Crossing the Desert, Again

Day 27 kt:38.6 ta: 973 gps:N 27 degrees 00.347' W 105 degrees 20.317'

I left the city with about four hours left until sunset. I spent some time at the internet cafe and, later, went to pick up my part at the taller de torno. After spending some time fixing my front saddlebag, it is now as good as new. Most of my riding, today, was flat and I can tell that it is flat all the way to Jimenez, Chihuahua and I can tell that it is going to remain flat because the distance on my GPS and that on a sign, on the side of the street, matched when I was about 50 kilometers away. It will probably be easy riding, tomorrow, but I could definitely be wrong.
Normally, in the desert, the number one hazard to my survival is dehydration. For this reason, I like to leave the city for the desert with no less than 10 liters of water. Water is always on my mind. I am intimately aware of the amount of water that I am carrying at any time.
The second most dangerous hazard to my survival is probably rattlesnakes. It is warm enough here that the snakes are not hibernating. For this reason I always step carefully when I am looking for a campsite. After selecting a campsite under a bridge, today, I walked by a large snake hole but did not see any snakes. I would like to see a rattlesnake in the wild some day, though, at a distance.
Desert scorpions and Black Widows are probably tied for third place. Both are potentially deadly and both could crawl into my sleeping bag unnoticed and bite me when I get in. Today, right before sunset, when I was looking for a place to put my tent, I saw a black widow. It was underneath a bucket that I had flipped over. It was bigger than I expected and I had to agitate with a stick to see the red spot on its abdomen to make sure it was what I thought. It indeed was. This was a picture perfect female specimen. It was quite beautiful. I took a picture of it and then left it in peace. I then promptly chose to put my tent about 100 feet away from it on the other side of the bridge. My tent was well zipped up so no black widow could enter. I see no reason to kill a creature because it poses a threat to me.

Day 28 kt:90.3 ta: 880 gps: N 26 degrees 17.558' W 103 degrees 52.862'

The land is flattening out and the mornings are not as cold as they were in the mountains. This makes for easier, though, less scenic riding. Jimenez seems like one of those towns that grow in the middle of farm and ranch country; like a smaller version of San Angelo, Texas. There is a tractor dealership there.
It should be pretty flat all the way to Torreon. This means my camping options are pretty limited. I am sleeping under a bridge for the second night in a row. Hopefully, there won't be any headwind as I ride, tomorrow.

Day 29 kt:101 ta: 737 gps: N 26 degrees 17.558' W 103 degrees 52.562'

The land is still flat, though, I can see the blue silhoettes of mountains in the distance. The desert is beautiful. Sometimes you just need to look a little more closely to find the beauty.
Despite the scarcity of water, life abounds here. There are large amounts of insects, birds, reptiles, and desert rodents. I don't always see them but I hear them scurrying away, in the brush, as I ride by. I have seen many hawks the last couple of days as they seem to be the top predator around here. I even had the priviledge of seeing them hunt.
Today, I discoverd that they will, indeed, let me ride on the toll roads for free. There are many posted signs that say that no bicyclists are allowed but that doesn't seem to bother the gatekeepers who blithely allow me to continue on my journey. The toll roads have big shoulders and seem to get less traffic so I don't feel like I always have to watch over my shoulder when I ride. There seems to be less places to stop and stock up on food and water, though.

Day 30 kt:103 ta:1163 gps: N 25 degrees 34.409' W 103 degrees 23.404'

Today, I wanted to ride straight through Torreon, Coahuila but I saw the perfect urban campsite as I was leaving the city. My campsite is in an urban wasteland type area with lots of overgrown bushes obscurring my tent. I am pretty sure that not many people go here because I had to make my own trails through some horrible, thorny, dead bushes.
I didn't notice until I was at my campsite, but I popped my first spoke of the trip, today. This is a problem that lightweights such as myself almost never have with their problem. With all my gear, though, my weight is a lot closer to the American average. This is about the only repair that I am not prepared to fix on the road. I can always keep rolling with this problem, I just may need to disconnect one of the brakes. Fortunately I am in the city and shouldn't have too much of a problem finding a bike shop to replace my spoke.
This is a large urban area as Gomez Palacio, Durango and Torreon, Coahuila are twin cities of the desert. They aren't even 10 kilometers apart and they are effectively one big city. There are probably more than a million people that live here.
Hopefully, after getting my bike serviced, I can be on my way after lunch. I am on Mexican time, though, so my hopes aren't too high. That is what I get for waking up at least two hours before anyone else.

Day 31 kt:42.8 ta: 411 gps: N 25 degrees 29.889' W 103 degrees 06.551'

There are a lot of bicyclists here in Torreon. It is definitely a common mode of transportation here. Since we cyclists are a lawless bunch, they had to pass a law in Torreon making it illegal for bicyclists to go the wrong way down the street. I still ride whereever I want however I want.
The first chunk of my day was spent fixing my bike, wondering around markets, and surfing the internet. It only cost $3.50 and only took half an hour to fix my bike. The bike shop was right across the street from one of those huge, labryntine marketplaces. It is always fun to get lost in these marketplaces, observing the sights and smells of every hidden corner.
If you have a sweet tooth to indulge, Mexico is the place to be. This is where the flavors of chocolate and vanilla were discovered, after all. You hardly ever have to travel a few blocks without running into a dulcería or candy shop. This is not to be confused with a nevería/paletería which sells ice cream and popsicles, a pastelería which sells cakes, nor a panadería which is a bakery that mostly sells sweet bread. All the dentists in this country must work overtime. Anyway, being the lean, mean, fat-burning machine that I am, I indulge whereever I go. I hardly ever have a meal in the city without also having dessert. I have even found a couple of useful survival foods in the dulcería. One is called a palenqueta de cacahuate which translates to peanut candy bar. It was lots of calories from fat, sugar, and protein and it keeps well without refrigeration. The other useful survival food is called até. For those of you in the United States, this is what we call fruit leather except they don't sell até in thin strips like in the U.S. It is sold in kilogram blocks for about a dollar. A pack of 20 palenquetas de cacahuate cost me $2. I am now well stocked up for my journey into the desert.
I found a nice little mesquite grove to camp out in today. There have not been any fences in the desert since I left Torreon. This is nice because my camping options are less limited.

Day 32 kt: 31.3 ta: 333 gps: N 25 degrees 36.528' W 102 degrees 54.613'

I wanted to try to ride 100 miles through the desert, today, but my hopes, along with both of my tires were deflated when I rode through a briarpatch. I have had pretty good luck with flats until recently but, boy, did my luck run out. Those who have ever owned and ridden a mountain bike should know that fixing a flat caused by thorns can be one of the most hellish and Sisyphaen tasks. I spent, at least, three hours, underneath the hot desert sun, with ants crawling all over me, picking out thorns from my bicycle. At least, the ants weren't fire ants and, at least, I had the partial, moving shade of a 6-foot-tall mesquite tree. I wanted to make sure that I got all of the thorns out because they can become embedded in the tire and cause chronic flats. My eyesight has always been good and this served me well for there were some tiny, little, pernicious fuckers stuck in both tires. I had to use the point of my small knife blade to dig out all of the thorns. By the time I finished fixing both flats, it was already the afternoon and, by the time I finished eating a late lunch, there was only two hours left until sunset. At the end of the day I was happy that I didn't have to fix any more flats because that would have ruined my day.
This trip, for me, has been more than just a long bike ride. It has been a spiritual journey as well. Religiously, I am what you might call a dirt-worshipping neo-pagan. I prefer not to label my spirituality, though, because I don't expect anyone to think exactly like me. Anyway, I worship the sun, moon, winds, mountains, forrests, etc... I feel like I prove my worth as a young warrior from the bicycle hippie tribe by riding over mountains and confronting strong headwinds. Bicycling is a metaphor for life. Well, for me, bicycling is my life. Sometimes in life you have to overcome obstacles to continue on. Every hill, headwind, or flat tire is only a temporary obstacle on the way to reaching my goal. I am now stronger and wiser for having dealt with this adversity. Humanity thrives on adversity. It is what forced us to adapt to new environments. I am confident that I can conquer any obstacle in my path.
I have still not seen any fences for a long time. It would be gallons of gluttonous, gasoline-guzzling, gleeful fun to have dirt bike here. One could ride for many miles unimpeded. That being said, I have my tent set up in a wide-open space about a 100 yards from the highway. It is beautiful here. There are large patches of beige-colored sand interrupted by a variety of desert succulents and bushes. The sunset over the mountains, today, was beautiful. It seemed almost like a reward for my patience in fixing my flats. I feel ready for tomorrows challenges.

Day 33 kt: 101 ta:966 gps: N 25 degrees 39.406' W 101 degrees 57.508'

I covered a lot of ground, today, despite having two more flats. The first flat was probably caused by a stubborn thorn. I dug out two more of those sneaky, evil, little fuckers that had escaped my vigilance the day prior. The second flat was caused by a faulty patch. I am determined to make it to Saltillo using patched instead of my last innertube. There are two important things to remember when using patches to fix a flat: always rough the tube using sandpaper and always deflate the tire completely before putting on a new patch. Otherwise, the patch will probably fail shortly. I still don't have a lot of faith in patches and I am resolved to leave Saltillo with no less than four innertubes.
There seems to be an even greater variety of desert succulents in this part of the desert. Some deserts are just sand but this desert is a thriving ecosystem. I could run out of food and water here and survive because I can identify several varieties of edible cactus that also have water stored inside. If worse comes to worse, I could always live off of grasshoppers and prickly pear, both of which are in abundance here. I could even have a survival party with 5 others and have rattlesnake cooked in maguay leaves. Mmmmmmmm, delicious. That being said, I will not run out of food or water here because there seems to be a prototypical dusty Mexican desert town every twenty kilometers or so.
This highway seems to be a major trucking corridor so all the little towns have at least one tienda de abarrotes or convenience store where I can stock up on food and water. Many of the restuarants here have names like "El Caminero" or "The Trucker." If they don't have trucker related names, they have pictures of semis right next to La Virgen de Guadalupe.I have had some close encounters with the rigs on the highway, but, for the most part, this highway has more than enough spare capacity for a wee, little bicyclist. There were mostly two lanes, today, so I aggressively claimed one as my own. Most drivers defer to me because they don't want to clean the mess off of their windshield or grill.
Out of all the American corporations here in Mexico, there is none more ubiquitous than Coca-Cola. They have an amazingly efficient distribution system here. If I were an economics teacher, I would use them as a case study for how a corporation from the developed world could tap into developing markets. Coca-Cola is in places where there is no plumbing, electricity, or even paved roads. They have developed a number of products for the local market here based on tropical fruit flavors. It seems like most people here prefer Coke to water, not unlike the U.S. I have a feeling that I could live in a rural village in communist North Korea and still find Coca-Cola. Communist dentists need jobs, too, after all.

Day 34 kt:110 ta: 2505 gps: N 25 degrees 25.459' W 101 degrees 00.155'

I woke up this morning and there was another fucking flat in the same tire. Flat tires are the bane of my existence. Again, I was determined to make it to Saltillo without using my last innertube. I put another patch on a little hole next to the original patch and it held air all the way to Saltillo.
My determination to use patches was matched only by my determination to make it to Saltillo before the sun set. I almost gave up near the end for the wind-less, flat terrain was replaced by ascents with a noticable headwind for the last 40 kilometers. But, I kept on pedalling with my determination being rewarded by a descent the last 10 kilometers into the city.
The road, today, was mostly not the nice highway, with two lanes going in each direction, of yesterday. It was replaced by a narrow, undivided highway that had only one lane going in each direction. To make matters worse, there were still a lot of truckers that follow the same route. I had more than one scary encounter with semis with double trailers passing me with, what seemed like, inches to spare. I learned from these encounters, though. Whenever rigs would approach from behind, I would move into the oncoming lane and wave them past me. If there was a conflict of interest between me and two oncoming rigs, I would pull off the side of the road and let them pass. Those who rule the road on these two-lane highways have either the biggest balls, biggest engine, biggest truck, or some combination of the aforementioned three traits. I have seen many people successfully attempt some brave maneuvers in passing slower moving vehicles. I have won a few games of chicken with the truck drivers as they attempt to pass some old jalopy around a blind curve. One always has to look at the traffic ahead of them as well as behind them if they wish to survive these highways on their bicycle.
When I was travelling through the desert, today, I saw some monarch butterflies flying south towards Michoacan, Mexico. They fly from Canada to the hills of Michoacan every winter to breed. They are supposed to cover everything. The trees and the mountains are blanketted in a sea of orange. This phenomenon only happens in November and December so after visiting Real de Catorce, I am going to fly like demon to el D.F., where I will stay about a week or so, and then to Michoacan. Even if I don't get to see the monarchs in full force, Michoacan is supposed to be very beautiful.