The Darkness and the Fog

Friday, November 21, 2014
Between Puebla and Verecruz

Unable to find a hotel in Puebla, I rode on into the dark, deep blue horizon as the sun set behind me.

The temperature began to drop precipitously and an overcast sky began to let fall a light rain.

After I passed through a toll station, I pulled to the side of the road by a rest area to add some layers.

I always ride with earplugs. The drone of the engine, and especially the wind noise, will cause hearing damage, so I wear earplugs to mitigate the noise.

There were people milling around the rest area, and a few vendors selling tortillas and soup. A fire was going and some men were chatting around it. I couldn’t hear anything, though, with my earplugs. The sounds were muted, and I felt as a ghost, moving unnoticed through the midst of these people. I experienced that sensation—of being a ghost—the rest of the night.

~*~

Trying something new: musical accompaniment.

(Press play and continue reading.)

Warm as I could be, I pressed on; into the dark, into the cold, into the drizzle—into the unknown.

The road had taken me to the highlands.  I had ascended to Mexico City, I knew, and I hadn't yet descended. The temperatures were 30 to 40 degrees cooler than what I had experienced up to now. I pressed on, hoping to find a hotel or lower elevation with warmer weather. 

And then I hit the fog.

The night was black, and that blackness closed in.

The road emptied dramatically, no more cars, just big semi-trucks lit up with all their lights. 

I began to see signs warning of something, but I didn't recognize the word. I suspected it was rain or ice.

Yellow lights flashed, signaling caution. The lane markers were illuminated by LEDs.

I slowed my pace, as fog began to grow thick.

I also began to pass many semi-trucks pulled to the side of the road—all their marker lights on. 

Oil fires were lit in open pans. I could see first their glow in the white haze, and as I grew closer, they illuminated the border between darkness and an opaque white ether. 

Sound soaked into the fog and did not come back. 

The road was dropping, and the bike didn't have to work as hard, the engine coasted, and with the low speed and ear plugs, there wasn't much to hear now.

Now the road became alive; the fog lifted it up. The reflections of its signs and lines all to be seen, but the world that held them seemed to vanish.

The lights of a truck or car here and there.

The darkness of sound was only punctuated by the big trucks, their engines pounding, resisting the steep grades.

As I approached each truck and trailer, they emerged from the white cloud like lumbering giants—sentient beings on a steady journey into this unknown. 

The road tried to get away from me, it was moving and squirming. I had to slow way down to keep my grasp on it. 

I weaved and banked the moto to stay on the winding curves as the road dropped, dropped into nothing.

At that point, I had completely departed this world. That was how I felt. The earth had fallen away, as an old depiction of a flat earth, and I had ridden a road off the earth and into space.

Looking up, I saw nothing, not stars, not sky, not clouds, just blackness, or the near grey whiteness of the cloud I now inhabited. I could not see to the side, as it was dark there, too. All that existed was what I could see before me; an infinite road that appeared from first the grey, then the white of the fog. Road lines receded away from me and vanished—not around a curve or behind a horizon, or into the distance, they just disappeared. Everything disappeared and appeared as if by magic. It was a surreal and visceral experience, all at once.

Before particularly tight turns—switchbacks—I could see the lights of trucks glowing in white fog not far below me, seemingly floating in blackness that spanned the distance between us. 

My light shown only 40’ into that white darkness. Shards separated from each other, the fog showed me the insides of my headlight’s beam, dissecting each reflection from within its housing.

This whole time we were descending. Down, down, into darkness, into silence, into nothing. 

With nothing to see beyond, I couldn't imagine what to expect, just more black road, white lines and yellow lines. More white fog and more darkness all around it. 

I went through three tunnels, holding my breath through each. I was thankful for the surety of a defined space, with all sides measured and quantified. And then I was back in the ethereal world, the nebulous world.

Indeed, the Spanish word for fog, printed in large, black block letters on white signs was “Niebla.” I made the connection then, to the warning and its meaning.

Finally, I descended out of that misty cloud, but feeling like I held some of that foggy mist in my head.

It was raining below that layer of the sky, but it was no worse than the cloud above.

As I entered the town of Orizaba, I spotted a sign that said “Hotel,” in red letters on a salmon-pink building.

I was going too fast to pull in, but I pulled onto the shoulder, turned around, and drove through the graveled mud to the front door.

~*~

Inside, two young women and a man were sitting in what looked like a restaurant.  It was stark and clean inside, though, almost too clean to believe it was ever used.

The room had bare tables with white tops. Black chairs surrounded the tables and the floor was gleaming white tile. The walls were as salmon-pink on the inside as they were on the outside.

One of the young women looked slightly older, and it looked like she was eating cereal. It was about 7:30 PM.

I opened the door and stepped inside.

Looking back from where I came, I saw my bike’s headlight was shining into the windows, and you could see it revealing the rain that the darkness was hiding.

I stretched to step onto a towel laid on the floor a little way from the door. I tamped my wet, muddy feet and smiled.

The man got up from the table speaking a polite farewell and departed the women. Walking out the door, he disappeared into the darkness.

I smiled, and asked for a room. The younger girl gestured toward the front desk, and I gingerly walked across the no-man’s land of pristine tile.

I had a delightful time talking to the younger girl, Selena, as she tried to explain she needed a “factura”—something like a form or a receipt, I gathered. She used Google Translate on her smartphone, but it didn’t seem to bring up the proper translation.

We laughed our way through the language barrier and settled the confusion with much smiling and shrugging,

Eventually, I paid 300 pesos and tip-toed off the gleaming tiles and walked back into the night and drove around the back of the hotel to park in front of room 104.

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!