Keep up with Mike of the Brigada Mariposa biking around the Americas!

Sunday, December 31, 2006

¡Feliz año nuevo!

Happy New Years from La Brigada Mariposa, stationed in Puerto Vallarta and San Cristobal De las Casas. Well, Andy is in San Cris and Pxl and I are ringing it in in PV. The Hostel Oasis here is a wonderful place to be, although they are full and we are camped on the roof. It´s a deal and a half - great people, nightlife and a wonderful beach. The gay scene here is pretty cool - I wish there was a gay scene for straight people.

We´ve found great beaches here in the Jungle - I slept at Palmitas in a hamock at a beachfront resturant. We´re going to visit Lee from Tucson this week in Bara de Navidad. Can´t wait!

Many thanks to Adam Lau for building me a new wheel - it´s a beauty. Also thanks to my family who is on vacation here for bringing it to me. Much love for California, Davis, the Bay Area and all my friends and family there. May this new year bring many happy moments, lots of bicycling, good food and the indictment of those criminals in the White House.

Happy new year!

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Tropical Navidad

It’s just different traveling on a bicycle. Sure, we go in a day what a car can do in an hour, but we see and smell and feel and taste and hear the places through which we travel. This effect is sometimes undesirable – like on the auto pista, where exhaust is choking you, burning your eyes and lungs, horrible noise assaulting you all too often. But it is also the best feeling ever when you are alone on the road, seeing the birds flying around you, the butterflies, the ringtails, the weird tropical trees, the sun warming your bare back while the wind caresses you continuously. We lucked out and met a man who worked for the freeway company. He informed us that there is a new toll road through the jungle to Tepic, but since construction is almost complete and the road is not open to vehicles yet, we should bike it. 200 km of nearly car-free bliss makes a wonderful way to enter the tropics. Three days of sheer happiness. We passed the tropic of cancer now, and are in a totally different eco-system than before. I’m excited to explore a mangrove today.

We are healthy and happy, staying safe and speaking Spanish that improves each day.

The holidays are really celebrated well here. People get together with their families, travel, or make merry. There are many parties, a packed zocalo and people bursting with amistad (and cerveza). I prefer this celebration to the hyper-consumeristic Northern tradition of buying lots of petroleum based crap, wrapping it up in virgin paper, unwrapping the crap, land filling the paper, acknowledging the crap and watching commercial packed football games while eating obscene amounts of meat. What happened America? Why the need to consume so much junk?

I propose a new holiday, to be celebrated everywhere. It would be called Celebration of Life Day, a day where everyone does their very best not to kill ANYTHING - especially animals. No meat would be eaten, no animals slaughtered, no trees cut, no cars driven (driving inevitably causes the death of many butterflies and other life). Fruit and nuts would be consumed with gusto, as would wine and other gifts from nature. People could dance, sing, love, go ride a bike, go for a hike, camp, swim, go to the beach – celebrating life by paying attention to the abundance of it all around us. Leave the cities (but not by car) and see the wilderness, do more to expand the diversity of life around oneself, maybe in a garden.
Sadly, I doubt the (dominant) attitude back home would be very positive about such a holiday. I can’t imagine Bush or any congressperson proposing such a day. However, I know many people that would embrace such a holiday. Let’s have a dialog! A Celebration of Life Day!

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Cuatro!


Cuatro!
Originally uploaded by SpokenWorld.
Here´s a typical crowd with an atypical gesture

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Sinaloa Amable

We´ve crossed some landmarks recently, crossing from Sonora into Sinaloa, crossing the tropic of cancer and spending over a month biking in Mexico. We arrived in Los Mochis last week, a city spawned by a north american cooperative´s venture to create a utopic city on the shores of the Gulf of California - an effort which required them to dig a huge trench to divert fresh water into town, a project that took two years, but got taken over by a lone capitalist and a different city was created in the model of New York.

In a hotel lobby I found a newspaper that had a few articles about tourism in Sinaloa. Apparently, the US diplomat to Sonora and Sinaloa put out a travel advisory for Americans to avoid travel in the state of Sinaloa. I thought this was dumb from the start, but am now convinced that this man is an idiot: I´ve never met more genuinely friendly, outgoing, generous, happy people anywhere. We´ve been hugged by a crowd of people at a gas station. We´ve been invited to people´s homes to camp. Girls from the bolt shop bought us Lunch at a Chineese resturant (where pxl´s sleeveless t was scandalous). They gave us gifts for the dia de la Virgen de Guadalupe. Roaming agricultural irrigation workers offer us shelter and cokes for breakfast. Everyone wants to help us, give us a ride to get food, give us advice, build us a fire, or just stand around supportively.

Sometimes, people ask why is it that they cannot go to the U.S. This is a hard one to answer, but I can only convey that I don´t agree with these policies and would be as friendly to them in California as they are to me here. After all, it was part of Mexico. But to explain why those policies exist, the institutional and cultural racism, hipocritic trade policies, xenofobia, ignorance... it saddens me. People here brag about how free it is here compared to the north, and many times I see examples of this, for better or worse. Why is this? My spanish is good enough to explain the prision-industrial complex, the privitization of prisons, subsequent legislation that creates more prisoners, the racism and injustice there too...

We´re now in the tropics and have left the desert, on to the Jungle!

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Sinaloa

We`ve survived our longest journey on the Autopista yet and made it to Los Mochis where we´re resting for a few days. Drivers in Mexico seem to be more courtious than their northern counterparts, with the exception of those truckers that see it fit to hit their engine breaks alongside of us (BBBRRAAATTTPPPPTTHHHAAAPPPAA!!!!!!!!!! - the worst sound I can imagine at this point). There seems to be a lot of SUVs with California plates headed south for the holidays, (over)packed with gifts and other stuff. Those CA plates tend to give us less space than the locals as well. Maybe they can´t see as well from behind the glittery bows and plastic junk they have packed the vehicle with. Or maybe Los Angeles breeds spiteful drivers (it would be hard not to be bitter - bikes don`t have to wait in traffic).

On the autopista we have: fewer dogs chasing us (from 30/day to nearly 0), more trucks, more road grime, fewer places to break, more checkpoints and soldiers, more friendly honks, more unfriendly honks, more horns that sound like sirens, less chillness in general. I hope to get off it soon, but it seems to be the best route south from here for a ways.

We continue to be met with entusiastic friendlyness and good cheer - I wonder if Mexicans bike touring in the US would be met with such kindness. I should hope so.

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Valle de Yaqui


Biking is a wonderful feeling. Biking into pueblitos of decayed brick structures, adobe homes, bare footprints in the dirt and 30 Yaqui children running after you is something altogether different. It´s grounding, more real than real. We often have to greet and spend quite a bit of time with all the kids from whatever village we stop at. We´re an oddity - and odd things attract attention, as well as ever more oddness. Wierd, wonderful things happen almost every day. Biking across a landbridge that appears on no map to happen upon a beautiful island hotspring is a recent example. Kicking it with the road construction crews that are impressed that (a) we biked here from Tucson and (b) that we just slid across their recently wetted mud street. The guy driving the grater, Jose Luis, deserved a badge (BBSB).

My wheel is going to fail. Very soon, I´m affraid. I´m up to 4 broken spokes, a couple nipples ripping their way through my rim and a stripped out hub. Barely holding it together, but I´m happy with overall performance from (newly dubbed) Osita (the bike).

Some amazing photos should be up today.