Three's company too. At one o'clock this afternoon Riding for ROMP 2010 became Riding for ROMP 2010 with an official SAG vehicle. SAG "support and gear" for Greg and Pat. They crossed the border today around 11:45 and I met them an hour later. This is the final stretch. Last night, driving from Guatemala City to Coatepeque I was astonished by the absolute downpour, the tropical deluge that was soaking plastic bag covered bicyclists. Wondering what Greg and pat were dealing with on the other side of the border. The rains have been heavy during the last few days here in Guatemala. So bad that roads are being swept away, bridges knocked down and possesions washed away. This has been the Guatemalan summer, or "winter" as they call the rainy season. Today was not one of those rainy days. We switched tires, unloaded the saddle bags, the tools and anything heavy. After 72 days, Greg and Pat lightened their loads and sped up a bit. We are now in Coatepeque. Nothing special here except the whole roasted pig for those delicious 85 cent tacos and the gas station ice cream that seemed a perfect match for the evening's brew. They two have accomplished something amazing and they're not even done yet. I'm proud to call one my brother and the other a good friend.
Greg's rear rim is showing some severe signs of stress. Some cracks are forming and it's time to repair. We're going into Guatemala City tomorrow to switch the rim. They'll need the days rest because Wednesday it's a hard climb. 50 miles distance, not much for these two, but a 6000 foot climb into the highlands that won't exactly be a piece of torta.
I have some great photos but the internet is too slow and they wont attach. Another day. For now, a good night's sleep.
Dave
Monday, August 30, 2010
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Green is the color of our road
The road is blue-gray, but green is the color of our road.
Seemingly endless spears of broadleaf green grass loosely hang over the road's edge, flowing into an abyss of green landscape- where green palm trees are overshadowed by even bigger collections of green topped Manilkara trees that produce pounds of chicle.
Swinging my head forward I see the brown sun-baked legs of Pat, passing in constant circular motions, starkly contrasting the green-scape that abounds. Few things contrast in such a green place: the occasional black lettered sign announcing a nearing village; the all too frequent roadside memorial that morbidly marks a tragic end of life, reminding us of our own mortality, keeping us keen to our surroundings; the gray-white ox that swings its head as we approach, idly drinking water from a rain-filled watering hole, its black tassel like tail swats off enemy pests that crudely bite at its skin; the wedding-white Heron that stands picturesquely near water's edge, moving only slightly before spreading wide its incredible wingspan and flying evenly into the green forest-scape.
A light-green soupy marsh sits in idyllic tranquility, a motionless green mass of soup. And then, an almost black, green faced bull frog emerges with vigor, unsettling the tranquil green soup. Its head emerges as quickly as we pass. Nearby a milk chocolate brown river splits through our green paradise, if only for a moment, dirtying our chlorophyllic filled surroundings, with a cold rush of recent rain-mud mix, that muddies the green as it passes.
Rows of Papaya, Mango, Melon, Banana, Guava, Tomatillo, and Guanábana occasionally cover the landscape, ranging from small to large parcels of land. Symmetrical rows of fruit-bearing trees drop dozens of heavy, sweet filled shells of foreign-looking fruit. The Noni fruit that hang like pear-shaped vesicles from their mother tree, waiting for gravity to do its work.
Feeding our green paradise, like clockwork, small, then large drops of rain start to fall usually in the mid-afternoon. The rain first moistens our hot skin, then progressivley becomes more violent, the rain sometimes sharply cutting into our soft flesh, for miles, minutes, sometimes hours. Our green paradise is flushed clean. Pools of water accumulate on the roadside. The waterlogged soil like an over-soaked sponge, quickly overflows and creates previously uncharted waterways, where spores and seeds no doubt move miles from origin. Like nature's superhighway, the tiny lifeforms spread for miles in every water soaked direction. We stop to drink something other than rainwater, taking a moment to observe the quaggy terrain.
We approach yet another green shaded hill top. We pedal up, and cruise down, our green colored landscape at its purest design. Green evergreens hang from steep rock-encrusted cliff sides like flying buttresses from Gothic Cathedrals. Bending as if properly designed, the tree limbs arch their way into lower levels of green abyss.
This is our green colored road. Our green paradise. If only occasionally marred by diesel filled, almost iron clad, mechanical contraptions: the speeding bus with tinted passenger windows, a speeding torrent of multi-colored sedans, and a cautious motorist that slows to our speed, following our movements for minutes too long. Plumes of dark hydrocarbon smoke trail behind vehicles both large and small.
We ride through the green. It gives us our deep clean breaths. Until we approach gut twisting, throat-gagging smells, that are otherworldly, that don't belong.
Day 70
After passing Oregon, the entire coastline of California, the Mexican States: Baja Norte, Baja Sur, Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, Michoacan, Guerrero, Oaxaca, and now finally Chiapas we are only one long day's worth of riding away from passing into our final challenge, Guatemala.
Our last day of Mexico is upon us, 145 kilometers of Chiapas to surpass, before reaching the chaotic, loud, and busy border town of Tapachula. We look forward to the green highlands of northern Guatemala. Tremendous mountain climbs, with green as-far-as-the-eye-can-see views await; 8,000 foot summits in less than ten mile climbs. We near Zacapa, we near the clinic, we near our goal.
A black-lettered sign loudly announces an approaching village; Poblado Proximo the sign announces. I slow my swift pedal blows, if only to relish for a few more moments, our sweet-green-paradise.
Greg
Seemingly endless spears of broadleaf green grass loosely hang over the road's edge, flowing into an abyss of green landscape- where green palm trees are overshadowed by even bigger collections of green topped Manilkara trees that produce pounds of chicle.
Swinging my head forward I see the brown sun-baked legs of Pat, passing in constant circular motions, starkly contrasting the green-scape that abounds. Few things contrast in such a green place: the occasional black lettered sign announcing a nearing village; the all too frequent roadside memorial that morbidly marks a tragic end of life, reminding us of our own mortality, keeping us keen to our surroundings; the gray-white ox that swings its head as we approach, idly drinking water from a rain-filled watering hole, its black tassel like tail swats off enemy pests that crudely bite at its skin; the wedding-white Heron that stands picturesquely near water's edge, moving only slightly before spreading wide its incredible wingspan and flying evenly into the green forest-scape.
 |
| Proudly flying the Mexican flag |
A light-green soupy marsh sits in idyllic tranquility, a motionless green mass of soup. And then, an almost black, green faced bull frog emerges with vigor, unsettling the tranquil green soup. Its head emerges as quickly as we pass. Nearby a milk chocolate brown river splits through our green paradise, if only for a moment, dirtying our chlorophyllic filled surroundings, with a cold rush of recent rain-mud mix, that muddies the green as it passes.
Rows of Papaya, Mango, Melon, Banana, Guava, Tomatillo, and Guanábana occasionally cover the landscape, ranging from small to large parcels of land. Symmetrical rows of fruit-bearing trees drop dozens of heavy, sweet filled shells of foreign-looking fruit. The Noni fruit that hang like pear-shaped vesicles from their mother tree, waiting for gravity to do its work.
Feeding our green paradise, like clockwork, small, then large drops of rain start to fall usually in the mid-afternoon. The rain first moistens our hot skin, then progressivley becomes more violent, the rain sometimes sharply cutting into our soft flesh, for miles, minutes, sometimes hours. Our green paradise is flushed clean. Pools of water accumulate on the roadside. The waterlogged soil like an over-soaked sponge, quickly overflows and creates previously uncharted waterways, where spores and seeds no doubt move miles from origin. Like nature's superhighway, the tiny lifeforms spread for miles in every water soaked direction. We stop to drink something other than rainwater, taking a moment to observe the quaggy terrain.
 |
| Our Green Road: Oaxaca, Mexico |
 |
| Leaving Guerrero, Entering Oaxaca |
This is our green colored road. Our green paradise. If only occasionally marred by diesel filled, almost iron clad, mechanical contraptions: the speeding bus with tinted passenger windows, a speeding torrent of multi-colored sedans, and a cautious motorist that slows to our speed, following our movements for minutes too long. Plumes of dark hydrocarbon smoke trail behind vehicles both large and small.
 |
| Watch Out-Rockslide! |
We ride through the green. It gives us our deep clean breaths. Until we approach gut twisting, throat-gagging smells, that are otherworldly, that don't belong.
Day 70
After passing Oregon, the entire coastline of California, the Mexican States: Baja Norte, Baja Sur, Sinaloa, Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, Michoacan, Guerrero, Oaxaca, and now finally Chiapas we are only one long day's worth of riding away from passing into our final challenge, Guatemala.
Our last day of Mexico is upon us, 145 kilometers of Chiapas to surpass, before reaching the chaotic, loud, and busy border town of Tapachula. We look forward to the green highlands of northern Guatemala. Tremendous mountain climbs, with green as-far-as-the-eye-can-see views await; 8,000 foot summits in less than ten mile climbs. We near Zacapa, we near the clinic, we near our goal.
A black-lettered sign loudly announces an approaching village; Poblado Proximo the sign announces. I slow my swift pedal blows, if only to relish for a few more moments, our sweet-green-paradise.
Greg
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Regarding Broken Spokes
It usually goes something like this:
 |
| Fixing a broken spoke in Big Sur |
We are riding through some gorgeous stretch of highway in rural Mexico, somewhere green and beautiful. Little kids laugh and play soccer around fruit stands on the side of the road. The sun is shining, birds are chirping, and right as you begin to think, "My, isn't this lovely," a bright, twangy, metallic pop cuts through the dense jungle air and sends a wincing shiver up my spinal column. That snap is agonizingly familar to the Riding for ROMP crew. That snap means my bike has broken a spoke...again.
 |
| Fixing a broken spoke in Baja California |
Like myself, many of you following this blog are not completely fluent in bike shop--a terse, highly-tecnical vernacular used primarily by tattoed bike mechanics--but fortunately for people like us, wheels are one of mankind's simple machines, and most all bicycle wheels work like this: in the middle of the wheel you have the hub, which is connected to the outside rim by a series of intertwined rods holding whole thing together. These are the spokes. Alone, they are just small, metal spaghetti sticks you can bend easily with your hands, but if you string them up together and tighten them correctly, they create a wheel that is both lightweight and strong. Strong enough to, say, bike to Guatemala.
 |
| Fixing a broken spoke in Manzanillo |
The problem with spokes, or I guess my problem with spokes, is that from time to time they break and have to be replaced. I have broken and replaced twelve (12) so far on this journey. There is a long, painfully repetative process for fixing them, and at this point in the trip I could do it blindfolded.
Thanks to these breakdowns, we have continued south down the MEX 200 highway in hurried spurts, riding the sign wave of spoke maintenance (biking through Jalisco--high; spoke breaks--low; fix spoke--high; road with coastal view--higher; break spoke--new low). Even with the continued bike problems and that uneasy feeling in our guts that all could turn sour at any minute, we were still riding through some of the most beautiful coastline on the planet, so we did our best to enjoy ourselves, you know, for ROMP. We soaked up places like Puerto Vallarta, with its touristy-yet-still-worth-it malecon, and Barra de Navidad, home to world class waves and awesome people like Enrique, the shirtless mountian biker who gave me a lift to the nearest bicycle shop just because I spoke Spanish. All over this amazing country we find beauty in the places we visit and the people we meet. But, of all the great people who have helped us, Carlos is by far the coolest in the history of planet earth.
After a record breaking day of dissapointment (4 hours on the road, 3 broken spokes, 2 blown tires, less than 20 miles), Greg and I limped our way into an unexpected dot on the map with a few hotels and a bus station to Colima, a city 100 km inland with a bicycle wholesaler. After only being in the town for 20 minutes Greg finds me and says, "Grab your stuff, we're getting a ride." It seemed as though a local hotel manager named Carlos, a complete stranger, had offered to drive us to Colima in his pickup and help us find the parts to fix our bikes and get on our way.
During the course of the car ride we learned much about our new friend Carlos. In addition to owning a beachfront hotel in Cuyutlan, he also had a spacious home in Colima and operated a farm where he grew mangos for export to the United States and Europe. During the 1980's, he founded the University of Colima's agricultural program and taught courses for decades. Carlos, it seemed, was the man, and he came through for us in a big way.
The bike shop in Colima did not dissapoint. It turns out Carlos' friend used to ride professionally and knew the bike wholesaler in town. The place was an oasis of quality, professional grade bike parts, which we eyed greedily as we skipped through the building like kids on Christmas morning. Elated and relieved, we solved all of our gear problems in one fell swoop, and the next morning Carlos drove us back to the coast, free of charge. Cheers to you, Carlos, wherever you are. You are a prince among men.
Blog update on the spoke-breakage-free Michoacan coast forthcoming.
 |
| Riding for ROMP and the guys from the bike shop. Carlos is the baller in pink. |
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Welcome to the Pacific
It is a warm day in San Blas, Mexico, and I am sitting on a surf board waiting for the set to come in. I close my eyes and feel the cool water of the Pacific Ocean surround my body; I let my mind go where it pleases. I think of this trip, of the desert in Baja that seems like forever ago. I think about my friends and what they're doing right now, about my family, about my future. Just as I start to debate whether or not Keanu Reeves took surf lessons for Point Break, I hear a prepubescent Mexican voice screaming, "¡Dale! ¡Dale! ¡Dale!" I open my eyes and quickly realize that my 14 year old Mexican 'surf instructor', Jose, has seen a good wave coming. It is for me. I scramble to turn myself around and then start paddling like hell, Mexican kids still shouting all kinds of commands in my ears, until I feel the weight of the board lifted by the momentum of the ocean underneath. "Levantate!" someone yells, and for a brief second I look towards to shore and realize that I, Patrick Mathay, am riding a wave...until I bury the nose of the board into the water and catapult my Gringo body into the churning foam washing machine beneath me. "Next time try for two seconds," laughs Jose as I paddle back. I smile and dig sand out of my ear. About an hour later I return to our palapa and find Greg drying off in a hammock, sipping on a Corona and staring out to sea. We share a smile that says, So this is our new reality. This is life on the Pacific.
Granted, not every day is filled with surf lessons and snorkle trips. We still average about 60 miles a day on the mainland, which means we still spend the majority of our waking hours wearing bike chamois instead of swim suits. But we definately aren't in Baja anymore. The most obvious indication of this fact can be found in tropical climate and lush green forests that prevail in this part of Mexico. All around you there is green and water and life, compared to the dry and brittle Baja landscape that seems to be actively looking for new ways to squelch life out, specifically yours. Whats more, the highway that led us all the way from Tijuana to La Paz in Baja, the MEX 1, only rarely presented glimpses of the ocean or opportunities to enjoy it. Compare that to the MEX 200, our new best friend here on the mainland, which hugs the coast from Puerto Vallarta almost to the border with Guatemala, and constantly gives us opportunties to stop and enjoy the water. When our heads hit the pillow at night, more often than not we can hear the ocean.
Fittingly, that is how we made the transition from the barrenness of Baja to the lushness of the mainland- with our heads on pillows. After spending a day and night in the lovely Casa Tuscany Inn in La Paz, we rode down to the dock near Pichilengue and prepared for the overnight voyage across the Sea of Cortez to one of Mexico's largest ports, Mazatlan- the self-titled Pearl of the Pacific.
And finally, this blog post would be wholly incomplete without the mentioning of the following, for it is of a magnitude not often discussed in this forum. In an unassuming tienda next to the small central plaza of the quaint town of San Blas, Gregory Allen Krupa discovered, at preciscly 10:27 pm on July 30th, 2010, what he proclaimed to be the BEST TACOS HE HAS HAD IN ALL OF HIS LIFE. Greg and I eat tacos almost every day. Sometimes more than once a day. A few times we have had tacos for breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And yet, of all of the taco eating he has done on this trip and beyond, those found in that tienda in San Blas have been declared superior to all others to cross Greg's experienced palate. More blog posts, and tacos, soon to come.
Patrick
Granted, not every day is filled with surf lessons and snorkle trips. We still average about 60 miles a day on the mainland, which means we still spend the majority of our waking hours wearing bike chamois instead of swim suits. But we definately aren't in Baja anymore. The most obvious indication of this fact can be found in tropical climate and lush green forests that prevail in this part of Mexico. All around you there is green and water and life, compared to the dry and brittle Baja landscape that seems to be actively looking for new ways to squelch life out, specifically yours. Whats more, the highway that led us all the way from Tijuana to La Paz in Baja, the MEX 1, only rarely presented glimpses of the ocean or opportunities to enjoy it. Compare that to the MEX 200, our new best friend here on the mainland, which hugs the coast from Puerto Vallarta almost to the border with Guatemala, and constantly gives us opportunties to stop and enjoy the water. When our heads hit the pillow at night, more often than not we can hear the ocean.
Fittingly, that is how we made the transition from the barrenness of Baja to the lushness of the mainland- with our heads on pillows. After spending a day and night in the lovely Casa Tuscany Inn in La Paz, we rode down to the dock near Pichilengue and prepared for the overnight voyage across the Sea of Cortez to one of Mexico's largest ports, Mazatlan- the self-titled Pearl of the Pacific.
 |
| Our last moments on land in Baja California. |
Though our bikes could have easily fit into our cabin, Baja Ferries insisted that we store them in the car bay for 'safety concerns' (and that we pay a fee for this storage service, of course). So, after leaving the bicycles in what amounted to a make-shift janitor closet next to the stairs, we settled into our cabin and made our way to the mess hall. There, under the fishtank-esque florescent lighting of the dinning room, Greg and I were treated to the tastes and smells of the worst meal we have yet injested on this trip. Cheers to you, Baja Ferries.
 |
| Riding for ROMP and the family Dulin |
Twelve hours later, we awoke on the dock in Mazatlan and were greeted by Lionne Decker, brother of Max Dulin (Greg's Univeristy of Oregon friend), who promptly took us back to his home and cooked banana nut pancakes to help nurture our traumatized tummies back to health. Over the next 24 hours, we were treated to similar culinary prowess at every meal, and enjoyed the company of the rest of the Decker family- Kristin, Kenya, and Sky- as we swam on the beach, played soccer on golf courses, and shot each other with paintball guns. Plus we are all famous. If you tuned into Sinaloa Channel 7 at 8:30 pm on August 7th, you would have seen a commercial featuring Greg, myself, and the Deckers that a film crew shot that afternoon on the paintball course. Everybody yell ¡Gocha!
And finally, this blog post would be wholly incomplete without the mentioning of the following, for it is of a magnitude not often discussed in this forum. In an unassuming tienda next to the small central plaza of the quaint town of San Blas, Gregory Allen Krupa discovered, at preciscly 10:27 pm on July 30th, 2010, what he proclaimed to be the BEST TACOS HE HAS HAD IN ALL OF HIS LIFE. Greg and I eat tacos almost every day. Sometimes more than once a day. A few times we have had tacos for breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And yet, of all of the taco eating he has done on this trip and beyond, those found in that tienda in San Blas have been declared superior to all others to cross Greg's experienced palate. More blog posts, and tacos, soon to come.
Patrick
 |
| Paintball Mexican style |
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
