PowerCycle

02/14 I’ve never been a big fan of Valentine’s Day (or any other commercialized holiday) but now I like it a lot less. Little background first… in Mexico it’s taboo to hook up with your significant other before marriage. Since that’s completely unrealistic there are all these motels that cater to guys and girls looking for a place to get it on. So here I am riding my bike in the dark on the disaster that is the Mexico City road system trying to find a place and the few normal hotels I could find were full. I’ve been avoiding the sex motels but everything was full tonight so I got stuck in one.

I guess it’s not too bad. The motel room is like a normal room except for the mirrored headboard and full length mirror on the wall. There’s even room service available. Since it took me until 8pm to find a place I needed a beer (or 3). I opted to pay for a full night instead of the four, eight or twelve hour options they have available. There’s even a curtained off garage to park your car for some additional privacy. There’s no check-in desk either. You just pull up to a glass window that you can’t see into and conduct everything through (very loud) speakers and a slide out drawer like at a bank drive through. That made communication even harder for me because being able to see the person makes it a lot easier. There’s no hot water either which was the one thing I was hoping for more than anythig.

Mexico City sits smack dab in the middle of the 3rd largest metropolitan area in the world so you can imagine the traffic. I rode around for about 4 hours and it was like rush hour on every road. My GPS track tells the story I’m sure. And let me tell you about road conditions. The highway I rode into the city on (Mex-85) and virtually every other road was in the worst shape of anything I’ve seen in all of Mexico. There are massive potholes on every road, broken glass is very common, there are unmarked speedbumps everywhere, people park on the sidewalks or double-park, the sidewalks are in horrible shape and people drive like freaking maniacs.

The fact that I’m even alive is a miracle. I was used to people cruising through stop signs after a cursory slowdown but here they burn right through red lights. Lanes are almost meaningless. There’s also garbage all over the place which is also something I usually only see on the outskirts of towns.

I didn’t get to see the ruins at Teotihuacan and now the cab ride there is going to cost a fair bit since I had to ride so far. I’ll have to find a new motel (with intenet) and then try to go see it tomorrow or maybe Tuesday. What a pain. I can’t wait to get out of this city.

Update: I think I found part of my problem. For some reason I’d manually entered wrong coordinates for the ruins into my GPS. Oops. First time for everything I guess. I’m still about 35 miles away. I’ll head over tomorrow. I feel a little better at least now that I know where I’m going.

GPX Track