around the world

Thursday, May 22, 2008

The Homeless Man´s Trained Attack Pero!

In Santa Rosalia

Day 74

Miles 213

Total mileage 3732

Money Spent since last update $44

Fishing boats in Santa Roslaia.

The Sea of Cortez.

Beautiful view coming dwon from the Volcano.

Do not make a mistake on this road!

The view from the tp of the descent.

Sleeping under the Volcano.

The oasis town of San Ignacio, out in the middle of the desert.


Camping outside of Guerrero Negro.


I am currently in Santa Rosalia on the Sea of Cortez, and it is nice to be near the water again. I can not help but smile every time I am near the ocean (or sea in this case), I guess it is the California blood in me.

As for the title of this entry, i will jump straight into this story, because it is a pretty funny one.
I was riding through a very small town out in the desert coming across the Baja peninsula when I saw a homeless man standing on the side of the road. He looked pretty strange just standing there as it was out in the middle of nowhere. He had this big, strange smile on his face and I assumed it was because he had not seen too many people riding a loaded touring bike so i figured I would wave at him just to break the tension a little and as soon as I did, he whistled and raised his arms in the air and this little white dog that was as dingy as he was came bursting out of some trash that was piled on the side of the road and tore off after me. This was accompanied by some maniacal laughter from the homeless man. The end effect was to scare the bejesus out of me!

Luckily, I was on the beginning of a downhill so i was able to outrun the little mutt, but only just. I have to hand it the the dog, he was fast! If there were a dog Olympics, this guy would be a shoe in for the 100 meter dash! I was hauling butt downhill and he kept up with me until the very end.

It is funny in retrospect, but it was weird as can be and a little scary at the time. Oh well, I´m still rolling, so as is well.

As for the ride itself, As soon as I got out of Guerrero Negro, the weather cooled off substantially and the terrain became much smoother. I also had a nice tailwind all day and was able to put 100 miles down fairly quickly. I decided to call it quits a little early so that I could camp out under the Volcano of the three virgins. I have never slept under a volcano before, so that was a first. It is a big imposing thing too, although it is dormant.

Today, i had a screaming tailwind which was fantastic and made great time into Santa Rosalita. It will become a cross wind as soon as I head south again out of town, but oh well, it was great while it lasted. I had two amazing downhills too, coming off of the volcano. They were extremely exhilarating, but also pretty treacherous. No gaurd rails, and a sheer cliff to one side with big rigs coming from both directions! I definitely did not want to make a mistake here.
I am also really excited to jump in the sea today, it will be the first thing resembling a bath I have had since Ensenada. It is strange how I have become accustomed to not bathing. It just does not bother you after a while. But it will be nice to get some of this sweat off...and the caked up dirt.

I have really enjoyed sleeping out here. Normally I have a great deal of trouble sleeping, but out here I sleep like a rock and for long periods of time, like 9 to 10 hours. I think it is a combination of being physically tired, and the peaceful feeling you get out here away from everything. The only thing I can say negative about it is the fact that the moon is so bright some nights it feels like the universe is shining a flashlight on you. But that is a minor complaint.

My plans have altered slightly, too. It turns out I can not sail out of Cabo San Lucas as I had originally thought. I will have to sail out of La Paz, which is about a day´s ride north of Cabo. So i will not go the entire length of the peninsula, but oh well. From what i have been told, Cabo is very Americanized and very expensive, so I am not concerned about missing it.
I need to hit the road. Until next time!
And thanks to Jess for making the awesome banner that now graces the top of the blog, i love it!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

The banner is awesome, but so you know or whoever reads this that can fix it, the myspace link is disabled.

The money you spend, are you figuring up the US amount or is that in Pesos? You'd would assume that Mexico would have been cheaper.

Anonymous said...

Well first... glad you like the little banner I made. It was quick... I'm working on something else special.. so WATCH OUT! :)

oh my goodness... WHEN SCARY DOGS ATTACK! I dunno which is creepier- the little attack dog or the creepy guy who sent the attack dog... I'm going to go with the creepy guy!

Glad you are getting rest. That is a definite must! Beautiful pictures as always!

Steven Andrés said...

You're not missing much in Cabo. Yes, it is a fantastic place to have fun and I visited a couple times back in college, but it is extremely Gringo-ized and if you're looking for an authentic Mexican fish taco, you won't find one there at Senor Frog's.

Excellent banner at the top of the blog. The "more information" link isn't working, FYI. That might be a work-in-progress.

Steven Andrés said...

Oh, and dog is "perro" (rolling R sound) not "pero" as in your title. As long as you're going to be rolling through Mexico, you might as well learn to roll your R's.

"Pero" means "but" so your title literally says "Homeless Man's Trained Attack But". Toss a "t" at the end of that "but" and now you have a tabloid headline that will sell!

Anonymous said...

Gosh Reece.... I make the banner and then you put a broken link with it! *HAHA*

Just so everyone knows... it was originally meant to link to this blog from his myspace so I dunno what he did to make it not work now... I think he was trying to link it back from his myspace.

Thought you were technology smarts... are you only in other ways... oh you know! *haha*

Unknown said...

That homeless man was probably your long lost relative, touring the world on foot...

Tungsten said...

Hey man,

Pete told me about your blog yesterday so I read it form start to finish before commenting. Sounds like you put together a sweet rig and I'm glad it is treating you well for all those miles. I'm sure it would hold up for 10,000 miles with little upkeep, and I think in the long run you are right not to have shocks on it because if something happened to go wrong with those you're boned.

Your trip sounds awesome so far and I hope we get to dork out sometime when you get back stateside. I'll pencil you in sometime around 2011. ;)

Take care and be safe. I'll be checking in on your posts from here on out.

Best regards,
-Fedewa

Reecius said...

hey everyone! I am still alive and kicking, just made it to the mainland. Jess amde the banner and she did an awesome job, and yes, i screwed it up! i gues si am not so computer savy as i thought i was.

I will change pero to perro, thanks Steve! No trained attack rear ends coming after me, although that would be pretty funny!

Pete! Holy cow, it has been a while! great to hear from you buddy! A geek out sesion would be awesome, we much plan on doing that when i get back. shoot me an email sometime buddy, it is great to hear form you again.