A Boring Sunday Post (except for the pepper spray part)

Today was Sunday, and like many Sundays in my other life, I rode my bicycle and watched the sunset. I've ridden my bicycle all days this week except Tuesday. I love riding. I love this. How lucky I am to be here. 

This is my second night of stay in the same place: Puerto Progreso, a delightfully touristy town north of the big city of Merida. It's delightful because it's not catering to white foreign tourists, instead it's all happy Mexican families on the beach. You can feel the happiness and family and friend love here. I sat in the sand and watched a family buffeted by the rigorous wind, all helping each other trying to get dressed over the sand under flapping towels. Hawkers sold popcorn and sweets along the beach, bachata music played from the beach-side bars, and there was endless good food for me to eat. I didn't even need to buy a bag of beans here! 

Today I rode my bicycle in nice little 40mile a loop (rather than using it as a means of transportation between two places). What else was I going to do today? Sit around? Um, no. 

I started riding with the sunrise behind me, past more vacation homes. Glorious. 

Except for the sudden and terrible awareness of a grey streak coming from behind the roadside palms. 

So I had an opportunity to deploy my self-defense pepper spray. With fancy vacation homes come well-fed and mean dogs. In the small simple towns, the dogs are totally ambivalent and see people riding bikes every day. But this morning, with all these special houses that needed protecting, a big grey dog came charging at me; and he wasn't barking, and he was angling for my trajectory, not just running along behind for fun. Jen has a theory about dogs, and I believe she is right: when a dog barks and is running, he is doing it for sport. When he is not barking and is running, he damn well means to catch you. 

But my pepper spray is at my right holster, and I grabbed it out, aimed behind me, and a marvelous stream of red flew into the face of that grey beast. And man, did he stop running right that instant. 

If you've ever taken out your contacts after chopping peppers and not washing your hands quite thoroughly, you might imagine how effective this is. I felt only the tiniest flare of guilt and pity, but mostly victory. Then I dealt with the fall-out of adrenaline charging loops around my veins, feeling shaky and hollow. I've been bitten in the butt before, and it's not anything I want repeated again. When biking in foreign places, my biggest heart pounding fear is dogs. 

Eventually the adrenaline subsided, and I found myself riding a bedraggled strip of road down the middle of a lagoon. The surface was potholes and huge wedges of gravel, and I'm amazed my bicycle didn't completely shimmy and shake loose. But I was completely alone. Just me and the still water and the shore birds and the mangroves. I sat for a long time on my helmet, in the center of this tranquil solitude and was so grateful for all of it.  

Then the road took me into a little town, and I thought with fondness how many little towns have supported me and Jen this whole trip. The couple of tiendas, the little bustling fruit and vegetable and bodies-of-chickens-for-sale-everywhere market, the tall church overlooking it all, the little children buying sweets and chasing each other around. 

I bought a food that I didn't know what it was, from a lady with a card table on the sidewalk, sat down in the shade next to a table stacked with bras for sale, and watched the Sunday morning bustle of this little town. My unknown food thing was hunk of cornmeal mush, with leaves and hard boiled eggs in it, topped with a brown sauce. The leaves were Chaya, I think, a local leafy perennial shrub thing here. Delicious, especially with the lip-fire of the salsa picante. 

Then I biked home to my hostel (tidy, quiet, dreamy), where I am the single guest. I made guacamole from produce in the market. I played in the surf. I walked in the sunset and watched the fisherman. 

I've absolutely transitioned to being in happy solitude. That first night alone, in Celestún, was the hardest. But since then I've settled into just being with me. Following any whim without needing to explain it. Writing is essential, or else I would combust from all the observations and narrations I have this inexplicable strong need to express.  

My days here in this lovely, spicy, loud, colorful, hot, happy, country are soon to end. I took time today to just sit and baste in the fact that I have been able to be here. 

Sunrise riding, bridge leaving Puerto Progreso.