A Cyclist Goes Camping? A self-depracating reflection on trees, feet, and love

An erstwhile post from your bicycle travel adventurer here! This will not be about bicycles however; instead, camping. A topic completely new to me I just feel compelled to expound about. That activity where you go trudging among trees with whatever you hope to eat weighing on your back, in addition to those items necessary for a bad night's sleep, all of which will most likely become filthy.  

This is how I defined camping until just recently. My only other experiences were a concerted effort to "get involved" during freshmen year via the outing club, where over October break I rented some ill-fitting gear and spent a miserably cold night in some Pennsylvania state forest with people I barely knew, so cold I was experiencing nightmares that if I could just get the equation correct in my calculus class my sleeping bag would warm up. It took many more years for me to try sleeping out again, where I slept alone, frugal, tent-less, on the edge of a bicycle trail in some state forest in Idaho, awoken by the tremendous sounds of some ungulate gulping a midnight drink from a stream. I arrived at the nearest log cabiny diner the next day, wide-eyed and very eager to eat a hot breakfast and not do that again thank you very much.  

And then, last year, I fell in love with a man who loves walking. And trees. The sort of man who hikes 20 miles a day in the California mountains for weeks on end. The sort of man who drives through snow storms to attach fancy add-ons to his boots and hike mountains through snow storms. He was crazy about hiking and camping and I was crazy about him. After months of hugging him and his smoke-filled hair back into civilization after being away, I wondered what all this was about. But I still dismissed it: camping required too much gear I didn't have, too much carrying, too much savvy, too much planning. Too much likelihood, I thought, for my sensitive odd little body to become cold or uncomfortable. He knew this about me and was too respectful to ask me along, except for occasional, "I wish I could have shared this mountain with you. It was SO beautiful." But something opened in me finally and for Christmas I gave him a handmade certificate, entitling the bearer to "any outdoor event excluding those outdoor events occuring below the temperatures of 50 degrees F and including those outdoor events involving sleeping bags." 

He had the gear to lend me, the savvy, the planning. I just had to set aside my old freshman self afraid of getting cold and trust him. 

My first experience out with him was a sweet short hike up to a camping spot on Bald Mountain in the Adirondacks, where he carried all the heavy stuff, lending me his uber-light pack and sleeping bag. At the top he magically produced two cold beers for us, from inside a pair of thick wool socks. We had the beers, a sunset, hot chili, and I slept the best I'd ever slept not under a roof. It was bliss. To wake up and see the mist yawning gently from the tree'd valley, the enterprising birds chipping away with no sounds of other humans, being with him and all his enchantedness and peering into his beloved world.  

This past weekend, plaintively grasping at the last of the wan warmth left before endless grey torpid winter, I suggested we go out into some Pennsylvania forest. A bit south, a bit back in time, perhaps some color left. This would be my third time out with him, sleeping on forest soils and walking a lot, and my farthest distance covered with a pack. Just under 20 miles hiked the two days we were out. Which for me, is a lot. We chose Loyalsock state forest, and no, I am not making up the name of that. "Wetsock" would have been more appropriate, given our second day of drizzle, however.  

The morning to depart for our sock-hike, I got dressed in my new thrift store down vest (packable warmth), a silk scarf in a clashing orange (packable warmth), my middle-aged-soccer-mom Supportive Footwear running shoes, and another thrift store gem of lightweight multi-pocket khaki pants a homeschooled tween girl would wear with gusto. "Ooooh you look so CUTE," he exclaimed. "What?!", I rebutted, "I'm dressed with no style whatsoever and these shoes are hideous and I'm wearing none of my cutest most interesting clothing." "But you're dressed like you're going out to DO THINGS," he countered. And he was right. I'm realizing that hiking and camping is about putting yourself into the very bosom of the world, trees and streams and quiet and mud and burs, and trying to take care of your needs as intrusively as possible while you relish these wild places. 

As we're getting ready to leave, I'm unsupervised for 20 minutes in the kitchen and he returns to find the counter piled with food. "I don't want to get hungry", I explained. Chopped, oiled, spiced and wrapped in foil was over half of a rutabaga the size of a small infant.  

Ever tactful, my boyfriend considered this enormous volume. "Is that enough?" I asked hopefully. Along with the soybean noodles, the bread, bananas, cheese, muffins, chocolate, peanut butter..... He found a kind way to reassure me we would have more than enough food, and counselled that I put half the rutabaga aside for baking at home later. 

I was eager to impress him with what I hoped would be my campfire cooking skills. The first time this had been successful; I had brought homemade buttery biscuit dough and made us fire biscuits roasted on the ends of fat sticks, pried off and filled with melting gooey brie cheese. When he tasted one I witnessed a catatonic religious experience. Even though when I had unpacked the food supplies at the fire circle, all of which he had carried to take the heavier weight, revealing my biscuit mix in a cute ball jar: "That's in a jar?!" he exclaimed, "I carried glass up here?!". Yup, thanks to your rookie girlfriend. Hehh. I know now that is what plastic baggies are for. 

One of my other rookie mistakes this weekend was my impatience with the rutabagas. Having poked them directly into the flames, they turned out like hard white board game dice with one side black, tasteless and unbecoming. 

But the rutabagas shortly became forgotten. Heavy rustling in the forest made us both sit up straight in the dark, ticking on our headlamps and shushing our story telling. Through the dim murky wall of tree trunks two bright eyed shone. A black bear. More rustling, which sounded as if it was approaching. Matthew stood up, grabbed a rock, and spoke loud and low. I stood up and felt fear and an impressed sense of the unknown. Rustle rustle, and the eyes shown from a greater distance away. Matthew explained that black bears are very shy and any encounters with humans were incredibly rare. He explained the protocol for self defense and reassured me all would be well. Heavy distant scampering, and eventually quiet. Matthew sat back down and continued his fire story. 

I couldn't get those glinting eyes out of my mind. 

Even though it was only 8pm, there wasn't anything more to do but get into our sleeping bags. Food had been eaten, fire had been satisfyingly made, and I hadn't thought to bring anything to read. Time to tuck in for the night. And it had gotten cold. My three sweaters and that vest are great, but he's letting me use his 4-degree sleeping bag and that will be inarguably cozy.

So you zip yourselves into a low-hanging flappy triangle, joking about quickly zipping up the flap to avoid letting the cold in the door. You pipe your body into an appendageless fluffy slidey tube and lay on something rectangular and partially inflated and also slidey, under some whispering trees very far from roads or any other people. Except your boyfriend, with whom you are very much needing to snuggle, to wrap an arm around.

Discovery: there is no satisfying way to snuggle when you are contained within an appendageless tube. You can't unpack and release an arm because it will become irrevocably cold. You can inch your way closer to him and his tube, but that only results in sliding him off his little rectangle.

So you're a fat singular larvae, as close to him as you can get, waiting for the next morning when there's light and warmth again and you can be a butterfly and drink hot tea and keep walking amongst joyful trees.  

Sleep came easily enough, because we had walked for 10 and a half miles. For most people I know who hike, this is like a boardwalk stroll. But for me, this is the longest I've ever walked while carrying life supplies on my back. When I'm bike touring, I'm inured to the heavy panniers full of back-up water and sunscreen and the aching butt from the bike saddle. Your butt always aches, and it's the fact of it, and you ignore it, and just get on with the wonderful activity you're doing. With hiking, it is feet and hips aching. When I first felt my feet starting to ache, this registered as a problem. Oh no, my feet hurt! I'm deficient! I lack some key heartiness! But Matthew explained, it's just the fact of it. His hurt too. It's ok. Accepting hurting feet was just going to be like accepting a hurting bike butt. 

But you walk along in the crisp roar of fallen colored leaves and balance across logs and admire neon green moss and smell the different types of trees as you walk among forest types. Yes, you can smell it. Your human senses become heightened in a way you can't get among offices and furniture and parking lots. 

So at about 6 a.m. I did Sphinx pose to peer out of the tent and will the dim sky to show nautical twighlight. I really wanted morning. I wanted to stop thinking of bears from a slidey tube.

He was still sleeping as if he had begun contentedly decomposing into the forest floor. I had slept such that every forest rustle sent a red exclamation point into my consciousness. As the night had wore on I did realize that a distant spooky regular sounding rustling was him breathing. I registered a single dry leaf falling from a tree, landing cacophonously in the leaf litter. A mouse scooting benignly through the rattling leaves was uproarious. But the bear never returned, and all was well. 

When I heard him stir, "I'm hungry", I announced, pathetically into the dark, "and I need to use the forest loo." Another activity, along with sleeping under trees and walking a lot and planning campfire food, that I had previously thought unachievable by me. He struck into action almost immediately, "this is the hard part" he said, leaving the warm larval casing to enter the cold morning world. 

"Fafafafafa" he went, pulling on cold pants. "The trick is to keep them under your sleeping bag so they're not so cold." "The trick is to not take off ANYTHING in the first place," I responded from my three sweaters.  

But the hot English breakfast tea we relished, made with stream water, and the bubbling can of beans for breakfast over another fire, these simple pleasures were heightened into richness you can never get inside a house. A richness cultivated from walking so far, from being cold, from some basic human instinct to rejoice in self-care in these circumstances. It is truly magical. 

At the end of the second day (rainy), after I was addled and tired enough that my sopping feet I considered somehow to be heavy quart ball jars of water, after we had walked and walked and entertained ourselves with rhyming games, and after we saw our parked car in the distance, I could only laugh in giddy pride to see the trail head sign from which we had launched over 24 hours ago. To spend so much time amongst these looming majestic living things, placing foot after foot, and to do this next to the supportive grinning master of all that, was just wonderful. 

Special Edition! The secret inside of the bicycle bags.

It was 2017 and I was traveling with my bike partner Kathy of the time, exactly twice my age and a wonderful testament that if you lovingly care for your person you can do anything you want your whole life. We were getting ready to leave our hotel room for the day's ride. "I just love Putting!" she said with obvious relish. "What?" I asked. "Putting! You know, putting this in that pocket, putting that in that bag. It's just so satisfying to put everything back in its place for the road." 

And indeed, every morning Ellie and I Put, quietly focused, a meditation of sorts, preparing for our day. 

Also in the morning I set the breakfast table by making the bed. I lay the bag of beans next to our bag of tortillas rolled up after last night's dinner. Unfold the pocket knife and chop up garlic (or if we're lucky, turmeric root) over a tourist brochure cutting board (any scrap of paper will do), slice the avocado smoothly in half. Beans, tortillas, some spices, this soft green fruit. We just love this breakfast so much, like each day it is new. 

The room is decorated for Christmas with bike shorts and sports bras draped over the television and curtain rods. 

One of the things things needing to be Put is a plastic cup. Otherwise trash, kept and washed out after a delicious orange juice one day, it's a speaker to put my phone into for music. Or a padded box to transport a mango or avocado inside. Or an Easy-Sip bedside water glass. Or a serving bowl for a pocket-knife-dismantled pineapple. Or it could be a BYO vessel to have guanabana juice poured into it by a vendor to save another plastic cup. 

Putting involves rolling the freshly dried clothes into sushi and jamming them into my zippered case for them, no bigger than a shoebox. You double check you have the phone charger in it's special pocket. You get your sunglasses, sunscreen, and face wipin' rag in your handlebar bag. You slide the map behind the shoebox-worth of clothes, fitting aptly and satisfyingly against the flat back of the panier. Every single item has a place. My four panier side pockets each have different zipper-pulls for easy recognition, to save the motions of zipping and unzipping and the memory game. Except for the buggered one held together by a punky line of safety pins. There's the Emergency Backup Food Pocket (the cookies that I never hope to have to eat), the VIP Pocket (sunscreen, charger), the Soft N' Warm Pocket (hat, mini scarf), and the Bike Mechanic Pocket (tube, patch kit, lube). 

In the unforseen and grumpy circumstances that you can't find a Put thing, to be zipping open pockets, pawing through items, rezipping pockets. All in futility. I want sunscreen. Not my spare tube. Not my hat. Time spent looking is not quality time. Knowing where every item is waiting is very important and satisyfing. Thus the Putting is very important. 

About a full third of my load is food and water, a third is clothes, and the rest is various life support items in itsy bitsy containers. Doll-sized handcream, toothpaste, a contact case cut in half containing my hair styling paste. I curate with enormous care each and every item I choose to bring. 

I conceptualize packing for bike travel by thinking about Physics: each item you bring has its own mass, and your very own quads and knees will need to create forces to put those masses in motion. I am incorrigibly light in my packing; each item should serve multiple purposes (e.g., pocket knife: which is bike tool and kitchenware), be imperceptibly light (my little wool smart wool hat), or be invaluable (spare tube). 

However, to be completely incongruous, I am traveling with what is basically a spice cabinet. I have accumulated it en route. I couldn't pass up a baggie of cinnamon for a few pesos; its beautiful redolence can augment weak coffee or nominal cinnamon rolls. Likewise cumin, smelling so rich and strong and contra-dancey. Ideal for little bags of popcorn bought in the park, or for all those bolsas of beans. A bulb of garlic. Some thumbs of turmeric. 

Each year in my travel journal I write notes to future self, "Remembers for Next Adventure", with advice to leave home the third shirt, but a to-go mug is a great idea. Let me know if you ever want a guide, as esoteric as it would be, to Packing for Bike Trips in the Tropics. I acknowledge that bike-camping is wholly different, a much heftier and impressive world indeed. But I am just a little traveling hummingbird. 

One of my higher-entropy days. Desperately needing a good putting. 

Still Life, with drying decorative bike shorts and food hung protectively. 

Somehow both these photos feature neon green hotel rooms (?!). 

Day 22: Arrival and gratitude

Day 22 began with us as sleepy as the little town of Armadillo where we awoke, deep in the crevices of those dry mountains of wild horses. The grey mist fattened into hovering droplets, then fell in a proper rain, adding to our sluggishness as we worked to change my rear flat which had appeared overnight.

We biked up and out and up, retracing our endless flight downward from yesterday. We were biking in a thick cloud, the road ahead eaten by grey mist with views completely unavailable. For being luggy and slothful, we were still celebrating ourselves for climbing for 1.5 hours.  This was our last ride of the trip, heading to our destination city of San Luis Potosí.

 The road consumed in the mouth of mist.

Wild horses in the mists. Like a story book. 

Before we entered into the clog of trucks and cars and taxis and potholes and dogs and street signs we prepared with some fortifying cookies. These were my Emergency Backup Cookies, and that I had been able to carry them for the entirety of the trip without needing to open them, was a joy indeed. For all that they symbolized, we ate them and celebrated.

 Ellie flies down the highway into San Luis.

From the mountains to the city, we had a gentle decline and a powerful tail wind. What a gift. We FLEW. 30 kph with little effort. Moments like these, the city lying ahead like a prize, and us buzzing with incredible speed, these are the times where I feel bigger than myself with all of it.

We chose an exquisite coffee shop to be our "final destination" in the big city. Unlike so many of our small town stops, this coffee was not brewed with sugar (very common, and frankly, an abomination), not burned, not Nescafé, not with powdered fake creamer. Real, true, upstanding unadulterated goodness. I waved my arms around as I sipped my cappuccino: so good. 

Celebration also continued with our very first and very last salad on the trip. Salads are as rare as unicorns here. "Look, I'm eating a LEAF!" we kept exclaiming to each other.

States of San Luis Potosí, Tamaulipas, Querétaro. Region of La Huasteca, Sierra Gordas, Sierra Madres. Rainforest, dessert, flat gulf industry, cattle ranches, sugarcane, mountains mountains mountains.

742 miles. 40,800 feet of climbing. (good lard) That's 1.4 times up Mt Everest, or 8 vertical miles.

20 riding days. 2 rest waterfall days. 4 flats amongst us. 4 jars of peanut butter. 0 accidents. Countless gratitude for safety, for good people, for all those amazing roads and views.

Day 21: Adventures with tire explosion, a garbage pile, wild horses, and nearly homeless

I cannot leave Day 21 undescribed. "WHAT a time", Ellie and I both kept exclaiming to each other, and the next morning we concluded we were even a bit emotionally hungover from it. Oh, the unknowns and bizarre experiences of travel. When you are so vulnerable and clueless and yet still are beset upon by intensely joyful experiences in amongst the mess. 

A little picture book below shall be the best way to tell our tale. 

Leaving the pleasing city of Cerritos, into a sunrise and a rather fractious headwind. Ellie's front tire has the hiccups: an unsightly lump has appeared from a worn spot in the tread. We continue riding, hiccups and all, as no bike shops are anywhere nearby and no where near open at this hour.  We are heading to a little town, Armadillo de los Infante, in the dry mountains. Armadillo has a rating of "Magic Town", meaning that it is especially picturesque and safe. We checked on Google and confirmed there was one hotel there. Perfect. 

Buzzing along, headwind and all, and I'm cracking a joke to Ellie about her hiccupping tire. And just at that moment, BLAMMO, and the thing explodes. Terrible and amazing timing. 

Thankfully we are not far from a main highway, so we pad flatly towards it to see what sort of help we can find. We speak our woes to the lady at a little tienda, and enquire if there is a bus heading to--yes, the big big city of San Luis, as that is the only place we could hope for a tire of the right size. Yes, there is a bus, but she has something better. She calls her son, and has him show up in his big fancy truck and drive us the hour into the city.  We tried offering him money, but he wouldn't take it. The ride started sullen and quiet; obviously he was begrudgingly doing his mom a favor. But Ellie, dear outgoing fearless Ellie, with her good Spanish and weird little short-short haircut, charmed him. By the end of the ride they were chatting away all comfortably. God bless Ellie. Sñr Truck dropped us at the edge of a huge bustling market at the outskirts of the city, where there was a bike shop. 

Mr Mechanic man got us a new tire for a fraction of the cost in the states. He bubbled with friendliness and happily showed off his English. He filled our water bottles too, and we were all set. 

Just not where we had planned to be for our day's route. It was 2pm. We sat on the sidewalk in that big bustling market, applying sunscreen and resurfacing into our day. "Let's just consider this an extended lunch break" said Ellie, and we decided to head towards Armadillo town anyway, just from a different direction now. 

The next little series of events charmed us immensely, and made us oddly grateful that the circumstances had brought us there. Sometimes when something goes wrong, you have to get off your normal track to fix it, and then all sorts of new and interesting things can occur. 

A man with a taco cart attached to a bicycle rolled over and Mr Mechanic fixed his seat. Mr Taco handed him a square styrofoam plate with tacos on it, apparently as a thank you. Mr Mechanic instead carried them over and handed the plate to us. The tortillas were tender, and inside was a hunk of pork bone, but fried and toothsome and somehow the most fun and complex to eat. Not long after, Mr Taco walked over himself and handed us directly two more tacos: these contained green chilies stuffed with meat and vegetables. So good! I would never have thought to order these myself, and here they were, gifts. 

As we sat there, involved with our tacos, an old woman walked by in a flowery dress, and bent down and peered at Ellie. "Gringa? Gringa-gringa?" she said. Like, are you real? Ellie responded in Spanish, "yeah! 100%!" and the woman smiled and walked away, apparently satisfied. A few minutes later she walked back the other direction, "adios gringitas!" she said in a delighted tone, using the diminutive "-ita" ending. We smiled to ourselves and giggled at the thought of being such pleasing oddities to another human. 

A shortcut was decided upon for our ride to Armadillo. We cut off the highway, into a small town with a narrow road. The houses abutted directly to the street, such that we were going through a tunnel of sorts. No people were about in this town, but the street was lined with dogs. Growling dogs. Packs of dogs. They were displeased to see us. We Protection Roared at them and rode through this terrible dog gauntlet.

Only to find the road leading out of  Dogtown was a dirt track. We considered our options: go back through the guantlet and all those grumpy creatures with us fresh in their mean littlel memories, or forge around Dogtown on one of the many little roads google maps seemed to suggest to us.

We chose the latter. Although this option was dog-free, the "road" apparent on Google maps was certifiably the worst conditions we have taken bikes across this whole trip. The path was little more than a lack of shrubbery. Hiking boots would have been ideal to navigate it. Huge rocks and sand and clunky cobbles. We had no chance of riding, and thus plunked along on foot. For many more kilometers than should be reasonable.  There wasn't much to say, so we forged ahead in the silence of the emptiness. 

"Roadside" cacti. We were completely in the middle of nowhere. 

Finally we heard the highway, our dog-free trek over. Never have I been so happy to hear trucks driving past as in that moment. Isn't it fascinating what one can become so grateful for?

But we weren't out of the mess yet: barbed wire barricaded us from that enticing real road and a pile of garbage was our on-ramp. We pulled our bags off our bikes, passed everything over the wire, and gingerly stepped over the garbage. Some days one gets so dirty with dust and sand that a little more is no matter.  

Finally, we found ourselves in the golden hour, on a real road, headed to our destination. I was so tired by this point I was lugging and panting like a rusty wheelbarrow. 

But there were wild horses in the hills. Whole groups of them, like sweet reminders of magic and freedom. 

A final delicious descent into Armadillo, flying for kilometers, what could be a better gift for such a long-suffering day. Tears in my eyes were from both wind and enormous emotions. Wow, the views! The sunset! The horses! The cacti! 

Arriving into Armadillo, and the adventure was not yet over. The one hotel we had found on the map was closed. And the whole sweet little stone-paved village seemed to be asleep. And the sun was setting. 

Goodness gracious. 

Ellie tenaciously headed to the one tienda that had lights, and explained our situation. The sweet woman there did know of one man who took guests into his guesthouse on weekends. It was not a weekend, but he was just now driving past, and out she ran to flag him down. 

He took us in, even though he had to bustle about cleaning a room for us, as he did not normally accept guests during the weekdays. He heated us up a huge allotment of food. We showered, fed, climbed into delicious welcome beds. 

The church in the town of Armadillo. Although a magic town, apparently it is only magic on weekends, when the majority of visitors come to enjoy the quietness and quaintness. For us, it was empty and even more peaceful. How fortunate we were to be cared for, given we didn't know about the weekend-only nature of the place. 

Magic town pinks and stone roads. 

Sometimes I feel I'm walking around in a National Geographic coffee table book of photography. 

Day 20: Nothing happened and it was lovely, with photos

Day 20, our road was flat, easy, mostly free of road-zits: a completely nondescript ride. Bikes functioned deliciously. Very uninteresting to write about. Except that Ellie made her first Protection Roar at a dog. Highly successful. "I scared MYSELF back there!" she announced, happily astonished. 

Some small possibly uninteresting other items to note: 

1. I watched my odometer click from 999 to 1000 for the trip and made all sorts of jubilant noises when it did so. 

2. Riding out of Rioverde, a surprise speed bump encounter, I call to Ellie: "tope!" and also seeing a delightful creature about in the road: "peacock!" Oh Mexico. 

3. Our fourth jar of lauded peanut butter has continued to last us only because Ellie bought a mammoth size. 

4. There is a perhaps miscalculated painting on our hotel wall, designed to be a bit 3-D and curve out of its frame. This features the Eiffel tower. Why? But anything on the walls is cheery, especially, when said walls are free of chewing noises. 

5. I connected my shirt to both my knee warmer and my bike shorts with my safety pin garter. Oops. 

6. Day 21 and 22 will be our last riding days, and then we arrive in the great city of San Luis Potosi. And I get my bike shoved into a box, and lug the whole situation back to the cold north again. We are already nostalgic. Transitioning back is always a challenge. My legs will be restless, The Thing I've been preparing for so long is now over.  

Here's some photos to share. 

Riding into the sweet town of Cerritos, which had everything we needed, on a smooth beautiful road. 

 A very colorful load!

Extra tall cinnamon sticks. 

The city square near the church at Golden hour. 

Day 19: The goodness of people

For today's ride, Day 19, my dear bicycle was relegated to a third of her available gears. Something had come out of adjustment with the front derailer, and sheepishly I do not have sufficient knowledge of limit screws, so after fixing it until it was fully broken, I decided it was best to ride on just the middle cog until I could reach a proper bike shop. 

Which meant that any climbing would require great and explosive knee effort. Thus we modified our planned route to be a longer distance to skirt mountains. We did have a medium sized climb nonetheless, and I was standing in my pedals and rowing with all my might. I gained inspiration from thinking about my interval training workouts at the Cornell gyms; how you can do anything for 45 seconds, right! And it was only probably 45 more seconds to the top. Heave ho. 

These sticky-outy-haired cacti evoked Dr. Seuss beings. With the sun beginning to reach into the hills and make them glow, and this stunning other-worldly land, it was truly magnificent to pedal myself through here. I couldn't stop craning around and exclaiming. 

My hair looks not unlike this when freshly washed.

This type of cacti reminded me of little stick figures. 

The landscape was cacti and scrub and dust as we passed through towns getting progressively smaller. Then the road, leading out of the smallest town yet, disintegrated from pavement to dust and cobbles and stones. This was the one road headed to Rioverde this far west, and we didn't know if it would be this horrendous the whole way. It would take us endless hours to reach the city on it if so. We decided to go as far as the next little town to enquire after the road. 

Our bikes clanked and our wheels jittered as stones skittered out from underneath us. Horrible, maddening conditions. We can only go about 5 or 6 mph on a road like this. The landscape was absolutely devoid of human life. No houses, no farms, not even fences. Just this horrible road stretching ad nauseum and dust and scrubby scrappy plants. 

 The horrendous road.

But the view was incredible.

Yea, behold! Unto us approached a chariot of juice vending. The chariot window did roll down, and spake an angel man unto us: "dost thou need water to drink?" We enquired unto him the conditions of the road, and he spake unto us the truth that the road doth be made of untoward stone for the entirety of the length. He bade us heed his advice that there may be people beset of evil spirits and to not traverse alone this damned path. He bade us turn back. And yet, he quickened our hopes when he spake these words of hope and goodwill: "I will offer unto you a ride in my chariot, however, behold, it is full of juice." 

Can you just picture us, in this immense dusty landscape of cacti, two dusty cyclists and a little decorated juice truck? Raoul was his name, and we could see the kindness in his eyes. He spoke English well and said that he used to work and live in Dallas, and the American people he knew there were so helpful to him, and he wanted to help us. We planned to meet in the next town back after he had sold his juice and had space to fit our bikes in his truck. 

We sat in the grey powder at the edge of town, watched chickens bobble around the street, and waited. 

In the grey dusty town waiting for our angel chariot.

When his truck finally rolled over I jumped up and waved with such happiness. We rolled our bikes into the back of the truck next to the leftover boxes of orange juice, and crammed ourselves into the little cab. We all talked and laughed together and listened to him talk about his life. The little truck ground and jumbled over the rocks, but went much faster and more comfortably than we ever could. How grateful I felt to be buzzing along over this treacherous road in safety, taken up in safety by a kind human. 

Juice and bikes! 

Not only did Angel Raoul drive us to the city of Rioverde, he also recommended a bicycle shop of his friend conveniently near the center square. More goodness and kindness of humanity continued at the shop: the tall and attractive mechanic not only was able to fix my shifting, he didn't even charge me for it. In addition, he gave us some grease for our chains, and meanwhile a girl came through the shop carrying a tray of hot empanadas. The mechanic insisted she share some with us, and with a huge bashful smile she did. Ellie made a hilarious show of fainting dead away over how good the tasted, and everyone in the shop was enormously pleased by this. While I was trying to express my enormous gratitude to the mechanic for returning to me my flying legs via my gears, the girl came out with another pile of empanadas, in a little bag. It was tied with a yellow bow. "For your journey." 

How KIND and GOOD people have been to us, especially on this day of terrible road and broken bike. My heart is huge and I am feeling so blessed and cared for. 

We are ecstatic to be in this city of Rioverde, with men playing guitars walking the streets, children and teens on good bikes, palm trees with Christmas lights, multiple icecream shops, fancy dress stores, and little girls dressed as butterflies doing a dance performance in the town square. What a change from the dusty barren towns we were in earlier today, from where we returned covered in grey.

 The beautiful metropolis of Rioverde. We blinked and admired and bought good food and neither got dusty nor stabbed by cacti.

Found this painted on a bright wall at the end of this day. How TRUE and how we experienced it. 

Day 18: From algal air to Spanish moss

AccuWeather pronounced "warm and humid" for today, Day 18. Yet another one of Accu's qualitative assessments of the weather. "Sunny and pleasant" has been another quip, in addition to one particularly gross day in Ithaca, where the app was downright emotional about the prognosis: "wet and dreary." 

Humid it was. Our ride began ascending into a thick jungly forest heading west out of El Naranjo. The mountains we are in now are called the Sierra Madre range; the Sierra Gordas are more south. We were ecstatic to find out our trip has included a generous serving of TWO differently named mountain ranges.

The air was so moist there was basically algae in it. My hair in my helmet was sweaty enough I appeared recently showered, although my body was exactly the opposite. We crawled up into the rises. On other days I felt we have climbed *up* mountains, with a view from whence we came, but today I felt we were climbing *into* them. There was no view of our past passage, just vegetation, and if there had been a view the air was so thick that little could be seen. 

The limbs of the trees were furry with hanging moss and epiphytes. Life hanging off of life. Knifey palm trees. Big ficus roots stretching finger-like across rocks. Tiny roadside weeds with brilliant red flowers like saxophones. The forest chirped and buzzed and cackled with the daily lives of insects and birds. Enterprising bugs flew into our eyes and ears. 

 Speck of sun spot in a rare parting for visibility.

Roots like dreadlocks in the air.

We climbed in this rich green world for about two hours, just grinding up and into and sweating like sprinkler systems. Then, the forest began to change. The density thinned out, the vines and epiphytes were gone, and dry red soil was visible. We had gotten west enough to leave the moisture from the gulf, which collects on the east side of the mountains. We blinked and found ourselves in a bright sunny dry world, where we could now see where we were. High up! The mountains loomed around us and the air was clear. 

Blinking ourselves out into our world of visibility. 

I get an enormous amount of joy from witnessing ecosystems change in this way, us moving through them under our own power--even when sore of butt and tired of legs--and able to notice details. 

We get back on the bikes after our climbing breaks, and my legs feel like mashed potatoes. Give them 45 seconds and they're back to powerful normal, but there's just something seemingly insurmountable about starting up again. Ellie gets this also. "Come on you two!" she urged her legs. We always laugh when this happens, that combination of intense miserable sensation combined with the hilariousness of the situation. 

The climbing seemed endless today, all 4,600 feet of it, and with essentially no towns for a fortifying coffee or proper baño. We bumped over some topes (speed bumps)--irritating for bicycling butts and our rattling paniers--in a little community consisting of horses, donkeys, and pigs grazing roadside, children playing, and men sitting. Not a cafe or a comedor to be found. "If this village is big enough to deserve topes it should be big enough to have some coffee somewhere!" said Ellie. Not so. 

We ground along; after the moist lushness and then the clear views, we dreamed hopefully of a delicious descent into our destination city of Ciudad de Maíz. But instead more climbing, through a yet again entirely different world. This forest was spare save for all one type of tree, and each individual tree was draped thickly with grey fringy Spanish moss. It was as if each tree had not leaves of its own, but only enormous drapes of moss. Did you know Spanish moss is not actually a moss (a moss is a plant that does not flower, instead reproducing through spores)? Spanish moss is actually a bromeliad (the same family as pineapple!). The incredible profuseness of the Spanish moss gave this whole ecosystem a mystical and curated ambience, as if we had entered a set for a grey ghost movie. 

Spanish moss takes over.

Our arrival into Ciudad de Maiz culminated with good coffee and a true gem of a hotel (only 300 pesos, $15 bucks), with a clean room decorated with paintings and statues and objects and pink walls and a leopard blanket. We can't stop giggling over this room, over how egregious the decorations are, and how charming. Not a room yet on this trip has come close to this. Most don't even bother with anything on the walls at all.

Our egregiously decorated little $15 room. 

Hotel with hot water, wifi, television, and many statues...

Wearied door, with tree. Ciudad de Maiz. 

Corner building. We were wandering around during siesta time and the city was truly asleep. 

The shadows of many puffy epiphytes on the electric wire. We ate at this restaurant.

Historical faces. 

Bonus: candy shop. These puffy enormous marshmallow "icecream cones" were hilariously horrifying. Why would someone design such a thing?