OLD MAN FOR THE TRASH HEAP

hotel owner

JALPAN, SIERRA GORDA: MARCH 11
I have spent much of the day writing in the hotel. Why am I so tired? Tired is a misnomer. Exhausted is an understatement.
Being away ten months and on the road, vulnerable on a small bike; seemingly endless series of packing and unpacking; at night, trying to recall in each new hotel room which direction the bathroom is and where the light switches are – all of that is counterbalanced by warm, interesting, kindly people, by superb country and wonderful buildings.
So why so exhausted?
By nature, I am an optimist (aged 75, only an optimist would attempt this ride). Holding on to one's optimism is hard. Country to country, the endless tales of coruption are depressing, the belief so many have that the system is too entrenched, that there is nothing anyone can do, that even trying is to waste one's life. Yes, exhausting.
There is a further factor: my editor/publisher is in adminsitration (bankrupt used to be the word). I had a three book contract. The first of the trilogy was due for publication in May. I had a young enthusiastic intelligent editor. Yes, I am suicidal...

HELLS ANGELS FOR OBAMA

MISSIONS OF THE SIERRA GORDA, MEXICO: MARCH 7
My friend, Don, and his Dallas Biker palls are Republicans. I have been corresponding with another friend in Texas, a Black academic. She is an Obama supporter (as am I). She was surprised by my assertion that Latin Americans support Obama. The BMW BOYS confirm my belief and confirm my argument that race is a US obsession.

HELLS ANGELS FROM QUERETARO

SIERRA GORDA MISSIONS, MEXICO: MARCH 7
Jalpan is more a village than a town., The population slightly exceed five thousand. Of the Sierra Gorda missions, It was founded first and completed in 1774. I have a large room with an emperor size bed in the Maria del Carmen Hotel on the church square. Water is hot in a power shower. I should be happy. I am miserable. The hotel is vast. Its chill atmosphere is a reminder of pre-Glasnost Russia.
I leave to visit the missions at a reasonable hour. Landa de Matamoros is my first target, 18 Ks. I spot a line of BMW bikes outside a restaurant on the outskirts of town. The BMW Bike Club of Queretaro is breakfasting. I halt and present myself. The bikers seat me at the head of the table. They are of much the same background as my friend Don and his biker friends in Dallas, successful businessmen in their middle years. They are indulging an unfulfilled desire of their youth. They were too busy then, or short of funds. They are good companions, cheerful, funny, generous and intelligent.

SEVEN YEAR FIX

MISSIONS OF SIERRA GORDA, MEXICO: FEBRUARY 8
Five Franciscan missions shelter in the high valleys of the Sierra Gorda. The churches are cruciform. Two small side chapels form the arms while a dome rises above the alter. To the left of the facade stands a tower. To the right, a simple cloister surrounds a small garden.
Fray Junipero de la Serra designed the churches and presented the facades as canvasses for indigenous sculptors. The sculptors had a ball. The baroque facades they created are unique and give the missions their artistic importance.
The facades are renovated and the churches painted every seven years. Why seven? No one knows.
No matter.
I have hit on the seventh year and Easter week. Scaffolding destroys the view of church fronts. Purple drapes hide statues and paintings within the interior.
I write here of all five Franciscan missions. I am disappointed by the scaffolding – not by the purple drapes. The interiors of the churches gain in simplicity and the simplicity is a wonderful contrast to the exterior exuberance.

MOTHER AND CHILD SURVIVE ON GRASS

SIERRA GORDA, MEXICO: MARCH 7
Trees shade the road as it turns and twists down through the forest. Two dark coated folk, mother and daughter, graze a small patch of almost invisible grass. Pines give way to broad leaf. I halt for a comfort break and listen to a stream splashing over rocks. I have ridden from near desert the west side of the sierra up into the chill of a pine cloud forest and am now, midway through the sierra, descending into watered valleys. These continual changes are the fascination of Mexico.

UNION - THE MIRACLE OF MEXICO

SIERRA GORDA, MEXICO: MARCH 7
I ride in thick pine forest. Trees hide the fearsome falls. The road crosses the final pass at an altitude of nearly eight thousand feet.
I try to imagine communication prior to construction of the road. Paving was completed in 1968. And the dirt road? I ask. No one knows. I must search out an oldy of my age.
The dirt road would have been impassable in the rains. Prior to the dirt road, a mule trail existed - a ten day trek from Jalpan to Queretaro. Imagine attempting to govern a country where Provinces were so cut off one from another and from the capital; and even Provinces were carved apart by sierra and river. The Miracle of Mexico is its survival (though, as Mexicans attest, a huge swathe of the United States was Mexican)