The summer came quicker than I expected. Classes ended, and I was free, for the next month anyway. Originally I planned to roll out the moment classes were over, but that didn't seem feasible. I am always ready for adventure; however I cannot say the same for my bike. I got on the road as quickly as possible, but only long enough to make it to Houston. I spent a week in Houston doing some little repairs; things that would help get my bike ready for the 10,000 miles of what might pass for roads in Central America. The headliner at this wrench fest was my forks; I wanted to put some gaiters on there, amongst other ever present tightening and tuning that bikes yearn for. It seems I was ill prepared for this little maintenance fest, and had to squander more time waiting for parts, parts I didn't even know my bike had or required. Once the parts came in I began to rip apart my bike. I played baseball with my forks, swinging them like a bat, trying to separate the fork seals and get a field goal / three pointers, whatever it is they do on the diamond. I swung for the better part of an hour before giving up. It wasn't until the next day I discovered I knew less about fork repair than about baseball and its three pointers. After the mechanical misadventures, I bid my family and friends adieu and began my road trip of the summer '04. The rest of this travelogue is taken from my road atlas/journal that I scribbled in my spare moments, highlighting the events of my days on the road from The USA to Columbia. I lost my camera's battery charger so the photos were limited to the bare essentials. Special thanks to Rafael, Carlos and Domingo, my Mexican Moto Buddies who adopted as their own for part of the trip. And an ultra special winner award goes out to my unnamed moto, without whom none of this would have been possible.

I rose in a quite mundane fashion, and instead of hitting the road I joined my father and an associate of his for a farewell lunch. The days I spent waiting greatly tempered my eager anticipation for meeting the road. Today felt just like any other. In a back corner of my mind I long ago decided that no great heroics were required on day one. I had one task before me, get out the United States of America. Back at the lunch table, I met another well wisher/ last minute interventionist. In the ramping up of my trip I encountered many well wishers and others who were very concerned for me and my safety. It seemed the more a person cared the more apprehensive they seemed to be, this lunch really polarized this theory. After Lunch I drove south, I stopped at eximport cycles, to pick up some fuel filters. Eximport is where my love with motorcycles began 5 years ago. My friend Adam bought his moto there and that day is the day I fell in love with motorcycling. We both learned to ride in the parking lot behind eximport since neither of us knew how to drive one before he bought it. Back where it all began, I took my filters and headed south again. Hitting the rode a little after noon the day's heat was firmly entrenched, not even the airflow at 70mph could dissipate it. As a result I elected to take off my jacket. After striking a balance between heat and velocity I found myself closing in on Brownsville, only 28 miles to go. Sad fact of the day? My tank only had 20 miles to go. I had recently switched over to my reserve tank, when I saw the sign that said Brownsville was 28 miles away. My reserve tank took me 20 miles on the back roads of Wyoming, once. I have never pushed it farther. But I have worked it out on paper, the .6 gallons in my reserve can take me ... about 20 miles. So I was in trouble. But at this point there was nothing to do but slowdown and keep on trucking. 32 miles later I finally found a gas station, the sign had lied. It was there I filled my bone dry 4.6 gallon tank with 5 gallons of the most glorious gasoline ever. Beyond that Mexico lay ahead, I rolled on through the border without so much as a wave or a nod from anyone on either side, hooray for NAFTA. I started down the road to the next town trying to make escape the sprawl of Matamoros, but night closed in on me quickly, and the next town was quite distant. I decide to turn around and find shelter along the southern outskirts of Matamoros. I found a couple establishments willing to take me in ... hourly. *wink* *wink*. and one semi-reputable place that offered a garage. I was quick to ask how much it would be for the night, 20 dollars was the reply. Only later did I notice that clearly written on a sign their price was listed, at $15 dollars a night. Mexico 1 USA 0.

Day number two was a hundred times more interesting and a million times more involved. No more endless miles of Americana. I awoke in the morning to find out just how interesting things had become, I had a boil the size of a baseball growing on my arm. It seems my 6 hours in the sun yesterday had been detrimental to my arms ability .... Seemed to have sprouted a new arm attempting to grow out of my old one. This lesion made it impossible to put on my jacket, but it would have been suicide to continue to ride without it. SO I reached into my gear box and pulled out some needle nose pliers with which I proceeded to tweak/lance it. I have done more pleasant things in my times, the grease from the pliers acted as a disinfectant, I am sure. On the road again, I headed south south south. I spent he evening pouring over maps and plans deciding which way to go, but there were surprisingly few roads south ... in fact there was only one. So I took it. But after a few kilometers (a hundred) I reached a check point, a checkpoint that wanted more pieces of paper than an extra roll of Charmin double ply. They sent me back to the city to "recross" the border. This time it was far more eventful than last night. In line I met a man and his wife who made regular visits to Mexico, he would be my last English conversation for some 16 thousand km. during this discussion he imparted some sage words of wisdom. "Everything south of Monterey is a wasteland" after three hours of bureaucracy I was heading south once more. As I passed through Matamoros a municipal policeman took notice of my gregarious situation. I was flagged over by a mob of policemen, seven policemen stood by the wayside demanding my immediate stop. I stopped and proceeded to discuss the merits and pitfalls of km vs. mph and their comparative differences, you see 40mph (a reasonable urban speed) is not 40kph (which is a reasonable walking speed in my book). During our discussion several others fell prey to the same traffic stop. Their conversations were far less involved and were usually summarily dismissed after a brief handshake. I tried the same thing, but no luck. He took my drivers license, expecting me to claim it sometime within 14 days. AS I look back later I should have let him keep it, since no one at any point of my journey ever wanted to see my driver's license again. But in order to prevent this from happening we decided it would be alright if I paid my fine to him directly. Thus avoiding the whole 14 day waiting thing. How courteous. Southward I bumped into the checkpoint again, this time it was lunch time, and no one care a whit about my dutifully gathered Charmin double-ply wad of documents that I earned from my bureaucrat brothers at the border. A simple wave of my hand was all it took to pass this interior check point. Sigh. At about 2pm that day I crossed into the tropics. The farmland is reminiscent of Texas, it just rolls on like a sea. As the sun was setting that day, I just got south of Tuxpan, in Oxeluma. The vegetation began to turn rough and edgy, a long shot from the rolling sea of grass I had seen all day long. About the same time the veggies turned, so did the road, they quickly became ugly and hostile, much like the vegetation. While crossing Tuxpan I met a pothole that gave me quite a shake, it seems I hadn't given my forks enough play, and I was eating most of the shock and vibrations, since they were not absorbing much. In Oxeluma, a town with four buildings, I stopped. I slept, ate and played play station 1 all in the same building, which represented a solid 25% of the entire town. When I wasting doing one of the above three things, I was tending to my bike. I wanted to drain out some of the fork oil to give my forks some more play and absorption. But when I went out to tend to my bike I noticed that my forks had already adjusted themselves, my right fork had blown. My first day in Mexico and my fork was blown. I debated my fate and fortune with a friend of mine. He was the owner of the restaurant/bed/play station to which that night I was promised. He was from Harlingen, a town in south Texas, where is family lived. He would love to be there with them, but he was convicted of drug smuggling so he is unable to see them these days. But that hasn't stopped his smuggling. He thought it would be best to go back to Texas, and I had to agree. That night I dreamt of what could be, what should have been and what was. My first day in Mexico met with disaster. I left my bike by the side of the highway, where I slept, barring any future incidents it would be there in the morning.

The bike was there in the morning, and so was my drug smuggling friend. But my mind certainly wasn't with me. My mind screamed at me all morning long, there were so many reasons to go home and so few reasons why staying ...either way I packed up my bike preparing for my journey not sure which way I would go, but knowing that either way I went it would require me to be on the road soon. I went through the motions without any idea of what may happen, my mind was pulling my north and my heart was giving into the pressure, I was genuinely upset/depressed about the immediate failure of my trip. In the l last day I saw everything familiar to me disappear and be replaced with a rough translation, Michaelangelo's David sculpted in play-doh. Type experience that I had never before lived. If I drove any farther south I would surely be tempting fate. The pothole that blew my fork yesterday would be only one of many potholes I would face today and tomorrows. Things were not looking good. I rolled my bike out over the gravel shoulder into the road, and as I hit the throttle I was heading south, south towards the unknown, I should say that I knew this was the wrong way, but once I got on the road, a u turn was just unthinkable, even though at every moment I dreaded my decision, my apprehensions were slowly shaken by the rolling jungle forests and its curves ... and eventually the rain. That's right before noon time I found myself crossing small lakes of what once were potholes. The rain intensified and my journey became quite perilous when the road gave way to dirt and mud. Oncoming traffic was indistinguishable through my mud covered visor. And even if I could pick a line so ride, the roads obstacles prevented me from holding it steady. It became so perilous that I decided to pull over at the next town, but I soon had passed the next town .. And the next. You don't get anywhere standing still. The rain gave way to some gorgeous stretches of blue sky, the most welcome blue skies I have ever seen. Did I mention I elected to only bring hiking boots on this trip? No room for moto boots AND hikers in my trunk. My boots would be soaked for the next two days straight. Today I arrived in Veracruz where I went in to fill up my tank. I stopped at a local mall to just gaze at the people for awhile. There was a small herd of spokes models roaming about, who took an interest in me and my bike. Spokes models are great fun, their job is to be cute and have fun, they are found all over Latin America at various places doing various things, mainly dancing and throwing balls. But after my cover was blown by gushing all over these fine ladies with my worst Spanish ever, I decided to hit the road again, even if it was threatening to rain again. It's never a good idea to sleep in, or on the "wrong side" of a big city, you always was to sleep just past it so that you don't have to deal with the traffic in the morning. As I circled the city of Veracruz looking for the connecting road I stumbled onto a toll road/toll plaza. At about 5pm. I was just about to stop and look for a place to stay when I found this shrine to capitalism, supposedly this could take me many miles down the road in a rather quick time, and since the hour was late I figured it wouldn't hurt, so after consulting my map for some time I rolled up to the plaza as I proceeded to spill all my belongings out of my pockets as I fumbled for the requisite toll. Motos and toll plazas don't mix, as I was bending over to pickup one one hundredth of a cent I heard the clamor of three large engines pull up behind me. I looked back to see two big boy BMW's and a lean mean racing machine behind me. After a quick look at the BMW roundel I knew these fellows were going my way. I knew we would be traveling together, but how could I break the news to my newfound amigos? I decided to break the ice ... since I was the one holding up the toll line, I asked "are you bandits?", "business bandits" they replied. Good enough for me. We raced into the night at 160 kph for another 5 hours. These banditos roll hard. When we stopped to refuel they were all quite impressed at my ability to keep up, after all their engines were twice as powerful as mine. Racing on I followed them into the night, across the coastal flatlands of southern Mexico. We arrived in some semi large city. (Coatzacoalcos?) And found the nearest five star hotel. I followed them in and explained my situation, I was instantly welcomed and invited to share a room. We had a federale outside watching the bikes all night for a nominal fee, so I slept quite well. My bandito roommate didn't even snore. :P

I took off early with my banditos. There was rumor of a road that would save us 5 hours of travel, if we dared to drive where the maps had no lines. Intrigued I went along for the adventure. After driving through Chiapas for some time we realized that there had been quite a bit of nothing around us. Dangerous amounts of nothing. At the next toll plaza (the only something for a few hundred km we inquired after the next gas station. None. The road was in fact existent, but there were no gas stations along its course, yet. After filling my heart and eyes with enough breathe taking vistas, it became time to fill my tank as well. Down in a valley there was a little homestead, some tarp and sticks. We descended on it like a pack of ravenous wolves. They knew what we had came for and brought out some petrol for us post haste. We negotiated with an 8 and ten year old for nearly 10 liters of gasoline to be split amongst us. Marveling at our situation, I was thankful for stopping at eximports for some bonus fuel filters. The ten year old (who could only see out of one eye) choked down a quarter liter of gas trying to get the siphon started, gee I wonder what happened to that eye of his? ... Tanks satiated we paid for our gas and left. I was not a part of the negotiating party, but I am certain we paid far below retail for the gas we received, 100 pesos for ten liters. At the station it would have been more like 140 pesos. Sigh. I doubt he even has a health plan. As we drove on into the wondrous region of Chiapas we set our eyes upon many more breathtaking sites. As I was driving and soaking in all the beauty I honestly could not breathe, the only other time this has happened is in the fjords of Norway. The marvelous view prevented me from even the most simple of tasks, I was so completely enamored with the ambiance. Never again have I felt the glory of a land so strongly than that day in Chiapas. Eventually we came to Lake Chiapas and the brand new (still under construction) Chiapas Bridge. This was the bridge that was to save us five hours. But after that ride, time didn't matter one bit. I found an eternity in the briefest of Chiapan moments. Across the bridge we drove though some sparsely settled regions, the people were voicing their dissatisfaction with the government's infrastructural efforts by building speed bumps on this newly connected road. It seems the people want to be left alone. Seems? It was obvious, so much so, that is what they told us whenever we would stop. I was even "lucky" enough to see a village out in the road together, actively destroying the road that ran through the small collection of huts, that I graciously call a village. Erie considering Chiapas' state motto is "together we are one" how's that for a bit of wishful thinking. We spent some time looking for the commander of the rebel Chiapan forces, but instead I decided to stop and eat a mango. OK not really, but some kind lady offered me a mango after I had spent some time talking with her. We were discussing Chiapan agribusiness and she said their fruits were the best, and offered me the mango to prove her point. timid at first I judiciously held the mango aloft as if to inspect if from all sides, then I sunk my teeth into it with wild abandon ... to a cacophony of laughter and terror. That's not how you eat a mango. That's how you catch disease and bacteria. The kind lady (who was also a pharmacist) quickly told me not to eat the skin since the FDA ... doesn't exist here. With a feeling of dread I thanked her and gently offered the rest of the mango to another buddy. Riding off through the jungle the roads quickly deteriorated, we would hit patches of gravel and patches of cement. As if the road was paved in Braille. During the recent uprisings the roads had been destroyed to hinder Mexican national troop's movements, but our bikes handled the mixture of terrain quite handily. A little further down the road, after passing a military outpost/power station I was shot. Or so I thought. I felt a quick sting in my chest ... and instantly made eye contact with a group of young Mexicans standing along the road side a little ways ahead of me. Looking down at my chest, my breathing became labored and I could barely hold myself upright. I wasn't dead, and I was still on top of my mount, but something had struck my chest in a sinister strike. Looking and feeling around my chest I found no holes, so I figured I was not shot, I followed the trajectory of the imaginary bullet and found my windshield was still intact. No bullet had come from there. AS I drove along I was driving my self insane with worry, I needed to know what had happened, and at 100kph nothing was making sense. So I pulled off the ...dirt. And inspect my chest, as I removed my jacket a large wasp crawled out from under my shirt. Drats! There goes my purple heart. AS the road wore on I found it climbing up to the sky, I was quickly engrossed in some dangerous hairpins turn climbing up to into the heavens. A boy from Texas I am, I haven't seen turns like these in all my (short)years. Seems Mexican civil engineers and Texan civil engineers have different ideas on the words turn or curve. My gang realized my weakness and trepidation with these harrowing hairpins and kindly held my hand, and showed me how to hold a line through the mountains. At this moment I felt really disparate with my Moto comrades, I was seriously floundering, my lack of skill was evident on these treacherous mountain roads. Texas just doesn't prepare you for these tight turns. But they kindly limped along at my slow pace in order to make me feel as comfortable as I could. Once we reached the top we stopped for a very eventful fill up. I locked my keys in my trunk. Of course I had a spare set, which were also in the trunk. After many sideways looks from new found friends I attempted to squeeze my hand through the crack and fish around, I mean they had to be on the top right? Got 'em! And we were off racing across the top of the mountains towards some placed called "wha-te-moc" :P Turns our wha-te-moc is Guatemala. My first Central American border crossing where I didn't have the USA on one side. Woo! These fellows decided to draw a line down the middle of this town and called one side Guatemala and the other Mexico, how .. Arbitrary. We stopped where the people stopped. Spoke to a few guys and before we knew it our bikes were being doused in the some concoction that probably graced my mango earlier today. Hardcore pesticides. DDT. A few bureaucrats later and I was done. Seems my Mexican buddies had to go back to get permission to leave Mexico. During this time I helped some wayward Americans cross the border. Kevin was their ringleader, and a VW van was their respite. I am sure the van is doing well now, but I fear Kevin and his companion's fortune is not that of the vans anymore. Kevin seemed pretty "out of it" if you catch my drift. He needed quite a bit of help getting his papers in order. He was nice enough to donate 20 dollars to a money changer since he wasn't familiar with this practice. I tried to warn him, but he didn't seem concerned by his loss, so no reason for me to be either. After my posse returned we took to the road, hopefully I would be seeing Kevin later on, our destinations were the same, and the roads choices were extremely limited. As we drove through the striking valleys and mountain of Guatemala I felt a great sense of beauty surround me, unlike Chiapas where beauty stretched for miles from atop mountains down the valley floors in Guatemala were trapped within the confines of rich verdant mountains, with vegetative tapestries cloaking her majestic ravine like roads. Further on down the road I passed a police truck with a cadre of men in committee around its open hood. We waved, and I chuckled, they wouldn't be fighting crime today as we drove down a valley, my bandito brother stopped to hand me all my documents I had stuffed into my jacket and subsequently dropped up and down Guatemala's most beautiful roads, thanks Domingo! I didn't value this paper work very highly since it seemed pretty much useless to me. But it does help you get out of the country. Before too much longer a similar looking police pickup ran up behind us, and drove behind us for some time. As a good ole American boy, when I say the lights I wanted to pull over, but my Mexican amigos were not so inclined to stop. I passed the message up the line, and asked for opinions as I imagined being executed for fleeing from the officials...10 minutes later the police man zoomed past us. Whew guess it was just trying to pass us on the roads. Around the next bend we saw him spread out road block style. Drats!#@! We pulled up one by one and by the time we had all assembled we were hearing a different story. The first man that stopped was being hassled for his documents and "wallet" as if it held important information. But as the group assembled the police grew less menacing and more pleasant, they not longer wanted to look at our money, they just wanted a ball park figure of how much were carrying. They no longer wanted to ride the bikes ... just to know how much they cost. Sigh. After smiling and waving and confessing our poverty we rolled on. And rolled on. And rolled on, into the night, much to my chagrin. We wanted to get down out of the mountains before bedtime, but it didn't seem like it was going to happen. City lights flashed through the trees, in the valleys below, every turn made me think I would be in the heart of the city after the next bend. But alas it never came, and before to long I found myself climbing up into the sky once more. But I was not alone, the clouds were up there too. I ran headlong into a cloud bank at about 9pm. and by 9:05 the innocent cloud had turned into a wet cloud of doom. By 9:10 I was freezing and wet ... and driving up and away from civilization. 20 minutes later we passed two cars that had just misjudged the bend in the road and smashed into each other head on. 5 minutes later we saw a lone car who had the same accident as the other two, but he manage to do it all alone, but he collided with the mountain side. It was time to get off the road. I couldn't see, wouldn't drive and couldn't feel my own body it was so miserably cold and wet. There was no reason to be on the road at this time, expect that my comrades would not relent, they wanted to be farther down the road than I did. Eventually after my third attempt to stop the parade, I found enough allies and we made for the nearest lodging. It wasn't an easy trek we found a guide to lead us off the high mountains and take us down to the small town by the lake that would be our home for the night. At the time we arrived we only had one dining option, eating pupusas from the last remain street vendor. As we strolled the city foraging for food we noticed that only females seemed to exist here. After driving through frozen hell all night we had been reward by bedding down in the land of limitless ladies! Hurrah! Also, I broke into laughter during our negotiations for our room when the price was mentioned, all four of stayed in a fine establishment for 20 bucks. The face on the proprietor was hurt, I tried my best to explain my gratitude for his reasonable prices, but I don't think his feelings ever mended.

ACAYUCAN is my battle cry. No reason it just sounds cool. After the disaster last night no at yptry, il cidrn wonderful ladies of Panajachel. We all decided to hang around for a bit. But for the others hang around for a bit meant waiting four hours before getting going again. . Sigh. What a loss.. We didn't get to spend as much time as this wonderful nirvana deserved. They spent their 4 hours of “hanging around” in various forms of waiting, banks and telephone calls mostly. One of the key reasons I wanted to hang around was to fix my bike, it was having serious issues with the altitude, I had felt it last night in the mountains, but at160kph it wasn't much of an issue. But here at 10kph starting and stopping was killing my bike. Alas we forged onwards.. As we rode my bike started behaving better at lower altitudes. We came out of the mountains descending onto the City of Guatemala, before to long I noticed I lost my entourage so upon driving back up a hill I found them huddled around Rafa's dead bike. They were going at it whole heartedly my humble suggestion as to the root of the problems was ignored as the men fumbled about with their tools. It was evident they were in the wrong area, it was reminiscent of a problem I had had with my own bike. But after much labor by the side of the road, we had amassed a few local bikers who had stopped to offer their advice. We ad learned of a well reputed motoshop just inside the city. So we threw out the tow rope and began climbing the hills outside Guatemala City. It was a precarious en devour, since the traffic would not cooperate. I myself had to suit up in all my gear and stand in the middle of traffic to wave off the lumbering buses. I could walk as fast as we were making headway up the hill. These buses felt the need to share a lane with our bikes even during our less than graceful ascent. Eventually we got to the top of the hills and it was all down hill into town. We deftly mounted and glided down the roads. Our local moto buddies assisted us with directions and traffic management. We flew like a flock of birds around our limping comrade. Since he was unable to accelerate or brake, he needed a constant cushion of space in order to maintain his trajectory and velocity. We were aided by some 12 other local motorists who flocked to our cause. With their assistance we made it to "El Gato's" motoshop on the outskirts of town, just as the sky became a sea. "El Gato" was dressed to impress, not a spot of oil on his clothes which was quite spectacular since he worked out of a boxcar and shared this box car with four other bikes El Gato quickly found the fuse box and replaced the fuse and had us on our way. The problem was right where I suspected it to be. But why would these 40 year old men listen to my 23 years? In the city we wasted the rest of the day looking for a "buddy". Basically someone who was nice enough to list himself as an emergency contact if you were ever coming through Guatemala. After waiting for two hours he shows up and we talk for 15 minutes he hands us some oil and we are on our way again. Into the night. Ugh I hate riding at night. the night came quick, since we had squandered our day. There were many wonderful curves on the road ahead of us, or so it felt. Without any eyes to see I could only feel the natural beauty as we rode. It was a magical experience. As the night wore on I began to feel really comfortable on the road, the corners may have been numerous and blind, but the air and rubber and pavement all contributed to a single peaceful existence ... until an oncoming car threw on its sirens and lights and gave chase. Around us, there was nothing, ahead of us, nothing, stopping in the middle of the pitch black jungle was the last thing we wanted to do, especially after our last encounter with Guatemala's finest. I was riding last and saw the U-turn of our pursuant. I kicked my throttle up from 100kph to 140kph on that black nothingness of a jungle road. I flew by my brother with such haste that they knew we had best be moving along with all alacrity. We poured on the throttle for 30 minutes hoping to escape the police/bandits/whomever was chasing us. We of course had every intention of stopping .. When we got to the next place that had witnesses. But before that happened we chanced upon the border. This crossing took some time since my VIN was already registered in El Salvador. Seems there are two of my bikes in this world. They wouldn't let my "stolen" bike into the country, but after some convincing they began to admit that there may be the possibility that my bike was legit and the other one was the stolen one. I was allowed to enter, provided I exited promptly, and with my bike. After crossing the border, we were ambushed by customs agents as they sprung a "surprise" road block on us. Roadblocks at night, around blind corners are not doing well for increasing El Salvador's population growth. All documents accounted for we were off to find our beds.

We spent a long night in El Salvador, we arrived late and coerced a late night snack out of the guys on staff (sleeping). From our late start we easily reached San Salvador by midday, enough time to sit in noonday traffic (lunch hour? siesta?) with the sun bearing down on us and the cars standing still we had a leadership crisis, His map said .... The leader had step by step directions, and was a very well planned man, deviation from the norm was his greatest fear, and thousands of kilometers from home his only sanctuary was his plan. Too bad his plan had me sitting in noon day heat, waiting for a cow on the other end of the country to get off the road. I quickly explained how every major city has a beltway, and that we could bypass the entire city if we simply caught it and continued southbound. After much convincing and asking of directions, even when I wasn't lost, I had enough consent to lead us out of the messy traffic furnace at hand. ... ... This guy would ask local farmers about direction to panama, on roads that if they owned cars they would never care to drive on. People don't realize that asking the locals is usually a bad idea. You think the man walking by the side of the road has a better grasp of the national highway system than you, the guy who has driven half of it, and has many maps? False. That man rarely leaves his village. And if he does, he certainly leaves the driving to the bus driver, or horse. Although we eventually arrived at our destination, our fearless leader was clearly shaken, having deviated from his plan. We arrived at the border with Honduras, and I was met by a pickup truck that decided to broad side me as I stood in line at the border check point. Seems he was going so slowly that everything was a blur and he didn't see my bike standing still in front of him ... as he applied the gas. Boom, knocked me on my keister. I was quickly surrounded by a small army of hangers on that exist in the space between nations. Being well ahead of my companions I quickly made the acquaintance of a fellow named Lucas who helped me get my bike upright, and he joined me by shaking his fist at the offending car who was nothing but a dark spot upon the horizon, far off in the distance. we proceeded to breeze through customs. I had finished with the red tape by the time my cohorts arrived, but oddly enough I didn't have any proof of my great accomplishment. Where were my documents?#@ I had plenty of time to go hunting about for my documents, and Lucas since my friends were having a much more difficult time with customs. It seems that they, being Mexican had to obtain and exit visa. (I too needed one but no one seemed to care). I finally caught up with Lucas on the other side, he had my documents in hand and a huge grin on his face. I snapped at him, demanding my documents. He obliged eventually, he hung around till the Mexicanos arrived, and quickly took their documents off them with promises of expediting our visit to "El Amatillo". He proscribed a possible 5 hour stay if we didn't use his service. Being the expert traveler that I am (read: Internet geek) I knew this man was up to no good from many of the reports I read at horizons-unlimited. I expressed my desire to handle it myself, but my friends soon pressured me into surrendering my documents once again. Here is where I could go into pages and pages of in depth reporting of the hell that followed for the next ten hours. Ten hours running from office to office cracking the whip on our "expediters". When we weren't in some random office being told to go to some other office we were busy fending off thieves and Thugs. I was ... file corrupted.