puebla

spent the day buzzing aroundPuebla which is a beautiful city with a cool old downtown center from the 1600's. it has a european feel to it with the narrow streets and walking pedmals. drivrs here are just like everywhere else...nuts. ive found the only way to deal with it, is to embrace it a.....when in rome. for someone whose known to break a few rules its not that hard and actually becomes very fun. honking the horn, weaving in and out, going when and wherever i want to. a fun kind of mayhem. even more fun is getting the 'in a hurry in 1 mile and hour traffic' people in a tizzy. i was waiting at a stoplight and a guy was trying to get out from parking along side the road so he pulled out slow and tapped my side bag, lightly but still i was right there he looking right at me. so i gave him and fbomb but thru my helmet i am sure he didnt here. so the light turned green and i decided to stay there and take a few pics boxing him in and letting some other cars go....he was beeping his horn until he just held it down permanenelty at which time i pulled up enough for the car behind me to continue blocking him in and took off :) the other nice fun thing about driving here is that motorcycles can and are expected to do whatever they want. mine is a little wide with the bags but i'm sometimes able to squeeze between cars and b-line to the front, which i did then.
another interesting thing about driving here are the street peddlers that come on to the roads at stop lights and such. they come out with all kinds of things for sale like music, flowers, puppies, bags of marshmellows and activities from winshield cleaning to fireblowing.....you never know what you'll see. on a bike they dont even bother with me.

hey, what if i want some of those marshmellows?

i "hold these truths to be self evident"

1. at some point everyday it looks like its going to rain here
2. when i put my rain gear on i go for hours sweatin like a pig without a drop
3. when i take my rain gear off it pours

Queretaro

After a long trek I made it to Queretaro. Very nice modern city! My dairy aire (which has picked up some unwanted friends) was due for a rest so I spoiled myself with a super swanky hotel built into the bluff that overlooks the city. Truth be told I hardly did anything except lay around my huge luxury room and watch some tv (in english, no less). I did go up and have a couple cocktails on the top floor balcony bar with a stunning view of the city lights at night and met a few peoplee from the us and canada. It was a good night. Like all the people from Mexico I have met, the guys working at the hotel were extremely nice and very helpful in routing my trip to Puebla. Thanks again Marco! After getting near Mexico City I would actually say they were godsent because they informed me of a new road that is not on the maps and lets y0u sort of hug the city itself instead of going in it. Seems as if all roads lead to mexico city in this country. 20,000,000 population traffic and one gringo on a motorcycle....no thanks!

Mex city makes LA look like a greenthumb paradise! At about 70 miles out you can start to see the smog and pollution. Its horrible. At 30 miles out you can smell the stench, which worsens as you reach the outskirts and litteraly made me gag in my helmet. Never smelt anything like it so i cant compare but its seems combination of fesces, smog, death and garbage.

Somehow I got off the cuota and into an outskirt regular road near the city that wasnt fun at all. jam packed, again with everything you can think, especially CRAZY drivers. After about two hours and maybe 15 miles I found another cuota and got out of there. The bike was over heating and i was praying that it woudnt break down. I made my way to Puebla where I am now.

Aside from the city part, riding in/ thru this stretch of mountains was beautiful. More trees and vegitation than anywhere else so far. Kind of reminded me of colorado.

who's dumber....these guys walking on the mountain roads with lots of semis and pretty much no speed limit or me taking a picture of them?

Tunnel to Real de Catorce

More pics up the mountains to RdC

viva la mexico

While Laredo Texas is pretty nice, Nuevo Laredo Mexico not so much. Its amazing the difference just crossing a bridge. My first encounter was with a dozen or so military guys with AK47's when i pulled into the wrong area trying to get to customs and they came running. A little intimidating on a motorcycle when young guys with big guns run at you. After a few minutes and driving around the small streets loaded with shady characters and beggars i found customs and got my permit etc which took about 1hr...no english and my spanglish.... which is quickly getting better.

This is customs and international border bridge in laredo.

After getting my permits i got lost and ended up in a part of town that i never want to see again.

The roads in Mex are pretty bad. Shared by all...... people, bikes, mopeds, semis, dogs, donkeys, dead dogs, trash, potholes, oil, u name it.

Thank god for Cuoata (toll roads) they're nice for long distances but expensive.

The first hour or so south of NL was pretty flat and looks like i imagined. Eventually i started getting into the mountains. There's a heavy military presence on the frontage, dirt roads looking for drug dealers and illegal border crossing i suppose.
In the mountains the sky was huge ad you can see where the weather is both stormy and nice. Exhilirating.

I was told about an off the beaten path mountain town, Real de Catorce, near Matehuala. Its an old silver mining town that closed in the early 1900's and is now kind of an artists and travel hang out. So I went to check it out and stayed there for the night. I had no idea the road type til i got there. Its 20 miles of deserted cobblestone. At first it didnt seem to tough but at is went on and up, way up, it turned out to be quite the challenge.Narrow, no guard rails and rough cobblestones. I finally reached the entry to RdC which is a 1-2 mile tunnel that looks like an old mine shaft. Again, from the start not so bad, once inside.. pretty rough. At points there was 2ft of unavoidable water which I almost tipped in a few times. Water was falling from the ceiling and looked like a bat cave. The stones are smoothed over and slippery from the splashing of cars. the town is built into and nesteled in the mountains!


By the time I got up top it was dark and tense.....especially when the burros were in the road!The town was cool but I didnt get to enjoy it due to altitude sickness from ascending to high to quickly. The hostel i stayed in was rustic cool.

the next day on the way down i met a family from London. They've been travelling around the world for 2 years with their young son Elliot in a 1975 Land Rover. We were above the clouds and it was cool watching them come in and out.

a bugs life

had the bike serviced and checked over today at the KTM dealer in San Antonio and everything checked out good. I was lucky because they were the only dealer to have the spart parts i want to take (and have been trying to get all the way down before entering mexico) in stock. parts are 2x the price as soon as i leave the U.S. and availability will probably be scarce.

It took all of the morning and after talking with a few people i changed my border crossing plan from brownsville to Laredo, where I am now. I plan to cross and cruise down to Santillo or further tommorrow. Laredo is nice, not at all what I expected.

i rode thru a butterfly phenom today.... this area is in the midst of a butterfly migration. It was insane! Millions of them....Litterally raining butterflies most of way just outside of SA down to Laredo. Every 10 minutes or so I had to stop to wash off my helmet visor so I could see. What should have been a 2 hr ride took me 4. The whole front of the bike is COVERED.... shoulders of my jacket, my knees, helmet, saddle bags..... everything butterflies.

I had a guy comment on them at my first pull off and so i asked him to take a pic but it doesnt do justice to what it looks like now.

It was actually a cool experience, i just wish i wasnt moving at 75mph....... you should see the cars

Hill Country and Lake Travis

The last couple of days I have been riding in and around 'the hill country' region of Texas. Its great for motorcycling...loads of twisty roads thru the hills but the heat - humidity takes a bit to get used to. Today was nice and cool though.

Everything is bigger in Texas and I'm liking it. The best part is definately the food. For meat eaters this state rules! On almost every crossroad, even in the boonies you can find a bbq pit place with chopped beef and beef brisket. Ive been stopping at all of them and it seems the more remote the better! This one is just outside of Austin.

Last night I camped for the first time at Pace Bend... Lake Travis.......

The spot I found was great! With the enduro I took the bike where they had closed a road because the water is so low and found a spot right on the lake. If you look close on the right side you can see deer in the background. They were all over the place, bucks too.

....about 3am it started raining and my $20 walmart tent didnt exactly hold up, so I made a 2 second decision to bolt..... said f it and left the tent behind....hopefully someone else will have a need for it.

I met a couple guys at the Austin Bmw dealership who have done a lot of travelling in Mexico and they gave me some tips on towns to check out. Im in San Antonio now and gonna have a dealer here do a little tune up before I cross the border. Hopefully they will have a few extra parts I want to take with me

Northern Texas

changing my path to avaoid hurricane Ike im heading to Austin, Texas for the weekend. It was a perfect day after I got out of the first hour of rain in the morning. You can start to see some of the geographical differences with reddish dirt, shorter trees, and HEAT. It was boiling duirng the peak part of the day, had to be pushing 100 degrees.
I rode on Route 66 for a little bit and came upon the Pop-pop-fizz-fizz museum that hosts the worlds largest pop bottle sculpture. Inside was every kind of soda you can imagine. met a biker there who had been riding back from Wiscosin and rides for a chapter called "riders against child abuse" old school harley guy, he must have been 75 and still riding across the country.

I met another rider at the Bmw dealership in Oklahoma City who was telling me about a ride he and his wife did 2up last summer.....48 states in 10 days! 8500 miles in 10 days.... 850 per day and they hit every state. Thats the most riding in a short period of time I have ever heard of. He said he drove and his wife videod and took pics from the back only stopping for food and sleep.

Further down the road i found a Texas sculptures personal Jurassic Park.....very cool...
he had a bunch of antique stuff too........

rain and more rain

It rained non-stop yesterday as i made my way down to the oklahoma/kansas border. Ive found that car washes are good for stopping in the rain when it gets too heavy so that became my routine f0r the day. The first pic below looks like a single still photo but its actually a 7 hour long movie with a few commercial breaks in the aformentioned car washes.
Buffet restaurants are good for rain too...y0u can sit as long as you want.
Eventually I made it to a hotel. Lucky me there was a new born in the attached room next to mine! Which was just fine because the beat-up, springs protruding through the sunk-in mattress bed/trampoline put me right to sleep.
better days to come.......

Day 1

..... good first day.....

After emotional goodbyes I got off to a later than expected start. Stopped in at MotoSports in D.M. and got a little bike insight. I'm no mechanic by any stretch although I might be by the end of this trip.
It was blowing hard on the interstate and the bike performed well, much better than my last bike in wind.

I got on some back highways and made my way down to NWMSU in Maryville, Missouri....my (first college) alma mater. Its been 15 years since I've been there and aside from a few new buildings and a remodeled town square, it looked and felt the same as it did back then. Loads of memories as i drove around town. The shite holes where I spent the majority of my time are the same shite holes today minus and E on our house!
Later in the day it started raining.... tested rain gear, all good. Didnt want to camp in the rain so I pulled off to a roadside motel. Tv is pumping Hurricane Ike which is en route to the same place I am.....Texas gulf coast. Will keep watch to avoid it.