battered and beaten

we arrived in la ventana just in time to catch the el norte wind event. it lasted about three days and i was finally able to get out on the water with a board and a kite (after a few days on the beach and in the water practicing flying the kite).
i was thrashed. the kites are huge and the amount of power they generate is enough to launch you 30 ft in the air while carrying you 200 ft down wind. trying to harness that to get me up and riding resulted in a lot of supermans, belly flops, severe whiplash, cuts, bruises, and a stomach full of salt water. just bloody and beaten by the end of the first day. the second day was an improvement and i was up and riding. however, i was also more aggressive with the kite, which meant some epic crashes. great entertainment for those sitting on the beach.

warning

two days into the trip and this is what i find hidden on the inside of my helmet:

some reasonably foreseeable impacts may exceed this helmet's capability to protect against severe injury or death

not sure i should feel comfortable with this...

so it begins

it just cant be that easy... got to calexico with our bikes, turned south to the border, drove under a large concrete canopy, and we were in mexicali, mexico.
drove twenty miles before we realized we should probably turn around and ask about the tourist card they say we need.
after spending an hour in line to cross back into the u.s. (because jon wouldnt duck the police tape to get into the motorcycle lane) we were virtually waved back through with not even a glance at our passports. it would seem that mexicali is spanish for "portal for illegal immigration".
back to the mexican crossing and again simply waived through the border and told we need nothing. i thought it unwise to try to convince the border guard that we must need something...
spent the day driving through desert windstorms. first day loaded with gear so of course we are going to have 30 mph side winds. what looked like smoke drifting in the distance was a sandstorm, floats across the road like snow.
made it to bahai de santa maria. a beautiful bay on the sea of cortez that serves as a getaway for the san diego crowd.
so cold we only slept a total of probably 3 hours off and on. jon actually had to wrap up in his boarding kite. we both shivered our way to the dawn.
we both got up thinking the same thing, "we have to go south."

border crossing

so... apparently we are crossing the border early tomorrow morning. mexicali and the sea of cortez. glad to be out of the city and damn the sunshine feels good. minus exchanging money we are set to cross. just hoping we have the paperwork we need and can slip across with relative ease. a little worried about the cost of our breakfast this morning (bagels and coffee) - $6.66...

status

things seem to be coming together...finally. spent the last two days riding through the canyons north of la. beautiful to say the least. the bikes are great, damn it feels great to ride. what i thought it would feel like to be atop a motorcycle. something like the opening chapters of ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE.

back on the road

The enormity of our endeavor escaped us in those moments; all we could see was the dust on the road ahead and ourselves on the bike, devouring kilometers in our flight northward. Ernesto "Che" Guevara - Notas de Viaje
it sounds nice. poetic. but to be honest we (that is jon and i) are wallowing in shit. it was an ideal trip, however, things just arent working out as we had planned. over a week behind at this point. i think god is trying to tell us something...
but we just keep plowing through the signs in our quest to make this trip happen.
at the moment we are stuck in LA with another run of bad weather and hoping to put on at least 500 miles before we head south. we currently have a total of 3 miles on the bikes. certainly starting to question the wisdom of this trip...

anti-americanism

i just read this in the ny times.

Fawaziah al-Bakr, who promotes educational change and women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, helped organize women to protest the Israeli attacks. “Nobody is talking about reform in Saudi Arabia,” she said. “All we talk about is the war, what to do about the war. There is no question that the U.S. has lost morally because of the war. Even if you like the people and the culture of the United States, you can’t defend it.” The statement by Ms. Rice — during a fleeting stopover in Beirut last month — is being juxtaposed with the mounting carnage to rally popular opposition against all things American. Anti-U.S. Feeling Leaves Arab Reformers Isolated

it certainly made me pause as it speaks directly to lara's comment. as things get increasingly worse in the middle east and lebanon it seems the line separating american politics and "all things American" will not be as clearly drawn. what do you all think?

out like trout

just to let you all know (that is those still reading this) i am heading into the mountains of northeast turkey in a couple of days. i will be heading to the black sea coast near the georgian border and then into the kackar mountains. i want to hike, relax, work on my turkish, and eat some rare (and supposedly psychedelic) honey. from there i will make my way to the armenian border to check out early christian churches (for you ruth) and eventually ending up at mt. ararat to search for noah's ark. i hope to also hit lake van, mt. nemrut, cappadocia, konya, bursa, and finally back to istanbul. i should be out for about a month depending on money, time, and all that rot. i am going to try to keep this updated with what is happening and what i am doing. so please keep reading and commenting.

tear gas in the classroom

in the middle of teaching my intermediate students to the many ways we make predictions in english i was once again interrupted by a protest walking down the main pedestrian street on which my school sits. this happens every weekend and always consists of a small group of protesters outnumbered by riot police 10 to 1. so i though nothing of it (even though it was monday). but the students always like to look out of the 5th story window and check it out (they are easily distracted). so as the chants grew louder, and the protest closer, i asked for an interpretation. "murder america!"; "down with israel!"; "we don't want to be israeli soldiers!" now i am interested. i look out the window and see a line of about 75 riot police squared off with a group of about 100 protestors. we try to continue the lesson, making predictions about what is going to happen outside our window. the protest builds over the next hour and our lesson finishes early so that the students can get out of the building before things get out of hand. that left three foreign teachers wondering what to do. we watched from the window to gauge the situation and watched the protest grow and intensify. then the surge, and the tear gas, and the police beatings, and the scattering protestors. the tear gas clouded the scene and filled the classroom so we decided to sit on the fire escape, drink bourbon, and let it clear. now i am wondering how bad it is going to get?