01/03 I can’t believe my first day of class is tomorrow. I hope I manage to stay out of trouble unlike every other time I’ve been in school. Sleep better come quick tonight because I was up until 5am writing back to some guy on reddit.com who annoyed me. People are so narrow-minded sometimes.

Tlaquepaque is a city right next to Guadalajara so it was a short ride today. The first thing I checked for when I woke up was the sun. It was out. So long rain. Guadalajara has lots of sights to see being the 2nd biggest city in Mexico (3 million people). Riding around wasn’t bad at all but I think it being Sunday had a lot to do with it. There were a lot of people walking around the central cathedral district. Can’t say I blame them because it turned out to be a beautiful day and there was so much to see and do.

Turns out I make a good tourist attraction too. 2 police officers on bicycles rode up to where I was taking a picture and started asking all kinds of questions about my gear. They were just curious though–it wasn’t a shakedown or anything. The racks drew the most questions. They didn’t have any and I bet they thought have bags mounted right on the bike was pretty sweet. While they were still standing there more and more people kept coming over to ask questions. Next thing you know there are 20 people standing around me in the plaza. It was pretty cool. The family in the picture below gave me their number and invited me to stay at their place in Mexico City if I get down that way.

Next stop was to track down my Mexican hosts for the next three weeks. It was only a 3 mile ride from Guadalajara so I took my time riding over. Off one of the side streets I saw a bicycle shop so I headed over. Ever since the rain day yesterday one of the gear shift cables has felt really tight. The dad runs the place with his wife/kids so he had them get my bike on a stand and bring him some tools. He spent the next 45 minutes cleaning the cables, the chain and the derailleurs like they’ve never been cleaned before. Then when I went to pay him he wouldn’t take any money! Wow. I’ll stop back over when I find something cool I can bring them.

Next stop was the plaza and market streets in Tlaquepaque. Took lots more pictures and then left. I’ll be spending a lot of time there because it’s only 2 blocks from where I’m staying. Met a gorgeous girl outside one of the stores. I think I’m keeping her.

I’m liking the Olympus camera. It tends to wash out parts of the picture if the lighting is bad but the Pentax did that too. The shutter lag and start up time, things some other people complained about, didn’t bother me at all. I kept the box just in case but its looking good so far. This morning I taxied over to Best Buy and exchanged the SD card. Left my hotel room key in the hotel room and couldn’t remember the name of it so I walked back. Glad it was only a mile (and a $2 cab ride).

The house I’m staying in is very luxurious. It’s not just one house; it’s kind of like a mini compound because there are 2 separate houses sharing the same fenced-in property. The private 3 car underground garage and only entrance, is protected by a wrought iron gate so my bike should be safe and sound outside. I stuck the rain cover on it and it’s out of sight from the street. The mom, Grace and her 2 sons and daughter live here. The daughter lives in the 2nd house. Both places are used to house people going to the Spanish school. The room is the one complaint I have. The bed is short and isn’t up against a wall at the head or foot so parts of me are going to be hanging off the end. The worst part is that it sits on the 2nd floor right over a fairly busy street and the window lets a lot of noise through. There’s either bar or a party a couple doors down too. I can almost see having to move to another place if sleep becomes an issue.

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12/27 Another painful day. I’m going to switch seats tonight and see how the narrower one does. I can’t take too much more of this. Riding is hard enough on this road without having to shift around in my seat all day.

Beautiful scenery along the highway pretty much all day. The free road ran more or less parallel to the toll road but it wasn’t as flat which worked out perfectly because the views were better. There was one stretch where they joined together and I got to enjoy a luxury that I haven’t had since I left Mazatlan–a wide shoulder. It was kind of funny in a couple spots where they had rumble strips set up to slow traffic down. There would be a dozen street vendors lining the road with booth set up to sell what mostly appeared to be shrimp. Some of them even tried sell me some.

Staying at a motel in Acaponeta tonight. It’s a pretty big building and I thought it might be too expensive. It was only US $12 though. When I walked inside I looked up and was surprised to see that there’s no roof. It must get a little wet in here during rainy season. Walked around the town square for a bit checking out the sights. The central cathedral is huge. First town I’ve seen with a fountain in the town square too. There were lots of vendors sells pretty much everything on the outside edge of it. I bought a big chunk of what I think was honeycomb. Also got a big bag of dried fruit. Hopefully none of this makes me sick because all the food is out in the open and there were lots of bees enjoying the honey. No flies though so I should be OK.

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12/18 Here’s a short version of what happened over the last 24 hours. Rode 75 miles and made it to La Paz in one piece. Had a brutal headwind all day and some hills but nothing too bad. I was just really glad to be in La Paz. For the next couple hours I rode around the city checking out the huge street market and trying not to get run over. At 6pm, after finding a cheap motel (but not registering for a room yet), I headed over to an internet cafe. That’s when I discovered that the ferry to Mazatlan leaves in 2 hours and not again until Tuesday. There’s a Sunday ferry but I think that’s reserved for cows or hazardous materials or something.

The sun has set by this point, the ferry is 13 miles from the cafe and I’m tired and quite starving by now. I decided that 5 more days in La Paz would be less than ideal so I turned on my front/rear lights and started riding. It was a terrible experience and I thought of turning back many times. Riding at night is bad enough but I was on a rural road with occasional semi’s, cars, no shoulders and zero street lights. I wasn’t even 100% sure where I was going or if that was even the right place to buy a ticket. It was probably a stupid move riding out there but I was careful to move off the road when I needed to. The worst part was how tired I was about half way.

Somehow I made it though. I’d even found the right place to buy tickets. So US $130 later my bike and I were in line to board. Only problem was ticket salesperson thought bicycles were “cargo” and had me in the wrong line. I found this out after standing there for 20 minutes. Now I have 10 minutes to ride another mile to get to the right place before the ferry leaves. Brutal. Complaining wouldn’t help so I jumped back on my bike and raced over to the right place.

Finally I was on board and ready to go. They didn’t even check to see if I had a ticket. In the area where they had me park my bike I was happy to see 3 other touring bikes.

Funny thing is the ferry didn’t end up leaving for another two and a half hours. Not sure what the hold up was but I was kicking myself for riding like a madman fr 3 miles.

The ride across the gulf was 12 hours and it went pretty fast. After eating (cafe on board) my next goal was sleep. I didn’t get a cabin so at 11pm I curled up on 2 seats called it a night. The next morning I grabbed some breakfast and met some of the other touring bicyclists on board. Byron is heading down to Argentina. Chris is another guy that I first met in Alaska (still amazes me that you can run into the same people thousands of miles away like this). There were also a couple from Montreal but I don’t remember their names. They are heading north up the coast.

Once the ferry landed we all packed up and rode into town. Byron and I had a similar plan to hang out here for a couple days and figure out where we’re going next. We gave that even more thought while drinking Coronas down by the beach all afternoon.

Mazatlan is easily my favorite place in Mexico so far. From the bustling city streets filled with vendors to the sidewalks that that are completely different in front of every building it just feels different from the other cities. The town square was amazing as was the huge church next to it. More pics tomorrow. Best part– the motel is US $10.83 a night. It has hot water and a fan so I’m good.

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12/16 Yesterday I hung out in Ciudad Constitucion and didn’t do much of anything except relax and work on my web site a bit. It was so rare to actually have a working internet connection in the room. Usually I have to go sit outside. I saw Roland and Belinda ride by about 3pm but they didn’t see me. I met them back up in Alaska. They are on their way to Argentina too. The 3 guys I ran into for the last couple days passed me too. Maybe I’ll see everyone in La Paz.

La Paz isn’t too far so when I left this morning I figured I’d be looking at a Friday arrival. Today was an easy day of riding, minus a headwind, so I’ll probably end up there on Thursday. The big challenge of the day will be to get a ferry ticket to Mazatlan.

Didn’t see much of interest on the road today. There were a lot of roadside memorials though. Some of them were pretty elaborate too. I did notice one thing that I’m surprised I didn’t pick up on earlier. There are no mailboxes…anywhere. Or if there are I’m not seeing them. I don’t even think any of the buildings alongside the highway have numbers on them. Weird. Maybe everyone has to drive into the nearest town if they want mail?

3 large, carnivorous dogs came tearing out of a yard while I was riding peacefully down the highway. I yelled at them and they decided I wasn’t worth consuming. My Dog Dazzer failed me again. I really need to find a nice bamboo stick.

People were acting kind of stupid today. This happened twice– I’d be riding down the road when an 18-wheeler would come up behind me and another vehicle would be approaching from the front. Instead of just maintaining their speed and maybe moving over to the right just a little, the cars would slow down and almost come to a complete stop right before they got to me. So now the truck can’t pass and has to slow down to a crawl. If they would have just kept going they would have only slowed down the truck for a few seconds.

Camping out in the desert was a no go thanks to fences on both side of the road. About an hour before dark I finally had enough riding for the day and asked the owner of a ranch/market if I could camp there. No problem. So here I am in my tent with goats, roosters, dogs, cows and donkeys all running around.

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12/14 The highway into Ciudad Constitucion actually opened up into a 4 lane road which was a first since Tijuana. No bike lane or shoulder though. Still a fair amount of traffic. I wonder if it’ll be like this all the way to La Paz? Wouldn’t surprise me since all the tourist towns are closer now (Cabo San Lucas). Ciudad Constitucion is a good sized city with about 40,000 inhabitants. Unlike other towns/cities it doesn’t have a garbage dump or a section of decrepit-looking buildings on the outskirts of it. Found a great Chinese restaurant to have lunch. This time there were lots of pictures so I kind of knew what I’d be getting.

Some idiot in an unmarked white U-haul-like truck thought it would be funny to drive over into my lane and slam on his horn as he approached. I didn’t have a place to bail off the road and he didn’t come over far enough where I thought I’d have to dive into the ditch. Normally something like this would piss me off for the rest of the day but it was hard to stay mad when half the people that passed me waved or gave me the thumbs up.

For the first time someone spotted me as I was leaving my campsite this morning. It was a guy in a truck but he didn’t seem to care. I looked back down the road and I swore I could see the 2 German riders I saw late yesterday. They are heading up north from Argentina but I didn’t catch to where.

As noted on FB I finally broke 10,000 miles on my trip this morning. Oh and what a 10,000 miles it’s been.

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