Time to Start Pedaling Again

Day 232 I stayed in Panama City one more day
Day 233 ta: 1309 kt:38.7 gps: N 9 degrees 13.286' W 79 degrees 37.579'

I finally broke away from the clutches of Panama City today. If I wanted to wait around for the rain to stop I would probably have to wait around for several months so I decided it was time to go, rain or sun. It is raining right now.
Panama City is a very cosmopolitan city. There are also a lot of very wealthy people here. I saw lots of people driving Maseratis and Porches. On the other side of town, people live in buildings that are crumbling around them. There don't seem to be any bonafide shanty towns, though. If you come to Panama City, you can hobnob with millionaires in the banking district or hang out with rasta dudes in the ghetto.
The place I stayed at in Panama City is nice. It is called Zuly's Hostel. Zuly is an African-Panamanian goddess who isn't but a year older than me. The beds were comfortable, the rooms were quiet, and we had free internet and cable. My only complaint is that she cracks down on pot smoking but that is mainly to protect herself.
My campsite is at a government building. It is an agricultural inspection post to be precise. I didn't ask anyone permission to be there, I just set up my tent. A worker found me a little later but he said it was okay. He even offered for me to set up my tent under a roof but I was already unpacked so I politely declined. If I were in the U.S., they would have called the cops and I would have spent a night in jail.

Day 234 ta:1613 kt:42.9 gps: N 9 degrees 36.043' W 79 degrees 35.283'
Day 235-239 I was in the Caribbean sea on a boat to Cartagena
Day 240-242 I stayed in Cartagena

There must be something about the humidity in Central America that causes excessive rubber rot because I had to sew my new/used rear tire back together the day before I left Panama. I miraculously found two more new/used tires at a bike shop in Cartagena. This miracle, which now seems to be on the Jesus-walking-on-water variety, has probably given me at least another several thousand kilometers before I have to worry about my tires again. I should be able to make it through Colombia, at the least, without having to buy more tires.
The day before I left Panama, I was sitting at a lunch stop when two other cyclists from Colorado rode up in a truck taxi. They had to hurry to the town of Puerto Lindo, Panama because their boat was leaving the next day. Being faced with the opportunity to leave Panama the next day rather than sit around for a week or more waiting for a boat, I put my bike in the back and rode with them to Puerto Lindo.
The names of the two riders are Ralph and Pat. They are a married couple from Colorado who is taking two years to ride from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to the southern tip of Argentina. Being a gearhead, I had a bicycle-induced orgasm when I saw their bikes. They have two titanium soft-tail bicycles with front suspension and mechanical disk brakes. My bike is nice enough but I was having some very unfaithful thoughts when I saw theirs. They have have ridden off-road some as their bikes should be able to devour dirt roads.
I have heard a lot of horror stories about drunk captains and unseaworthy boats so I wanted to go to port before I agreed to get on a boat. That being said, the boat ride to Cartagena was at times a little unpleasant but was mostly a hoot. The unpleasantness was entirely due to my day-long bout of seasickness and not the captain or the boat. I was a little disapointed that we were motor-sailing but the wind wasn't strong enough for us to keep our schedule. There is only so much food and fresh water that you can carry on a boat.
Captain Mark was a gregarious guy with a with a lovely Colombian wife young enough to be his daughter. He spends most of his time on his boat in the San Blas Islands, a Caribbean paradise south of the hurricane danger zone. He makes money by delivering goods to islanders and other boaters anchored at the San Blas Islands and taking backpackers from Panama to Cartagena and vice versa. It seems to me that he lives a pretty idealic life though I am not ready to give up tierra firma and follow in his footsteps just yet.
We stayed at the San Blas Islands as Captain Mark's houseguests for most of the time we were on the boat. This place really is beautiful with crystal-clear blue water and abundant sealife. I spent most of my time snorkelling and reading. The reefs in the San Blas Islands are not as impressive as those in the Bay Islands of Honduras but still had an impressive array of sealife. I saw lots of barracudas, sting rays, and eagle rays to go along with many of the fish that I saw in Honduras. I also saw dolphins and squid. My boatmates saw sharks but I wasn't so lucky. We ate well while we were anchored at the islands so I can say that my memories of this place are all good.
After five days at sea, we finally arrived in Cartagena, Colombia. Cartagena is one of the more popular tourist destinations in Colombia. I would describe it as a small island of beautiful colonial architecture and fortifications surrounded by a sea of slums. The hotel where I am staying is cheap and upscale compared to what I have gotten used to in Central America but there are plenty of sketchy people in its surroundings. I am spending a few days here getting used to Colombia and running some errands before I start pedaling again.
At the hotel, I smoked a joint with another person staying in the hotel for the first time in over a month. I then went back to my room and watched cable T.V. Here in Latin America, some of the cable channels show cherry-picked reruns of the American cable channels. I saw That's My Bush and Breaking Bad for the first time. Maybe it was the fact that I was stoned for the first time in a long time but these shows seemed brilliant. In That's My Bush, the president was going to celebrate the arrest of the 100 millionth War on Drugs criminal at a White House Press Conference when he accidentally ingests a couple of extasy tablets. The press conference quickly degenerates into a rave with the president dancing like a club kid and being as cuddly as ever. In breaking bad, an underpaid science teacher decides he is going to make some extra money by cooking up methamphetamines. I love it when Hollywood mocks the government. As long as the government persists in its quixotic attempt to fight the War on Drugs, there will be plenty of fodder for the screenwriters to ridicule the government with.
Here I am in Colombia, the frontline on the War on Drugs. This is the land of the F.A.R.C., A.U.C., E.L.N., Pablo Escobar, and the Medellin and Calì cartels. Narcoterrorism was invented here. That being said, drugs seem pretty readily available here. Even though I got a stern warning from Captain Mark, I could have easily carried drugs on board in the Caribbean Sea if I were discrete. The sea to the north of Colombia is one of the most heavily policed bodies of water on this planet but they can do nothing to stop the flow of drugs. For every time they stop a ton of cocaine, ten tons are probably making it through. There are people who openly smoke pot on the street here and I have been accosted on more than one occasion by people selling a variety of drugs.
As a pot smoker, I am indignant at amount of effort that all the governments of the world expend keeping pot illegal. Cigarette smokers blithely walk down the street sucking on their cancer sticks and throwing their cigarette butts whereever they want while drunks beat their wives and kill people in traffic accidents but I have to hide in the shadows and constantly look over my shoulders if I want to smoke a joint. There are so many addictions that are worse than marijuana. Cocaine and heroin are obvious but their are so many addictions that are legal that are worse. Have you ever met someone addicted to sniffing glue or huffing gasoline. It is not a pretty sight. How about someone who is addicted to prescription pills, gambling, or sloth.
The worst addiction of them all is the addiction to all the stuff that seems to afflict most Americans and spreads like a cancer to the rest of the world. This addiction lead to the housing bust afflicting America today. Americans wanting to finance their increasingly expensive lifestyle fell victim to the lure of easy money and easy credit to take out mortgages which they couldn't afford. When the times were flush and the house prices were rising, we were able to flip our houses or take out home equity loans so we could buy bigger cars and more stuff than we could ever reasonably afford. Now the economy has been worsening and our lifestyle is being exposed as unsustainable. The Chinas and Indias of the world want their share of stuff, too leading to the rise in almost all commodity and food prices so they can live like westerners. Those poor kids from the slums of the world that grow up to become drug dealers don't do it so they can provide their families with financial security and health care. They want the bling. Maybe we should end the War on Drugs and start fighting the War on Greed.
I don't smoke cigarettes, I almost never drink alcohol, I don't gamble, I don't snort coke or meth or shoot speed but I smoke pot and ingest an occasional few grams of mushrooms. I am not some retarded, drug-addicted loser who can't take care of his own business. I graduated college with a degree in math while working my way through school and I speak two, soon to be three, languages. I paid off all of my loans before I graduated school and have saved up a shitload of money because I have a simple lifestyle centered around not owning a car. I have a rule where I don't buy anything on credit and I usually don't buy anything that I can't carry on my bicycle. This eliminates a lot of useless shit. People probably say, "You must live like a monk.", but I don't. I eat well, go dancing, and enjoy being with friends, making music and food and merriment. I am currently travelling on the adventure of a lifetime because I have been afforded the opportunity by my own personal responsibility. I think it is fun to smoke a whole bunch of pot and spend four hours cooking. I can't think of many things more fun and spiritually rewarding than taking a bunch of mushrooms and climbing a tree. I harm no one with these activities, not even myself, and I am pissed off that my government wants to say that I am a criminal for this behavior. I will be forever defiant until the government ends its insane War on Drugs.
The drug problem is like a poison ivy rash. The more you scratch it the worse it gets. It itches so bad but you have to resist scratching. You have to treat it intelligently by applying ointment to the affected areas. I understand the visceral reaction that people get when they see someone who has ruined their life because of their addiction. I watched my own father ruin his life because of his drug addiction. He chose being an addict over being a father. He started as just a user and quickly graduated to selling drugs to feed his own habit. People think, "We should lock up all the people who sell these drugs and turn our children into addicts." They never think that these people are victims, too. They never think that they are fathers or mothers and that they are somebody's child. Like the person who scratches his poison ivy rash, the government only gets temporary relief by attacking the supply of drugs. It would do a lot better by attacking the root causes of drug addiction such as social inequality and lack of education and opportunity among abusers. Only when the government tries an intelligent solution rather than a reactionary temporary solution will we be able to win the drug war.
The group of presidential candidates is a little bit narrower now but none of them have any positive, proactive solutions for ending the War on Drugs. With that being said, I am going to announce my candidacy for 2016 when I will be old enough to run for president. I promise that I will gather the heads of the D.E.A. and all the respective leaders of the drug agencies from the rest of the world, and anyone else who is responsible for this mess we have gotten ourselves into. We will have a summit about the War on Drugs. I will bake special brownies and harangue all these people for their asinine drug policies. Afterwords, I will have a shaman administer mushrooms to all them so they can experience what it feels like to dissolve their ego for the very first time.