10/26 Yesterday sucked. Rode for all of 13 miles before a spoke broke. The wheel wasn’t too wobbly and after waiting for a taxi for an hour I decided to just ride the couple miles back to a small town I’d passed. It wasn’t too long before I found a bike shop and had the broken spoke replaced. The mechanic also went out and found me 10 spare spokes just in case. I’m no expert on spoke replacements having never done it but it looked easy enough provided none break on the side with the chain rings. Not sure why it broke. I slammed into 2 decent speedbumps going down a hill which probably didn’t help. All day I was paranoid they’d keep breaking.

Big climb today after the longest downhill. The views going up the mountain were pretty amazing thanks to mostly sunny skies. The temperature is much cooler but the sun is incredibly strong. Road conditions were OK. No shoulder but the lanes are wide. Truck traffic was non-stop. The worst is when they get in a convoy so five or six pass you all at once. The noise is incredible when that happens. I should try to take a video of it.

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03/03 Poverty really sucks. It’s been getting worse as I travel south and in one of the towns it was pretty bad. As soon as I pulled up to a store to buy some water about a half dozen women came over trying to get me to buy something. I ended up buying 3 tortilla shell things with chili (and chicken?) inside but I didn’t really like the taste so I ate the first one there and then gave the other ones to a woman and her kid a little ways down the road.

I discovered what kind of traffic the trails in the area get that the kid with the slingshot was trying to tell me. At 7am this morning I heard something walking outside my tent so I sat up and looked out. Apparently the very few trails alongside the road are used by cattle ranchers to move their herd up and down the canyon. About 20 (big) cattle proceeded to walk within a foot of my tent as they lumbered past. Fortunately none of them stepped on me or my bike that was laying next to the tent. The rancher came up last and didn’t seem to care that I was camped there which was good.

Awesome scenery again today. I’ve never loved and hated anything in my life as much as I’ve loved and hated this highway. The constant up and downs can be brutal but damn is the view nice at the top. I’d probably do it again even knowing how hard its been. I did a little number crunching and in the last 10 days I’ve climbed almost 30,000 feet–a little higher than Mount Everest.

The weather has been phenomenal for days. It’s hot but there’s usually a nice breeze. The night got pretty cold (no frost) and the stars were out in force. It took me 5 seconds to spot Mars.

Staying in a kind of expensive (US $35) resort/motel but I was going through internet withdrawal so it’s worth it. The other couple places were almost the same price and they had no net access (OK, one place did but the manager didn’t know what the password was for the wireless). More dumb teenage girls thought my attempts to ask for a menu at the restaurant here were pretty funny. There must be a thing with teenage girls in this part of Mexico because I’ve never had anyone actually laugh before. I should have walked up to them and gave them a big freaking hug because my shirt smells like death.

One of the housekeepers just decided to peek in front window that was open with the curtains closed. She got a treat because its warm in here and I just got out of the shower.

Pictures on the way tonight (unrelated to last paragraph). Need to go eat.

GPX Track