The Bad and the Ugly

Jim posting. Social media venues such as Facebook or travel blogs tend to highlight the positives.   They make every birthday party look perfect, every vacation a dream come true, and every dinner a culinary masterpiece.   Instagram is almost defined by this phenomenon!   It is just the nature of the beast – we tend to post what we would like people to see, and I think it is fair to say that for the most part we see what we want to see, even if we sometimes complain about it.  We share the “good”, but less often “the bad and the ugly” (old western movie pun intended).  

I have had in mind for some time to make a blog post that shares a bit of the other side of the coin, as relates to our trip.   Because the bad and the ugly are part of our journey as well – and to more fully share in our adventure, you need to know that it isn’t all Instagram moments!   To be sure, for the most part our trip has been a wonderfully positive experience – but it should go without saying that a trip of this magnitude is going to have a dark side.  Not every day’s ride is a joy, not every view is breathtaking, and not every meal is to die for (and yes, we have both had to deal with travelers’ diarrhea!).   But it is all part of the whole – so in this post I will take the somewhat unusual approach of describing one of “the bad and the ugly” aspects our trip and share how that has shaped the way we travel and helped form the evolving legacy of our adventure.

It happened in Baja.  Which is ironic, because overall Baja was a truly wonderful experience – we had been before, and we both agree we will be back again.  But early on, near the end of our first week in Mexico, we hit a long section of dirt road over two days of riding.  This was on Hwy 5 headed south from San Felipe along the Sea of Cortez.   We have touched on what happened on this ride in other blog post and on Facebook, but not in a way that truly exposes the unpleasantness of the ordeal.  We’ve posted that Carol dropped her bike several times on that route and that she bent her crash bars (engine protection bars), which we had repaired while we were in Guadalajara.   But what we’ve posted prior glosses over it.   The fact is that this section of road was really nasty, it was hard especially on Carol, and the crash that bent her crash bars was pretty scary.  And I watched the whole thing, helplessly, in my rear-view mirror!   And even that wasn’t the worst of it – it was the after effects that truly made this a “bad and ugly” experience.     

Here is how it went down (pun not intended!):   We were on day two of Hwy 5, headed south to the intersection with Hwy 1, the main North/South highway through Baja.   Hwy 5 was a dirt highway that has been slowly being paved for years, and we learned that ironically the year before the last section of paving was completed, making it paved all the way to Hwy 1.   Then hurricane Willa came and seriously damaged it – basically took out much of the road along with most of the bridges.  I had read that as a result there were “some sections under repair” – a gross understatement!   The temporary roads and bridge detours in particular were nasty.   We were at the southern end of the route, almost to Hwy 1, when the detour took us way off the original highway (was disconcerting to look at my GPS display and it shows us in the middle of the desert far from “the road”!)  We have seen very few other vehicles, maybe one an hour, so basically, we are alone in the desert on a road that isn’t a road, but we hope is right because the detour sign said to go this way – and then it heads up this steep hill.  

It is important to understand how we had been working our way through these bad sections.  I am always in front, sort of scouting the way, and we are connected by helmet intercoms.   I radio back suggestions on how to navigate road obstacles, remind her about technique, and try to keep her spirits up with banter. And when we come to a particularly bad section (like most of the bridge wash-outs) that I judge are not going to go well for her, I tell her (or sometimes she tells me!) that she should probably wait and let me ride her bike through for her.    And despite this approach she has had several falls already, and now it is near the end of a long hot day and we are both tired.   But I know (if in fact the detour we took was correct!) that we have to be near Hwy 1 and pavement.   

So up this hill we go.   As I bobbled my way up, I made the judgement call that she could do this on her own, and I radioed back and told her so.  She trusts me and started up the hill standing on her foot pegs (what one does riding in dirt).   I hit some bad “moguls” that nearly took me down, and I gulped thinking “I made a mistake” – but it is to late to stop her now.  I sat back down on my seat so I could see her in my rear-view mirror and saw her as she went through the “mogul” section (the road was like a black diamond ski run!), and as she did, I heard her engine rev!   As she went through this dip, she was thrown back and off-balance.   And tired and stressed, she had a tight of a grip on the throttle, and as she was thrown backwards with her hand griping the throttle she accelerated.  This of course threw her back even more (Newton’s third law … have to work some physics in), which caused her to accelerate more, etc.  In technical terms she was in a positive feedback loop.  Remember that I’m watching this in my rearview mirror and listening to her go “whoa whoa whoa” through the intercom, unable to do anything.

The road was roughly cut through a hillside, and she accelerated (bouncing along the road) at a glancing angle into the embankment and came to an abrupt stop.   Her left-side engine crash bar hit a rock in the embankment, and that is what stopped her motorcycle and is how it got bent.   Carol was sort of tossed up alongside the embankment (she did not come of her bike) and hit her arm (we don’t know exactly on what), which was bruised, and there is a gash in her helmet where it hit the hillside.    And as I said, I watched this all happen in my rear-view mirror, helpless.   And I made the (incorrect) judgement call that she could make this section on her own.  And I know that my bad call was in part because I was tired, and the thought of having to ride my bike through this section, park, walk back down the hill, get on her bike and ride it up for her – this was not something I was looking forward to.  So, I pushed the limits of what I thought she could handle, and I felt horrible and responsible. 

We checked her and the bike out.  She seemed ok other than the bruise, but her bikes shift lever was also bent and I had to get out the tools to remove it and bend it back into shape.   I rode her bike up the hill as I should have from the start, and we took a long break.   Then we got back on the road, and soon found out that this had all happened frustratingly close to the beginning of tarmac and the intersection with Hwy 1!      

But the crash itself, with the bruise and bent bars, are not the truly bad part.   The bad part was the aggregate effect all this had on Carol’s moral and confidence.   After those two days, Carol began to struggle with feelings of anxiety at the start of every day we rode.  She was having serious doubts about her ability to complete the trip, and I was playing coach and cheerleader to keep her confidence up, all the while wondering if I would honestly know if it was time to call it quits.  I knew Carol had ridden thousands of miles before this trip, including into Baja before.   I believed she could do this trip, but I wasn’t sure she was able to believe it!   This was truly a dark undercurrent for several weeks in Baja.   We would have days where things were just fine, during which we were both fully enjoying the trip, but then one bad section of road due to construction or a dirt path to a campground, and Carol would start to question her ability again, and fret about the journey ahead.  I was really not sure about the future of the trip; I did not want to push Carol to burn-out just to say “we did it!”, and I was worried she’d push herself too far because she knew how much I’ve looked forward to doing this trip with her.  And many days she seemed to be fully enjoying herself and up to the task.  We had some great times in Baja (just go back and review the posts!), but this was the dark undertone.

And then, just at the right time I truly believe God sent her a messenger, in the person of Sharon.   I mentioned Chris and Sharon in a previous post, and I said I would have more to say about them.   We first met them in San Ignacio, just a few days after the crash.  We learned that they had worked for years as missionaries in Honduras but had returned to the states for a few years of additional schooling for Sharon to become a Nurse Practitioner in order to operate a clinic back in Honduras.  They are now completing a trip similar to ours before heading back to their work in Honduras.  We enjoyed our brief visit with them in San Ignacio, and Carol discussed her falls on Hwy 5, and I was delighted to hear Sharon exclaim that she had fallen several times on that same road! Brief as our time with them there was, it was good for Carol to hear that!

But Carol was still struggling with her confidence.  We drove for several more weeks after that – down to the tip of Baja and then back up to Loreto to meet our friends Dave and WenJiang from San Jose (see Loreto snorkeling post – it was awesome).   This was several weeks after our brief meeting with Chris and Sharon in San Ignacio, and I was sitting in the backyard patio of our B&B actually writing about them (see previous post) when Chris and Sharon came unplanned and unannounced into the backyard and said “Hi!”.    They had heard from someone else about another couple in town on motorcycles headed to South America and had figured it was us.  The day after hearing that, they were walking down the street and saw our bikes in the driveway.    It was serendipity – it was divine appointment!  

That evening, Carol and Sharon went to town together while Chris and I hung out with the B&B owner, giving them hours to talk and share.  As a female rider, Sharon could relate to Carol in a way I could not, and Sharon has had some falls of her own so she could truly relate!   She was a great encouragement and their time together was a tipping point for Carol.   We ended up bringing them along to dinner with Dave and WenJiang.  After dinner the four of us walked around town a bit, and as we did, Carol said “People say I’m brave – but I’m not bold or fearless, I don’t think I’m brave.”   Sharon stopped in the street and said “Carol – that is what bravery is!  Doing the thing despite the fear.   You are a brave woman!”   And I think for the first time Carol started to believe it!   

Since that meeting with Sharon, Carol has recovered her confidence and seldom has anxiety when we are starting a ride.   She has engaged with the trip in a more earnest fashion, through researching our destinations and planning much of our itinerary.  It makes me happy to see her so invested, engaged and truly enjoying our trip.  She will probably never enjoy dirt roads, but we have encountered plenty of them since then and she makes it through, and she recognizes that she has gained some skills which adds to her confidence.   And I have learned to read the tone of her voice over the intercom to know when we need to stop for a break (because she will usually not just come out and tell me!) so she can re-charge.  We are much better at managing the rigors of the road now than we were at the start.  And   I believe that Sharon was God-sent and am thankful to her for helping Carol gain confidence and to believe in herself and her ability. 

So, it isn’t all happy days swimming with the sea lions or climbing volcanos.  But even this dark side of our trip has woven itself into the fabric of our journey in a wonderful way.  You have to take the whole – that’s real life.  And even after 40 years of marriage, we still learn about ourselves and each other, and what I have described here definitely has been a learning experience!   And we are not quite “looking back” on all this yet– it is still somewhat present and recent, but it is receding in the rear-view mirror as every day brings new and exciting things in front of us, and we look forward to continuing the adventure.   And we look forward to seeing Chris and Sharon in June, because as we talked to them, we discovered that they have booked the exact same boat and departure date as we have, for transporting our motorcycles and ourselves from Panama to Columbia.  Small world indeed!