watermelons.and.redstarfruit: Border Crossin´

I stayed in Popayán much longer than I had planned, a week longer to be exact, but I had to get over this fever and cold thing. Once that was out of my system I figured, why not stay until Halloween? Nothing could be more depressing than being between here and nowhere during a holiday alone. I stayed to check out the once a year party that all of Popayán talks about the rest of the year. I do not want to go into the boring details but the party was small with alternating bad electronic and salsa music. Regardless we all had fun after getting hopped up on rum and danced the night away. We all paired up that night and I danced the blurry night away with a quintessential ´butter face´ that was as British and young as she was annoying, but when in Rome right? Well apparently they did not get action in Rome because I passed out hugging a pillow that night.

Caption: ¨Halloween: This kid blew me out of the water on the ¨cute-off¨ He is a horse riding another horse.¨

I lack that youthful freshness that I remember once having. There is a doughiness now. The freshness seal of youth has been broken. Perhaps it was drank away or traveled away. It is not necessarily a bad thing either. I enjoy the new stoicism. I find myself relating more to my grandparents. Flashing back I remember bouncing off the walls with energy while they sat in rocking chairs all day for hours and hours while watching life go by. I understand them now. It looks really appetizing. I am not willing to put in the effort with a young lass that does not get me excited. Before it would be ´game on´. You play because there are players.

Then a penny from heaven arrived in the form of an email. It was a message from my friend Gigi that she wanted to meet me whereever I was to have a week long holiday. Awesome. I could use the friendship.

She was down to meet in Quito, Ecuador on the 8th of Nov. That gave me exactly 7 days to get there from Popayán, about 600 up and down and up again kilometers away. It would be a struggle, but I am no purist and I was up for cheating to get there on time. I headed out and burned myself out the first day trying to go 130km. Easy there tiger. My legs were hairy throbbing bags filled with soreness.

The next days were all up, up, up through some hills that made you feel like an ant. I had to crawl up these monsters on what felt like hands and knees. These damn things would not stop. Sometimes it would be 6 hours of uphill. I wanted at least a moments break to feel the wind in my hair, but no.

Caption: ¨6:30Am sunrise riding. Breakfast was a 2 hour hill.¨

So I thought long and hard of why in God´s name am I doing this to myself. To me it seems that in today´s society all is provided for- you have a place to stay, a job to earn money to buy food. You are never ever hungry. I mean hungry in both in terms of food and in a desire to do shit. All is convenient and easy (this is especially true of backpacking where all is provided for you and you don´t even have to work). I think the challenge of today´s comfortable consumer is to create a hunger. I see it in all my friends. Although all is comfortable they have a hunger to explore their world and create things and inform themselves. For me, since I have no talent, my hunger is to challenge myself to see if I can make it up a hill or learn a language that sounded like babble for a year. This act of creating hunger today is what makes life interesting and not just living. It must be the annoying American in me talking right now. I guess you really don´t always have to be doing things.

I pulled up to kilometer marker number 38 and called it a day at a gas station. My legs, and more importantly, my will, was spent for the day. I showered up and watched and listened to a cow chewing grass until the sun went down. Cows are zen. What a bitch to be a vegetarian. My friends always say the biggest animals are all vegetarians, which in general is true, but have you seen what those guys do all day? They stand staring at the grass or a branch of leaves eating 16 out of the 24 hours of the day. It´s insane.

I prefer to eat meat every once in a while. Then, after eating a piece of chicken that really tasted like a burnt bird with a strange tumor growth looking thing hanging off it´s bone and growing into the meat, I started to think. If you eat unhealthy animals, like a chicken with breast cancer or a cow with leukemia do you think that would be bad for you? I was eating a hunk of pig skin that still had hairs still on it. This particular piece of pig tasted really piggy. That did it, my stomach did a half somersault. The thing is I need to eat to keep my gas tank full. There is nothing else to eat but these hunks of sub-prime meat in all these pueblos, rice, beans and fried platanos. I found the secret. Ají picante! You just drown your food in this hot sauce and you can eat the furriest burnt creature without a problem. The only downside is the exit of the spicy on the already tender bottomside from being your only pressure point for 8 hours a day on the bike. As with all things in life, it is going to catch up with you eventually, it is just a matter of time. I figure I am working on good down payment for colon cancer with 4 portions of spicy grilled meat a day and biking. My poor ass is wondering what it did to deserve this kind of treatment.

I finally arrived to Pedregal. Only 40 short and very uphill km from the border of Ecuador. I sat facing the street having my usual piggy tasting pork lunch and I noticed two motorcycle cops madly driving up and down the street. They were swerving here and there with really serious looks on their faces. I saw a car drive by with a mattress on top of it and I did not think of anything. Then another and another one appears- this one right in front of the food stall. The lady chef, who looks and walks a lot like a pig herself, jumps into action and trots over to the car with a knife. People are jumping out of the woodwork to help get this mattress off the car. They lady chef slashes the cords and 4 guys whisk the mattress next door and out of sight. Just then the motorcycle cops are flying up the street and are on the scene. They stop 2 more cars with mattresses. I ask a young lady what is going on. ¨Contraband from Ecuador. A shipment of 35 mattresses was hijacked and they are trying to get them into the city,¨was her story. We had a good laugh. Only in border towns. It´s a cat and mouse game with the people and the cops here. I snapped a few pics and the cops flagged me down. ¨Me?¨ I gestured to myself. Yep, me. They left the illegal mattress-ed car and came over to make me delete the photos. What a shame.

Caption: ¨On the left hand side of the pic you can see the car with the mattress on top. I had to take this picture over my shoulder while walking so the cops would not delete this photo as well.¨

I had a restless sleep that night. It was decided, today would be a rest day and I searched out my first hitched ride of the trip in order to give me enough time to do the border crossing paperwork and make it to Tulcán 10 km inside Ecuador.

I flagged down a pick-up truck and truely enjoyed the one hour freezing ride up the hill that would have taken me a better part of 5 or 6 hours. I have never relished a ride so much in my life. The peaks are so craggy and foreboding that nothing will grow on them in this area except an coat of emerald green and rust colored moss. I noticed the wallpaper on the computer in the internet cafe was of a country road on a barren plain- flat as far as you could see. This must be such a mysterious landscape for them, for people that have never left their pueblo and seen a horizon without a mountain.

Caption: ¨Biking in fog, and then later in the pouring rain. Good times.¨

Well, I made it out of Colombia without a single problem. Out of one frying pan and into another. I am like a piñata of a gringo on a bike filled with bags of money (I literally do have money stashed in each one of my bags incase I lose one I have something in the others). Take a wack and watch the money pour out. I am more suprised that they have not robbed me than they have not. 70% of the people are below the poverty line and are daily looking for a way to fill their and their families stomaches. Why not rob the gringo? Shit, I would. I am more surprised of civil peace than civil war, but people, for the most part, are not pure evil unless they are pushed into a corner and have no where else to turn.

Caption: ¨The Piñata sitting at the equator, I think.¨

**A BREAKING FOX NEWS ALERT**
There have been some recent developments of new muscles on my legs. They were last seen in the inner upper thigh region flanking the testicles. The testies are reported to be quite annoyed by the recent encroachment in their sphere of personal space. Negotiations will be taking place between the two parties in the coming weeks to arrange some sort of settlement. The leg muscles have promised to stop any further growth until after talks have closed.

In other news Obama is our new President.

Other roadside attractions: