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Mexico!
Day 4
18 October 2006

Cold.  Altitude = 8,000'.  La Junta - Hermosillo.  Highway 16... miles and miles and miles of twisties.  Chicken strips long gone.  Peg-draggin' fun!  So many twisites almost got tired of it... almost.  Like being on a race track for 200 miles.  Road went to shit when we crossed from Chihuahua into Sonora.  Potholes filled with pea-gravel.  Burros, cows and trucks in the road.  Hermosillo, no rooms.  Finally found one. 2300.  Followed cab to hotel.  Nice!  KFC for dinner.  hotel even had a garage.  Phone call for a $150 hooker. 

Imagine having a 350-mile track day without ever repeating the same curve.  This pretty much summed up Day 4.

Twas cold when we awoke in the room.  La Junta is around 8,000 feet in elevation; 0700 is cold.  The last thing I wanted to do was get out from under the thick wool blankets that provided me with such comfy-ness throughout the night, but I had to get up at some point; we had a long day a of riding ahead of us if we were going to make Hermosillo that evening.

After loading the bikes (because even though we were told the restaurant opened at 0700, this was Mexican time, so 0700 really meant ~0730ish), we got something to eat.  And as was typical in every town we passed, there was the stray dog looking for a handout.  This particular fellow got a Pop-Tart and some tortillas.

We left La Junta on 16 and began the battle with the twisties.  At first I took it a bit cautiously.  I mean, let's be real... I was on a BMW dual-sport motorcycle with Continental TKC tires... KNOBBIES... twisting through the mountains of Mexico.  As if that wasn't enough, I was probably carrying close to 200 pounds of gear.  But mile after mile... curve after curve... I began to go faster and faster and faster.

Now let's talk about Steve, Hal and Jon.  These guys are... well, let's just say older.  Two of them are 63, and one is 70; I won't say who is who... 
You think these fellas would ride cautiously too?  Hell no.  As I sped up, they sped up. 

So faster and faster we went.  I bet we weren't into it no more than 10 miles before I started dragging the pegs.  I had to put my tip toe on the peg with each curve, because if I didn't the surface of the road would knock away my boot.  There were even a few times I had to completely lift my foot off the peg because it was folding up from the road surface pushing against it.  I have a hockey puck on my kickstand for additional height so that the bike doesn't lean over so much because of the additional height as a result of my upgraded Ohlins rear shock.  By the time we were done with the twisties, it looked like someone had applied a belt sander to hockey puck and ground away a good inch of it.  "Chicken strips?"  They were completely gone about 15 miles into it.  The strips had been replaced with melted rubber.  

Check out my peg...

... dat's what I'm talkin' 'bout!

(For those of you unfamiliar with motorcycle terminology, "chicken strips" is term used to describe the width of unused tread on the edges of motorcycle tires.  The chicken strip is the amount of unused wear caused by a motorcyclist being considered too chicken to go faster through a turn and thereby lean the motorcycle farther over.)

Like I said out loud at one point... there were so many twisites for so long that I almost got tired of them... "almost."

The road surface in Chihuahua was as good or better than any road in the US.  It was flawless.  But as soon as we entered Sonora, it immediately turned to shit.  The freshly paved road turned into a highway in need of serious repair.  The potholes were filled with pea-gravel, then there were the burros and cows in the middle of the road... not to mention the trucks that pretty much took their half of the road in the middle.

Now, you'd think this would slow us down... and it did... for about 5 miles.  Then we were right back at it, only this time we added to our fun by dodging potholes, rockslides and wildlife.  AWESOME! 

I could go on about highway 16 forever and still not describe how fun and exhausting it was.  It was not only a test of my riding and physical ability, but it fully tested my mental awareness as well.  It was almost like I was in this groove... kinda like a sports movie where the pitcher is on the mound getting ready to throw the last pitch for the final out of the series, and his focus is so intense everything else simply doesn't exist... the "zone" if you will... it was exactly like that!

Here's one of very few pictures I got of the road... 'cause the last thing I wanted to do was stop for pictures...


See the road winding through the hills?

Our ride took us through Basaseachic, which would be one of our stops later once we picked up the rest of the group in Arizona (more on Day 11). 

While fueling up at a PEMEX station just outside of Basaseachic, I spied these guys hauling their horse somewhere...
We don't need no steenkeen horse trailer.

There was also beautiful scenery along the route...

Can you see what remains of the old pedestrian bridge in the picture below?

As we continued on, Steve wanted to stop at this little "gem of a town" as he called it,  San Javier.  It was only a 5 km detour off of 16, and it turned out to be well worth it.  While we didn't stay long, I did take the time to snap few photos of the church and some of the local kids.

An interesting thing about the kids... and not just in San Javier, but every place we went... as soon as they would see us, they would come running over like we were alien space crafts.  You almost felt like a rock star stopping in some of these little towns.  But I guess the reality is that there are not many crazy white people riding motorcycles into these towns on a daily basis.  Heck, I'm not even a little kid, but if I see an adventure motorcycle, I go check it out too...

After a Coke and a snack, we left San Javier as the sun was beginning to set.  We eventually made it to Hermosillo, but of course we couldn't find the hotel.  Steve had an idea of where it was, but after riding around the city, we finally hired a cab.  Steve paid the cab to take us to the hotel... the cabby would drive there, we would follow.  Easy enough.  Except this cabby was flat out hauling ass.  I was beginning to think he had taken Steve's money and was trying to get away, so I chased his ass down.  But that was not the case; he really was taking us to the hotel. 

Steve and Hal headed into the office while Jon and I "guarded" the bikes (from what I don't know).  

After taking what I thought was an excessively long time to get keys, I stepped inside.  No rooms.

Not only were there no rooms there, but the lady behind the counter had called other hotels in the area... No rooms.

I dug around in one of my panniers and found Lonely Planet - Mexico and searched for hotel rooms in Hermosillo.  We found one, and the lady called, and they had rooms, but...  the lady didn't seem like she was too fond of the hotel or its location...

Now while all this is going on, Jon was outside talking to some guy.  Turns out the guy has a BMW motorcycle and was at the hotel because the local motorcycle club was having their meeting there.  He knew of a new hotel near the Ford factory and said we should try there.  Back into the lobby of the hotel we went again and talked the lady into calling over there for us.  They had rooms.  The only issue was that they were not double rooms, so each of us would have to have his own room, and they were $30 per night.  Well, at this point $30 was a small price to pay, so we hired another taxi to take us over to the new hotel. 

We pulled into the hotel and approached the guy behind the window... "yeah, we're the guys that called; we need the 4 rooms..."  They didn't have 4 rooms.  They had one.  A little bickering later, we found out that they had one room now and would have 3 more rooms in 30 minutes.  Huh?  It's 2230... how are they going to have 3 rooms come open in 30 minutes?  Whatever... I was hungry.

We decided to get something to eat and settled for KFC.  I kept a close eye on the homeless guy wearing the trash bag standing next to my bike, but he left it alone, and I left him alone.

Arriving back at the hotel, we found they had 3 rooms, and one more would be ready in 15 minutes.  Whatever... give me my key.

The guard opened the gate and pointed me to my garage door.  AWESOME!  Each room had its own garage.  I pulled into the garage, and the door to my room was inside the garage.  Convenient!

Now if you have yet to figure out what kind of place this was, let me 'splain.  It was a rent-by-the-hour hotel.  The garage was so that you could drive your "date" there for the evening to do whatever it is you wanted to do while your car was out of site from the rest of the world.  Not only that, this place was brand spanking (excuse the pun) new and fancy!  Very very nice hotel.  Very popular too apparently as I heard garage doors open periodically throughout the night...

At this point I didn't care.  I just wanted a shower and sleep.

After a very long hot shower, I climbed into the bed and flipped on the TV.  Porn.  Porn.  Porn.  Porn.  Mexican music videos.  Porn.  Porn...

It didn't take long before I was out, but I awoke to the sound of a ringing phone.  Was the $30 only for an hour?  Did Hal not get a room?  WTF?  "Hello?"  On the other end of the line was a male voice speaking Spanish with a little excitement in his tone.  My Spanish is actually pretty good, and it was on my second attempt at translating when I figured out he was asking me if I wanted a companion for the evening.  

"Do I want a girl for the night?" 

"Si! Si!  Solamente un mil y quinientos Pesos."

"ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS???"  For a hooker in Mexico?  "No thanks." 

As I fell asleep again, I wondered if any of the boys' wallets were $150 lighter...

Mileage = 344.

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