194 miles

I feel good, like really good. As grateful as I am to call the United States home, I’m extremely excited to be in Mexico. The warm-up is done. The real test of the Pan-American begins now. Alaska, Canada, and continental US was all a big warm-up. The first 4,500 miles of this trip were a spin out to get my legs ready and my mind strong for the next 9,500 miles. The next week will be incredibly telling of how the rest of this trip will go. Can I sustain myself in a foreign country, in the desert, all by myself on a fatigued mind and a fatigued body? Yesterday I said that I was going to take it slow and settle into a rhythm here in Mexico. I don’t think I’m going to do that. I’m going to take it day by day and if I feel good, then I’ll push on. I have to be more regimented now. I kind of need to know where I plan on camping most nights. It’s harder to just pull over on the side of the road and camp anywhere. That means I have to set more concrete goals in advance. I can’t wait to see how the next couple of days go. If I can turn out a couple 200 mile days in a row that would do wonders for my mindset. Right now I’m trying to block out everything that’s in the past, both the good and the bad. I’m starting a new trip. From Prudhoe Bay to del Rio Texas was just the warm-up, like the ride from the hotel to the start line of a race. The real ride begins now.

I left my hotel on the American side of the border in Del Rio at 6:45 AM. It was still dark as I made my way through the city to the Mexico border. Before I started rolling it had rained for about 30 minutes. The culmination of three days of intense headwind resulted in a 30 minute storm. As I approach the Rio Grande, the road turned into a two lane divided highway with tall fences on either side. Bright LED lights illuminated the highway at short intervals. It looked like the road was under a microscope, which it is on the US side. I was waved through the American side without so much as a second glance. I rode over the Rio Grande and into Mexico. The Mexican border agents tried to waive me straight through without even checking my passport. I could’ve gone straight into Mexico, but I knew that would be a fatal mistake for this ride. I could get back across the northern border without a Mexican entry stamp in my passport, but I would not be allowed into Guatemala without an official entry stamp into the state of Mexico. It’s a little bit annoying that this isn’t a well-known fact or advertised at all by border patrol. Lucky for me, I knew I must get a stamp from personal experience from my trip this spring. Other bikepackers have not been so lucky. There have been many Pan-American cyclists who did not collect an entrance stamp in Mexico, and upon reaching the Guatemalan border were told they had to go all the way back to their Mexican point of entry to get a stamp before they could move on. This would obviously end my record attempt. I had to go out of my way to get a stamp and it took about 20 minutes for the guy behind the counter to process me. Since my stay in Mexico will probably be longer than seven days, I had to pay a $55 entrance fee. That seems really steep. I could maybe have gotten away without paying this fee, and I might be out of the country in seven days, but I’m taking no risks. I would be incredibly mad at myself if I foiled my own record attempt by messing up a simple logistical note or because I tried to cut a corner somewhere. I rolled out of the border checkpoint and through the open gates into Ciudad Acuña. On the US side, the town of Del Rio had been set back from the border and for about a mile leading up to the crossing there been nothing but desert. I assume that US does this so it’s a lot easier to find immigrants crossing illegally. On the Mexican side, as soon as I exited the checkpoint gates, I was immediately in the midst of Ciudad Acuña. What had moments before been a two lane highway was now just a city street. When I crossed from Canada into the United States, it had been extremely underwhelming, as expected. It’s impossible to tell a difference between one side of the border from the other. This morning, it was like stepping into a different world. It wasn’t just a language change, the architecture was completely new, most of the businesses were completely new, the cars are different, the roads are different, it looks like a traditional Mexican city, which is a lot different than the traditional American city. I was expecting this abrupt change, but I still thought it was really cool. It’s incredible how some borders are virtually nonexistent, and others are an incredibly stark line of division. Unfortunately, it seems like the more similar countries are economically and racially, the less stringent their border. It’s a bit of a sad testament to division humanity. At the European Union. Different countries have different peoples and different nations, but for the part the European Union is a homogenous, majority caucasian, majority wealthy—from a global perspective—homogenous group. the EU member states have virtually no borders. On the other hand, the racial and socioeconomic differences between the US and Mexico have given rise to a militarized division line. Obviously I’m being reductive in my summarization, and border security is important, I am just fund the security at different borders interesting and a bit sad too.

I stopped at an ATM for some pesos and then made my way out of Acuña. The streets were alive and traffic was pretty busy. All the buildings are right up right up against the road and commonly painted bright colors. While there are still chain stores, most businesses look to be local with handpainted signs on their facades. Mexican flags flew everywhere. National pride was much more on display than in America. The streets became incredibly rough and pools of standing water from the brief rain shower stood at every corner. The water was a murky black and I was soon covered and a layer of grime. As I made my way out of the city, dogs ran around me as kids walked to school and adults made their way to work. I’ve been so used to being in sleepy interstate towns on the US side of the border for the past week that the movement and life of it all was an incredibly welcoming sight. There were a lot of people on bikes, not bikes like mine, but bikes for transportation around town. The roads were full of pedestrians and life. The traffic was busy and rogue, but the drivers are also looking out for people on the roadway. While it can feel unsafe to be biking on the roads here, I actually think it may be safer in some respects. Cyclists are not a common site in Mexico, cyclist like me riding on the main roads between towns that is. However, motorcyclist are. The motorcycles here usually don’t go as fast as the cars, they go 30 or 40 miles an hour and stay in the shoulder. I’m obviously not on a motorcycle, but from a distance, I might be mistaken for one, and the cars are certainly looking out for motorcycles. So in general, I would say they spot me well before the average American driver does. Because there are so many motorcycles and old cars that can’t keep up with the main traffic, they tend to drive in the shoulder. This may sound bad, like they are driving where I want to be biking, but in reality, it means that the shoulder is clear of debris and generally well-maintained, where there is a shoulder. That being said, a lot of the roads I was on today had no shoulder at all. However, where there is a shoulder, I feel incredibly safe. I also think drivers here are a little bit less distracted than in America. I know there are certainly still drivers on their phone or not paying attention, but if you’re driving in Mexico while texting you’re going to end up hitting something pretty soon. Between all the dogs, livestock, motorcycles, pedestrians, olds slow cars, potholes, and random debris in the roads, if you aren’t paying attention, you’re going to hit something and pay the price sooner than later.

The road I was on directly out of Acuña was very nice. The shoulder was wide and the pavement was smooth. It rained a little last night and the sky still hung heavy with clouds. It was a little bit cooler than it had been in subsequent mornings, and most importantly, the wind was no longer coming from the south. It was coming from the east at only about 10 miles an hour. This meant that instead of the headwind, I had a sidewind which didn’t slow me down much at all. In fact, at times it became a very light tail crosswind which nudged me along anytime I turned west. It’s not a tailwind, but it’s a heck of a lot better than a headwind and that’s all I can ask for. I rode for a couple of hours before getting to Zaragoza. I made my first stop for food in Mexico at an Oxxo convenience store. These stores are absolutely everywhere. It is by far the most abundant chain here. I’d seen one while I was in southern Mexico this spring, but I didn’t realize how monopolistic they are across the country. There was literally one every single block. As much as I railed on monopolistic companies creating a homogenous world, in a country where I am very unfamiliar with the foods and unsure of what will make me sick and what is OK for my weak gringo stomach to eat, it’s nice to know that every single city will have a store with the same exact food if I need it. I know that the Oxxo will have the electrolyte drinks I need, I know they will have the ice cream I am familiar with, the milk that is safe for me to drink, the meats that have been cooked well enough that my stomach will be able to take it. I want to be able to experience some really good local food while I’m down here, but I’m constantly on edge about getting food poisoning. Every time I go for a meal I have to weigh my options. As much as I want to eat the street food for every single meal, I know it’s only a matter of time before I get sick from something. I got food poisoning in Ecuador last winter and it put me in bed for 36 hours. If I get food poisoning similar to that I will not be able to ride for at least a day. It’s not that I can’t eat street food, it’s just that I need to be smart about what street food I do eat. Absolutely no produce, and I need to stay away from liquids. If I have any type of meat, I need to make sure that it’s been very thoroughly cooked and if it looks like whatever vendor I’m buying from isn’t cross contaminating even the slightest, then I need to move on to the next place. Liquids are the big thing though. I have to stay away from the tapwater from here to Ushuaia. The only countries I pass through from now until Argentina that have water that is safe to drink is Costa Rica and Chile. There are isolated pockets that I will go through that are on water systems that are safe for me to drink, mainly in big cities, but it’s always hard to tell when I can drink tapwater and when I can’t. As much as I hate buying plastic water bottles, it’s my only option if I want to stay healthy. It’s so incredibly wasteful to be buying upwards of 15 bottles of fluids per day. I feel awful about it every time I go into a store, but there’s really no other option. it’s especially difficult because there’s no recycling here and I know the majority of trash is not disposed of very well. It’s something that I had a hard time grappling with the last time I was in Central America. Then, I had a down day in El Salvador on the beach. It had rained all day and there was massive flooding. There was a river that ran right into the ocean at the beach I was on and it was carrying thousands and thousands of plastic water bottles straighten into the ocean. I know that a lot of the bottles I am drinking and throwing away will eventually end being burned, demoed, or washed out to sea. When I was in El Salvador, I filled up three garbage bags full of plastic trash i collected from the ocean to try to offset my impact in the slightest, but I know this doesn’t really count and it was just an effort to try to make myself feel better more than anything else. I took those bottles and threw them back into the trash, so they very well could’ve ended back out in the ocean.

Now that it’s so hot out the only thing that sounds really appetizing every time I stop is ice cream. Luckily ice cream here is really cheap and readily available. In the heat I’m trying to stop at least once every four hours, more like once every two in reality. Each time I get a little bit of ice cream and I pick up about a gallon of fluids. Today I think I drank about 5 gallons of fluids, about half of which was water, a quarter of which was electrolyte mix, and the remainder was a hodgepodge of soda, juice, and chocolate milk. One food item I am worried about missing is protein shakes. Over the past two weeks I’ve been relying on shakes for about 150 g of protein every day. I haven’t found any protein shakes down here yet so I’m not sure how I’m going to replace all that protein intake. Plant proteins are not available other than beans, but beans aren’t really easy to eat on the bike and in gas stations I can only find them in cold cans. I had a can of cold black beans for lunch, but it didn’t really feel like it helped my biking afterwards. The most obvious source of protein would be meat, but I hate the idea of getting almost 300 g of protein a day from chicken. That’s a lot of chicken. As I get more used to the offerings here hopefully I’ll be able to find enough protein in a good balance of items.

Riding through the towns, I am astutely aware that I’m in a new country, but out on the road in rural areas Mexico is almost indistinguishable from Texas. There are a few small differences. The roads aren’t quite as nice, the powerlines looks slightly different, the Barbwire cattle fences are different and the vegetation on the shoulder of the road is much taller. Other than that, I can’t really tell a difference between today and yesterday for the first 50 miles. A bit past Zaragoza I saw a break in the flat desert. Far to the west, the Cuatrociengas mountains rose up to meet the clouds. This was the same range I’d seen yesterday while biking near Armistad. All day the mountains got bigger until I was thoroughly encompassed by large mountains on all sides by the time I got to Monclova. In the morning these mountains were monolithic blue framed against the low angle sun. But as the sun got higher in the sky, the intricate ridges and rock faces of the mountains revealed themselves. These mountains are covered in vegetation. It doesn’t look like woods, it’s probably more of the same mesquite, sagebrush, and grasses that are all around me in the valley below. But because the soil is so rocky, many of the mountains are very fluted from erosion and lack vegetation on their steeper points. Every ridge and peak of these mountains seems more defined without a forest growing on them. They are beautiful mountains. The only other mountains like these I’ve seen are those in Big Bend, which makes sense because that’s only about 200 miles from Monclova. I’m so incredibly happy to be back in the mountains. The riding today was very ideal with some shallow grade climbing, but not too much elevation gain. But at the same time I get to look up at large peaks on all sides. It’s very similar to the style of riding that I had in Montana, only now I’m in the desert. I didn’t see any agriculture all day. There are Barbwire fences lining the road, almost the entire way, but I never saw any cattle. I saw two horses in town and of course there were an abundance of chickens, but beyond that I saw no crops. It’s too dry and the soil is too poor to grow any crops without irrigation. I don’t know if Mexico has laws against irrigation or if people simply have never invested in that infrastructure, but I didn’t see any of the irrigation infrastructure that covers much of America. It also didn’t get as hot today as it has been in previous days. I’m not sure why it wasn’t as hot, but the high of only 92 as opposed to 100 was a very welcome change. To be honest, I loved the riding today. Not having a headwind had a large part to play in my increased mood, but the riding was undoubtedly more entertaining than it has been for the past week. There’s a certain novelty to being in a new country that played into my enjoyment of today’s ride, but I also just really like riding in this part of Mexico. The mountains are really stunning. Mentally I needed a day like today. It wasn’t my biggest day of this trip, in fact, it was still below average in terms of mileage, but it was solid. It was short and sweet. My legs felt good, my average was really solid, and my mind was in a great spot all day. I enjoyed the waves that I got and the drivers were remarkably respectful. Nobody seems to have any qualms with me riding on the road. The caveat is, if I want to ride on the road like a vehicle, I’m going to be treated like a vehicle. I was given safe passes, but there’s no 3 foot law here in Mexico and cars don’t see a problem with passing you with about a foot to spare. I don’t mind this because I trust the drivers here, but it still takes a little bit of getting used to. The roads can be very narrow, so these passes are actually much safer than a wide pass would be anyways. Also, close passes give you a rush of wind at your tail, an artificial tailwind, which, even if it only lasts for about a quarter of a second, can be a nice boost.

I stopped in Sabinas at around one for some food and liquids. This is the first real city that I’d been into. All of the other population centers I’ve been through were just towns. The road became incredibly potholed and uneven and traffic started choking off my route. The cool thing about biking through busy cities in Central America and Mexico is that the traffic generally doesn’t move much more than about 25 miles an hour, so I can ride with the flow of traffic which makes it feel safer and more fun. The drawback is that if I’m riding behind a car I have less time to react to the road surface changes and potholes become a huge hazard. Some of the potholes here are absolutely massive and if I ended up riding through one of them, it could be catastrophic. Some of these are sure to cause a crash and it doesn’t take that big of a pot hole to crack a carbon rim if I’m not paying attention. I think my carbon wheels are the first point of failure on my bike. It’s pretty hard to snap a frame. If that ends up happening I’ll probably have much bigger problems on my hands like a major car crash. Most other things that can break on my bike, I can fix. If my carbon rims crack though I’m in quite a pickle. In Sabinas, I stopped at a little grocery store. I locked my bike to a metal fence right outside the store and two young men approached me and tried to tell me some things in Spanish. I asked for them to please repeat it a little bit slower because I had no idea what they were saying. They didn’t repeat it any slower and kind of just walked off. they weren’t the cleanest cut figures, and in the back of my mind I was a little bit worried that they were trying to tell me my bike wasn’t safe there. I decided to duck into the store, but was a little bit anxious about it and tried to make things move as fast as possible. While I was grabbing my food inside the store, another young man approached me and asked me what time it was. There was a clock right above my head and had his phone in his hand, he clearly did not need to know the time and even if he did, why would he have the only gringo in the store? This made me quite anxious because if someone ever comes up to you and ask you, “what size shoes are those” or “what size watch is that” or “what time does your watch say”, means that you might be about to get robbed because they like what they see. I knew I wasn’t going to get mugged in the middle of the grocery store, but I was anxious about my bike so I grabbed my stuff and headed out as fast as possible. I don’t know how dangerous it actually is around here. I don’t fear for my own safety really at all, but I just worry about my bike getting stolen. I’m not sure how much I should be concerned. I’ve talked to several other bikepackers that I’ve met along the way and of the five of them that I have met going north, three of them were robbed in Mexico, and one of them had his entire bike stolen. I’d really love not to have my bike stolen. I think it’s healthy to be on edge a little bit and always have it in the back of my mind as a possibility, but at the same time I know 99.9% of the people around here are super nice and it feels wrong to put a blanket statement of fear on an entire people. In reality, I don’t think my bike is more likely to get stolen here than it would in big cities in the United States. I didn’t have to really worry about my stuff getting stolen in the United States because I was in rural areas almost the entire time and never went through any big dangerous cities. I would be just on edge in Chicago or New York or St. Louis or Baltimore or San Francisco etc. as I am here in Mexico. In fact, many US cities are considered more dangerous than the cities I’m going through in Mexico simply because of the murder rate. The cities with the highest murder rate in the world are in Mexico, but my route, intentionally avoids these cities and, I’m not in the slightest bit worried about getting murdered. That’s mostly cartel on cartel violence, which I’m not worried about. I’d have to go out of my way to do something incredibly stupid to piss off the cartel. That would be really hard to do actually. When I’m riding through smaller towns, or stop in the smaller towns like I did in Zaragoza this morning, I feel completely safe. It’s only the big population centers where I’m on edge.

Still, my stop at the grocery store was a little bit nerve-racking. I hopped back on my bike, but I only went about 50 feet before I stopped at a burrito stand in the parking lot. As I was getting my burrito about 10 teenagers walked up and started talking to me. I was pretty bummed to realize that my Spanish-speaking abilities have drastically decreased. It makes sense, I haven’t really practiced my Spanish at all. I haven’t taken a Spanish class in over two years. If I were smart, I would’ve taken a Spanish class this summer, but to be honest, I’ve always been bad with language and didn’t want the extra work. Even if my Spanish had been good, all these people were trying to talk to me at once so I understood absolutely nothing. I was trying to get my bearings when I felt something grab my calf. I jumped for a moment. I was kind of freaked out in my mind for a second. Here I was surrounded by a group of young men, and someone was grabbing me. It felt like that could be a really bad situation. It turns out, one of the kids just wanted to feel my calf and soon there were four were five kids all squeezing my calves. They hadn’t asked or even warned me, they just went in for a squeeze. I was a little shocked. I didn’t mind that much, but it was pretty weird and a little bit annoying that they just started touching me. Ultimately, they were all really nice and asked me a lot of questions about my trip. I was able to answer some of their questions, but some of what they were saying was totally lost on me. At one point one of the kids told me to give him five US dollars. I told him no, I wasn’t going to give him my money but he was very insistent that I should give him US dollars. It felt less like a threat and more of just wanting to have money, but I was still a little put off by him. The whole exchange was a little strange. One thing that I kind of picked up on in the spring, and was reinforced in my mind today, is that people in Mexico are much more forward and bold in their social interactions with me than people in America ever would be. I don’t think it’s just that I’m a gringo either, I think, people are just more straightforward here. I get cat called a lot, usually in good humor, and anytime I stop people are quick to come up to me or start looking at my stuff or in the case of today straight up touching me. In many ways, I think it’s cool that people are more bold socially. As I sat in the Oxxo parking lot eating this morning, it was clear that strangers were much more likely to engage in spontaneous conversation. At the same time, it has its downsides for someone like me who would rather fly under the radar.

I grabbed my burrito for the road and left Sabinas heading south as ever. As I left Sabinas, the desert closed back in, and I got ever closer to the looming mountains. By mid afternoon, I worked my way up a very low grade climb through a notch in the valley before dropping into a very low-grade descent into what would be the valley where the city of Monclova is. It was a pretty sunny afternoon, but it was still partly cloudy and every time the clouds covered up the sun I was grateful because the temperature seemed to drop at least 10°. The clouds made the mountains all that more beautiful, and as I rode into Monclova, the sun punched through the gaps in the cloud cover and illuminated the sky with the many colors of the sunset.

Upon arriving in Monova, I found a supermarket and stopped for dinner supplies. In the United States and Canada I always bring my bike into the supermarket and either lock it by the cash registers or just walk through the store with it. In the United States I am almost ubiquitously allowed to just walk through the store with my bike. However, almost universally in my experiences in Mexico and Central America, bikes are not permitted inside. This means I have to lock my bike outside which always makes me nervous. There are almost always security guards at the entrance of the store. I usually beg them to allow me to lock it as close to their post as possible. If they are really nice they will let me lock it just inside the store and promise to watch it, other times they are apathetic to my fate. Since bikes are such a common means of transportation here there are almost always bike racks outside of the supermarkets. Whenever I have to lock my bike to these racks it makes me quite nervous, not only that it will get bumped by others taking their bikes in and out, but I feel like the risk of my bike getting stolen is much higher when it’s locked outside than inside. I usually try to pay a security guard a couple of USD to keep an eye on my bike. This doesn’t always work, but usually the USD can go a long way. Inside the store I get a little paranoid the entire time I’m shopping. I try to get in and out as quick as possible. At the Gutierrez supermarket the security guards would not let me bring my bike inside and I had to lock it to the rack. There were tons of people all about, a lot of people were loitering in the parking lot and on the curb in front of the supermarket. The store was very busy and I rushed as fast as I could, picking up some very random items before making my way to check out. They didn’t have any plastic bags, kudos to Mexico, but unfortunate for me. I had to stuff my groceries down my jersey, in my hydration vest, and strapped to my bike in whatever way possible. Still, I couldn’t find a good place to put my tostadas, so I just carried them in my mouth during the 1 mile bike ride to my hotel. I checked in, showered, ate, and was in bed by eight. I hadn’t started that early this morning, but I’d been moving pretty fast all day without any wind so I’d managed to put a solid day down in a short manner. Now that I’m in Mexico, I need to start much earlier in the morning than I have been. Last week I talked about slowly adjusting my sleep schedule, pushing back my wake up time by 30 minutes every morning through the US, but that never ended up happening. My plan is now just to shock the system with an early wake up tomorrow and hope that I can get away with it. I have enough time to get an okay night of sleep even if I am going to wake up at three. I let myself I could probably sleep for 24 hours straight right now, so I know that a 3 AM wake up is going to be brutal no matter what time I go to bed. Time will tell how my circadian rhythm can adjust to such an early wake up. Now that I am in Mexico, I will be staying in hotels much more consistently. Up to this point in my trip, I am staying in a hotel roughly one of every four nights. I will be staying in hotels and hostels much more frequently now. This is good and bad. When I look at my riding, some of my shortest days have come after stays in a hotel. I think this is more by virtue of me pressing on late into the night to get to hotels, then subsequently sleeping in than anything else. But it is undeniable that checking into a hotel and getting to bed after a shower takes a longer time than simply pulling over on the side of the road and throwing my sleeping bag in the dirt. Regardless, it is nice to have a shower and I eat better dinners in hotels. It will be especially nice once I start getting consistent daily thunderstorms in the tropics.