Tipping Over

A view from Mazatlán

Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Somewhere outside of Mazatlán

Finally, I had a good rest last night!

I didn't think I would find a place so close to the city, as I was.

I got a late start because I was sightseeing in Mazatlán.

I chanced upon a pullout next to the road that led to a stream and a walking path that ducked under the small bridge that carried the road over the stream.

It was dusk and almost dark, and a cloud of fog was billowing from the surface of the cold water. The fog rose up to cloak everything in an eerie quiet.

Cars and trucks rushed over the bridge and their lights chased the shadows around the trees and across the bridge in a choreographed game. The long Doppler effect of the whoosh of their movement adding a climax to each round.

I'm growing use to the road noise, and with confidence I would not be discovered because of the late hour and cloaking fog, I slept well. Probably for the first time since my trip began.

~*~

I´m sitting at a cafe eating breakfast (pollos rancheros). I´m on the porch, on the only corner getting sun. It´s around 8 A.M.

I can tell it will be warm today, but right now it´s next to chilly and it feels perfect, as the sun warms my left side.

Earlier, I drank a glass of fresh orange juice.

There are birds chirping and they are so pleasant.

´´Hello!´´

´´Good morning!´´ They say.

Or, I suppose, ´´Hola!´´

´´Buenos días!´´ Or maybe it´s an indigenous language. I don´t know.

~*~

Yesterday, I went exploring in Mazatlan.

From afar, I saw a peninsula with a light house perched high atop a hill, and a road leading to it.

Following the road, I arrived at the base of the light winding road that led to the top.

As I arrived, I saw another motorcycle start up the road. ´Encouraging,´ I thought.

Over the road was an arch that announced this was the path to the top and and gave an average walking time (25 minutes) to reach the light house. A bit strange to put on a road I thought.

I started up anyway.

30 yards on, I could see the concrete ended and a very rough dirt road proceeded beyond. I grew cautious.

At that moment, a motorcyclist came around the bend.

He pulled up to me. I couldn´t be sure if this was the motorcyclist I had seen ascending just a moment before.

He greeted me and I asked if motorcycles could make it to the top. He spoke Spanish but seemed to understand me okay, and he said I could make it. I asked, ´´Are you sure? With this kind of bike?´´

He reassured me, ´´Yes, just be careful.´´ He was riding a small cruiser or standard style bike, and he didn´t say he´d just been to the top but I assumed he had, optimistically.

I revved the engine and proceeded slowly.

To those who´ve been there, it reminded me of Camelback Mountain in Phoenix. An urban hiking trail with steep grades.

There were many groups of people ascending and descending and I felt acutely out of place, but buoyed by will, desire, and the encouragement of a stranger that I chose to trust.

The road quickly went from cement, to dirt road, to washed out hiking trail with protruding rocks and runoff trenches formed by erosion. I did not belong there and I knew it, but I kept revving the engine, feathering the clutch, and coercing the bike to climb, albeit slowly.

I rounded the first switchback, lost speed, pulled in the clutch, pulled in the brake, and stopped. It was a sad, wobbly sight. I put my foot down. It kept going down. I had stopped next to a trench. The bike kept leaning over until my foot finally touched down, but it was too late. The 480 lbs or more had traveled too far away from the center of gravity and I could not stop it, but I did slow it down. All the while saying (not too loud), ´´No! No! No! No!´´

But yes, yes it did. The bike toppled, I toppled. All in the middle of several groups of hikers. I sat up, and began laughing.

This was ridiculous, I knew it, and I persisted. Why wouldn´t I laugh?

Once the bike was down I became aware that I had made a spectacle of myself, but I had that coming and I knew it.

I tried to lift the bike but it kept slipping downhill when I did. Soon, some hikers offered assistance and we had the bike upright.

The headlight cluster was broken and hanging by wires. The handlebars slightly askew.

Since the bike was upright there was no immediate rush (fuel and oil can flood the engine or otherwise leak into places you don´t want them to when it is horizontal).

I took some pictures, sat down and laughed some more at the situation, then fished out my duct tape, reaffixed the headlight cluster to its approximate location, gingerly turned the bike around, remounted, and coasted down the hill.

I´d only made it 50 meters but it was enough adventure for me, and I decided to keep on moving.

~*~

I have pictures of several of these locations and events but they are on my camera (all pictures posted so far are from my phone) and I can´t upload them until I can process the raw digital images. So, sadly no visuals to help tell the story.

I want to specially acknowledge the financial contributions from Alexandre Nguyen, Manny Rangel, Michael Pang, my mom, and my aunt Julie, as well as Kate Phillips and Ian Wheatland for helping make these words and pictures possible!

Tales from the Road

Monday, Nov 17 2014
Somewhere outside of Obregón.

I flicked the bike into neutral and greeted the attendant, ``Buenos días, cuanta questa?´´ It was 32, he said.

I was at one of the many toll booths I would encounter during my foray through Mexico.

In my pocket I found I had change for 31 pesos, or 35 pesos. Naturally, I offered the attendant the 35 pesos.

He frowned and asked if I had 32 pesos. I double-checked, verified I did not, and he began tell me something I did not understand.

Then, he yelled over to the next booth, and asked his co-worker if he had change. His co-worker must not have, because the attendant turned to me and began explaining something to me, and again, I did not understand.

Seeing my confusion, the attendant held up the 5 peso coin I had given to him. Pinching the coin, he showed me one side, and pointed to it with the index finger of his other hand, and then to himself. Then he turned the coin to show me the other side, and again pointed at it, and then at me. One last time he pointed at the coin, and then turned his finger to point up.

By the time I processed the pantomime, he had already tossed the coin, shown me the result (it was his side) and raised the gate for me to proceed.

I began laughing, and he began laughing too.

Just laughing at the turn of events, the moment, and the moment of realization. I laughed, "Esta bien!" and thanked him.

I rode away laughing, and thinking, "That's justice!"

Later...

2:26PM
Mazatlán.

Camorones Imperiales

I`m sitting in the shade after eating at La Faena café. I had camorones imperiales; shrimp stuffed with cheddar cheese and wrapped in bacon. It was very tasty.

I rode through the most beautiful and relaxing countryside. From Culiacán to Mazatlán, on the 15 (libre, not cuota). The entire trip was gorgeous; happy little river towns, restive farm land, and scenic, verdent bluffs. Like if Arizona and Florida had a baby.

I suppose it is all due to a large delta or watershed.

The roads are perfect and smooth, not too much traffic and everything just feels easy.

However, I have noticed that a lot of people speed here, no exceptions even for semi-trucks (I saw one had flipped over a clover leaf going up the ramp, all the contents spilt down the embankment.)

Butterflies were all over and I`m sad to say that many of them hit me, but so many did not, and those streamed by my face and created orange and yellow streaks! There were sweet smells, too. Like dendelion or clover. It was a blissful experience, euphoric, even. Perfect temperatures, smooth, gentle curving roads. It was just as joyful an experience as I could have hoped to have. It felt surreal, at moments, it was such vivid perfection that it felt like a halucination.

During this blissful ride, I came around a gentle curve and upon a man who waved me down with his thumb. I don't know why, but without hesitation, I turned around and pulled up to him.

In the brief moment before I saw him and slowed down to turn around, I took in a white car parked carelessly on the opposite shoulder, with a crushed windshield.

The man was in his thirties, I'd say, with a short beard and rings around his eyes.

He shook my hand and explained he had been traveling the same direction as I was (toward Mazatlán) when he rounded the corner and cut it short, running onto the shoulder. Then he hit a speed limit sign (he said this without irony but I surmised it might have been karmic). The sign explained the smashed windshield.

Then he explained that he over corrected and swerved, apparently did a 180, and wound up on the opposite shoulder, facing the opposite direction.

He started the car and demonstrated that the transmission was stuck in neutral, and besides, he had two front flat tires.

It was a hopeless situation.

During all of this exposition, I noted 4 or 5 broken beer bottles in the bed of this Chevy Tornado (a modern interpretation of the El Camino), and allowed myself to wonder if their contents had played a part in this story.

In any case, I pressed my impovrished Spanish into use, and inquired what I could do to help.

I wasn't going to offer it, but if he asked I knew I would say yes.

He pointed in the direction of Mazatlán and to my bike,

Now is a good time to mention that the bracket for the box had broken a day or two before, and I had not much certainty it would hold the box, and now a man was indicating he'd like to ride on it.

Naturally, I said, "OK."

Off we went, down that winding road. I kept the speed low, and he shifted so that he was sitting on the box, his feet on the seat, and hands on my shoulders. He would be sitting at the height of a semi-truck cab.

I thought, "We must look ridiculous!" but no one seemed to take a second look at this odd couple. He, a bearded Mexican man, I, a white power ranger (all of my protective gear is white and plastic).

About 30 kilometers down the road, we entered a small town. He pointed to an older woman with a cart and indicated he wanted to stop.

She was selling shaved ice and he ordered one for himself and asked if I wanted one, as well. I declined but thanked him.

While she was preparing the treat, a chicken bus rolled up, and he signalled the driver. He indicated to me he would take the bus the rest of the way, so I started the bike and sped away to more curves and Mazatlán.

I want to specially acknowledge the financial contributions from Alexandre Nguyen, Manny Rangel, Michael Pang, my mom, and my aunt Julie, as well as Kate Phillips and Ian Wheatland for helping make these words and pictures possible!

Locked In!

The freeways in Mexico are generally lined by fences on either side, delineating private from federal land. However, there are countless driveways and access gates along the way. These may lead to small villages, grazelands, or fields of farm crops. It was the latter kind of place that this story unfolded.

Monday, November 17th, 2014
Somewhere in Mexico

Locked in!

Last night I thought I had found a good place to rest.

A dirt road that stretched for miles up the rolling hills that led to fields.

It looked perfect, and it seemed so, too.

I set up camp (read: put down a tarp and my sleeping bag.) and slept fairly well.

I only saw one vehicle on the dirt road, a pickup coming from the fields. It stopped at the intersection of the highway and the dirt road for a couple of minutes and after that I was left in peace.

In the morning, after eating an apple and brushing my teeth in the predawn light, I headed for the road and discovered why I hadn´t been disturbed: there was a gate, it was shut and it was chained to a post.

My stomach dropped and my sublime morning started to fade away, even as the gentle colors of a peach sunrise were beginning to seep out of the horizon.

Not to be deterred, I mounted the bike after thoroughly verifying that I could not circumvent the gate and went exploring down the dirt road.

At a crossroads, I explored first the left branch, but a quarter mile down the road it ended in a field of crops. Backtracking, I crossed the main road and went the other direction. That road dead ended at another locked gate.

I wobbled the bike back down the tractor tracks to the main dirt road and decided against going further in, as that direction didn´t seem to offer freedom from this fenced in field.

I found myself back at the locked gate, out of ideas and options. For a while I just waited, thinking that a farm hand would arrive soon and unlock the gate. I´d have some explaining to do, and I prepared my broken Spanish as best I could. I even prepared some money in case it came to that.

I wrote in my journal, took pictures and worried myself. Eventually, after an hour, I decided that there was no guarantee that anyone would come on this day, and even if they did, no guarantee that it would be soon.

Examining the fence, I noted some weaknesses between the first post to which the gate was chained shut, and the adjacent post. The barbed-wire fence could be cut, and pulled back. The bottom most strand was already unfastened. I would only need to cut one strand, and the others I could unwrap from around the post as they were not stapled to the gate post.

Out came the multi-tool. Out came the adrenaline. I detached the luggage from the bike, it would not fit otherwise. With a quickness I began unwrapping and pulling back the wire.

I did not want to be caught by a farmer taking down his fence. I´ve lived on a farm--fences are taken seriously.

In a few minutes the fence was open. I shuttled the luggage through first. Then I started the bike, and walked it to the opening. With some revving, a little slipping and one snag on the top wire, the bike was through. Now, I wanted to undo my damage.

Locked fast. This is after I had removed the fence and before I had repaired it.

Before I began, I had determined I would be able to mend the fence in a manner consistent with how other sections had been repaired. I set to work, the almost finished feeling of a race coursing through me.

I re-wrapped the wire around the gate post, and the piece I had cut, I was able to twist with a spare section of wire and reattach to the rest of the fence.

In a few minutes the job was done and I rearranged the plants to make a better presentation.

No doubt, the farmer would notice immediately, but at least no animals would get in or out and anyone else casually observing would not notice.

I re-loaded the bike, started the motor, and--with elation--sped off into the rising sun.

I want to specially acknowledge the financial contributions from Alexandre Nguyen, Manny Rangel, Michael Pang, my mom, and my aunt Julie, as well as Kate Phillips and Ian Wheatland for helping make these words and pictures possible!

Belonging

Belonging.

How does one belong? No really, how?

Is it when I feel accepted, or is it when I am accepted. If I'm accepted but I don't feel accepted, do I still belong?

People ask me where I'm from. I don't know how to answer that question.

I was born in Texas, but raised in Ohio. I'd like to claim I'm from Texas because I identify with the weather, and the individualist culture. But I only lived there for the first three years of my life. It's my birthplace, but it's not really the origin of Me. I don't know what it's like to live in Texas.

Then there is Ohio. I really don't like Ohio. I don't like to be associated with it. As a place, and as a general culture, I just don't identify with it at all. I don't want to be “claimed” by Ohio. But so far, it's the leading contender for where I “belong.”

I've lived in Arizona, a short while in the Utah desert, and most recently, California. I've never really felt like I belong in any of those places.

Sure, I've felt accepted, and I've felt comfortable, but no place has ever held me, no place has ever spoke to me; told me it is my home. Conversely, I've never arrived somewhere and felt “home,” or that I wanted to stake my claim to a place.

I'm always passing through. Sometimes for a longer time, sometimes for a shorter time. But everywhere I go, I always know that my time there is finite.

I had a moment of recognition in L.A. I was amongst a group of friends—4 or 5 of us. We were diverse, from different backgrounds, races and cultures. Because of that, I felt like I belonged, because I was part of the mix. But as we were hanging out, languages came up, and everyone started talking about their home life and the other languages they spoke because their parents were of a different ethnicity. I realized that as diverse as these friends were—each one of a different race—they all shared this common thread of being bicultural, bilingual, and it united them. I was the odd one out. I didn't have a distinct culture to identify with. I was just white. And in that instant, I didn't feel like I belonged there any more.

Nothing had changed. No one spoke to me differently, and we still had fun, but for the rest of the evening I felt like the black [white] sheep. It made me sad.

After that night, I started thinking more seriously about where I belonged. In my reflection, I didn't come up with any place. In Ohio, I feel like I would have had too many experiences that people that have lived there their whole lives could not relate to. I have this feeling that even if I went back to the origin of Me, that I would no longer fit. I've been transformed by my experiences, and my opinions have changed, and those things would make it much more difficult to find belonging amongst what I remember the vast majority of Ohioans to be like.

Equally, I don't feel like I fit in other areas because my origins have shaped my opinions and core tenets. My moral code and integrity is largely influenced by the Christian culture I was raised in, even though I don't practice any religion now.

Therefore, I'm as though a freshwater fish that swam into the sea and adapted to breathe the saline water. I feel I can't go back because no one will understand what it is to breathe the saline water, or the other types of fish and sights I've seen. Not that I've lived an extraordinary life, just that my background experiences are different from most people's there. On the other hand, I'm obviously an interloper in the sea. I don't belong there either.

The only time I feel like I'm fitting into people's understanding is when I'm traveling. A traveler is a person that comes from one place and goes to another, and when you see them, you accept that about them, questioning much less whether they belong at their present location because it is only a waypoint for them to get to where they belong.

I fit in, in a lot of places—I can be likeable when I want to be. Typically, I can break off a little piece of myself and show it to someone and say, “See, it's like one of your pieces!”

I relate to many people that way. But as with anyone, I have many pieces, and maybe unlike many people, I feel that my pieces are wildly diverse and combined in a rare manner, and I struggle to find communities of individuals that share many of the same pieces.

That was the realization in L.A., that I thought I was matching more pieces with people than I really was. Or maybe, that everyone else was matching just as a few pieces to me as I was to them, when in reality they had many pieces to share with each other but fewer to share with me.

So what now? My feet itch—all the time they tell me to move on.

I'll find a place once in a while and I'll stay until I find that I've exhausted my pieces to share, and then I feel like I don't belong any more when I see everyone else seems to have endless pieces to show, share and match with each other.

It's that grade school feeling of being left out because you don't watch the same television shows, or wear the same fashion, only now it's because you don't have similar ideological backgrounds, or cultural experiences or childhood struggles.

I felt like I belonged in L.A. when I dated someone from there. I felt like she vouched for me. I felt protected by her influence. As soon as she broke up with me, I felt expelled by the homogeneous force of the city. I lost my in. Always on the outside, I feel I orbit social circles and only interact when someone from within reaches without and holds on to me for a second, like a playground merry-go-round where I'm held in the orbit until I'm let go, and then I float again.

I hope one day, that if I travel to enough places, I will by chance find a place that I know I can call home. A place I can claim for myself. A place where I can find people with who I can share and match many pieces of myself.

~*~

That's it for today. I promise the next post will have some adventures from my current trip. This theme of belonging has been weighing on me and as such, it has become part of the larger theme for this journey. It's something I reflect on often. I welcome opinions and personal experiences from anyone willing to share. 

Tears Shed to the Wind

Tears shed to the wind:

I listen

“Has the world gone mad, or is it me?”

Such a long time it has been

Since I have beheld unadulterated beauty

The green life of these hills,

your Spring skin:

each draped over fine bones.

These hills, these words,

Remind me of your handsome curves.

Visceral and pure,

tears shed to the wind

Tears cried again, and again.

“And I can't see my love.”

~*~

Sun. Nov. 16, 2014 Somewhere in Northern Mexico

I forgot to mention the fog!

In the morning, I rode into the deepest and thickest fog I had ever seen in the desert.

I slept in a field last night. It was right next to the highway and loud, but I wasn't disturbed all night.

I navigate primitively, with a map, simply following road signs from one town to the next. Connect the dots: reality version.

My Spanish is poor—impoverished, even—but not bankrupt, and I can make myself understood. I have a harder time understanding others, but I think that will come

I can generally comprehend all road signs, and I'm working on not translating everything into English in my head.

~*~

These days spent in Northern Mexico, they were the acclimatization period. My head swirling, the ground blurring, road twisting and engine churning, I tired quickly.

In the evenings I would find a place to camp, close to the road, a place to hide the motorcycle. Not so much for fear of theft, or because I was doing something wrong—though if I've mentioned those things they must count for something—but because it made me feel more comfortable to know no one would stop for any reason, and I could sleep peacefully.

At 5:30 in the morning, before the cold light of day broke, I awoke. By 6:30 I would be on the road. One of these mornings, I reflected that the phrase the "cold light of day" while it can mean the harsh unforgiving illumination day, to me it meant the hours of the day where light had broken darkness, yet the sun had not yet appeared. It is that pre-dawn period where the light is unforgiving in its revelation of what the night has held in secret, as well as the cold hours spent before the sun makes its tardy appearance.

I began to expect those morning hours, the cold light of day that would insist that I begin moving again, despite the cold wind that would creep and seep into my clothes, then my skin and bones. Only later would it be expelled by the sun. 

The roads in the north west of Mexico, especially the toll roads and some of the free federal highways, are the nicest roads I have ever ridden. Better than anything in the states. The drivers stay to the right except to pass, so there's hardly ever any congestion, and the speed limits are reasonable. I would typically ride around 50 to 65 MPH, or 80 to 110 Km/H, and ride for 8 to 10 hours each day.

I want to specially acknowledge the financial contributions from Alexandre Nguyen, Manny Rangel, Michael Pang, my mom, and my aunt Julie, as well as Kate Phillips and Ian Wheatland for helping make these words and pictures possible!