I have perfected the overland high kick. It’s an essential manoeuvre to mount the bike. Tank bags and top box leave a small space for a skinny arse to fit in and no room to wriggle.
Agility, momentum and balance are required to propel myself into the pilot’s seat. I don’t seem to have any of those right now, just determination and necessity. They turn out to be an adequate alternative.
Gingerly, that’s the style of riding now. I have shell shock reactions. The speed is slow, the confidence gone and the fear is rife. I find myself throttle down every time a car comes the other way, it’s a knee jerk, knee trembling reaction of self preservation. But my knee won’t jerk, it won’t even bend, it sticks out, resting on the highway peg like a joisting pole.
Of course now I am wearing all my safety clothing, horse bolted, door locked.
It doesn’t help my dexterity but it covers my vulnerability a bit. I don’t really have a target today, other than stay up right, the accident replays in my head, over and over like an unexpected dumping, heart not broken but battle scared all the same. What could I have done to prevent it? What can I do to prevent it happing again? A crow scarer explodes down a side street, explosions and fireworks are common place here. But now I break instinctively, was that my tyre exploding?
I think I'm glad I'm riding alone, no one to push or pull me beyond my seriously reduced limitations.
I stop at an auto parts shop to replace broken bulbs, blown on impact.
‘Where you going?’ some interested locals in a pick-up ask
‘Veracruz’
‘Be careful man there are drug dealers there; or maybe that’s what you’re looking for’
God, now even the Mexicans are giving me warnings, just because 35 naked bodies of a drug cartel were dumped in the road on a major intersection a few months ago, in a display of power and intimidation, suddenly it’s considered unsafe to go there. The only body on the road that scares me is my own.
Two days of timid riding get me to a familiar city to see some familiar faces. I'm going to be a needy guest. But I'm in the right company. A plan is hatched over breakfast, calls are made and before the bike is striped of luggage the first of many fixers has arrived to view the damage. Plastic is procured to fix the screen, and then off we go in a pick-up. The first 4 wheeled vehicle I've been in for 3 months, I get new tyres, mirrors, and my panniers are dropped off at a car body place.
At the end of a weekend of good food good alcohol and good company, the bike is looking and running better than it did before the accident. And the panniers, they are perfect. It was done so efficiently and precisely. If only my body had repaired with such speed.
Monday morning I pack the bike as the rain pours, the humidity escalates and the mozzies hover. There’s no urgency other than I'm now on a mission to get to Denver. No more site seeing, no more diversions, just a destination.
By the time I'm ready to leave only puddles are left and within half an hour the road and day and hot. This paranoia is ridicules I've only been riding half an hour it feels like my tyre is flat again, I stop to check, it is. My new rear Pirelli is on the rim. So now in hot sun, no shade, I strip off my cloths and the panniers again to repair it.
The nearby puddle is deep enough to submerse the tube but I can’t find the hole so I just replace the tube with a spare I have, it is also punctured but I know where the hole is and repair it before I fit it.
I have a 5 day window of good weather to get to Denver. My direct road north is taking me through some areas I've been warned about, there is a very strong military presence, patrols of pick-up trucks with guns mounted above the cabs and heavily armoured solders, vigilantly wilding there automatic weapons, I don’t feel unsafe. The thing with war zones and places of conflict whether it be an oppressive regime, infighting drug cartels or invasion is that life carries on, people still need to eat, so trucks deliver, shops are frequented and fruit sellers still sell their wares at the side of the road. I'm sure it’s a very different scene at night. But for now it’s just normality with an ominous presents of the army. No one is expecting me or waiting for me. I don’t dither but I have to stop for food and fuel. And I see no evidence of any trouble at all. I suppose you have to know what to look for and where to look.
In Veracruz I was shown a house that was literally sprayed with bullets. It was in a good neighbourhood, now the windows are bordered up but that doesn’t hide the gunshot damage which is as dense as a heavy hail storm. It was planed and specific; no one is going to waste their bullets on a limping overlander.
After two days I'm on Friendship Bridge, the sat nav springs into detailed action and I sit in a 4 lane queue with air temperature of 110 degrees and slowly push my bike forward to be processed. But it’s not Mexican immigration, when I get to the front I'm at US customs and I've missed my chance to get my temporary vehicle importation fee refunded and it’s quite a significant amount. After a half hearted look in my panniers a little chat about the English music scene and the obligatory scaremongering I’m free to enter Texas.
‘Any trouble’
No none at all, the stories aren’t true you know, everyone was kind, friendly and hospitable’
‘Yeah tell that to the guy who was here yesterday, he was kidnapped’
‘Kidnapped? Well not with too many restraints if he was allowed to cross back home’
Is the scaremongering a compulsory part of the immigration process? I mean I'm coming from the country now, I'm experienced, and informed, you are on the ignorant side of the fence. Stop telling me how dangerous Mexico is. It’s bloody not.
I'm wet with sweat, thanks to all my stupid black safety clothing on. I have one thing I want to do, get a room. Actually two get a room and shower, no three things I want to eat too.
I want to look at a menu, recognise every word and order just what I want. So as pink clouds illuminate scruffy palms I sit in an open air restaurant and eat a ridiculously large meal surrounded by ridiculously large people, with ridiculously loud conversation, none of which have any substance at all.
My room is cheap but still the price of 2 days Mexican budget but it’s sumptuous, clean and the bed is so soft that my bruised and swollen body feels like its floating.
Over a polystyrene cup of coffee and under a cool cloudy morning sky I decide I want my money back, it’s a tough decision. One of my least favourite aspects of overland travel is boarders and my most hated is US immigration, but I did both yesterday and as I ride south again I realized I am going to do both again today, I pay my toll to go over the amigo bridge and I'm back in Mexico, I hadn’t had my passport stamped on leaving so I that is my fist little hurdle, they didn’t seem to have missed me.
‘Where did you spend the night last night?’ I wasn’t asked
‘Oh I went and slept in American, very comfy bed you know’
I should have got myself some breakfast whilst in Mexico but I rode onto the vehicle import place and quickly and efficiently got processed. Right back to America then, the beggars on the bridge recognise me and we exchange a few words. The queue is as long as yesterday but I know which lane moves quickest now because it splits into 2 at the end, it’s cool and comfortable today.
The comfort ends at the immigration booth.
‘When were you last in the US?’
‘About an hour ago’
‘Why wasn’t your passport stamped?’
‘Don’t know’ ask your inept colleague
‘Where is your form you present along with your pre approved electronic visa waiver programme authorization?’
There is no form that’s why it’s called ESTA, it’s electronic.
‘You need a form sir’
No I don’t, you’re as incompetent as the other shift, can’t we talk about Supertramp and Roger Waters like I did yesterday?
No apparently not, I have to be accompanied to the processing building,
‘Walk on my left sir’
Really it’s that strict? Do you really think I'm going to pull your gun from you holster and shot you with it? If you’re so afraid of guns perhaps you shouldn’t carry one, that’s why I don’t carry one, they can so easily end up in the wrong hands.
3 hours to get processed, it’s wrong; I didn’t tell them obviously, I'm in on the wrong visa, idiots. But more than that, I was here yesterday under the radar. I could have stayed indefinably in the US no one knew I was here, and I could just go back to Mexico which I was never stamped out of and come into the US again like I’d not been here, ho hum, I really wanted my $400 back though. When I go back to my bike I have a little crowd of customs men gathered round we exchange a few words a prelude to the compulsory warning, ‘have any trouble?’
‘No none what’s so ever, Mexico is harmless’
‘You must have the luck of the Irish’
And that little sentence says so much. Paranoid, scaremongering, irresponsible, ignorant and afraid, and on top of that they still don’t know my bloody nationality.
Ok 1200 miles to go on smooth roads with sign posts and no speed bumps. I have to keep reminding myself to obey the signs, laws are enforced here. There is a sign I'm sure it’s a contradiction or maybe I'm just being pedantic. ‘Warning signs must be obeyed - Texas state law’ it says, well it’s not a warning then is it? It’s an order.
with my right leg leading, stuck out on the peg and my scabs peeling, I do the highest mileage days of the journey.
In San Antonio I see a sign for ‘The Alamo’ so I divert off, ride a few blocks , stop, take a look, and mentally check that site off my list of world sites I've seen. Then I’m spat back out onto a highway of 5 lanes in rush hour. Its really requires quite a lot of concentration. I'm out of practice with large quantities of fast moving traffic in multiple lanes.
When the metropolis dies down back into farm land, all the land both sides of the highway is fenced, regardless of what inhospitable terrain is beyond it. Fly camping is significantly harder and more dangerous here. Fenced in the name of fear and protection of territory terrified of trespassing. I dare not fly camp, they all have guns, it’s an isolating quality, its self generating, it’s hard to decide if they are fencing in their fear and ignorance or keeping knowledge and enlighten out.
However with no potholes or other unseen obstruction its safe to ride out the last of the light and with a very good comprehension of the language I get a camping spot in an RV /caravan park, it’s the price of a good room in Mexico but I do have wifi in my tent, and I'm even offered a tent heater for the night, free of charge, but she looked like she might snore so I just politely said goodnight.
Bloody hell it was cold in the morning, down by the river the cold air lingers, steam comes off the water, beautiful it may be but it’s not exactly a the cosy entry into a long day on the road.
It’s a gradual night time decline of body warmth, combined with hunger and self imposed dehydration to avoid getting out of the tent into the freezing night.
I all depends on your basis of comparison but I'm beginning to think this is a bit hard core. 8 days ago I came off my bike, since then I have ridden through tropics, through rain, through humidity, fixed punctures at the road side, ridden through drug cartel territory, through the US boarder twice, along crowded impatient city freeway rush hours, camped in frigid conditions and now I'm up and off to continue my 2300 mile return trip.
Texas is massive, I'm really not sure why they made it so big but it can’t be ignored. It’s just about stimulating enough to keep me interested. Distances are big, but there are slow variations, a landscape of contradiction when the oil wells mix with wind farms.
Now distance markers have changed from kilometres to miles everything takes a little longer to get to, but the secret to progress is momentum not speed. And as long as stops are planned, for the most efficient use of time I can ride through my little window in the weather without extremes. I know its January, I know what season it is, I just keep forgetting, when I see the random white rocks on the north side of buildings in the evening light, it dawns on me that I have now ridden to where snow lies on the ground in an air temperature too cool to melt it away.
I should stop in this town but for the last hour I have watched the sky to my left promises a spectral sunset and now I'm going to ride west into it.
It delivers in full and even when the rest of the sky had eventually given in to night the burning western embers of the spectacular display refuse to be extinguished.
I suppose I’ll get a room tonight, in fact I get 2 cus my noisy neighbours won’t shut up or show the slightest bit of consideration. So using my native linguistic skills I request and relocate to a different room. Where I continue not to sleep. May be its excitement of the last leg, or the pain in the first one, maybe its overtiredness, but I wait impatiently for dawn; it’s so late coming in this time zone boarder town. 7.40am and I still can’t read my tyre pressure gauge, 8am and hyper from caffeine I find myself judging the timing of the traffic lights to co ordinate it with the donning of the helmet and my departure, it’s safe to say I chomping a bit.
Not to be out done by yesterday’s end of daylight display, the dawn is equally spectacularly in a difference and incomparable way. A low sun undermines a dark heavy sky that makes the blackness shine and then something happens that I'm not sure I should share, not just because the site might be beyond the limits of my written word, not to mention my camera but also because it was a moment in time that seemed to be just for me and left me in awe.
There was a flock of perhaps 70 white birds flying in an agitated display, a frustrated formation, against the ominous sky. Pinpointed by a searchlight sun, they moved as if they had no more substance than feathers delicately tied together and being blown by a strong wind. A systematic motion but with an uncoordinated grace, they came towards me at 45 degrees slowed enough to distract but too fast to even attempt to photograph. It would be futile anyway. One of Mother Nature’s entrancing moments in time. Witnessed by one and then gone.
That was followed shortly after by the disappearance of the sun and with it the promise of any warmth to the day disappeared too.
I stopped for breakfast. Ignored instinct, into a large 1800’s dining room of a ‘historic hotel’ it’s not heated, other diners are complaining and the solitary waitress has the grace and competence of a hung over teenager, which I'm pretty sure she is, the food is slow, cold, greasy and raw. Annoyed at myself for eating it, accepting it without complaint and paying for it, I stood outside emptying my panniers to find the lead to plug in my heated vest, the vest has been redundant the whole trip and it occurs to me I have never seen the lead. So it becomes a waistcoat, nothing more.
It’s too early to lose my momentum but I do along with my stomach contents at every available rest stop as the raw potatoes slices marinated in cold oil and served with the chill of an inefficient establishment demand a premature exit. Public toilets, cold concrete, multiple layers, chilled, painful, awkward and un cooperating limbs, combined with a cramping tummy. All this with the knowledge that everything I own of value is out of site beyond this unlockable and graffiti covered door. The greasy food no doubt the cause although it had the graced to assist with the evacuation.
And finally the 200 mile homerun interstate to the high snow covered plains of central Colorado.
The winds are strong and gusting, I ride at a 60degree angle. At last, after 2000 miles reducing the width of my highway wide chicken strips, at least on the right side.
The highway warning signs say ‘wind advisory for high profile vehicles’ well I have a blog and a book, do they mean me? I'm not sure the book sails will blow me away, but it’s the book that’s sending me home.
The bike is strong and responsive, it seems to like this cold air and altitude, and I think it will be staying in Colorado, that’s what it’s telling me.
We got on ok, we had a nice little 10,000 mile ride but I think we will be going our separate ways, no hard feelings we just know each other well enough now that we know what’s best for each other. There may be a mutual appriciation but we never really bonded.
My eyes and desires are drawn towards KTM’s, after all isn’t it all about new experiences?
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