brownie go south

Vids.

2008-06-04T12:56:00.000-07:00

My videos in chronological order:

1. I sound like a bit of jackass here but this is Volcan Talculmulco. Cool to see the top with the sun setting and the weather begining to turn. Climbing down in the dark, however, was not great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9SI0Nksm_g

2. Volcan Chicobal, Guatamala

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQjWcgGc7WA

3. Semac Champay Guatamala Jungle-River

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bupxJsF-LpU

4. Tikal at sunrise

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iqk3ZLYtOc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDNTm7qgIrM

5. kayaking in Rio Dulce

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xm7x3mnL0Q4

6. Lago Nicaragua rain storm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL42DAqMnEQ

May 5 Update

2008-05-05T08:08:00.000-07:00

Hi Guys,

Sorry for not posting very often in the last month. I am going to try and update the blog more often in the next several weeks.

I have spent the last two weeks in Honduras. I spent a day in Omoa, a town on the Caribbean just inside the Northern boarder of Honduras. It was very hot there and my nerves were frayed from dealing with importing the motorbike into the country. It turned out to be a mistake to drive into the country using an off-the-beaten-path border crossing. I ended up paying $70 to import myself and the bike into the country and had to jump through many beurocratic hurdles including: getting a visa for myself, filling out paper work and paying money at the boarder to temporarily import the bike into Honduras, driving 35 miles with a guide on my bike to the port town of Puerto Cortes to complete the importation paper work, take a digital photo of the bike license plate and printing the photo out at an internet cafe, make 3 more trips to a bank for variouse amounts of money to complete the paper work, all while sweltering in what felt like 85+ degree temperatures with very high humidity while wearing full motorcycle gear. All in all, it was a miserable experience. I think this was the first time I lost my temper during the trip so far, as I was so frustrated by the experience that I berated variouse officials in Spanish, and at one point went to far as to try and return to Guatamala to go to another border crossing before discovering, in Guatamala, that importing the bike into their boarder crossing would be nearly as difficult as getting into Honduras. In the future I will only cross into new countries using the main freeway crossings, CA1.

Omoa itself was a nice town with an impressive Spanish fort and an interesting mix of afro caribbean and ladino cultures.

After Omoa I drove South East to La Cieba, another hot-as-a-frying-pan town on the Honduran Caribbean coast. I stayed in this town for a day, then took a ferry boat to Utila in the Honduran Bay Islands. Utila is famed at the cheapest place in the world to learn to scuba dive. As such, it is a major tourist destination. I spent about 10 days in this town learning to scuba dive. I completed two courses, the PADI Open Water dive course and the PADI Advanced Open Water Dive course. Each course cost about $250 and included lodging in the price of the course. I took my classes at the Cross Creak Dive Center, and had a really great time. I was fortunate to bump into two fellow travellers on the ferry, Neil and Kim, and we were able to go through the courses together and most importantly share a cabana with AC, a refrigerator, and a TV. Doesnt sound like much, but down here AC is heaven. I do not have a good basis for comparison, but I though diving in Utila was great. I made 13 dives in total visting many coral reefs, ship wrecks, and seeing lots of fish, shrimp and lobsters in the tropical waters. The water is so warm, about 27 degrees celcius, that I seldom needed a wet suit, diving in only a swim suit and scuba gear to depths as deep at 115 feet. I do not have an underwater camera, so I have not pictures, but being that far underwater and watching the light pass from the surface of the ocean into the depths is an amazing experience.

The one problem I encountered in Utila was that a bug bite on my right foot became infected on Wednesday of last week. The bite soon became imflamed and painful, and I required antibiotics, first in Utila, then later in a hospital in the capitol of Honduras. I think I am recovering nicely now, but I was not feeling very good the last several days.

Now that I am feeling better I am going to try and get to Nicaragua this afternoon.

Love you guys and hope you are well!

-Christopher

Now I am in Honduras

2008-04-22T19:35:00.000-07:00

Sorry for not posting so much. I feel like I do not have the time!

Here are some picuturs from my flickr account. Not very well organized. But you can see some of the stuff that I am upto.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25191067@N06/

April 8

2008-04-08T16:29:00.000-07:00

So I was able to drive to Guatemala. It was pretty exciting. There is alot of new construction on the main north south highway CA1, as it is being expanded from a two to four lanes through some very rugged terrain. The day I did the drive from San Cristobal to Pana was very exciting due to the traffic, the road, and me not knowing where I was going.

Pana is the biggest city on Lago Atitlan, a large lake in a volcanic crater, very similar to Lago Majore or Lago Como in Northern Italy.

I did not enjoy Pana much though, so I promptly drove "back" North to Quetzaltenango, or Xela, as everyone calls it. I enrolled in Spanish classes here and have been working (sort of working, I guess) on improving my language skills. I succesfully climbed my first mountain (Talqulmulco) the highest peak in central america three times on two seperate trips to the mountain. The first two times I climbed the peak I did it with a group of friends and a guide. Of course, I got lost climbing down the mountain and ended up hitch hiking and taking buses for three hours to return to Xela. Oops. Thats what I get for being impatient and walking infront of the group. And for forgetting to bring the GPS. I have some very nice pictures of the mountain that I will post eventually. I returned to the moutain 4 days later, this time with some folks from my Spanish school and no guide. We summited the mountain just in time for sunset (it was not technically a sunset as it was foggy and we had very little visibility). Byron, one of the guys with me, had Shine on You Crazy Diamond on his cell phone and we played it as the sun set. Then it got very dark and what should have been a half hour climb down, turned into a two hour adventure (lost again, in the dark, in the fog... oops) before we got back to the fire.

Other than that things are muy tranquilo as they say down here. Alot of Spanish, some naps, eating too much, not too many adventures on the bike.

I will post more when I have more to say. Hope everyone is doing well!

March 26 Upto Date

2008-03-26T13:34:00.000-07:00

OK. Yesterday I left Oaxaca at 10:30 AM and had a fairly big drive on the bike, getting into San Cristobal about 7 PM. This was a fairly uneventful drive. Some of the interesting things were that it was quite breezey at the coast and consequently the bike was a challenge to drive for about 100 miles. I though that there was more wind on this section of road than on the grapevine, with the main difference being that it was daylight and that I elected to drive at a slower pace. I also managed to suck my backpack tie down straps into the sproket on the rear wheel. This did not effect performance at all as I did not notice that this had happened until I tried to take my pack off the bike at the hostel. The effect of this accident was the straps were just sort of melted and torn up. I repaired the strap ends, and I think they are about 1 foot shorter now than yesterday morning. Using the panniers as a center stand I inspected the chain, rear wheel and the swingarm on the bike and everything looks to be in good shape. This is a strong argument for using relatively week nylon type straps.

After not seeing another gringo on a motorbike since Cameron left for Seattle, I also ran into two motorcyclist in the same afternoon. The first guy I met driving from the coast inland to San Cristobal. Alone on a windy mountain road (and pushing the speed somewhat hard, I felt) a guy screamed by me a big 1200 GS BMW. I waved at him and chased him for a while until leaning hard into a corner I felt my front wheel skip sideways accross the pavement. At that point I decided to let him go, only to find that a mile or two down the road he had stopped to wait for me. It turns out that he thought he was on the coast road (I do not know how this was possible, as we had been gaining elevation for about 25 miles and were very clearly in the mountains), did not know where he was or where he was going. I suggested that we travel together to San Cristobal and he agreed. After coming to this decision he turned on his bike (he did not take his helmet off or move from his seat the entire time we spoke) and immediately roared off as I fumbled to put my helmet and gloves back on. That would be last time I saw the guy on the 1200 GS.

After reaching San Cristobal I met another guy who had just sold his bike, Gage. Gage had ridden from Boston to Seattle and then down to San Cristobal, but as he had an older street bike that we begin to run strange, sold the bike here in San Cristobal and elected to fly home. Gage had met the guy on the 1200 GS before, and said he was a somewhat interesting guy, as he saw him on the side of the road eating three lobsters for lunch, sweaty, with red sauce running all over his face.

Anyway, I am in San Cristobal now. And I think I might try to go to Guatamala tomorrow. Wish me luck!

March 24, Day 66 Mas or Minus

2008-03-26T13:16:00.000-07:00

Outside Oaxaca there are many ruins and famous sites. Here are a few of them.

Mt Alban. This was an ancient Zapotec capitol that existed from about 500 BC to 700 AD. This city was built on top of a mountain whose top was flattened for construction of temples and buildings. It reminded me of the Acropolis in Greece. It seems as though the people of Mt. Alban were realitively peaceful, not practicing large scale sacrifice like the Aztec. Similarly to the fall of the Maya, no knows quite why it happened. My guess is that they ran out of water on the mountain top. The mountain is quite high and without a natural spring or water source I think it would be a difficult place to live.

Ruins at Yagul. A city in the Oaxaca region that rose following the fall of Mt. Alban.

A picture from inside a tomb at Yagul. These ruins are a bit off the beaten track and thus visiting them is a bit more of an intimate experience (ie you can crawl into tombs).

Hierve De Agua, a natural mineral spring outside Oaxaca. There are bathing pools for swimming and water from teh spring spills down the mountain leaving mineral deposites that look like frozen water falls. The day that I was there it was quite windy, I was by myself without any friends, the springs were crowded with locals, and I had no bathing suit. Thus I did not swim (but I have a small regret about not doing it anyway).

Another picture of the mineral falls.

March 22, Day 64 Mas or Minus

2008-03-26T13:01:00.000-07:00

Finally I had a chance to see Oaxaca. This was the city that was the joke that launch the plan for the motorcycle trip south nearly 3 years ago. "Mustaches and machetes in Oaxaca" was the bright idea we had at the George and Dragon after my General Exam.

It is interesting to compare the actual city to the one I had imaged before visiting. I had imaged the city to be close to the coast, lower in elevation, hotter, more humid, with more bright colors, like a Michael Mann movie (think Miami Vice). Actually the city has some elevation, is dry and cool at night, and does have the colors of a Michael Mann movie. It is also a sophisticated tourist city with many art studios, markets, and nice resturants with table linen and the like. It reminds me of a place like Cannon Beach in Oregon. Anyway, here are some pictures.

Cathedral Iglesia de Santa Domingo. A big beautiful cathedral named after a Dominican Saint. The Dominicans were strong in this region and tried hard to protect the local indigenous population from the Spanish Conquest.

A Micheal Mann alley.

Roof of the cathedral.

Pink doorway.

Huuuuuuge Satruday market. 100X Pike Place market. This is one of the nicer sections, the flower alley. Some of the alleys can be quite unpleasent. The dead chicken alley, with rows of yellow dead chickens, legs sticking into the walkway so you brush them as you pass is not so nice.

180 degress opposite the last picture. The alleys and vendors stretch off in all directions into the distance.

March 21, Day 63 Mas or Minus

2008-03-26T12:46:00.000-07:00

I decided to leave Mexico City and drive back south to Oaxaca. I had visited Oaxaca for a day on my was to DF from Puerto Escondido but, as I was moving fast, I did not see any sites in this area. This is about at 250 mile drive and very fast once I had left the DF outskirts behind. I took the pay road, called the autopista down here, and though expensive -- over 300 pesos -- it is a fast and safe road in good condition.

BTW: DF = District Federal = Mexico City

As March 21 is Good Friday, and a high holy day in Mexico, the culmination of Semana Santa or the Mexican Easter holy week. No one works and everywhere around Mexico family members traveled home to be with their loved ones. At a gas station on the way to Oaxaca I met this family that was celebrating Good Friday by playing music loadly and drinking from their cars in the gas station parking lots.

They were very friendly and invited me to drink mezcal and cervesa with them (I declined as I have a hard enough time keeping the wheels of the bike on the road already). Many of the male members of the family had worked in varouse parts of the US, and were curous about what cities I had seen on the way South. In fact, the man with the white shirt holding the beer in his left hand had traveled throughout the US more than most Americans I know, and infact was working in Santa Clara US, but had taken the week off to visit family in his home country. The man in the red shirt, peering over my right shoulder, gave me a prayer necklace (similar to a crucifix, with prayer beads on it, but somehow related to the death of a relative, or so I gather) to keep me safe during my travels. He took it off his neck and placed it around mine, and it was a very touching gesture. The male members of the family would tease me about how I should take their sisters and neices south with me on their motorbike. The women would get angry and scold the men. In all, it was an very friendly group, warm and talkative. I felt like I was at a Burns family reunion.

Parking lot party.

Day 60 Mas or Minus

2008-03-26T12:04:00.000-07:00

So after kayaking, hiking and climbing for a week and a half, I returned to Mexico City. I had enjoyed my time there waiting for the package of climbing gear and bike parts, but was interested in seeing more this this huge city and spending more time at the best Hostel I had stayed at thus far, Hostel Amigo.

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Aside: What makes for a good Hostel experience? In my opinion:
1. The people
2. The people
3. The people

Hostel Amigo is not the cleanest place in the world. In the two weeks I stayed there, there was never any soap in the bathrooms, there were no handtowls, at times there was no running water, and the water they did have was not potable. The room in which I slept for the first 5 days or so had a window which would not close, and consequently a nightly mosquito infestation. The computers they had for the internet sucked. There was street construction infront of the hostel the entire time I stayed there so we were constantly having to walk through and around huge piles of gravel and avoid stepping into open manholes full of sewage. The hostel, while centrally located close the zocalo and the presedential palace, was about a 20 minute taxi ride from the neighborhood with the good bars. Despite these limitation I thought this was the best place to stay thus far.

However Hostel Amigo had a great bartender and I felt alot of comradery with the guys and girls that stayed there. The bartender, Gerardo Lazarro, was very good at getting people to loosen up, have fun and drink tequilla. Every night you felt like you were hanging out with your friends. He played music very load, and if you had an ipod he was willing to let you be guest DJ. A personal highlight was discovering that an Aussie staying at the bar had Louder Than Love on his ipod, playing the album and singing along to Gun infront of the other guests. The down stairs of the bar would open around 6 PM and stay open until 1 AM, at which time most of the crew drinking in the Hostel would take transportation to other bars in town. There are few pictures of these nights of course. Most of the pictures that were taken are on various folk´s cell phones. But here are a few brief stories:

1. I visited the same night club (Pato Negra) 3 nights in a row accidentally, seeing many of the same people there each night... after that happened I decided to leave DF for the first time.

2. Three of my friends went out drinking and got arrested at 6 AM for drinking in public. After the police relieved them of their IDs, a 1500 peso bribe, and one kids case, his wallet, the were allowed to go home.

3. After a fairly long night of drinking, 5 of us decided to get one more drink at a salsa club and ordered a liter of Barcardi. Two friends immediately decided to leave, one of them being the only girl with us. After our only girlfriend left the three of us discovered that the salsa club was, at least in part, aslo a brothel, and we spent the remainder of the evening trying to finish the liter of Barcardi while fending off some not very attractive sex workers.

4. After discovering that a friend was going to take the Metro to the airport 8 hours before his flight left, I insisted on driving him to the airport at 2 AM. The drive to the airport went fine, but I got lost returning to the hostel and drove around the DF for 1.5 hours before finding my way back home.

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I did do a few things other than go to nightclubs in MC. Actually I tried to make a point of doing something productive at least once a day. Here are a few things I did and pictures I took in the DF. I visited the Museam of Anthropology in Mexico City and thought it was the most impressive museam I have seen thus far in my travels. Here are a few pictures (I appologise for the blue tint. Obviousely something is not right with the camera. I will see if I can get it resolved for the next round of pictures).

This is the Bat God. He is made mostly out of jade and is about 6" tall.

This is the famous Aztec callender. A depiction of this calender is on the Mexican 10 peso coin. Only now they don´t think its a callender. It may have some sort of religiouse significance or guys fought on it or something (my spanish needs to improve, obviously).

Aztec serpent.

This is from a contemporary painting called "Maya Dream." I think the intent of the painting was to depict what the Mayan spiritual or fantasy world was like, or something. I dont know much about that, but I think the depiction of Scotts "Unicorn Boner Jam" is quite accurate... and btw there is a unicorn on the painting, it just didn´t fit into the picture.

So after a night of drinking, I decided to stay in the hostel for a day and make some stencils for the motorcycle panniers. My English friend, Jack, the guy on the right did the drawing. I made the stencils (very similar to "The Warriors" stencils) and put them on my bike. At the insistence of the Gerardo, the bartender, I also put some up in the bar. There they are in the background of the wall.

Itza

2008-03-14T18:28:00.000-07:00

After not getting a chance to make much of an attempt at Pico de Orizaba I decided to try to climb another mountain, Itzacewatle (sp, totally wrong, btw). I turned in my rental gear, and drove west towards Mexico City. I needed to run a few errands on the way, including improving my food supply and purchasing a new knit hat (I had somehow lost my hat in the week prior). As running errands in Mexico seems to take quite a bit of time, I fell behind on my drive to Itza. This was not helped by the fact that the road, which seemed to be a freeway on my Mexico County map turned into a dirt road on the way to the mountain. 30 miles of dirt road later, with night oncoming, I decided to try and find a camp ground. The first campground I found was charging an outlandish 200 pesos for a night of camping at a strange disney style resort. I elected to save my 200 pesos and drive the motorbike into the woods about half a mile away from the resort. This is picture of where I camped. Thankfully someone had grazed their cattle in this area recently, so I could see the ground easily and avoid the barb wire that was strung across the area. I chose a spot a good distance from the road so I would have a bit of privacy and hopefully be out of harms way. Things worked out well, and the only thing I had to worry about that evening was animals that might have tried to eat my leftover dinner.

-----------------
OK. Sorry folks, out of time. I have other plans for the night!

Take care! And sorry dad to hear about Ken!
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The next day I set up my tent next to Itza. Here is a picture from the mountain valley where I camped. Beautiful! I ate a large meal for dinner and went to bed early in prepration for another early morning climb. This was the highest elevation I pushed the bike. I was successful in running the bike to the trailhead, an even 4000 m of elevation.

After sleeping in until 2:30 and leaving the camp ground at 3:30 AM I started to climb. This is a picture West from the mountain towards Mexico City. I took this picture at about 4:30 AM from about 4500 m.

Unfortunately this was the last picture I was able to take as the batteries ran out on my camera. This is picture East towards the rising sun, at about 6:30 AM. The gray horizon we see is the cloud ceiling stretching East towards Vera Cruz and the Caribean Sea.

I ended up climbing until about 10:45, and summited several peaks without ever reaching the true top of Itza. I got a chance to use my crampons on a small glacier near the summit, and they worked even using the New Ballence running shoes that I chose to climb with that day. The summit of Itza is supposed to be 5280m and I got to 5220 m before deciding that I should return to my camp site. The return trip was fast and I was home at 4000 meters drinking coffee by 2:00 PM.

Pico De Orizaba

2008-03-14T18:03:00.000-07:00

This is Pico de Orizaba the thrid highest mountain in North America, over 18000 feet in height. After much planning and orgainizing including evaluating which motorcycle gear could be used as climbing gear, negotiating and renting gear from two seperated rental agencies in a town at the base of the mountain, negotiating with another village mayor to look after my motorbike after I decided I could not drive it to the base of the mountain, purchasing a government topographic map of the mountain in Mexico City, I was ready to go. But first I had to hike in from the last village, Guadalupe Hildalgo where I left the bike to the refugio where I would sleep before the climb. This was a hike from about 3300 meters to about 4200 meters. After I completed the hike I understood why I was the only person to do this, in my time there... I felt exhausted. This part of the hike was particularly difficult. I am about a mile from the refugio and am hiking up a slight uphill grade. Everytime I look up the refugio looks no closer and the road looks to go on forever. The refugio can barely be made out in this picture, a small hut in the middle of the picture. Pico de Orizaba looms above.

As I arrived at the refugio the climbers hut was full of folks that planned on attempting the summit Sunday morning. There were about 20 guys and gals in the hut and one dog. It was amazing to see all the climbers together as on this day I was the only tourist. I have always thought of climbing as being a sport of the upper middle class white folks, at least it seems this way in the US, so it was quite interesting to see all these Mexican climbers with all kinds of differnet gear cooking food and chatting in the refugio. Some of the climbers were guides that were paid to lead groups to the top of the mountain. There was a coordinator who stayed behind in the refugio with a radio and good set of binoculars who kept track of the guys that were climbing with him. This is his dog Sasha.

Here is the refugio. 20 people in this room, four a bunk, with two sets of bunks racked three high. I do not know if it was because of the altitude or the fact that I was feeling sick, but I could not sleep a wink. After a prolonged coughing fit at midnight I decided that I would not get up with the rest of the climbers at 2 AM for an attempt at the summit. This turned out to be a good decision as I finally got some rest after everyone left and felt alot better then next day. At 6 AM I could hear the wind howling outside the refugio, and I wondered to myself if this was normal. It was not normal, and everyone of the climbers that left in the morning returned without reaching the summit. Everyone encouraged me to stay anther day and give the mountain a shot Monday morning. Initally I had not planned on staying two days, but after all the encouraging words from everyone, I changed my mind. As I was a bit short on food I accepted most of a pack of hotdogs, half a coke, and a some vanilla wafers to suppliment my food supply. Those hot dogs were deliciouse!

Monday I attempted the climb. To make a long story short, after alot of planning, my head lamp was not working properly and I had to return to the refugio. I only climbed from 4200 to about 4500 meters and was back in bed by 3:30 AM after leaving at 2:00. I was disappointed that a gear failure was what prevented me from climbing to the top, but happy with my decision to return. In the middle of the night on the side of the mountain, I felt lonely. The thought of having my old light go out was not comforting.

I returned to town the next day and talked with Michael, a traveler from Lithunian. He had joined me at the refugio Sunday night, but not feeling well had returned to town. As he is a Lithunian, and this is a sort of Russian, I gather, he is not smiling for his picture.

day two in Jaculmulco

2008-03-14T17:53:00.000-07:00

My second day in Jaculmulco I went for a hike with a guide Sabastian (a great guy) to view another canyon outside of town. Here is the canyon. At the top of the playtou to the left is an ancient grave yard. Down to the left at the bottom of the canyon is a town that time forgot. There are no roads that run to it, and so it has been completely isolated. Three years ago they got electricity. They still do not have phones. And the teacher that teaches at the elemetary school there hikes in 2.5 hours each way to give his classes. Amazing. When I return, I will visit the town and the grave yard.

The interesting thing about this hike is that it was the last chance to use my old hiking boots. I bought these boots 12 years ago, and they have held together through many adventures. Dad kindly shipped them to Mexico City for me, and after inpecting them for damage I though they needed to be oiled and the soles glued to help waterproof them before I took on any mountain climbing. After searching the town of Xalapa high and low for a cobbler, I finally found one. He seemed to be a kindly man (after watching Pinochio, I had a good impression of cobblers like Jopeto) and fixed the boots for $4 US. I thought they looked great at the time. Halfway through an 8 mile round trip hike, first one sole came off the boat, then the other sole came off. I was not happy to finish the hike like a JP Patches type hobo. And I will plan on keeping my eyes on cobblers in the future.

more pictures from jacamulco

2008-03-14T17:46:00.001-07:00

Instead of bug spray this is what the locals use to keep away the musketos. One of the guides told me about it the shampoo, Green Caprice, so I bought a bottle as I thought I would need some protection for a night of camping out in Jacamulco. I though like I had some great inside knowledge when the price of the bottle came out to be $1.20 US. Who needs DEET, indeed! During the course of the afternoon and evening I put on three liberal application of this stuff. I had it on me for about 24 hours straight. A day or two later I had what I believe to be my very first allergic reaction. I had rashed behind my knees and elbows, little bumps on my skin and a very itchy sensation all over my body. Back to DEET!

Here is the cabin I stayed the night at in Jaculmulco. I elected to sleep in the tent as I thought it was more bug proof. It turned out to be a very lazy afternoon as we got off the water about 1 PM, I drank a coke and ate some cookies and then took a 3 hour nap in a halmock under the eves of the cabin.

2008-03-14T17:18:00.001-07:00

Picture 1: Anyway, here are some pictures from the kayaking expidition. To make a long story short, they wanted to take me on a raft. I wanted a kayak, and we spit the difference with me getting to be in the front of a double kayak. The river is Rio Pescador (I think) and is low in these pictures as this is the Mexican dry season. The rapids are class 2 and 3, but the guides assured me that this is a monster river in Auguest and Septermber when the rainy season increases the river level by 3 meters. Here I am going down a nice rapid getting some water splashed in my face.

Here are a few pictures from the kayaking expidition. This whole idea got launched over a bucket of beers at Hostel Amigo in Mexico City. I had heard that there was some great river rafting in Vera Cruz state and that if enough of us got together and rented a boat we could float the river. Eventually about 5 of us agreed to give it a shot. 3 of us left town the next day for Vera Cruz with plans to meet up. Of course the plan failed. The phone number I got from one of the guys did not work. The two guys who took the bus to Vera Cruz could not remember the name of the hotel I was staying at... so we missed eachother. I decided that Vera Cruz sucked and drove to Xalapa. They decided that Vera Cruz sucked and took a bus back to Puebla. I ran into the guys back in Mexico City today, at the Hostel Amigo. It was like a reunion. Good to see friends again.

This is the best picture I have of the river canyon. This is a really big canyon, with walls at least 200 meters deep in parts. It is at low elevation about 1000 m, and so this sleepy town used to be a farming village growing mangos and sugercane. Apparently about 15 years ago some Canadian kayakers stumbled across this town, and now the river rafting and kayaking industry are quite popular. In the canyon away from town, it is a humid hot jungle type environment. There is alot of wildlife, and I saw a tocan, hawks, different types of fishing birds, and vultures. If Mexico was America they would have made this area a National Park a long time ago.

This river is famous for the large shrip that are caught in it by fisherman. This is a picture of a fisherman with a shrip basket. They attach these baskets to rocks with bait. Shrip climb in and can not get out. I ate a bowl of shrip soup later this night and can say that the shrimp are indeed quite huge. They are the size of small crayfish. The guys that fish for shrimp wear shoes and shorts and little else, and spend most of the day swimming in the river setting their baskets. During the 2 hour kayak expídition, I saw about a half dozen of these guys.

Here is a picture of kayak getting flipped. This is funny as leading up to the kayak getting flipped the guy behind me is yelling alot of instructions at me, and I was replying, OK, OK, OK, without really knowing what he was saying. When he flipped the raft I was actually quite surprised.

Here are the crew of guys (whose names I can not remember). The shorter fellow in the middle took most of the pictures from his hard bottom kayak while the larger fellow on the left was in the inflatable kayak with me. The guy in the middle is supposedly one of the best kayakers in town. If it was not for the new born ecotourism industry in this town these guys would probably be swimming for shrimp in the river, or cutting suger cane with a machete for a living. I was happy to spend $50 for their help guiding me down the river.

Still Alive

2008-03-10T11:48:00.000-07:00

I´ve spent the last week or so kayaking in Vera Cruz and trying to climb Pico de Orizaba. I survived the week, and will post some pictures and a description of the climb later.

Day 41

2008-03-04T21:05:00.000-08:00

I left Mexico City Saturday after finally getting the package. I felt it was time to go as things were beginning to get a bit repetive. Saturday night I drove to Vera Cruz, a big city on the Gulf of Mexico. As I got in late in a driving rain storm, and my attempts to contact friends in Mexico City via cell phone failed, I wasn´t in particilarly good mood to enjoy the city. My shoot from the hip impression of Very Cruz is that it reminded me quite a bit of another oil town: Houston, where the people that live there if they have the money aspire to drive SUVs and enjoy their air conditioning. Similarly to Acapolco the rich history of this city as the link between Mexico and Spain is largely lost due to the climate and development.

I left Vera Cruz Sunday for Xalapa, inland of Vera Cruz at an elevation of about 4500 feet. Xalapa is the capitol of the state of Vera Cruz and has a more moderate climate and is the hub of Mexican adventure and eco tourism. After a day resting and running errands, on Tuesday I drove to the town of Perote and climbed a small mountain (4250 meters). Here are some pictures:

A beatiful flowering Bouganville plant in front on my room. For some reason there are no tourists in the town. The last two nights there have been three people staying in a hostel with over 50 beds. I like the privacy, but I miss the company of other people.

A picture from the roof of the hostel south into the valley under Xalapa. This morning a big storm blew into Vera Cruz, so it rained and was cool in Xalapa. It felt like home and I loved it, though it seems like everyone else in the city was cold and hated the weather. Because of the quantity of water blown in off the Gulf of Mexico and the huge changes of elevation, everything in the world grows in the State of Vera Cruz somewhere. In the lowlands of Vera Cruz where it is hot and tropical they grow suger cane. Near Xalapa at 5000 ft elevation it rains and is misty (sort of how I image Ireland) and there are many dairy farms. At higher elevations near Perote where I climbed a mountain, it is more arid and you see pine forests like eastern washington and oregon. There is a little bit of logging and the soil is sandy and farmers grow potatoes and onions.

I drove the motorbike to Perote and tried to drive as high as I could up a dirt road to the top of the mountain. Somewhere above 10,000 elevation my carbaretor failed me and my bike stopped running. I pushed the bike to the side of the road and chained it to a tree. Only after chaining it to a tree did I notice the grave marker withing 5´ of my bike. Weird. I have a picture of this and will upload it later. Later when I am walking down the mountain I see a family driving to the top in a VW bug. The VW bug did make it past where my motorbike stalled out (they have a better carb, or know how to rejet the engine maybe)... but the guy driving the car did make one consession to altitude. He made his whole family get out and walk behind the car, including a grandmotherly type with a cane.

On top of the mountain. Looking to the east we see rolling rain clouds and mist. Looking to the west we see desert. The demarkation between wet and dry is very stark. Cool!

Even though the mountain is in an ecological reserve that didn´t stop the local phone utility from covering the mountaintop with cell phone, TV, and satalite relay equipment. This installation has been here beaming radio signals to 5 Mexican states for 35 years.

We climb these stairs, kindly provided by the phone utility to get to the top of the mountain. If you can´t tell from the picture, it is steep.

Here is a man pouring some fresh concrete. The folks at the utility were really cool to let me run around their worksite snapping pictures.

Here is a picture of Alberto, an engineer at the top of the world. Alberto is an electrical engineer who works on site at the top of the mountain, one week off and one one week on maintaining the cell phone and satalite equipment. I told him he should move the US and become a fireman, I think they get more off time.

Day 35ish

2008-03-04T20:14:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday I took a break from harassing Fedex and visited Teotictuan, the ancient city of pyramides outside Mexico City. This ancient city was believed to be populated from about 200 BC to about 700 AD and has the huge Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon as well as the Avenue of the Dead. The name avenue of the dead was given by the Aztecs who found this city long destroyed by the time their civilization rose and believed that the pyramids were tombs of ancient kings. Apparently Cortez passed by the ruined city on one of his Mexican campains and did not notice the ruins (supposedly they were completely overgrown) The pyramid of the sun is the third biggest pyramid in the world, nd the largest one that authorities still let people climb. Here are some pictures. The civilization that was founded in this city shared many similarities with the prehispanic civilizations that followed it: high population density that was the result of farming, a specialized society with farmers, warriors and priests, and a religion that involved human sacrifice. No one seems to have a good explanination why a city rose in this particular location, or why it totally collapsed several hundred years later. It seem strange to me that an area that could support tens of thousands of people could be abandoned and overgrown 1000 years later.

Me standing infront of the Pyramid of the Sun. This is a really big pyramid and those little specs that you see going up and down the stairs are people. After climbing up and down the thing once I thought I was glad I wasn´t one of the pyramid priests that had to do this every day. Image the arguments they must have had about who would have to go down to get the tools, if someone discovered they forgot something important at the bottom!

This is another picture of the Pyramid of the Sun taken from the smaller (but built on top of a hill and thus about as tall) Pyramid of the Moon. The street to the right of the picture is The Avenue of the Dead. Besides the fact that the avenue is over two kilometers long, the interesting thing about it is that it is not flat. There are multiple raised and lowered sections along the avenue, indicating that everyone walked along it passing up and down stairs. Of course this would not be a practicle design for any sort of wheeled vehicle. Its amazing to think that as sophisticated as these ancient civilizations were, they didn´t have the use of any type of cart pulling animal, and thus had no need for the wheel.

The Pyramid of the Moon. We can see smaller temple or dwelling complexes off to the lower left.

Carvings from yet another complex, the temple of the jaguar, I believe.

A close up view of a carving from the Temple of the Jaguar. This head was removed and installed in a small museam in the Teotictuan complex. Its interesting that extensive and huge as these temple complexes were, there are relatively few carvings or frescos that remain. Maybe there were lots of carvings and frescos at the time the civilization existed, but they didn´t hold up as well over time as the larger structures.

Day 37, Finer Entertainment for Manzell

2008-03-04T20:02:00.000-08:00

Manzell asked about finer entertainment. Well, I spent most of the evening of Day 34 running around Mexico City in my Dr. Waggoner mask. After walking across the Zocalo in the mask, we got a quick dinner and bite to eat at another hostel and I went to my second Luncha Libra, a 5 match event in a Key Area sized venue in Mexico City. After the lunch libre we went out for drinks. What do you do when you wear a Mexican wrestling mask? In my case, sometimes this involves getting a shot of tequilla poured into your mouth from a bartender who is also wearing a Dr. Waggoner mask. Anyway, I think think the picture speaks for itself:

The bartender is Gerrardo, the coolest bartender I´ve met during the trip so far. My friend Darragh, a big Irish lad who looks quite a bit like Donnie, took this picture.

Day 33

2008-02-25T23:02:00.001-08:00

Its now Thursday 28 and I have been in Mexico City, I believe, since last Friday. The original purpose of traveling here was to pick up a care package that my folks sent me last week. The package was due to arrive either Thursday or Friday of last week. The package has not yet arrived and I am beginning to feel alot like Humfrey Bogart in Casablanca. Every morning I harass the Fedex people with calls and e-mails. Every day some sort of fresh injustice occurs. Yesterdays injustice was the fact that the Mexican customs decided not to clear the package because they did not have a copy of my plane ticket to leave the country, despite the fact that earlier in the week I had faxed them a copy of my tourist visa that clearly says "mode of transportation: motor bike" and was stamped by an official at the Mexican border.

I guess the upside to being trapped here is having more time to see this huge beautiful city, to meet interesting people in the city, and to hang out with some interesting people at the hostel. On Sunday as I walked around the historic center of the city I came across a Museum of Economics and decided to go on a tour. Since it is a newer interactive type museum, I enjoyed the company of my tour guide Oscar, a university student in Mexico City. We had such a good time during the tour that we got a beer and something to eat afterwords with a friend of his, Lizeth. We had a good time and they offered to give me a personal tour of a few parts of Mexico city after classes on Monday. I gladly accepted and here are some pictures I took.

La Villa de Guadalupe, or the Cathedral of the Virgin of Guadalupe. While the Catedral Metropolitan constructed in the Mexico City Zocalo (town square, incidentally, directly above the old Aztec pyramid and temple complex) the may be considered the largest and most historic Cathedral of Latin America, La Villa de Guadalupe is the spiritual home of Mexican Catholics. The new cathedral that we see on the right is the sight of yearly pilgrimages for many people, some who crawl the length of Calla de Guadalupe as an act of penance (think of crawling down Rainier Ave from downtown to Columbia city to get an idea of what this might be like). When the pope visits Mexico City he gives mass from a balcony of the cathedral. They even have a popemobile that is sort of an exhibit off to the side of the cathedral.

This is a picture south from the Latin American Tower in the downtown center of Mexico City. My GPS clocked the elevation as 7450 ft.

This is a picture of the three amigos. As we were trying to capture some of the lights in the background, the lighting isn´t so great for the rest of us. Oscar is on the left with Lizeth in the middle.

Day 29

2008-02-25T22:56:00.001-08:00

When I reached Puerto Escondido I checked my e-mail for the first time in a few days and discovered that my folks sent a care package of climbing gear and bike parts to Mexico City for me to pick up from a Federal Express office. Whoops! Now I need to make a 400 mile trip north to pick up the stuff.

I left town early for Oaxaca, the mid point between Mexico City and Puerto Escondido. It was an awesome drive with the first 100 miles of road seemingly not having a straight section of road over 100 meters in length.

I got to Oaxaca had fun for the evening and left for Mexico City the next day.

Day 27

2008-02-25T22:23:00.000-08:00

After consulting with the kind folk at Hotel Eiffel Tower and hearing horror stories about driving in Mexico and decided to continue driving South along Mex 200 to the surfer town of Puerto Escondido rather than attempt a journey east to Mexico City.

The drive South along the coast was uneventful and ended up staying at my first hostel of the trip, Hotel Mayflower, in Puerto Escondido.

Puerto Escondido is an amazing place. Its an internationally renowned surf town, home of The Mexican Pipeline, a hugely powerful wave that reported reaches a height of 60 feet when its big in the summer months before crashing onto the beach. This is the wave that attracts surfers from all over the world to live in this small town. The beaches are full of Mexican, American, French, Argentinian, South African, and Australian surfers. This is also a major backpacker destination as my Hostel was full of European and Canadians tourists. Most of the surfers live in rooms they rent for about $10 a day, surf during the day, hit the bars starting about 10:30 at night, if things go well end up with a girl for the evening, and like the movie groundhog day repeat this process over and over until they run out of money. The more aspirational surfers may take a Spanish lesson during the day or try to find a job at the beach that allows them to live in Mexico a little longer.

In my second day in Puerto Escondido I surfed a relitively sedate 6 foot wave. It was still the biggest wave I have ever tried to surf. I didn´t really catch one of these waves but I did learn to stay back on the board, since if my weight is too far forward I experienced a sensation similar to falling off a brick wall, then having the brick wall fall on my back. I was pretty sure I was the worst surfer in the water day, and if I ever come back I´m going to make a red t-shirt that says "The Worst Surfer On The Beach" so people know to stay away from me. Besides being crushed a few times in the ocean I also got an extremely bad sunburn. I was so burnt I ended up watching a movie by myself, Jimmy Cliffs "The Harder They Come" at a Cinima. Since I was the only guy in a 12 seat theater I got to pick the movie and drink beer and eat popcorn in the airconditioned dark. Heaven! After it was over I hung out with Blue, an Australian surfer and Sammy the woman that ran the theater. We chatted about surfing and living in Puerto Escondido into the evening, and I went back to the Hostel for an early night.

camera phone pictures

2008-02-25T14:37:00.000-08:00

I just got back last night or more accurately early this morning. The last push was large, 800 miles or so. I am at work right now using the wonderful Internet for education purposes of course. I will chalk this one up as personal development.

I am feeling a bit tired at the moment so I will only going to upload pictures now.

Chris, Bobby and Carl in Carls' Garage. Carl, thanks for all the tools and parts, we have used nearly everything gave us.

This duct tape glove was custom designed to fit over my gloves. After trying to work the throttle and break with the goofy thing I gave up on it.

Wind mill between Palm Springs and LA. The picture doesn't do it justice.

Pirate Code states. "Pirates do what they can do, and they don't do, what they can't do."
This little rig was designed to replace the chain quick link retaining clip. It worked in this state for 300miles before finally failing. I eventually replaced the wire and fixed it on with a healthy amount of JBweld. We will see how long it lasts but so far it has held since palm springs.

This guy was living in a mans backpack in Zihautinejo.

Boards on the bike at the local surf hang out

This was my bathroom buddy, found him when I reached to put some sawdust in the can when I was surprised by some tiny pinchers.

Ziha's water front

Mexican Wrestling

Chicken Mole with red sauce

Pizole, a local soup. I would liken it to Ramen in Japan, cheap and delicious. This is the best Pizole in town but it is not so cheap.

Uncle Domino and Chris. I think the hour is a little early for the Brownie.

Uncle Domino and his Dream, Thank you for sharing it with us.

Chris in San Mateo coming back from some errand running on my bike. Oil your chain no matter what you read on the internet and beware the evil chain eating chemicals such as Engine Degreaser.

Day 26: Tuesday Feb 19, I think

2008-02-22T20:23:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday in Zehau Cameron and I split paths.

Cameron began what planned to be a furious drive back to Seattle with the throttle "taped" open and high hopes to get home to Seattle in a week or so, and hopefully not get fired from his job.

After some indecision on my part about weather to drive East to Mexico City or continue South along the coast, I decided to take the easier path and continue traveling along the coast to Acapolco. Continueing a trend that had begun in the US, I had lost my lonely planet travel guide, a book that to me ranks slightly below my passport and credit card in terms of importance. Thankfully Monday night Cameron and I had run into some Canadians that we were surfing with earlier in the day that were traveling home in the morning, and I was able to purchase a slightly used version of the same book I had lost. Awesome! I knew where I was going once again!

So after another tasty breakfast at the Zehautinajho Pancake house, Cameron and I packed our bags and headed in different directions. I had an easy drive south on Mex 200 about 16o miles to Acapolco. Once arriving in Acapolco things got very hard. The lonely planet travel book for Acapolco sucked: in a city of 500k they only had names for a dozen streets and to make matters worse Acaploco has only about 4 steet signs in the entire city. It took me about an hour of driving around, asking for directions, using the terrible maps and GPS I had with me to find the hotel I planned at staying at for the evening.

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Edit: sorry about the half post. When I was writing the first draft of the post in Oaxoca two Swedish girls and Dutch girl interrupted me with an invitation to go out for drinks and dancing. Like The Godfather, when girls like that make an offer like that, it can´t be refused.
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Anyways, back to the post. I finally made my way to the place I planned on staying for the night, the awesome Hotel Eiffel Tower. After stashing my bike in the garage and checking in for the afternoon a walked into Old Town Acapolco, checked out the town square (always called the zocolo for some reason), took a tour of Fort San Diego that gaurded the harbor and ate a delicous fish dinner at a resturant.

Later that night I swam some laps in the Hotel pool and watched the cliff divers. I stayed up late that night with the owners of the Hotel eating cookies, drinking coffee and talking about Acapolco adventures.

Here are some pictures:

Beautiful Acapolco harbor, well protected from the weather from the hills that line the bay. This was the Pacific end of the old Spanish trading route to the Philipines and the Far East. Think of it as an older San Fransisco with wide sandy beaches. Spanish silver mined in Mexico was traded in the Philipines for china and silk for over 300 years along this route. This harbor was often the subject of fierce navel struggles between the Spanish and various european navel powers and pirates.

The view west from Hotel Eiffel Tower. 10,000 miles to the West is the Philipines. Below my left shoulder are the cliffs that the Acapolco cliff diver jump off.

The famous Acapolco cliff divers. The diver that dove the highest distance, the guy in the middle, dropped about 65 feet into the ocean and needed to clear about 10 feet of cliff to make the dive. Before the divers jump into the ocean the pray at a little shrine on top of the cliff. The thing about the dive that seemed tricky to me is the fact that they need to jump out to clear the cliff and that they need to make a semi technical climb up the rock face of the cliff to reach their diving platforms. I have a small regret that I didn´t swim out to the cliff in the morning before leaving town and attempt my own dive.

some more pics

2008-02-18T20:41:00.001-08:00

Chris after a hard day of riding in Guadalajara.

Sunset heading into Santa Rosillia

Pelican flying over the dock in Gurrero Negro

The best whale picture I was able to get.

Chris stoked to be getting on a whale tour boat

Seals on the rocks neer Big Sur

Chris streching his leg outside of Big Sur

View from Schad and Petra´s place in the Santa Cruz Hills

Petra and Schad´s place and the bikes charging.

just pictures

2008-02-17T10:44:00.001-08:00

Playas Saladita

Surfboards on the bike

Chris looking awesome

Me with creepy facial hair

Coming into Mazatlan

Our ferry, the Sonora Star

Another similar Ferry

David, looking good

The dream on Playas Saladita, not quite there but showing promise

The reality on Playas Saladita, a nice cool trailer and living facilities.

Day 17

2008-02-17T09:14:00.000-08:00

San Rosillia to La Paz

We woke up early with the intent to reach La Paz by early afternoon. I went to take a quick shower to find that the water was not running. Chris used his broken spanish (¿Broke ass Spanish?) to ask for water. The reply was that there was no water in the morning. No shower this morning.

We were on the gulf side of Baja, I was breath taken by its beauty but there was not time to stop. Uncle Domino had a plane ticked to Zihuatenejo arriving in only 3 days. No time to waste! I felt a little sad as I passed through the tranquil town of Mulege, located in a small vally that opened to the sea. The palm trees lined the small river, providing shade and fruit to the area. The climate was noticabley cooler. In my opinion, the gulf was much more senic than the coast, it is one of the places I will am eager to return to.

We passed through a couple towns, none had gas directly off the road side so we continued on. it was about 80 miles on my tank. The is roughly the 2/5 of the operating range of my bikes. I had an extra gallon in my pannier so in a pinch we could both travel 25miles further or one of us could go 50miles and return with gas. Regardless we could still press on a bit. I saw signs to the next town Loreto was 200kilo. Which is damn close to 120miles. If Lorado was the next town this one was going to be close. It would be close the maximum range of the bikes with 4 gallon size gas tanks.

We pressed on, our tanks were reaching a low we had never experienced. To conserve on gas we began to play Tour de France, taking turns drafting one another at the optomal speed of 55mph. In this case drafting means when following your buddy getting as close to the rear end of his bike as possible. Both drivers work hard to not accelerate or decelerate suddenly. Both drivers duck low on the bike to lower air drag so that the person driving the bike in the rear saves fuel. Chris hit his reserve and we knew there wasn´t much left. The Clark tank on his bike was different then mine, reserve could mean another 30miles or it could mean 10. Cars and trucks would pass us and look at us like we were crazy. David caught up with us while we were playing silly buggars and mimed drinking a beverage. Just as he passed Chris ran out of gas but we had a plan. I was too lazy to unpack my gear to get to the gas so we decided to tip chris´s bike onto its side allowing fuel on the right side of the tank to drain to the left side where the petcock siphoned off the fuel. This double the reserve distance from 20miles to some were around 40 if you are playing silly buggars and drafting off eachother. The town was only 5miles away, no problem. David noticed we had droped out of his rearview mirror and returned to see up proping up a bike. He must have though we crashed the bike or something. A few minutes and we were at our favorate store, PEMEX, the Mexican gas station.

The bottom of Chris´s tank at the PEMEX station. Very empty!

We took a break and stoped at a convenience store and bought some soda, chips and tp. We also picked up some beer for the gas station attendents for good karma, they were thrilled. The soda break ended up being too long about 1.5 hours. David then notified us that we had crossed time zones, oops didn´t account for that. The pressure was on, we began to driver faster and faster, becoming more and more brazen about passing slow vehicles. The rolling hills didn´t help with visibility. Our arrival time in La Paz was late, nearly 4:30 and we still needed to find the place and get the paperwork done as we were not sure that the store would be open on Saturday. It turned out to be on the oppisit side of town neer the ferries. We rushed in a panic that the Banhersito, the vehicle licensing agency would close at 5:00 and we would be forced to catch a Monday Ferry. In hind sight this was completely stupid as Chris´s mexico guide book said that the banjercito actually closed at 1:30 Friday but was open on Saturday. I thought Chris was out of his mind, we were traveling out of La Paz at a incredable rate. If we continued this we would shurly end up in Cabo.

We reached the terminal a couple minutes befor 5:00 and were informend the Banhercito was closed. Crap! The guard informed us it would open at 9:00 the next morning. A great sigh of releaf followed. Still pumped from the rush to the terminal we headed back to town to settle in. David lead this time because he had a GPS with destinations programmed in. Coming around a corner we encountered a Semi that had crossed over the center line. It gave David quite a spook as his pannier cleared by a matter of inches, but that was the last bit of excitment for the day.

We booked our stay at a local hotel with an open courtyard that fit all our bikes. The court yard was furnished with plants and a small coocking area. The rooms surrounding the yard had double doors with pad locks. Our room was quite big with a two story ceiling, three full size beds and room to spare. The shower and bathroom was a walled off half way to the ceiling with a curtain instead of a door. The water was hot and the overal conditions quite cleanly, no bugs or leaks. It felt good to get the sweat off my skin and the grease out of my hair.

The door to our room, double doors and a pad lock. I love the warm colors down here.

David and I in the court yard loading up for the ferry

We took a detour and had a drink on the water front where we bumped into a Canadian couple riding Harlies. The sun set over the gulf with a beautiful sillowette of a palm tree. David got an excelent picture. Hopefully I can get it and post it. We then bounced and got another beer and taquila. Before going to be we grabbed some food from a street vender. A local was proud to practice his english and ordered the best off the menu for us. Tired and full we went to bed feeling safe and secure knowing the morning would not be another shit show in Mexico.

Day 14: San Diego to Ensenada

2008-02-16T17:15:00.001-08:00

This was an exciting day! After almost two weeks of driving and several weeks of prepration we were actually going to go to Mexico. Neither Cameron or I had ever traveled there, though I felt as if I had a good understanding of the country from repeated viewing of "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly," "No Country for Old Men," and hearing alot things about "Apocolypto." I had also taken three years of high school Spanish over 15 years ago (and in previous travels to foreign countries I can safely say that I have a terrible ear for language and little facility for remembering words) and practiced Spanish for 3.5 hours New Years Eve before attending several parties. Cameron had similar language preparation to me. And now we would be put to the test!

We enjoyed a breakfast at McDonalds (for some reason when I´m international trips I really cant get enough of the Big Mac Value meals, with a side order of apple pie and large coffee to go with the Coke. They are delicouse! And this burger eating policy takes effect as soon as I leave the Seattle City limits). Cameron and I also strategized about what we would do once we got to the border. First we would get the bikes registered, get our visas then quickly visit a cash machine and drive south. As they say in these parts: ¡No Problemo!

Well, things did not go according to plan. We encountered our first problemo at the border itself. We drove to the boarder in moderately light traffic towards a toll both looking thing with traffic moving at about 20 mph. At the toll both area there were green lights and one guy sitting on a stool in the midst of this six lane booth area. The light was an unwavering green. No cars stopped or slowed down. The guy on the stool did nothing. Welcome to Mexico! 100 yards past this booth thingy the road we were on turned into a highway driving East along the boarder. Cameron and I pull over exclaiming, "Shit, how could they just let us into the country like that!" "Why didnt they stop us at the border!" and "How are we ever going to get back to the border to get all our paper work figured out?" After pulling the bikes off the freeway and parking, we looked around and saw that things were alot hotter here, and very dusty. The cars that everyone was driving looked old and beat up, sort of like my Ford Escort back in Seattle. There were alot of people just sort of hanging out doing nothing in the shade. A police officer had pulled over a Mexican car next to us and seemed to really be closely going through the paperwork of the two guys in the car. We quickly decided to NOT talk to the policeman and to try and drive back to the Mexican side of the boarder crossing.

This seemed like it should be pretty easy, as were less than 400 yards from the border crossing and had a GPS map of the area that showed the exact streets on which we were driving, but driving back to where we crossed proved to be difficult. We went around a vast traffic circle with something like dozen cops sitting in the middle of the circle and not a single car following any sort of rules of driving (our strategy, turn on high beams and make noise by reving the engine high). We crossed the freeway we used to enter TJ and ended up in a neighborhood of colorful shanties. The roads we drove on changed from smoth pavement, to rough pavement, to gravel, and finally dusty dirt. Looking down an empty block of dirt road and shanties, Cameron and I decided that we would rather u-turn the bike (usually something that we would frown upon in the US for safety reasons) than drive around the block. It seemed we couldn´t get back to the border on our own, so it was time to start asking for directions. I selected a police woman standing on the street next to some traffic cones and pulled the bike up to her and asked her where the border and the banjercitos (sort of a wierd mexican army band that takes care of vehicle permits) were located. Amazingly I though I understood her directions. We drove off only to find roads and traffic leading back to the US side of the boarder. We didn´t want to go back to the US, so we turned off the road and returned to the colorful shanty town. Emerging from the shanty town, and now maybe 150 yards from the Mexican border station but on the wrong side of a 8 lane freeway, I asked a parking attendent how to get to the Mexican border. He couldn´t understand a single thing I said and I couldn´t understand him. He whistled for a friend that could speak english and a young man ambled out of the shade of the border fence (he was literaly sitting in the shade under it) towards me. He said he would walk me to the border. I asked him how far of a walk it was. He didn´t give me a good answer, so I said "no gracies, no neccisito." I started putting my helmet and gloves back on, while shooting Cameron a lets-fucking-GO-NOW look. The young man asked for something for his trouble. I said "no tengo dinero," which was true actually since neither of us had gone to a cash maching yet. We hopped on the bikes and drove back into shanty town.

This is sort of another interesting things about motorbikes. For better or worse, when we are wearing all our gear and sitting on the bike, we look like an imposing presence. The engine noise makes all conversation below shouting level impossible to make out cutting short awkward conversations, and bikes can squeeze through most any little crack in traffic, in the side walk, in a dirt path to escape a situation. After about two hours of driving around in circles in Tijuana we decided to go back to the US.

Going back to the US, we joined a long line of cars streaming to the border. 6 lanes wide in the blazing sun in stop and go traffic. Now this was what a border crossing looks like! Home sweet home! Happy to have made the decision to go back to the US Cameron and I sat in traffic sweating. Drivers in other cars would helpfully roll their windows down and suggest that we lane split to the front of the line. That sounded like a fine plan so we did it, though I imagine if we had tried such a thing at the Blaine border crossing, people would have had a fit. After we reached the border the guard asked us how long we had been in Mexico and we said two hours. We told him we would return to Mexico as soon as we could get on I5 south. He told us that we were lucky not to be stopped by the Tijuana police (he actually said something like "The TJ cops are all crooks" which I thought was a pretty strong statement considering that he was telling this in his official capacity as border gaurd). After warning us to be careful he let us back into the US and we were on our way back to Mexico.

This time when we entered Mexico we didn´t let the fast moving traffic, the green lights and the sleeping border gaurd confuse us! We drove straight to the vehicle inspection area and asked them where we could get our tourist information filled out. They motioned us towards a long line of windows besides the inspection area parking lot. Cameron and I started husteling back and forth between variouse banking, visa, and tourist offices getting visa stamps, maps, and paying various fees. As an American this feels like a terrible lot of beuricratic red tape, but having experienced this type of thing throughout Mexico I am fairly certain that it is an anticorruption measure. They seperate the guy that gives you the visa, from the guy that you pay for the visa, from the guy that stamps your visa to make it more difficult to work a scam to take your money. Another interesting thing is that often the guys that help us fill out the official paper work tell us things that we knew to be untrue about traveling in Mexico. The visa guy said that we didn´t need to import our vehicles into mainland Mexico (which we knew to be untrue). After stamping our visas he also asked for some money for a coke. We declined (¡No tengo dinero!) and after confirming with a second guy in a tourist information both that the banjecito that we needed to get to for importing the vehicle was in the neighborhood of the crazy roundabouts and colorful shanties Cameron and I decided to drive South ASAP and worry about importing our bikes at a later time.

Relieved to be leaving town, Cameron and I drove south in the afternoon sun down Mex 1 towards Ensenada. After TJ, this felt easy. Traffic was light and the road was good. The sun shone over a beautiful blue ocean and desert landscape. After leaving TJ houses began to look alot less shanty like. The only thing that was funny about the drive was that Cameron and I had decided to not attempt to locate a ATM in TJ, and after spending about $30 cash each for visas (they do not takes cheques or credit cards at the border) we were running short of money. Mex 1 out of TJ is a toll road and we would be stopped periodically and pay tolls of about $2 per bike. After about the third toll both we had run out of money and had to ask the toll both operator to take mercy on us and let us continue driving. I´m sure that the toll both operator had a good laugh with his friends about the indigent americas that somehow snuck into the county later that night.

Ensenada was a dirtly wonderful little place. We had a great room, and I was relieved to be safe in Mexico after the days adventures.

Day 16

2008-02-16T16:43:00.000-08:00

Guerro Negro to Santa Rosillia

We woke up arround 7:00, thing were already starting to get hot. I packed up a little while Chris went to check up on the tour times. Apparenty the first tour started at 10:00 so we had some time. I made tortillias and beans, this time we knew to add a little water to the pan before adding the beans. This kept the hot spots cooler and didn´t burn the shit out of the beans immediatly. Chris´s little stove was working well. It was nice to move at a slightly relaxed speed again.

We arrived for the whale tour arround 9:30 and relized it cost 400 pesos a head. This was too much, we wouldn´t afford gass to the next bank machine if we did this. We could quick disasemble the bike and break into the reserve US $60 that remained from the dip we took on the Autopista to Ensenada. We talked our selves out of spending all our cash and with quite a bit of sour grapes we finilized packing our gear on the bikes. I turned the bike off of choke too erarly and stalled it on our exit and realized I had left the keys in the on possition and the handle bar heater on high long enought to kill the battery. Doh!

Now it was engineering time again. I knew we couldn´t jump the bike off a car because we hadn´t replaced our trickle charging fuses with higher amperage ones yet. This ment we could charge the bikes but if we tried to kick over the engine current draw would immediately blow the fuse and the exernal cable I routed to the battery would be useless. I could remove the panniers and mounting rack and do the traditional jump technique. I could also hook my bike to Chris´s bike and let the alternator from his bike charge mine. We didn´t make a bike to bike connector. Well time to engineer one, I clipped to the hot side of the handle bar heater switch on his bike and back striped a ground wire and clipped to it. Some sparks flew but I was going to be optimistic this time. Mean while we were attracting attension from the tour staff. One that spoke english came and asked if we were ok. I replied yes and explained our cash delima. I managed to bargan a reduced price on the next boat. The bike started up and I found the lock for my Pack safe. What a turnaround.

We ditiched our stuff in the parking lot and hopped on the next boat. There were only 6 people on our tour the previous boat held upwards of 16 people looks like we got the deal. As we headed out on the lagoon we saw a male whale breached the surface at full tilt almost completely exiting the water and landing with a giant splash of water. The Mothers pushed there noses to the sky so there eyes would rise above the water line. We asked about the behaviour and were told they were looking around. Obviously we were a bit of a curiosity. Eventually the boat was within meters of the Does and their caves. It was amazing, I was glad to have made out even though I had spent most all the money. Admittedly after an hour and a half of being on the water scorched by the sun and chilled by the water I was ready to get back on the bike.

We puttered off not knowing how far we were going to make it. We speculated on a number of spots but San Rosillia was definatly a need stop on the map because it had a banks with chash machines. We cut across baja through national parks. There were no major towns for some time, 200miles between official gas stations. Chris bought us a couple gallons of gas from a local vender selling out of a pickup truck. The desert was very unique portions of it remeinded me of a field of parcly that had gone to seed. Low ground cover with ocasional jutting groth with a bit of dispercement near the top. Soon cactus began to grow tall, the type of cactus that is depicted in cartoons. After having animals run through the road at dusk we decided not to travel at night. We stopped short in San Rosillia after experiencing the most unreal pink sunset over the mountains.

Our stay in San Rosillia was a test on our spanish. We paged through the Lonely Planet Book looking for places to stay and thing to do. The streets were dimmly lit and often not labeled. The GPS Mexico maps had nothing but a dot indicating a city. We first stopped by a bakery that claims to be world renoun. I bought a short bread like muffin filled with thick sweet cream cheese. It resemble one of those mini shortbread pecan pies but without pecan pie filling. It was amazing. Dinner was 200 pesos for the two of us at a very nice Mexican resturant including appetizer and cerveza. Some searching later we found a place to stay. The owner had gone to be alread not expecting costomers later in the evening. A local nocked on the door for us and we were in for 150 pesos. There wasn´t much to the place, two clean beds in a quaint little hotel with a soft brown courtyard, some local dogs and a little greenary. No TV, not so great plumbing but that is the norm here.

Days 11, 12, 13

2008-02-16T16:32:00.000-08:00

After a celebratory Friday night, Davie left San Diego early Saturday morning for an academic conference (side note: Ashers boyfriend Davie is an accomplished medical doctor and HIV researcher as UCSD with, I believe, funding from 4 R01s at this time... in short, a lot of smart people think you are doing good things if you get this level of funding. It was alot of fun to be able to discuss some of the ins and outs of my PhD research with someone after leaving Seattle).

Much time was spent in San Diego at Asher and Davie´s place resting up for a few days and preparing to get ready to ride into Mexico. This involved approximately a 8 trips to various motorcycle and tool stores looking for bike parts and equipment: we tried to find a spanner wrench to adjust my rear suspension -- we failed in the quest for this tool but purchasing a giant pipe wrench seemed to do trick with this adjustment, a chain tool and new chain, oil filters, oil, and o-rings to change the oil on the bike, knee pads to wear under our motopants, and lightweight gloves to wear in warm weather. Cameron and I worked on the bikes changing the oil and adjusting the suspension on the rear spring of the bike so it is "harder" and better accounts for the heavy load of gear and equipment on the bike.

We visited a Washington Mutual bank to convert some dollars to pesos but it seems that banks do not commonly do this sort of thing anymore, leaving it to travelers to convert their money from ATMs once they enter a foreign country.

We also visited a travel agency, Discover Baja, with extensive experience organizing trips to Mexico and talked to them about what kind of vehicle and health insurance we would need on the trip, what visas we would need to enter the country, and what type of documentation we would need to import the bikes into Mexico. We visited San Diego AAA and a map store. In San Francisco we had discovered that we would need copies of our vehicle titles to complete some of the Mexican vehicle importation paperwork and mom and dad had kindly mailed the letter to San Diego. I picked up this letter at the Hillcrest neighborhood post office. For many of these errands Asher and Aline generously allowed us to borrow their cars. And Cameron and I only got a little lost driving around San Diego.

After fixing the bike we had plenty of time for fun. Asher and I talked about school and old times. Asher cooked amazing dinners both Saturday and Sunday nights. Unice, who speaks fluent Cantonese and Mandrin, treated us to a real Chinese brunch of Dim Sum at a Chinese restruant in San Diego Sunday morning. We watched movies Sunday night and had a going away celebration Monday night. Both Asher and I were feeling a little under the weather Tuesday morning. It seemed just like old times at Seattle University. I was excited to go to Mexico but sad to leave great friends in San Diego.

Day 15

2008-02-16T16:27:00.000-08:00

Enesenada to Guerrero Negro

We awoke bright and early around 6:20 with the intent to get to Guerrero Negro before nightfall. We moved a little slower than anticipated and had a nice cup of coffee with David a fellow adventure rider we bumped into the night before. David was a white South African, born in what was Rhodesia. After living in South Africa and retiring from his advertising company David had decided to ride around the world for six years on a motorbike, a BMW GS650: a somewhat heavier and more road oriented version of our own bikes. David offered up some real coffee and we obliged. Without a filter he poured the grounds and hot water directly into our cups. I had done this once in the past with mixed results. The key is to stir the grounds until they sink to the bottom. Chris took two swigs and dumped his in the bathroom and then made instant coffee, I gritted my teeth and endured the texture. Meanwhile, David went on about a great deal of interesting things. David felt he had lost his home for the second time, as South Africa had become too dangerous for even this adventurer.

On the road by 9:00 and on our way. The roads were now all highway and we feared they might be slow. The opposite was true, the road were quite clear in Baja. One could easily do what ever his bike would and skills would permit for the majority of the trip with the exceptional slow vehicle and topo (Mexican speed bump) here and there. We drove along the coast for the majority of the morning. Before heading slightly east into the interior we found some single track dirt trails to the water. Here we burned some beans and served them in flour tortillas we purchased from the Oxxo (Mexican Plaid Pantry). The food may have been terrible but we loved it just the same. The cost was similar to most of what we has seen in the us and before Enesenada, stunning as ever but this was the first time we has seen dunes and Pelicans.

Pictures from our luch side track

Full and ready to leave we pushed talked about our destination and strategies upon arrival then headed off. The road winded thought some hills and the road became quite bad in places. All maintainance was done by hand with a crew that fit in a pickup truck. We passed several accidents but this was becoming normal after our experiences in Tijuana an Enesenada. Night fell and we found the visibility conditions to be terrible. The lack of reflectors, rumble strips and fresh paint made staying on the correct side of the road difficult. Dull yellow looks similar to white especially when you are staring into oncoming traffic. We arrived in Guerrero Negro with a little adrenaline on our breaths and quite fatigued. It was time to get off the road.

Our first stop was at the hotel and restaurant know for it's excellent seafood. This was a bit of a tourist destination with whale tours only a few miles away. The Lonely Planet suggestion proved to be good again with an excellent diet of fresh fish we hoped back on our bikes in search of a campground on the beach. Fifteen miles of dirt road through a sea salt production facility and we found our spot. The sky was all stars, not even the moon polluted the sky. It was so clear you could tell the color and twinkling of stars you had never seen before. The milky way was not just a haze but a band of tiny lights, we could see by the star light. The tent was pulled out for the first time and we were fast asleep ready looking forward to the next day.

400 miles in total

Day 9

2008-02-16T14:21:00.000-08:00

Santa Cruz to LA

We woke up in Santa Cruz and had coffee with Petra and her husband Shad. Their house was beautiful, in the light we could see the way the house was situated in the hills far above Santa Cruz, a country home complete with a stocked chicken coup and other small utility shelters. We relaxed for a few minutes before attempting to leave, enjoying the scenery. I forgot to take keys out of motorcycle after packing it. The battery died. This wasn´t the last time that this would happen.

A few minutes of searching for a working outlet outside was not successful. We eventually found a extension cable and routed it through the cat door to our battery tender, one of the few bike tools that Chris had packed and I had not. We waited about another half hour before starting the bike and putting away what we had got out. We continued on the Hwy1 and then to the 101 all the way into LA.

The scenery from Monterey to San Louis a Bisbo was amazing. Fun twisties on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific leading into the Big Sur where the elephant Seals basked in the sun. We stopped on the flatts just before Big Sur where we saw some small seals sleeping on the rocks. We snaped a couple pictures and let our bodies strech out a little.

When we reached San Louis a Bisbo we chowed down a couple burgers at Carls Jr. and sucessfully invited our selves to my cousins Sean's place. Dircetions seemed simple enough, we guessed a couple to the hours and we would be in LA, a few more minutes of letting our butts recover from the narrow vibrating seats on the DR-Z400 and we were off again.

Traffic slowly began to build as we entered LA. Crossing throught he grape vine was extrememly windy, our motorcycles tilted as much a s 45deg as blast of wind would whip through. I saw signs to Yosemite and thought of climbing. Eventually we arrived in Ventura to get gas and a drink. We expected to be 40minutes out at this time. We were wrong, LA was much more vast that we had expected. The freeway had signs saying LA. Not LA next 3 exits, or downtown next 4 miles, just LA. Freeways merged into freeeways. Hwy 101 was now 6 lanes wide as it approached the city center, it would periodically peel off or combine and you had to stay on your toes. Agressive drivers in sports cars whipped around in every direction, a little mind boggeling when you are on a 400cc motorcycle loaded down thinking you should have been off the freeway 50miles ago.

We arrive in the dark, glad to be off the road and parked in Sean´s parking gurage. Sean lead us upstares and served some drinks. We shared a couple stories and did some laundry. Sean and his room mate went to bed early, it was Thursday and school and work for the occupents kept the night form staying up too late. Seans friend (Matt?) from Texas on the other had was glad to entertain us until the early hours of the morning with stores of paintball, displays exquisit hand guns and boasting of unique busness tactics (quick story: one business tactic is too keep the other side on its toes... dont let them be comfortable or they will have the advantage. So Matt would arrange for business meeting to happen at his gun club. He would show them how guns work and shoot at targets while they tried to talk to him. After shooting at targets for a while he would then tell them to talk to his lawyers.)

Day 8

2008-02-16T13:51:00.000-08:00

Berkley to Santa Cruz

We started off the day a little lazy, heading out of town after morning traffic. While packing the gear onto the bikes Chris noticed there was an o-ring coming out of his chain. Humm, thats not good. We pondered if we should replace the chain immediately or not. We decided if the chain was less that $60 we would just get a new one otherwise we would get one in San Diego. About 40miles down the road in San Mateo we found out we would be buying one immediately when it broke on the freeway.

I lent Chris my bike while he ran to the closest Suzuki store which we found using Google text. Manny helped from Portland too, by now we had started using him as the go to man for questions. Coincidently there was a Suzuki store just a few miles away. Here Chris met some the most generous people we have encountered. Carl the local retired motorcycle guru spends his free hours working the store. Carl located a store that carried the chain a RK520S, which was a bit out of the way down a thoroughfare that resembled Aurura. Once we had the chain we began to realize that quick link was not as easy to install its name implied.

The wrapper explicitly stated that vice grips should not be used to install the part. Not a problem, we didn´t have vice grips anyways. After an hour of creatively using every tool to get more leverage to squeeze the link quick link we gave up. We made a couple calls back to Carl asking for advice, he suggested persistence (squeeze harder!). At 6:00 the Suzuki store closed and Carl offered to have us push the bike a few blocks to his house. He pulled up at the off ramp in his new Corvette with some quick links for the bike chain and a pair of vice grips just as it was beginning to get dark. After giving the chain a squeeze and shake with vice grips he suggested that we drive the bike to his garage without fastening the chain link lock and finish our work there. We ended up limping the bike there slowly following Carl's Corvette and hoping that the chain link wouldnt come apart before getting to his garage. Carl offered us some drinks, fixed himself a cocktail and started to work on the quick link with some large vice grips. After alot of squeezing and shaking the link went on.

After fixing the chain, soon we found our selves with a drink, hanging out in the garage with Carl and his old friend Bobby. Carl would show us pictures of his youth, touring with Bobby on motorcycles. I can remember a few of the scenes depicted: a motorcycle burnt into a molten crisp after a crash, another picture of a motorcycle crash after Carl had just driven it through a barbwire fence, and picture of 1970s versions of Carl and Bobby (full heads of long hair, mustaches and leather fringe jackets) glad to be alive after another crash. Carl showed us his motorbikes: a Suzuki Bandit and a big yellow 1950s Triumph. While Carl asked questions, imparted advice, and told stories about motorbikes he snuck a pair of vice grips and some quick link parts into our panniers. These guys were the real deal and I felt very comfortable being in good company. Eventually it was time to go. We packed our stuff back into our panniers, pulling our gear out of the back of Carls Corvette and putting it back onto our bikes. We left around 7:30 PM, heading south to Santa Cruz.

We pressed on into Santa Cruz in the dark. Chris knew some people there from the Ultimate Frisbee circle. Manzell had told us this his ex-girlfriend Petra lived in Santa Cruz and we made arrangements with Petra and her husband to stay the night at their home. We took our time getting there, filling up with gas at night in Santa Cruz and based on Idahos recommendation eating dinner at the Santa Cruz Dinner. We ate double portions: two Teryaki burgers each. After dinner we drove to Petras place up in the hills of Santa Cruz arriving around 10:00pm, after only getting a little bit lost.

Day 10

2008-02-16T13:42:00.000-08:00

LA to San Diego,

Our trip to San Diego began with a slow start. Since we knew that we didn´t have far to drive we slept in until 10 AM. We made coffee and finished washing a load of landry in Sean´s washing machine. I felt guilty washing my biking pants in his washing machine as the pants were covered in variouse greases and road grimes that I had accumulated over the last week and I wasn´t sure if the greases would just disolve off the pants or smear all over the inside of the washing machine. At 12 Sean´s room mate, a law student at Loyola Marymount University and, along with Sean a fellow Mercer Island High alum, got home from her morning classes and let us out of the downtown LA condo. I regret that were didn´t have time to sunbath by the swimming pool as the view of the pool from the apartment window was very nice.

After the terrifying experience driving into LA at night on the freeway, Cameron and I were both a little paranoid about traffic and getting lost leaving LA. Sean and Asher had both assured us that we would avoid most of the heavy Friday traffic by leaving LA at noon and if we did encounter traffic, take advatage of the carpool lanes and a unique California institution, the motorcycle lane split. Cameron plotted the route out of LA on his GPS and we both memorized it so we wouldn´t have to look at written directions or maps on our way out of town.

Thankfully the ride south from LA to San Diego was boring and fast. When traffic got heavy we rode in the carpool lanes on the far left side of the freeway and when traffic was light we moved to the second lane from the right so as to not encounter merging traffic. As our bikes felt happiest driving about 65 miles per hour, motoring in the carpool lane in light traffic was problematic as all sorts of california motor vehicles accustomed to traveling 85 mph down the freeway stacked up behind us and became frustrated. For this reason we travel in the slow lanes in light traffic. We don´t travel in the slowest lane though as this is the lane that driver used to merge on and off the road, and half the time merging drivers don´t see our motorbikes. When traffic began to thicken and slow down, our relatively underpowered motorbikes could move to the carpool lane and fast lane without any problems. As we approached San Diego, traffic got heavier, and our progress slowed to stop and go. Or as dad would call it, Level of Condition F.

In this situation our bikes had the advantage of the California lane split perspective where a motorcycle can drive down the dotted line between two lanes of stopped highway traffic (it really is more of a perspective or a viewpoint than a law as there isn´t really a set of rules to follow about how to avoid a ticket from the police. It seems that if you lane split safely, the police won´t ticket you and the motorcycle police themselves lanesplit regularly... but you lanesplit at the wrong time or place and attract the attention of the police, they can ticket you for a driving infraction). Cameron and I lanesplit in stop and go traffic outside San Diego and it was a strange experience. On one hand we really did move faster than the stopped traffic (they are stopped while we move forward, amazing!). On the other hand, while many drivers saw us approaching in their mirrors and moved their cars to provide us with room to pass some drivers would vindictively attempt to block our progress, drive large vehicles that occupied more of the lane, or not notice our approach and weave back in forth into the lanesplit area. One additional challenge was that our bikes were not particularly narrow, with the panniers installed on the bike the back of the vehicle measures over 3 feet in width, so we needed a little more than a crack to squeeze through traffic. Anyway, with traffic mostly light and able to exploit our california lanesplitting advantage we got to San Diego and only got a little lost before arriving at Asher´s place. Home sweet San Diego home!

Asher, his boyfriend Davie, and their dog Sadie live in the Hillcrest neighborhood of San Diego near Balboa Park. Asher and I caught up on everything that had happened over the last five years, while Asher´s friend Unice, and Cameron´s friend Aline, arrived at Asher and Davie´s place. The entire group of us went out for mexican food (San Diego fish tacos!!!) and drinks.

Here is a picture of Cammy and Asher in the kitchen.

Day 6

2008-02-13T16:42:00.000-08:00

Crescent City to Berkeley,

Cameron and I work up bright and early at 6:30 AM and attacked the breakfast buffete. I had two helpings of susage and biskets washed down with two bowls of cereal (free food!!). Cameron had one order of susage and biskets and some cereal. We each had two cups of coffee and some juice too. I think the hotel lost money on the bufette that morning!

After watching the news that morning, seeing more snow on the ground and on our bikes, and conciouse of the fact that we still had to pass over several more low mountain passes through the redwood forrests of northern california we decided to go back to bed and sleep until 9 AM. After loading the bikes and getting gas we left town by 10:30. Driving up through the redwood forrest south of crescent city was beatiful. Snow was in the trees, melting and dripping on the road. Very few cars had passed down 101. The downside of this was that there were few tracks in which to drive the bike. The upside was that we felt like we could go as slow as we wanted even though the posted speed limit was 65 miles an hour. Cameron´s contined his quest to waterproof his clothing by putting his feet in plastic garbage bags in his boots, using red duct tape to seal his seams in the crotch of his pants, and by putting his hands in plastic painting gloves that we purchased from bait shop in the redwood forrest. At the bait shop I was told that one of the snow plows had slid off 101 earlier in the morning, so we both felt happy about or decision to sleep in and leave once the day had warmed up a bit. I bough latex dish gloves to wear under my ¨waterproof¨ winter driving gloves. However, they cut off the circulation to my hands so I abandoned them after several hours of driving. Cameron liked his painting gloves and he continued to wear them for the rest of the day. He looked a little bit like a psycopath with the red tape and plastic gloves. Thankfully there wasn´t much rain on our way south and we made good time on the road.

After a long day of driving through northern california we encouterned both dusk and heavy traffic about 50 miles north of Berkeley. We pushed through the heavy traffic until arriving at the outskirts of Berkeley, where the traffic stopped dead. The heavy rain from the last few days forced the closing of several exits from the freeway into Berkeley and now everyone had to either exit or enter Berekeley from University Ave. Thankfully Cameron and I were in dirtbikes! We pulled onto the should of the road and drove for 2 miles until we got to the exit. I was in the lead as we passed a surprised state trooper who gave a finger wave to Cameron. I guess he had bigger fish to fry and let us go on our way. After only getting slightly lost in Berkeley we got to Hilary and Heather´s apartmant. A warm safe haven!

We finished the night by eating a bunch of sushi. And Cameron showed us one of his favorite sushi dishes: super white tuna. Deliciouse!

Heather and Cameron

Rob, a old lab mate and fellow motorcycle tourist

Day 20

2008-02-13T16:26:00.000-08:00

Cameron and I have now been in Zihuatanejo for three days. This was the destination for both Cameron and myself, biking to Zihua to stay with Cameron´s uncle at Playa Escondito. Cameron´s uncle Rick, called Domino in these parts, has beachfront property, a trailer, and an unfinished house facing southwest towards the Pacific Ocean.

Domino left for the US this morning and Cameron and I set about taking care of a few errands that have been neglected in our drive south: food for the beach house, parts for the motorbikes, getting our clothes washed, batteries for my water purifier, another trip to the cash machine, and cleaning up some of the gear in the bottom of our motorcycle panniers. In Cameron´s case, this first involved draining 2 quarts of 87 octane gasoline that had leaked from his one gallon reserve fuel tank. The gas made all the plastic parts in the pannier feel like jello and we hope that with a little drying in the sun, this isn´t a problem later.

PS Sorry for the poor speling! Mexiword says that everything is spelled incorrectly!

Day 5

2008-02-03T19:28:00.000-08:00

We woke up that morning to the sound of rain outside our window. It was dark in the room and we felt warm. What time is it? It feels a little after or projected 8:00. We looked at the clock to see it was 10:15. Oh shit! I went to the bike to put some thing in the pannier and found shallow layer of slush covering the parking lot. I brushed the snow off of the bike attempting to make use of the wet paper towels that had been stored in Chris's blue hiking/camping backpack. We moved slowly, packing and put on our mostly dried clothing. I put two pairs of socks on, and wrapped my feet in garbage bags. I put on my "not so waterproof" water proof pants followed by my gasoline smelling jacket. The gloves had shrunk slightly from the soaking and drying process from the previous day. We didn't hit the road until 11:30.

Driving was wet as usual and very cold. The temperature had dropped and the snow level couldn't have been more than 500 feet. We drove through the morning gloom along the coast. The scenery was incredible. The sea was a mystic green and white as waves roared into shore, crashing through the giant rocks that littered the shallow waters. Cars screamed past as we passed through micro climes when the road pulled away from the water and swooped into green vallies with surging streams and full rivers. Sometime we would ascend into the snow level and riding on a dusting of snow or in the thick slush. Progress was cautious and slow.

We stopped three times that day roughly every 40 miles to warm our soaked hand and rise our core temperatures. The first stop we ate breakfast in Bandon and overheard stories of more snow. This wasn't encouraging. The road turned out to be better to the South until it began to get extremely windy on the coast. Gusts of 30 miles per hour hammered our bikes as we traveled conservatively in the middle of the lane. We took extra cautions on the corners where we here rumors of centerline cutting RV travel in the area. We passed over bridges fearing on-coming traffic and praying for pavement instead of steel grate and violent wind. Just before we reached Brookings, our second stop and huddle point, we found a relatively high pass where the snow levels were becoming concerning. In Brookings and had some warm coffee liquor drinks followed by a soup and desert. We decided to continue after talking to the waitress about the road to crescent city.

The conditions mediated and a bit of sun peaked through the clouds on our jaunt across the Oregon California border. We were warned by the guard that the road to Eureka was snowed in and we should not to attempt the drive. The roads widened in California and the speed limit jumped from 55Mph to 65Mph. Shortly after we arrived in Crescent City; Chris insisted that we get lodging with a fire place to dry our clothes. We found a nicer hotel on the coast and managed to knock $60 off the $140 dollar going rate. It was Sunday night in out-of-tourist season. We pull the trigger on that one, they had a sauna, breakfast and internet access.

That night was spent relaxing in the sauna and pool, followed by eating granola bars and raiding of the breakfast facilities for something that resembled dinner and capped it off with some internet usage. I also plotted the rout on my GPS from Mazatlan to Zihuatenejo. A bit a pre-packing for the next day and we were fast asleep.

137 miles in total

Day -1

2008-02-03T18:52:00.000-08:00

The day before we departed, was spent running errands: replacing my bike registration, repairing Chris's car, packing to leave, finishing last touches to motorcycle maintenance, obtaining international drivers licenses, buying motorcycle insurance and saying our "good beys." Things were going amazingly well and we determined that we would arrive in Portland around 10. All was going as planned until we couldn't find Chris's Passport.

It was 11:00 by the time we gave up our search. We sat down and had a drink, waiting to for Brown Sr. to come home and open the safety deposit box. Halfway through The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, a 3 hour spaghetti western, we found out the safety deposit box didn't have it either. Sleepy and slightly overwhelmed by the day, I retired to the guest room at the Brown residence. The thought process involved waking up and searching around and getting to Portland during daylight hours.

One day later on our already belated departure. I felt a little like an astronaut waiting getting news of another delayed launch.

I am sorry Anna, I should have let you know I was still in town. Some how my mind had left Seattle and forgot my body.

Cameron

Day 4

2008-02-03T17:01:00.000-08:00

Driving back and forth between Berry's house various autoparts stores in Lincoln City, the bike is eventually fixed. As it is beginning rain hard, as predicted the night of Day 3 by a friend of Berry who used to work for the USAF as a weather man, I decided to purchase "100% Waterproof" pants for the ride south. Cameron and I hit the road on the way South by 1:30 PM, in an attempt to reach a Suzuki shop in Coos Bay before closing time. Coos Bay is about 127 miles from Lincoln City. By 2:00 PM we were driving in a heavy downpour with occasional gusts of wind off the ocean. As the weather worsened Cameron and I found out that all the supposedly waterproof gear that we were both wearing did not work very well. The boots leaked (Cameron's theory was that the books leaked just enough to let water in but not enough to let water out), the winter gloves leaked, the pants leaked (on Cameron's pants they leaked only in his crotch area), and my jacket leaked too. After an hour of driving in this hard rain we stopped at a McDonald's and ate lunch. We both got burgers and coffees. I spilled a big coffee all over the resturant. Cameron got frustrated that the insulation on the coffee cup was preventing the coffee from warming his hands and strips off the insulation in a long spiral shape. The approximate two gallons of water soaked in our cloths and boots, slowly trickles onto the floor of the restaurant. Learning my lesson from the day before I change my clothes in the restaurant bathroom. Later Cameron and I both agree that this was the worst actual destruction we had done to a restaurant.

We continue driving south in the rain, reaching Coos Bay at 5:30 PM, too late to make our appointment at the Suzuki dealership. We decide to get a room for the evening and check into a Motel 6, ruining the hotel lobby with our accumulated rain water. As everything was soaking wet, Cameron and I do laundry, iron our money, checks, and other important documents and try to dry other wet cloths on a room heater.

Day 4

2008-02-03T16:51:00.000-08:00

The end of Day 3:
1. Navigating a mountain pass with 8 inches of snow on the ground. You have seen these pictures already.
2. We stopped in Beaver, Oregon, to warm up and eat a meal. I make the mistake of trying to change in the lunch area, and the guy at the counter gets upset when I take my shirts off.
3. Stopped for the evening in Lincoln City we meet Berry at the Safeway who invites us to stay at his house with his wife and kids away. We accept his offer and driving to Berry's house my bike breaks down a second time. The drips oil out of its crankcase all the way down the road, leaving a trail you could see by eye. I slept well that night despite the presence of a cocitle flying around the room.

Day 3

2008-01-29T22:08:00.000-08:00

I spent most of Day 2 fixing the flat tire. I took the damaged tire and wheel to The Portland Motorcycle Co, a Suzuki dealership near the Portland airport. After inspecting the tire the mechanics at the dealership suggested replacing it with a new one. They located the last dual purpose road and dirt type tire in Portland that fit my bike and installed it with a new innertube on my wheel. I also asked one of the mechanics, Jim, about a good road from Portland to the coast. He suggested taking the road from Clinton to Beaver because parts of it were unpaved and it was scenic drive. Jim had used this road two years ago but after calling a friend reported to me that this road was still open for the winter. Cameron and I stayed at Manzell's place for a second night, woke up early on day 3 and started driving to the coast.

Everything went according to plan as we drove southwest from Portland, into the Willamette valley. The day was cold and clear and we drove down two lane country roads towards Carlton. Upon reaching Carlton we stopped at an Italian restaurant for lunch. I ate a meatball sandwich for lunch with a Capresse salad as an appetiser (the waitress helpfully informed me that the salad contained no lettus). After lunch left town on the 40 mile long road to Beaver that winds through Oregon's coastal mountain range. At the summit we reached the McGuire reservoir, where what was a dry road began to show accumulations of snow and ice. As we drove west over the summit the road follows the Nestucca river, and we encountered increasing amounts of snow and ice.

Here is a picture me standing with the bike in front of the McGuire reservoir.

This a picture of the bike on the snow and ice of the Nestucca river road.

A picture from Cameron's bike of ice falls off the road.

Cameron standing next to his bike.

Day 1 Pictures

2008-01-29T21:33:00.000-08:00

This is a picture from my folks front porch the day we left town. Its a cold, sunny winter day in Seattle.

Here are parts from my bike after it got a flat. Everything is scattered about the gas station parking lot.

This is picture of my bike chained to the gas station air/water pump. I'm taking the rear wheel home with me for the evening.

Later on Day 1 we visited some bars in SE Portland. Here is a girl flashing a SE gang sign. Later we get backlava.

Day 1

2008-01-24T23:58:00.000-08:00

Cameron and I left Seattle Wednesday at noon, on a clear cold winter day. We filled up with gas at Safeway (my gas tank holds 3.9 gallons of gas, which allows my to travel about 200 miles between fillups) and drove south to Vancouver WA on I5. With time for stops, this took about 3 hours. It was a very cold trip despite the fact I wore a lot of cloths. On my legs: motorcyle pants, fleece warmup pants, polypro long johns, bike shorts, spandex tights over underwear. On my upper body: motorcycle jacket, jacket liner, long sleve shirt, long john top over t-shirt. Having gotten quite hot packing the bike while wearing these cloths I forgot to zip up the top inch or so of my jacket and pull the flap across the top of the jacket zipper. Pulling onto the freeway and accelerating to highway speed, I quickly realized this was a mistake as cold air blew through the top the jacket and the exposed zipper, down my torso and down my arms. On a motorbike, unless you stop, you don't have a chance to mess with things like zippers because both hands are on the handlebars. So unfortunately I didn't get a chance to zip up the jacket for another hour, until we stopped at a rest stop past Olympia. I guess that is one difference between motorbikes and cars... you get to play with your zippers in a car!

As for the trip to Vancouver, it went pretty well. Riding the bike was a little colder than I thought it would be. I also experience a more vivid sensation of speed on a bike compared to a car, which made the fast parts of the drive down I5 a litle scarey. After arriving in Vancouver, Cameron and I had coffee and dinner with my mother (a longtime, notoriouse Mexico-by-motorbike hater) which was alot of fun. We all ate greek food (I love baklava!), mom gave me a Saint Christopher medalian and prayer, and after dinner Cameron and I drove to Portland to stay with Manzell Blakely.

The trip to Manny's house was interupted about 2 miles from his house when the bike began to act strangly. Actually, I noticed that something odd was happening while crossing I5 into Oregon from Washington state, several miles before we actually stopped, but given the wind gusting across the freeway, the fact that I had alot of gear on the back of the bike, and that it was dusk with temperatures below freezing, I thought that the bike was handling strangly was due to my lack of familiarity with driving a bike in poor conditions.

After Cameron and I pulled off the highway into a gas station parking lot, we determined that the back tire was flat. Normally we can fix a flat tire with the spare tubes that we carry in our panniers, but upon inspection the tire looked to be damaged and I wasn't sure that it would be a good idea to drive on it. I decided to have the tire examined by a mechanic before installing it back on the vehicle. After making this decision there were sevaral hours of confusion in the gas station parking lot. Phone calls were made to Manny (he offered to drive his 10-speed to the gas station to help us out), my cousin Nick (he answered the first call or two then promptly shut his phone off. Smart man!), and Cameron's friend Tim (he got in his car to drive to the gas station and help us, but his car broke down several blocks fom his house). Manny eventaully rented a flex car, picked up all our stuff and we eventually got back to his house.

I did notice two things in the several hours that Cameron and I spent working on the bike at the gas station: people are really friendly and want to help us out and riding a motorbike in the middle of winter causes people to notice us. All the employees at the gas station were super friendly, offering suggestions about what parts of the gas station I should chain the motorbike too while the wheel was getting repaired (and in one employee's case, even offering to let me change the motorbike to the low profile wheels of his custom chevey caprice) and letting me borrow varouse plastic bins from their convienience store to stack under the damaged bike. Also lots of people getting gas at the station wandered over to talk to us when they saw the bike and our gear in a thousand pieces in the parking lot. Its sort of like the time we took the $25000 ceremonial check to the bars, with with less envey/hatred to go with the attention. People just notice you and want to talk.

After getting to Manny's place we celebrated our arival in Portland by touring the most notoriose hipster bars in Southeast Portland (and SE Portland, being a hipster haven, provides some of the best opportunites of this kind on the planet). It was an awesome night (I ate another baklava at 2:30AM!), and if we can ever get the pictures and video off our cell phones I'll let the images speak for themselves.

How I Left Town

2008-01-24T23:30:00.000-08:00

OK, in an attempt to preserve some sembelence of continuity to my description of the trip, this is a follow up to my first post on Monday where I listed what I needed to finish before leaving town.

1. I cleaned up the lab by 2 AM Tuesday morning.

2. I repaired my damaged car (the Ford Escort LX wagon, its "scort tough!") by 4 PM Tuesday afternoon. The repair consisted of two new tires on the right side of the car installed by Les Schwab. I got lucky in that it only cost about $160 for the new tires and I didn't need to replace the wheels. The car pulls a little to the left, and the tires on the left side of the car should be replaced to even everything up, but I elected to wait on this expense until getting back to Seattle. I suspect that the vehicle, though looking like its gone through hell and back, is in decent mechanical shape. Happy day!

3. The dissertation was sort of submitted by 6 PM Tuesday evening. Submitting the dissertation actually encompasses a bunch of little mundane tasks (paying old library fines, paying late submittal fee/binding fees, print two copies of dissertation, gather reading committee signatures, complete exit interviews/surveys etc) and I was pretty sure that all these tasks were complete Tuesday night. I gave the stack of stuff to submit to Tim Soper by mail Wednesday and it looks like everything got turned in OK. I think that is last of the PhD.

4. Though I made a valient attempt to pack/leave town Tuesday evening, it didn't happen. I lost my passport and didn't find it until Wednesday morning. It eventually turned up in an inside pocket of a rain jacket. I also had a hard time figuring out what to pack (as of Thursday night in Manny's place in Portland this task still isn't resolved, as I am now planning on shipping some extra stuff back to Seattle by mail). The packing was complete enough by Wednesday morning at 10 AM that Cameron and I were able to leave town after eating breakfast around 12. Though reasonable people may disagree with trip packing strategy, I decided go heavy with clothes. I brought enough clothing that I can wear clean stuff for a week before having to do laundry.

This picture has nothing to do with Mexico

2008-01-21T23:54:00.000-08:00

This is a picture of Scott taken by Eamon at Jashar's Halloween party in, I think, 2004. Scott was captaining a womens dodge ball team that evening, though he went to the party as "The Bomber." He appointed himself as the captain of the team after the actual captain of the team didn't embrace his captaincy with enough vigor. I think the picture portrays the energy that Scott brought to his position.

Almost Ready to Go!

2008-01-21T23:43:00.000-08:00

After years of careful consideration and months of planning I'm nearly ready to begin my motorcycle trip to Mexico. The motorcycle is running well, which is a refreshing change. All I need to do is:

1) Turn in the PhD dissertation
2) Get my car - which is on life support and may not survive the winter - back to my folk's place
3) Clean up the lab
4) Pack

Sounds pretty easy, huh!