256 miles

The wide shoulders and kind drivers of my first day in Mexico are long gone. As I approach Mexico City, the roads become increasingly dangerous and more busy by mid afternoon. The roads were so dangerous that I no longer felt safe taking my phone out to grab pictures of my surroundings. For the past 25 days I have been jotting down notes and writing short sentences for these blogs while I ride. When I’m riding, if a thought comes to me or I see something I want to capture I will usually whip on my phone and jot it down quickly. Now that the roads are so busy and dangerous I no longer feel safe even pulling out my phone for a brief second to take a picture. Typing out blog entries is undoubtedly out of the question. There will be no blog to write if I get hit by a car. Expect my blogs to become significantly shorter from now on. There may even be days where I just have a few sentences to type out and some pictures to attach. I have loved writing these entries, but is a luxury I may no longer be able to afford, especially as the rains approach. Even if the road becomes safe again, I cannot type on my phone when it is wet. I apologize in advance if this is one of my last thorough journal entries for quite some time.

My morning was fantastic. The shoulder was wide, and although the road was busy I felt totally safe and enjoyed the riding. There were beautiful mountains and the weather was nice and cool. I actually started the morning with my arm warmers on for the first time since Montana. I had camped at almost 6000 feet and it was quite chilly when I woke up. I had a short climb and then a long descent into Matehuala. as I rolled into town, the sun came up, illuminating large mountains, and two conical peaks that looked volcanic. The road is now dominated by semi trucks. There are almost no passenger vehicles on the roads between towns. I have never seen so many trucks in my life. When I begin riding at 3:50 AM, the road was already incredibly congested by a constant stream of semi trucks. They own this road and they don’t like me on it. They made that abundantly clear multiple times. The semis park in the shoulder as well, the drivers take breaks and nap. Every time I come across a truck that is parked in the shoulder. I have to come out and take the lane. This is incredibly dangerous for me. The truckers absolutely hate it when I ride in the road. If they see me in the road, they will honk and run me off intentionally. I absolutely have to stay in the shoulder, but it’s not always practical since there are commonly obstructions, like other trucks, in the shoulder. Increasingly in the afternoon, the shoulder would disappear completely. Especially on narrow bridges or in towns, the shoulder often becomes nothing more than the rumble strip. before the sun came up the road was lined with semi trucks. The highway I was on was like an interstate. Imagine if trucks were just allowed to park in the shoulder of the interstate at free will. That would be so dangerous, but that is the way it is here. I was able to take the bypass road around Matehuala. There was standstill traffic for several miles on this road which I was able to easily pass in the shoulder. I found out the reason for this traffic, a pileup of semi trucks. I do not know what happened for sure, but it looked like a semi had been parked in the shoulder and another semi driving at full speed had careened into the back of the parked semi. The sun was just coming up and it looks like the accident happened at least 30 minutes prior to my arrival. A trucker had probably dozed off at the wheel and drifted into the shoulder. There were five or six trucks that had then rammed into the back of the parked and crashed, semi creating a huge pile up, blocking the shoulder and one lane. Several of the semis were crushed like tin cans. I saw one of the cabs absolutely flattened from a distance and averted my gaze as I got closer in fear of what I might see if I looked too hard. This accident seemed to be foreshadowing for what was to come in the afternoon.

I made great progress in the morning and late afternoon. My legs felt fantastic once I reached some climbs by mid morning and I felt like I was absolutely flying. The road continued to get busy into San Luis Potosi, but I had a nice wide shoulder the whole time. I was writing on a brand new road that couldn’t have opened more than a couple of weeks ago. Mexico’s finest interstate with brand new asphalt and a wide shoulder. There was a lot of traffic congestion and at one point the road came to standstill for 3 or 4 miles. I was able to split the semi and keep biking at my normal speed through this traffic. My first stop of the day until I got past Sam Louis Potosi at 2 PM. Felt so good riding all day that I hadn’t wanted to stop. I was already at over 180 miles, and it only stops for a couple of brief bathroom breaks. I knew I had at least 80 more miles in my legs and was hoping for closer to 100 to get me into the outskirts of Queretaro. After I left the state of St. Louis Potosi, the road changed a lot. Road construction and maintenance seems to be handled at a state wide level, so every time I enter a new state the road surface and structure changes. Until this point in Mexico, all of the roads had been designed with a nice shoulder. That all changed after I left San Luis Potosi. There was a shoulder at times, but it would randomly disappear or be filled with the debris that was just never cleared. Before the busy roads have just been a nuisance, but now they were an active danger. The riding all of the suddenly made my adventures on the interstates and limited access freeways of America seem like a greenway ride. There truly are not roads in America that compare to the danger of riding here. The landscape became more arid and the large grasshoppers once again returned to the road. These guys were like three or 4 inches long. It was crazy how many of them there were. Covered in their smattered bodies. no joke, the right lane of the road was orange from so many grasshopper collisions.

The traffic was starting to wear me out a little bit. At around 4:30 I was riding on a stretch of road that only had a shoulder that was about 6 inches wide. These 6 inches were entirely rumble strips so I had to come out and take, the smallest part of the right lane to ride on. In reality, I was riding on the white line, not even the actual road. Anytime I came remotely close to the actual road. I would get honked at and buzzed by semi trucks. Even if I was riding on a white line, they would take offense to my presence. One truck decided to buzz me while I was riding on the white line and after his cab passed, his draft pulled me in towards his trailer and my shoulder made physical contact with the trailer as it sideswiped me. It was just a glancing blow, and I was able to stay upright, but it was still nerve wracking. 30 minutes later I was riding in the shoulder and saw a parked semi up ahead. The semi was taking up the entire shoulder so I had to move into the right lane to pass. I waited till it was clear and then crossed the rumble strips to the white line. There was a semi coming from behind me that I was aware of, but he had space to pass me, granted, only with about a foot to spare, but he decided that he would rather run me off the road. Right as he passed me, he laid on the horn, let me know that he was running me off the road intentionally. His cab came along right as I was coming up on the parked semi. He cut his cab into my straight line, leaving about a foot gap between him and the parked semi in the shoulder. If I had held my line, I would’ve gone straight into this gap. However, my bike and I are wider than 1 foot. I would’ve been caught between the parked semi and the moving semi and would’ve been shredded in a meat grinder between the two. It would almost certainly have resulted in a fatal accident. I had about 15 feet to react and I was moving at 25 miles an hour, so this wasn’t enough time to do much of anything. I instinctually turned as hard as I could into the parked semi, choosing to crash instead of being turned into hamburger meat. I had to lean into the turn with all my weight and had so little time I couldn’t even brace for impact. I ran into the back of the parked semi at 25 miles an hour. It was like running into a brick wall at full speed. I crumpled up like a wet rag upon impact. My adrenaline was surging, so I couldn’t even feel any pain when I stood back back up I could tell that I hadn’t broken anything, but I was almost positive my bike hadn’t fared so well. Sure enough, my front rim was cracked. I talked about my carbon rims being my first point of failure just a couple of days ago. It seems that I have jinxed myself. My front shifter was also not working well. Although cracked, my front wheel was holding air and I managed to get back on my bike and ride on. I was very shaken mentally but also physically I couldn’t stop shaking. The threat of getting run over seems so real now. About 15 minutes after I crashed, the pain from various bruises and lacerations started to surface and I realized that I was banged up a bit more than I first thought. I kept riding, because what else what else was I going to do? The sun began to set, and it got dark. I didn’t even watch the sunset, I was laser focused on the road, trying my best not to get hit. The farther I biked the worse the road seem to become, and the worse my mental state seemed to deteriorate. My rear red blinking light had been smashed in the crash so I had even less protection from the semi trucks in the dark. I stopped at a convenience store a few miles before the hotel I was supposed to stay at. I got off the bike and was shaking. I picked out my dinner and made my way to the cash register. I was still shaking and must’ve been pale as death. The woman behind the counter stared at me like something was wrong with me. I was filthy, covered in dirt and blood from my crash and tired from a big day on the bike and shaken, and I was showing my fear. I must’ve looked awful. I certainly felt awful. My head was cloudy and I had a sick feeling in my stomach. She told me that her system was down and I could only pay with cash, so I went out to my bike bags and grabbed some cash I had at the bottom of one of my bags. In the process, I unpacked the entire bag and when repacking I must have forgotten to put back in the Ziploc bag with my charging cables. This bag also had US$50 hidden in it. I have hidden cash and various compartments of my bike so that if I do get robbed, hopefully, I still have some money left in random spots. I rolled out of the gas station and didn’t realize my mistake until I got to the hotel. I biked back to the convenience store, but they were closed. I knew my charging cords were gone. The prospect of US$50 was too much for anyone to pass up on. I was incredibly mad at myself for such a thoughtless and stupid error, I didn’t matter that I was in a state, I should have been smarter. I need to be more levelheaded in intense situations. This is some thing that keeps getting me in trouble over and over on this trip, both mentally and physically. I crawled into bed, feeling broken and unsure of what the future held.