Drugs, Rapists, and Some Good People Too: Part 4
Making friends.
“We stop in at a local cantina that is famous for its role in the Mexican revolution. From the outside, it just looks like any old saloon. Once we enter, the interior decor is akin to a hundred-year-old estate sale of your crazy uncle who never really got over the war.”
BLOG POST #015 - The Border and Some Good People Too: Part 4
How I learned to ride a motorcycle, speak Spanish and not die. Riding solo in search of adventure from Detroit to Argentina.
Other than an occasional dusty town, signs of human activity are few and far between. The mountains seem ever-present, but always at a distance. The road winds through the flat-land desert scrub, made up of either vast stretches of brown sand or sparse vegetation.
We stop at a roadside stand to look over the rocks and fossils on offer. It is all trash. There are a few crystals, but it is mostly things like a 1960’s coke bottle and an old bullet or two.
Maria notices something moving under the table in a bucket. It is filled with desert tortoises.
Endangered desert tortoises on display outside Monterrey, Mexico.
“Ugh,” I know this situation well.
The farmer running the little trinket stand is a humble family man with few ways to earn a living. He caught the tortoises not knowing and not caring that they are a rare, and protected species. He has no sense of conservation or the importance of protecting wildlife. He and his family are just trying to survive.
I felt tempted to view the farmer as the bad guy and holler at him like he is a poacher or collector. Or, we could threaten him with calling the authorities unless he lets them go. But honestly, the human factor has to be weighed as well. The best balance is sometimes to buy them, then release them into the wild ourselves.
Maria explains to him that it is illegal to have them, nor do they make good pets. We don't want to pay for them and participate in the buying and selling of a threatened species. But we also want the farmer to respect us, listen to what we have to say, and maybe put a little bread on his table for tonight. So, in the end we forcefully negotiate a price for the whole bucket. We offer to pay a small percentage of what they are asking, but also promise that we will not report it.
Back on the road, we arrive in the tiny little town where we plan to spend the afternoon. Maria has some local contacts here, that may clue us in on where to look for rattlesnakes, and other creatures. The town has a school, a church and a modest park, but most of it is made up of a few streets of houses. Some of them have an open door with plastic lawn furniture set up to serve lunch in their makeshift restaurants. It was a view that would feature all over Mexico.
We stop in at a local cantina that is famous for its role in the Mexican revolution. From the outside, it just looks like any old saloon. Once we enter, the interior decor is akin to a hundred-year-old estate sale of your crazy uncle who never really got over the war.
Apparently, this was an important meeting point for Francisco "Pancho" Villa and his cohorts.
A great warrior steeped in Mexican lore, Pancho went by many names such as "The Lion of the North" or "The Mexican Robin Hood."
Or so the story goes, many maps were drawn on tables here to discuss troop movements and strategies. The walls are covered in newspaper articles, taxidermied animals and photos of Pancho Villa's bullet-ridden corpse used as proof of his demise.
A bust of Pancho Villa alongside one of my hockey pucks.
Off to the side, and away from the bar, there is a separate space with a large table that looks like it must have been the war room. I can easily picture a horde of dirty men, fresh off of three-days on a horse, sitting around with large beer mugs and a dusty bottle of mezcal.The place is dingy and poorly lit, so I try to imagine how dark it must have been back in the early 1900’s. Lit only by candlelight, with swirls of dust coming off the back-slapping guerrilla fighters, reeking of tobacco smoke.
Some new friends.
Today the table is covered with copious curios, like every other horizontal surface in the place. Most of the stuff is proud Pancho Villa propaganda and artifacts. Apropos of nothing, at one end of the table there is a large framed upright glass case with the body of a chupacabra prominently on display. Ok, now they're just mixing mythologies for fun.
The chupacabra, is a Pan-Mexican-cultural-icon that strikes fear into the hearts of superstitious grandmothers who worry too much, and five-year old children who refuse to go to bed.
I think of it as a “Mexican Bigfoot,” but with no known form.
Today the table is covered with copious curios, like every other horizontal surface in the place. Most of the stuff is proud Pancho Villa propaganda and artifacts. Apropos of nothing, at one end of the table there is a large framed upright glass case with the body of a chupacabra prominently on display. Ok, now they're just mixing mythologies for fun.
The chupacabra, is a Pan-Mexican-cultural-icon that strikes fear into the hearts of superstitious abuelas who worry too much, and five-year old children who refuse to go to bed.
I think of it as a “Mexican Bigfoot,” but with no known form.
Sometimes it may look like a wolf. Other times it may have more of an apelike form. But it always has a red glow-in-the-dark eyes and large fangs, as it consumes livestock by the dozen.
I have seen grainy videos from the 80’s of some poor mange-infested coyote, or a rabid raccoon walking upright at a distance, that were said to be a chupacabra. Best I can tell, the one on display here is a stingray carcass that has been carefully fileted to showcase a long devil's tail and huge eye sockets.
At this point, things are getting surreal for me. I'm having beers out in the Mexican desert, with my fake-girlfriend, a bunch of raucous locals, a bucket full of tortoises at my feet, and my hockey puck mounted on a Pancho Villa statue. Life is pretty good.
Straining to limit the number of beers, we make our escape and go hiking for a few hours. We release the tortoises and explore the scrub. I am all about reptiles and would love to see a snake or two. Even a lizard would make me happy. We end up getting skunked and don't see anything at all. None of it matters, we had an amazing time. The adventure of it all, is what matters.
Afternoon beers outside Monterrey, Mexico.
Over the next few days I settled into a routine. My Spanish classes were super intense. I signed up for three-hour long sessions, three days a week. This is far too much. By the end of each class I am fried and can't focus that hard for such a long period.
I have work to do, running my company back home. I am also on a software project for General Motors. I have not even told most people that I left home. But since COVID is in full swing, I am able to do my thing without anyone catching on.
I am a man of two minds. My time is split between loving every minute of this trip, versus dark sadness and self-doubt as to why I am not good enough to keep a woman. My divorce is only a few years in the rear-view mirror and my feelings for “Larry” are super raw. If my relationships ended on their own, fair enough. I can handle garden-variety grief. The part that my self-esteem can't handle is, both of those women had someone else lined up by the time it ended between us.
It is not a "one-plus-one equals two" math problem. My brain cannot accept how those other men are better than I am. I know that there's nothing healthy or true about that kind of thinking, but that is the way it feels. All I can do is ride it.
Antonia, she may be an artisan in the kitchen, but she's not exactly Jason Bourne behind the wheel.
One day, with a strong side-hug of reassurance I said to her, "You know I love you, but you are a terrible driver.”
She replies, "I know. I hate driving so I don't pay attention."
We burst out laughing. She has this jolly, yet dangerous attitude of, "They won't hit me. Maybe once or twice a year." followed by more laughing.
She doesn’t so much as glance at a rearview mirror, as she wildly gesticulates with her hands, changing lanes on the densely trafficked rush hour streets of Monterrey.
One of my white-knuckle rides with Antonia.
If there are two of her in this city, surely they have never met. There's no way their airbags would survive a week if they were living in the same neighborhood.
From that first breakfast, I have always offered to drive her car when we go places.
There are a few times where she drives, because I had to follow her on my motorcycle. I hug her back bumper for sudden lane changes and abrupt highway exits. Stop signs are not a consideration, and speed bumps are a negligible slow-down, at best. I'm on a bike, so the risk is not just a fender-bender for me. It's death. Or a wheelchair. I have to stop, actually check for other cars, proceed with caution, then hammer it to catch back up again. This goes on for twenty or thirty blocks of intense city traffic.
Being honest, my top speed was probably only forty-one miles per hour. But because I am still new at riding a motorcycle in the first place, and there's so much coming at me, these compact urban streets felt more like the Jason Bourne jokes.
Imagine me as a middle-school kid learning the waltz and lip-syncing the steps, "One, two, THREE. One, two, THREE. One, two, THREE."
Starting out as a new rider, I have had to over-think everything in a similar fashion. But the more comfortable I get, the more I forget myself and just ride.
Monterrey has a distinctive bridge on the west side that looks like a humongous handle or lever sticking out of the ground. It is called the Puente de la Unidad. As the name implies it is the point where everything unites and joins up all together.
This five-hundred-foot-high bridge looms over Antonia's guest house from only three blocks away, and it can be seen for ten miles in any direction. Being an asymmetrical design means that I can't mistake what direction the bridge is pointing, no matter where I am. All of these things make it a perfect navigational aid for me from anywhere in the city.
After a while, I was able to find my way home without using my phone for directions. I stopped Antonia and Maria a few times from going the wrong way down one-way streets. So at that point, I felt as though I had graduated from Mexico-urban-driving-school. It doesn't take long before Antonia automatically hands me her keys whenever we head out to go somewhere.
I have been counting "crashes" and "drops" on the motorcycle.
A crash is any accident over ten miles per hour. A drop is a slow speed fall where I lose my balance, can't hold her weight and dump La Barra sideways.
I have dropped her fifteen times and I am sure there will be plenty more to come. My toes barely reach the ground on this big bike. When I get tired or the ground is uneven, it is really easy to drop the bike. To be completely honest, I want to be done with crashing.
I am afraid of crashes. I am hyper cautious about them. I have lost lots of skin because of crashes. I really don't want any more. I hope everyone else is convinced because, as I keep telling myself, "I am done with crashes!"
Then riding home one day from a short outing, I have another crash.
Railroad tracks can be tricky because La Barra's tire fits nicely down into the bottom of the recessed channel over the road. I am third in line at a stop light, so once traffic starts to move, I can't really see how to play the track until I'm right up on it. This isn't a straight, perpendicular ninety-degree crossing because the tracks bend away to the right. I was sure the angle was enough for me to cross safely.
Nope.
The tire slips down to the bottom of the track and flings the steering wheel sixty degrees to the right. La Barra does a hard twist sideways onto her left and I do a full-on Superman launch over the handlebars. The funny thing is, Superman can fly. This is where the analogy ends because I cannot fly.
I may not be great at riding, but I am amazing at crashing.
I sail through the air at about twenty miles per hour. My left forearm extends out to meet the ground first as I tuck and roll over into a ninja sideways somersault. I pop up out of the roll and stick the landing perfectly, both feet, back on solid ground. I swiveled around to face oncoming traffic, anticipating that I might need to high-jump the car about to hit me from behind. However, she managed to swerve left of La Barra and jerk to a stop. Everyone else in the three lanes of traffic also stopped safely with no other incident than my soaring "Biker Ferper Gringo Superman Ninja show."
Whenever I am in trauma, I go straight into polite, "I'm fine!" awkward mode.
I recall the wide-eyed look of the driver behind me and her confused kids not quite sure what to do. I gesture to her that I'm fine and apologize with whatever Spanish language blabber that comes out of my mouth.
I do the "lift of shame," getting La Barra back to rubber-side-down.
I pull her up onto the sidewalk to regain my bearings for a moment. Traffic is reluctant to leave. But after much of my insistence and reassurance, the cars all pull away and leave me to my private indignity.
I realize that anger is a secondary emotion, behind a sadness or fear underneath.
But right now, I am f*******king furious.
I was done with crashes. Remember?
In my defense, I had never really ridden on railroad tracks like this. But the feeling that I should have known better is raging through my veins. It was a short outing on local roads, so I wasn't in my full protective gear. Yet again, I have torn the skin on my left hand, left elbow, and left knee. There are no broken bones, and La Barra is totally mechanically fine. I feel her rolling her eyes at me, being that she's used to my incompetence by now.
Never mind my complex relationships with the women in my life, my own motorcycle is mocking me.
I get back in the saddle and ride a few blocks to find a better place to stop. I call Maria because I need to vent. When she answers, I calmly tell her that I am fine.
"I had an incident, and I got scraped a little, but it was all very minor. Please do not freak out when you hear what I am about to say," I said.
As if speaking in tongues, I let out a stream of demonic curse words.
Before this crash, I was almost healed up. I was almost through with the constant stinging pain, and slow-weeping human-meat-juice soaking through my shirt and bed sheets 24/7. Now I have to start the cycle all over again. Worse, I am worried that maybe this will be a weekly thing for me.
I try to hide this all from Antonia and ask her not to have my room serviced, but she seems to know all, in her little hacienda. In the end, I bought her three sets of new sheets out of sheer embarrassment, and not wanting to feel guilty about it.
There are some strange patterns forming. I always crash on my left. I have six or eight scars from this trip, and not a single one of them is on my right side. Whenever I had a crash, I was wearing the same shirt. It is now torn in such a way that the rips in it match my scars.
I'm calling it my "lucky shirt" from now on.
One of the many sections of road-rash I collected along the way.
There is a strange masochism about adventure travel. I don't want to get hurt. I swear I do not steer into trouble so I can look like a tough guy. But there is such a thing as "Type II" fun.
"Type I" fun is just simple fun.
When you play cards with friends, or go out in a kayak, that is the most basic type of fun. However, when you do something challenging, painful or unconventional, then this is "Type II" fun.
Running a marathon is torture, and getting punched in the face during a karate tournament is not pleasant. But we choose these things willingly, and we are proud of them later. “This is Type II” fun.
“Type III” fun is when it lands you in the hospital, and Type IV fun is when you never leave the hospital again.
Rusty is a “Type II” person himself, so I know he understands when I text him, "Come out to the coast. We'll have a few laughs."
This is a running joke and a Bruce Willis movie reference about things going all wrong. I'm glad I did it, and I'll tell stories about it later. However, when it is happening it sucks.
I settled into a sort of routine in Monterrey, and I started to really sense I had gained the confidence to move farther into Mexico. The stability of Antonia’s positive energy, her abundant spirituality, and basic friendship gave me the affirmation I needed.
BLOG POST #014 - The Border and Some Good People Too: Part 4
How I learned to ride a motorcycle, speak Spanish and not die. Riding solo in search of adventure from Detroit to Argentina.
NEXT POST COMING SOON: December 18, 2024
