PowerCycle

Here’s my rant for the day. This is in regards to a proposed ban on all pet sales in San Francisco.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-goldfish-20110627,0,6881137.story

I love the comments at the bottom of this article…

“It takes a while but they eventually warm up and become fantastic friends!”
“You must never have loved a dog or cat as a family member.”
“This is what happens when you have socialists running your government. Pretty soon they will be telling you how many children you can have.”

Everyone is all up in arms about their rights being taken away but no one seems to give a crap that keeping living things as pets to fulfill our own selfish desires just promotes the idea that every other living thing on this planet is here solely for our benefit; to be used and abused as we see fit.

The city shouldn’t have to impose a ban and it’s pretty sad that people have to be told/forced to do the right thing. The pet food industry is contributing in a profound way to the destruction of the rain forests. Habitat destruction is currently ranked as the primary cause of species extinction worldwide. The loss of carbon absorbing trees accelerates global warming. These are facts and it isn’t old news. That’s the other problem–people rarely consider what impact their lifestyle has on anyone or anything else.

Recognizing that the pet trade is never going to go away (human nature and all that), I am thankful for my friends that devote time/energy to promoting pet adoption from shelters and doing what they can to make things better for the pets already out there.

06/25 Slacked off for a couple days and didn’t write anything. There just wasn’t much to comment on I suppose. Arrived today in the big city of Huancayo (pop. 323,000). The road was a mess coming into the city thanks to construction that went on for 20 miles but other than providing plenty of nourishing dust to eat it wasn’t bad. Got mobbed by a bunch of construction workers but managed to get out of there after a dozen roadside pictures.

After leaving Carhuamayo there was a nice downhill ride on a beaufiful paved road with a big fat safety lane to the mining town of La Oroya. There I ran into Justin and Nedo, two guys heading north on their way up from Ushuaia. We met up for dinner and shared road stories for a bit. It was nice to finally run into some other cyclists–it’s been a while. Besides Karin and Marten I haven’t seen anyone else riding since Quito (3 months ago). La Oroya was a surprise after passing through my last mining town (Quiruvilca). Mining activity seemed to be going on all around the town but the residents managed to carve out a nice little “normal” area where all the shops/hostels were located.

From La Oroya I thought I’d be descending down pretty far along a river valley all the way to Huancayo but that didn’t happen (I had the route info which shows elevation info–I just didn’t read it). It was downhill but very gradual which wasn’t the end of the world but the lack of scenery and slower pace made the ride a bit boring. The safety lane also disappeared which made riding a bit dangerous thanks to a steep drop-off into a gutter and a good amount of heavy truck traffic.

Last night I stayed in the town of Jauja. This place was unremarkable except for the amazing amount of road construction they had going on around the plaza. I ended up staying on the other side of town in a place that also has saunas open to the public. I skipped that however. I get stared at enough as it is.

Planning on staying here Sunday to relax and then I’m off to the highest drivable pass in the world (or so they say). It’ll be nice and high up there at 16,578 feet. That won’t be for a few days but I’m kind of excited about it.

I’m at the Hotel Roger. Nice place for S40. Wifi, hot shower and a big bed… all the comforts of home. Did some shopping and bought yet another pair of sunglasses. Managed to break pair #5 yesterday. These ones are some Oakley rip-offs called Okey’s. They are actually pretty good quality and might survive stretching around my fat head.

GPX track

06/22 Finally managed to leave Huariaca this morning. My stomach has been bothering me a bit and since the hostel was decent enough, minus the stupid dogs barking all night and the neighbors shooting fireworks off at random times starting at 5am and finishing at midnight, I stayed.

Rode a bit further than I would have liked today and it cost me at least one place I wanted to see. Everything was fine up until I got to the junction for Cerro de Pasco. There was a sign but it didn’t say how far it was to the city and the road was heading back north. Not wanting to take what I thought would be a 6 mile one-way trek to see a big hole in the ground I skipped it.

Next junction a few miles further on was for a dirt road that goes to a village called Huayllay. Close by is a park that has one of the highest rock forests in the world. The problem was that it was still pretty far, I was tired and it was getting late (and cold). There was a little village at the junction but I asked a bunch of people and there wasn’t a place to stay. The surrounding land is also very flat and very barren so camping would have been tricky.

Carhuamayo was another 10 miles but it was on a beautiful paved road with a wide shoulder. Amazingly enough there’s a hotel here even better than the one in Huariaca. Same price but the room is much bigger, the shower is insanely hot and the wifi signal is stronger. The floors are even carpeted which is good because it is bloody cold here (50F in my room!). The town is quite big and they have some great bakeries along the main drag. The hotel is on the west side of the road–it’s the one with a very tall neon “Hotel” sign.

Nothing too exciting on the road today except the landscape is so different from what I was seeing just a few days ago. It is extremely barren, no trees and hardly even any bushes. Had a bunch of stupid dogs chase me and one managed to bite my back left pannier. No punctures fortunately. God I hate dogs so much.

GPX track

06/18 Writing this on Sunday, aka “Happy Let’s Get Drunk and Make Asses Out Of Ourselves Day!”. It’s also Father’s Day so to my Dad… OK I won’t say anything sappy.

The ride up here from Huánuco had to be one of the easiest climbs ever. The grade almost never went above 3% and I sailed along with a nice tailwind all day. Not too much going on with scenery so no pictures. There are no snow-capped mountains around here and the hills lining the valley are a bit bland.

Today was a day off to do some shopping, get my clothes washed and just eat a lot. The big purchase was a Click Stand that I’ve been debating getting for a while. I went ahead and placed the order for the Max version after reading nothing but positive reviews online. It’ll be another thing waiting for me in Florida where I think I’ll be in about 45 days.

The fancy place to stay here in Huariaca is Hostel Rosa Nautica and it’s extremely nice. The double room cost S40 and it comes with everything including wifi. The hot shower was great and there was even decent water pressure which can be a rarity.

Huariaca is a nice town that evidently doesn’t see too many gringos stopping over (maybe none would be more accurate). Market day was today and walking along the one long road they use I was kind of amazed how clean the streets were. Normally they are a hot mess with scraps of everything laying around which can make walking along in flip flops a bit soupy at times.

Tomorrow I head up to one of the highest altitude cities in the world, Cerro de Pasco (pop. 70,000). It sits at 14,370 feet. The city has a lot of issues thanks to the almost mile wide, 1,600 foot deep open pit mine that sits smack in the middle of it (lead, silver and zinc have been extracted from it for 55 years). It is one of the poorest and most polluted cities throughout the world with 85% children in the area having high levels of lead in their systems (3x safe level). They use chemicals such as cyanide to extract the minerals (silver) from the ore but instead of being properly stored the waste is simply dropped in lagoons and in between houses. There’s actually been a project floating around to relocate all the city residents just to get them away from the area.

GPX track