PowerCycle

I love Mazatlan! In fact I like it so much I’m going to stay here until the 26th. No point in spending the holidays stuck in my tent out on the road somewhere. This city is just amazing. I’m staying in Old Mazatlan, which is a far cry from the gringo tourist area north of here called the Golden Zone. I rode there yesterday and hated it. Hardly anyone was walking around and there were no cool street side stands. The big draw for the area is a McDonald’s, Burger King, Sam’s Club and I think I remember seeing an Office Depot.

The streets in this area are packed, its loud and the sidewalks are in brutal shape. In the States an area like this would have driven me back inside in minutes. Its different here though. The people are very respectful of each other. Not once did someone even bump into me or stop in front of me and block the sidewalk. There are virtually no extra-extra-large people so the rather confined sidewalks are easily navigable. Jay walking is rampant but the cars/buses keep a safe speed and stop if someone crosses in front of them.

The other touring rider staying here, Bryon (web site), is probably leaving tomorrow so it’ll just be me and the couple retired Americans/Canadians that are also staying here. Walking around town, I haven’t seen too many other Americans. There was one guy who had a Jesus thing going with all white clothes, a long beard and no shoes. Yes, he was walking around the city streets with no shoes on. Goes nicely with the somewhat socially accepteble habit of spitting that goes on here. There are a fair number of police walking around or riding custom mountain bikes. Some of them even have automatic weapons in hand. I think its mostly for show. I have yet to hear a single police siren.

Let’s see what else I’ve done. I went and bought 48 patches for my tire since I was getting low. That should hold me over (for ever). I bought a new bike seat but it won’t mount using the bracket I have. I’ll run it back over tomorrow and try to get another one. It cost about US $5. No more Brooks for me. Byron has a Brooks Imperial seat and he hates it. He ended up getting a new seat too. I’m glad I didn’t buy the Imperial in San Diego because I tried his and it wasn’t any better than the Champion I have. I also picked up a new water bottle cage to replace the one that broke when I ran into the taxi door.

After 10 months I’m going to get my sleeping bag washed tomorrow. I’m a little worried but I converted the cleaning instructions to Spanish for the laundry mat people so we’ll see what happens.

I took a picture of me standing in the entrance to the bathroom here in the motel room. I’ve probably smashed my head into the top of the (concrete) door frame at least half a dozen times so far.

Last night I decided to upgrade my web site to WordPress 2.9. That was a miserable failure. I ended up staying awake until 4am after having to back out of the upgrade because the database wasn’t current enough. You’d think they run the compatibility checks before the actual upgrade process starts.

Update: I finally got around to finishing my Highlights page. The description at the top and the additions of Best Scenery and Biggest Annoyance were the only changes.

12/18 Here’s a short version of what happened over the last 24 hours. Rode 75 miles and made it to La Paz in one piece. Had a brutal headwind all day and some hills but nothing too bad. I was just really glad to be in La Paz. For the next couple hours I rode around the city checking out the huge street market and trying not to get run over. At 6pm, after finding a cheap motel (but not registering for a room yet), I headed over to an internet cafe. That’s when I discovered that the ferry to Mazatlan leaves in 2 hours and not again until Tuesday. There’s a Sunday ferry but I think that’s reserved for cows or hazardous materials or something.

The sun has set by this point, the ferry is 13 miles from the cafe and I’m tired and quite starving by now. I decided that 5 more days in La Paz would be less than ideal so I turned on my front/rear lights and started riding. It was a terrible experience and I thought of turning back many times. Riding at night is bad enough but I was on a rural road with occasional semi’s, cars, no shoulders and zero street lights. I wasn’t even 100% sure where I was going or if that was even the right place to buy a ticket. It was probably a stupid move riding out there but I was careful to move off the road when I needed to. The worst part was how tired I was about half way.

Somehow I made it though. I’d even found the right place to buy tickets. So US $130 later my bike and I were in line to board. Only problem was ticket salesperson thought bicycles were “cargo” and had me in the wrong line. I found this out after standing there for 20 minutes. Now I have 10 minutes to ride another mile to get to the right place before the ferry leaves. Brutal. Complaining wouldn’t help so I jumped back on my bike and raced over to the right place.

Finally I was on board and ready to go. They didn’t even check to see if I had a ticket. In the area where they had me park my bike I was happy to see 3 other touring bikes.

Funny thing is the ferry didn’t end up leaving for another two and a half hours. Not sure what the hold up was but I was kicking myself for riding like a madman fr 3 miles.

The ride across the gulf was 12 hours and it went pretty fast. After eating (cafe on board) my next goal was sleep. I didn’t get a cabin so at 11pm I curled up on 2 seats called it a night. The next morning I grabbed some breakfast and met some of the other touring bicyclists on board. Byron is heading down to Argentina. Chris is another guy that I first met in Alaska (still amazes me that you can run into the same people thousands of miles away like this). There were also a couple from Montreal but I don’t remember their names. They are heading north up the coast.

Once the ferry landed we all packed up and rode into town. Byron and I had a similar plan to hang out here for a couple days and figure out where we’re going next. We gave that even more thought while drinking Coronas down by the beach all afternoon.

Mazatlan is easily my favorite place in Mexico so far. From the bustling city streets filled with vendors to the sidewalks that that are completely different in front of every building it just feels different from the other cities. The town square was amazing as was the huge church next to it. More pics tomorrow. Best part– the motel is US $10.83 a night. It has hot water and a fan so I’m good.

GPX Track

12/16 Yesterday I hung out in Ciudad Constitucion and didn’t do much of anything except relax and work on my web site a bit. It was so rare to actually have a working internet connection in the room. Usually I have to go sit outside. I saw Roland and Belinda ride by about 3pm but they didn’t see me. I met them back up in Alaska. They are on their way to Argentina too. The 3 guys I ran into for the last couple days passed me too. Maybe I’ll see everyone in La Paz.

La Paz isn’t too far so when I left this morning I figured I’d be looking at a Friday arrival. Today was an easy day of riding, minus a headwind, so I’ll probably end up there on Thursday. The big challenge of the day will be to get a ferry ticket to Mazatlan.

Didn’t see much of interest on the road today. There were a lot of roadside memorials though. Some of them were pretty elaborate too. I did notice one thing that I’m surprised I didn’t pick up on earlier. There are no mailboxes…anywhere. Or if there are I’m not seeing them. I don’t even think any of the buildings alongside the highway have numbers on them. Weird. Maybe everyone has to drive into the nearest town if they want mail?

3 large, carnivorous dogs came tearing out of a yard while I was riding peacefully down the highway. I yelled at them and they decided I wasn’t worth consuming. My Dog Dazzer failed me again. I really need to find a nice bamboo stick.

People were acting kind of stupid today. This happened twice– I’d be riding down the road when an 18-wheeler would come up behind me and another vehicle would be approaching from the front. Instead of just maintaining their speed and maybe moving over to the right just a little, the cars would slow down and almost come to a complete stop right before they got to me. So now the truck can’t pass and has to slow down to a crawl. If they would have just kept going they would have only slowed down the truck for a few seconds.

Camping out in the desert was a no go thanks to fences on both side of the road. About an hour before dark I finally had enough riding for the day and asked the owner of a ranch/market if I could camp there. No problem. So here I am in my tent with goats, roosters, dogs, cows and donkeys all running around.

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12/14 The highway into Ciudad Constitucion actually opened up into a 4 lane road which was a first since Tijuana. No bike lane or shoulder though. Still a fair amount of traffic. I wonder if it’ll be like this all the way to La Paz? Wouldn’t surprise me since all the tourist towns are closer now (Cabo San Lucas). Ciudad Constitucion is a good sized city with about 40,000 inhabitants. Unlike other towns/cities it doesn’t have a garbage dump or a section of decrepit-looking buildings on the outskirts of it. Found a great Chinese restaurant to have lunch. This time there were lots of pictures so I kind of knew what I’d be getting.

Some idiot in an unmarked white U-haul-like truck thought it would be funny to drive over into my lane and slam on his horn as he approached. I didn’t have a place to bail off the road and he didn’t come over far enough where I thought I’d have to dive into the ditch. Normally something like this would piss me off for the rest of the day but it was hard to stay mad when half the people that passed me waved or gave me the thumbs up.

For the first time someone spotted me as I was leaving my campsite this morning. It was a guy in a truck but he didn’t seem to care. I looked back down the road and I swore I could see the 2 German riders I saw late yesterday. They are heading up north from Argentina but I didn’t catch to where.

As noted on FB I finally broke 10,000 miles on my trip this morning. Oh and what a 10,000 miles it’s been.

GPX Track