PowerCycle

06/29 The 18 miles to get here had to be some of the toughest 18 miles of my entire trip. Tunnels would be great here. Or bridges. Those would be good too. Or the ability to turn down gravity so my bike wouldn’t be so heavy. The grade of the hills was bad but like yesterday, had it not been for the traffic, they would have been manageable. An amazing number of people use the collectivos (buses) here. At least one of them would pass every 15 seconds forcing me to ride straight up the hills instead of side-to-side. That got tiring after a while. These flat bed trucks the size of dump trucks are also popular ways of getting around. Every time one goes by I’m shocked by the number of people squeezed into the back.

Here in Coban I’m sitting at 4378 feet which is pretty sweet because the weather is perfect and the humidity is at the point that my clothes aren’t soaking wet all day. I’m pretty sure Coban is the provincial capital. The city is pretty big but is much more developed then I expected. The sidewalks always tell a good story and they are all the same here. I’m sure I’ll be spending some time wandering around. Crime might be a bit of an issue. All of the small grocery stores are behind bars so you have to tell the guy what you want from the window. Haven’t seen that before. I found a really good fast food chicken place called Pollo Pankys (I think that’s right). The lady who served me even used hand sanitizer before helping me. If you saw the condition of some of the places I’ve had chicken before you’d understand how noteworthy this was.

I’m sure I’ll be here for a couple days. The bike rack needs to be replaced, I need to get the zipper on my shorts fixed and I’m going to ship a couple things back that I haven’t been using (head’s up Dad). The (heavy) water filter is going back–I have a UV one that I can use if need be (and so far I haven’t), the rainfly from my hammock that I kept to use as a rain shelter is gone and I’m going to see if I can track down a smaller sleeping bag. Having one rated to 0 degrees is overkill for these parts.

I might have to knock having a sore butt off my list of chronic ailments (OK that was the only one). This stuff I ordered in Florida call Bag Balm is supposed to be used to keep cow udders from chafing but a lot of long distance cyclists use it too. It’s freaking amazing. I don’t think the FDA approved it for use on the human ass but they should. I haven’t had a sore fanny since I got back to Mexico 3 weeks ago.

GPX Track