February 1

Ruben had told me of some rough cabins in the mountains about a kilometer east of the railroad tracks that we rode next to on Christmas Eve. Ruben struggles with English and I admire his effort. He spent a year in Provo, Utah, in an English course, but he says that Provo has a large Hispanic minority, and he hung out with them in bars and dance halls rather than immersing himself in English. The only time I remember being in Provo was in 1967 when Miko Concha and Joey McHorse and I passed through on our way to San Francisco. Miko and Joey are natives of Taos Pueblo, and the three of us were not well received in Provo. And as long as Hispanics are a minority there they will not be treated well. So Ruben did not learn as much English as he could have.

I went looking for those cabins on my bicycle a few days later, but did not find any roads that looked like they went into the mountains. Then, in further conversation with Ruben, and with Rosie, I learned that I needed to go through the puebla of La Libertad and into a cañon just beyond it. I had thought I had seen a road sign for la Libertad on my first attempt, so a few days ago I tried again. I did not see any such sign, and went much further toward San Luis Potosi than any rational being on a bicycle should. When I next saw Rosie I told her what had happened, and she drew me a map, which did not help much, and told me to ask some one when I got past the railroad tracks.

Rather than ask anyone I took the first paved road to the right on the other side of the tracks. I had been avoiding it because there is a state police installation on it and Ruben had told me to avoid cops. Let me digress a moment. Between Christmas and New Years I rode my bike downtown, and was riding on the wide sidewalk of the Plaza, slowly and carefully, not sure that it was legal, and a cop stopped me. He must have read the terror on my face because the first thing he did was offer me his hand. He was a young man, in his twenties, and very pleasant. He spoke no English, but he let me know that he had seen me with my laptop in the park-divider of Blvd. Velasquez. I tried to tell him that I went there frequently to check my e-mail and that I had ridden here on the bike from Canada. He acted like he understood and shook my hand again before moving on.

That paved road led to La Libertad, which is a small isolated village strung out along the road. Many of the buildings have palm-thatched roofs, and many others have metal roofs that have replaced the thatch. There were small ranchitos, many of them fenced in with vertical sticks tied or wired together, and several households had bright red and yellow flowers blooming on high bushes next to the fences. There were a lot of well-fed lazy dogs who couldn't be bothered to chase me, even though the day was not at all hot. And quite a few women and children but not very many men in the yards and on the road who also took minimal interest in my passage. And there were the required number of tiny stores and cafes. An old woman came out of her house as I was riding by and threw a pan of dishwater to the side of her dooryard. The houses are small and close together; many of them, as are most new houses in Victoria, are built of concrete block. I wondered about their water supply and how they keep from contaminating it, but they evidently have got that figured out, because the people look healthy and content. If I spoke Spanish and had friends there I too could be content to live in La Libertad.

The road continues through the village and suddenly one is in a cañon in the mountains riding beside a crystal clear stream. There is a fragrance that I know from the banks of the Rio Grande near Albuquerque, and I think it comes from a bush but I cannot identify it. Walnut trees as large as ancient cottonwoods grow on the banks of the stream. The Department of Tourism has built a park here, with cabins and picnic sites and playgrounds, all well constructed, and while the place would be more interesting to me if there were no road and no structures, what has been done could have been done worse. The Mountain walls forming the cañon are high and steep, covered with scrub oak. I rode to the end of the pavement, and then five hundred or more meters on a rocky road past mor cabins and picnic sites, until I was stopped where the road fords the river. It is too deep there for my bicycle, But I could see that it continues up the cañon on the other side. The river is shallow and quiet and perfectly clear. There is some litter in it, but not much. I couldn't see any fish.

I will go back before I leave, and take some pictures, and identify the source of that fragrance.

January 1

Had five drinks last night, which is a big drunk these days, and resolved to be indolent today. Didn't keep it. This is the second day free of computer games, one of my least damaging addictions, but still a waste of creative energy. I added another thousand words to Road Tripe, which is the working title of the conversion of this journal into a travelogue. Remember that all memory is creative.

I'm drumming my fingers on the table. Solitude and clean living have their limits. I've been looking at railroad routes (remember, trains are an acceptable use of fossil fuel, except when they introduce new species to habitats that cannot deal with them, like gringos into New Mexico) and there is a train from San Antonio to Deming. That's only fifty miles from Silver City, which is on the edge of the Gila. Silver City is a fairly big town. The Gila might be crowded. I'm going there anyway.

Lots of fireworks last night, all night long, which didn't exactly keep me awake, because I would have had trouble sleeping anyway. I got up at 11:45, intuitively (without my glasses on I never know what time it is in the dark), got dressed and took my tequila bottle out to the street, to see if I could share it with revelers. None were there, and after about fifteen minutes none had come by, so I toasted Erin, my homies, and all that I love, came back to mi habitacion, had another tequila chased by a beer and wrote a little more Road Tripe.

Gil Fronsdal is my guru, but he doesn't know it. He has lectured extensively at the Insight Meditation Center in San Francisco, has been a Buddhist for a long time, and a scholar in the western tradition, and a cook, and a father. Last winter I started listening to some of his lectures that are available on the net. His style reflects his experience. He began by studying comparative religion, became a Zen monk in Japan, then studied and became a practitioner of the Vipassana tradition, that of South East Asia, and now makes his living by lecturing on Buddhism. His style is light, relaxed, humorous and comforting, and the content of his lectures is profound. I can learn a lot from him, and with this time on my hands and a good internet connection, I can learn a little every day.

I do not expect to be transformed into a new person by this practice, nor to experience any kind of epiphany. The goal of Buddhist practice is to let go of the attachments that cause our suffering, and that is a difficult thing to do, and very few, perhaps only the Buddha himself, have been able to fully accomplish it. It has taken me a long time to even accept the legitimacy of such a goal: for all of my life I have worked against the external causes of individual human suffering: oppression and injustice that lead to hunger, for instance, and I have thought that religious attempts to ease such suffering were mere ploys of the ruling class.

To quote Fronsdal on the renunciation of attachments:

Renunciation is often difficult. Grappling with the power of desire,

attachments, and fear may require great personal struggle. But that

struggle yields many benefits. We develop the inner strength to

overcome temptation and compulsion. We don't have to live with the

suffering and contraction that come with clinging. Clinging can be

exhausting; letting go is restful. We may taste the luminous mind of

freedom, which is hidden when clinging is present. And, last but not

least, we are more available to work for the welfare of others.

December 25

A bright, clear and still cool morning. The fireworks were tame, and I fell asleep at about 9:30. And then at 11:30 a bomb went off next door, followed in two seconds by another down the block, which was followed two seconds later by another 500 meters further away, and so on for at least 12 of them. I got up and got dressed and stood out in the yard, but there were no rockets or roman candles visible from here, just the noise of firecrackers. Orion was at his zenith, nearly directly overhead, and I could locate Cassiopeia, but not the dippers nor Polaris, they were too dim in the glow of the lights.

Ruben took some digital photographs during our ride and he will come by soon, but not today, to download them to this machine so I can e-mail them.

December 24

A storm last night, with high winds, rain, and bit of thunder and lightning. It was cold this morning, for these latitudes. I wore a jacket over a sweatshirt, and thought of putting on sweat pants under my jeans. This place is unheated. I stayed here all morning, drinking tea and studying Spanish. And then at noon Ruben and Alicia came over and took me out to breakfast. Their breakfast, my second lunch. They will be back shortly and we are going for an eighteen km bike ride.

A beautiful ride. We started late, but the wind died down and the sky cleared. We rode north of the city on an unpaved country road that parallels the face of the mountains about a kilometer east of them. These are mountains without foothills, and a level plain lies to the east as far as I could see. There are large fields and cattle ranches out there, and blue mesas on the northeast horizon, at least 60 km away. We rode through a small herd of cattle, and past small ranchos with dogs and chickens and music, to a camp owned by Alicia's father. The sun set behind the mountains as we rode back, its yellow light filtering through the passes between the peaks. They are more rugged, than the Rockies, but not as massive, and in their way just as impressive. Eso si es Mexico. Ruben gave me a baseball cap for Christmas, on an impulse, after I wished them una feliz Navidad as we parted. It is a very well made Mexican duplicate of the Swiss army cap. In camouflage. I need a cap and I like it. It will be a hit in Texas and New Mexico. True camouflage.

The fireworks have begun, another Mexican tradition. Ruben pointed out the church where those bells are being rung, but I'm too tired to go. Besides, I've got my Christmas cold. I'll sleep in my sleeping bag tonight.

December 23

Will, of Will and Eleanor, calls the Tamaulipas, the Mexican state of which Victoria is the capital, "tamale upas", fully aware of his mispronunciation. He also expects Mexicans to make at least as much effort to speak English as he does Spanish. That expectation wouldn't be reciprocated in his bar and grill in South Dakota, I suspect. I have heard many times, "If they wanna live here, let 'em learn English." Eleanor is trying to learn Spanish and is doing better at it than I am.

Rosie came by at suppertime. I had a plate of enchiladas in the brand new microwave that she gave me this morning. She was all gussied up, driving her little red car that is filled to capacity with what looks like junk, and she gave me a calendar. It has a picture of a dove on a background with the bright colors of a serape, and a bit of advertising. Paz en la Terra. We exchanged "Feliz Navidad"s.

I'm prepared for Christmas. I loaded in a lot of food, I have clean clothes, new shoes, beer, tequila, and a bicycle. Those bells do sound on the half hour; they must be church bells. I'll see if I can find it tomorrow and maybe go to midnight mass, if I can stay awake that long. For the last three and a half months I've been going to bed and rising with the sun, and the habit persists.

I called Erin today, and she will be with our good friends Malcolm and Dawn for Christmas dinner, along with the usual crowd of their children and sons-in-law, and other mutual and equally good friends.

As for exchanging gifts, I got an e-mail from Emily this morning. It was thoughtful and intelligent and carefully composed, expressing her contentment and happiness with her job, her hobbies, and her man, in inverse order. She does good things in this world, accumulating and spreading good karma without knowing it, through her work against the flow of global capitalism. Her letter made me very happy, and I tried to respond in kind.

December 22

On this day I bought a bottle of tequila, and drank two shots, each chased with a beer, while I cooked supper. The tequila isn't the strongest available, but it tastes good.

There are bells in this neighborhood. Crude and not in any particular key, and they chime at odd times several times a day. They chime, or bang, in two tones. There will be two or three at the higher pitch about a second apart, followed by as much as sixty at a lower pitch at twice the frequency, and end with two or three at the higher pitch again. I thought they were church bells, but they don't make any sense in that regard. Maybe it's just some guy who likes to bang on a couple of wheel rims. In addition there is the occasional shotgun blast. You can count on one at 5:45 AM, and another at six. Public alarm clocks, maybe. I'll ask Rosie.

Christmas is coming. Here, while there is all the US consumer motivational hype, there is a deeper and stronger sentiment as well. The pageant that I watched in the Plaza downtown included, besides depictions of the Virgin and Joseph, shepherds, angels of the Lord, and magi, scenes from Hell. Now that is playing loose and free with the Gospels, as I remember them, but it is also indicative that the Nativity is taken seriously and has a deeper meaning than found in, say, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

Victoria's streets are crowded with cars all the time. All the streets in the center of town are narrow and one-way, and a constant stream of traffic crawls through them. The town is as dominated by cars as is Boulder, Colorado. I'm cautious on my bike, but there are a lot of bikes in the traffic. If we are treated the way that drivers treat each other, they more courteous than those in Halifax.

December 21

Is today the winter solstice? I think so. Victoria is just north of the Tropic of Cancer. I haven't looked at a globe, nor Google Earth, but I think I am now close to the latitude of Okinawa, where I spent one and a half of the best years of my life. That was due to two factors: women and youth. I had just turned 21 when I left Okinawa.

When I left Okinawa I was a very good aircraft mechanic. Now I am a very slow bicycle mechanic. I have lost dexterity and strength in my fingers, and have lost a good deal of the sub-conscious intelligence that, for instance, places a nut squarely on a bolt and turns it in the right direction while the mind is troubleshooting the difficult problem at hand.

A crowd of motor homes, each the size of a city bus, and each towing an SUV, came into this park the day before yesterday, and left this morning. Will and Eleanor, he from South Dakota and she from Ottawa, each divorced and neither about to remarry, occupy the only RV left here, and they are leaving tomorrow. I will be the only tenant, until more Gringos come through.

Will's biography could make a country song. He drove trucks, was an owner-operator, built up a fleet of twelve, got divorced, bought a bar, and then another, and met Eleanor in southeastern Arizona. I didn't ask about his dog. He spent six years in the South Dakota National Guard. Those of us who were "regulars" called Guardsmen "weekend warriors". Eleanor is a retired teacher. She was the head of the English department at an Ottawa high school, and she sounds like it: Standard English, offhandedly conversing with excellent diction, a true gentlewoman. She rented one of these "apartments" two years ago, and has made it into what would be a very attractive and comfortable place, if she and Will did not use to store all the things they "need" that won't fit into their RV.

They drove me to a Wal-Mart today, where I bought shoes and another pair of jeans. I am concerned, here, with the way I present myself, more so than I have been for a very long time. I have not been a foreigner since I left Okinawa, and the status concerns I have here prompted those remarks on how good a mechanic I once was.

Juan continues to mess with the plumbing. He and I communicate, a little. His plumbing is eclectic: an elbow salvaged from this, a length of pipe from that, whatever works, as long as it doesn't cost anything.