"The doors of the houses"

This is my bike box, because I am flying into Cancun and out of Merida (so I'm not using my plastic case), and it is beyond capacious. We didnt even need to coax the rear wheel off to get it to fit. At the baggage check-in counter at the Rochester airport, Attendant 1: "Do you have the number for the oversize bag room?" Attendant 2, looking then at my box on the scale: "Good lord. Here."

Getting groggily off the plane, passing thru customs (which always makes me feel delinquent even though I'm not), and then finding myself at the curving baggage belt. "I am looking for a very very big box", i found myself saying in Spanish, effortlessly, to Snr Baggage. I've definitely had to say that before! And it came enormously round the bend--reunion joy!!--and i loaded it onto this cart and I rolled us forth and could have easily wiped out a family of four.

I set up a staging area under the covered Departures section of the Cancun airport, and proceeded to take bike out of box and assemble. Families and taxi drivers and police swarmed past, but i payed them no heed: i was busy getting greasy and i most definitely did not need a taxi. This face shows my glee upon finally pedaling away from the airport under my own power, my huge battered box left looming over an airport trash can.

Reunited with Bicycle Buddy Jen! The last we biked together was in 2010, around rural SE PA during our Rodale days. And here we are. How magnificent.

The bicycling away from the airport was the feeling of movement after so much cramped sitting, the satisfaction at having just put together my machine, and the squinting and swearing into a rain storm. And I had left my fenders at home, so a splatty spray cloud existed around my feet and grit flew up enthusiastically to coat my paniers. To make matters more long-suffering, I was bicycling along a highway, on the variably expansive shoulder, and the spray-roar from the cars was deafening. Who knew water could be so loud?

I am CRAZY, I thought to myself, in a mix of glory and misery, powering along towards Centro Cancun under my own legs in the grey wet. And also, "I don't travel to stay clean" was my mantra. My shirt was heavy and studded with grit, my pants needed to be rolled up because they grabbed my quads needlessly in their sticky wetness.

At one point I looked behind me to check the traffic and found I was being followed by a flock of birds. Small brown birds. Gah! But a second check revealed this was actually grit flying up behind me.

I believe that pleasures are made to be even more delicious after a contrasting experience, and I even prefer them this way. Thus, finding the abode of our warmshowers host (like couch surfing, but for bicycle tourists: the most generous and welcoming man and his girlfriend), and reuniting with Jen, and having a warm (hot) shower, and eating the shrimp pasta ordered for you, and receiving a guided mescal drinking....all this glowed with a warmer light than ever.

So much gratitude. How are these warmshowers people so GOOD?

Snr Host had this to say, "The bicycle is the only machine in the world that opens the doors of the houses and the hearts of the person's." 

Mescal is distilled from the succulent agave plant and is traditionally drunk, with enormous reverence and pleasure, with lime, salt with chili and crushed worms, and then followed by a whole worm itself. I actually burped worm while writing this post tonight.

One final note about my fun in the security line at 5am today. Thanks to my totally eccentric rule not to purchase food in airports. I was pulled over for Special Attention after my little bike bags passed thru the scanner. Mr. Gloves opened my bag and removed one by one my odd self-reliant little containers of food. I had packed myself what had been 2 cheese curds in a Ziploc (I know, I know) but what were now a single flattened hunk of white plastic explosive. "We don't have to check that, do we" asked Mr Swab to Mr Gloves, hoping to avoid such a pitiful task. "That's breakfast!" I said, with as much benign positivity as I could muster, of the cheese curd and the parmesan container with the flaking label containing a crumbling banana bread marmalade sandwich pressed atop a splat of blueberry crisp.

Thankfully, we all cleared and I got to keep and enjoy that strange picnic.