Death by Misadventure

This insanity doesn’t stop at the border. I was issued a ticket in Panama for making an illegal U-turn where I saw no sign indicating that I couldn’t. The cop told me that I had to pay the ticket or I would be stopped at the airport and not be permitted to leave the country. Given that the ticket was issued to my passport rather than my driver’s license, I thought this might be a real possibility. I’ll spare you the tedious story, but it took me four hours and visits to five different locations before I was able to pay the $75 ticket and get a stamped receipt.

So many of the people I met throughout Central America were wonderfully kind, helpful, and friendly. I am very fortunate to have met them. However, I can’t shake the feeling that they fully deserve the prevailing living conditions to the extent that they’re able to do something about them yet still willing to put up with the status quo.

Admittedly, these opinions are based on what was essentially little more than an extended road trip through foreign lands.  Others may come away from time spent in Central America with alternate views and opinions based on experiences unique to them.  The route I followed, and the manner in which I did it,  gave me a far greater exposure to Central America than if I’d simply arrived for vacation in some resort via the comparative magic of air travel.  Equally, anyone who has lived, worked, or study in these countries for an extended period of time will have considerably more informed opinions than the ones I’ve shared here.

I also greatly underestimated the isolation and loneliness brought about by being unable to communicate with almost everyone I met. Four weeks and five-thousand miles spent only on the periphery of the world around me was a rough experience that I’d rather not repeat.

In the end, I rode across a beautiful suspension bridge and looked down into a thick green valley to see a muddy brown river filled with – ‘Are those…? Those are…? They’re fuckin’ cargo ships! Those are ocean-going cargo ships? This is the Canal. I made it! I fucking made it!’ I’m screaming inside my helmet, pumping my left fist in the air, and raising both hands as my Triumph and I rolled across the Centennial Bridge to complete a solo month-long, 4,824 mile journey through seven countries. I’m done. I’m going home.

The border crossing between Mexico and Guatemala along Highway 190 proved to be a straightforward nonevent. After a brief hassle with Mexican immigration authorities, I rode another two miles, passed a smoldering open-air garbage dump, and was soon in Guatemala. My first experience with a Guatemalan was a young man in a sharp crisp uniform who informed me that my bike tires would need to be sprayed with pesticides. “Ahh…OK” I watched as he donned a simple respirator, fired up a small spray rig, and lightly misted the bottom half of each tire. I can appreciate that the good people of Guatemala don’t want my bike transmitting whatever this application was supposed to stop, but he only sprayed the bottom half of each tire. Once the bike moves just half the circumference… whatever. Clearly this process was intended more to create a job than to do anything else. Then he billed me! I paid for pest-control… and a half-assed job at that! The border crossing consisted of driving down a narrow street lined on both sides with flimsy stands selling all manner of disposable kitch, stopping first at immigration where I presented my passport, then at customs where I presented the Pennsylvania title document for the bike. Copies were made, small fees were paid, forms were stamped in triplicate, and bureaucrats were spared from joblessness. The only physical barrier to entry into Guatemala was a simple hand-drawn wooden gate like one you’d see exiting a parking garage. They couldn’t even be bothered to lift it. I just ducted low on the bike and rolled under.

Guatemala looks even poorer than Mexico. Town after town appears as little more than a collection of ramshackle buildings and garbage strewn lots. I spent the night in I-Don’t-Know-Where, Guatemala because very few of what passes for a towns here have any signs indicating where you are. Even the route markers appear only every 50 miles or so. I actually spent the night at a junction where three roads, one of them dirt, intersect. Multi-colored ornate buses with every imaginable type of cargo strapped to their roofs stopped in the middle of this intersection to unload and collect more passengers before roaring off again, doors still open, men still climbing the ladders attached to the rear. Other men, whose job is to coordinate this madness, bark destinations and departure times. Stray dogs patrol the crowd in search of dropped food or discarded garbage. Children play soccer in a field edged with trash. In the morning, a young boy, drunk the night before on Tequila, lays passed out in my hotel courtyard.

I’m glad I didn’t leave Guatemala without a brief stay in Antigua. This vibrant and colorful city centered around a beautiful lush park is dotted with art galleries, coffee-shops, old Spanish Baroque architecture, and bookstores selling a rich array of Latin American literature. Antigua also seems to draw a certain type of visitor. Situated pretty far from the beaten path, it plays host more to travellers than to tourists, more to those who come to discover than to confirm.   A guy in dreadlocks passes time before an eco-tour by thumbing through a dog-eared Che Guevara while pretty blonde twenty-somethings in flowing hemp dresses hurry along the black cobblestones en route to Spanish class – Berkley with a bit of dust and better coffee.

This has been an interesting week. I put in my two-weeks notice at my job.

A year and a half working with the same team means that we’ve shared a lot. The responses I got ranged everywhere from excited to being visibly disappointed. I certainly don’t think that I was viewed as the savior of the company, but people had high hopes for me. When those high hopes up and move to New York there’s a feeling of hurt. I feel like the kid in a small town that decides to up and out for the big city. There’s more than enough love, encouragement, and resentment to go around. Everybody I’ve talked to has been dealing with it in different ways.

How do you deal with surprises?

Change is hard. Even the most adventurous of us can shirk away from it when it challenges what we’re comfortable with. This need for stability only gets stronger as we get older. Sure, we may revolt against it from time to time. If my life is stable for too long, I feel trapped. At that point, I have no choice but to change or do something to re-affirm my control over my life. These revolts aside, as a whole we look for stability more and more the older we get. Our desire for control is the work of our lizard brain doing all it can to avoid change. Unfortunately for that inner control-freak, change happens regardless of our intentions. How do you deal with it?

No coping method is better or worse than others, but it is important to know how you handle it. Think back onto the last time that you got dropped a major surprise-bomb. How did you handle it immediately? 5 minutes later? 2 days later? 1 year later? All you really have is you, so I hope you know yourself.

A very kind reader, (thanks Skim), put together a map of Jim’s progress on his solo motorcycle ride from San Diego to the Panama Canal.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=33&msid=112802784570492713438.00047f9ceab68af14c66c&abauth=4b8d99beRmqljnB2QYe_AH8v84Y95i90

I’m hoping that the map will continue to be updated as Jim progresses on his journey.

Jim’s been at this ride almost a month, and is still going strong. Keep on keeping on Jim!!

Having survived “The Windy” I continued into the Chiapas region in southernmost Mexico.  Chiapas seems like Mexico’s West Virginia.   It’s mountainous, beautiful, sparsely populated, rich in natural resources, and poor in virtually everything else.   Many of its people, accounting for only 3% of Mexico’s population,  live in insular mountain villages where they speak languages derived from Mayan dialects, farm seemingly inarably steep mountainside slopes,  wear  very distinct and colorful dress, suffer from mal-nutrition, and beat their wives and children.  I was told to avoid the section of Highway 190 between Tuxtla and San Cristobal.  “Take the main road.  The road through the mountains is to twisty, too dangerous and isolated, “ someone in Tuxtla told me.  I’m glad I didn’t listen.

This section of road was brilliant.  It rose steadily through the mountains until it reached the ridgeline where it ran below only the blue sky itself.  The air here was cool and crisp. I flipped open my helmet visor and let it wash in.  The purest air I’d ever tasted seemed to flow directly from wherever it is that air is created.    From this vantage point the landscape rose and fell for miles below me.  Clumps of small houses dotted those peaks connected by frail dusty roads.   Women in brilliant colored dresses hauled bundles of four-foot long wooden stakes tied with twine up narrow little trails clinging to the mountain’s edge.  Together with wire, these stakes are used to build acres of trellises attached to amazingly steep slopes .  I have no idea what they grew in their trellises.

Four men sitting at a dirty plastic table on the porch of a concrete block store stocked only with a dented refrigerator of beer and a  small wire rack of chips seemed shocked when I stopped.  They didn’t take their eyes off of me as I walked confidently up to the front door and asked for a beer.  When I told the men in Spanish that I was en route by motorcycle to Panama, they immediately started speaking Japanese.  This was when I noticed slight Asian facial lines and features hiding quietly beneath their dark brown skin.  I wondered what circumstances brought people of Japanese descent so far from home to such a remote place where they still talked in their mother tongue.   I finished my beer and set the empty can on the table in front of them.  “Domo arigato,” I said with a big smile.  They laughed.  Thank you Dennis DeYoung.

Further along the twisty road I found a home sitting on the outside of a wide bend.   Hanging clothes formed a band of rich blues and purples along the second floor faded wooden porch railing.  I stopped for a closer look.  The people who lived here seemed happy to have a visitor and potential customer.  I talked with the husband in broken Spanish enough to learn that he too only spoke a little bit of Spanish.  Fortunately, we seemed to know most of the same words.  His wife, daughter, and two sons soon appeared.  They seemed interested in where I was from and where I was going.  They took down one of the cloaks for me to try on – a bright blue and green piece ornately adorned with tassels.  I’d seen men along the roadside wearing these same garments.  I took it off and thanked them.  I then removed my Joe Rocket motorcycle jacket and offered it to the man.  He smiled and put it on.  I pointed out the protective padding in the shoulders, elbows, and back.  His wife began striking him across the back with a stick, laughing.  One of the little boys liked my bike and climbed onto the seat.  We all clapped as he sat there with a huge grin.  His little brother was too afraid to follow suit.  They took me upstairs to the open deck where they not only made the shirts and cloaks but slowly fabricated by hand the material from which they were made.  I was awestruck by how labor-intensive this whole process must be.  The littlest daughter kept her distance sitting on the deck floor swimming in a black and orange dress a few sizes too large and wearing a plastic bowl on her head.  I bought two garments and later mailed them home. 

Stopping at a fruit stand of meticulously arrayed peaches, apricots, avocados, and watermelons I noticed a pickup truck parked nearby – the bed filled with children.  They watched as I bought a bag of small peaches, sat on my bike, and ate a few.  I waved hello, but they just stared.  I’m sure I looked as strange and foreign to them as they did to me.  Before leaving, I bought two more bags of peaches, approached the driver of the truck, and asked him if I could give the peaches to the kids.  At first the kids were hesitant, but I smiled and spoke softly.  The littlest one went first and soon the others followed suit – pulling a peach out of the bag while I held it and walked around the truck bed.  They smiled and giggled at me and my poor Spanish.  I set the bag and remaining peaches in the truck bed.  I wanted the kids to  remember someone who looked, dressed, and talked nothing like them but did something kind nonetheless.

I spent the night in San Cristobal, a town which seems to be the historical, architectural, and cultural gem of the Chiapas region.  In the morning I rode for the Guatemala border.