Asheville to Argentina

Guess the states and win a prize!

And two concerts, one in camp with a great light show with a great light show! And the other behind my hostel.

Click for the full photo gallery

It started the week before as a trickle. An email here and there asking not just for information, but for accurate information on when the bikes would arrive in the port of Altamira on the Caribbean coast of Mexico. When we booked the shipping container we had been told it would take three to four weeks for the voyage, and after three weeks, we were told the boat would be a month late. Now, no one could say for sure if they would would arrive on the 29th of April as promised, or the 31st like the Hamburg Sud website had listed.

One thing we did know for sure, we needed another customs agent. This one charged us $350 USD per bike to do the paperwork. By this time I was too worn down to fight so I just laid back and counted ceiling tiles while they did their business. And there was a lot of business. The bikes arrived on the 31st and two 12-hour days later, about 25 letters, 50 stamps and a good sniffing from a German Sheppard,  I was riding out of the final customs check ON MY MOTORCYCLE!

Here’s a photo of the happy reunion:

I spent the night on the beach with Mike and his friend Mat who had driven down from Minnesota to collect the last two motos and the next day rode to Monterrey to meet Roberto and his girlfriend Gabby. Roberto, Gabby and I planned to ride Copper Canyon together.

I know that Mexico and the crime has been a central issue in the US news lately, but until we arrived in Urique in Copper Canyon, I hadn’t seen even a hint of the problems. From the top of the canyon the village looked incredibly tranquil, but things were different in town. As we pulled in, the main street was blocked because a little Cesna was landing – and on every corner of the 200 person village there were military police dressed in black and M-16’s on their hips.

Three days before we arrived forty people, Narcos, marched into the village wearing masks and carrying guns. They kidnapped 12 people and took 5 trucks. After a day, they released 9 of the 12 and assassinated the remaining three. Of those three, two were people fighting the traffic of pot out of the valley and the third was an informant for an opposing cartel. The plane was actualy the mayor of the town and his family. Because of threats against his life, the mayor only moves via plane. And remember that this is a town with a population of 200 people – how can they support that? I think there may be a deeper story…

Our experience in Urique was amazing. We camped in the yard of the sweetest family – Grandpa, Grandma and two of their six granddaughters.

Dawn in camp:

And the family doing what they do, Grandpa playing, the kids singing and Lola making tortillas…

Grandpa, who’s name is Chiro, suggested that we go down to the foot bridge over the river where there is a sandy beach for a picnic – GENIUS! We bought a pollo asado and started walking. I loved the scene, dusty cars driven into the river to be washed, teenagers sloping in mud. A peaceful day playing out… until. Over the hill, accelerating fast, a truck flew into the riverbed. Tires spinning and throwing sand and rocks into the air, the truck did doughnuts around the muddy teenagers until a boy spilled out. He started fighting with one of the muddy boys, the the two crews pulled tire irons and threatened and postured and pulled while the girls all cried and screamed. And it occurred to me that is was the same play in micro that had gone on it town with the narcos, and the same theme that has driven so many Westerns. Small, peaceful Mexican village threatened by a few violent assholes from the outside. Over and over, we never learn.

The foot bridge over the river:

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From Urique, we rode back out to Creel where we spent Easter Sunday

Click for the full photo gallery

click for the full gallery

This weekend I went to a bullfight in Irapuato Mexico. We saw five matches and I hate to say it but I liked it. It was ritualized and majestic bloodsport. Roman.

After the match we had a beer in one of the tents and watched everyone stream out. A guy with with a shock-box asked us if we wanted to play. We passed but the table next to us said yes. The object is to all hold hands and then two people grab what look like metal jump-rope ends. The guy with the box starts turning up the juice. First one to let go looses.

I could hear the testosterone sizzling.

Go to a Mexican basebell game. Keep your eye on the ball, cause the fouls come flying in fast and hard and if you aren’t quick enough the ride to the hospital is long and slow. There were two close calls in the stands and three players beaned in our 9 innings.

Drink rooftop beers while watching the moon rise over the city.

Stroll the laberinth of tunnels under the town.

Go to a roof-top BBQ above a mescal bar in Valenciana. Cuidado con mescal. Es suave y fuerte….

Or listen to a little Bach played on violin and cello in a dive bar on a Sunday night.

My publics been clamoring for some new posts. I’m in school and not much is going on, so here’s some recent photos:

This weekend I visited the infamous Mummy Museum in Guanajuato. The inhabitants weren’t so much real Mummies as they were dessicated corpses. It seems that when they died they didn’t have the money to secure themselves a resting place into perpetuity, but could afford five years. After that five years, if no one claimed the body there was the problem of what to do with it. Why not put it on display and charge 50 pesos to see it?

There were bodies from the 1800’s and one from 1972, infants, adults, doctors and fat ladies. It was undignified, voyeristic and I couldn’t look away. I even took pictures. Heres the gallery: Mummies

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original illustration of Archy

In posting this I remembered a poem from a book published in the 1920’s called Archy and Mehitabel. If I remember right, it was written by Archy, a roach that lived at the Chicago Sun Times. At night he would throw himself on the keys of the typewriter and in the morning the editor would find these musings. Heres an inside look at the musings of a real Mummy:

boss i went
and interviewed the mummy
of the egyptian pharaoh
in the metropolitan museum
as you bade me to do

what ho
my regal leatherface
says i

greetings
little scatter footed
scarab
says he

kingly has been
says i
what was your ambition
when you had any

insignificant
and journalistic insect
says the royal crackling
in my tender prime
i was too dignified
to have anything as vulgar
as ambition
the ra ra boys
in the seti set
were too haughty
to be ambitious
we used to spend our time
feeding the ibises
and ordering
pyramids sent home to try on
but if i had my life
to live over again
i would give dignity
the regal razz
and hire myself out
to work in a brewery

old tan and tarry
says i
i detect in your speech
the overtones
of melancholy

yes i am sad
says the majestic mackerel
i am as sad
as the song
of a soudanese jackal
who is wailing for the blood red
moon he cannot reach and rip

on what are you brooding
with such a wistful
wishfulness
there in the silences
confide in me
my imperial pretzel
says i

i brood on beer
my scampering whiffle snoot
on beer says he

my sympathies
are with your royal
dryness says i

my little pest
says he
you must be respectful
in the presence
of a mighty desolation
little archy
forty centuries of thirst
look down upon you oh by isis
and by osiris
says the princely raisin
and by pish and phthush and phthah
by the sacred book perembru
and all the gods
that rule from the upper
cataract of the nile
to the delta of the duodenum
i am dry
i am as dry
as the next morning mouth
of a dissipated desert
as dry as the hoofs
of the camels of timbuctoo
little fussy face
i am as dry as the heart
of a sand storm
at high noon in hell
i have been lying here
and there
for four thousand years
with silicon in my esophagus
and gravel in my gizzard
thinking
thinking
thinking
of beer

divine drouth
says i
imperial fritter
continue to think
there is no law against
that in this country
old salt codfish
if you keep quiet about it
not yet

what country is this
asks the poor prune

my reverend juicelessness
this is a beerless country
says i

well well said the royal
desiccation
my political opponents back home
always maintained
that i would wind up in hell
and it seems they had the right dope

and with these hopeless words
the unfortunate residuum
gave a great cough of despair
and turned to dust and debris
right in my face
it being the only time
i ever actually saw anybody
put the cough
into sarcophagus

dear boss as i scurry about
i hear of a great many
tragedies in our midsts
personally i yearn
for some dear friend to pass over
and leave to me
a boot legacy
yours for the second coming
of gambrinus

archy