I take a sip, discover it’s horchata.  Oh well, some highly refined sugar water isn’t going to kill me, and I don’t want to be ungrateful.  When the car pulls away, I pour it into one of my plastic bottles and continue scoping out for a taco stand.  I find one that looks promising, with a grill that’s being put to heavy use along with a fan that is billowing smoke out.  I walk up to the grill and the proprietor asks me how many tacos I want.  I say 3, and he instructs me to sit down.  There’s no open tables, so I take a seat a table with two guys, one my age, and one that’s maybe in his 70s.  Standard questions and answers, and I try to make conversation by asking the older guy what he does for work.  I’m resolved to go analog with attempts at conversation.  Paper and pencil for words I can’t make out verbally, and phrase book for words I don’t know.  This has mixed success.  When they leave, the old guy says a salutation that I don’t know and gives me a kind of backhanded wave.  I worry that I’ve somehow offended, and he’s letting me know as much with this gesture, but a few hours later, I get it again at an Oxxo stop, and there, I get some explanation that this is a common way of saying good day in these parts.  When I go to leave the taco stand, the proprietor asks if I want some water.  I do, and he points me to the cooling water dispenser at the back of the place.  I take out a 100 peso note, intending to pay with a sizable tip, but it’s refused.  I ask “why?”, and he shrugs in a way that says lunch is on him.  I thank him ‘mucho’ and continue on my way.

Having taken the previous day off, and experiencing multiple spontaneous acts of generosity, I feel like I’m hitting a stride.  The road, however, is increasingly only one lane per direction with zero shoulder.  I WhatsApp Pitty and ask her about the toll road.  While waiting for signal with which to get her reply, I also ask a watermelon vendor at the corner which is where I have to decide if I’m going to take my best opportunity to cut over from this road to the toll road.  He says that the toll road will definitely be better for bicycling, and so I head in that direction.  A dog starts chasing me (it’s the third of the day), but this time, just for grins, and a little bit of primate resentment at being barked at and chased, I give it chase instead of dismounting and disarming it.  The road is flat and I’m already going close to as fast as the dog when he starts, and it’s not much effort to pedal hard enough to pull away, even while taking a little acceleration hit to turn my head several times to make sure that the dog isn’t within bite-striking distance.  He chases me for a couple hundred meters at about 25mph, then gives up.

I get to the toll road, and there’s a couple of women holding an impromptu checkpoint (asking for donations).  I talk to them for a bit, and the pad and pencil approach works.  I make a donation, and then get on the highway, and it’s like paradise.  It’s much cleaner than the old, non-toll road, wide shoulder, tree lined, and it’s the golden hour.  I pedal for about 30 minutes, and then it’s time to look for places to sleep.  I take a side road, which doesn’t yield any good prospects, but does lead to another road that will take me back to the highway.  On this road, I come upon 4 boys with bikes.  One of the boys is trying to pry at something on one of the bikes with a stick.  I stop and ask “what’s up”.  The boy with the stick points to the front derailleur of his friend’s bike.  It’s gotten jammed up into the front chainwheel somehow.  “Si si si” I say as I go through my handlebar bag and pull out my (knockoff) leatherman, open it into plyers mode, and hand it to him.  Using this, he’s able to easily pry the derailier clear, and all four of them start exclaiming things I don’t understand, but seem generally happy and grateful.  I get underway again, and then notice in my mirror that they’re behind me, pedalling rapidly with their non-road gear ratios, presumably trying to catch up.  I slow down to let them, and then we ride 5 abreast, chatting as much as my spanish allows.  When we get back to the highway, I ‘air’ fist bump the kid I’d lent the tool to and zip off.  For fun, I’m guessing, the kid whose bike needed to be fixed, tries to keep up with me for a while.  I would have played along more, but I was running out of light.

I take another side road, and as I’m scoping out some possible prospective sites, a creepy looking low-rider shiney black pickup with blacked out windows rolls up the gravel side road off the highway, and pauses to look down the side road of the side road I’m currently scouting out, before continuing on.  Probably harmless, but I do like it best when zero people know where I’m camping, and I can probably do better.

I find another pullout, and this leads to a road that has at one time been driven by vehicles, but judging by the large briar bushes in the road, hasn’t been in some time.  This leads to a trail, and then a clearing where people have clearly camped before, but not very recently,  It’s a perfectly suitable site, and I set up my bug net and strip down.  The air is muggy and everything feels slimy, like I’m no longer a water-based creature but have morphed into something mineral oil-based.  I eat the rest of my food with a protein shake, and then use a little bit of water to clean up, but I don’t have a whole lot to spare.  Sleep is decent, but I miss the AC of the previous 3 nights as my pad puddles with sweat even well after sunset.

When I’m up at 6:30, I break down camp, have a protein powder shake for breakfast, do some minor repairs to a bottle cage on my bike, then hit the road.  18 miles down the road, I get to an Oxxo.  It’s breakfast rush, and there’s a little taco stand set up inside the Oxxo.  I get 4 tacos, coffee, biscuits, and water, and eat them with the other patrons; construction workers and soldiers toting automatic weapons.  I have 120 km to cycle to get to Mazatlan.  It’s overcast and really sticky out, and my legs don’t seem quite as happy as they usually are, but I pound out the kilometers.  I stop for more tacos and snacks at 2:30 in the afternoon, and then roll into Mazatlan.  I head to the hostel that I’d booked online earlier that day, and am met by the American ex-pat owner who says he looked up my facebook profile when he was trying to narrow in on my expected arrival time.  He shows me around, then I shower, take a dip in the pool, chat with a Danish woman, then take a nap.  The hostel owner wakes me up to see if I’d like to join them to see the movie “Bad Neighbors 2”, and more importantly, indulge in the massively portioned popcorn.  I do.  We go see the movie with the Danish girl and a dutch guy who are both volunteers at the hostel.  It’s utterly stupid, but also genuinely hilarious, and for 30 pesos ($1.80), well worth the price of admission.  I gorge on popcorn, cramming it into my face by the fist full, as one does.

We return to the hostel, they turn in, and I stay up for a bit to write this post.  And now I’m all caught up!!

I’ll be staying here tonight and tomorrow night, and then onwards!