Riding a motocycle is in my view one of the best things in life. Being on 2 wheels is the thing that first give you your independence. You start as a young boy on your first bicycle and you can go places. You can escape your parents, siblings, race your friends, discover new regions as far as your legs take you, the next village, you can be on your own, you’re mobile, you get your first taste of freedom.

Then you graduate to motor power, in France where I grew up, and I suppose in many other countries, you can finally legally drive a moped at the age of fourteen. The first moped is really your first big love. You ride it everywhere with your first gang of friends, and go on fantastic journeys. You work on your mini moto, twink it, decorate it with stickers, you make it yours and somehow become a master mechanic of small engines, 49 cc max, but so cool… At 16 you get, if your lucky, and I was, obviously, your first real motorcycle, now 125 cc, 4 speeds, the whole deal. Mine was a Honda, a red one, and since then, my love of motorcycles kept growing. Emigrating to the US lent me of course to the Harley Davidson world. I became a Hog owner, had several Harley in succession of models until I got the biggest, heaviest, and most expensive one possible. I now ride this beautiful gold colored Road Glide Ultra everywhere, put 75000 miles on it in 5 years, and went cross country several times with my lovely wife behind me on the passenger seat. Long distance riding is one of my biggest pleasure, and when we go on vacation, if it is possible, I’d rather rent a Harley instead of a car. Heck, I rode motorcycles in almost every states, in Hawaï, South Africa, Australia, Europe, even in Bali if you can believe that.

There’s something inherently thrilling about being on a motorcycle. First of all you’re on 2 wheels and you need to balance that, at any speed. You’re working your body to keep straight, the arms and legs intimately connected to the metallic horse, the left side for switching gears, the right side to control accelerating and breaking, the machine becomes an extension of your self vibrating with the metal beneath you. Leaning into the curves, the wind in your face, pushing against you with great force sometimes, you have to be so in the present at all times. You can’t take your eyes off the road even for an instant as there may be a fallen ladder or a brick or a huge pothole suddenly in front of you. Of course there always a sense of danger accompanying you on every ride, being so vulnerable and open with no protection from bad drivers and their car missiles, or unfortunate slides and tumbles from ice or oil or wet pavements or loose gravel, running dogs or whatever may happen that you cannot control…

Sure I had my share of accidents, nothing too major though, but a deer jumped over my helmet once and made me fall, almost totaling my cherished white Road King, and a tear in my right meniscus occurred when this dingbat made a u-turn in the middle of an intersection right in front of me damaging my second Road King, the blue one, etc etc… O well, you only live once as I always say, you may as well enjoy what you do…

I prefer using my motorcycle, now I can say gleefully one of my motorcycles, plural, as opposed to taking the car. The car is not mine, it belongs to my lovely wife, but I must take it if I am sent on a grocery run, or if it rains, or if we have passengers… I don’t really love cars, never really been into cars, even though I had very nice luxury cars in my life, nothing too flashy but I enjoyed nice German sedans when I had them… I almost always fantasize about riding a bike when in a car, wherever the scenery is nice, when it’s beautiful weather outside, when the road is curvy, whenever I’m stuck in traffic… It is a whole process to get going though before any motorcycle riding. Putting on the helmet, the gloves, the boots, the leather, protecting yourself and your skin as much as possible and then you go, smiling on the road for no particular reason, music resonating in the helmet, smelling the roses or the stench of fuming cages, it’s all good… So of course I had this dream of circumventing the world on a motorcycle, I am now of my first steps of doing just that. Going from the Cadillac comfort style of my Harley with the heated plush and comfy seat to this ”adventure“ or dual sport Yamaha named America. It’s been mostly good so far, I’m loving America more and more every day. She is such a capable machine, so much lighter and nimble, even with the big bags on each side and on the back seat. It will do the job of getting me to Rio, and I will love every day in that saddle, even with a sore derrière…

But enough about the Zen of motorcycle riding, let’s see where we left off. I don’t pretend to write a travel blog, or even to write at all as I’m just talking about this selfish trip. Just relating a few stories that might be of interest to those I left behind, friends and family, anxious or not to know what happens to me on this journey. I am just a raconteur writing as I would talking to a best friend, as I have a lot of them. I don’t have a talent for syntax or beautiful prose, I’m just laying the words I would tell, and I am just putting them down on paper, or pixels as it is the case. I am lucky enough to have all these new experiences, out of the ordinary, different from any routine, changing scenery and feelings and human interactions and cities and countries… So I’m telling.

What happened that I still can recall vividly among the blur of these overwhelming and busy past few days? Well, let’s try chronology to start with. After our second night in Mexico, I like to count the nights instead of days, this gives me a better sense of time it seems, the three of us left that forgettable area of northern Chihuahua, still too close to the border to be palatable, and we headed south. Wanting to keep a schedule, but also limiting ourselves to a maximum of 4 or 5 hours of riding per day, we arrived in this unplanned stopover in the small town of Guerrero, a couple of hours before sunset. In search of a hotel, we landed in the middle of town, in a cute plaza with of course a nice and imposing white church. What ensued what like a scene in a movie. I dismounted America, took my helmet off and intended to walk into this restaurant to ask anyone in there where we could find a hotel as none were in sight of our immediate surroundings. She must have seen us parking our 3 motorcycles through the windows, she came out of the door, almost bumped into me as I was entering and immediately started to speak English, greeting me and my companions warmly asking how she could help. I couldn’t help but look at her magnificent large breasts and beautifully made up green eyes, forgive me lovely wife, I’m only a male human. Alma, that’s her name, was beautifully dressed, black pants, nice silky white blouse, lots of jewelry, probably in her fifties, lots of make up and absolutely not casual in her appearance and demeanor. I figured that the sight of our trio of bikers arriving into town, not unlike an old western movie, must have made her day, something probably out of her ordinary in this medium size Mexican pueblo, and I understood her intention to help was of genuine interest and curiosity, maybe a chance to practice her English. In any case, it was a wonderful sight for us, and a welcome relief to be helped without struggling to find and mumble our mangled words!

Adam of course, probably always a ladies man, jumped at the opportunity to be funny, somewhat lecherously though, he explained “ I don’t know how he does it but this French man always manage to find the most beautiful women in the most remote areas, even in the desert ! ” She had a lovely laugh, and then proceeded to enumerate our different options, there was a hotel nearby a few blocks away but maybe it wouldn’t be up to our gringo standards she thought. She suggested we follow her to her cousin’s place, a few minutes away from the center of town. He apparently ran some sort of a combination ranch/guest house with a few rooms available. So off we went, following her spanking brand new black Mercedes to the outskirts of town. We arrived at the cousin’s place, him very friendly, as everyone else in the country, and Steve went to check on the rooms quality to decide if we were to stay there for the night. Adam and myself stayed close to the Mercedes and the boobs, Adam was very chatty of course as he always is, and during that conversation we learned that Alma was the sister of the owner of the nice restaurant we had stopped in front of. She was born in Guerrero but lives in the state capital, Chihuahua, a city so nice they named it twice… She came down for her mother’s 79th birthday, having a grand birthday party on the upper floor of the fanciest restaurant in town, with live music and everything… The cousin was asking too much for his rooms, a thousand pesos a night, way too much for our budget, and too remote from the center, we would have had to take our bikes to go have dinner. We declined and Alma took us then to her second recommendation, Alicia’s hotel located at walking distance from her brother’s restaurant. We definitely intended to have a good dinner and this was for sure our best bet in town.

Alma said her goodbyes, to Adam’s dismay, as she had to drive back to Chihuahua, the city not the dog, and wanted to leave before dark. We thanked her profusely and settled in our cheap rooms.

Dinner was indeed very pleasant, we sat at a round table next to roaring fire in the large fireplace and met Luis, the brother, also perfectly bilingual and very helpful, giving us all sorts of info on where to go and what to see in our next destination, the famous Copper Canyon. A nice bottle of wine was shared and I truly enjoyed myself with this great day of riding in the Mexican sun, the nice meal and the company, thinking that everything was all right with the world.

After Luis left the restaurant, we stayed up maybe an hour more, having conversations within the three of us, mostly answering Steve’s increasingly inquisitive questions… I kinda kept myself away from the conversation, not wanting to share too much too soon with these guys, and I could sense some tension there, Adam being openly very liberal and somehow a little confrontational. I am now used to Steve’s abruptness, he’s pretty blunt with his questions and I suspect that Adam wasn’t very pleased with the direction of the questioning.

We retired to our rooms and decided to meet again for breakfast the next morning at the same restaurant as Luis was to be there and we had appreciated his helpful comments and recommendations.

I must say I was a little shocked when Adam announced that he had been thinking it over, and that he had a change of plans. He told us that he had already been to Creel, our next destination, and that he would prefer to go to warmer climates. He was going to ride south right away, and he wished us safe travels, and who knows maybe we’d meet again someday! And just like that we were only two now…

To be continued, it’s late, and I must get up early tomorrow for a busy day.

The next installment will be a shocker !!