PowerCycle

02/09 For the last week I’ve been writing the date like it’s May; not February. Not sure what’s up with that. I don’t even like May. For years now I’ve always thought something huge (and likely bad) would happen on the 18th.

The ride today was uneventful. The roads were fine, my visit to the city of Celaya was limited to the (industrial) suburbs because I skipped the central district and the weather was OK.

Things got a little more exciting in Santiago de Querétaro. First of all this is a big city (pop. 1,085,153) so traffic along the highway went from 2 lane to 4 lane in no time at all. I also lost the shoulder I’d been enjoying all day. But then suddenly something I’ve seen very rarely in Mexico appeared in front of me–a bike path! I hopped on that thing and had a pretty relaxing ride for a couple miles until it ended.

My goal was the central historic district which I found easily enough. With a few hours until dark I just rode around taking pictures of everything. Traffic along the narrower, one-way roads wasn’t bad at all. What an amazing city. It dates all the way back to 1531 and at least twice was declared the capital of Mexico. The historic center is even a World Heritage Site. In 2008, the state of Querétaro was listed as one of the top 15 historic destinations of the world by National Geographic.

The picture taking went on for a while until a woman on a bike rode up. Update: I had this whole story written about this encounter but the next day I was interviewed by a local TV station so I’ll just leave it at I stayed in an extra room at her house and left in the morning. Nothing x-rated happened–she’s just well known in this area and people should form their own opinions.

One of the places I visited was a bike shop to see if they had any good touring tires. Turns out they had a Schawbe but it was a Skinny Minny (or Jimmy– I forget) tire which isn’t for roads. I’ll keep my eyes open but for now my current tire is still good.

GPX Track