surly – vagando

The Legend of the Pura Bajada

Creel, Chihuahua, Mexico to Samachique, Chihuahua, Mexico

We now live in a society where the hour of the clock is more important than the position of the sun. We live by set schedules that do not correspond to the natural world and thus we shift our clocks forward an hour in the beginning of summer and back an hour in the fall. One day in the spring ends up being 23 hours and one in the fall is 25 hours. Not only am I pissed off about the switch in time, I have to be pissed off for an extra hour.

Parque Nacional de Las Barrancas del Cobre

As we shift an hour back it makes already short days more difficult as restaurants and shops open later relative to the rising of the sun. The hour of the day is irrelevant to us. We are delayed in accomplishing certain vital tasks such as returning 1.2L beer bottles to the grocery store and buying fruit. As we ride out of town my leg feels slightly better after a break, although I nurse it anyways.

As we exit Creel we enter the indigenous ejidos that are minimally developed and still maintain large stands of pine. The indigenous people subsistence farm in this area and live a life very distinct from that of other Mexicans. They walk the road, appearing and disappearing into the woods, as the only traffic we encounter for awhile. One scraggly old man herds goats on the roadside, the tinkling of the bells fills the air. We greet everyone as we pass in Spanish, their second language, which receives a lukewarm reception. I feel like Cortez on his iron horse, so I stop speaking and just give gentle waves

The riding is stunning, lined with pines and limestone outcroppings. The road is not cut through the landscape and instead follows the meandering contours that characterize the sierra. It is difficult to tell where we are going in such a steep landscape as there are virtually no vistas. We could be going up, down, sideways or topwise. We were told by every person with whom we spoke that this section promises to be arduous. After a sheer descent we follow a river canyon lined with fences
around pastures and cornfields made of meticulously stacked rocks. The homes a similarly built out of the materials available, pine and stone. We ride over Río Uríque and climb for hours at 8km/hr, unsure of where the summit lies. The air gets cooler, the trees change. We need food and water in Samachique. We arrive where Samachique should lie according to our piece of shit map and find out that it is several kilometers off the highway and a decent descent in order to get supplies.

Unnecessary climbing? No huey. Instead, we choose to buy several liters of water, four baloney and cheese sandwiches on white bread and two cans of juice from a lady in a shack on the side of the road. We continue climbing despite sheer exhaustion.

The shadow I cast on the road grows long. I arrive at the top of a climb where the cold air prickles the sweat on my skin and look out upon the mountains in the distance. A summit of some sort. We disappear into the woods, feeling secluded and secure. We get quiet as an entire indigenous family passes through the woods, not 20 meters away, without noticing us. You are never very isolated in Mexico.

We build a fire out of pine trees downed from the routing of power lines through the area. The flames ebb and surge as we take in the stars. An owl hoots in the distance.

Samachique, Chihuahua, Mexico to just outside Guachochi,Chihuahua, Mexico

I am more rigid than normal when I get up, the cold making matters worse. We are out of food. We descend and climb for kilometers, riding the crest of the sierra. The roadside is littered with broken Barrelito beer bottles that I am constantly dodging. We pass a frozen lake in a meadow.

We eventually reach a small store where children who are in school are practicing marching in step on the basketball court in the freezing air. Brin tries to enter the store and a woman emerges from the house next door and approaches us with a look on her face like he just spit in her salsa. The people in the sierra are genuinely good people, but they are just not very outwardly welcoming. The lady opens the store and then just stares at us, occasionally giving monosyllabic answers. Another woman arrives to help stare at us. Nobody here has water. We buy tuna and cookies for breakfast. We devour the food as the school kids stare through the cyclone fence. One girl keeps poking her head around the corner of a building and disappearing shyly if we look at her.

Exhausted we arrive in another small town where we buy avocados and tortillas. We sit on some pine needles in the forest and relish our quarry. I limp into Guachochi where we split a chicken and a rack of ribs.

We spend most of our days building a mental roadmap of what lies ahead based upon hearsay, myths and talltales. On this map there is never much climbing with plenty of towns where we can get supplies followed by a lengthy downhill. Pura bajada is the phrase oft used, meaning pure descent. People who have never ridden a loaded bicycle significant distances have a limited ability to judge the landscape and appreciate its features; riding a bicycle sears the topography into your head. That being said, I prefer lies.

Guachochi is a decent logging town with a massive golden bighorn sheep that demarcates the entrance to town, an animal that does not live in this area. It may have lived here at one point, but would have been hunted to extinction hundreds of year ago like everything else in Mexico. There is virtually no animal life here except vultures. The state’s namesake dog is strangely popular here, they brazenly bark from rooftops and curbs as we pass.

We ride outside of town, making a few extra kilometers as the day peters out. Camp is on a limestone slab a hundred meters off the road where we build an awesome fire. I read until I fall asleep, only to be awoken by the sound of my heart beating in my sleeping bag, which sounds like footsteps and Brin talking in his sleep. All I can make out is ‘pura bajada.’

Outside Guachochi, Chihuahua, Mexico to 40km outside of Balleza, Chihuahua, Mexico

The fire still smolders and fills the air with the sweet smell of burnt Juniper. The sun never officially rises, it is smothered by a curtain of clouds. We set out in search of the legend of the Pura Bajada. Dozens of people have told us that it exists, the cyclist’s El Dorado. It can drive a man mad. It never appears for several hours as we grind our way upwards only to dissipate our potential energy in seconds over and over again.

I limp to the top of a climb drenched in sweat. Brin arrived a while before and sits around chatting with a road crew.

‘¡Ay quiero vender la pinche bici y comprar una mota!’ I exclaim as I lay my bike down.

This has them in stitches. It takes me a second to realize what I said. La moto is short for la motocicleta. La mota is short for marijuana. This roughly translates to ‘Ah I want to sell my fucking bike and buy weed.’ They courteosly offer to get me high, but I decline.

A few of the construction workers wear neon vests that are very similar to the one that I bought to wear while riding, but have never donned until this point. I put it on proudly.

‘¡Dame una pala!’ I shout and they toss me a shovel.

I deliriously shovel gravel as fast as I can, keeping them laughing.

We are once again given a scintillating vision of the Pura Bajada from the road workers, yet we curse them as we continue climbing. The mountains begin to gradually soften. We arrive in Baquiriachi on empty stomachs. A cowboy in a pink on black jacket embroidered with Japanimation samurais fighting directs us to a 75 year old lady’s house where we can feast. She invites us in and is very reserved initially. She claps her hands together to make tortillas out of corn that she places on her woodburning stove, churning out a stack in just a few minutes. She begins talking to us about the Sierra Tarahumara and her life here. She eats only tortillas, beans and pinole.

‘What is pinole?’ Brin asks.

‘It is toasted corn that is ground. It is what the Tarahumara runners drink. Do you want some?’

I savor the pinole while she speaks of Pura Bajada that awaits us.

We continue climbing a little more before suddenly an expansive desert valley lined by craggy cliffs opens up in front of us, the sierra dropping off. Juquilita’s Mustache! Malverde’s Tiara! The legends are true!

We do a quick pre-descent check to make sure that nothing is going to let loose at 60km/hr and go. I veer across both lanes, banking into turns. I hit 69.9km/hr without pedaling on one section. The views are stunning and I nearly lose control as I get distracted. Cactus appear in the blur. Mormon crickets again crunch under my tires and ping against my spokes. Cattle lift their heads and gaze as we pass. The likelihood of Onza attacks diminishes with each passing second.

We arrive in Balleza where ⅕ of the population appears to be crosseyed from our limited sample size. We buy the following provisions: Honey, bacon, fresh caramel and beans. We head out of town into a muted landscape, the horrors of the Sierra fading from my mind in the warm desert air.

The past few days have been without a doubt the toughest mentally and physically in my life, mainly due the pain in my leg and exhaustion that never abated during our break in Creel. I went to bed the past few nights knowing that I would wake up stiff and in pain, only to fight through it over the day as I vomit stomach acid into my mouth from the 800mg of Ibuprofen that I am eating on a stomach that is not nearly full enough. I have sores on my ass that burn everytime I sit down.

Before a climb we stop for some tacos from a pudgy roadside taco vendor. Brin talks to him and they stumble through a conversation in Spanish until the man switches to perfect English. He has lived in America for the past 20 years as his parents brought him there when he was a child. He went to school, got married, bought two houses and had a kid in America. He remembers nothing from being a child in Mexico, yet was deported last year and has had to start a life here. He hopes that Obama will give him and his parents, who still reside in America illegally, amnesty.

‘A lot of the drugs that come from the sierra pass through here, El Tule. The narcos will get out of their cars with assault rifles and eat tacos before leaving a good tip. They mind their own business. There was a guy full of bullet holes in the bushes over there a few weeks ago, but he was probably mixed up with the wrong people.’

His son cracks all of us up by running around in miniature cowboy boots and kicking trash while shouting all of the phrases he knows in English.

At the summit we pass all of our gear over a barbed wire fence, but the ground is uneven and littered with Cat’s Claw and cactus. We carry our gear and our bikes all the way to the summit where the ground is flat and the cattle have cleared out most of the prickly plants. I gently slide cow patties a few feet away from where I will sleep. The sky is filled with a thin sheared sheet of clouds the underside of which is on fire against a faded Robin’s egg sky. Shooting stars cut cut across the Milky Way as cows bellow in the distance.

I stretch in the starlight before laying down for the night. I feel like today was the first time I felt that I might actually make it to Mexico City, the only destination that I have. I listen to the coyotes yipping and howling in the distance, they know something about living that we never can. To be free with no future or past. They curl up with the rising of the sun and set out as darkness descends with a purpose. I keep trying to push myself in order to find my limits. I have never actually known a point where I can no longer continue in my life.

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Surviving the Sierra

The mountains outside Buenaventura, Chihuahua, Mexico to Santa Ana Bavìcora, Chihuahua, Mexico

We are up before the sun eating oranges outside the barbed wire fence. The sun rises down canyon, giving everything a tangerine glow. We start riding. I never even try to move any faster than 10km/hr, as the next hour clearly visible as it sinuously traverses the mountainside climbing deep into the Sierra Madre. We pass a small pasture illuminated in the morning light, a grey coyote stands alert as we pass. Traffic is light and polite. Every car gives us a wide berth, a wave and often a well intentioned honk that makes me tense every time. We take one break midway, eating fruit flavored with sweat dripping down my face. We march upwards and meander back and forth as we reach the summit adorned with shrines dedicated to the Virgin de Guadalupe, each one filled with half burnt candles and dead flowers. My gnawing hunger makes itself known and we start our descent into Ignacio Zaragoza.

I lean my bike into the turns, yipping and howling as junipers and piñons fly past. It never lasts long though, the gradient falls off and we find ourselves using our pedals once again to traverse an open valley full of waving brown grass populated by corpulent cattle. We navigate the dirt streets of Zaragoza in search of food with no luck. We are directed further down the road, where we gorge ourselves on chips, salsa, guacamole, burritos and huevos Mexicanos. The restaurant is strange, full of patrons, yet nobody speaks. I try to break the silence to no avail. This is our first taste of the different constitution of the denizens of the sierra.

As we leave town we climb continuously and are frequently taunted by short descents. Overeating was a bad choice; I stare enviously at open patches of grass on the roadside and imagine myself laying there contented. The valley stretches out in front of us, divided by painstakingly built stone fences. I pull over to stop and stretch. Brin and I talk briefly as we watch two donkeys that overheard our conversation from a distance come tear assing down the hillside right up to the fence that separates us. Brin draws them close with a climb of grass held out as an olive branch. As I run my hand down their muzzles, dust fills the air.

We frequently stop to ask for directions and about the terrain. We peruse chiles, discuss them and buy large quantities. We stock up on supplies before arriving at the pass between this valley and Santa Ana Bavìcora. The descent is incredible, a road crew yips and hollers as we pass, straight out of a narcocorrido. As the wind howls in my ears, the pines give way to rock, scrub and cactus once more. As we relax in the sumptuous plaza of Santa Ana Bavìcora, centered around a fountain surrounded by roses, a toothless man stares at our map uncomprehending before sending us on a shorter route towards Matachic that doesn’t exist according to our map.

We head out of town in search of a campsite, apple orchards line the roadside. We find one that lacks a fence and wait for traffic to pass before we disappear into the rows. A man in a pickup nearly slows to a stop as he rolls past staring. Strange. We roll our bikes across the supple dirt and eat apples off the trees left behind from the harvest. We unpack and get prepared for the night as a man whistling and eating an apple passes through our row, only long enough for us to make eye contact. He heads onward, but it unnerves us slightly. Trucks wander through the fields and machinery scours the earth late into the night. Traffic roars past. Light pierces the trees and shines on my face, leaves fall around me. A dog bays in the distance. All of this rattles me for a moment, but you either accept your limited locus of control or spend your life worrying about things that are outside of it. I accept that I am at the mercy of the world and roll onto my side to go to sleep.

Santa Ana Bavìcora, Chihuahua, Mexico to Guerrero, Chihuahua, Mexico

I awake to a sleeping back covered in frost. Light from the sun dapples the ground around me. As we slowly begin our morning, I look down the row of trees to see a man standing 100 meters away watching us. He disappears before returning several minutes later. I can see him talking on his cell phone. He disappears again and we start quickly rolling our bikes out of the orchard. We are still in the relative security of the trees as a cop car comes flying around the corner in a plume of dust heading in the direction of the farm house. We quickly hop onto our bikes and pedal hard down the road.

We set off in the chilly air towards Matachic. The kilometers come easy until a small town appears on the right side of the road where we decide to stop for breakfast before we climb. Buena Vista has rutted rocky streets dotted with adobe houses and unintimidating dogs as obstacles. A man in a stained Frank Zappa shirt scratches his belly as he gives us directions to the local store. The massive store has shelves lined with goods spaced several feet apart, a meagre selection. We buy small candy bars as a consolation for the shopkeep.

As we are trying to find our way out of town, I ask wiry man in a cowboy hat picking up trash in his yard about the way out of town. He comes over smiling, speaking a mile a minute in Spanish.

‘Where are you from?’
‘Colorado. Have you been to the States?’ We agreed on a joint answer to simplify our lives.
‘I worked in Idaho, Colorado, Utah, Arizona.. All over the West. Maybe half of the townspeople here have been to the States to work. We work hard and cause very few problems. I had my papers when I was there and worked in construction for many years.’
‘Are you going to go back?’
‘No, I have earned enough money and learned enough skills that I don’t need to go back there. I like living here more.’
‘Can you find work here?’
‘If you know what you are doing, there is construction work here. The problem with immigration is that the immigrants aren’t brought into the system and families are split apart. Many of the hard working Mexicans are deported while the lazy criminals who don’t even have jobs go unnoticed.’
’What do you think should be done to fix the problem?’
‘I don’t know. Obama has four more years to fix it.’
‘Did Obama win the election?’
‘Yeah, he won, by quite a bit. He has a tough job fixing all of the problems that Bush created, worrying about all of the money he spent.’

This is how we find out that Obama won the presidency.

‘Romney is a pendejo’ I feel like freely expressing my opinion.
‘No, no. He isn’t a bad person. He is just a part of a group that has bad policies.’

I am taken aback by this intelligent understanding view.

‘What do you think about Peña Nieto winning the election?’

This question always evokes interesting answers, as most people believe the election was rigged in typical Mexican fashion. The PRI is the establishment party of Mexico that held sway over the government for over 60 consecutive years until the conservative Northern party, PAN, inexplicably took the reins in 2000. PAN held the presidency for 12 years until January 2013.

‘PRI is full of crooks. We need a change, we need to move away from that style of politics. Politicians are like babies diapers, you need to change them frequently. But in many cases Mexicans don’t value the right things and they get the politicians that they deserve.’’

We introduce ourselves and learn that his name is Beto. He shows us pictures of his family on his cell phone.

‘We are going to find some breakfast, it was really nice talking to you Beto’ I say in Spanish.
‘You are going to find ham and eggs!’ Beto shouts in English as we ride away.

Our day is off to an interesting yet slow start as we climb back into the piñons and junipers. As we descent into Matachic we crouch close to our bikes and pedal hard to set new high speed records on the steep rolling descents. We ride up to a cop car parked in the middle of the intersection of two highways to ask where we can find some food. The windows are cracked, both seats are reclined and the passengers are sleeping.

‘Haha. They are sleeping!’ Brin exclaims as he rides up.
‘No…no…no’ We hear come from the car as the seats rachet up.

I ride over and they button up their shirts and put on their hats before rolling down the window to talk with us. We get directions and are told to tell anyone in town that we are friends of Mario if they give us trouble. Matachic is a strange place, random drunks staggering in the streets shout broken English as we ride past and one gropes our arms as we walk into a restaurant. Every town here seems to have its own vibe, the one here is unpleasant.

After Matachic we enter a section of rolling hills that never seem to end and sap our energy. The wind picks up, further demoralizing us. We keep pushing though. As we pedal into Guerrero I smell chicken roasting over flames and start riding towards it. I lose the scent and double back until I see it, El Pollo Rey. We lean our bikes against the wall and treat ourselves to a beer and an entire chicken.

A man enters with his alligator skin boots clomping and says nothing in response to our greetings, only flipping up his shirt so that we can see the pistol in his waistband. A black cowboy hat and thick mustache complete the look. He glares at Brin the entire time we sit there, I have my back to him. We decide to hasten our departure.

Outside town we find ourselves passing our gear over a barbed wire fence once more to a spot nestled in the pines with a beautiful view of the sun setting over the sierra. The pink lingering in the sky until darkness overtakes us. The riding here is spectacular, open, minimal traffic, good people and a constantly varying landscape.

Guerrero, Chihuahua, Mexico to Creel, Chihuahua, Mexico

The big push. We each eat a can of tuna, a banana that tastes like drywall and several chocolate cookies. I know the taste of drywall from a strange childhood that I have expounded upon previously. The morning is chilly and already a steady breeze buffets our advance. We ride across a large plain filled with apple trees and alfalfa fields before arriving at Entronque San Pedro, a place where I spent many hours sticking my thumb out the year before.

Creel is in our sights: relaxation, food and beer. The plains quickly give way to the sierra, we drop into canyons and climb out, over and over. We reach a river canyon that softens our ascent, but it funnels wind that leaves us absolutely gasping for air. We alternate drafting every couple of minutes as leading into the stiff wind is exhausting. I pedal as hard as I can to reach the top of several climbs, the pine trees on either side swaying from top to bottom. We stop and collapse into the dirt on the side of the road, laying in silence before eating some peanuts and cookies.

I grit my teeth and curse under my breath as I give everything that I have until we reach the bottom of a steep 400m climb. The wind strangely dies and we leisurely climb to the summit where a steep downhill awaits us. I am reveling in the descent, lost in a joy that nothing else I have ever done has come close to providing when a truck coming the opposite direction lays on its horn. A piece of lumber comes flying off of the truck as my eyes are watering at 60km/hr. I instinctively swerve and narrowly miss the piece of wood, but I pull over to the side of the road to breath deeply for a few seconds. Too close.

‘Everything alright?’ Brin shouts as he rolls past.
‘Yep!’

We pass through San Juanito, a rough logging and drug trafficking town. The streets are lined with liquor stores, indolent women of ill repute and corrupt police. A strange mix of Norteños and indigenous people becomes apparent for the first time in our trip. We ask around town about the ride to Creel and receive answers that vary wildly in typical Mexican fashion.

‘O Si. Tan fàcil, muy fàcil. Ustedes han hecho el parte mas difícil.’
‘Hay dos subidas grandes, mas grande que la subida para llegar acà.’
‘Solamente hay una subida grandote!’

We eat some burritos that a guy is selling out of the back of his van and pay someone else as the guy who sold them to us took off running as we were eating for no clear reason. A bus runs us off the road, we yell unheard obscenities. Logging trucks slowly pass and choke us with black smoke. One logging truck comes down a climb we are slowly ascending, making itself first heard by a horrific squealing, swerving recklessly between both lanes at over double the speed limit. We bail to the side of the road again. Another truck randomly decides to pass another coming uphill as we are full of momentum going downhill, Brin bails into the gravel and I am forced into a steep concrete ditch on the side of the road. The riding is anything but mundane, complete focus is necessary. Virgin de Guadalupes line the roadside in little shrines. Drivers urge us on. At the summit a woman crosses herself in her car, Brin thinks that she is blowing him a kiss.

We hit Creel at full speed from a downhill, coming into town like madmen. I fly over speedbumps, blow past grandmas, a fat kid runs out into the street and reaches his arm out to touch me as I pass, but I am too fast. We gulp down beer as quickly as the waitress can bring it. The early darkness and chill put us to sleep 643km from Columbus, New Mexico.

All paths lead nowhere, but some make for a joyous journey and others for a miserable one.

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Polygamy in the Pueblos: Mormons and the Mafia

Outside Nuevo Casas Grandes, Chihuahua, Mexico to the foothills outside Buenaventura, Chihuahua, Mexico

We survived the Black Widows and will thankfully get to be alive for the greatest spectacle in the free world: election day in America. We have decided not to seek out the results of the election. As we ride through the rural mountains, we will let somebody inform us of the outcome in due time. We work on our bikes in the morning, cleaning chains and pulling sharp objects out of tires. I wince as I stand up from a crouch in the sandy wash and move my bike out of the wash. We disregard traffic and brazenly pass all of our gear over the barbed wire fence along the highway. I clip on my panniers and begin once more.

We descend on a brand new road with a shoulder, a much deserved reprieve. We barely pedal and let the bikes take us downhill. We are traveling with a map that was given to Brin’s fiance as she bought temporary car insurance for a trip into Mexico. It has no key and the least amount of detail possible. Many of the roads we take do not exist on the map, which gives us plenty of opportunities to speak Spanish. We stop at a roadside….. I am not sure what to call it, although it has an astounding amount of scrap parts and junk for sale… to ask directions. We continue onwards and eat breakfast in a family’s living room with several gruff truck drivers.

We pass through the town of Galeana and then arrive in a place called Colonia Lebaron named after its founder Alma Dayer LeBaron who started the community roughly 60 years ago to freely fornicate with multiple women tied to him by the sanctity of marriage in pecan orchards he planted. LeBaron was a Mormon Fundamentalist, a polygamist who was forced from the United States and granted refuge by Porfirio Diaz’s government. As we stop for a sandwich and some juice, we meet one of the founder’s sons who speaks frankly about the community. He is one of 48 children left by the founder. The church’s leader and prophet was murdered by his brother in a Machiavellian religious powerplay in 1972. This set of a string of murders that lasted decades and claimed as many as 25 lives. Andy himself proudly lays claim to five wives and thirteen children. His friend Charles who chats with us pathetically has only two wives and five children. He describes himself as a late bloomer, I describe him as a loser.

‘Do you guys have any connections with anyone in Colonia Juarez?’ Colonia Juarez is another polygamist refuge where Mitt Romney’s father was born.
‘Oh yeah! We have known the Romney family for years. Let’s hope Mitt takes back America.’

Andy tells the restaurant owner that he will pick up the tab for anything we would like and takes off in his massive diesel pickup. We each order a liter of fresh squeezed orange juice and a sandwich. We are then subjected to a rambling soliloquy from Charles; there really is no such thing as a free lunch. You know it is going to be good when it starts out like this:

‘Do you know that there is a new world order being set up?’ He asks in earnest.
‘No…no we didn’t.’
‘George Washington and Joseph Smith prophesied that the thirteen controlling families of the world intend to murder 80% of the worlds population with genetically modified crops and vaccines.’
‘……’
‘The end is coming when the Nephites, the light skinned people of the world, will fight the Lamanites, dark skinned people in a battle of good versus evil. I am not racist, it is just that god decreed in the story of Cain and Abel that dark skin was a sign of evil.’

We try repeatedly to extract ourselves from this discussion, saying goodbye and shaking his hand. At least six times. I have condensed this dialogue for your sake. I nod my head and give monosyllabic answers as my food gets cold.

‘Did you know that particle physics has finally proven what Joseph Smith said about everything being infinitely divisible?’
‘No…..’
‘Dark matter propagates its force at 80 billion times the speed of light, finally allowing us to reach the next galaxy in 1/10th of a second. This is god’s force. I have some videos that I would like to show you guys if you would come to my house with me?’
‘Oh um, we need to try and make some miles on our bikes, but thank you.’
‘I am going to a wedding later as well if you want to come. China and Russia are going to attack America, a fight we will almost lose until the moment when god intervenes. God’s kingdom on earth will rise in Central America, amongst the Mayans.’ He is fervent.

I desperately want to ask him how god’s kingdom is going to rise amongst the swarthy sinners of the Yucatan and Central America, but I relent.

‘In Colonia Lebaron we have had problems with violence as of late, with the mafia. This place is supposed to be a peaceful refuge for anyone, with any background. We say respect is peace, like Benito Juarez. We have taken on the cartels, we have a sniper positioned in that tower on the hill over there that overlooks town. They killed a few of our brothers. We all carry guns now. You can read about us on the internet. I also sell some medicine on the internet, it cures nearly everything. Here is the address of my website if you guys are interested in ordering some of it.’’
‘Interesting…’ Again, someone in Mexico talking to us about snipers watching us. That makes at least two occasions that Brin and I have been threatened with snipers while traveling here.

A girl comes into the restaurant and introduces herself as Elsy. She is pregnant as is every other woman that we see waddling through town.

‘You boys are in the wrong part of Mexico.’ She knowingly warns us.
‘Why is that?’

She walks away. We finally extract ourselves from this place after speaking English with some white Mormon Mexican cowboys who are sipping on glasses of carrot juice. I am mentally exhausted from the 45 minute tirade. I had read that the townspeople here are often more mixed up with the cartels than they will admit, for obvious reasons.

Our last stop for the day is in Buenaventura, where we buy four kilograms of oranges, pecans, honey, water and steaks. Our ascent into the Sierra Madre Occidental begins in earnest at this moment. We follow a long straightaway where we stop as my bike is making a racket, my front rack is nearly falling off. Lesson: periodically tighten bolts.

We climb, grinding it out at 9 km/hr. I come to learn that climbs always look worse than they are. It is just a matter of persistence. We are rewarded with steep short downhills that are succeeded by another significant climb each time. The smell of marijuana emanates from several cars that pass on their way out of the Sierra. We come into sight of the big climb into the Sierra before Ignacio Zaragoza. Camping in this area poses a significant problem as the ground is littered with Cholla and other vicious spiny succulents that will surely wreak havoc with our tires. We stop in front of a ranch gate with a corral and a dilapidated building. We decide to climb the following day. We scout it out and nobody is home. We look both ways and then start passing our gear over the fence again. We set up camp on the concrete slab dated to 1968. The roof has fallen in on the structure, but there are fresh horse tracks and manure.

We feast before the day dies. We vow to leave at first light, lest we be caught here by the owner. Cattle forlornly moo throughout the canyon, the echoes bouncing off the walls. A chilly down canyon breeze sends me into my sleeping bag.

Guerilla camping is strange. It feels so exposed, yet so free and right. We leave no trace and only occupy the ground. I am so tired that concerns over safety easily fall by the wayside. The coming days promise to be tough, but rewarding. We are entering an area infrequently traveled by tourists and with insignificant local traffic. It promises significant climbs, but incomparable scenery. New types of cactus are appearing already: ocotillo, prickly pear and cholla. Traffic dies completely as I lay in my sleeping bag staring at the stars.

I awaken with adrenaline instantly coursing through my veins as three horses gallop through our camp in the middle of the night. I am quickly calmed as I watch them strangely play with one another and give chase, their forms only visible as silhouettes in the moonlight.

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Dos Güeros

The United States of America to Mexico

I wake up at Brin´s fiance´s place in Española, New Mexico with the lingering stabbing pains from food poisoning or anxiety induced illness from over a month and a half of moving from place to place. My life has never been more scattered. I couldn´t eat the day before and instead drank two glasses of vodka, a couple of fingers worth in each, with the intent of vomiting up the contents of my stomach. I succeeded. The following morning I awoke, loaded my bike and panniers into my sister’s car, who drove me to Green River, Utah where I met up with my friend Brin.

We intend on beginning our trip in Columbus, New Mexico where we will try to find a place to leave Brin’s car.

Let me step back and contextualize this trip:

I had planned last winter to continue hitchhiking out of the freedom, simplicity and adventures it provided. In the middle of summer, after riding a bicycle more than a few miles for the first time in five years, I decided to buy a bike. A bike to ride South. I had no idea what I was undertaking at this point. The first person that I told about this change in plans was my boss as we were working on a van in the shop.

‘Hey Tim, I think I figured out what I am going to do this winter..’
‘YEAH! WHAT´S THAT?’
‘I am going to buy a bike and try to ride it to South America.’ I don’t think I finish the sentence before it begins.
‘AAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA……’ It continued for a while, I don’t feel like typing it all out. It was the most that I have ever gotten him to laugh. He never explained why this was so hilarious and I didn’t want to ask.

I talked to a few friends who ride frequently. I measured myself. Everyone told me that I needed to train extensively, that I needed to buy an expensive bike and have it custom fitted. In the end I decided to order a stock Surly Disc Trucker from the internet, due to its simplicity and my desire to make miles. Most people I talked to about this trip had nothing to contribute but reasons why I shouldn’t or can’t. My intention was to get on my bike and start riding. I will train and figure it out as I ride.

I finished guiding one of my last river trips for the season and my bike was sitting in a box at the warehouse. It was one of those evening where whiskey just tastes better than food. My brother, sister, Brin and I started building my bike after finishing a bottle of Canadian Host. We drunkenly eyeballed, cut, tightened and assembled the bike. An auspicious start. We ripped the ‘ly’ off from Surly to leave simply ‘Sur.’ The bike came together in a blur, emerging out of our soused collaboration. We decided was a good idea to quit at some point. We hit a bucket around the shop with brooms, playing some sort of violent variant of floor hockey. Brin hits a slapshot that shatters the bucket and it slices across my face. I go to the bathroom and am unwittingly assaulted with a fusillade of soaps, rags, towels, shampoo bottles that come flying between the top of the drywall and the ceiling. The bottles explode as they impact the walls around me spraying fluorescent chemical streams.

I wake up on the back porch with my brother and sister huddled to my right and Brin without a sleeping pad using my left leg as a pillow.

The next few weeks unfold as I slowly collect parts and try to plan for something that I have never done before. I ride a little bit, never more than 100km in order to get in shape. On my first long ride I eat no breakfast beforehand and only bring two cookies. My legs feel like they are being beaten with a baseball bat as I descend down Logan Canyon. Diet is important?

In the twilight shivering and hiking our bikes over a rock strewn dirt road on our way from Salt Lake City to Logan, my sister says something that has stuck with me for the entirety of this trip:

‘Hey, just let me know if you are too tired and I can call for a ride.’ I propose.
‘I have never given up on anything before, I am not going to start now. Let’s go!’

Here is some of the soundtrack from our drive from Green River to the border to set the mood:

‘He’s thirty four, drinking in a honky tonk, kicking hippy’s asses and raisin’ hell!’ Jerry Jeff Walker – Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother

‘He rode into El Sueco, stole a rooster called El Gallo del Cielo and he crossed the Rio Grande with that fighter nestled deep below his arm…’ Tom Russell – Gallo del Cielo

‘There is no need for alarm, they are waving their arms, they would just assume blow you away.’ Robert Earl Keen – Blow You Away (Can’t find an original)

‘It all started when I had a little trouble with this guy on a highway crew and that lying son of a gun told them I had done some things I didn’t do.’ Todd Snider – Tillamook County Jail

We get a parking ticket in Santa Fe and spend an hour trying to pay it to no avail. We decide to mail it from further down the road and stop in Socorro. After mailing it Brin crouches down next to his VW Passat, the front end is held together with a cam strap and one of the turn signals dangles from its wire on the fender. We make eye contact and just start laughing.

‘So this is where my life is at? Taping my car’s turn signal into place after paying a ticket on my way to ride my bike through a place that everyone keeps telling me is one of the most dangerous on earth.’
‘Sounds pretty good to me.’

We are going to Mexico. We pass through Albuquerque, the worst city that I have ever seen on Cops. Images of meth, knives, flashing lights, strip malls and prostitutes flash through my head. Anchorage is the second worst city due to a Special Summer Solstice Episode of Cops. Violence, drunkeness and depravity appear all the more surreal and disturbing when played out in broad daylight at 3am.

We follow the Rio Grande and its line of yellow Cottonwoods southward through the rocky and barren landscape to Columbus. We find a bed and breakfast run by a nice old lady named Martha who says we can leave the car there, no questions asked. We go to sleep with the lights of the border fence shining over us in Pancho Villa State Park.

In the morning we pack our bikes, something that I haven’t even done before. It takes a bit of time before everything finds its proper place.

As I pedal the steel frame of my bike flexes and sways under the weight. It fishtails, yet rides better weighted. After two kilometers I try and adjust my mirror before we reach the border, hit a speed bump and am nearly catapulted over the handlebars. I am reassured when the bike continues rolling without a hiccup.

The border: kids selling trinkets, men yip like coyotes out of cars, food simmers in every direction, animals beg and scatter and broken English echoes. The energy of Mexico is inexplicablely intoxicating.

We head out into the wild Chihuahuan desert, a massive expanse of rock and scrub. A straight road fading into the distance demoralizes us. It undulates over the rolling landscape, I find even minor climbs exhausting. We draft off of one another to save energy, alternating every few kilometers. My entire body burns and aches. I drink water as quick as possible, unable to get hydrated. A pain develops on the outside of my left knee and becomes excruciating. I feel even the most minor shifts in wind that barely stir the grass along the roadside. I am going to do this for how long? What did I get myself into? What if I have to turn back with no job or place to live with my tail between my legs?

Brin gets one flat tire, then a second within a few minutes. The valves are being cut by his rim, a jagged edge encircles the valve stem. We use one of the destroyed tubes to fashion a valve protector. Not an ideal start.

‘Echale güero!’ Horns blare. Norteño music is remixed with the Doppler Shift.

The drivers are incredibly respectful compared to American drivers, contrary to expectation. The sun beats down on us, I wince under burden of the pain in my leg and focus on taking one stroke at a time.

We eat at a restaurant in Ascención with dozens of fighting cocks strutting and crowing in cages, the walls pasted with posters for upcoming fights. We talk to various characters around town, lack of teeth correlates with our lack of understanding.

As the sun sets we ride out of town trying to find a place to camp. We head down a gravel road between some cornfields and turn into the lot behind an abandoned building. We look around making sure that nobody is watching. A few workers wander in the chile field across from us. We disappear into the cornfield after 107km.

Day 1:

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As darkness descends we emerge from the field and set up camp in the soft tilled dirt that flanks the field. I dig a trench to sleep in that feels like a shallow grave. I lay down exhausted under a moonless sky electric with a million burning suns. I wake up occassionally as cars rattle and crunch down the gravel road. The highway roars all night. As the moon rises the coyotes begin to yip and howl in all directions. I don’t think I can do this.

I get up though and do it again. My knee protests as I begin to move in the morning before the sun rises. I am soaked in dew. I crouch inbetween the corn rows trying to take a shit as I hear Brin come crashing through the corn stalks. He tries to take a picture of me crouched over the steaming pile, but it is too cold out for the camera to work. We steal some red jalapeños from the field across the way as we set out.

Most drivers wave as they pass, an old grandma gives us the finger. We pass several checkpoints where we are searched and questioned. The soldiers seem unable to comprehend what we are doing. We ride on a two lane shoulderless highway, the wind from trucks either buffets us or propels us depending upon their direction.

We arrive in Janos at 10:30am without having eaten breakfast. We eat the most exquisite food on earth, Mexican food. We buy some packaged mystery meat and other provisions for the day. The day heats up under a vacant sky. Time passes slowly, the trucks pass quickly. My knee pain, which I have decided is from my IT band, leaves me wincing and hobbled. I am struggling mentally and think I might have to give up. Day two: The tip of my dick is chaffed and bleeding. I walk like Captain Ahab.

Brin and I sit on the roadside under a Cottonwood eating lunch. The chiles that we picked from the field in the morning leave Brin in tears. I valiantly savour their heat when combined with the gratifying mystery meat that we purchased in the morning. We lay around in the shade for an hour or two before riding into Nuevo Casas Grandes.

Riding into cities is exhilirating and irritating at the same time. Cars are less courteous, but people are more interested in what we are doing and want to speak with us. We jostle over speed bumps and run stop lights. We make our way out of town in search of a place to lay our heads. Barbed wire lines the highway with almost no break. We stop in front of an agrochemial disposal site and debate the merits of sleeping there. We press onward in the fading light.

We climb into some small mountains after already having ridden over 100km for the day . I am running on fumes. The rotor on my front disc brake squeaks as the bike flexes under the force of each stroke. We stop at a few locked cattle gates in dismay. The sun disappears. We ride down a hill and find a wash at the bottom. We pass our bikes and gear over the barbed wire fence when there is a break in traffic. We walk up the wash a couple hundred feet and drop our gear on the sandy bottom. Brin runs up a nearby peak to catch the last of the daylight. I hobble.

We reach the top and look over a broad valley surrounded by gentle sloped foothills. We take it in before descending in the last scrap of light. We cook two batches of popcorn on my stove. We garnish the popcorn with lime, chile and salt. Brin swings his headlamp to his side and recoils as a massive Black Widow hovers in a nest built into the bank. We admire its size and I anger it by throwing unpopped kernels at it. Wait there is another right next to it, and another….there are hundreds lining the rocks near us and on the walls. I agree to stop harassing them.

Trucks wail on their jake brakes coming down the hill. I realize that I can do this, that I am doing it. I cannot fail, as there is no goal. I lay in my sleeping bag smiling as I think about my life before sleep draws me away from my reverie.

Day Two:

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