Don't Go Chasing Butterflies

Toluca, Mexico

6,116 km

The morning after the car accident the sky was mostly clear but sharply cold. I left around midmorning as Male and her sister and their parents left for work. Male apologized profusely and I sarcastically thanked her for the excitement. Soon I was out of the city and heading west on the free highway. The first danger came when I arrived at a patch of highway construction where deep grooves were cut into the lane parallel with the direction of traffic. The grooves are to hold the new tarmac when it is poured but they are a terrible hazard to a motorcycle because the front tire can get caught in the groove and loose all traction. This was made worse because here the highway twisted through hill country and I had to make leaning turns amidst the grooves in the tarmac.

Soon it grew very cold. It started to rain, then it rained hard, then the rain became hail. It pelted my helmet and the gas tank and I could feel the staccato sting through long johns, trousers, and rain pants. I pressed on and the downpour continued sometimes as rain and sometimes as icy pellets. It pooled in the center of the highway and then broke into rippling mudflows. Occasionally the rain stopped and the skies cleared but then the wind rose and I had to lean against it and the leaning means less tire touching the we tarmac and so less traction. Finally, I passed Zitácuaro and then I turned north on a secondary highway towards Angangueo. Before there, at Ocampo, I saw the signs for the El Rosario butterfly sanctuary.

The road meandered for 15 kilometers up the hillside in two lanes paved in rough, bone-jolting stones around two narrow tracks of smooth stone. Water flowed downhill as I climbed, soaked and shivering, trying to stay on the smooth tracks and trying to stay perfectly vertical to lose no traction to a lean. The rain turned to hail and struck hard and the downhill flows grew heavier and cut the road crossways rushing at times perpendicularly against the tires.

At the entrance to the butterfly there was a small open-air hut where old men and women bundled up and huddled against the stinging cold and did not come forward to greet me. I parked the bike and approached. The said there would be no butterflies today, which of course I knew. I said I wanted to get something hot to eat and drink in one of the structures a half kilometer ahead. They wanted to collect 20 pesos as a toll and I – cold, wet, and exhausted – became somewhat indignant and replied there was no way I would pay if there are no butterflies. The shrugged their shoulders and said that I could pass but now, bizarrely there was a principle to stand on, so I remounted, made a U-turn and returned the way I had come.

The descent was more harrowing than the ascent. To climb you apply throttle: you exert force against contrary force – you turn wheels against gravity, push water between treads, heat cold rubber, and this creates traction. But descending, gravity is no longer against you; you no longer create traction by exerting force against contrary force. Worse now was that the hail had frozen in sheets across the smooth paving stones and it was a virtual slalom for 15 kilometers until I arrived, shaken but not beaten, at Ocampo, where I took shelter in an open-air taquería and drank a hot coffee to settle my nerves.

A Road Accident in Toluca

Toluca, Mexico
5,843 km

The motorcycle appeared to be running well again so I spent a few more days in Mexico City before I shoved off again. I made other small repairs and had a new rack built for the saddlebags because the high speed vibration was causing wear on the vinyl. I spent a very fine day visiting the Plaza de la Constitución and the Catedral Metropolitana. Inside, standing before an enormous backdrop of carved saints and martyrs brilliantly leafed in gold, the priest sermonized of the “enfermidad del sexo, alcohol y oro” (“sickness of sex, alcohol, and gold) and I appreciated the irony of the latter. In the afternoon I visited the Museo Nacional de Antropología where a casual visitor could fill several days and an aficionado could lose himself for weeks. The museum is a marvel and the exhibits dispelled any prejudicial doubts I had that Mexico is poor in cultural heritage.

In the evening Memo and I had dinner and a few drinks. He told me of the terrible Mexico City earthquake of ’85. He was very young but he and friends obtained a truck and drove water and food into those in the affected area. He spoke of the poverty of his country, of his family members in the Oaxaca region that still go without shoes. There was great sadness in his eyes and his voice and I saw the soul of a good man.

The evening of the next day – the 14th of January – I left Mexico City for Toluca, which is on the way to Ocampo in the state of Morelia where I wanted to visit the monarch butterfly sanctuary the following day. In Toluca I stayed with a young lady, Male, that I had met through couchsurfing.org. In the afternoon we went to the Cosmovitral, which is like a cathedral to this natural and beautiful. Stone paths meander among lush flower gardens and bubbling fountains and streaming tinted sunlight pours through enormous stained glass images of cosmic creation that decorate the simple gray stone walls.

In the evening, Male, her sister, Erica, and I took the car to go out of dinner. It drizzled and the night was dark but for the rushing headlights along the freeway. Male drove in the fastest of the three traffic lanes. Rising on an overpass she noticed an approaching car traveling fast. She moved to the center lane to let it pass but quickly found that she was approaching too quickly upon the car ahead of her. She swerved left too hard and then back again right to compensate. The sedan hydroplaned and went into a uncontrolled spin as though the wheels were skies and the rain slicked tarmac icy snow. We made a turn and a half as we barreled to the right, clipped the car that Male had tried to avoid, and careened backwards into a concrete-reinforced rail post at the top of the overpass. I saw the whole thing happen in slow motion, aware of everything – of the spinning, of the crashing, of the broken glass shattering inward upon me from the rear window – fearless, strangely, but also impotent, powerless to control an uncontrollable situation.

The reinforced post halted us and prevented us from breaking through the railing and falling the dozen or so meters to the pavement below. There was a moment of shock before the three of us reacted. Male launched into hysterics but her sister, Erica, was cool and levelheaded; I was impressed by her. After we calmed Male into a stunned silence, I said that we needed to call the police. Instead the girls called their parents and then the insurance agent. Eventually, but only eventually, the police arrived, although they had not been summoned. A woman in the other car had severe whiplash and I thought it a terrible thing that the police were barely an afterthought. The police regulated traffic, which had mostly ground to a standstill and much later I head the approach of an ambulance but it was ages in arriving because in Mexico nobody yields the roadway for emergency vehicles.

The injured woman was finally taken to the hospital and Male was reviewed and released by the paramedics. Male and Erica’s parents came and the insurance adjuster came and began the paperwork. It was wet and very cold and the middle of the night now, the rain still falling in a light sprinkle. Eventually we were taken to the police processing station and there was more waiting while we waited for word to come from the hospital regarding the severity of the woman’s injuries. Eventually the terms of the restitution were agreed upon and we left. At the house, cold and exhausted, we had hot tea and quesadillas and talked little before we went to bed.

The Best and Worst Ride of My Life

Mexico City, Mexico
5,728 km

My way took me next to Metepec, which is a large city high in the hills to the west of the capital. Here I met some people through couchsurfing.org and ended up drunk and somewhat stranded at a house party until after 4 in the morning. It was a good time and a fine, unexpected experience but the next day I was riding back to Mexico City and back to the motorcycle shop because the old problem had come back riding up into the thin air of the mountain around Metepec.

At the motorcycle shop I was greeted with friendly surprise by the mechanics. I said that I had come back because I missed them and Tocayo, after listening to my explanation that the mechanical problem had come back and borrowing my favorite Spanish expression, said, ‘Hostias, man! Find another excuse for visiting us.’ Memo was very upset because he takes much pride in his work but also he was intrigued because he likes nothing more than to take on a good mechanical challenge. He did some more tinkering and again the problem appeared to be solved.

In the afternoon Memo had to go to a Sam’s Club on the far outskirts at the other end of the city to activate a newly purchased motorbike. He rode the small shop bike and another mechanic rode passenger and I followed on my bike to see the city and test the repairs. No traffic can possibly be so bad as how Mexico City commuters describe the traffic of their city; however, if any traffic can even come close to the horrors of gridlock that they describe, then it is the traffic of Mexico City – and this was the first day back to school! Also, Memo is a devil on a motorbike. He rides as hard as I’ve ever seen someone ride and doesn’t let a cc of potential go un-exerted towards propelling the bike forward. He rode a small bike with a passenger and tore through the traffic, weaving among cars and cutting lanes with a hair’s breadth of clearance.

We did more than 100 kilometers within the city and it was the most challenging motorcycle ride of my life. At lunch, after the work was done at the Sam’s Club and we knew that we would be returning through the city during rush hour, I said to Memo, ‘Si muero, dile a mi mamá que morí como un valiente – if I die, tell my mother that I died valiantly.’ But coming back was not so hard because the bottleneck traffic brought the motorcycles as well as the cars to an almost complete standstill. The cars were packed so tightly that frequently there was no room to cut between lanes and, when we could, there was often a bottleneck of motorcycles backed up along the dividers. Downtown we stopped at a wholesaler and Memo purchased cleaning supplies in bulk for the shop and the mechanic that was his passenger whom everyone called ‘Jim’ rode with boxes under his arms and bags in hands so that the vehicle now looked twice the size as it had. I also strapped what I could to my bike, which was already fully loaded with my gear. Like this we drove through the historic center and stopped as long as we could in the Plaza de la Consitución so that I could take it in and snap a picture before a police officer hurried us along.

We arrived back at the shop at dusk, alive and well and with no trace of the sickness that had been plaguing my motorcycle. It was a great ride, one of the finest I’ll ever have, and one that I hope never to do again. That evening we went for dinner and finished my first beer in two long pulls.

Breakdown in San Miguel

San Miguel to Mexico City, Mexico
5,379 km

After the New Years I spent a couple more days in San Miguel de Allende. Then, when I was packed and ready to leave, I couldn’t because my motorbike wouldn’t start. The battery was dead and, after a quick revision, I discovered that the battery was completely dry. It was a new battery so I took it to a motorcycle shop and had them refill it and put it on a slow charge. They didn’t have one in my size so if this didn’t work it would be eight days to get another from the capital. Eight days to send a motorcycle battery 300 kilometers from Mexico City – crazy, right? Fortunately, the battery took and held its charge. But my problems weren’t over. Now she would start but when next I set out she performed miserably and the engine kept cutting out. It was early in the morning so I found a motorcycle shop in San Miguel and waited in the parking lot until they opened. When the shop opened we wheeled the bike inside and a young mechanic listened to the engine and felt the exhaust pipe and, finding that it was not warming properly, he determined that the front piston was not working. He discussed the situation with the manager and they decided that the piston would have to be replaced. I was quoted a price and a timeline.

Obviously, I was suspicious that a mechanic, no matter how good or experienced – and this kid was neither – could determine that a piston needed to be replaced based on how quickly the exhaust pipe warmed. I decided to call a motorcycle shop in Mexico City that the Yamaha main offices had recommended. The shop owner asked some questions and was noncommittal but suspicious about a motorcycle needing a piston replaced after only 10,000 miles. He offered to drive the truck to San Miguel and haul me and the bike back to the shop in Mexico City for 1000 pesos, about $80. I accepted.

During the drive, Guillermo (Memo) and I slowly became friendly and by the late evening we were at the shop in Mexico City. The mechanics were in the process of closing up but everything stopped and they gathered around the gringo with the sick motorcycle, amazed that I had come this far on this bike – I didn’t yet know what they meant by ‘this bike’. Memo started the engine and felt that the pipe did not heat propely but then he tested the compression in the cylinders and found that both were the same and within the proper limits. In one, thirty-second diagnostic he had disproven the need to replace the piston.

Over the next few days, Memo and another mechanic, Eduardo, whom they call Tocayo, which is what you call someone that has the same name as you only no one else at the shop is named Eduardo, took apart the carburetors, cleaned them and replaced seals, they adjusted the engine valves and conducted a the rest of a full tune-up. At the end no obvious culprit for the severe performance problems had been identified but at least now she was running well and strong and I thanked them all and went on my way.

Christmas in Morelia and New Years in San Miguel

Comala to San Miguel, Mexico
5,371 km

From Comala I rode northeast on a good highway through forested hill country south of the Laguna de Chapala to the small town of Mazamitla where I stayed for two nights. The town is built on the slope of a hill and its streets are narrow and some are very steep. They are made of smooth, round, irregular rocks with no mortar between, which is the style in many Mexican towns. For this reason and for the steep slopes people drive ATVs through the city streets. The central plaza and the church that stands adjacent to it were lovely in the twilight, as lovely as they are in any town in Mexico, and here, also, the air breathed cool and clean into my lungs and it smelled strongly of the pine trees that cover these hills. In the evening I walked among the pine forested hills above the town where the locals have built cabins that they rent or sell as weekend retreats.

From Mazamitla I rode to Zacapú, which is of little note except that it is between Mazamitla and Morelia. The winds were strong during the day, making a great dancing undulation of the trees and the bushes along the highway, and slowing my progress so that I did not reach Morelia as I had planned. I reached Morelia first thing in the morning of the next day, which was a breezy, sunny Christmas Eve day. I walked around during the day and in the evening I drank hot chocolate at a café across from the Plaza de Armas. Some people attended mass at the cathedral and others enjoyed the evening in the plaza with their families and I enjoyed watching them. I noticed that there was an pleasant calm across the city. The next day – Christmas Day – I slept in and then walked around the city and then I returned to the hotel to take a nap. The city is beautiful for its Spanish colonial architecture. In the evening I walked among the plazas and pedestrian streets, which were aglow from the strings of white Christmas lights that hung along the walls and along the archways. There were many people out but I didn’t talk to anyone, except for a group of bikers wearing Harley-Davidson jackets because the evening was cool and because they liked the look.

The next morning I breakfasted at a restaurant across from the Plaza de Armas and the cathedral and drank hot coffee until the sun rose above the closer of the two towers of the cathedral. The city was completely still, although the holiday was over and it was now a work day. In the midmorning I rode to Guanajuato, which a city in the nook of a valley and, impossibly, it is even more beautiful than Morelia. Around every bend is a fountain or a statue or a plaza or a garden or a combination of these, and everywhere there are the facades of wonderfully preserved colonial buildings. The streets are a tangle of narrow, curving, cobblestone alleys and below the city center there are dark subterranean passageways with stone walls and vaulted ceilings that seem as though they were once used for something sinister but are now used as a parking lot.

That night I stayed in a dormitory room at a hostel and I immediately regretted the decision. The sheets were dirty and there was someone snoring and, worst of all, all the lockers were filled. I secured my gear to my motorcycle but my toiletries I kept atop my boots beside my bed and it was my toiletries bag that was stolen during the night. I awoke very early to find the bag gone and the snoring man gone and that was too much of a coincidence but there was nothing to be done and I grieved the loss of my Sonicare toothbrush.

That morning I was grumpy and the best thing to fight the mean reds or the cold blues or a bad case of the grumps is to go for a motorcycle ride. So I rode along a road that follows the ridge around the valley and saw the city from every side as the early morning sun cast long, deep shadows. Leaving the city, I followed another harrowingly corkscrew canyon road. After Dolores Hidalgo the highway straightened and my speed increased but I was in no hurry because San Miguel de Allende is not far away. In San Miguel I found Erssel’s house, which is in a quiet neighborhood about 20 minutes walk from the central plaza. I met Erssel through couchsurfing.org, which is a project that connects travelers with hosts and something I had been persuaded to try by a group of devotees that I met in Zacatecas.

San Miguel de Allende is another charming little city, small enough to be intimate but big enough to keep your interest. It is a city of about 100,000 and half of these are foreigners – most are retired North Americans. Erssel is one of them. He lives in a large house with high, vaulted ceilings of red brick. His friends are an endearing ragtag group and his neighbors, Jeff and Arnie, are a pair of likable roughnecks. Jeff is talkative and crass and a hard pill to swallow and Arnie is mellow and laidback – he was a professional wrestler years ago before it became a phenomenon. Now they build water features on homes and golf courses.

On New Years Eve we went to the central plaza and we stood before the church where a group of mariachis played traditional songs that come from the state of Veracruz. When the New Year arrived we danced and whistled and some people kissed and we all clapped and held small firecrackers above our heads that shot off sparks the color of dry Champaign.

Canyon Roads, a Lake, and a Magical Village

Jalpa to Comala, Mexico 4,409 km

There are more canyon lands between Jalpa and Guadalajara. By now the tired, old misconception that Mexico is a country of long, dry, flat, barren lands – like our own Texas only more so – has been thrown out and I understand that the topography of Mexico is a great deal more complex than that. To say that the landscape is turbulent is an oversimplification at best.

But by now I am becoming quite accustomed to riding canyon roads – the whipping turns, the hard leaning, the accelerating and decelerating. There is a thrill in the not knowing what you will find beyond the present bend and the not overly caring because you know that you have your hands plenty full with just handling the present turn. I ride along, happily reconciled to the uncertainty, wishing that I could be just this accepting of it as it appears in all aspects of my life. Then I remember my former boss, Clayton Williams, who is now a big shot with the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, because he used to say that learning to deal with ambiguity is a sign of maturity. It’s a fine thing to say, I think.

These are canyon lands, not highlands, and in Mexico altitude decides everything. So, unlike in the mountain country of the north, here, among the rocky, barren ridges of the canyons lands, it is not cold. Even, actually, it is warm, but this warmth is precarious at best. It is thin as tissue paper and stretched too tight so that when a wind rises it tears and the cold rushes through the torn places. So it is a delicate thing, this warmth, and it seems that to acknowledge it with anything above a whisper and it might disappear. So I do not speak of it, only I make a gesture: I lower the zipper of my riding jacket and I raise the visor of my crash helmet. I do this to enjoy the sun on my face and the warm breeze on my neck. But the gods see everything and they are quick to interpret arrogance in our actions and they are ever quick to punish arrogance. So, no sooner have I lowered the zipper and raised the visor and the bright sun disappears behind one, lone, self-important cloud – the only one in the sky.

I raise the zipper and lower the visor and shiver voluntarily to quicken the blood in its warming course through my veins. I look up at the sun behind the cloud and I shake my head in disappointment. I want to say that it’s ironic but it’s not ironic. It’s not ironic in the same way those things in the Alanis Morissette song are not ironic, they’re just bad luck, and this too is bad luck, nothing more. But the sun behind the cloud reminds me of a story I once heard and I like it so I’ll recount it here:

Once there was a stonecutter who wanted to be more powerful than he was. One day as he toiled at his work he looked up at the sun as he wiped the sweat from his brow. ‘The sun gives life and warmth and burns my back as I work,’ he mused aloud. ‘If I could be the sun then would I be most powerful.’

It was a restless Universe that heard him or maybe it was a mischievous deity but, whoever it was, the stonecutter’s request was heard and it was answered and he became the sun. After this, many days went by during which the stonecutter traveled the heavens in his daily course, giving light to the land and warmth and burning the backs of hardworking men, and he was pleased. Until one day a storm cloud crossed his path and covered his face. Angry and bewildered he said, ‘I must be the storm cloud, which may go where it pleases, ravages the land, and extinguishes the very light of the sun.’

So he became the storm cloud and for many days he spread himself across the heavens and brought rain and darkness and destruction to the land. Until one day he came upon a great boulder that was unyielding before his blows. Almost insensible in his rage and his impotence he said, ‘I must become the boulder, which is immovable and unyielding.’

So he became the boulder and much time past during which he stood tall and majestic – a symbol of dominance over the forests and the creatures of the land, and he was pleased. Until one day a stonecutter came and chiseled him into powder.

By early afternoon I am in Guadalajara. It is warm here because the sun has emerged from behind the cloud and the choking exhaust of a hundred thousand idling motors heats the heavy air so that you see wavy distortions everywhere. Several times I cut the engine while waiting at traffic lights. It goes like this: while your light is green the cars trying to move perpendicular are stuck in the intersection and then, when they move past and the intersection is cleared, the light changes and the cars going in your direction make a quick dash and fill the intersection so that the cars going in the perpendicular direction cannot move during their green light. This continues all throughout the afternoon as street vendors walk among the idling motorcars, selling water and snacks and newspapers and cards for recharging the credit on mobile telephones and coloring books and toys for children and a million other random and bizarre things, and all the while the shrieks of impatient claxons ring out in a discordant cacophony.

It is late afternoon before I am away from Guadalajara and I arrive at Chapala near sunset. Here there is a long boardwalk and a narrow beach along the shore of the lake. There are sailboats docked and some are sailing and there are people in kayaks and sitting on the beach and sitting on benches kissing and children flying kites in the strong, warm wind coming off the water. I buy a beer and I sit on a bench facing the lake. I drink the beer and close my eyes to the warm wind and breathe in deeply the clean air from the lake and exhale deeply the bad air from the city streets. I watch the sun set and the dusk becomes twilight.

In the morning I meet a group of retired Americans and I join them for breakfast. They are real old-timers and their droll banter sounds like it comes out of an old movie or radio show. They tell jokes and talk about their veteran’s benefits and the way things used to be and about their ‘girls’. Someone mentions that his girl is coming from a nearby town to stay during Christmas and that she expected him to buy her a present. He doesn’t know what to buy her. Someone has a suggestion: ‘You should tie a red bow around your dick and tell her “Feliz Navidad.”’

That morning the breeze comes cool off the lake. I ride south, detouring onto a secondary highway that meanders through rugged hills. The tarmac is mostly destroyed here and the going is slow – potholes and fissures are difficult to avoid when you are already leaning hard and fast into a turn. In the afternoon I arrive in Colima and I find a hotel. In the night at have drinks on the patio of a restaurant and watch a group of dancers have a milonga in the plaza. The next morning I go to the small town of Comala. It is a few kilometers away down a lovely highway that is flanked on both sides by green bushes and wildflowers.

Comala is the setting of my favorite Mexican novel, Pedro Páramo, which also has the distinction of being the only Mexican novel I have read. It has that same mysterious, fantastical quality that you find in the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquéz and sometimes in those of Isabel Allende. The small town is bright and lovely and nothing like the morose village of broken spirits from the novel. But Juan Rulfo wrote the novel in the 1950s, which was another time, and long before the Mexican tourism bureau came up with the idea of designating particular towns as ‘Pueblos Mágicos’ to bolster tourism. It felt cliché but I bought copy of the short novel and I sat at a table on the patio of a café and I read the novel while I ate breakfast beside the central plaza where there is a statue and a plaque dedicated to the author.

A Night at the Cock Fights

Zacatecas to Jalpa, Mexico
3,832 km

After the night at the disco I slept in (until 8:00) and then I rode over to the Yamaha dealership in Zacatecas because for a while now I had been detecting a failure of the motorcycle at high speeds and hard climbs when she was exerting all or almost all of her 535 ccs. So I went to the service department and explained the situation to the two mechanics. Juan Federico Gomez de Ana Quezada was the head mechanic and Faramundo Aurelio Ortega was his assistant (both names have been changed). Both thin men, they nevertheless struck me a bit like Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb the way they stood over the motorcycle rubbing their beardless chins, wearing rather blank expressions on their faces, and asking me if the motorcycle has fuel injectors and me dumbstruck, nervous now about where I had brought my motorcycle, and pointing out the clearly visible carburetors above and between the two cylinder heads. They listened to the motor and Juan Federico listened through a hose to isolate the sounds. They agreed that the rear exhaust valve sounded loose and so they opened the covering and spent what seemed like ages loosening and then measuring and then tightening and then measuring again and, the measurement not right, them loosening and then starting all over again. After a couple hours the superficial adjustment to the valve was done and I paid them 150 pesos, or $15, off the books, saying ‘Thank you for your time and expertise” and then riding off still feeling that the motorcycle was sluggish but deciding that, in consideration, the money was well spent because she was no worse off than before.

About 50 kilometers south of Zacatecas I stopped at the hilltop ruins of La Quemada whose crumbling walls and columns and pyramid are the same parched color of the desert plain that stretches in every direction around it. Across this plain the color of the brush and vegetation changes where the buried remains of pre-Colombian clay roads pass beneath and extend out in several directions. They say – that is, the ‘they’ who say all general and imprecise things that then go repeated until what was originally maybe a guess or a conjecture has become hard fact like the various explanations for why the moon looks bigger at the horizon and how come it always seems that the lane you are driving in is the slower one – anyway, they say that La Quemada was once a city of 60,000 to 70,000 and that it is the mythical Chicomostoc, the place of seven caves, although only six have been found so far.

In Jalpa, which is a small city about equidistant between Zacatecas and Guadalajara along the major highway that connects the two, I found a hotel and stayed for the night. I didn’t want to go out because I was tired from the night before but I was in a new place and there were new things to see. So I walked along the main street toward the central plaza, the zócalo is what it’s called in Mexico, and as I walked I noticed that, through two large open doors, there was an area with a small enclosure surrounded by bleachers. When I asked the woman at the door what it was, she said, “Gallos” and I asked, ‘At what time?” and she said, “A las 9.” So I continued on to the zócalo and I bought a Michelada, which is a beer drink that includes ice, salt, some type of mystery sauce, chili sauce, powdered chili around the outside of the cup, and, of course, a slice of lime. It was awful, outright horrendous, I thought, and I consider myself rather a good democrat when it comes to alcohol in various colors and flavors but I couldn’t force down more than three sips before I had to throw out the entire pint. I ate dinner at a food stand in the zócalo and then at 9 o’clock I went to the cock fights.

I took a seat in the front row because I figured that if you are going to try a new thing then you should do it all the way or not at all. There were eight ‘breeders’ that each brought four cocks and so there would be 16 fights that night. During the preparations, which is quite a lengthy process, one cock is tagged with green on his leg and the other with red. Then they are weighed and then each corner picks out a steel talon and these are measured and observed by a judge. The talons are then fixed to the leg by a band that is wrapped around tightly many times. Next the toes are pulled at and cracked, to loosen them, I suppose. Then a third cock is brought in and both are held and it is allowed to peck furiously at each of the two combatants in turn, loosing large tufts of feathers, this to anger them, I suppose. The whole while men hurry around the ring shouting, ‘Rojo!’ or ‘Verde!’ and try to entice you to place a bet and women go about selling tickets for the between rounds raffle and another woman takes and delivers drink orders.

When finally the combat begins you are exasperated by the waiting, but then, immediately, you are surprised by how fierce it is and how bloody it gets if one or the other cock gets lucky and its great steel talon finds a soft home in its adversary’s belly. The fight lasts a matter of seconds and it ends suddenly when one cock lies on the ground defeated, usually alive but almost always bleeding and panting and the life quickly departing, and the other, the victor, standing over the defeated, refusing to finish him either because he fights only to save himself or because he is merciless in his triumph and he would drag his victim around the ring in a victory lap like Achilles did to Hector if it weren’t that he, too, the victor, is also wounded and mortally exhausted. This is when the breeders leap into the ring and each retrieves his champion and carries him quickly out and behind a curtain. I don’t know what happens to the cocks next, if the defeated is killed or if they are both killed or if something else happens before the killing finally comes. I know only that both cocks have left the dirt ring covered with their feathers and sometimes with bits of flesh and often with a deep puddle of blood. I know, too, that it is exciting as all violence is exciting but that it lacks finesse: it is crude and artless. It is not a corrida, a bullfight, which is not a sport but the playing out of a tragedy, the tragedy of the bull’s death. It is instead all fury and no skill, no story, and so no triumph in victory or bitterness in defeat, only it is a bloody combat between two mindless brutes where one will win and the other will lose and both will break themselves in the trying and then both will be killed eventually.

I stayed only for the first few fights and then I was tired by it and also a little disgusted. It was dark and quiet now on the main street, which is only one lane in either direction. The storefronts were all closed and the food and drink vendors had gone home because everyone not attending the cock fights was back in their houses. I walked back to the hotel and in my room, looking in the mirror while I soaped my hands to wash up, I saw on my face and my clothes that the blood from the fights splatters.

The Disco in the Mine

Guachochi to Zacatecas, Mexico
3,654 km

From Guachochi you take the Chihuahua Highway 23 south and east to Hidalgo del Parral, a city along the major highway that connects Chihuahua to Guadalajara in the south. For a time the forested canyonlands continue but soon the slopes become gradual and the thick pine forest disperses and the land becomes dry everywhere. Soon you are riding through rolling yellow plains, the canyons ever further in the distance but never completely out of sight. Now you realize you have come back to the desert: harsh and pitiless, subtle and grand and unconquerable, someplace you can visit but not settle. God must love deserts, you think.

Here it is warm and the breeze becomes a formidable crosswind. Yes, it is desert but the jagged canyonlands were never far off and now they have returned, only this time dry and barren. The last 40 kilometers to Hidalgo del Parral are difficult ones because the highway here is bad from neglect and overuse. The tarmac is broken and rough. At least if there were potholes that would be something to avoid. So you rumble on, teeth clattering, spine jolting, front forks and rear shocks absorbing what little they can.

From Hidalgo del Parral it is a long 300 kilometers along a straight desert highway to Gomez Palacio. Even now in the winter it is hot and dry and very windy. There is no hurry in a desert. Maybe because it is so hot or so dry or maybe because it seems so endless in every direction. But you can ride all day as fast as your screaming engine will carry you and feel as though you have only advanced at a crawl. That is the way it is here.

In Gomez Palacio I completed two weeks on the road. It was an important psychological barrier because, previously when people would ask where I was going, I would say “to Panama” and then add “but let’s see if I make it past two weeks.” Two weeks came and went and I continued riding south. I was holding up because a body can get used to almost anything and grow stronger. The motorcycle was holding up because the riding was smooth here and there were no extremes but she wasn’t getting stronger. The riding went fast along the desert highway, always moving south, occasionally passing a small town, all the while the weather growing colder as you gradually ascended back into elevation.

Zacatecas is a beautiful colonial city nestled within a wide valley. It was once a mining town whose bounty of silver long fed the decadence of the Spanish crown. Here there is a cathedral and many churches; there are monuments of politicians and war heroes and buildings from the colonial days whose beautiful stone facades have been well preserved. There is a teleférico, which is a cable car that runs from midway up one hillside to the top of the other across the full spread of the old city. In the western of these two hillsides there is a once prosperous silver mine that ceased to produce and was shut down. Now it is a tourist attraction and at the end of one mine shaft they built a discotec.

In the evening I went to La Mina Club, which is the disco in the mine. After you pay your entrance fee they seat you on a small train and take you several hundred meters down the mine shaft. When you exit the train they escort you into the bar room, which is adjacent to and smaller than the dance hall. Here they seat you one at a time according to the number in your party. The walls are bare rock and dome-shaped except for the support beams that run every which way, reinforcing the structure and anchoring the large television screens and sound system.

I ordered a Bacardi on the rocks. Soon the dancehall became full and the music got louder. Now people were dancing. I ordered another Bacardi. I drank it and I tried to reason with myself to go out there. I prodded myself. I tried to shame and cajole. You didn’t come here to stand around! Nothing worked; I was unmoved. It seemed that I didn’t have the sand to go out and dance on my own. Finally, disappointed, I said: You’re riding a motorcycle alone through Mexico. The bad highways, the banditos, and the drug traffickers. All the countless dangers. Every day you wake up thinking about how today might be your last. You’ve accepted this and you’ve come this far and here you are in a place where no one knows your name or will ever see you again and you haven’t got the gravel to get out there and dance to just one song!

So I finished my drink and I went onto the dance floor. I danced to one song and then to another and I met people and I had fun. I felt about as awkward as I have ever felt when I first dancing but it got better and I felt braver than in any other moment during the trip.

¡Qué Aventura! ¡Qué Aventura!

Creel to Guachochi, Mexico
2,688 km

Creel is the last major town before you enter the Parque Nacional Barranca del Cobre (Copper Canyon National Park). Here I took a room and unloaded the luggage from the motorcycle. In the afternoon I took a long hour’s ride along the corkscrew highway that follows the train tracks along and over and through the great canyon ridges. These are the tracks that run from Mazatlan on the coast to Chihuahua in the middle of the empty, mountainous northern country. That a train can run through these vast canyonlands is marvelous; it makes you think that maybe anything, anything at all, is possible.

The highway ends at a train stop. Here, at the train stop, there are artisans and souvenir vendors and women cooking and selling food. They come here because the train makes a stop here and also because there is a famous mirador (lookout) and tourists come to see the view. Here at El Divisadero on the northern rim of Barranca del Cobre, you can stand at a cliff’s edge, along a railing and a stone parapet and you can see as far south across the canyonlands as your eyes will let you. You see the rough, jagged slopes of rock and scrubland barreling into and away from each other, looking like the great, colliding waves of a storming sea frozen forever as earth and stone.

The next day I rode more than 150 kilometers of canyon highway from Creel on the north side of the Barranca del Cobre to Guachochi on the south side. The road was rough and meandering: hard corners, twisting as it rose and falling again according to the terrain, cutting through thick forests along the heights where the air was cool and smelled of earth and pine needles and, descending into the valleys, it was hot and dry and bathed in sharp sunlight. In one valley about halfway through the ride I stopped beside a bridge where the road crosses a river and I sat upon a boulder reading and resting and eating sunflower seeds and getting sunburned. Warm and sweating and skin becoming red and no shade anywhere, it was lovely here after so many days of cold.

In Guachochi I rode to the Sinforosa, which is the principal southern mirador as El Divisadero is in the north. It was 10 miles from the town to the lookout and the road was all dirt, rocky and potholed, and at one point I had to cross a large puddle which was thick with mud and sludge and I thought for sure that I would go down. This was my first time riding off of tarmac and it was not pleasant as dirt roads go. I rode slowly and looked straight ahead, avoiding large rocks and gravel and sudden dips in the road.

As I rode, gingerly and nervously, I thought about a story that a friend in Chile had told me. She had gone with her family to a pebbly beach in the south of the country with her family and they drove out onto the sand. There they saw a young American with a rented Jeep. He had got floundered in the pebbles and sand and had kept gunning the engine, which only drove him deeper in. Eventually he got help from a couple of local men with a pickup truck and they rigged a tow line and tried to use the truck’s torque to free the Jeep.

The American had a good attitude and saw it all as an experience. While the two men rigged the line, pulled from the pickup truck, and slowly reversed on the Jeep, the American had his camcorder out. He was circling the scene and filming and smiling and saying over and over again: “Qué aventura! Qué aventura!” (What an adventure! What an adventure!). Some time passed and the Jeep was not freed and the American lifted his gaze from the camcorder aperture and saw that all during the ‘adventure’ the tide had been rising up the shore. The last “Qué aventura!” was only half uttered when he made this realization and now he began repeating different words: “Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck!” Now he was no longer filming and he was helping push the Jeep. Only now there wasn’t time and the rescue had to be abandoned and the pickup moved further up the beach. The tide rose and flooded the Jeep and soon the strong, sidelong current knocked it loose from its moorings and swept it some ways down the coast.

I thought about this story as I rode, bumping and crashing into and over the uneven road, repeating to myself “Qué aventura! Qué aventura!” until finally I arrived at the mirador. There, after crossing a small cow pasture, I was alone at the lookout in the late afternoon. It was a wide concrete platform with a fenced metal rail, the cliff face tumbling down and away below. All around there was only wind and sky and what must certainly be some of the roughest, ruggedest canyon country to be found anywhere on the whole earth.

Motorcycle Trouble at the Edge of the Canyon

La Junta to Creel to Chihuahua to Creel, Mexico
2,481 km

The 90 kilometers of highway between La Junta and Creel cut through yellow plains, soon becoming rolling hills and canyonlands. Entering the canyonlands around Parque Nacional Barranca del Cobre (Copper Canyon National Park), the highway first began to meander and then corkscrew among rocky slopes and sharp ridges. It was good riding, great riding: the hard turning, the leaning, the looking through the present turn and into the next, the bike oscillating from this side to the other, like a pendulum, and me back straight and sitting vertically, arms locked, locking the steering, and leaning the bike into the turn and out of it, easing on the throttle going in and opening it up again coming out, me happy, would be smiling but for the concentration: perceiving, calculating, then doing. My fingertips were freezing under the leather gloves that were covered by electrical tape and duct tape to serve as an insulation, which did not work.

Creel is a small city on the edge of the national park. It has a downtown of a small square and a couple main streets that run parallel on both sides of the train tracks. The train tracks are those that run from Chihuahua between the two mountain ranges to Mazatlan on the coast, running though a hundred kilometers or more of the canyonlands in a marvelous feat of engineering.

I parked the motorcycle near the central plaza and took a stroll to see the town and look for accommodations. When I returned to ride the bike to the hotel where I had taken a room, she was reluctant to start and idled poorly, cutting out after exerting force to climb and slope. I parked the bike at the hotel and left the troubleshooting for tomorrow.

That night I ate dinner at a restaurant that was really the dining room of a family’s house. The mother served me Menudo because that is what she had prepared. Menudo, I learned, is a soup of beans, broth, and cow intestines. I did not much like it. While I forced myself to make a show of the eating, not enjoying it, the older daughter sat at the same table decorating Christmas stockings to be given to the children in her mother’s class – she is a school teacher when she is not running the restaurant. The younger daughter helped her little brother read a picture book about the Greek King Midas who wished that everything he touched would turn to gold and it did but he came to regret that wish. It was pleasant to watch them go about their evening business, me just being, listening, observing, not having to entertain or be entertained, no formality, no ceremony.

The next morning I tried to service the motorcycle. I had the Clymer manual and the small toolkit that comes with the bike. I cleaned the air filter with compressed air from the nearby gas station. I cleaned the fuel filter by running gasoline and then compressed air in a reverse flow. I also replaced a fuel hose, which cracked when I removed it to remove the fuel tank. This helped but did not solve the problem. The carburetors were gummed up and I didn’t know anything about carburetors.

I considered having the bike shipped to a Yamaha shop in Chihuahua, not knowing if to ride the bike would cause problems or find me stranded along the highway. I decided to risk it when the shipping service refused to let me ride along with the motorcycle.

So I rode to Chihuahua and the bike performed well enough to get me there. In Chihuahua I went to the Yamaha dealership and had a full tune-up done that same day. Uriel, the mechanic, cleaned the carburetors, which were fouled with water and dirt and rust; he changed the oil, and did all the things that you do during a tune-up. He treated me to lunch and gave me numerous motorcycle maintenance tips. He refused to accept a tip when I tried to give it.

The next day, now day 11 of the trip, I was back in Creel, the motorcycle humming nicely: idling calmly, steadily, and running strongly.

I am Cold and I Despair

Janos to La Junta, Mexico
1,726 km

After taking a fall at the highway turnoff I continued on to the ruins of Casas Grandes. The ruins were spread across a rolling field and looked like a labyrinth only the you can see easily over the crumbling stone walls, which are the color of the desert.

That afternoon the sun broke through the thick gray clouds and it was sunny and my spirits raised. It was still cold but the desperate chill was gone. That night I stayed in San Buenaventura. A small parade of school children and their parents passed along the street while I sat eating dinner. There were figures dressed as saints and a group of red frocked drummer boys beat time, mostly together, as the rearguard of the procession.

That night, alone in my hotel room, bundled against the cold that seeped into the room through every tiny crack and broken seal, I despaired about this trip. Alone and on a motorcycle and to start in the very middle of winter! Eventually sleep brought relief but until then I was cold, I was alone, and I was bewildered.

The cold broke early in the morning for a few hours but soon, riding at high speed along an open highway that cut through yellow, bush-covered flatlands and undulating hills, flanked by taller hills and then by mountains, the sun disappeared, it grew cold again, and my fingers began to freeze. I pulled over and had an idea. I wrapped the fingers of my gloves with electrical tape and duct tape, hoping that this might reduce the wind chill that was making my fingers so miserable. It looked funny and it didn’t work.

In the early afternoon I arrived in Cuauhtémoc. Cuauhtémoc is in a region of the state of Chihuahua that is dotted with Mennonite settlements. The Mennonites came from Germany in the 1800s and 1900s after first migrating to Canada. They’re very industrious and have drawn great productivity from the land. Many people really like their cheese but I didn’t think it was so great.

I decided not to stay in Cuauhtémoc as I had planned because it didn’t seem to me to have much charm besides a pleasant church. So I continued on. Only now it was early evening and the sun was getting very low and I didn’t find any hotels along the highway. It was late and very dark before I came into La Junta and found a reasonably priced hotel.

That night sitting cold and alone in my hotel room, I despaired again. I became very negative about the trip. My confidence was still shaken from the fall and I was ill-equiped for the cold, which was pushing me to the limits of my endurance. Traveling alone is always difficult at the onset. No matter how much of a loner you are it takes getting used to. Still, riding alone is always a pleasure: the solitude on the open road, the wind, and the strong hum of the engine gives a sense of freedom. But the cold makes everything difficult. It hollows you out, leaves you feeling empty. Bad thoughts are always the first to seep in where there is a vacuum.

Gravel Comes before a Fall

Agua Prieta to Janos, Mexico
1,409 km

After crossing the border at Agua Prieta I rode east then south on Federal Highway 2. Highway 2 is the western prong of a wishbone-shaped junction that connects with Ciudad Juarez in the east and then runs south to Chihuahua. It is a major trucking route and principal conduit for drug trafficking.

The highway first cut a straight line through a barren desert of scrubland surrounded by hills on all sides. Soon the highway rose into these hills and meandered along narrow ridges. In the distance I could see snow speckled mountains and before long I was in those mountains. These are the mountains of the Sierra Madre Occidental – the western of the two mountain ranges of the same name that run along almost parallel tracks in a southeastern course through the whole length of the country.

Here, among the mountains, the blue sky, clear and windy, became very cold. The riding went like this: you weave fast up the mountain road then, getting stuck behind a semi, you wait until the road opens so that you can pass, then you ride fast again, weaving, until you encounter another semi and must wait again. Then, soon, I was descending and it was warmer and the road became straight. Then it was totally flat and straight. Now the sun was low and the shadow of a man on a bike with a large pack stretched long ahead and to my left.

The two prongs of the wishbone meet Federal Highway 10 at Janos and from there go south towards Nuevas Casas Grandes and then Chihuahua. Janos, small and dusty, is a town of 2,000 inhabitants, of little note except that it is located at an important crossroads. I stayed the night there. I went to the nicest restaurant in town and spent $10 on dinner.

The next morning I woke up warm in my hotel room with the heater on. When I went outside the cold struck like needles. I was told that it had snowed very early in the morning. I wore everything I owned and even took the insoles out of my boots to wear two pairs of socks. My body was warm and bundled but the wind from the fast riding stuck my double-gloved hands and numbed my fingertips to the bone.

After a short time, I slowed to pull over. I came onto the gravel pull-off too fast and still breaking – an amateur move. My front tire lost traction and then my rear and the bike went over and I was thrown off. I tried to right the bike but my fingers were too numb and I was shaken by my first fall. It turns out I had stopped or ditched beside a small private school alone beside the highway. Two teenage boys saw me and almost immediately came to help. After we righted the motorcycle, the boys admired it and we commented on the cold. Soon they went back to class and, my hands now mostly thawed, I returned to the highway.

The Departure

Reseda, California, to Agua Prieta, Mexico
1,251 km

On November 30th I left Los Angeles. My starting point was the Panavision parking lot because it is where my mother works, so it was where to say goodbye to her. Also, it is where much of the preparation work on the motorcycle was done and I could not leave without thanking Dan Charleston, the Panavision Facilities Manager.

I left in the early afternoon and it was sunny, warm, and windy, riding east into the Palm Springs desert, where I took my first night’s rest. An easy warm-up ride. On the way there I stopped at Chaparral Motorsports in San Bernardino where I bought a few last minute things. I met an old biker in the parking lot. It was very windy and he was the only other person that I saw riding a motorcycle that day. He was thin and sinewy, gray was in his long hair and his handlebar mustache. He smoked cigarettes as we spoke.

“A bike trip – very cool, man. I was gonna take a cross country trip last year,” he said. “Was gonna meet a few women along the way that I met on the internet along. But it didn’t work out.”

That night I dreamed of someone from my past and I woke up wondering if the dreaming was the closing of a chapter or a leftover yearning, or if there is no closing of chapters and in fact no such thing as pages or chapters, only what you carry with you from one place to the next.

The next day I rode through the vast desert and the scrubland of eastern California and Arizona. I rode fast along the Interstate, more than 85 mph, the motorcycle humming, vibrating beneath me, the wind, the sun, and the music from my iPod, wondering if the planes that fly overhead and scan with their radars could see me on my motorcycle and if I would have a stack of speeding tickets waiting for me when, if, I return.

My next stop was Phoenix where I visited an old friend who is a doctor doing her residency there. She is lovely and beautiful and I never understand why she hasn’t a boyfriend but I blame it on her pickiness and on her being a dedicated doctor. We met another old friend for dinner and he is also a doctor. He was exactly as I remembered him from high school and that is a very good thing. We had a few drinks and we reminisced.

Later, after more drinks, I told the story about how, when I was working in the Superdome during the Hurricane, we had to move a 600 lbs. woman from the Superdome to the Arena where the Hornets play. There were two small maintenance vehicles to drive the non-ambulatory patients and we left her for last. Finally, when she was the last, we gathered together five of us and took positions. She was seated. One cradled her head and one was at each of her arms, one had her right leg, and I had the left. I took her by the ankle but it buckled when we tried to lift. So I brought my hands higher, above her knee, and, lifting again, my grip slipped upwards from the sweat and my hand penetrated into her labia, which was grossly enlarged and exposed below the Muumuu. It was warm, wet, and went deep. I gasped. I knew what I had done. She knew it too.

We lifted her onto the flatbed and, driving with one hand on the steering wheel, the other hanging limply, I drove the longest drive of my life from the Superdome across the overpass to the Arena. We left her on the flatbed because the army cots were not sturdy enough. I bolted looking for a bathroom, only now, three days after the storm, the power was out and there was no water pressure. I went from bathroom to bathroom until I found a facet that gave a trickle, a precious trickle! I loaded my hand with liquid soap and scrubbed, and scrubbed. And scrubbed.

After Phoenix was Tucson to visit my cousin who is also a doctor and also doing her residency. She had just broken up with her boyfriend and we talked about that and about doctor stuff. That night I stayed up late to write my Will and my Power of Attorney for Health Care. Then, lying sleepless in bed I thought about how tomorrow I would be in Mexico and what would I do if my bike were stolen along with all my things. It took a long time to calm myself and, when I finally did, there were only a few hours left before the sun would come up.

I had had a great visit with my old friends and my cousin but that day, riding in the pale sunlight and the warm air, south towards the border, I was ready not to talk about boyfriends or especially about anything related to doctoring for a while! On the way to the border I stopped in Tombstone and I took a photo of my motorcycle in front of the O.K. Corral. Then on to Bisbee, which is far more picturesque: nestled within a canyon, narrow streets and pretty storefronts. In Douglas I stopped at the post office to mail my Will and Power of Attorney. The postal clerk knew each person that walked in, addressed them by name, and knew whether to speak in English or in Spanish. It was a curious thing, something that you figure exists somewhere in the world but that you have never seen before and never expected to see or certainly be part of.

Crossing the border was very easy. On the Mexican side I parked in a dirt lot. There was a security guard with a uniform and a sidearm, slouching in a small chair, one leg bent and the other extended out, drowsy under the midday sun. I secured a lock to the motorcycle’s disc brake and fixed a cable from the fork to a steel pole. Inside the customs office there was no line, no migrants, no rush, and almost no movement. I explained what I wanted to do; the paperwork was done; the fee for the vehicle permit was paid; and suddenly I was outside, the sun on my face, warm but not hot, a breeze, and then stillness. Oh shit! Now what?

I hate to stereotype – don’t we always say ‘I hate to do this or that’ immediately before we go on to do exactly what we say we say we hate to do? Anyway, I hate to stereotype but Agua Prieta is exactly what you think of when you think of a northern Mexican town: small, wind-swept and dusty, few signals and no street signs, a place to pass through on your way somewhere else. I rode through it quickly – stopping only to determine which way was south – and soon was on Federal Highway 2 headed towards Chihuahua.

On Value

What about the drug lords and the armed gangs?
What about them? I reply.
And the banditos – aren’t you afraid of the banditos?
Of course, I reply.
And on a motorcycle and alone!
Dangerous, I reply.
Then why do it?
Because I can’t not.

When you tell your friends and your family that you plan to travel through Mexico, alone no less, and on a motorcycle, something like the above conversation is what almost invariably ensues.

If you don’t immediately understand why one would want to take a motorcycle trip, alone, free, and through unknown lands, then nothing I can say, no explaining, will enlighten you. You don’t see it and that’s fine. But to you who understands the allure, to you whose heart races at the thought of it, to you who loves the idea but fears the doing of it, read on, comrade! Heed what I have to say!


We are all seeking Value in our lives.

We are taught that our lives have an intrinsic value. But value and Value are not the same. Value – the latter of the two – has to do with finding the path to a flourishing, to a fulfilling life. Some read books about how to find that path, some attend seminars, and some go to church. But no one can lead another to that path, not really anyway. It is a personal thing, the most personal of things. Only, maybe one can point another in a direction and maybe it will be a good direction or maybe it will not be. I don’t have the answers for anyone. I don’t have them for myself. Only I have some ideas and they help me.

I find Value in my life by what I have done and, in particular, by how much it scared me to do it. Rock climbing, boxing, now motorcycling. Knowing you can do a thing and then doing it is nothing; it’s the not knowing and then the doing it or the trying to do it and failing – there is Value. Breaking your fears or facing them honestly and truly and them breaking you and then you getting back on your feet, dusting yourself off and facing them again – the Reckoning – there is Value. And having faced them, your fears, and having won or having lived to face them again, there is the growth, the expansion of what you once were to what you now are – there also is Value. Of course, it is not necessary to be a daredevil, I am certainly not, but I can face my fears one at a time and in my own way.

That’s what I think anyway, but, of course, I’m not certain of anything. This has been my thinking for the past ten years but ask me again in another ten and perhaps I’ll have thrown it out and stumbled onto something new. Anyway, maybe it’s the search for how to obtain Value that actually bestows it. It sounds silly, I suppose, but no more so than anything else I have said or heard.

What I do know with certainty is only this: I like the way it feels to do a thing that is hard to do or scary or both, and, having done it, I don’t like to spend much time guffawing about it, only to breath in deeply the air, sweat and crisp and scented from the success, permit an inward smile because the triumph is mine alone and no one else’s, and then begin planning for the next project.

So now on to a motorcycle trip into Latin America.