Writing this I sit on the bed in a small motel room with tile flooring in Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico, six days across the border, almost 1200 miles since we started in San Francisco, sit contented in this clean, well-lighted place, grateful for a bedstead to lean up against after a handful of short nights holding myself up to read with nothing to rest my back on; while what seems to my unaccustomed ears the typical brass and accordion of Latino music drifts through our window and the smoothness of a small amount of generously given and graciously received pure agave tequila weighs heavily on my eyelids, seemingly affecting more than usual my body which is susceptible to stimulation in its current state of elevated metabolism and water flux. But before I get ahead of myself and backtrack to the termination of my last post, I feel I owe an explanation for my lack of updates on our travels, an explanation that is multifaceted: first, I am lazy. But it isn´t my fault! After a day of riding it is seriously difficult to get motivated to write, cold on my fingers to hold a pen, and much easier to read in the warmth of my sleeping bag, finishing one of my five books so I can discard it and lift its weight from tuggging down on my conscience up every hill we climb. (I brought too many books, but each one has been better than the last, as good books always are; there was a collection of short stories by Count Leo Tolstoy, then One flew over the Cuckoo´s Nest, A History in English Words by Owen Barfield, Down the River by Edward Abbey, and The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman; each presents an intrigue on my intellect that is a welcome contrast to the diminished rate of neuron firing due to the physical exertion that comprises the majority of each day. I find that if I receive fulfillment merely from a book, the rest of life is that much richer). Second, I´m afraid, because this lies outside the scope of my descriptive abilities - how can I express miles of sights, days of scenery, or the nuances of fireside conversations, without falling short of reality, of feeling, in short, of the truth? I cannot. I am petrified by reading the greats; I run dry even as I am awed by Thoreau (quoted by Abbey), ¨We walked in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmer to it. The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening.¨ Or Abbey himself: ¨A countryman has a place on earth that is his own, and much as he may love to wander...he loves the wandering more because he has a place to return to, a place where he belongs. A place to live and when his time comes, a place to die. The earth has fed me for half a century; I owe the earth a body. The debt shall be paid.¨ Or by Vikram Chandra in Red Earth and Pouring Rain, the last novel I have, from the same words in the first chapter that caused me to climb a tree at night over a month ago: ¨We are blessed, and how strange it is that we can learn to hate even this; that we forsake these gifts and seek release; the sheets are cool and smooth below me, and this I am grateful for, surely, this must be enough, to feel these things and to know that all this exists together, the earth and its seas, the sky and its suns.¨ Anyways, the point of these quotes, besides maybe promoting some good reading, is to credit every author who has benefited me by purging the way before, for nothing I write is my own, it is all a collection, a reflected myriad of everything I have ever read. Perhaps if I triple the number of books I have read thus far in my lifetime, I will have the ability to come up with something original. But whatever I write, let it be truth. Thoreau again: ¨Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.¨ Or of course Lennon, ¨Just give me the truth, all I want is the truth.¨ Finally, my favorite, an appeal for truth through its primary conveyance - language: ¨Respect for the word is the first commandment in the discipline by which a man can be educated to maturity - intellectual, emotional, and moral. Respect for the word - to employ it with scrupulous care and an incoruptible heartfelt love of truth - is essential if there is to be any growth in a society or in the human race. To misuse the word shows contempt for mankind. It undermines the bridges and poisons the wells. It causes man to regress down the long path of his evolution.¨ - Dag Hammorskjolk, quoted in A History in English Words. So read books, and seek truth.

A significant portion of each day, more than I preconceived about the trip when I romanticized its cycling aspect, is taken up by the mundane tasks of camping. Of 26 days so far we have camped 24, by far the longest stretch in my relatively short career. Each night we pull into camp around 5pm, not long before it becomes dark, into a state park or in some sheltered place off the road. We change out of used clothes into other used, but less sweaty, clothing. We assemble the stove, prime the fuel, get water from a spicket if we´re in camp or pour it from one of the water bladders we carry when we know we will be ¨stealth¨ camping, boil it, cook the pasta or rice or whatever. Eat, wolfing down the food before it gets cold and because we´re so hungry. Then have some cookies with peanut butter, lean back and heave a sigh, satiated and stalling to be the one to wash the dishes. By now we don´t even use soap, we just give em a quick rinse and run over with chilled fingers, gosh I can´t even think how many times I´ve smoothed out the crusted bumps coating the inside of my metal bowl, till it shines and one more swish of rinse water for good measure. The dishes we leave out until morning, when the process will be repeated with tea and oatmeal, an essential rhythm we found after like two days. By then it´s probably 7pm and we set up tents, or more lately skip the tent and just diverge to our respective carefully selected place on earth that is our own, to unroll a sleeeping pad and slip inside a sleeping bag to read by headlamp until eyelids make full use of their clout, otherwise we converge around a fire, discussing plans and checking maps, finding excuses to argue, arguing for an excuse to converse (seriously, we´re brothers). Bedtime is 9pm.

I awake every morning at 7am naturally, a constancy which I appreciate compared to the college schedule. Someone eventually succombs to hunger and staves the cold to heat some water, for tea and oatmeal flavored with walnuts and raisins and other dried fruit, then we have bagels with cream cheese or peanut butter. On special days we have pancakes, Andrew cooking one at a time and continuously mixing batter until we are all stuffed with flour and syrup. After breakfast we air out our sleeping bags in the sun while we change into riding clothes, then pack everything up and head out usually around 8:30am, removing layers of clothing within the first 15 minutes after warming up from riding. A snack around 10am, lunch around 11:30 and maybe a longer break to digest a bit or avoid the hottest part of the day, another snack in the afternoon, stop for groceries or to refill our water bottles, and hopefully reach our destination or find a suitable spot beside the road before it gets dark. That is sort of a typical day.

We really eat like kings though - gourmet gorp, freshly-mixed guacamole, sandwiches of cheese and hummus, pesto pasta or Thai peanut stir-fry, all the peanut butter and cookies we want; I never end a meal unsatisfied. We snack on fruit; once we bought like 10 pounds of bananas for a buck and they were gone the next day. One of my favorites is wheat tea - green tea made with the water drained from cooking whole-wheat pasta. Mmmm!

So the first week we were on the coast, riding down Highway 1, or finding bike lanes to pick our way through towns. We camped on the beach a few times, wiling away the afterning reading after a leisurely day of 26 miles, or taking a quick dip in the frosty breaking waves, shock therapy on sore muscles. We make whips out of sea plants washed onshore, then have a throwing contest with a 12-foot long thick seaweed cord, Dave wins. Andrew and I explore another cliff cove, cilmbing over slippery rocks and inspecting sea urchins or whatever they are that close when you poke them. I read on the steps that access the beach down the cliff until the sun goes down, head back to camp and change before we spread out search-party style to scrounge for firewood in all the vacant campsites´fire rings. Or another day of 60 miles, ending in a long mentally straining climb which I prided myself in overcoming. We took two showers that first week; not a big deal after the 9 days I went showerless this summer working in the mountains of Colorado.

My legs blew up to twice their size in the first few days, pumped full of blood from throttling up and down every last Pacific coast hill. Every night the first two weeks I was sore, but felt better after a nightly stretch routine. I love stretching, it feels great and is so relaxing. I stretch in the morning too. I am sore in my butt from the saddle, on my quads and inner hamstring. Muscle soreness doesn´t bother me, it just means I´m gaining muscle. Joint pain is bad though, and my right knee was starting to bother me after a few days, until I checked my shoe cleat and noticed it was ever-so-slightly askew, which was turning my foot slightly inward. That´s not so bad for a little while, but over 30,000 revolutions per day (I approximate), it becomes a serious issue. The pain dispersed after I straightened the cleat. I´ve also had problems with tightness and pain in both achilles tendons, which was alleviated after more shoe and saddle adjustments. Bicycle issues have been moderate; Dave´s bike popped three tubes in two days, I´ve had to patch three myself. I ran over my sunglasses with my trailer, and had to pick up a $3 pair. I also lost a water bottle over an awful road, but replaced it with a regular water bottle.

We passed several elephant seal colonies, ate lunch beside a beach strewn with hundreds of them, laughing out loud at their snorting and fart-like noises, barking at each other as they flub huge bodies past each other.

That´s all I´ve got time for now. I miss everyone and wish you all the warmth we´ve got here in Mexico! Asta luego.