September 26th Guadalajara to Teotihuacan - Bumps, lumps, dogs & Tinker

Yesterday's evening dip station

Riding a bike is obviously different to driving a car, but in ways you may not imagine. Firstly you are much more aware of temperature and noise and you are much more a part of the environment - these things you may have guessed, but what non riders won’t appreciate is the way you are part of the machine. Every little nuance, such as the way you have packed, your position on the seat and so on affect the way the bike behaves.

Getting on the bike after two days rest, the machine felt strange, it felt a little uneven, lopsided. My first thoughts were that the people who serviced it had misaligned the wheels when adjusting the chain. Having got away from the city in super fast time (20 minutes) I decided to stop at the first services and check, I filled up with petrol and replenished the empty petrol canister that I emptied on the previous Friday. i then examined the chain and all seemed as it should be - maybe it just felt strange because of my few days away from the machine.

Any way back on the road and instantly it felt different - more balanced, less lopsided. Then it twigged, I’d spent two weeks distributing, as best I could, the weight across the bike and with an empty petrol canister this had upset the balance. Once I had restored the equilibrium all was fine. 

Bonito shining again!

The motorway was empty, but passing through beautifully green and fertile countryside - not one’s image of Mexico, but it is truly lush- the time went quickly  and I was eating up the miles. This was only punctuated by the many Toll stops I had to make. At the Toll immediately after filling up I was peeped by the driver behind, this impatience is not uncommon, nor is the use of the horn. I do have some sympathy though, as every time I stop at the toll, I have to go through the ritual of stopping and killing the engine, side stand on, brake on, gloves off, root inside my tank bag for money, pay, receive change and receipt, place bag in tank bag and then reverse everything previously done. It takes a while. However, this was not Latin impatience, but Latin consideration - my petrol canister was trickling drops of fuel. I thanked the man, drove quickly out of his way and parked up. I took off the lid and noticed that although the lid was tight,  the washer inside had become lightly twisted. Quickly remedied I tightened up, and was back on the road.

I passed more beautiful volcanoes and a most enormous lake (will check out its name later) and shortly after passing the lake we climbed a little. I began to hear a different sound from the bike and again my imagination went into overdrive - what could it be, why did it sound so different, it sounded like it was being starved of air, there was no deep rumble that I was used to. At the top of this very gradual climb the sign read 2570 metre Altitude. I could not believe it, this is only 400metres short of Mount Olympus that we climbed in the summer. Mexico , especially the central band is deceptively high.  I started to descend pleased that we were at the summit, as I was getting worried, maybe this altitude was affecting the bike. Just as that thought passed my mind my ears suddenly popped, and surprise surprise, everything now sounded fine. I'd been unaware that my ears had been affected,  it goes to show that an overactive mind can create all kinds of demons! Bonito, apart from using more fuel took the hills in its stride. 

With only 90 miles of the 356 left to do the motorway went through a large town and I finished up being shouted at by Tinker, ‘Off route recalculate’, I followed her instructions to get back on route, but found I was no longer on fast motorway but single lane country roads taking me through some very impoverished looking villages. All the time I was expecting us to rejoin the motorway at any time. While passing through the various villages I was reminded of a comment my Mam made to me when she was a social worker many years ago, ‘People who find it difficult to make ends meet, will often have a  dog or even two.’ If Mam was right, these villages were definitely not making ends meet, they all seemed littered with stray dogs wandering into the road and congregating in packs. Only one actually ran out in front of me - in fact I was amazed at how aware of the traffic and road they were. The other bizarre feature of these villages and small towns are the speed bumps. Firstly they are not marked, nor is there any signage to let you know you are approaching one. I discovered later that I set off my GPS tracker (alarming Jen and Bruce with an SOS signal) yet again. It occurs to me that  the least significant the place the more bumps it would have and the less well defined! It was perhaps a case of low self-esteem on the part of the village leaders -wanting to be important by having lots, but a bit timid about showing them off!!! 

This tortuous route, that Tinker took me on, lasted for 70 miles and my average speed was around 20 miles an hour and I literally must have gone over a thousand or more speedbumps. Not only are they inconvenient but the Mexicans, who in the main have very old cars, go over these painfully slowly and sometimes causing a queue. I was further exasperated when coming out of a small town called San Pedro (not sure if a good or bad omen I thought) I saw up ahead a line of policemen stopping cars on both sides of the road. I decided very quickly to sneak up as close as possible behind a car carrying what looked like the contents of an house on its roof rack - hoping to avoid being spotted and stopped for some bureaucratic reason. I also thought if they were to stop anyone it must be this unsafe monstrosity - as it happened both of us snook through without notice - a result. As for Tinker, I was less polite internally and another T word sounding like satnav sprung to mind,  T*atnav. Can't do with her can't do without. A love hate relationship.

Anyway it’s definitely my teatime now and the wifi is also said to be better in the adjoining restaurant, so I’ll finish now and paste this document into the blog

*Footnote

the 356 miles took over 9 hours to complete

I avoided a massive rain shower

The Aztec pyramid is only 3 miles down the road and will view first thing tomorrow morning