Monthly Archives: September 2010
You know you cycle for a Living when…
You wake up at 2:30 am, wobble over to your food stash and grab a can of tuna, briefly consider digging further for a fork, but quickly decide the fingers will do and devour in 1 minute flat, before falling back into a coma.
4000 KM in, Montreal suffered her 1st critical damage, frame breakage!! 3$ later and we were ready to roll
You stop and stare into the horizon, whilst admiringly stroking the butt imprints on your trusty saddle.
leaving the lush coast
Growth in abundance! This is a mango tree growing in a lake
The sleepy fishing town of San Blas, where i got eaten alive and heard the story of one pacifist expat who used to take a canoe to work due to the yearly floods and avoided going to war by convincing the government he was crazy. ‘It was a damned Oscar winning performance’
Every person you meet asks you when, where, how, why and then……. are you crazy!?
I named this stretch of road the ‘trying to stay alive road’,as in 'what are you doing today?' ....'O you know, the usual, just trying to stay alive'... no shoulder due to over growth, constant blind corners, heavy traffic and constant hills. Needless to say it wasn’t fun and I changed my route and headed inland to the cool mountains.
You would rather ask Google than the locals, what the road is like ahead, because 8 times out of ten, the locals are wrong .
This is the lovely view from the apparently flat road
Someone offers you something and you immediately calculate the weight vs usage ratio.
Good times couchsurfing with Denisse in Bucerias
Denisse was awesome, and even braved the humidty to ride with me outta town!
Heavy rain caused this major bridge to collapse near Vallarta, killing at least one person
You ask the sun for the time and the sky for the weather forecast.
Look to the left.....heavy rains caused major mudslides, luckily most were cleared by the time i slowly passed through
You know the local environment just as well as the locals.
And look to the right
You can determine how fresh the rotting roadkill is from the smell.
And behind
You sit on a bus and it takes a few minutes for your brain to figure out why you are moving so fast without moving your legs.
The charming town of Mascota
Mexicans definitely appreciate the good old bench
Leaving Mascota behind for the hills
You enter a town and with a look of sheer desperation, say to the first person you see, ‘ is there a bakery here!?’. Then proceed to sniff out the unmistakable smell of baked goods, regardless of the answer.
The road became less jungle ish and turned into open farm land and enchanted pine forests, unfortunately it rained, and rained...and rained, so i didn't take many photo's
An enchanted forest with huge frogs
You ride shirtless in torrential rain for 8 hours through the mountains, during which you holler and make animal noises shaking your head in a rock n roll fashion, whilst the sheltered locals stare in bewilderment.
After *see above* i made it into this nice town, it was a nice town for the following reasons. 1 - any town i forget the name of automatically gets renamed to nice town. 2 - i talked my way into some free accommodation. 3 - i got free tasty food. 4 - my picture was taken with promises to put it on the wall.
Some lovely people from the 'nice town'
You look at the nutritional content of every purchase you make and feel disgusted when things don’t have enough calories.
jazzy fizzle
My biggest day with over 4000 feet of climbing
Develop a sixth sense for sniffing out where the crazy dogs hang out and make sure your whip is in arms reach.
Rapha..funny guy
I spent four brilliant days with this amazing family
The blisters and callouses on your hands become a permanent feature.
Ameca from left to right......
The very nice university in Ameca where we played some basketball
Old hacienda, the palms were a sign to others to let them know a safe place was close by
You wake up at 4:30 am, reach over for the pre placed peanuts and pastries, devour and pass out.
The very modern and pretty cool Guadalajara
There’s no place you’d rather be, than on your bike.
Thank you:
Denisse and friends for generally being awesome
Chrissy and family/friends for the superb hospitality and good times
Michelle and Dave for hosting me yet again
Raul for the ’3 meat’ torta and good talk
Unknown taxi Driver for coffee and local lowdown
Unknown woman who gave me a free room to bed down
Total miles to date: 4000 KM
Number of flat tires: Don’t get me started! Damn you Bob!
Disclaimer – my camera broke so these shots are from my crappy 5mp video camera, my camera is finally in for repair, so hopefully this will be the last of the dullness..
