Jen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: 1976 Yamaha XS500 travel blog

Creating Miss Margaret

2009-06-18T21:33:00.002-05:00

The saga of an abandoned Cal 20 sailboat coming back to life.

Bad news

2009-04-28T13:02:00.003-05:00

Ok, so:

1. Sorry for being a jerk and not updating this recently.

2. We're leaving Mexico, stat. We're in Veracruz right now and we're getting the hell out of dodge as fast as possible. We're going to try to make the U.S. border in three days and get back to New Orleans in another two. It will probably be more like four and three, but hey man, I can dream, right?

2b. Ben is out buying us all the tunafish and crackers we can carry. This is serious.

2c. We've been wavering on whether or not to stay or go. We "evacuated" Mexico City two days ago, hoping to get a better idea of what was going on and to get out of the immediate infectious area. But in Veracruz, while there are still folks on the street, lots of them are wearing cobrebocas (surgical masks). Today was the proverbial 'nail in the coffin' (no pun intended) or the 'sign from God': we got an email from a Couchsurfing host we had lined up in the future that their current guest has just unexpectedly come down with flu like symptoms (unknown what it is yet, but very likely it is this swine flu). They are in Villahermosa, Tabasco. The flu shouldn't be there, and yet it seems like it is.

2d. Hence, we are getting out, ASAP. If you feel in any way that you may have flu, get yourself to a hospital, stat. You can take Tamiflu and you'll be ok--it's not the flu that kills you, it's the inflammatory doodads that your body creates that make your lungs explode and fill up with water, drowning you from the inside!

2e. Be safe; sorry this is bulleted.

3. Sucks that this is the way our trip ends. :'(

Tres Marias Motorcycle Rally

2009-04-07T11:55:00.004-05:00

We headed out on Sunday with our host and fellow motorcyclist Garry and his wife Ivonne for Tres Marias. Jen, Bonnie and I got a workout just trying to keep up with Garry on his 1000 VStrom:

but we held in and enjoyed the spectacular view: and then these guys came along. When we arrived we stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the crowd of high speed bikes. We did find a big brother 82 xseleven on sale for 40,000 pesos:

The quesadillas with corn fungus didn't have cheese, but were tasty:

The quesadillas with Squash blossoms did:

Of course the usual suspects were there:

What do you think we should trade in for one of these:

and put Jen in one of these:

There were young riders:

and old:

and of course the slowest, but from farthest away.

We have a Taste of Mexico City Contest going on the blog, and a bunch of networking via twitter.com, which will be landing us some paid travel writing gigs. More travel less work. Yeah!

Benjamin P.S. The parts have arrived. Time to get dirty!

A Taste of Mexico City Contest!

2009-04-06T09:08:00.004-05:00

My favorite photos from Mexico City have inspired two contests:

an incredible night of art and dance:

Jennifer's birthday party:

four legged friends:

two wheeled friends:

and twitter friends.

Tell me what these crafts adorn and I will send you a handmade postcard of Mexico City.

Tell me what contest I won, creating our new good luck charm, and I will send you a taste of Mexico City.

Post your guesses in the comment section.

Saludos

Benjamin

Twitter Updates

2009-04-02T15:37:00.002-05:00

Hello!

So our computer is nearly dead; I am writing this in long-hand cursive on the tablet. It will probably be a while before the computer is working well again, so full blog posts are going to be rare. :(

I've been trying out new ways to integrate twitter posts into our blog; I am not 100% in love with the current format, so please feel free to give me feedback or suggestions. What I like about twitter is that it's another way/style of writing, different from the more "traditional" storytelling approach of travel blogging. It also appears to function better as a way to interact with readers, like-minded people, travelers and the world. Blog comments seem to me to be a kinda dead way of the past. R.I.P. Comments Section.

So, I recommend, if you aren't already, sign up on Twitter and type in 'follow @jenandtheart'. Then you can write something cute like, '@jenandtheart Love your blog'. We will totally follow you back and diligently read about the sandwich you ate for lunch today. We both love chatting, too. So feel free to chat is up on Twitter, because otherwise we have to make up our own conversations.

Or, if you aren't particularly inclined to Tweet, don't worry, I'll make sure the excitement keeps showing up on the blog. And you can always still comment on the posts if that's what makes you happy.

Love,

Jennifer

Dogs

2009-03-26T02:30:00.002-05:00

You can't get dogs to pose like this.

Well, you can. But you have to be a dog trainer.

Changing & Daring: Sierra Gorda Biosphere

2009-03-25T18:10:00.006-05:00

Goodness, I don't even know where to start. What do I write about? I want to tell you everything, and there are so many stories that haven't been told yet, and so many photos that are up, but haven't been shown. So this will be somewhat linear. Kinda.

I think there was a sea change in this trip, and it occurred somewhere in the Cloud Forests. Maybe it was the fact that I was feeling a bit mean after so many thousands of kilometers of desert and cactus, but being up on the exhilarating, curvy mountain roads of the Cloud Forests started to change things.

Sometimes you forget how special an adventure is, because it becomes so mundane--you know: mountain, valley, mountain, repeat; mountain, valley, mountain... don't forget to brush you teeth between mountains! And perhaps, this sea change started even before the Cloud Forests when we were sitting in San Miguel de Allende with Max and Judith, and someone mentioned being silly and foolish and young, and I responded, "Oh, we're young? I forgot."

So we got ourselves into days of curvy roads; the first ascent and drop seemed charming, and Ben had been dying to see something other than straight lines. Four days later Ben had had his fill; we had finally left the Sierra Gorda Biosphere and the mountain roads to exit out on the plains north of Mexico City.

But before that? It was beautiful. Desert mountains into rainforest into pine trees that reminded both of us of the American Northwest, and that damp scent of plants and dirt made it feel like Connecticut in springtime. Plunging in and out of four environments felt like an act of resetting. It wasn't another silver mining town, and we were finally back on the road in a regular way, moving everyday.

Mexico is the picture of pastoral. I grew up in New England thinking that all the little folk art paintings in local museums, of apple orchards and cows and pigs was what the word 'pastoral' meant. But here, this place is something out of 'Sound of Music,' but with Spanish dubbing (and minus the Nazis).

We went to Las Pozas, an architectural monument to surrealism, constructed by poet, bastard son of an English king and eccentric millionaire Edward James.

Visiting it was straight-up life changing.

Situated on acres of jungle forest, next to a gorgeous waterfall

which falls down into 'wells' or pools of water, giving it its name, Las Pozas. You can swim there, just like you can climb up to the top of the four or five story (depending on who's counting) cement catwalk that has no railings (Thanks Mexican Government!)

(Sorry for the swearing in the video, guys.)

Climbing and crossing the top bridge is incredibly scary. There was at least a 50 foot drop and it is the first thing you come across when you enter Las Pozas.

James built Las Pozas not just as an intellectual exercise in applying surrealist design tenets and symbolism into architecture, but he built it to be his residence, too. As you explore, you find more and more rooms that aren't directly exposed to the air and were once living quarters. They are locked off now, and in such a manic place, locked doors incite a desire to climb everywhich way to get in (which you can't, unless you are very daring). It is an adult cement playground, hidden in the woods.

You know those '1000 Places To See Before You Die' books? If Las Pozas isn't in it, then the book isn't worth buying. Las Pozas will change your life--no number of Dali paintings or Escher drawings hung on museum walls could ever change you like Las Pozas.

...

Several days (and several ridiculous situations later), we're in Mexico City. And everything is sunshine and rainbows, despite the sky being cloudy and smoggy half of the time. While in fear of jinxing it, it is as though we walk, or maybe even skip, through the streets and literally pick up friends, as though we are in some music video about friendship and love and happiness.

That is Simon, up there. He is a Twitter friend. We met Ido later that night, a friend of our hosts Eran and Keran, at a short fiction reading:

(Not Ido, but a photo of the reading.)

and then were invited to see his Volkswagon Combi and meet his brother and mother. But the real kicker is when we sent out Couchsurfing requests this morning. Later that afternoon, we're eating tacos (with habeneros, which we didn't realize until too late, because we are silly gringos and still learning) and sitting on the curb surrounding a garden and all of a sudden a guy just walks up to us, "Ben... Benjamin? and uhm, Jen...?" Turns out that as strangers in a city of twenty million (yeah, that's 20,000,000) people, you can just randomly come across someone who knows you. Or, if you're Ben, you can find someone who will curl up next to you while you nap, even though they only met you two days ago:

Mexico City!

2009-03-24T01:09:00.001-05:00

We're in Mexico City! And we're going to Frida Kahlo's house on my birthday! More soon!

<3xoxojen

The best of San Miguel de Allende and onwards.

2009-03-19T23:55:00.006-05:00

Tomorrow we are riding east, by northeast through the Sierra Gorda biosphere where we are going to go camping with some fellow couchsurfers Ben and Buffy. Xilitla is our ultimate destination in this our last stab into the interior of Mexico.

Mexico's rugged interior has been spectacular for motorcycle riding.
Only once did we find ourselves on a dead straight road between Monterrey and San luis Potosi.

I am expecting the riding to be excellent for the next couple of days. The Sierra Gorda biosphere is a nationally protected region comprised of one third of Querétaro state. It is host to three bio regions, epic mountains and spectacular valleys. At the northern tip is Xilitla and the surrealist landscape, Las Pozas, of James Edwards. I don't want to spoil it with some preview pictures so wait for us to get to Mexico City to update you on this adventure.

After Mexico City our route will head towards the Pacific Ocean. This will be the second time we visit the Pacific Ocean on this trip and will be a highlight of this epic journey. We will probably follow the coast down towards the border of Guatemala before heading back inland, and across to the Yucatan Peninsula.

There are still loads of things to see in Mexico, plus we are only starting to really get into our Spanish speaking groove. Our importation permit on the motorcycle expires at the end of June, so I think we will probably stay in Mexico till then. It really depends on where we next pickup work. In Mexico City we will be chasing a couple of journalism leads, but that depends on how long we can find hosts. Couchsurfing has been great so far. We have one host lined up for the first week, and we are looking for a host for a possible second week if we can get a good lineup of interviews and article pitches for the English speaking publications. If you have any contacts we should know about in Mexico City please fill us in.

Here are the best photos of San Miguel de Allende:

The central garden,

La Parroquia,

Treats.

Benjamin

2009-03-15T23:09:00.005-05:00

It took us two days to get to Guanajuato because we were held up in Aguascalientes. No, not that kind of hold up.

The kind of holdup every motorcyclist loves to run into. A fellow motorcycle enthusiast that can't get enough of your story. Duro spotted us on the 6 lane autopista (freeway) running straight into Aguascalientes. We stopped and chatted for a couple of minutes about our trip, and his interest in taking smaller motorcycle trips, and we were hoping he could point us in a good direction for some lunch. It was about three in the afternoon and we were both starving.

He then noticed that we were burning oil on the right side exhaust pipes. I tried to explain to him that I was constantly watching the oil, and that I knew what the problem was, and that I was in the midst of resolving the issue. Which is our cam chain tensioner not holding tension and leaking a fair bit of oil past the seal. Well, instead of pointing us to a good restaurant for lunch, (we finally made it to the Birria market that I was dreaming of before we left the next day.)

The back of a lamb on the table in front of us.

Pretty good Birria cook.

Side note, Birria is a specialty of Northern Mexico where lamb, mutton and goats are raised. The best place to get Birria is in Aguascalientes, so stop right here.

Eat and watch your bike at the Juarez Market.

Back to the story, We got the Birria information later that night when we meet up with Duro and his wife, and got a tour of the city. But, the first place Duro took us to was the infamous motorcycle garage of the Maestro Jorge Venegas Estrada.

We discussed the issue with my motor, and he offered up a quick solution. drill out the old bolt on the cam chain tensioner so we could thread in a stud bolt. This was a good option, but I knew if we made one mistake Jen and I would be stuck in Aguascalientes for much longer than we wished to visit this uber modern city. Mind the Birria market. I chose to talk my way out of the situation, and I learned a good lesson.

Even if the mechanic you are talking to about a problem wants to do the work for free, it doesn't mean it is always the best decision.

So to fill you in on why we decided to pass on the offer, I have found a used cam chain tensioner on eBay for seven bucks. This includes the cam chain and the guides. Not a bad deal.

So we get the tour of the town that night by Duro. Auguascalientes is one of the highlights on the Mexico bull fighting circuit. Some of the best bulls in the country are breed here and killed here. We also got to see a Marilyn Monroe impersonator, sorry no photos I forgot the camera, she was standing over a grate in a section of town that had the cars passing underground. When a car would pass underneath her, the viewers would get a little glimpse as she posed innocently for the photos.

The next day I got up early, to check the condition of the bike, oil, and cam chain tensioner. I had to add a bit of oil, but that was expected. We then took off for a visit to the National Museum of death.

Click on our pictures for more great photos from the Death Museum.

So here we are in Guanajuato. I again have the engine out, and I am getting the broken bolt on our cam chain tensioner fixed temporarily as our new tensioner gets shipped to us.

I am going to replace our original one, because I also want to replace our head gasket, the oil seal around the cam chain tensioner bolt, and put in a master link on the cam chain. Plus in the care package with these parts from the states will be a new electric starter motor for the bike. Lets hope all goes well.

Benjamin

In Guanajuato, Motor is OUT!

2009-03-13T17:35:00.002-05:00

So we made it to Guanajuato in one piece. We stayed over in Aguascalientes for a night, both for Ben to check out the Museo Nacional de la Muerte (National Museum of Death), from which we have some very interesting photos of the art there,

but also because we literally got pulled over by a fellow motorcycle enthusiast, Duro, who runs the blog En Dos Ruedas, written in Spanish.

We stopped in Aguascalientes for three hours, putting us off track for our destination in Guanajuato that night, so we got a room, saw the museum and walked around downtown a bit.

The three hours we spent at the motorcycle shop was pretty hilarious. It involved Ben waving his hands at Harley Davidson enthusiasts, saying, part in Spanish, part in English, "Please, please, no! Don't drill into the head!" For those who don't speak motorcyclese, the head basically equals the motor and drilling into it and leaving metal shavings is a terrible idea.

We made some quick friends in Aguascalientes, and got a little nervous about the cam chain tensioner being loose--not only are we losing a lot of oil regularly, but the cam chain tensioner is sitting in the motor, shaking around. If it gets completely detached from the outside, it will bash into something important (i.e. the valves or the pistons or something like that) and then the ride is OVER. Capital O-V-E-R. So Ben took the motor out, again. And I helped, a little. Here are the photos:

This is Judiht's courtyard, and the view from our current bedroom. There's Apolo, the collie and the engine sitting out in the courtyard.

Muchas Gracias!!!

2009-03-13T10:10:00.003-05:00

Thank you everyone for continuing to support us, our motorcycle, and our blog. Thank you for the financial donations that make my work on Bonnie possible and keep us on the road to adventure and new friends. Thank you for your comments, anecdotes, blogs, and twitter updates. We love sharing our stories and experiences with everyone we meet in our daily lives, and with all of our dedicated followers on the blog, through advrider.com, and on twitter.com.

We have received some very generous donations since we left the states:

Christopher Hillard, your donation has helped us cover the costs of cleaning out our gas tank.

Michael Saunders, we have finally found a good deal on an electric starter.

Steve Brawley and Marc Lanciaux, your incredible donations are going towards a new front tire. I have been searching far and wide for a good deal, quality that will last, and tread that will keep us on the beaten path while allowing us visits off the beaten path. I have a supplier in Mexico City all lined up for the transaction.

Robert Owen, thanks for the donation. It will help us get the motor back in the bike for good. I have found a used cam chain tensioner a used cam chain, and a new head gasket.

Mark Hyatt, your donation has bought us a new cam chain master link.

I also want to say thank you to my family for helping us with shipping our care package of parts and tools to Mexico.

Viva Mexico!

Benjamin

Videos on the Road

2009-03-09T16:26:00.003-05:00

Here are some baby videos taken while we were driving to Zacatecas

Oh no, Mr. Bill (Ben)!

2009-03-08T19:29:00.000-05:00

Real de Catorce in words & images

2009-03-06T16:50:00.004-06:00

Well, we still haven't even written about Real de Catorce and frankly, I already have enough stories to write a memoir. So I am going to do a bit of backblogging for y'all while I look at the photos of myself on our Picasa albums, where I am desperately in need of a haircut. If you know of some really great hairstylist en route, this 1970's-ten-year-old-boy haircut I've been sporting in various fashions is getting old, fast. Or, if you're a really hip person and great with a pair of shears, I am a really desperate person with a floppy mess of hair. (It wouldn't hurt to get Ben's hair cut, too.)

So, like most of our trip thus far, our route is inspired by others' suggestions. When we were in Humble, TX, Billy and Anna suggested to us that we should go visit Real de Catorce. On the first night we spent in Humble, the four of us went over our map and circled in red all the places they recommended. A month later, in Monterrey, MX we were staying with Gaby, where she too, recommended that we visit Real de Catorce. Ben, I think, remembered the initial recommendation, but it wasn't until after we left Real de Catorce that I actually put two and two together.

Real de Catorce's historic name, depending on the source is: Real de Alamos de la Purisima Concepción de los Catorce or Nuestra Señora de la Purisima Concepción de los Alamos de Catorce, which roughly translates to 'Royal Alamos of the Immaculate Conception of the Fourteen' or 'Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception of the Alamos of the Fourteen.' San Luis Potosi, Zacatecas and Real de Catorce are all old, colonial, silver mining towns and they tend to have these romantic and blustery names. The town was founded in 1779 and produced silver until the Mexican Revolution, when it was shut down due to the dropping price of silver in the world market.

The town has been until recently living on tourism--cowboys stand on all the corners and ask you, in Spanish, if you would like to take a ride up into the mountains on a horse. Almost every large (and small) house has been converted into a hotel-cum-restaurant-cum-souvenir store. We later found out that the charming pueblo of Real de Catorce is on the 'hippy drug trail' due to the peyote found in the surrounding area, ritualistically consumed annually by Huichol Indians and consumed the rest of the time by hippies worldwide, leading to concern that the Huichol tradition of peyote-induced spiritual trips may die out.

The demographic made sense, in retrospect, as every third person we passed on the streets was either wearing tie-dye, had dredlocked hair or was a tourist under the age of 25. Ho-hum. A lover of both the extreme authentic and the terrible imitation, I enjoyed wandering the streets of Real de Catorce as tourists took photos of people in their 'authentic' Mexican campesino clothes, unaware that the people in traditional dress were just as much outsiders to a town surviving on string of tourism as the tourists themselves. Everyone stares at everyone else in Real de Catorce, because everyone is both the spectator and the spectated in such a dynamic tourist town.

Now, there are possible bids to reopen the Real de Catorce mines again. I've been reading up a bit on this, to give you a good opinion of what's going on out there regarding Real de Catorce. I couldn't say for sure whether this is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing, but it is definitely A Thing. The beautiful churches in town, gaudy on the inside and more relic-like than the older and larger cathedrals in San Luis and Zacatecas, were built on this money.

In fact, the entire desirable city was built on this money, and if all this 'reopening of mines' stuff goes down democratically, this might be an incredible thing. In another two-hundred year cycle of newly opened mines and building and closing of mines and downturn and tourism upturn, Real de Catorce may be more or less integrally the same.

I've watched New Orleans go from a 'mostly-surviving on tourism' to an 'only surviving on tourism' town and you can see the matte black wall, about two inches past the pupils of the eyes' of people who only survive on tourism. It's not good. And for the tourist, it becomes a wheedling uncomfort of feeling like you constantly owe something to someone, like everyone is infuriated with you after you walk away without hiring their services. I suspect to some extent that this is what is so attractive about the concept of 'eco-tourism,' because it makes consumption look and feel really good. (I swear, Ben is going to have to update soon with something upbeat before I go all communist on this blog.)

...

So. Real de Catorce is beautiful.

9,000 feet up, and you can stand in the town and watch the clouds pass above and below you, and they compress themselves to fit into the clefts between mountains.

The masonry is incredible--in some places, three different layers have fallen off of decaying buildings and give you an idea of the makeshift reparations and the generations of people who've built this place all willy-nilly on the side of the mountains.

With dozens of abandoned houses, people still find unused pieces on the hillside to build new buildings, usually half out of concrete blocks and the other half out of rocks found nearby.

(This is hair that needs the badly needed haircut.)

And the views?

...

One of the concerns with the reopening of mines is the undermining of the historic quality of towns like Real de Catorce. Real de Catorce is part of the Programa Pueblos Mágicos a program run by Mexico's Secretary of Tourism. I am unsure as to the benefits of degree of legal historical preservation by being designated a Magical Town. Real de Catorce was the first town we have visited on this list, and we visited a second, Jerez, last night. San Miguel de Allende, another magical town is also on our route, after Guanajuato. If you haven't watched the video of the trip into the tunnel, I suggest you look at it again.

Real de Catorce has a romantic, blustery name because it is a otherworldly place that you get to through a tunnel in the earth with an unopenable altar to something that you can't really see.

Some Loving, Some Blog Hating & Nature Photos

2009-03-02T22:18:00.011-06:00

One of the reasons that this blog didn't start up until Ben and I realized we were just disappointing our future selves by not documenting this trip, is because I have a really difficult time with negotiating my liberal arts degree of 'critical kindness' towards all things new, different or unique; and my desire to write out, document and share my love of small handmade and hand delivered stories to other human beings.

To casually display the fight against the existentialist struggle.

I told our host, Gaby, in Monterrey, that I was working in my head on my 'What I Am Going to Say About Mexico That is Honest, Not Stereotyping; Kind, But Critical.' This is part of that series of thoughts.

Today, via my college email address, I received a bulk-letter from one of the administrative bigwigs at Tulane, my alma mater, telling students to use caution, and check the state.gov website for travel information about going to major Mexican tourist areas and the Mexican frontera. Drugs, death, violence, pickpockets and rape! Frankly, short of Tijuana, all of the cities listed on the website seemed charming compared to New Orleans, New York City, Chicago, and sure as heck better than Gary, Indiana. What are we (Americans) telling ourselves about the outside world? Are we writing these blurbs about our most dangerous cities, when all of those out-of-state college students just showed up in New Orleans for Mardi Gras this year?

...

Right now, Ben has the whole darned motorcycle apart, up the street (Carlos and Nasul's house is located on the hillside, and the immediate surrounding blocks are pedestrian stairwells only, paved with large stones held together by cement and loosely attached, somehow, to the mountain), so we haven't been driving anywhere for the last couple of days.

Therefore, every few days we walk down to the markets and go to buy groceries. Zacatecas is an old town, and it is difficult to build modern day grocery stores into the city--there are no streets that run straight and buildings, stairwells too, tend to just pop out of nowhere, built on top of other buildings, buildings that are dug into the sides of the mountains surrounding the main valley of the city.

These markets tend to be mixed results for us--sometimes three days of delicious groceries or an incredible lunch comes for less than three dollars (or 45 pesos). Other times, we are ripped off--less than a pound of rice for 20 pesos, or a $1.33. This may not seem like a lot, and in a way, it isn't, either economically or emotionally. But in some ways, it is. We watch and listen, as we get ripped off by someone--we know whats going on and they know that we know. Everyone is clearly aware. What we're paying for is more than just some white rice, we're paying for years of bad blood between two countries, for a child's education, our stilted Spanish, for our blue eyes. In this is the critical kindness. I don't blame this individual for overcharging me, and I let him do it, willingly. It is easy enough to say no. But it doesn't help him if I say no, and it doesn't help me if I say yes. Overall, no one is winning in any of these situations. How do you call someone out on this without skirting around the obvious reasons that you are being ripped off?

...

One night, my friend Anna and I were waiting for the streetcar in New Orleans. A woman came up to us and asked us for money for a cab. Her boyfriend had just beat her up and kicked her out of the car. We gave her everything we had short of the small fare for the streetcar back Uptown--did we want to be scammed and do the right thing or not give her money and possibly let this woman try to walk home by herself in the middle of the night?

...

It makes me really nervous to fall into the travel blog/travel writing hole of essentializing groups of people and blaming them for historic, political and social events outside of their reach, or summing them up into quaint exoticized moments in my life. These stories may seem negative, but they're really about the difficulty of walking a fine line between forgiving, comprehending, and criticizing. How do you humanize a person, a place or a country without generalizing or being unfair (in either a good or bad way)? How do you write a story about something without taking advantage of the person who made the story--the climb up the hill or the noteworthy news?

...

I spend a lot of time, looking at the florae and the terrain on our trips. A lot of the time on the motorcycle is spent between towns; it makes the metropolitan area from New York to Boston seem claustrophobic. It is hard to catch pictures of plants while we're moving,

most of the on-motorcycle pictures tend to be of distant objects (ok, mountains).

So I've been trying to take pictures of interesting plants more often,

so that I can show at least what some of the plants are like, the more "exotic" ones that catch my eye.

I wish I could give names for these plants, but you'll just have to appreciate them for what they are. Included are some photos of the mountains I've loved, too. Just so you can start to feel the expansiveness of Mexico, the rolling desert plains and mountains we've been travelling through since we left the United States.

We had to slow down for these sheep. I would say that half of the animals we've seen have not been penned in. But they tend to be a little smarter, the cows, the horses, the chickens, etc. and they realize that there is no food to be found on the road.

I actually was able to catch a picture of one of small dust whirlwinds that suck up the dry ground. Everytime we crest a mountain, there are dozens of these to be seen on the horizon:

Grapevines in the desert for Ryan:

Mardi Gras! Mardi Gras! (Anticipation!)

2009-02-26T00:58:00.003-06:00

Everyone seems to love videos. So here is a video and text and picture post; everyone wins.

Ben and I are regularly lying to ourselves about 'getting in shape.' 'Getting in shape' is antithetical to our love of food and our now typical hedonistic New Orleans lifestyle. It is also pro-antithetical (yes, that's right) to the fact that yesterday's 'lets walk until we drop' day was Mardi Gras Day.

If you've never experienced Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans (and I don't mean on Bourbon Street), there is a lot of 'walk til you drop' included in the festivities, as most public and motorized transportation is severely limited by lack of available employees, parades and crowds of organized and not-so-organized people wandering the streets. We spent the entire day walking around El Centro (not in honor of Mardi Gras, but because we wanted to see El Centro), the historical downtown area of San Luis Potosi, looking at the gardens,

the cathedrals,

an interesting decorative cistern with a statue commemorating the men who would carry water to all the homes throughout town,

and trying to get into the Museum of Masks, which was unfortunately closed for structural repairs. So, after a good three hours of walking in circles in the heat, we decided to call it a day.

I've been mopey for about a week, because as the Mardi Gras season was soon coming to a close, more and more facebook photos of all the fun that all my friends in New Orleans were having was making me a bit emo. So, surprisingly, two blocks after getting on the motorcycle, what do I spy but a Mardi Gras parade!

Heck yes! Ben and I quickly turned through two lanes of traffic and parked the motorcycle to follow the parade for about an hour. There were musicians playing, and they followed the parade for a while, until they climbed up onto the top of a bar and played,

while the young men in costume (few others were dressed up), danced in a circle around another man, dancing with a bull costume over his head,

different guys took turns at being the bull and dancing spastically, as though they were the bulls that one imagines in the bullring of a Hemingway novel.

Eventually, prizes were given out for best costumes, which became a desperate fight to get trophies.

And everyone up on the roof started throwing oranges and bottles of fruit juice at the crowd. After being pegged enough times at parades in New Orleans, by plastic beads, and not oranges, Ben and I tended to duck more than try to catch the throws.

During those minutes when the oranges were being thrown and caught, the air smelled of citrus zest. It was intense, serious pushing and shoving as the circle of guys ran back and forth down the street, circling the bull-man. After about an hour or so, we decided to go back to Aldo's house, as we were already exhausted before finding the parade.

The End!

Public Service Announcement

2009-02-25T20:35:00.006-06:00

Hey dudes and dudettes!

I have a question and a psuedo-PSA and a mini-PSA:

Question:

Do you have any ideas of how I could better advertise this blog? Specific forums, ideas on advertising, people we could contact? I am a little stumped as to who to reach out to right now.

Reason/Psuedo-PSA:

Ben and I make a pittance via advertisements that are (hopefully) not super intrusive and occasionally from donations from really awesome people (who are probably afraid we would start eating cactus and coyote roadkill if they didn't throw us some money). So the more people who read this occasionally or regularly, the more money we get.

This is good, because it means that we can do this a bit longer and that we can do more fun things, because everyday we have to decide on whether we want to have one more tank of gas, or if we buy the part that we desperately need so that the motorcycle doesn't explode on us. We are not King Solomon, you know??

It also means that we make more friends because then folks are like 'Hey these guys might be cool I should meet them' and then we have more things to write about and everyone wins. Oh, and if you have a really rich uncle who likes sponsoring hardworking crazy kids like us, give us his contact info.

Mini-PSA:

Also! Please don't forget that if you like us, you should link us! We will link you back!

And! Please check out our photo albums at: http://picasaweb.google.com/jenandtheart We are very diligent about trying to keep them organized and up-to-date! Not all of the great photos that we have show up in the blog! We also try to keep our latest photos rotating in the slideshow to the left.

And! We now are posting videos because I became brave over at: http://www.youtube.com/user/jenandtheart If you have a youtube account, you should rate them like one bazillion percent so that other people will see them too, and so that we can maybe one day beat out all the Miley Cyrus videos that show up on youtube.

Ok. That is all. Thank you. I am working on getting our videos up from Mardi Gras in San Luis Potosi, and once that happens, I will post a blog about it.

Love,

Jen

Real de Catorce tunnel

2009-02-24T12:12:00.001-06:00

A little video of part of the 15 minute tunnel ride. Pause it around 10 seconds to see into the shrine located about a quarter of the way into the tunnel ride.

Non-Sequiturs in Spanish

2009-02-23T12:01:00.006-06:00

We made it finally to San Luis Potosi, but as we get further into Mexico, I get less interested in blogging about it, and more interested in trying to speak the language fluently. To date, our travels have taken us to Monterrey, Real de Catorce and now to San Luis Potosi (there is an accent mark over the i of Potosi, but heck if I know the keycode for it on this computer). Everyday is emotionally exhausting--speaking in Spanish "es muy dificil" and depending on who Ben and I are talking to, it can be fairly easy, or incredibly hard. Most conversations I start off with "Hola. Lo siento, pero no hablo espanol muy bien." or "Buenas dias. Lo siento, pero mi espanol es asi-asi." which translate to: "Hello, I'm sorry, but I don't speak Spanish very well." or "Good morning. I'm sorry, but my Spanish is so-so." I become incredibly shy when talking to people in Spanish and usually break out into a cold sweat when in a situation where I feel pressured to talk. I cannot think of any other activity more intellectually, emotionally and physically exhaustive than speaking in a language in which one is not fluent.

So hilarity always ensues when I'm talking in Spanish. The last time I had a non sequitur moment, Ben and I were in El Museo del Palacio, originally the Government Palace, where the state congress met in Monterrey. One of the docents took a liking to us, I think because a lot of folks get a kick out of chatting up gringos in the same way that Americans can't get enough of foreigners' accents. He starts talking to us, in fairly difficult Spanish about the neoclassical style of the congress' auditorium "y los otros estilos diferentes" present in the room--the gold leaf on the ceiling, the "mascaras," the masks, located at the corners of ceiling panels, the type of tiling used throughout the building, the original wood dias, the bullet holes in two of the front seats, and so on.

Ok. Repaired bullet holes in the chairs, I can dig that. The auditorium is beautiful. And then all of a sudden, he is asking me, I think, about the Native Americans of the United States. Que, senor? I try to explain, in broken Spanish that there were hundreds of tribes in the United States before most of them were wiped out by colonists and the American government. I am saying that this is unlike in Mexico, where there is a greater focus on the macro-cultures of the Mayan or Aztec people. But, I say, the one thing that all the Native Americans of the United States have in common is that the United States tried to kill all of them. Hilarious, right? The United States! What a cruel, colonizing bully of a nation! Hahaha, or jajaja, as they write in Spanish.

Good conversation, right? Sigh.

Last night, I told our host, Aldo, in Spanish, about two of the most distinct memories I have from when my paternal grandmother died: the memory of aseptically packaged cow tongue sitting for weeks afterward in our refrigerator and eating beef fajitas for the first time the night of the funeral. His family owns a carneceria (a butcher's shop) and we were talking about eating menudo (a soup with cow stomach in it that Ben nonchalantly ordered yesterday at a Sunday market for lunch in Cedral) ad other unusual meats. Presumably, cow tongue tacos taste good. I can't report yet on the tongue tacos, but menudo is definitely an acquired taste.

In short... or perhaps more accurately, in other words, talking in Spanish is like playing a dadaist word game. Nothing makes sense, including the ridiculous things that you come up with to talk about, because in the end, we speak Spanish like babies with big heads.

La Huasteca, or Ansel Adams, eat your heart out

2009-02-19T17:04:00.006-06:00

Ben and I got exceptionally lost, crossed over La Puente de la Unidad, also known as the Puente Atirantado:

...and then got ourselves to La Huasteca National Park. The majority of these photos are from the back of the motorcycle as we drove through the park. Now we only need to figure out a way to mount a tripod to the motorcycle. Ansel Adams, eat your heart out.

Gaby, our hostess with the mostess, says this is the Mad Scientist's house. She says that her parents' used to tell her this as a little girl, but it turns out that all of her friends' parents used to tell their kids this, too, so it must be true.

Wooooie!

Border Crossing in Mexico

2009-02-15T13:20:00.003-06:00

Border crossings are fun!

These guys just give a little tug on the rope, and the pulleys do the rest of the work. A genuine hand pulled ferry crossing into Mexico.

That is how they do it at the Los Ebanos ferry crossing.

Hello Mexico!

Goodbye America!

Jen's new sunglasses. They were given to her by the first person we meet in Mexico.

First things first. We headed off the main route and onto a somewhat less frequently traveled road. These bumps are not so bad.

Flying down the autopista towards Monterrey.

The mountains into Monterrey.

We are getting closer

and they were all shot at 110km/h. Good job Jen.

That's right Mexico.

Monterrey just goes on forever. We have lots to explore. More to come soon.

Benjamin

Roadside Mechanics Series #3

2009-02-12T09:14:00.004-06:00

That is right, what Jen said. "Hell Yeah Mexico!"

So how did that happen. Two days ago we were fighting a broken starter, and xs500 still did not want to start right with the kick starter. Yes it was running well, when it was running, and did a great job on our test ride to Boca Chica, but it was not perfect.

So, yesterday morning our baffling motorcycle problem of extremely hard cold starts, and a screeching noise that occured on while the engine was starting was finally exposed.

I was recommended to perform a cold engine compression check by Vanya, an "old motorcycle" mechanic whiz on advrider.com. The procedure for the test is the same as in our earlier blog post for the Roadside Mechanics Series #1, except the test is performed while the engine is cold. The idea behind performing this check was that our hard cold starts were caused by a small air leak that can only be present when the engine is cold. Therefore, the air leak did not effect the operation of the motorcycle at normal operating temperatures because as metal heats up it expands thus closing off the air leak.

So first thing I did at 7 am on the day we are supposed to leave for Monterrey, Mexico, was pull the gas tank, remove the plugs and setup the compression tester. Our initial results for both sides were very poor at 90psi and proved Vanya's point. We had a cold engine compression leak.

Vanya suggested that if this test resulted in poor compression, I should check that the eight head bolts were tightened to 25 ft-lbs. This is where I discovered our problem! The head bolts were just loose enough that they did not created a good seal with the cylinders until the engine was warm. That is why the warm compression check didn't expose the problem with our compression.

Through this process I have learned that discovering the origins of a problem in a troubled engine requires following a series of steps to make sure that the three main systems of compression, spark, and fuel are opereating properly when you perform a tuneup, and that to check them in that order. First, make sure the engine has good compression. The main check should be when the engine is warm, but if your engine will not start then a cold engine compression test could expose the underlying problem of why the engine won't start. Then, and only then, should you proceed onto checking the electrical system to make sure that a healthy spark is being delivered through the spark plug, and that it is being delivered at the right time. From there you should go onto check the fuel flow. All of these ingredients combine to make up a running engine, but the first systems have to be functioning flawless make sure that you are diagnosing the true problem.

After I tightened the head bolts I got a healthy reading from both of our cylinders.

The motorcycle started right up when I put it back together, and is a breeze to start with the kick starter when warm, all of our gear is strapped on, and Jen is sitting on the back of the bike. Hurray!!!!!

Benjamin

p.s. Now I am going to go through the other systems and make sure they are functioning flawlessly with the correct compression. Just another step in maintaining a 1976 Yamaha xs500 in Jen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Mexico!!!!!

2009-02-11T22:18:00.002-06:00

HELL YEAH, MEXICO!

That is all.

Jen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: 1976 Yamaha XS500 travel blog

Creating Miss Margaret

Bad news

Tres Marias Motorcycle Rally

A Taste of Mexico City Contest!

Twitter Updates

Dogs

Changing & Daring: Sierra Gorda Biosphere

Mexico City!

The best of San Miguel de Allende and onwards.

In Guanajuato, Motor is OUT!

Muchas Gracias!!!

Videos on the Road

Oh no, Mr. Bill (Ben)!

Real de Catorce in words & images

Some Loving, Some Blog Hating & Nature Photos

Mardi Gras! Mardi Gras! (Anticipation!)

Public Service Announcement

More Real de Catorce video

Real de Catorce tunnel

Non-Sequiturs in Spanish

La Huasteca, or Ansel Adams, eat your heart out

Border Crossing in Mexico

Roadside Mechanics Series #3

Mexico!!!!!