December 11

I'm 66 and I still felt like Gary Cooper riding into a small town in the Old West when I rode into Jimenez early in this hot and dusty afternoon. Put glasses and a cheap bicycle helmet on Gary Cooper and he would look like a nerd too. Dogs chasing me, but desultorily, they were too old and too fat and it was too hot. I got friendly greetings from respectable men as I rode along toward el centro, where I expected to find el Hotel Los Reyes. The narrow street I rode on, became flanked on both sides by buildings with common walls separated from the street by a narrow sidewalk as I got further into the town. That street formed the western side of the plaza, and at its corner of the plaza on the northern side was a two story, perhaps adobe, building that reminded me of La Fonda in Santa Fe. But Jimenez is much poorer and more rectilinear. Rather than ask one of the respectable men I had passed where I could find the Hotel Los Reyes, I asked a plump fellow in need of a shave who was standing on the southwestern corner pf the plaza and he didn't know what the fuck I was talking about. But some teenagers caddy-corner from us, among the twenty or so people at the Tranzpais bus stop, must have been listening, because they shouted, "Rey! Rey!" and pointed further down the street.

In three blocks I was nearly out of town, and hadn't seen a hotel. I rode another 300m to a gas station, and as I was parking my bike a car full of teenagers pulled up, and told me my friend just rode out of town ahead of me. I suspect his name is Ray. I bought a soda, had an embarrassing moment due to my inability to add in Spanish, and asked the patient attendant if there was a hotel or motel nearby. He said yes, about a mile up the road. It was less than 200 meters, the Motel Govi, clean, attractive, comfortable, and Spartan for $25. There's a restaurant here, and a Mini-Super which sells beer, which I hope will be cold.

Speaking of restaurants, I stopped at one of the hundreds on the highway at noon. I had to force myself, because I am at heart my Momma's little boy who is afraid of dark and dirty places and people. I had seen two new eighteen-wheelers pull into the place, and I figured that either somebody was related to the proprietors or they knew it was a good place to eat. One of the truck drivers acted like he was on speed. He asked me a lot of questions, loudly and animatedly, and told me a lot of stuff, and I told him, or think I did, some of what he wanted to know and some things that he couldn't figure out either. The other driver, who had been outside, was quieter and a lot more laid back. He spoke about as much English as I do Spanish (and that seems to be the best way, for me, to communicate) and I learned that Jimenez was 40 km away, up the next hill, one curve, another curve, and downhill for 25 km into town.

At the top of that hill, which took me twenty minutes to climb, was a military police checkpoint, which southbound traffic could ignore, and another heart wrenching view of the Sierras. I was on the top of one of the mesas I had seen yesterday, and from here the mountains were closer, but still distant. I feel about them what many have felt, and recorded, in their first encounter, coming from the east, with the Front Range of the Rockies: awe, love, and a little fear towards the majesty of the Earth.

And that truly was a mesa, the land for the next fifteen or more km seemingly as flat as its namesake. Walk it and you will think differently, just as cyclists can tell you that Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa are very hilly.

I saw something disturbing this morning. A car stopped 500 meters ahead of me, and I could see doors opening and people getting out, and then back in, and doors closing, and I figured there was a change of drivers. But one person remained when the car drove away. They had stopped a little past an intersection, so I then figured that the remaining person had been hitch hiking, and I could see that he was carrying a pack or bag. But he was walking up the road, away from the intersection, in the direction of the car. As I got closer I could see that he was scavenging from the roadside trash, and when I was about 35 meters away he picked up a Coca-Cola bottle and drank from it, and then sat down on the blanket that I had mistaken for a pack and stared fixedly at the center of the road. I looked him in the eye (his were clear) and said "Buenos dias" as I rode by, and he answered with a clear "Buenos dias". It had come to me last night as I lay half asleep, worried about the kind of food I might find today, that there are million of women in this world and in the northern half of this continent, who have children and no food and no money. I will not make any excuses for not stopping to help that man. I had a little food and water and money that I could have given him. I was afraid of him, but that's no excuse.