Two seas (Seeing stars)

Thursday 21th - Friday 22th March

The next day on the road it feels as though I had just kept riding from the previous day. The wind is still hot and pushing me back. The hills still roll before me. I am still tired. It's like I haven't slept, or haven't rested at all. It's like you're jumping on a trampoline, and you come down through the air, feel the fabric under your feet stretch down with your momentum as far as it will go, to its nadir, and you expect to be shot back upwards... and nothing happens, you just stay down there.

I ride along in my nadir, where it is hotter than it is, where the hills are bigger than they are, where the landscape is more hostile than it is. So it is no surprise that it finds me again. That black thing, that creature shape, that darkness... It only ever finds you when it's dark, as if it is afraid to come out in the light, cowardly, waiting until you are alone. I wonder what I am doing out there on the road, alone. My spirit falters a little. What is the point of all this? Why am I bothering? Why don't I just go home? Gloomy thoughts gather, and thicken, and darken, weighing me down. Pedalling is becoming more of an effort, as my strength wears thin. I am going to have to stop. I wonder why it's so hard today?

I stop. I lean my bike against a pole in a turnout beside the road. I sit in the shade of my bike. I eat raisins. A banana. Water. I rest. And then I feel a cool breeze. It feels different from the hot wind I have been feeling all morning. I look up. I realise I have come around a hill and I am looking out over the Pacific again. I have passed the point where the warmer Sea of Cortez meets the cooler Pacific, on the southern point of Baja. The wind blows again and it's cold now beautifully cold. I look up. I stand up. I fill my lungs with the cool air from over that vast sea. The moment turns, like the others have before, and I am ready to go on. The shadow begins to slip away, as if unable to resist that cool, gentle breeze. Slowly at first, and then faster, and faster, with my wheels, until I am clear again of that heaviness, and I can see again, straight ahead, and there are pictures in my memories again.

The Pacific, seen from the shade of my bike.

The afternoon flashes before me, the sun is flung across the sky like a discus, and lands with a splash and a thunk, and it is night-time, and I am camped on the beach. My tent is up and I have eaten. The Pacific thunders and crashes into the beach here. It's a thrilling sound. I look up and all I can see are stars.

A far flung sun

Seeing stars

Friday's morning light shows me a beach carved steeply by the thundering waves of the Pacific. I check my bike. It's the last day of my 5 day mini-tour, and I want to make sure it's going to be a smooth ride. I find a thick black rubber coated wire wrapped around my rear axle. I think it's part of a retread, which must have been on the side of the road. I wonder how long it has been there, and if it has been making my life difficult. Hm.

I start riding and the cycling is noticeably easier, but now I notice a squeak. I oil the crank axle and kill the squeak. Riding is easier again, so much easier. Hmmm. I feel there's something I am supposed to learn from all this. Definitely something about bicycle maintenance. Probably something about travelling, like what Dr Suess might say. For some reason, it makes me think of my life in general too.

La Paz lies at the end of the road that fifth day, or at least I hope it does. It looks as though the heat has melted the road in the distance, and the cars are just driving off into the air.

But it is easy. Heat and hills feel small and little. A strong wind takes me into La Paz.