ART-MOTO

November 15, 08

A funny thing happened the other day when I came down out of the mountains from San Javier, rolled into Loreto on the main drag, went as far as I could on that street and stopped to get my bearings. I had wandered off the main highway a couple hundred kilometers back to explore the area around La Purisima that Ed and I stumbled into a few years back. I had also taken leave of Ingo and Birte, the pair of Germans who had kindly adopted me into their camper back in San Ignacio. As it seems I had been passed off from my previous adoptive family, the ‘crazy guys on bikes,’ Michael and Ciska and their two young boys Jesse and Sammy, a Dutch-Australian family touring Latin America on 2 tandem bicycles.

Following Hwy 1 south out of San Ignacio, IngoBirte and I putted down through Santa Rosalia, and Mulege to land on the beach at Playa Burro, where we set up camp under one of the vacant palapas. Crystal clear water stretched out from our feet to the jagged peaks that rose up on the opposite shore of Bahia de Concepcion, easily one of the most beautiful spots in Baja.

We spread out on the beach, I tested my hammock, we swam, we even hiked some. It was idyllic, warm, the mosquitoes were fierce but only came out around dusk and so long as Ingo was around, they weren’t all that interested in me.

There was a small community of gringos living full time along this stretch of beaches, long-hair types, a bit rough on the edges, who had moved down to get away. One guy described his little hamlet as a town full of drunks with a fishing problem. Residency swelled to beyond capacity during the winter months when the snow birds flocked in form the northern US and Canada. Luckily, we were early and didn’t have to fight for a camp spot.

Life was easy there. Since IngoBirte had cupboards, a sink, a stove and a fridge, I didn’t have to worry about carrying my own food or even soiling my own pots. Ingo usually prepared one of his special dinners and Birte would ban me from her kitchen when the dishes needed scrubbing. About the only culinary contribution I made was the occasional morning mushi stuff, as I called it in an attempt to overcome the language barrier, aka oatmeal with bananas and raisins, which Ingo turned his nose up at. He preferred toast with jam or with a tuna medley and green tea. Birte humored me at least and tried some. They were very European and very civilized, for Germans.

We were there for two days before the thought of doing nothing, of killing time until the next meal became unbearable. I wanted to get back on the bike and back off road.

I had been holed up in San Ignacio for over two weeks, waiting for parts to repair my bike and now that I was mobile again, I could feel the dirt calling to me. I’d been staring at a section of the map just west of where we were for weeks and I wanted to finish the business Ed and I had begun there.

When Ed and I returned from San Miguel in my brother’s pickup truck in ‘07, we boarded the Ferry in Mazatlan for La Paz then caught the freshly tarred highway running north-south, the length of the Baja peninsula. We expected it would take us past Conception Bay and through Mulege, one of Ed’s favorite spots. I wasn’t paying much attention to names of towns or to the map for that matter, I was relying on Ed for navigation. He pretends to know Baja like the back of his hand, at least he talks that way and well, he must have been dozing off, because we missed our turn. What we didn’t miss was that the road leading out of Ciudad Insurgentes was in much worse shape than the one leading into it. The first pie size pothole we saw surprised us, the second and third too and we imagined the local elected official there was not in favorable standing with those doling out the road improvement funds.

The highway started to look like an old minefield and the ruined remnants of roadside eateries and petrol stations should have made us wonder long before they did. We drove for hours, bobbing and weaving, not recognizing anything on the map, the road periodically turning to dirt and back. Other vehicles became scarce and the only ones we saw went racing past us in all their glorious disrepair, dragging mufflers and body parts and bouncing in and out of holes like they were on a ski slope pocked with moguls. This was obviously sport.

When the scarred pavement finally yielded to a rough corrugated dirt track about a hundred kms past Ciudad Insurgentes, we realized we must have made a mistake and would either have to turn back or try to push through. Our main concern then was whether or not we had enough gas and where we might find more.

The upside of getting lost was discovering this beautiful stretch of nearly abandoned road and the handful of interesting spots along its way. We both imagined ripping down those very same roads on our dirt bikes, flying over the bumps and throttling through the corners, we were practically drooling at the thought of it.

When we did finally find gas, it was in a little town that had undoubtedly seen better days. A hurricane had thrashed the area and left scores of enormous date palms littered along the river that ran through the valley and parallel to main street, La Purisima. Whole hillsides had rushed down across the road to merge with the storm-swollen river and now it was just a mess.

By that time we had our bearings and we thought we might be able to cut over and still catch Conception Bay. When we inquired about the roads, the response was rather peculiar. The locals who, wishing never to disappoint, usually just tell you what they think you want to hear, all seemed apprehensive about sending us into the mountains. The roads they suggested were maybe a bit washed out and rough for, looking at our little 2WD pickup, una trocka like this one.. But you may be able to make it, if you think.

It was getting on in the day and so, with a full tank of gas, we heeded the warnings, turned north again and headed towards San Juanico. And we were both left with a longing to know just what those roads looked like.

When I left the nest and peeled off Hwy 1, the beat up road sign indicated 61 kms to the next town, 65 to La Purisima. The dirt track in was rough, though improvement crews were scattered along it, chipping away at its surface, widening and grading it, bits at a time. A couple slopes were especially slow going, large rocks and ruts eager to stand in the way brought forward progress to crawl but none lasted more than a hundred meters or so. More alarming were the dips that came out of nowhere on an otherwise high speed section, causing the tires to flatten on the rims and the suspension to bottom under the weight of the fully laden bike.

And I had forgotten just how unnerving it could be to hear the cacophony of knocks, squeaks and rattles that reverberate from the bike off road. Being in an especially fragile state since the bike broke down, I must have stopped a half dozen times to check for loose bolts. Fortunately my imagination was more active than were the demons at sabotaging my ride.

This was beautiful country, hilly, studded with healthy greenery and teeming with goats and horses and signs of other wildlife too. Heavy volcanic activity in the area had scarred the landscape but enriched the soil. Rivers flowed and where they stopped, pools remained in their paths. The air was fresh and less burdened by the dust that plagues most other parts of Baja.

I arrived to the edge of a plateau where views soared out over the precipice and a town lay stretched out below on the valley floor beside a wide snaking river. The sun was starting to sag in the sky and I wanted to find a spot to camp rather than push on. There would surely be an opportunity there, with food and water to boot.

A first cruise through town was fruitless but the road continued a couple kilometers into another town and then another. Nothing since the highway and then Carambuche, San Isidro and La Purisima, buried deep in the hills, all strung together along an 8km stretch of this life giving river. I doubled back and figured on turning down towards the river at the first welcoming little dirt road.

The family I met down at the end of the cul-de-sac rose to the occasion like a welcoming committee. With my request Jose Luis Arces showed me down through his property to the river’s edge, where his family’s feet had carved and maintained access to the water through the reeds that grew thick there. With his cowboy boot he kicked some horse shit to the side and pulled up some of the weeds that were growing out of the only flat sandy spot in sight. Signs of flooding were apparent everywhere and he said the water had risen up over its bank, flooded his house and taken with it everything that was not nailed down. A hundred year flood, the aftermath of which Ed and I had been witness to.

That afternoon was glorious though so I stripped off my gear and went for a swim.

A quick walk to town produced beer and tacos and some clarifications about the road ahead. I figured the people I met that night would be most apt to inform me of its condition but oddly few knew anything at all about it. Partly because people there didn’t get out much and partly because the road had remained impassible since that same big storm, and people didn’t get out there much.

It turned out to be the old mission road, linking Comondu and San Javier and their sister missions. Not possible by car one guy said when he found out I was traveling by motorcycle, but you.. no problem. I wasn’t sure if I should be reassured or afraid he assumed I was one of the Baja 1000 racers that come ripping through those parts at a hundred miles an hour. I was clearly on a different kind of ride.

Most of all I was afraid I would find myself on a narrow shelf somewhere, skirting a gorge halfway up the side of a cliff and run into a two meter gap in the road, rocks tumbling the thousand odd meters to the floor below as I approached the edge to look across. But that’s not the kind of impassible this road had in store for me. There was no reason to be afraid of heights where I was going, the dodgy parts of this road dipped in a long bowing arc through a wide and shallow valley.

Straight out of town, the road was harsh and the sharp volcanic outcrops that studded its surface were jarring and well worth avoiding. For several kilometers I wound through the hills, sticking to the main road and avoiding the ranching drives that peeled off it, until the most heavily trafficked lane boasted no tracks at all, spare the prints of a million hooves that meandered through its rocks like a little rivulet.

That was the first time I looked up to pay the vultures any mind. Though not circling over me per se, I could tell they had their eyes on me, waiting for me to crash and lay helpless under my machine or simply succumb to the heat, go bonkers and wander off to perish under the oppressive sun, They had designs for me, I could tell. So I watched where I pointed my front wheel.

I told myself that, in theory, I would stop and turn around if ever I got to a point whereby going forward I would be unable to return. That instead of risking getting caught out, I would do the sensible thing and turn around. But that’s easier said than done because you never know if you can get through something until you try and if you do make it, you may as well go on because you’d rather not have to go back. That’s where I found myself, halfway up the road, looking ahead, looking back. Fuck it. I was surely almost there, besides, that evening’s cold beer was awaiting me.

In the end I was lucky to have anywhere to point my front wheel. The road worsened and the bad bit happened when the whole width of it turned into a dry river bed with proper boulders and all. I followed the game trail back and forth across the arroyo cum road, falling a couple times and stumbling repeatedly. And after toiling with it for a kilometer or so, the road started to materialize again, though to be sure, it was no award winning feat of engineering when it did.

I knew I would be OK when I spotted a set of tire tracks running in to join mine. Where they can go, I can go. I followed on until another and yet another set of tracks joined us and we were clearly all headed into town. And the vultures went back to being condors and turned tail in search of more weary prey.

Comondu came first and then San Javier where I spent the night in a mini pen of sorts, down the road from the beautifully restored mission and the restaurant with the warm dinner and cold beer.

It was the following day, unannounced, that I came to a stop by the water in Loreto and Ingo came running over to flag me down. The pair of Germans had been sitting there by the main square, sipping lemonades and in disbelief, snapping pics of the throngs of gringo tourists who had filed off a cruise ship and were now mooing about town in all their splendor.

So I parked the bike, got myself a lemonade and sat down next to them to watch the parade.

November 22, 08

Maybe I should have seen the red flags, maybe I did and I chose to ignore them.

Lee Gross and I met in La Paz on the way to the Topolobampo ferry, one of a handful of the roll-on, roll-off jobs that take people and their wheels across the Sea of Cortez from Baja to the mainland of Mexico and back.

These are the working vessels that link some of the northern ports of the Mexican Riviera -Guaymas, Topo, La Paz, Mazatlan, Santa Rosalia- though few of passengers on these boats are remotely aware of any notion of the Mexican Riv. Nothing fancy about these rusting steel transporters or the mix of truckers, migrant workers and occasional tourists that board them and kill time eating fistfuls of chips and candy and swilling beer and sodas. Any remnants of their 1950s heritage of high-brow service on the European seas has been resurfaced with a couple layers of paint and the stale smell of sweat and urine. This is not a duty-free and cheap alcohol destination in itself as are the ferries of the Baltic and North Seas. This is cattle class. People milling around and back and forth from the feeding trough to the watering hole. They trudge on when it’s time to board and off again when it’s time to disembark.

We arrived in Topolobampo after dark and rode into town to find a place where we and the bikes could safely spend the night. Hotel Casablanca was in the center of Los Mochis, a major hub of one of the main agricultural regions in Mexico. Though it was rather sleepy when we rolled into town that night, the place came alive by early morning. It’s a busy city with wide bustling streets and a serious pollution problem. Every car, bus and bike spews smoke in shades of white, black and blue. Downtown, which encompasses a couple square miles, is covered in a seamless veil of painted facades, stuffed window displays and tarpaulin covered carts. Fruits and vegetables, cooked and recently butchered animals, womens underwear and other clothes, over the counter prescriptions and the ubiquitous cowboy hats and boots are on sale in any of the main avenues or alleys. And people swarm to gather them up.

Los Mochis is also the coastal gateway to the network of mountains and river gorges that make up the Copper Canyon National Park, and is the end of the line of the El Chepe, an historical narrow gauge train that snakes its way through the park and up past Creel on the way to Chihuahua.

Lee and I were having trouble deciding whether we would ride together and if so, which way to ride. His instinct had been to ride south and around the canyons on the asphalt. He had crashed several times on his first attempts at riding the sandy dirt tracks of northern Baja, suffered a number of bruises and twisted limbs, and had not yet recovered the nerve to tackle more of the stuff back on his fully laden bike. I on the other hand was clearly drawn to the canyons, to the unknown, to the dirt road leading off the highway and back to the adventure. Despite any crashes in Baja, any minor injuries I had sustained or any mechanical trouble had had, I knew where my road lay. Yet, as brave as I wanted to believe I was, my longing was not without reservation. These are rugged and expansive mountains concealing their fair share of mystery and danger and I quite welcomed the idea of having some company.

We made several attempts to leave Mochis, once in the direction of the mountains, once down the coast and for some reason or another, we kept finding ourselves back to our room at the Casablanca. Our decision seemed laborsome and uneasy. This should have been the first of the red flags but in the end we rode out together past El Fuerte and Choix to the end of the asphalt and landed at Tino’s place in Tasajera, just before dark.

Tino and his friends were the first people we saw, slumped over the sides of their pickup trucks, sitting on their lowered tailgates. They were waiting but not waiting, talking, resting, blowing off steam, wasting time before they made their way home for the evening, right there on the side of the road, in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. They were drinking tins of Tecate and tossing empties to the dusty shoulder. They were dusty too, in fact everything for miles was dusty. Years of exposure to the elements had carved deep lines into their dark faces and their calloused toes poked through their huaraches like the bulbous scars on a tree that sticks just too far into the road.

We rode up and interrupted their little party. It took them a while to figure us out, it usually does. We must look rather strange to the people we meet, dirty with road grime, dressed from head to toe in our brightly colored battle gear, riding our heavy and clumsy looking bikes, mysterious in our own right. Without allowing the time for uncertainties to grow unnecessarily and with my helmet removed to appear more approachable, in a decent Spanish I announced our purpose. Could we camp somewhere in the area, possibly in one of your fields or something? Most of the times people respond before they realize how bizarre they find it that one of my kind, a guero, speaks like they do and their answer, I find, is often favorable. Then come the inevitable questions to satisfy their curiosity. Who? When? What? Where? How?

Within moments, we are offered a spot to pitch our tents, then some hushed debate reveals there is room at one of their houses and before we know it, a kind of hospitality contest has resulted in multiple offers. If one place doesn’t suit us, we are welcome to try the next. They are eager to ensure we feel at home and assure us we will be safe with them. Wishing not to insult, I accept the first offer and hope for the best. No matter, we have found a place to sleep for the night.

Then I understand I’m giving Tino a ride home and in an ungainly manner, he throws his drunken huarache shod foot over the back of the bike and with one hand on my shoulder, the other gripping a fresh Tecate, he hoists himself up to land in a seated position, squeezed in just behind me on my solo seat. And off we go.

We arrive at his house and just manage around the corner and up the steep drive without tipping over. His father, Candelario, sitting on the porch with Tino’s sons Alex and Tinito, is wondering who the hell we are and what the hell we are doing there. If a bit awkward at first, we end up spending two lovely nights there, due in great deal to his mother Sarah’s incredible generosity. Tino, of course, insisting that she will go out of her way to cook us one of her famous meals and that we shall allow ourselves to be spoiled by her. She will be back shortly, she has no idea we are there.

Tino showed us to our room, the biggest in the house with the biggest bed by far. I tried to refuse it but was told no-one slept there. I never did figure out if we were taking over the parents bedroom and no-one betrayed their secret if they kept one about it, but the only bathroom in the house was accessed through our room and I suspected we had. I would not describe their living condition as poor, so much as rural. They seemed to have much of what they needed and in many ways more richness in their lives than most rich people tend to have. Again, Sarah, with all the warmth that surrounded her, her home, her kitchen, seemed to be responsible for most of this.

Tasajera was quaint and clean but behind the scenes, there were few legitimate jobs to be had and most everyone we spoke to had spent at least a couple of years working illegally across the border in the States. The town was not very isolated but access to it was still on a dirt road. I believe this has a lot to do with how corrupt or not the spirit of these towns can be. Pavement means easy access and progress but facing a flood of foreign temptations can also result in the ebbing of customary living and a towns’ unique identity. As it is, I am surprised so many people had returned home and the town still had a healthy feeling.

We found out a lot of things about Tino as he skinned up a joint of the local stuff in the torn off corner of a sheet of college ruled note paper. Stuff you couldn’t assume by simple observation, but which made sense when put into context. He liked to talk a lot and further enjoyed trying to shock us. This was the the first weed I had seen in Mexico on this trip and as it was taking effect I was being explained how important a role it played in the region of the Copper Canyon. It was everywhere and a lot of people were involved in it. Tino was a picker. Not to worry, we would be safe with him.

Tino’s intoxication was what broke the ice, really, but I could tell it bothered Sarah. She was used to it, she probably didn’t deserve to have to deal with it, it was her lot in life. Her younger son, the good one, died in a car accident up the road and she was left with Tino. Tino had been living in New York for a long time, had a couple of kids there and then got himself mixed up in some dirty business, lived out a couple sentences in the joint, was deported and was now banned indefinitely from States. Among his friends he was known as Tino Loco but with us he was very civil and even rather pleasant. When he wasn’t plastered that is, then he was sort of funny in small doses, not really falling down drunk, mainly just making a fool of himself, but he still managed to break the ice.

He had the whole village coming round to the house. He shouted out to anyone who passed by, wanting us to meet them, wanting to show us off. By the end of the night everyone was coming out of the woodwork just to see what all the fuss was about. His English was poor, but was the kind that seemed to get better with every drink, to a certain point. He spoke it proud and loud. Lee, who doesn’t speak but a few words of Spanish, managed to blend into the background, but Tino kept one arm over my shoulder and sloshed beer around from the other hand as he gesticulated here and there and all around about what life was like in the States and about how he knew my story and how we were best buddies and all. He wanted to sort us out with the local school girls, he was also embarrassing. I knew the drill, I swayed with him a while and played along until I could tell no-one was amused. Then with a grin I took advantage of his sloppy state and slandered him for the others’ entertainment. It was a great night and it really felt like we had arrived in Mexico.

The next day was, well, like many other morning-afters, a lot of the charm was gone and we related to Tino in a different way. He was slinking around, popping out occasionally to puff on a joint. I didn’t know what to say to him. Since we planned to stay another night, Lee and I decided to ride around and explore the area. We could leave the boxes behind and have a bit more fun, we thought. Though Tino looked like he was ready to jump on my bike when we were leaving, I didn’t invite him.

Our ride wasn’t quite the one we were hoping for. Neither one of us was on point. I was thinking it would be a good opportunity for Lee to get comfortable off road with his bike unladen but he wasn’t into it. Last night’s weed was still clouding my mind and dulling my senses and I too was having a hard time getting into it. Besides, there was a strange feeling about riding somewhere without my stuff, knowing I would have to return for it. On the way out I went down.

I saw a snake slithering across the road and, caught of guard, I grabbed too much front brake and washed out the front of the bike. The road was hard with a thin layer of sand on it and I went down fast and hit the ground hard, my left shoulder, my head, and somewhere I caught my right thumb. I was only doing about 25 when I got off but I was slow to get back up and I was hurt. A few moments later, Lee crested the hill where I was standing over the bike, he dismounted and helped me lift it and lean it on its stand. I was cradling my arm, I could barely move it. I rode on just the same, sore but able to control the bike fine.

Tino was a bit sore when we returned, not very happy looking, not very happy to see us either. He was hung over. He remained kind hearted but distant and much of his humor had vanished. I could feel the vast differences between us. We were moving on and sadly it was obvious he likely wouldn’t be. Much of what we built up the eve fizzled away, but that was no real surprise.

Sarah was the same sweet woman, free from the waves of drink and drug that drove her son and full as ever with joy and contentment, albeit in the life and love of her savior, the one and only, Jesus Christ. In many ways I had become closer to Sarah than Tino and in her presence I felt more security than I think I could ever feel with Tino, ever. Mothers have an incredible way of making one feel safe. She motioned the cross with her thumb and fore finger, up and down and across our chests, while she muttered her mantra and sent us off with the blessing of her God. She prayed also that we would return someday to visit. She was everything Tino had said she was and more.

After a final home cooked breakfast, we rode back out to the road where we met Tino and then left, up into mountains. This is the part Lee was apprehensive about. He had been nervous about the dirt roads and now that we were out on them again, none of his fears had dissipated. He was still nervous. He did what he could to shake it off, I did what I could to stick with him through it and together we came out the other side of it, a bit shaken but whole.

The road to the mine at Sauzal was hard and gravely and slippery at times but wide and well maintained. It’s a beautiful ride as it climbs up and over a handful of ridges before it dips down to meet the Rio Fuerte. From there it snakes along the river for a couple dozen miles until the little town of Tubares. We stopped there mid afternoon to set up camp along the river’s edge, on a sandbar, just beyond the bridge.

It was an easy day and we reveled in the beauty of the mountains that had grown steeper and taller the further into them we penetrated. We splashed around a while upstream in a deep, cold pool before making our way back to the bikes to pitch our tent and cook up some food.

There were some people about, most of them ambling down to the shores to bathe. Two young boys threw rocks and waded back and forth across a shallow bit, a little red truck backed up to the water’s edge and unloaded a couple of tired workers into the water. A large flatbed truck, it’s driver filling its empty bed with gravel, we found out, to have enough traction to climb back up and out of the canyon. A man on horseback rode by and out of sight, up river, then reappeared a half hour later, his horse soaked up to its shoulders. At dusk, some teenagers drove their SUVs down onto the sand across from us, blasted a few ranchera tunes, then left. All but for the white Jeep Grand Cherokee with the black tinted windows made it seem like a rather sleepy town.

The Jeep rolled down off the bridge on our side, turned and drove towards us across the sand. I stepped over to it as it was passing and raised my hand in greeting, a gesture I’ve grown accustomed to doing when in someone else’s back yard. The chunky guy behind the wheel lowered his window to say they were going for a dip and rolled on.

I saw this red flag but I didn’t know what to do about it.

I shifted my attention back to the bikes, the tent and our food until one of the five guys who had piled out of the Jeep, the token one who could speak a couple words of English, was waving a large bud in the air and having a laugh mouthing those words to get our attention. I figured I ought to humor him, go over and feel them out, rather than ignore them. They were drinking beer, tossing empties into the river and now I could smell the thick pot smoke on the light breeze floating my way. They weren’t going away just yet. This was their back yard.

I strolled over without hesitation. Hola, que tal? I let them know I could speak Spanish. They looked me over and flashed their bud again asking rhetorically if I didn’t have weed like this where I came from. I’m from California, man, come on. But I didn’t insist. Besides I wasn’t in the mood to smoke, not there, not then, with those characters.

They were a strange bunch, like a small swarm of bees. The two guys on the periphery, one loud and crazy looking, one just crazy looking were flitting about and were the only ones to get in the water. Their gazes were fleeting and hard to meet. They were distracting at first, unpredictable.

It was the other three huddled on a large rock outcropping that drew me back in with their inquiries. More of the usual questions but something to focus on. I knelt down in front of them to address them when a bit of bling at one of their hips caught my eye. Then my eyes cautiously made the rounds to discover that these three were all packing heat. This was obviously the core of the group, the ones that keep their cool until they feel they’ve got control. But by the time I had assessed the situation, they let me know they knew I knew and everything was cool. By this time, Lee had joined us and they offered us beers.

The one of the three guys who moved lazily and chose his words carefully seemed to have the respect of the others and was slowly warming up. He sat closest me and the bulk of the conversation was funneled through the two of us. Lee sat behind me, off to the side. The slow guy was clean cut and sported a baseball cap and cowboy boots, the other two important ones too. He had been in the military for ten years, stationed all over Mexico. He had enjoyed traveling and was proud to know his country. Now he and his friends were marijuaneros, they were growing weed, transporting it to the States, selling it, they even dealt in coke. Did I want any? No, I couldn’t afford to get caught with it, thanks. I had forgotten about the two peripheral guys and they slowly settled down to join the party behind the others. I had also forgotten about Lee; he was just sitting there, following as best he could, not following much.

I entertained their questions until I thought they were satisfied, then excused myself to make dinner while there was still light, before the sun set. We brushed palms and knocked knuckles and said our good byes. They tried to assure me we would be safe there that night. This was definitely a red flag.

Back at camp I exhaled a deep, long sigh. Within a few minutes our new friends piled into their Jeep and rolled back past us across the sand with the black windows up, climbed to the bridge and over it and they were gone. Lee and I giggled in disbelief and without giving much thought to what we were doing, began cutting vegetables.

Dinner was cooked and eaten automatically and the sun went behind the mountains at 5:30, right on schedule. That’s when the teenagers came down to blast their ranchera music and then leave. And as the veil of darkness settled around us, we heard the first couple pops go off in the distance. They were loud enough to hear but confusing because the darkness had not yet been accompanied by silence and they blended in with the noises the pots were making, the rustling of our clothes. Maybe we knew what the pops were, though we turned to each other for confirmation, maybe we hoped we could ignore them.

I reckon we heard a hundred rounds that night, there was no way to ignore them. Some single reports, large caliber, loud but farther down the canyon, others closer and louder, bouncing off the canyon walls, still some, the quieter ra-ta-ta-tat of machine gun fire, all kept us rapt in our tent, covers up just below our noses, our ears exposed, listening for more clues, listening to the crunching of stones beneath the tires of cars as they wound down one side of the canyon and across the bridge, sure they were driving down the beach, right outside the tent, only to hear them fade back up the other side and away. This went on intermittently, all night long.

The funny thing was none of the shots seemed to be answered, like someone was shooting at tin cans to pass the time. There was never any escalation, no battles ensued, there was no desperation in the shots we heard, like they were just for fun, coming in waves like the moods of a drunk who passes in and out of consciousness, wakes up suddenly remembering what he was doing and has another go at the cans on the short wall.

In the end a numbness settled in and although sleep was not deep, I dozed in and out and for a long time morning seemed impossible, until the light woke me with a jump and I sat up, scratched my head, looked over to see Lee and tried to piece it all together again.

Morning is glorious and with it returns a sense of peace. Birds are chirping, the towns people are coming out, the same little red truck drives down to the beach and backs up to the river’s edge for its morning ritual and the gunfire has ceased. By my calculation, the last shot echoed through the canyon around 4:45.

And best of all, there are things to do. The tent needs storing, the bike needs packing, we need to be dressed and in that way, the day begins. We occupied ourselves with these tasks, performed them automatically and when all was together, we took one last look around and satisfied we had gathered everything, we set off.

I mounted my bike and got as far as the sandy bump to the bridge when I realized Lee had stopped, was sizing up the climb and was shaking. This was not a good start. On his first attempt, with a bit too much speed and not enough equilibrium, he buried the front wheel in the soft stuff, was tossed to the right, then to the left and finally landed under his ride, jerking desperately to get his foot loose with one hand and trying to remove his helmet with the other. He had a cigarette and then made it on his second attempt but he had lost his composure and the shakes followed him the rest of the day.

We crossed the bridge and rose sinuously into the mountains again, leaving the river below and behind us. More of the same even, hard packed dirt road led us to the mine, where we arrived after about an hour.

A pair of armed guards stood watch over the doubled gate which led into the property. I knew the drill because I had stopped there the previous year when returning home from San Miguel in my little Toyota pickup. We were to wait there until we had an escort down the road, past where they were blasting the mountain into terraces and extracting their gold. Everything there is done with an escort.

I made small talk with the guards who stood with us and he asked the same questions everyone does, including where had we come from and where were we heading. He looked at us funny when we said we had camped out along the river in Tubares, like he didn’t understnd why we would do such a thing. He informed us seven people had been murdered in the area that night. Bad workers, greedy ones, lazy ones, shot dead on the spot. Maybe under cover of the night with no way of answering the hostile fire. Is this what I was hearing?

After what seemed like an hour, our ride came and showed us the way down the stepped backside of the mountain and into a narrow gorge, where another team was expecting us. The back door was as heavily guarded as the front but seemed smaller and less important. A group of indigenous people, about ten of them, men, women and children, stood just outside, silent, waiting for work, a ride, for scraps maybe.

The steep and rocky road leading away also seemed much less important and spilled into a stony-bottom river, across about 15 meters and up again the other side, several times before we climbed out of the gorge a mile or so upstream.

Without consulting me or even taking a close look at the first crossing, Lee gathered too much speed and thrust himself half way across before being pitched back and forth and landing in a pool, pinned under his bike again. Another red flag? Who’s counting?

Worried he had injured himself, I waded hurriedly out into the knee high stream, over to where he lay and helped him dislodge his foot which he had twisted. Then, slipping on the submerged boulders he had dumped into, I righted his bike and dragged it out for him. I was loosing my patience with him and chewed him out for risking himself and our mission. Here we were, like it or not, and we had to work together to get out.

In the right company, this would have been fun. The river gorge was pristine and truly awesome. We were far into the canyons now and everything was green and lush and the water flowed cold and clear over the tumbled stones. The mountains rose sharply out of the river bed on both sides and were studded with small trees and brush. The road there was a nice road. It was rough and dove into and across the water but it was pleasant, it was a cool day and although clouds had formed overhead and there was a slight sprinkle now and again, it was peaceful and I felt good, centered.

Lee was a basket case. He was leaning on me more with each crossing, his judgment declining, his stare vacant. All he seemed able to muster was a nervous smile, his mouth twitching at one corner. I could see he was needing a smoke.

I didn’t mind helping him across the river, we were a team and he watched my back too. I did need him to remain present though because we had a lot of riding to do and I could not expect it to get any easier. We were promised five river crossings and I counted six. Confirmation from a couple boys sitting under a large shade tree told us we would now climb up and over a ridge and out of the gorge, no more water. They also said Batopilas was an hour away, maybe an hour and a half.

Leaving the river behind us, Lee came around again and found the strength to ride on. I plodded along behind him as I had done since we hit the dirt, in case something should happen to him. A slow meandering double track soon turned up into a series of treacherous switchbacks called Cuesta Colorada. For much of the way a sheer rock face rose out of the road on one side and the other side was simply a view, no barrier, no shoulder, just an expansive, breathtaking view of the mountains across the valley and the river snaking below. With every turn, the view was more expansive until the mountains stacked against each other in jagged bands of fading blue green. Through twisty stuff, steep, loose rock and dirt, hours of it, I didn’t take my eyes off Lee who pushed ahead but who I could tell had become tired and weary again.

Luckily we were beyond the cliffs when I saw Lee’s bike tip and drop over the edge of the road, behind a large boulder and tumble once down the hill before it rested, hung up in a tree, between a rock and a hard place, you could say.

I found a spot on the road where I could lean my bike on its sidestand and ran to see if he was OK. It was not a spectacular fall. He hadn’t been going any faster than 2 miles an hour, he just lost his center and over he went. This time he had done his ankle in pretty good. He was quick to amble out from under the bike and back to the road, where I found him limping about, one arm across his chest, the other hand rubbing his chin, shaking his head and mumbling something under his shortened breath. Now he was really shook up, too dazed yet even to grab a smoke.

When I established he was not seriously hurt, the first thing I did was ask if I could take some pictures. I laughed a bit under my own breath and shook my head too. Here we were in the middle of the mountains in Mexico, a motorcycle off the road and down the hill. We had seen one car since we ventured out of the mine three hours earlier, it was 2:30 in the afternoon and we still had no idea how far it was to Batopilas. An hour, maybe an hour and a half, I suppose.

A closer look revealed that the boulders the bike was resting on were loose. They had been excavated and shoved off the step in the mountain that would become the road. Walking there was treacherous, causing mini slides and further dragging the bike down. During the tumble, the rear wheel had slid down along the trunk of a tree and wedged itself there, spring loaded against the compressed shock. And gas was leaking from the fuel tank.

A stout tree was growing out of the slope across the road from where the bike lay and would serve as a good anchor. All the extra weight had to be stripped from the bike. Then the bike would have to be righted and turned to face uphill so we could roll it out. I fished out all my ropes and straps and set to work figuring out how to pull the bike back up to flat.

Lucky for me, Ladd had come round to my house in San Francisco before I left and dropped off a block and tackle he thought might come in handy on my trip. The one he gave me was bulky and heavy but he had planted a seed. At West Marine I found mini versions that were plenty strong and stowed well on the bike: two double pulleys and 30 odd meters of thin 530 lb test rope. I reached for those now, along with a deck of playing cards outlining a grip of useful knots.

Lee was hovering, pacing, still mumbling and shaking his head. He was beside himself, still in shock. I’d let him walk it off, he was fine as long as he didn’t get in the way. We didn’t have much time before the sun tucked itself behind the mountains and I was determined to get the bike out.

Meanwhile we could hear the drumming of a car approaching from somewhere in the valley below, the sound of its wheels on the gravel, the groaning of its engine against the slopes. Sometimes it sounded near, other times far off and sometimes the sound of it disappeared altogether. Lee was ready to sit down and wait. I knew we couldn’t afford to.

I lashed the bike to the tree. With physics on our side, every hundred pounds we hoisted, the action of the pulleys made it four hundred, and we would need at least that much force to get her out. Now we just had to get the bike un-wedged, stripped and pointed up.

Only one of the three boxes could be removed at first, because the others were stuck under the weight of the machine. We lifted and tugged and before long it was happening. We were working it free from the tree and shoving rocks out of the way.

Within 90 minutes we had her where we needed her and the truck we had been hearing bumped up the hill and stopped in front of ropes we had stretched across the road. Four young guys piled out and poked all around to see what was going on. After explaining the situation, I got them behind us and together we pulled her up to the road. Although she fired up immediately, we sent the truck on its way with instructions to get help, a truck that could haul Lee out with his bike. He didn’t want to ride anymore.

I imagined the chances of help coming soon were slim so I pushed for us to get packed up and ready to roll. Lee reassembled his bike and I stowed my tools and we were ready with a half hour or so of light to spare.

Lee was getting nervous again, smoking, walking around, trying to shake it off. His eyes were shifty and I could see him sizing up the road, the rocks, the ruts. He didn’t like the edge, he had fallen off it once and he was scared of it, he wasn’t having fun. I knew he was in no condition to ride, so I suggested we camp at the first little flat spot we found, which happened to be only 50 meters up the hill, just off the shoulder. We could get an early start in the morning and hopefully Lee would be up for the ride. I didn’t like the alternative. Ride into town, find a truck and a place to stash my bike then come back out to rescue Lee… I knew he could ride the bike out, he just didn’t think he could.

Right around dusk, shortly after we erected the tent, two trucks drove by and reminded us just where we were. I heard the first one rumbling up and around the corner and stepped out to greet it.

It was a late model Ford crew-cab pickup with 5 men in it. I stood beside the passenger door when it came to a stop in front of me and started to address the driver who was loosely holding a two way radio and speaking codes into it. Then I noticed something odd just under my nose. I looked up to catch the front passenger’s eyes staring back at me, grinning ever so slightly, and I allowed myself to scan the automatic rifle he was clutching in his lap with my peripheral vision. He wasn’t pointing it at me and I didn’t need to look straight at it. He didn’t seem to be all that threatened by me anyway, so I told him why we were here. I asked him, asked the driver too if it would be alright for us to spend the night there. They didn’t seem to care and then they chugged off.

A minute or two later, the second truck, a red, older and more weathered, heavy duty flat bed truck with stake sides and a big blue tarp covering its bulky load chugged up, around the corner and past us up the road without so much as a nod. As instructed to do, it drove by as if we weren’t there. Those were the goods. But if anyone asked, I hadn’t seen anything.

Red flag? I was in way too deep to be concerned with red flags now. I needed to get Lee back to the pavement, but before that I needed to make it through the night. I thought I heard things and when I stepped out of the tent in the middle of the night I thought I saw things. It was cold up on our mountain and I was getting tired. I was still nursing my shoulder and thumb and a cough I had developed from all the pollution in Los Mochis.

I was up at the crack of dawn. A couple granola bars was all I ate amidst a flurry of gathering and packing that morning. As soon as he got a chance, Lee lit up, paced around and made like he wasn’t sure about the situation. I wasn’t having any of it. I saddled up, cranked her over and waited, not terribly patiently, for Lee to do the same. We may be riding slowly but we would ride.

I motioned for him to take the lead and he did and we rode slowly, painfully slow. The road twisted, was steep and gnarly at times but nothing worse than what we had already tackled. The morning air was brisk and invigorating. I was ready to get to town, park the bike and take a hot shower. But the way Lee was crawling up the hills and around the bends and brake jerking every inch of the downhills made the morning drag on. I could barely stand it. I kept wincing, waiting for him to go over the edge again. On several occasions I even had to ride his bike, walk back and then ride mine. It was a disaster.

We made about 3 miles progress that morning before we came to a high valley with a small cluster of houses, a pickup in one of the drives. I took one look at Lee who’s spirits had risen suddenly and I knew I would have to attempt to arrange a ride for him. The people there said town was just over the saddle and down a windy steep descent to the bottom of the canyon. It took me 15 minutes, a nice pace, a nice ride, no-one to baby sit.

For four hundred pesos, a guy who was headed into town took Lee with him.

September 27, 08

I said my good byes and left Santa Cruz with a bitter-sweet taste in my mouth but mostly glad to be back on the road. My trip had barely started and a part of me was already looking to settle down, I am still getting used to it all. For the better part of a year I talked about leaving and now I am out here. It is strange to have started my trip, to have embarked on this huge adventure and to still have so many people to stop and see. I still feel attached by my umbilical cord, that I am being looked after and coddled. I was overwhelmed by a feeling of being in limbo and the feeling stayed with me much of the day. Just when I thought I was through it, it came flooding back when I saw the sign for Esalen on Hwy 1. So many great memories there but that was another time. Today I would not stop, I would not soak in the tubs or eat from the plentiful buffet. I needed to be alone and I had no desire to tell about the trip that lay ahead of me, it felt so uncertain even to me. I wanted to find a place to camp, to remember what it was like to hide in the landscape and sleep out.

Strange too was riding the roads of California I knew so well.. The challenge was to live them for the first time, to experience them anew. I did everything to get off the main roads and freeways and to lose myself on the side roads. Last time I rode down to San Diego in a straight shot of 11 hours that left me feeling jet-lagged. When I arrived, I had no idea what happened to me and recovery took a couple of days. This time I would ride a while and stop for the afternoon and night.

Being a Friday, most of the official campsites along the coast were filled up for the weekend. I was even willing to pay the $20-30 they wanted for a patch of dirt next to a port-o-potty. But I was out of luck. This wouldn’t have bothered me were it not for the lack of hiding places along that stretch of the 1. To the left, steep and rough, poison oak muntains rise up out of the road to meet the sky and the steel blue ocean rushes up to the right to fill the gap where the land drops off.

I found my campsite quite by accident that night when I turned up the Nacimiento road away from the coast just south of Lucia. I snaked up and over the mountains to the sweltering valley which lay beyond. There I was told I would find two less popular campsites with promise of there being room for me. I landed at Ponderosa campground where Charley suggested I spread out in site #17, for the shade and the water spigot. By the time I rode around to #17 and had taken off my helmet, the flies I was warned about had found me. But they hadn’t yet developed a taste for me the way they had for Charley. He was standing next to me and busy shuffling his cane from one hand to the other, swatting at the flies buzzing left and right. So dry was it in the valley that flies were attracted to the moisture in our eyes, mouth and nose. Fierce is an understatement.

It wasn’t until Charley asked me for the $15 fee (discounted because of the flies, I assume) for the night that I realized I had no cash. What the hell was I thinking? I couldn’t believe I was so stupid as to not have cash! I knew exactly where I had spent my last $26, it was for the 4 gallons of gas I bought on the coast in Gorda… At $6.39/gal! I was afraid I would run out of gas in the hills, but I hadn’t thought about running out of cash.

I stood there in disbelief for while as my host patiently waited out my bluff. He had to get paid and I had no money. It was time to move on. In the 5 minutes I was standing there, sweat had beaded up on my forehead and was now streaming down my face and the fies were starting to like me all the more for it. I wanted nothing more than to strip down and wash up some but first I would have to find a place to do it. He must have figured I wasn’t bullshitting when I reached for my helmet. In a moment of sympathy, he let onto a little secret he had been concealing. I could camp out anywhere I wanted along the road. It was a national forest and it was my right. In fact there was a nice little spot just down the road a mile or so known as Hippie Hole. Thanks Charley.

The $15 river back at the campsite was dried up too, so it didn’t bother me much that Hippie Hole was just that, a hole in a dry creek bed and not a refreshing little pool. Too bad… Water would have transformed the whole valley and would probably have been reason to stay a while, not to mention the hippie chicks who would flock to dip in the pool that wasn’t. Nevertheless, I was out of the sun and could finally take off the jacket, pants, the layer of armor and the long johns I was wearing.

That evening, between quick trips to my make-shift kitchen where dinner was cooking I holed up in my tent out of reach of the flies, waiting for them to get scared of the dark. I can’t remember ever being happier to sit in my tent and the buzz of the swarming masses beyond the mesh was like music to my ears. It was almost a sick pleasure I took in watching them struggle in vain to get at me as I sat in my almighty shelter.

I awoke triumphant the next morning. No-one rode away with my bike in the middle of the night and once the plague of flies subsided, the rest of the wild animals left me alone to sleep in peace. I had rough-camped alone and was alive to do it all over again another day. I packed up and left early that morning after putting down a couple of fruit and nut bars and set out with the intention of finding another camp spot a few hours down the road.

I continued along the Nacimiento road, up and out of the pines until I came to the entrance of the Hunter Ligget military base. The sentry was hiding in his gate house, away from the flies who had built up the courage to come out of hiding again. He appeared, gave me a serious looking over, checked my papers and once he deemed me a non-threat to the security of America, he softened up, we exchanged a few words and then he let me ride on through.

The small mountain roads that twist through California’s coastal range make for great riding. They are scenic, well maintained and void of the annoying traffic that congests many of the straight ahead 4 and 5 lane highways that run lengthwise like blistering scars through the valleys of our great state. The slow and winding roads are full of little towns, old weathered pick-up trucks, cowboy hats and the sweet smell of fresh cow shit.

As the morning heat began to store in the barren hills, I wound my way through them and past Lake Nacimiento to Paso Robles, the first town of any consequence. There I found a bank and promptly withdrew a couple hundred bucks. I also got gas, filled my canteen, bought some produce at the local farmers market and had a bit of lunch under one of the large oak trees in the main square. With all my reserves topped up, I pushed off towards the coast in hopes of finding a resting place.

I wound down the 46 back to the 1 and turned left at the coast through Morro Bay, San Luis Obispo and a string of beaches starting with Pismo. By this time it was getting along in the day and although I had knocked on a few farm gates, for insurance reasons no-one could allow me to camp on their land. So by suggestion I turned in and up towards Cachuma Lake where I was assured there would be space at the camp grounds. It sounded like a good enough plan and I figured I would stop along the way if I saw the chance.

Fences along the road kept me from going astray and led me right to the lake. The price for the night was $15 and I wriggled to get out of it but the lady with the Smoky the Bear hat wouldn’t budge, though she sent me in to find a spot I liked and to report back to her.

I rode in and circled around looking for friendly faces, maybe bikers, anyone who might let me crash their site and avoid the fee. That’s when I ran into the Strictly Vintage 2s crew who would later be joined by the Vintage Transporter Owners crew. They weren’t Airheads but they have to have been the next best thing. Their bubbly old buses immediately caught my attention and I rode up with a smirk, knowing that they would be hard pressed to turn away one of their two wheeled cousins.

When I arrived on the scene there were only 3 buses, and one by one they trickled in until the party was complete with a tally of 8. Each proudly drove her/his own bus all summer from show to remote show, admiring the old and the innovative. They had stumbled onto the vintage road for different reasons but they all seemed to enjoy the tech talk and were pleased with their new family. As for the pace of things, they looked slow, but I was assured most were tuned to turn heads, though they too drove with air-cooled heads. Joe, Ivan, Bill and Kevin, Stan Pearl, Michael, Mo and Quillan took me in like an orphan, hid me behind the tree on the far side of their site, fed me and made sure I drank my share of cold Budweiser. I had definitely crashed the right party!

In the morning, my first mission was to exit the park without having to stop at the gate. I may go to the fiery deep for this, but thinking I was being adventuresome, I hadn’t the intention to pay. I did end up saving myself the $15 but my morning was spoilt thinking about the nasty gate-keeper who I feared awaited me with her troopers. I packed up my belongings, damp from the morning air, said my good-byes and made a run for it.

The poor kid stuck with the early morning gate shift never quite knew what hit him. The sleep in his eyes was plainly more evident than his ignorance of my escape and from his box he waved a friendly farewell.

Descending on the coast, I met a thick cold blanket of fog which swallowed me in seconds and left me fumbling in its white darkness. Down under cover, the streets of Santa Barbara came out of the mist to line my path, while shadows of people made themselves busy opening their shops and sweeping the ritzy streets. Downtown was a nice distraction at a casual pace but as is often the case in minor towns, small roads lead to main roads and before I knew it I found myself back on the 4-laner. Normally the fog would be a welcomed spell of natural air-conditioning, but at highway speeds I shivered against the weather and zipped up. Beads of water forming on glasses and face shield made them a nuisance and squinting into the light rain, I continued to limp along. All I could think about was getting back off the highway. My hands were getting cold and my spirits were sapped with the thought of having to continue south through Thousand Oaks and the other cities that line that artery down into the heart of the sprawl.

Last time I took that route was a Saturday evening a few months back and for 4 hours I weaved through a solid mass of cars to travel the 40 or so miles through LA. After a few minutes of carefully skipping my way from one lane to the next, my vision draws narrow and focused on the few cues that inform me when sharing lanes with cars. Are gaps in the traffic large enough to tempt ambitious drivers to merge suddenly? Cars often reflect their drivers’ body language; shifty, nodding, distracted attitudes are to be watched carefully. Once in a while a car will pull way over in demonstration of their rider-awareness but most of the time drivers are completely oblivious to the presence of bikes in their periphery. I look for front wheels jerking, large and obtrusive mirrors and simply whether there is enough room to fit through. As is often the case with challenging environments, you get accustomed to them, and settling into the groove you get more confident but also sometimes dangerously complacent. The effort to maintain this kind of concentration can be mesmerizing and exhausting, not to mention the strength it requires to jerk the cycle in quick bursts as the narrow opening moves left and right, back and forth in front of you.

I wasn’t going to go there this time around. In reality I wasn’t trying to avoid LA as much as I was trying to get lost in the scenery, but as I got closer I knew I would have to pay attention not to get sucked into it unnecessarily. Though ultimately it was inevitable.

I remembered seeing signs in these parts for a town called Ojai but I’m not sure if it was instinct or desperation that guided me off the freeway in Carpenteria and ultimately onto the road east up the hills, out of the fog and over into the lovely sun-drenched Ojai Valley, where I stopped to warm up and have breakfast.

I remember being disappointed the first time I drove through Santa Barbara. Poking around, it was nothing like the quaint but prosperous beach town I had imagined it to be. Like a grown-up Santa Cruz, I thought it would be inviting in a familial sense, populated with Mom and Pop shops that had ridden out the times to offer an old charm. Instead all the high-brow brand shops had toed the main strip staggered by cookie cutter coffee counters and chintzy gift shops, along with a grip of jewelry handlers, pret-a-porter boutiques and starred restaurants whose quality I’m obviously not fancy enough to appreciate. I suppose it’s the place to be if you’ve a lot of money to spend and need to be pampered and made to feel like a star. Not for me.

I didn’t see much of the surrounding neighborhoods but suburbia was lurking on the edge of town, saturated in malls and drive-thrus and fed by the freeway. Most of Santa Barbara was stuccoed though few structures managed to approximate the old spanish style or even look charming, least of all the plastered gas stations. Only a handful of antique buildings left over from the days of the mission and another handful built later, when things were still well crafted, were of any interest as far as I could see. Homes looked comfortable but boring.

Ojai on the other hand was still small enough to be rather charming. It was the feeling of the whole valley that I found so enchanting. The road winding down into one narrow end of it, lead past fields of lush vegetation, small wooden houses and a network of dirt and sealed country roads leading off to the bordering mountains, went the 3 blocks through downtown and then started to make its way back up the other narrow end of the valley through much of the same. The main drag was spotted with little shops and a restored arched boardwalk that felt authentic. Only the plastic red, white and blue Chevron station seemed grossly out of place on one of the most prominent corners. It was a busy spot for being such a little town. Motorcycles buzzed by all morning while scores of people walked around and across the street that ran through the place, going from the coffee shop to the breakfast joint, with some disappearing through one of the arches. Then it made sense and I wandered back a block to find a farmers market. I don’t imagine it would be cheap to set up shop in Ojai, being sandwiched so, between Santa Barbara and LA, and managing to remain quite rural, but I found it refreshing for southern California and I liked it.

A week on the road and only now did I have the feeling I was approaching Los Angeles. Since the mileage markers on the roads I was traveling indicated only smaller towns, I had no idea its northern reaches were just over the hill. Funny how the stress came rushing back in the blistering heat of the 118 freeway. I stayed off the these main arteries as long as possible but now I could no longer escape them. The teeming cars and the turbulence they create on these roads drowned out the sound of my engine until all I could feel was a high frequency vibration, and looking down confirmed i was speeding along at 80MPH. Cars were still floating past me. The only distractions were rocky interruptions trickling south from the mountains on my left, causing the road to wind up and over them. But they merely offered a false sense of hope as the vantage point only gave promise to more of the same: straight and fast. This kind of riding quickly drains even my large fuel tank and just as I was exiting the 210 at Colorado Ave in Pasadena, I had to reach down and flip over to reserve.

September 23, 08

The day has finally come to roll out of the garage. After so much preparation, it seems strange to stop all the fussing and ride away…

The bike (doesn’t have a name and may never will) is running great and with all the pouches and compartments I’ve made, it has come together to make a very solid ride. It all came together yesterday and the end result is quite confidence inspiring. I believe I have isolated the source of my high-speed wobble and maybe put it to rest. That would be a good thing!

So, the first stop will be Santa Cruz, about 100 miles south of San Francisco. There I will see Maggie, who’s studying at the farm on the UCSC campus. I might stop off at the art department to see some of my old teachers and I may try to sneak into the cafeteria for old time’s sake.

I’m a bit nervous but something tells me I’ll be just fine.

Leaving San Francisco was eerily reminiscent of past departures. First it seems like it will never happen and then I’m gone. I rode out through Golden Gate Park towards Ocean Beach and took a left. I was feeling rather tired and somewhat spacey and riding a mellow pace seemed appropriate. I gazed out to the water often but never yelling whooos or talking or singing inside my helmet as I ofter do. I was silent but my mind active. Where am I going? What am I trying to prove? What’s wrong with California and why do I have to leave it? In case I could answer any of these questions, there was one that really eluded me. What am I doing? I guess I’m just riding my bike. Or I guess I’m bound to find out.

Well, I made it to Santa Cruz in one piece and settled in at the farm. I have never really been to the farm before and am amazed at how beautiful and lush it is, like an oasis, tucked away in the middle of campus. People drive and cycle past all day long, as I did when I was a student, and I’ll bet only a small fraction ever stop to explore it. Plants and flowers everywhere, fruits and vegetables hanging heavy on branches all around me. The air is fragrant and refreshing with a sprinkler’s mist spreading over the beds in the wind. The Pacific Ocean is hazy in the distance with the land mass at the southern end of the Monterey just visible above what might be confused for the horizon.

I get there in time for a gorgeous spread of dishes prepared by Astrud and Brian, 2 of the interns: summer squash, green beans and veggie burgers with fresh baked brown bread and all the fixin’s. Maggie surprises me with her plans to get tacos downtown and I half-heartedly agree to follow along. Then I come clean and tell her I’d rather enjoy a farm fresh meal. I’m not disappointed, the food is delicious. So much love goes into growing and preparing the food that it makes sense to ignore any kind of luxury and eat off a mix-match of plates, bowls and silverware and I dig in, fingers and all, not to miss anything. The people I meet are super friendly and all offer me to help myself from the boxes of produce that are in peril of going bad, there’s so much of it.

It’s taco-tuedays at one of the mexican places in downtown Santa cruz. Maggie and Molly are happy to get off the farm for the evening and we have a couple of drinks while they eat their $2 tacos. The farm community is cramped and can be intense. The 40-odd people camped out along the back fence of the farm are the same ones working in fields, eating together, and sharing the only 2 showers

The well used kitchen, adjoined to the dining room and bathroom area, make up the farm center. This is a lovely little wooden building, surrounded by the gardens and overlooking the water, that I would be happy to call home if it were for rent. But the Farm center is a busy place with evidence of on-going activities strewn all around amongst the marks of past classes, different intensities that filled the space in previous years. A large cast-iron stove sits idle against the wall and people constantly walk by it, not interested enough to stoke it. Perhaps it has been too warm or the farmers too busy or tired to feed it wood.

To avoid the wrath of the UC parking attendants, I get an OK to pull my bike onto farm property. Still I had to tuck my machine away and under a tree near the back corner of things and hope the authorities wouldn’t notice it. Things happen a little different on the farm, things seem more human, though evidence still suggests that UC is boss.

Even though I spent months selecting the items I would have with me and then carefully packed them into every nook on the bike, I am still confused about where things are and how it all goes back together. The most useful things seem to always be at the bottom of my bags. And I wonder how many times will I strap the bag across the top of the panniers, only to have to remove it again to regain access, before I get a working system down. At least I’m out of my garage and no longer tempted to bring more things.. What I got is what I got.

I spent a good part of the day walking around the campus I called home back in 1995-96. Somehow it feels like nothing has changed. The ground is soft with fallen redwood needles and the smell is warm and unmistakably of a sun drenched redwood forest. I vividly remember cruising up and down the gullies on my bike years ago on my way to classes, stopping occasionally at a grassy clearing for some sun or maybe in front of the library on Fridays at 4:20. UCSC is a beautiful place to be, there is no question about it. And I haven’t lost my touch with the dining halls. A free lunch was just a matter of asking.

I was made to feel quite at home on the farm, and after helping in the field for half a day I felt like I had actually earned a meal, though for a small donation none was ever denied me. I was starting to feel comfortable with everyone’s names.. Brent, Anne, Adelaide, Correy.. Am I spelling these correctly? 2 Dans and 2 Davids, Marsha, Josh.. Who Am I forgetting? Karen, Paul, Christophe, Jim, Shareen, Sally, Leah, Robson from Zambia and Christian from Ecuador.. and probably 2 dozen more.. and by this time most everyone had met me too. It was time to either get more involved or keep moving.. I was starting to feel like I was just hanging around waiting for scraps to fall off the table. Deciding to leave wasn’t really a tough decision though because I had a trip go on and I was after all not a farmie. Someday I would plant a vegetable garden but now was not the time.

September 10, 08

I’ve been hearing this a lot lately and I’m not surprised. I’ve been threatening to leave for a couple of months now. In fact I tried to leave last December only to realize I was nowhere near ready. Nearly a year later I’m finally at a place where I’m comfortable about shoving off.

I’ve spent countless hours agonizing over what to bring and how to carry it, not to mention how to keep on keepin’ on. That is, how am I going to deal with all the challenges that arise along the way? I’m sure it’s going to be a mixed bag. Some days I’ll be loving life, not a worry in the world.. other days, I can see it already, I’ll be standing on the side of the road, under the sweltering mid-day Mexican sun, kicking my bike because I can’t figure out what’s wrong with it and screaming profanities at the top of my lungs to the sole amusement of the buzzards circling high above.

The up-side is that I really don’t have a schedule. I can hole-up if need be while I wait for parts or to let a big storm pass through. The whole point of the trip is to slow down and smell the flowers. I plan to average about a hundred miles a day, on the days I’m riding, so that I have plenty of time for talking to the locals, setting up camp and relaxing. I’m even hoping to have extended visits in places that turn me on. Where there’s surf, I’ll rent a board and paddle out.. Where there are horses, I’ll saddle up.. I’ll carry a backpack to explore some of the more remote spots on foot.. You get the picture, I’ll be doing what I can to survive.

And yes I’m leaving soon.