Author Archives: Eli

When I first found myself in the understory of this buzzing forest of glass and steel, I thought maybe I would feel at home here in a way I haven’t since I crossed into Tijuana; since I rolled into lands where the cities are all spread flat, and even the most ambitious buildings stake no … Continue reading »

My dear kith, kin and strangers, whose enthusiastic support and interest has filled my sails: I hope it disappoints none of you too much that the time has come for me — for now — to wash myself off, put on human clothes, and try now to rejoin the society I left six months ago. … Continue reading »

So it was that, at 6:30 yesterday evening, 168 days after loading up my bicycle and shoving off from the doorstep of the house where I was raised, I squinted apprehensively along the arched concrete back of the Bridge of the Americas, thanked the fates for the stalled taxi that left one lane clear of … Continue reading »

The border crossing from Nicaragua had one perilous moment. Unlike any of its neighbors to the North, this country requires foreigners to show their onward bus or plane tickets at the entrance to prove they aren’t going to stick around too long. The visa guy gave me a long look up and down and ten … Continue reading »

I knew going in that all of these countries are poor, but I keep finding that the poverty of a nation is not at all straightforward to see or appraise. For example, Guatemala’s per-capita GDP is less than a third of Mexico’s, but Guatemala always felt much richer than Mexico, whether in the country or the cities. The cheapest of everything was better quality. People seemed very generally … Continue reading »

It seems Honduras sees very few tourists, and fewer like me. All the way from the border I was called out by people along the road. Not by the usual small fraction of people who saw me — I mean by almost every person. Then there was the police checkpoint. It’s rare that I ever … Continue reading »

Yesterday I passed the 5,000 mile point of this journey. My cycle computer marked the occasion by gradually dying; from here on I won’t be able to track any distances. But like many things that have happened on this road, it brings to mind a certain song by Modest Mouse. “Well the dashboard melted but … Continue reading »

Bike travel has many strengths and weaknesses. One strength is that you have to stop in many places that aren’t mentioned in any tourist book; you see everything you didn’t know was there to see at all, and arguably you know the country more authentically. One downside is that it’s prohibitively hard to visit anything … Continue reading »

“¡Pura subida!” two boys in a rusty pickup yelled, grinning at my craziness, when I told them where I was headed. I didn’t know for sure what it meant at the time, but it wasn’t hard to guess it right. That day, between the towns of San Pablo and San Marcos, I crawled into the … Continue reading »

Two more hard days’ ride followed Oaxaca, snaking wildly through a considerable pile of dry mountains and chilly shadows, making me wonder whether cactus land would ever end. There was no memorable downslope out of those hills. At some point I just looked up and suddenly eveything was flat and green, and the air was … Continue reading »

There’s a city of pyramids at the flattened peak of a mountain above Oaxaca, where a ruling class of holy astronomers once looked down from the top of the world and exerted their control over a society unlike anything that exists today, largely unknowable to us. These old naked stones were once bright with color, … Continue reading »

There were no apparent clocks in the big square, no countdown chanted by the gathered crowd, no sharp line between years. Within some range of midnight the pace and intensity of high-explosive firecrackers increased, shaking the ground under us and setting our ears ringing. People scattered laughing as the hand-grenade-sized things rolled among our feet … Continue reading »

Morale has been low this week, but something always comes along to stir up the embers. Last night over numerous beers and Cuban food, a newly made friend said (to the best of my understanding and paraphrasing): “When you die — and, I mean, not soon I hope, but some day — when you die, … Continue reading »

How can I say this? It seems as if written information is not reliable here. All written information. I feel bad to level such a sweeping critique, but lately I’m having to adapt to it. A store has five separate OPEN signs hanging in its windows, but it’s closed until next week. Four consecutive hotels … Continue reading »

You may reach a point in any given day at which you are too totally beaten to go on. You may look at your map and know the name of the next town, but you know you couldn’t pedal one more meter toward it if you tried. It’s impossible. Your every cell tells you this. … Continue reading »

Here’s my current inventory, totaling roughly 65 pounds (30 kg) by my reckoning. These are boring mundane details, yet potentially interesting in that they make up the entirety of my earthly possessions for the duration of the voyage. Some overkill may be apparent. 

It’s now been three months since I left Seattle and a month since I crossed into Mexico, and more than three thousand miles of pavement have passed under my feet. For five days I’ve been enthralled to find out the mainland is a whole other thing. Every breath is unwieldy with humidity. Every town is … Continue reading »

That lost look that crosses my features in the video is the moment in which it dawns on me that I was silly if I expected some kind of world beyond Wal Mart. In this time in history, you can never truly be more than a few miles from The United States. Little colonies seed … Continue reading »

While I still have access to an actual computer, I updated the header images with photos from the road. (The old ones were from my first trip down the coast in 2006.) Here are the uncropped versions:

You will be reassured to know that my cranium is as grand and shiny as ever. Pardon the wind in the mic etc. etc.