Ditched In Mexico!

Well, this is probably my most exciting post, and it’s probably the most exciting thing that happened to me ever.

 

So we ride across the Mexican border into Tiajuana, and I am in love! The place is gorgeous. A real city.
Fuck San Diego, seriously, I want to live in Mexico.

 

All the while, I’m in the back caboosing like I usually do to make sure everyone is together. We ride around a little until we find the mass of riders. We join up with them, and it’s really great.

 

A group ride in Mexico! What could be better.

 

Plus, unlike in the US, their streets are better paved, and the drivers are tolerant even more so in nice town San Diego.

 

Disaster struck, though, when going up a hill. I tried to pop into a lower gear, of course, and my chain got stuck between the cassette and the wheel.

 

I pulled it out, and I found that in a lower gear, my derailler went into my spokes. This was probably due to my getting hit by a car earlier that day. Long story, I know.

 

When I get stuff fixed a little, I run up the hill and everyone’s gone.

 

Great!

 

A nice guy points out where they went.

 

A few very long and scary–due to the quick traffic–blocks later, I saw nothing. No blinkies. No cyclists of any kind. Just lots of fast and pissy cars.

 

So I decided to ride back home over the border then then 25 miles or so back to San Diego.

 

At the time, I felt a bit freaked out because I’m in a foreign country where I don’t know the language nor where I am at. I wasn’t scared of crime or anything because everyone in Mexico was really nice. So far.

 

Then I start thinking of drug dealers and the dude who got his nuts taped to his face and his body hung from a bridge. Uh oh. I was extra nice to cars in case they were driven by drug dealers.

 

I got really distressed when I hit a pot hole. Pot hole! I was just raving that they actually kept their streets paved. The pot hole made my shit coats fly out of my basket all over the street along with my water bottle.

 

At that point, I started laughing at myself. Here I was a dumb American trying to get his shit back into his basket while freaking out in Mexico. What a tool.

 

I realized I had no clue where the actual border was nor how to ride back once I got there. Heading North doesn’t work in a city like San Diego where every streets a potential cul de sac or even worse some of them take you back to where you started. Assholes.

 

So I get a hotel for the night. The guy at the hotel asked me if I was Lance. I told him no, but I’d like to be him. On second thought, I said, no because I didn’t want the cancer that came with being Lance. They didn’t think that was funny. I wonder how they would have reacted to me hitting a pot hole. I need to bring a variety of comedy material to try out, I guess. 🙂

 

I put my bike and went out like Anthony Bourdain looking for a low key place to eat. I found one and the tacos were great. I felt so cool walking the streets of a real city again alone. I even saw a Starbucks and looked inside until the people stared back like I was a freak.

 

I didn’t find a dive bar so I bought some Lime and Salt beer–they have that in Mexico! This is a totally amazing country.

 

Then I went back to my hotel and watched Seinfeld in Spanish–the one where Kramer was wandering around with a meat slicer.

 

My wife called me and some saint named Caeser picked me up.