Jeremy's Bike Blog

​When we’re very young, all experiences are profoundly new, and limit expanding.  As we get older, this is decreasingly so.  Our ability to experience becomes more sophisticated, and correspondingly the experiences that we can consider limit expanding become more elusive.  At some point, the basic experience becomes insufficient to expand limits and we use the word adventure to describe (at least) one kind of complex experience that expands our limits.

Adventure is somewhat elusive, as it can’t be prescribed or entirely intentional.  So a common way to realize one is by making a set of choices that, by definition, introduce some challenge, complication or combination thereof that don’t serve any purpose other than to set the stage for an adventure.

As I cycle out of Mexico City, I ponder the choices I’d made that set the stage for the adventure with the cops the night prior.  Taken individually, I’m not particularly proud of some of them, yet without having made them, I wouldn’t have had the  adventure, and it was a really good one.  I’ve seen first hand how a shakedown happens, it expanded some limits, and I feel a lot better for it.  When a security guard at the mini-mall sandwich stop comes in to ask me to move my bike, I’m not jumping to my feet.  I’m respectful and courteous, but I’ve recently just expanded my limit on how much authority is exerted before I’m automatically deferential.  So I ask “why?” respectfully, if not chipper-ly, before I comply.  Through engaging to understand his reasoning (to stop blocking the sidewalk), we have a richer interaction.

I have breakfast at said shop on the edge of town, having slept past the hostel’s breakfast serving time, then set out, no food packed, up a climb that is long and steep, but not commensurate to the amount that it’s kicking my ass.  What gives?  Oh, right, I haven’t actually ridden any distance for a week, the short ride from Toluca to DF notwithstanding, and I’m presently running on a hangover-size bag of empty calories.

I’m positively beat down and unable to keep my brain from switching to thoughts about what I’ll eat once I find something to eat by the time I get to the top of the climb where, mercifully, there’s a series of taco stands.  These are the first anythings in a few dozen steep kilometers.  I’m starting to scan them when I see a bicycle and a man with a large pack at the first one.  I ride up and introduce myself.  His name is Jung.  He was born in Korea and immigrated to the US about a decade ago.  More presently, he’s riding his bike from San Diego to Panama.

Our rigs could not be more different.  His is a feather-light, carbon fiber racing bike.  Mine is a steel touring bike laden with about 40-50 pounds of gear (depending on water levels).  All of Jung’s gear is carried in a backpack on his back, and a small camelback on his front.  The pack is impressively light, especially considering he’s camp-prepared (tent and sleeping bag), but not so light that I would want to wear it while cycling if it could be at all avoided.  Having a backpack has it’s advantages off-cycle, but needing to wear it on-cycle has to be chalked up to a questionable decision that defines an adventure.  Same goes for taking a bike that’s highly optimized for weight/racing at the expense of delicacy, for a ride over rugged terrain from San Diego to Panama.  But then, far be it from me to judge.  Neigh, instead I compliment him on the challenge he’s set for himself (and his minimalism), then excitedly tell him about my previous night’s mis-adventure.  I can already tell with some certainty that running slightly afoul of local law enforcement is not his kind of adventure, but he appreciates the adventure within it just as I can in what he’s doing.

The hill has kicked him a bit too.   He estimates that he walked it for about 5 hours.  His gearing doesn’t go low enough for some climbs, particularly with the extra weight he’s carrying.  He’s also had 12 flats in the 24 days of his tour so far, whereas I’ve had 4 in about 85 days so far.  So his overall adventure entails challenges that mine doesn’t, and that I definitely don’t miss.  All the same, it doesn’t take long for us to decide to roll down the other side of the hill a ways and find the first available place to crash, together.

We pass a small town that probably has a hotel but is a ways off the toll road.  Most towns are, or are blocked off by fence, as is the next, slightly larger town which we also blow past.  I’m in the lead, and when I realize we’ve passed the town I hang back to suggest we just go to the next small-ish town as I’m digging the glide down hill.  But when Jung catches up he’s just gotten flat #13.  So we walk back to the town we just passed.   At the breach we find in the fence separating town from the toll road we humor a drunk guy.  I think he wants to host us, but I can’t make any progress understanding what seem increasingly like drunken ramblings.  He also wants to not leave the bar, so eventually we just walk away rambling something in English that he doesn’t understand which now seems to be the appropriate response to his ramblings which he clearly doesn’t care if we understand.

English is a second language for Jung and he knows only a few words in Spanish, but he has a knack for getting understood by and understanding locals.  He often starts by saying that he’s Korean, so that he’s not mistaken for a local, and this usually evokes a smile.  He uses hand gestures to indicate sleeping and we get pointed towards the hotel.  I try to help by asking where the hotel is, in Spanish, to a kid sitting on a corner of what turns out to be the last turn we have to make and a very short way from the very large and obvious hotel, but he doesn’t understand me.  Then Jung uses pantomime with another person and we get directed immediately. 
We get a room, take showers, and then head out to get something to eat.  The walking and the showering has taken a while and when we set out it’s 9pm and well past dark.  The town is quite small and dining options are accordingly limited.  In fact, the only place serving hot anything is a burger stand.  Through some series of miscommunications, I order 2 burgers, which I’ve just learned by watching a previous order are loaded with, in addition to a patty, 2 kinds of cheese, ham, and pineapple.  The burger guy, and I for that matter, thought that Jung would have one, but he declines.  I’m fine with that, and I eat one then the other, standing under the awning out of the rain, on the spot.  Then Jung decides he’d like one, but in the process of trying to get 1 with 2 patties, he gets 2 separate, fully loaded burgers as well.  While the caloric consequences of these miscommunications is far from negligible, the financial consequences are, as each burger costs 27 pesos ($1.50).  Jung eats one back in the room just before we pass out.

Quick aside about my phone situation:  My primary phone is broken.  No amount of rice or drying has brought it back.  This was a subgenius, not proud of decision: to leave my primary phone out in the rain.  My backup phone is what was my primary phone (including on my tour last summer) until after the third replacement of a broken USB port, the built-in microphone stopped working.  I’d opened it and replaced various parts enough times that when I got back from that tour I graduated myself to a newer model, but kept the older one as the new backup.  The older model is nexus 5 and newer is 5x.  I’d kept them mostly in sync, and I didn’t even lose many (if any) photographs in the process of randomly bricking the new one and switching to using the older one.  It was actually a bit of an upgrade as, you may recall, I’d busted the screen on the newer one a couple weeks earlier. 

I bought the protection plan on the 5x… I know how things go for me and phones on these trips.  I filed the claim, but then learned it could only ship to the US.  Yes, I could have it relayed, but I also have to send the broken phone back.  No big deal, I’m fine with waiting a bit longer.  I think/hope when I do finalize the claim that the reviewers appreciate how many different ways I broke the phone that would have warranted a replacement before I actually had it replaced (it’s 3).

Come morning we cruise town for breakfast options, but don’t find any, so we hit the road.  We’re only about 70km from Puebla and set on a hostel that I’ve found online. Jung gets his first flat in about 15km.  Then, going through a toll station, Jung hits a storm drain gate and takes a tumble, getting a snake-bite flat in the process.  This one takes long enough to repair that by the time he’s done, I’ve dozed off while reading on the side of the road, among the vendors selling candies to passing motorists. 

This is clearly not sustainable, but gladly Jung has plans to buy new tires in Puebla, along with getting his freewheel hub rebuilt.  His bottom bracket it also clicking and creaking to an extent that would send me into fits, but it’s a very uncommon part, owing to the carbon fiber frame, so he’s just hoping that it makes it for another 6 weeks.

We roll into Puebla and he sets out to get his bike attended to.  I head out by foot with Travis, from Sydney, who shows up at the hostel shortly after Jung and I, and who I recognize from the hostel in Mexico City.  We wander around for a bit taking in the sights.  When I tell him about my difficulty getting cellular data on my back up phone (the data-only SIM worked great in the US but isn’t working much at all outside of it so far), he suggests getting a Mexican sim from Telcel for 150 pesos, as he did the day before.  I do, and it seems to work, and then he and I part ways so I can eat, read and write.  Overall Puebla is pleasant, but relatively uneventful.

Oaxaca is the next main stop for both Jung and I.  Jung has to be at Panama City in 6 more weeks in order to fly home and attend to some obligations.

I too have decided to end my tour at Panama City.  While it would be nice to touch Colombian soil and stay true to my original, if somewhat arbitrary, destination goal, what it would amount to, really, is taking a boat or a flight around or over the 200 mile Darien gap, a section of Panama in which there are no roads, and then either biking a short ways to Bogota to catch a flight back to Seattle (in the former case) or simply walking from one part of the Bogota airport to the other (in the latter, less expensive case).  Seems imprudent to spend several weeks worth of travel budget (of late) to go South a bit further to immediately turn around and head back North.  I have a couple of celebratory events that I would like to attend in mid-September, so my fairly firm plan at this point is to be back in Seattle the week of September 17.

This puts me on a schedule that is about 2 weeks looser than Jung’s, whose is pretty demanding.  He figures he needs to average 100km a day, including off days, whereas I have about 16 off days if I continue to average 100km per day when I’m on bike.  I think.  I’m still instinctively averse to plotting out my trajectory far in advance.  It’s as discomforting as looking directly at the sun, or updating my resume.
I suspect that Jung is a faster rider in general, but that if we account for flats, and his new tires are not effective in eliminating them, we should be able to cover the same amount of ground, albeit at different rates.  We agree to try to both make our own ways to Tehuacan that night, and when he heads to a Korean restaurant for breakfast at 10, I hang back at the hostel, eat there and get going at noon.

I stop at a gas station at the edge of town for a bio-break and one of the attendants strikes up a conversation with me, telling me that 3 Brazilian women on bikes like mine (touring) stopped through there about four hours ago.

Interesting, but not likely I’ll catch up with them given that much of a lead, at least not today, and especially considering I’m going to take a clever shortcut from the free road to the toll road about 10km further on.
I pound out about 50km more when hunger takes a hold and I stop at a roadside convenience store.  I’m finishing up my sandwich and snacks when Jung rolls up.  It’s only been a few hours, but the serendipity of running into each other again is delightful.  He asks me if I also crossed paths with 3 Brazilian women that he did.  I have not, but I tell him about the gas station attendant’s account of them.  It’s a bit of a mystery how I have not as he caught up with them on the toll road, chatted with them briefly, got to a rest stop where he then saw me ride by (he called out, but doubtless I had my headphones in), then caught up with me at the current rest stop.  The most likely explanation is that they took a rest stop during which I passed them.

Jung is really regretting not exchanging any contact information, and I don’t blame him.  But I also reassure him that I know, first hand, how easy it is to let opportunities like this slip by.  As their catching up seems all but inevitable, and I have the time and inclination to hang back to let them do so, it should be no big deal.  I determine that I have about an hour to spare in getting to Tehuacan before night fall, at my current rate and so get back on the road so they don’t pass by while we’re both at the rest stop.  I’m pedaling, but then it occurs to me that each intersection is an opportunity for them to get back off the toll road, which I myself have been considering since one could cut South sooner and turn the current headwind into a side wind.

So, at the next overpass, I push my bike straight up the 45 degree embankment and onto the overpass.  I’m apparently so excited to meet these women that I’m performing this pointless feat of strength, to the bemusement of a few locals scattered about.  I lounge about on the overpass for about 20 minutes when Jung cycles down the road below.  I walk down and meet him and we make plans for him to find us a place to stay.  When I get to town, I’ll plug in my phone, find some connectivity, then hopefully get his location.  Sadly, the Mexican sim worked for some tiny amount of cellular data before prompting me to buy more data from a site that, ironically, wasn’t very easy to navigate by phone browser.
My backup and now only phone is also on its last milliwatts, with a pretty worn battery, so soon I’ll be flying with no navigation.  But the route is pretty simple, and I’ve memorized it, including optional, head-wind avoiding shortcuts.

The rest of the hour had nearly passed when it occurs to me that they may be stopped at the rest area Jung and I reunited at, which is only a couple km backtracking.  I head there, but they’re nowhere to be found.  I’m out of time, so I hand out some of the slips of paper I carry with my contact info, to the gas station attendants, and the giggling cashier girls in the mini market.  I’m pretty pleased with myself for thinking of doing this until 3 seconds later when it occurs to me that I could have done this before I even left Jung at the rest area an hour ago, and spared myself the wait and subsequent race against the sun.  Oh well.  It’s a few days later, I’m several hundred km from there, and haven’t heard a word from the Brazilians, so it seems our meeting is not meant to be.  Also oh well.

I spend the next 3 hours pushing against unexpectedly strong headwinds, not tracking very well for a pre-nightfall arrival, with no navigation and no way to send or receive messages to or from Jung.  I could charge my phone while I ride, but I have a very strict policy against doing so, particularly with this phone, as inevitably this leads to a connection in the USB port breaking, and the phone becoming increasingly fickle in charging, until eventually it takes no charge at all, thereby brickifying, at least until the $0.30 part can be ordered and delivered at a cost of at least 50 times more, from somewhere in China to somewhere I’ll be in a couple of weeks…an exercise I have no interest in repeating yet again.

I roll into town when there’s barely enough light to see Jung on the other side of the road, flagging me down.  He’s gotten us a room in the hotel just a bit further down the road for a very reasonable 250 pesos total ($7 each).  He waits for me to wash up, then we go out for dinner at the only place within walking distance, where we gorge on wings, nachos, and a burger, commiserating about the Brazilians and sharing accounts of the day’s rides.  Then we grab a little desert at a mini-market on the walk back, and then we’re out like lights.
It’s kinda crappy weather before we roll out in the morning, so we don rain shells, but by the time we’re actually on our way, they’re unnecessary.  We have a nice breakfast at an apparently popular breakfast spot, then meander about town a bit.  The road ahead looks really desolate, so I suggest we stock up on a bit of food.  I buy a box of cereal, some bananas, two boxes of granola-type bars, and a liter of soy milk.  Jung buys a couple of nut bars.  We buy a 4 liter jug of water, for which I have the capacity to carry 3L, Jung 1, maybe 1.5.  It’s full on sunny as we pedal toward Oaxaca, and then, all of a sudden we’re in desert.  There’s very little of anything around, and I’m glad to have the soy milk as reserve hydration.  We stop and I eat a bunch of food while Jung pecks away at his.  I offer him anything he wants of my provisions, but he takes only a tiny bit.

It’s another big climbing day, pushing our way slowly up long, parched hills.  Jung tells me my speed up the hills is motivating him to pedal more and walk less.  I can relate, his speed on flats and descents has been motivating me to push myself harder to keep up.   When we get to the top of big climbs, it feels great to fist bump and congratulate each other.

Unfortunately for Jung, my motiavation is taking its toll on his knees as evidenced by his difficulty walking normally.  His gearing is meant for speeds of 15km/hour and greater, which is just not possible for these climbs, especially considering his 20-30 pounds of gear.  I urge him to consider getting a touring rig when he gets home, and when he expresses reluctance owing to an attachment he feels towards his cannondale, I urge him to then at least consider getting a third, front chainring, something that might even be possible prior to his return to the US.

As you may recall, on one of my first ascents on this side of the border, I became enamoured by the idea of catching a pull off of one of the very slow moving semis passing me.  I fashioned a sort of rigid lasso out of an orange traffic cylinder.  I carried this around for several weeks, but got rid of it when I failed to find any opportunity to use it.
I’m pushing hard to catch up to Jung about a hundred yards ahead when, lo and behold, this double trailer-towing semi is crawling up behind me.   When he finally catches up, I let up, sit up, turn to make eye contact and beam a “boy am I glad to see you here” smile, which I think he returns.  When the first trailer is halfway past me, I spot a vertical bar holding a door on the side of the trailer closed, which makes a perfect hand hold.  I grab hold and the hair on the back of my neck stands on end as I find my balance while transfering forward force from my left hand, through my right, to my handlebars and the rest of my bike.  I call out “please don’t hate me for doing this” as I come up from behind Jung, beaming with self-satisfaction.  To the contrary, he seems every bit as happy for me as I am for myself, though not at all interested in taking my advice of finding his own hand-hold and takng a pull as well.

This is not without good reason.  Most sensible people will instinctively say that hanging on to a truck to pull yourself up a hill on a bicycle is a stupidly dangerous thing to do.  But just like people dealing with system security do so by considering possible attack vectors, let’s deal with the dangerousness of parasitic hitchhiking by considering possible stupidity vectors.  1)  Falling off a bicycle so close to a truck entails a risk of being run over by the truck, so first and foremost, do not fall.  And if you fall, by all means, fall away from the truck.  2) The truck’s speed can be the water in which your frog boils.  Let go well before you get to a speed you even suspect might be too fast.  The goal is to get over the steep that has the semi slowed to a crawl.  Once you feel it shift gears, let go.  3)  This is probably the easiest mistake to make.  All the assist that you’re getting from the truck is transfering through your hand.  The truck’s engine has an immense amount of torque that can and may cause it to lurch away from you with utter indiference to your 250 pounds of flesh and rig.  When finding a hand hold, under no circumstances should you place any digit or appendage such that if the thing rips away it will take a piece of you with it.  For example, after riding on the side of the first trailer a bit, I dropped back to give it room on the shoulder.  The next rig was one that was the last in a line of 5 others held back from the first.  The best hand hold was a hinge on the back door housed by a casing.  The casing had a slot that my fingers would fit into, but wouldn’t necessarily slip out of if it jerked away.  No good.  So for that ride, I pincered the entire casing, requiring a lot more exertion.  But when the truck got his opportunity and lurched off, my pincer grip simply slipped off, with my left forearm exhausted but my fingers still attached.  After the 5 trucks passed the truck from which I got my first pull , I caught up with it again.  It had a loop of plastic twine about 2 feet long dangling from the back.  I reached back and pulled off a bungie that I found early on in this tour and has been very useful for securing a variety of things…mostly damp things being dried.  With the 4 or 5 inches additional reach that it afforded me, I hooked the twine.  This worked OK, but stupid vector 4 is involving a bungie, especially a road-score bungie, at all.  Stupid vector 5 is allowing sentimental attachment to bungie to justify riding way too close to the tailgate of a semi to get enough slack to unhook it. 

Fortunately, I avoided any mishaps for these unanticipated vectors.  The last ride I got was similar in it’s initial approach, but for my greeting, I concluded with my thumb and arm held aloft in the international sign for hitchhiking.  The driver may or may not have actually nodded in positive acknowledgement of this proposal, but I like to think he did.  The panels of his rear doors had hinges with bolts that extended a full inch beyond the bottom of the hinge, with plently of clearance so that I could hook 2 fingers around safely.  I had just started up from a rest stop, and Jung was close enough to caught up that I could see him smile for me and my cheating ways as he struggled up the hill and I glided off with minimal effort into the distance.  When the grade leveled off and I could feel the truck shift gear, I increased my pedalling and let go with no reduction in speed in order to sit up, make a fist with the now free left hand, and press it to my chest in what I hope is a widely understood gesture of ‘thank you’.  I wasn’t sure if the driver was able to see this gesture, or even aware of having given me a lift up a good bit of steep until he flashed his right turn signal exactly once, signaling my graduation from parasitic to symbiotic hitchhiking and sending a wave of joy through me.

I’d be willing to bet good money that the odds of a US trucker playing along thus in such a past time are far worse than even, while in Mexico they’re far better than even.  The US trucker would be too worried about a mishap leading to liability litigation.  I get the distinct sense this is just not a real factor in the Mexican consideration, where the dominant consideration goes along the lines of: Is this hurting anybody?  No?  Is it interesting or fun?  Yes?  Ok, then why not?  Let the person taking the risk decide whether or not to take the risk.  Similarly exhibited in my zipping around construction sites and occasionally joining most Mexican cyclists in the practice of going against traffic, the foundation of interaction with strangers in Mexico is ‘live and let live’, whereas in the US it’s ‘cover your ass’.  You can probably tell by this point which one I prefer.

That said, the honeymoon period of me and Mexican drivers has ended.  I still think they’re better than American drivers, in general, but I’m increasingly of the mind that some of the drivers that honk are doing so to be dicks, or at least not doing it to be nice and supportive.  Jung is not as long into his tour, and also Buddhist, so he is choosing to interpret any and every honk as a positive thing.  This leads to some discussion of intention being in the eye of the beholder.  And I think I get it, understand the advantage, but also think that it comes at the cost of seeing things for how they were intended.  So, Jung and other Buddhists, I hope you’re OK with me keeping the Buddhist worldview on file for consideration in the event that circumstances change. Oh, right, you have to be, you’re Buddhist. ;P  Anyways, my last thought on the matter of honking and how to respond is, if there’s nothing inherently aggressive or offensive in the initial honk, then surely a honk in kind is a suitable response.

We take a detour to a small town where there’s a hotel we’re going to consider staying for the night.  I stop in the road to take a picture of the large gateway around the road leading into town, and a truck that has plenty of room to get around me honks at me before doing so.  I catch up with Jung as he gets into town, and I see the pickup, blocking part of the road as it backs into an alley.  I call out “hooooonk” to the driver as we roll by, who pretends not to hear me.  Jung is a good sport, and also pretends to not notice my casual, slight but utterly pointless belligerence.

The hotel wants 600 pesos for the night.  It’s a family establishment, and we don’t want to be stingy, but that is just way beyond fair market in these parts, even if it is the only hotel in town.  So we decline and head to dinner at dusk.  In somewhat ramshackle cafe, I handle ordering us food, but not feeling up to asking about places to sleep.  Jung is happy to, and he gets a hand drawn map from one of the other patrons, after which he shakes the hand of the patron, his girlfriend, and the two women working the grills (so everybody in the restaurant), which doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, but makes everyone involved smile.  I feel like a grouch as I muster my best smile as the other patrons want to shake my hand when they leave.  I’ve learned a lot about how I’ve changed since I first got into Mexico by watching Jung and how he interacts with the locals.  On the one hand, I think I’d do better to find that indomitable optimism again.  On the other hand, I think about that construction boss dude that playfully poked me in the gut my first week in country, when I was eating a Mango on the side of the road and he was comparing our belly sizes, and wish he would try that again so I could tell him to keep his fucking hands to himself.  Well, maybe.  Point is, honeymoon is over.  I feel more like the real, regular me.  Thankfully, it’s still really good being here.  Better, in some ways, than when I was completely deferential to everything and everyone from here.  Oh, and when a truck passes by just to the other side of a white line, sucks me into it’s wake and sends my shirt flying up my back, that’s just pure joy…

We follow the hand drawn map which takes us up a very steep city street into an area where the street lights stop. It leads to a slope-y field that we explore by moonlight.  Villagers walk by occasionally by car and on foot, but other than to say “buenos [tardes]” they don’t seem to care that we’re pretty clearly setting out to camp.  The dogs from the surrounding properties, on the other hand, are livid.  We get up the slope pretty far, and the dogs barks have subsided.  We’re nearly done setting up our tents in the dark when a couple of dogs start barking and approaching us.  We can’t see them, but Jung reassures me he has a stick, by which he means the tiny fiberglass poles of his 1-person tent.  If that gives him confidence, that’s what matters.  I’m disconcerted, but not particularly fearful, in large part because there are two of us.  I stand up to stand them down, though I still can’t see them.  I yell “GO HOME!” a couple of times, assertively, but not so loud as to disrupt the neighbors, and throw a rock or two into the general direction of the barking for good measure.  This seems to do the trick, and we’re not harrassed again until we descend in the morning.
The dogs probably belong to the people whose property we’re on, or at least whose property borders the un-privately-owned plot we’re on.  The whole idea of camping in or just outside of a village is pretty foreign to me.  I like to camp where and only where exactly zero people know that I am.  But tonight is not so bad as the villagers seem amenable to it, the dogs are manageable, and there’s 2 of us to field any difficulties that result.

This in-village camping is a first for me in Mexico.  It’s not very likely to change how I find places to camp going forward, but falling asleep looking at the clouds float by in front of a full moon makes me realize that I do miss sleeping outside.  I’ve been town/city hopping, and consequently sleeping inside, for the last several weeks.

In the morning we get some breakfast and set out for Oaxaca.  We manage to stay within a few minutes of each other throughout the ride.  It’s a lot of climbing, so this is mostly me getting to a nice vista, taking the camera out to take a 3D panorama, and Jung catching up.

Shortly after we cross into  Oaxaca state, we pass the first barricade of the local teacher’s protest of the government’s education mandates.  There’s a long line of trucks lined up, but not cars or busses…I’m guessing because the truckers get paid for their time held up, or have some other motivation for not turning around that busses and cars do not.  We glide by, and the protesters manning the dirt piles and oil-can fires give us big smiles and waves.  All the same, the feeling on the other side of the barricade is pretty eerie.  We pass a number of burned out, commercial (I’m guessing government owned) vehicles.  Unfortunately for us, not long after we get past the barricade and another nearby, the traffic picks back up.  They’re either vehicles that have gotten to the barricade and turned around, or that have taken unpaved back-roads to get around them. 

We get into Oaxaca town, and it’s a little hectic, being a Friday at rush hour.   Jung lets me take the lead weaving through traffic, white-knuckling it through congested areas and doing our best to keep pace with it.  I’ve had a hilariously protracted exchange with the #1 most popular hostel in Oaxaca, and it’s now sold out of its cheapest beds.  I don’t have signal in the particular part of town we’re in so can’t find backup hostels with my phone.  Jung comes through with the door-to-door approach, inquiring within high-end hotels until one of them directs him to a hostel that has no other clients that night.  This works well since we want to use the room in the big dorm to dry out our gear that got wet (condensation, not rain, AFAICT) the night before.

We cruise town, eating at a couple of different stalls.  I run into a brit named Sophia that I’d met in Mexico City, and tell her to find me on FB for hanging out the next day, if she wants.  Jung and I grab a 40 and then head back to the hostel to share it.  He turns in and I go to the rooftop balcony to work on this post for a bit.

In the morning Jung and I say farewell.  He’ll head off and get a ride with some guys later in the day, one of which he’ll nearly get into a fist fight with.  The following night, Federales will bust into his motel room.  He’s fine (as of this writing) judging by his journal, as well as many miles ahead of me at this point, owing to my day hanging back in Oaxaca, and that he takes rides when offered and opportune.  Actually, Jung is a bit nuts.  He took a ride on the back of a motorcycle, holding his bike, first with one hand and the rear tire bouncing wildly, then holding it entirely after a readjustment, several miles to get into Guadalajara after dark.  Back in his island hometown in Korea, he left a fisherman, who he’d ask to watch his stuff, in tears…the fisherman assuming that Jung had died, when in fact he had only come extremely close to dying after getting caught in sea currents and being rescued rescued.  When he lived in the Seattle area a few years ago, he pulled a similar stunt in the Puget Sound.  Jung is a true adventurer.

I spend the morning recovering from the 350KM and 14,000 ft of climbing we’d done the previous 3 days from Puebla, along with enjoying the standard tourist sites in Oaxaca.

Cathedral of our Lady of the Assumption

I move to the #2 hostel in Oaxaca and run into a crew of Australians I’d met in Guadalajara.  That night, I meet Sophia (from CDMX) and her #1 hostel friends out for some dinner, but then opt to go back to my hostel to hang with the Australians.  The Aussies, a Londoner, and I share some tea, then spend about 6 hours on the roof yawning deeping then ooohing and aaahing non-ironically at the stars, moon, it’s halo, and the city lights, and literally rolling around laughing until we can’t breath.  At about 3am, one of them that hadn’t joined us comes back from his night out and reports that there are food stands open about a kilometer away.  I’m ravenous, so I fly there on my bicycle, weaving through staggering drunks, have a hamburger among more staggering drunks, and then a hotdog among the tents of mostly sleeping protesters.  When I get back, everybody has turned in, so I use the roof’s solitude to fall asleep while watching the (near?) fullmoon set.

The next morning, even though I’ve only gotten a couple hours of sleep, I feel kinda re-born and am looking forward to the long, desolate road ahead, with nothing but my thoughts and an abundance of natural beauty with which to occupy myself, I hope.