Mexico continued

Read the post from July 15 first and this will all make sense I promise. 

........ They look at me and erupt in full blown laughter. I'm so confused, that wasn't meant to be funny?! They welcome me to the beer tent complete with slaps on the back and hilarious impersonations of my greeting. I've been accepted, this is great. I spend the next three hours at this fateful beer tent, buying rounds and attempting to communicate through broken English and Spanish. They refer to me as captain America and Easy Rider as well as "muy loco" for riding all the way down from Canada. So far, I love Mexico; the fact that I've stumbled into this town and made friends with a Mexican biker gang is really making my day.

After a few hours of this they invite me to dinner. My response; "hell yes" (like I needed any kind of convincing).  8 or 9 of us all on deafening Harleys just hooliganning our way through the streets of Nogales. I was in heaven. Riding on sidewalks and running red lights (which is very common in Mexico if you go anywhere other than a resort) all the way to this seafood restaurant.

Our food arrives just as a group of gorgeous Latina beauties walk in and over to our table. The leader of the gang "Rudy" leans over and says to me "hey man, which one do you like?". I politely inform him that I absolutely love Latina women and it would be quite unfair for me to choose just one. Rudy contemplates my response for a moment and replies with this piece of gold: "bro, you're 32 in the waist and cool in the face, you can have any woman in Mexico, be careful my dude".

We finish dinner and I give one of the Spanish smokeshows a ride back to the festivities. We park the bikes and head back to our spot; the beer tent. After a few rounds I am routinely checking my bike a half block down every few minutes. One of the gang dudes notices this and asks me what I'm doing. "Oh I'm just checking on my bike, I've got my bag and everything on there". He lowers his voice and looks me deadpan in the eyes: "Homie. You're with us now, you're protected".... Great. This is all great.

We continue drinking and I learn that the Mexican way to drink beers is to drink the blue Tecates, not the red ones, because if you stick with the light beers you can "drink all night". Roger that, but these dudes obviously know nothing about me and my alcohol consumption prowess.

Night has fallen and the booze is flowing, I'm having a great time hanging out with these dudes just watching this street festival roll past us. Then it dawned on me; where am I staying tonight? I had multiple offers throughout the day for places to stay, here's just a choice few: (from a beautiful senorita) "you can stay at my place for free, my kids would love to see a white man on a motorcycle" as well as the 20 pesos for the week offer: "it's only a few miles out of town, we don't have no electricity but there's running water..."  Had I not been drinking since noon in the desert heat I may have been a better judge of character and actually headed out to a lonely casa in the middle of nowhere. However, now that it's dark and I'm gettin loose I probably shouldn't make any real decisions. So I check out a few hotels (brothels) on the surrounding streets until I finally find one with a little courtyard, I'm basically looking for somewhere to hide my bike. 200 pesos for the night and a 50 peso "TV remote rental" deposit, I guess people steal the remotes down here?

I wake up fairly early surprisingly and get a good look at my room, there's only a few bugs that I could see, hopefully they didn't make it into my bag... I pack my shit up and head out to my bike, where I find a bunch of little niños standing around my bike. Their very young and stunning mother comes over and I end up doing an impromptu photoshoot with this Mexican family all sitting on my bike (and on me).

I find my breakfast at a very small and barely noticeable "diner". The little restaurant room seats about 8 total and I am wedged in the corner. My Spanish is terrible at best so I'm fairly certain I ordered something to the effect of huevos rancheros.

Basking in the glow of this Spanish culinary delight I get back on my bike and head for the border. On a lonely stretch of highway headed north, up ahead was something half-blocking the road. As I rode closer, 20 ft in front of me was about 10 local policeman, and 2 police trucks. I look behind me, there are no vehicles at all on this road except the police and I. How strange. They are frantically waving me over and blocking the road. I roll slowly closer and see their menacing stares and machine guns, this does not look like a good time. I take a deep breath, taking mental stock of what exactly is happening here, this moment seemed like it lasted longer than it should, everything was in slow motion yknow? I lean to the left and twist the throttle harder than I ever have, spinning my back tire and propelling me in the small valley that is a meridian between the opposing highway lanes. Absolutely no way am I gonna get the 'ol Mexican police shakedown alone. There's no way they can catch me on a bike, but riding off road through that meridian was a jungle of terrain; chunks of concrete and earth, so uneven and rough I thought for sure my sissy bar would break from bouncing around so much and everything I had with me in my duffle bag would be left behind for these so called policemen. I make it to the other highway lane headed back into town and squeal my tires to escape, I glance in my rear view mirror and see them scrambling to get in a truck and start chasing me. I redline through my gears til they are just a speck in the distance, taking the first turn into town so I can hide.

Thank goodness I find an absolute dump of a gas station with a pile of garbage/dumpster I can hide behind without being seen from the road.

It's about 10 am and it's getting hot, I grab a few cerveças from the gas station and decide to wait these bastards out. A couple cold beers in the hot Mexican sun? Yes please. I'm acting tough telling this story but in reality I was freaking out and had no idea what to do. So I wait. Half an hour later I figure the dust has settled and I should be ok, so I pack up and take off through the city streets, bogging down in my gears to keep the RPM's low, keeping the rumble of the pipes to a respectable volume. I zigzag and crisscross my way through back alleys, taking the long way through town to get back to the highway. Back on the road to freedom I am stopping for nothing, bobbing and weaving through cars, doubling the speed limit in some areas, it's Mexico right? I arrive at my salvation; the border and am waved back into the US without even checking my passport, no questions asked. Back on American soil the events that occurred in Mexico started to set in, only 24 hours and I had the most tumultuous time. Imagine if I had stayed for a week?!

So that was the first time I rode my bike to Mexico....