PowerCycle

01/02 Lot’s to write about today but I’ll try not to make this too long of a post. It rained all day but it was warm enough to wear shorts. Had to bust out my yellow rain jacket though. It was about 53 F. Riding on the highway was horrible especially once I got into the city because the roads are in rough shape and the puddles of water made it hard to tell what I was riding through. The drainage system here is definitely not very efficient. My front panniers, both of which have big tears in them, didn’t let too much water in but it wasn’t pouring out either.

Passed through the famous city of Tequila, Mexico but it was raining pretty hard at the time so I didn’t stop. The Spanish school has outings every other day after class and one of them is to Tequila so I might jump on one of those. There were so many stores lining the highway selling mini and not-so-mini barrels of the potent drink. I don’t know how so many of them manage to stay in business from all the competition.

Rode past a Best Buy in what looked like a mall so I checked into a nearby motel and took a taxi back over to do some camera shopping. Cab rides are a bit different here because there are no fare meters so you negotiate the price beforehand (well, if you speak Spanish you negotiate–if not you get in and hope for the best).

The name of the mall was Galerías and I was floored by how modern it was. It was easily as nice if not nicer than any mall back in South Florida. Not only did they have a Best Buy but there was an Outback, a Hooters, Sears and a million other “Western” outlet stores. All 3 floors were just jammed with people. Dinner was at the Outback but it was a little disappointing. I should have went to Hooters. Outback had no Foster’s to start with. They did have Budweiser so I felt kind of like I was at home. Had the prime rib but I had to send it back for another round of grilling because the version of medium here is more like rare.

I’m very happy to have a new camera again! I spent at least 2 hours walking around the different stores looking at cameras until finally I went with the one I should get; not necessarily the one I want. My new toy is the Olympic Stylus Tough 6000. It’s an upgrade from the Pentax Optio I lost in terms of zoom (3.6x) but it doesn’t have manual shutter/aperture settings like I really wanted. I just couldn’t find a small enough DSLR-like camera I liked and that would fit in my handlebar bag. The selection of good Canon point & shoots was also poor (no SX200 Jason and trust me I looked). The Olympus is shock/water/freeze proof and the biggest complaint I could find online was the fact that it doesn’t do well submerged. I’d only use it in the rain occasionally so that’s not concern for me. We’ll see how it does with actual picture taking. The microSD card I bought isn’t compatible so I have to head back over tomorrow and exchange it. Stupid Visa got declined again after I just used it to pay for the motel. I hate them. Thank God my Amex always works when I need it.

My bike seat is finally in a spot that didn’t produce feelings comparable to sitting on a hot iron all day. Still not perfect but a lot better than it was.

GPX Track

Weather in Guadalajara when posted:

Temperature: 12 °C, Humidity: 93%, Wind Speed: 4km/hr, Cloud Cover: broken clouds

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 at 11:27 pm and is filed under Leg 2. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.