"Puro frenos!" (only brakes!)

In the quiet pine woods to begin the day

"I'm gonna take down our lampshade, because this is the shirt I'm going to wear."


This is the first thing I said to Kathy, Sunday morning, in the cold height of the mountains, in the perching town of San Jose del Pacifico. I had positioned my orange shirt around the single bare bulb in our cold little room, to help improve the aesthetics. Middle-40s (F) for temperature in the night, and I was wearing half of all my clothing (all the warm items), such are the conditions of high elevation and packing light. 


Then, after a hot frothy mocha, and worried about my knees, I started out of town on the long arduous thread towards the coast.  


My ride began easily, however, because a ponderous truck stacked with boxes of chickens chugged along slowly on the road. As it passed me, I reached out, grasped a strap on that truck, and with some careful balancing, began bike-skiing behind it. My left arm steadied me with micro-adjustments as I gripped and zoomed along with all those birds. This glee and excitement lasted for a couple good climbs, but I had to release after a kilometer or so, to avoid being curved into the ditch. 

Wow! But what fun! 


The road stitched through thick pine forest, nearly entirely quiet from cars, and in this peace and presence I found my Sunday morning church. Growing on the side of the road was a humongous agave species, looking completely Jurassic, leaves like bending swords. I stopped to be in the presence of this awesome plant, it's grandeur, how long it took to grow (agaves are sometimes called "century plants"), and that humans in all their greed and entitlement had left undisturbed this incredible being. I got a little misty-eyed, there alone on the side of the road with it. 

This plant was like Sunday morning church

I was still concerned about my knees, but they were thus far complying. I thought of my 92 year old grandfather, who will ride his stationary bike and then tell me, "Today I went 3 miles on the bike. 2 miles with legs and 1 mile with arms." I thought about him and then transferred some of my pulling into my arms on some of the steeper spots, rocking back and forth on my bike like an idiot, but helping to bypass the knees a little bit. 


A lone man was by a bridge on the desolate forrested route, selling mayacuyas (passion fruit), his only advertising a stick propped up and hung with the yellow fruit like a catch of fish off a pole. I cut open the fruits with my ever-obliging pocket knife and sucked the sour delicious seeds from their hold inside. In tropical countries with exciting illnesses, I feel really good eating foods that are contained within a peel. 


Mr Fruit was interested in our biking, and Kathy with her excellent Spanish conversed easily with him. I'm able to catch snippets of conversation here, but I am pretty much a fetus when it comes to my Spanish abilities. But I did understand him when he said, "puro frenas!" from here onwards, "only brakes!" 


That was absolutely not the case, however; the day included some more hauling climbs. To cross all those Sierra Madres Sur, we went down, up, around so many masses of risen earth, the road looking like a ribbon of squiggly frosting on my map. 


But when we did reach areas of descent, what a thrilling glory. These truly were "only brakes", and I felt like I was downhill skiing. The curves in the road, banking left and right, smoothly connecting one curve to the next, like a skier carving out swoops of snow behind her. Descending for minutes at a time--thinking of the hours it took to get up here--i had to stop and catch up with myself, even though there was no physical output besides my roaring hand muscles, it was that intoxicating to be flying in this way.  


With our flying downwards, the ecosystem changed, as starkly as like stepping off a plane on a foreign runway and being hit with the contrast. The pines disappeared. The air felt warm, full-proof and boozy. Leaves were gigantic. Bananas, hibiscus, ferns, palms, epiphytes: I was encountering one by one my beloved tropical favorites as I zoomed past. Coconuts for sale on the side of the road. Looming strangler figs like the Swiss cheese of trees, bamboo copses emanating peace. Parrots sqwacked in flapping groups. I love the lush tropics, life growing on life there's so much of it. 


The fiesta of green that was this ecosystem did not connect against the coast, however. As we approached the ocean the forest was gone, replaced again by short dry wizened plants. 


I had a piña colada on the beach (we are two nights in the very touristy and pleasing town of Zipolite), so quintessential, relaxing on a cushion and watching the waves, to cheers myself for making it over those mountains. That drink was so righteously earned, and I bade it go to my knees. 

A fern ready to unfurl, like a little pixar creature with eye stalks

Coming down into the lush fiesta of green