The objective for
Day 5 was to make it to Douglas, Arizona to meet the rest of
the folks... and in reality, it would be the beginning of the actual
trip. Everything through and including today was not actually
part of the official Chain Gang ride... it was basically 4 guys
riding through Mexico. Once we met up with the rest of the
folks, there would be rules and stuff... yeah right.
The plan was to meet the fellas at the entrance gate to the
all-night hotel at 0800. I opened my garage door at 0755 and
cautiously backed out the bike off of the slick tile garage floor.
Steve already had a cup of coffee in hand, and Jon and Hal were not
far behind me.
Turns out poor Hal was having issues with his stomach... or perhaps
I should say his stomach was having issues with him. He told
us he woke up at 0300 feeling horrible. Unfortunately I think
he spent more time in the bathroom than he did in the bed resting.
The plan for the day was to ride from Hermosillo to Douglas via highway 14 north through
Ures, Moctezuma, Nacozari, and
eventually into Douglas. But
Steve needed to stop off in Nacozari along the way to make a
donation to the local charity... worked for me, I was on
vacation.
Once again, we found ourselves in the mountains riding through the
twisties...
Our tummies told us it was lunch time when we neared Moctezuma, so
we headed into the little town looking for something to eat after
fueling the bikes at the PEMEX station.
I guess we were a bit early, because we had difficulty finding an
open restaurant...
We experienced quite a treat looking for a place to eat as we rode
through the streets of Moctezuma. We rode by a school, and the
entire playground was full of children. When they saw the 4
space aliens on motorcycles, they all came running and screaming to
the fence and greeted us with smiles and waves that only come from
children of that age. All I could do was smile and wave back.
... in the end we found this little taco stand and had a very tasty
lunch.
After our lunch and an assortment of Gatorade and bottled water from
the local convenience store, we got back on the bikes and pressed on
to Nacozari.
Twisties. (I'm not complaining... I'm just sayin'...
there's a lot of twisties in Mexico!)
Fortunately someone had the idea to warn folks in advance when the
road was undergoing repair. He or she was kind enough to put
cones out well in advance to warn overloaded motorcycles riding
entirely too fast of the hazard that lie ahead...
We arrived in Nacozari and found the building where Steve needed to
drop off the donation...
It was a perfect day in the little town. Not a cloud in the
sky, and the temperature was around 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
While
Steve was in the building, we spent some time in the town square
taking in the beautiful weather and relaxing a little. Poor
Hal. He needed to relax more than the rest of us. He
found a spot on the tiled-concrete planter in the shade where he
took a nap since he wasn't able to get a decent night's sleep.
Jon and I chatted about nothing and watched the world go by.
As we quickly found out, going by seemed to be the thing to do in
Nacozari.
As we sat in the warm sunshine, we noticed the same cars going
around the square. They'd drive by with the music loud enough
for us to enjoy? then they'd disappear around the corner only to
drive by again about 10 minutes later. It seemed that making
this loop was the thing to do Nacozari... even in the middle of the
day.
One particularly cute instance of this behavior was a car load of
what appeared to be high school girls making the loop with big
smiles and flirtatious waves. The first pass they stared.
The second they stared and smiled. The next time was a smile
and wave. Then came the silly smile and wave. And finally I guess
they embarrassed themselves, because they didn't drive by anymore.
Either that or they ran out of gas...
As we sat, school let out, and the kids came over to see the bikes.
Kids are always fun to talk to about motorcycles... usually.
See the kid in the red shirt on the right in the picture below?
Now, I'm sure his mother loves him, but he was a little pain in the
ass. He was OK at first... rattled off some questions in
Spanish... of which I was able to understand about half of it, but
at some point he went from cute little kid asking questions to
pain-in-the-ass kid who couldn't keep his hands off the motorcycles
to save his life. Now I'm not talking about just touching the
bikes, I'm talking moving the mirrors, twisting the throttle,
beating on the luggage, unscrewing the tops on the fuel bottles,
rocking the bikes back and forth, opening panniers... Like I
said, I'm sure his mother loves him. Aside from him and his
overwhelming desire to touch things and beg for Pesos, the other
boys were great. One even knew a little English, which made
for quite the entertaining Spanglish conversation between him and me.
Steve finally emerged from the building after what seemed like an
hour. Behind him was the gentleman to whom Steve gave the
donation followed by a couple of cops. "OK, you're going to go
with those guys to the mine."
"What?"
Now I vaguely remembered Steve telling me there was a place
somewhere along the route where he wanted to do a little research
for an upcoming dirt trip to Mexico. Well, turns out this was
it. I was to follow the two police officers to the old mining
town and report back to Steve what I saw.
"Are you coming with me?"
"No."
"Umm... OK."
So
I put on my gear (when in reality what I should have done was unload
my motorcycle) and followed the police truck driven by the two
officers out of town.
We took a left here, a right there, and at some point as we passed
the common folks in their regular cars, we ended up on a dirt road.
The dirt road was graded, but there were a few sections where it was
more difficult than others... (where the grader couldn't get)
... nothing major, but I would have preferred to have the panniers
off the bike.
As I made a mental note of the road conditions as part of my report
back to Steve, I stopped and took a couple of pictures while the
police officers waited for me ahead...
We finally arrived at our destination.
As I dismounted the bike, I was taking more mental notes.
"OK... decent dirt, not too challenging, some old building off in
the distance, would be nice to have some gear to hike to the
bottom..."
I mean, yeah, it was OK, but nothing too impressive...
I told the officers thanks, and they hopped back into their truck
and continued on. I figured we were going out a back way.
I was wrong.
I cannot really put into words what I saw as we rounded the corner,
so I'll let the following pictures explain it...
This is the old mining town of Nacozari where they used to mine
copper. When the mining stopped, so did the town.
After a few pictures, the officers jumped back in the truck and
continued on. I followed as they drove down a few steep and
deteriorated road sections into the center of the town...
Similar
to other ghost towns, there were a few people who lived there.
One old fella emerged from one of the dilapidated homes and was
quite eager to chat. Neither he nor the officers spoke a word of
English, but I was able to figure out that a total of 11 people
lived there and sorta kept the place up. It was also a tourist
spot, but they rarely had any tourists.
The officers said I could wander around a bit and take some more photographs
(actually they didn't really care what I did... I think they were as interested
in the guy with the space suit and camera as I was in the town), so I tried to
capture some of the detail...
As we
loaded up to make our way back into town, I took a final shot of the
area before making my way up the hill...
The next time I am here (and there definitely will be a next time) I will
bring water and some hiking gear with good boots and plan on spending an entire
day exploring the area.
I also want to say thanks to my two police officer friends who
showed me around...
And thanks to Steve for letting me do the recon.
I rolled back into town to find Hal, Steve and Jon waiting for me and ready
to depart. I was anxious to tell them about all I had seen, but they had
been waiting for me for over an hour and were ready to go. Somewhere in
the rush to get going, I lost my damned sunglasses (mind you, if they weren't
lost, they wouldn't be "damned sunglasses"). I backtracked, but no love.
I'm sure the kid in the red shirt found them and is amazed at how light titanium
really is...
The rest of the day was basically uneventful. We pressed north to
Douglas and sat in exhaust fumes for about 30 minutes waiting to cross the
border. We pulled up to the historic Gadsden Hotel and made short work of
unloading the bikes and hauling the gear to our rooms before getting something
to eat.
The Discovery Channel had a forensics show on; I think I saw 37 seconds of it
before I was out like a light.
Mileage = 257.
