Jen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: 1976 Yamaha XS500 travel blog

Creating Miss Margaret

2009-06-18T21:33:00.002-05:00

The saga of an abandoned Cal 20 sailboat coming back to life.

Bad news

2009-04-28T13:02:00.003-05:00

Ok, so:

1. Sorry for being a jerk and not updating this recently.

2. We're leaving Mexico, stat. We're in Veracruz right now and we're getting the hell out of dodge as fast as possible. We're going to try to make the U.S. border in three days and get back to New Orleans in another two. It will probably be more like four and three, but hey man, I can dream, right?

2b. Ben is out buying us all the tunafish and crackers we can carry. This is serious.

2c. We've been wavering on whether or not to stay or go. We "evacuated" Mexico City two days ago, hoping to get a better idea of what was going on and to get out of the immediate infectious area. But in Veracruz, while there are still folks on the street, lots of them are wearing cobrebocas (surgical masks). Today was the proverbial 'nail in the coffin' (no pun intended) or the 'sign from God': we got an email from a Couchsurfing host we had lined up in the future that their current guest has just unexpectedly come down with flu like symptoms (unknown what it is yet, but very likely it is this swine flu). They are in Villahermosa, Tabasco. The flu shouldn't be there, and yet it seems like it is.

2d. Hence, we are getting out, ASAP. If you feel in any way that you may have flu, get yourself to a hospital, stat. You can take Tamiflu and you'll be ok--it's not the flu that kills you, it's the inflammatory doodads that your body creates that make your lungs explode and fill up with water, drowning you from the inside!

2e. Be safe; sorry this is bulleted.

3. Sucks that this is the way our trip ends. :'(

Tres Marias Motorcycle Rally

2009-04-07T11:55:00.004-05:00

We headed out on Sunday with our host and fellow motorcyclist Garry and his wife Ivonne for Tres Marias. Jen, Bonnie and I got a workout just trying to keep up with Garry on his 1000 VStrom:

but we held in and enjoyed the spectacular view: and then these guys came along. When we arrived we stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the crowd of high speed bikes. We did find a big brother 82 xseleven on sale for 40,000 pesos:

The quesadillas with corn fungus didn't have cheese, but were tasty:

The quesadillas with Squash blossoms did:

Of course the usual suspects were there:

What do you think we should trade in for one of these:

and put Jen in one of these:

There were young riders:

and old:

and of course the slowest, but from farthest away.

We have a Taste of Mexico City Contest going on the blog, and a bunch of networking via twitter.com, which will be landing us some paid travel writing gigs. More travel less work. Yeah!

Benjamin P.S. The parts have arrived. Time to get dirty!

A Taste of Mexico City Contest!

2009-04-06T09:08:00.004-05:00

My favorite photos from Mexico City have inspired two contests:

an incredible night of art and dance:

Jennifer's birthday party:

four legged friends:

two wheeled friends:

and twitter friends.

Tell me what these crafts adorn and I will send you a handmade postcard of Mexico City.

Tell me what contest I won, creating our new good luck charm, and I will send you a taste of Mexico City.

Post your guesses in the comment section.

Saludos

Benjamin

Twitter Updates

2009-04-02T15:37:00.002-05:00

Hello!

So our computer is nearly dead; I am writing this in long-hand cursive on the tablet. It will probably be a while before the computer is working well again, so full blog posts are going to be rare. :(

I've been trying out new ways to integrate twitter posts into our blog; I am not 100% in love with the current format, so please feel free to give me feedback or suggestions. What I like about twitter is that it's another way/style of writing, different from the more "traditional" storytelling approach of travel blogging. It also appears to function better as a way to interact with readers, like-minded people, travelers and the world. Blog comments seem to me to be a kinda dead way of the past. R.I.P. Comments Section.

So, I recommend, if you aren't already, sign up on Twitter and type in 'follow @jenandtheart'. Then you can write something cute like, '@jenandtheart Love your blog'. We will totally follow you back and diligently read about the sandwich you ate for lunch today. We both love chatting, too. So feel free to chat is up on Twitter, because otherwise we have to make up our own conversations.

Or, if you aren't particularly inclined to Tweet, don't worry, I'll make sure the excitement keeps showing up on the blog. And you can always still comment on the posts if that's what makes you happy.

Love,

Jennifer

Dogs

2009-03-26T02:30:00.002-05:00

You can't get dogs to pose like this.

Well, you can. But you have to be a dog trainer.

Changing & Daring: Sierra Gorda Biosphere

2009-03-25T18:10:00.006-05:00

Goodness, I don't even know where to start. What do I write about? I want to tell you everything, and there are so many stories that haven't been told yet, and so many photos that are up, but haven't been shown. So this will be somewhat linear. Kinda.

I think there was a sea change in this trip, and it occurred somewhere in the Cloud Forests. Maybe it was the fact that I was feeling a bit mean after so many thousands of kilometers of desert and cactus, but being up on the exhilarating, curvy mountain roads of the Cloud Forests started to change things.

Sometimes you forget how special an adventure is, because it becomes so mundane--you know: mountain, valley, mountain, repeat; mountain, valley, mountain... don't forget to brush you teeth between mountains! And perhaps, this sea change started even before the Cloud Forests when we were sitting in San Miguel de Allende with Max and Judith, and someone mentioned being silly and foolish and young, and I responded, "Oh, we're young? I forgot."

So we got ourselves into days of curvy roads; the first ascent and drop seemed charming, and Ben had been dying to see something other than straight lines. Four days later Ben had had his fill; we had finally left the Sierra Gorda Biosphere and the mountain roads to exit out on the plains north of Mexico City.

But before that? It was beautiful. Desert mountains into rainforest into pine trees that reminded both of us of the American Northwest, and that damp scent of plants and dirt made it feel like Connecticut in springtime. Plunging in and out of four environments felt like an act of resetting. It wasn't another silver mining town, and we were finally back on the road in a regular way, moving everyday.

Mexico is the picture of pastoral. I grew up in New England thinking that all the little folk art paintings in local museums, of apple orchards and cows and pigs was what the word 'pastoral' meant. But here, this place is something out of 'Sound of Music,' but with Spanish dubbing (and minus the Nazis).

We went to Las Pozas, an architectural monument to surrealism, constructed by poet, bastard son of an English king and eccentric millionaire Edward James.

Visiting it was straight-up life changing.

Situated on acres of jungle forest, next to a gorgeous waterfall

which falls down into 'wells' or pools of water, giving it its name, Las Pozas. You can swim there, just like you can climb up to the top of the four or five story (depending on who's counting) cement catwalk that has no railings (Thanks Mexican Government!)

(Sorry for the swearing in the video, guys.)

Climbing and crossing the top bridge is incredibly scary. There was at least a 50 foot drop and it is the first thing you come across when you enter Las Pozas.

James built Las Pozas not just as an intellectual exercise in applying surrealist design tenets and symbolism into architecture, but he built it to be his residence, too. As you explore, you find more and more rooms that aren't directly exposed to the air and were once living quarters. They are locked off now, and in such a manic place, locked doors incite a desire to climb everywhich way to get in (which you can't, unless you are very daring). It is an adult cement playground, hidden in the woods.

You know those '1000 Places To See Before You Die' books? If Las Pozas isn't in it, then the book isn't worth buying. Las Pozas will change your life--no number of Dali paintings or Escher drawings hung on museum walls could ever change you like Las Pozas.

...

Several days (and several ridiculous situations later), we're in Mexico City. And everything is sunshine and rainbows, despite the sky being cloudy and smoggy half of the time. While in fear of jinxing it, it is as though we walk, or maybe even skip, through the streets and literally pick up friends, as though we are in some music video about friendship and love and happiness.

That is Simon, up there. He is a Twitter friend. We met Ido later that night, a friend of our hosts Eran and Keran, at a short fiction reading:

(Not Ido, but a photo of the reading.)

and then were invited to see his Volkswagon Combi and meet his brother and mother. But the real kicker is when we sent out Couchsurfing requests this morning. Later that afternoon, we're eating tacos (with habeneros, which we didn't realize until too late, because we are silly gringos and still learning) and sitting on the curb surrounding a garden and all of a sudden a guy just walks up to us, "Ben... Benjamin? and uhm, Jen...?" Turns out that as strangers in a city of twenty million (yeah, that's 20,000,000) people, you can just randomly come across someone who knows you. Or, if you're Ben, you can find someone who will curl up next to you while you nap, even though they only met you two days ago:

Mexico City!

2009-03-24T01:09:00.001-05:00

We're in Mexico City! And we're going to Frida Kahlo's house on my birthday! More soon!

<3xoxojen

The best of San Miguel de Allende and onwards.

2009-03-19T23:55:00.006-05:00

Tomorrow we are riding east, by northeast through the Sierra Gorda biosphere where we are going to go camping with some fellow couchsurfers Ben and Buffy. Xilitla is our ultimate destination in this our last stab into the interior of Mexico.

Mexico's rugged interior has been spectacular for motorcycle riding.
Only once did we find ourselves on a dead straight road between Monterrey and San luis Potosi.

I am expecting the riding to be excellent for the next couple of days. The Sierra Gorda biosphere is a nationally protected region comprised of one third of Querétaro state. It is host to three bio regions, epic mountains and spectacular valleys. At the northern tip is Xilitla and the surrealist landscape, Las Pozas, of James Edwards. I don't want to spoil it with some preview pictures so wait for us to get to Mexico City to update you on this adventure.

After Mexico City our route will head towards the Pacific Ocean. This will be the second time we visit the Pacific Ocean on this trip and will be a highlight of this epic journey. We will probably follow the coast down towards the border of Guatemala before heading back inland, and across to the Yucatan Peninsula.

There are still loads of things to see in Mexico, plus we are only starting to really get into our Spanish speaking groove. Our importation permit on the motorcycle expires at the end of June, so I think we will probably stay in Mexico till then. It really depends on where we next pickup work. In Mexico City we will be chasing a couple of journalism leads, but that depends on how long we can find hosts. Couchsurfing has been great so far. We have one host lined up for the first week, and we are looking for a host for a possible second week if we can get a good lineup of interviews and article pitches for the English speaking publications. If you have any contacts we should know about in Mexico City please fill us in.

Here are the best photos of San Miguel de Allende:

The central garden,

La Parroquia,

Treats.

Benjamin

2009-03-15T23:09:00.005-05:00

It took us two days to get to Guanajuato because we were held up in Aguascalientes. No, not that kind of hold up.

The kind of holdup every motorcyclist loves to run into. A fellow motorcycle enthusiast that can't get enough of your story. Duro spotted us on the 6 lane autopista (freeway) running straight into Aguascalientes. We stopped and chatted for a couple of minutes about our trip, and his interest in taking smaller motorcycle trips, and we were hoping he could point us in a good direction for some lunch. It was about three in the afternoon and we were both starving.

He then noticed that we were burning oil on the right side exhaust pipes. I tried to explain to him that I was constantly watching the oil, and that I knew what the problem was, and that I was in the midst of resolving the issue. Which is our cam chain tensioner not holding tension and leaking a fair bit of oil past the seal. Well, instead of pointing us to a good restaurant for lunch, (we finally made it to the Birria market that I was dreaming of before we left the next day.)

The back of a lamb on the table in front of us.

Pretty good Birria cook.

Side note, Birria is a specialty of Northern Mexico where lamb, mutton and goats are raised. The best place to get Birria is in Aguascalientes, so stop right here.

Eat and watch your bike at the Juarez Market.

Back to the story, We got the Birria information later that night when we meet up with Duro and his wife, and got a tour of the city. But, the first place Duro took us to was the infamous motorcycle garage of the Maestro Jorge Venegas Estrada.

We discussed the issue with my motor, and he offered up a quick solution. drill out the old bolt on the cam chain tensioner so we could thread in a stud bolt. This was a good option, but I knew if we made one mistake Jen and I would be stuck in Aguascalientes for much longer than we wished to visit this uber modern city. Mind the Birria market. I chose to talk my way out of the situation, and I learned a good lesson.

Even if the mechanic you are talking to about a problem wants to do the work for free, it doesn't mean it is always the best decision.

So to fill you in on why we decided to pass on the offer, I have found a used cam chain tensioner on eBay for seven bucks. This includes the cam chain and the guides. Not a bad deal.

So we get the tour of the town that night by Duro. Auguascalientes is one of the highlights on the Mexico bull fighting circuit. Some of the best bulls in the country are breed here and killed here. We also got to see a Marilyn Monroe impersonator, sorry no photos I forgot the camera, she was standing over a grate in a section of town that had the cars passing underground. When a car would pass underneath her, the viewers would get a little glimpse as she posed innocently for the photos.

The next day I got up early, to check the condition of the bike, oil, and cam chain tensioner. I had to add a bit of oil, but that was expected. We then took off for a visit to the National Museum of death.

Click on our pictures for more great photos from the Death Museum.

So here we are in Guanajuato. I again have the engine out, and I am getting the broken bolt on our cam chain tensioner fixed temporarily as our new tensioner gets shipped to us.

I am going to replace our original one, because I also want to replace our head gasket, the oil seal around the cam chain tensioner bolt, and put in a master link on the cam chain. Plus in the care package with these parts from the states will be a new electric starter motor for the bike. Lets hope all goes well.

Benjamin

In Guanajuato, Motor is OUT!

2009-03-13T17:35:00.002-05:00

So we made it to Guanajuato in one piece. We stayed over in Aguascalientes for a night, both for Ben to check out the Museo Nacional de la Muerte (National Museum of Death), from which we have some very interesting photos of the art there,

but also because we literally got pulled over by a fellow motorcycle enthusiast, Duro, who runs the blog En Dos Ruedas, written in Spanish.

We stopped in Aguascalientes for three hours, putting us off track for our destination in Guanajuato that night, so we got a room, saw the museum and walked around downtown a bit.

The three hours we spent at the motorcycle shop was pretty hilarious. It involved Ben waving his hands at Harley Davidson enthusiasts, saying, part in Spanish, part in English, "Please, please, no! Don't drill into the head!" For those who don't speak motorcyclese, the head basically equals the motor and drilling into it and leaving metal shavings is a terrible idea.

We made some quick friends in Aguascalientes, and got a little nervous about the cam chain tensioner being loose--not only are we losing a lot of oil regularly, but the cam chain tensioner is sitting in the motor, shaking around. If it gets completely detached from the outside, it will bash into something important (i.e. the valves or the pistons or something like that) and then the ride is OVER. Capital O-V-E-R. So Ben took the motor out, again. And I helped, a little. Here are the photos:

This is Judiht's courtyard, and the view from our current bedroom. There's Apolo, the collie and the engine sitting out in the courtyard.

Muchas Gracias!!!

2009-03-13T10:10:00.003-05:00

Thank you everyone for continuing to support us, our motorcycle, and our blog. Thank you for the financial donations that make my work on Bonnie possible and keep us on the road to adventure and new friends. Thank you for your comments, anecdotes, blogs, and twitter updates. We love sharing our stories and experiences with everyone we meet in our daily lives, and with all of our dedicated followers on the blog, through advrider.com, and on twitter.com.

We have received some very generous donations since we left the states:

Christopher Hillard, your donation has helped us cover the costs of cleaning out our gas tank.

Michael Saunders, we have finally found a good deal on an electric starter.

Steve Brawley and Marc Lanciaux, your incredible donations are going towards a new front tire. I have been searching far and wide for a good deal, quality that will last, and tread that will keep us on the beaten path while allowing us visits off the beaten path. I have a supplier in Mexico City all lined up for the transaction.

Robert Owen, thanks for the donation. It will help us get the motor back in the bike for good. I have found a used cam chain tensioner a used cam chain, and a new head gasket.

Mark Hyatt, your donation has bought us a new cam chain master link.

I also want to say thank you to my family for helping us with shipping our care package of parts and tools to Mexico.

Viva Mexico!

Benjamin

Videos on the Road

2009-03-09T16:26:00.003-05:00

Here are some baby videos taken while we were driving to Zacatecas

Oh no, Mr. Bill (Ben)!

2009-03-08T19:29:00.000-05:00

Real de Catorce in words & images

2009-03-06T16:50:00.004-06:00

Well, we still haven't even written about Real de Catorce and frankly, I already have enough stories to write a memoir. So I am going to do a bit of backblogging for y'all while I look at the photos of myself on our Picasa albums, where I am desperately in need of a haircut. If you know of some really great hairstylist en route, this 1970's-ten-year-old-boy haircut I've been sporting in various fashions is getting old, fast. Or, if you're a really hip person and great with a pair of shears, I am a really desperate person with a floppy mess of hair. (It wouldn't hurt to get Ben's hair cut, too.)

So, like most of our trip thus far, our route is inspired by others' suggestions. When we were in Humble, TX, Billy and Anna suggested to us that we should go visit Real de Catorce. On the first night we spent in Humble, the four of us went over our map and circled in red all the places they recommended. A month later, in Monterrey, MX we were staying with Gaby, where she too, recommended that we visit Real de Catorce. Ben, I think, remembered the initial recommendation, but it wasn't until after we left Real de Catorce that I actually put two and two together.

Real de Catorce's historic name, depending on the source is: Real de Alamos de la Purisima Concepción de los Catorce or Nuestra Señora de la Purisima Concepción de los Alamos de Catorce, which roughly translates to 'Royal Alamos of the Immaculate Conception of the Fourteen' or 'Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception of the Alamos of the Fourteen.' San Luis Potosi, Zacatecas and Real de Catorce are all old, colonial, silver mining towns and they tend to have these romantic and blustery names. The town was founded in 1779 and produced silver until the Mexican Revolution, when it was shut down due to the dropping price of silver in the world market.

The town has been until recently living on tourism--cowboys stand on all the corners and ask you, in Spanish, if you would like to take a ride up into the mountains on a horse. Almost every large (and small) house has been converted into a hotel-cum-restaurant-cum-souvenir store. We later found out that the charming pueblo of Real de Catorce is on the 'hippy drug trail' due to the peyote found in the surrounding area, ritualistically consumed annually by Huichol Indians and consumed the rest of the time by hippies worldwide, leading to concern that the Huichol tradition of peyote-induced spiritual trips may die out.

The demographic made sense, in retrospect, as every third person we passed on the streets was either wearing tie-dye, had dredlocked hair or was a tourist under the age of 25. Ho-hum. A lover of both the extreme authentic and the terrible imitation, I enjoyed wandering the streets of Real de Catorce as tourists took photos of people in their 'authentic' Mexican campesino clothes, unaware that the people in traditional dress were just as much outsiders to a town surviving on string of tourism as the tourists themselves. Everyone stares at everyone else in Real de Catorce, because everyone is both the spectator and the spectated in such a dynamic tourist town.

Now, there are possible bids to reopen the Real de Catorce mines again. I've been reading up a bit on this, to give you a good opinion of what's going on out there regarding Real de Catorce. I couldn't say for sure whether this is a Good Thing or a Bad Thing, but it is definitely A Thing. The beautiful churches in town, gaudy on the inside and more relic-like than the older and larger cathedrals in San Luis and Zacatecas, were built on this money.

In fact, the entire desirable city was built on this money, and if all this 'reopening of mines' stuff goes down democratically, this might be an incredible thing. In another two-hundred year cycle of newly opened mines and building and closing of mines and downturn and tourism upturn, Real de Catorce may be more or less integrally the same.

I've watched New Orleans go from a 'mostly-surviving on tourism' to an 'only surviving on tourism' town and you can see the matte black wall, about two inches past the pupils of the eyes' of people who only survive on tourism. It's not good. And for the tourist, it becomes a wheedling uncomfort of feeling like you constantly owe something to someone, like everyone is infuriated with you after you walk away without hiring their services. I suspect to some extent that this is what is so attractive about the concept of 'eco-tourism,' because it makes consumption look and feel really good. (I swear, Ben is going to have to update soon with something upbeat before I go all communist on this blog.)

...

So. Real de Catorce is beautiful.

9,000 feet up, and you can stand in the town and watch the clouds pass above and below you, and they compress themselves to fit into the clefts between mountains.

The masonry is incredible--in some places, three different layers have fallen off of decaying buildings and give you an idea of the makeshift reparations and the generations of people who've built this place all willy-nilly on the side of the mountains.

With dozens of abandoned houses, people still find unused pieces on the hillside to build new buildings, usually half out of concrete blocks and the other half out of rocks found nearby.

(This is hair that needs the badly needed haircut.)

And the views?

...

One of the concerns with the reopening of mines is the undermining of the historic quality of towns like Real de Catorce. Real de Catorce is part of the Programa Pueblos Mágicos a program run by Mexico's Secretary of Tourism. I am unsure as to the benefits of degree of legal historical preservation by being designated a Magical Town. Real de Catorce was the first town we have visited on this list, and we visited a second, Jerez, last night. San Miguel de Allende, another magical town is also on our route, after Guanajuato. If you haven't watched the video of the trip into the tunnel, I suggest you look at it again.

Real de Catorce has a romantic, blustery name because it is a otherworldly place that you get to through a tunnel in the earth with an unopenable altar to something that you can't really see.

Some Loving, Some Blog Hating & Nature Photos

2009-03-02T22:18:00.011-06:00

One of the reasons that this blog didn't start up until Ben and I realized we were just disappointing our future selves by not documenting this trip, is because I have a really difficult time with negotiating my liberal arts degree of 'critical kindness' towards all things new, different or unique; and my desire to write out, document and share my love of small handmade and hand delivered stories to other human beings.

To casually display the fight against the existentialist struggle.

I told our host, Gaby, in Monterrey, that I was working in my head on my 'What I Am Going to Say About Mexico That is Honest, Not Stereotyping; Kind, But Critical.' This is part of that series of thoughts.

Today, via my college email address, I received a bulk-letter from one of the administrative bigwigs at Tulane, my alma mater, telling students to use caution, and check the state.gov website for travel information about going to major Mexican tourist areas and the Mexican frontera. Drugs, death, violence, pickpockets and rape! Frankly, short of Tijuana, all of the cities listed on the website seemed charming compared to New Orleans, New York City, Chicago, and sure as heck better than Gary, Indiana. What are we (Americans) telling ourselves about the outside world? Are we writing these blurbs about our most dangerous cities, when all of those out-of-state college students just showed up in New Orleans for Mardi Gras this year?

...

Right now, Ben has the whole darned motorcycle apart, up the street (Carlos and Nasul's house is located on the hillside, and the immediate surrounding blocks are pedestrian stairwells only, paved with large stones held together by cement and loosely attached, somehow, to the mountain), so we haven't been driving anywhere for the last couple of days.

Therefore, every few days we walk down to the markets and go to buy groceries. Zacatecas is an old town, and it is difficult to build modern day grocery stores into the city--there are no streets that run straight and buildings, stairwells too, tend to just pop out of nowhere, built on top of other buildings, buildings that are dug into the sides of the mountains surrounding the main valley of the city.

These markets tend to be mixed results for us--sometimes three days of delicious groceries or an incredible lunch comes for less than three dollars (or 45 pesos). Other times, we are ripped off--less than a pound of rice for 20 pesos, or a $1.33. This may not seem like a lot, and in a way, it isn't, either economically or emotionally. But in some ways, it is. We watch and listen, as we get ripped off by someone--we know whats going on and they know that we know. Everyone is clearly aware. What we're paying for is more than just some white rice, we're paying for years of bad blood between two countries, for a child's education, our stilted Spanish, for our blue eyes. In this is the critical kindness. I don't blame this individual for overcharging me, and I let him do it, willingly. It is easy enough to say no. But it doesn't help him if I say no, and it doesn't help me if I say yes. Overall, no one is winning in any of these situations. How do you call someone out on this without skirting around the obvious reasons that you are being ripped off?

...

One night, my friend Anna and I were waiting for the streetcar in New Orleans. A woman came up to us and asked us for money for a cab. Her boyfriend had just beat her up and kicked her out of the car. We gave her everything we had short of the small fare for the streetcar back Uptown--did we want to be scammed and do the right thing or not give her money and possibly let this woman try to walk home by herself in the middle of the night?

...

It makes me really nervous to fall into the travel blog/travel writing hole of essentializing groups of people and blaming them for historic, political and social events outside of their reach, or summing them up into quaint exoticized moments in my life. These stories may seem negative, but they're really about the difficulty of walking a fine line between forgiving, comprehending, and criticizing. How do you humanize a person, a place or a country without generalizing or being unfair (in either a good or bad way)? How do you write a story about something without taking advantage of the person who made the story--the climb up the hill or the noteworthy news?

...

I spend a lot of time, looking at the florae and the terrain on our trips. A lot of the time on the motorcycle is spent between towns; it makes the metropolitan area from New York to Boston seem claustrophobic. It is hard to catch pictures of plants while we're moving,

most of the on-motorcycle pictures tend to be of distant objects (ok, mountains).

So I've been trying to take pictures of interesting plants more often,

so that I can show at least what some of the plants are like, the more "exotic" ones that catch my eye.

I wish I could give names for these plants, but you'll just have to appreciate them for what they are. Included are some photos of the mountains I've loved, too. Just so you can start to feel the expansiveness of Mexico, the rolling desert plains and mountains we've been travelling through since we left the United States.

We had to slow down for these sheep. I would say that half of the animals we've seen have not been penned in. But they tend to be a little smarter, the cows, the horses, the chickens, etc. and they realize that there is no food to be found on the road.

I actually was able to catch a picture of one of small dust whirlwinds that suck up the dry ground. Everytime we crest a mountain, there are dozens of these to be seen on the horizon:

Grapevines in the desert for Ryan:

Mardi Gras! Mardi Gras! (Anticipation!)

2009-02-26T00:58:00.003-06:00

Everyone seems to love videos. So here is a video and text and picture post; everyone wins.

Ben and I are regularly lying to ourselves about 'getting in shape.' 'Getting in shape' is antithetical to our love of food and our now typical hedonistic New Orleans lifestyle. It is also pro-antithetical (yes, that's right) to the fact that yesterday's 'lets walk until we drop' day was Mardi Gras Day.

If you've never experienced Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans (and I don't mean on Bourbon Street), there is a lot of 'walk til you drop' included in the festivities, as most public and motorized transportation is severely limited by lack of available employees, parades and crowds of organized and not-so-organized people wandering the streets. We spent the entire day walking around El Centro (not in honor of Mardi Gras, but because we wanted to see El Centro), the historical downtown area of San Luis Potosi, looking at the gardens,

the cathedrals,

an interesting decorative cistern with a statue commemorating the men who would carry water to all the homes throughout town,

and trying to get into the Museum of Masks, which was unfortunately closed for structural repairs. So, after a good three hours of walking in circles in the heat, we decided to call it a day.

I've been mopey for about a week, because as the Mardi Gras season was soon coming to a close, more and more facebook photos of all the fun that all my friends in New Orleans were having was making me a bit emo. So, surprisingly, two blocks after getting on the motorcycle, what do I spy but a Mardi Gras parade!

Heck yes! Ben and I quickly turned through two lanes of traffic and parked the motorcycle to follow the parade for about an hour. There were musicians playing, and they followed the parade for a while, until they climbed up onto the top of a bar and played,

while the young men in costume (few others were dressed up), danced in a circle around another man, dancing with a bull costume over his head,

different guys took turns at being the bull and dancing spastically, as though they were the bulls that one imagines in the bullring of a Hemingway novel.

Eventually, prizes were given out for best costumes, which became a desperate fight to get trophies.

And everyone up on the roof started throwing oranges and bottles of fruit juice at the crowd. After being pegged enough times at parades in New Orleans, by plastic beads, and not oranges, Ben and I tended to duck more than try to catch the throws.

During those minutes when the oranges were being thrown and caught, the air smelled of citrus zest. It was intense, serious pushing and shoving as the circle of guys ran back and forth down the street, circling the bull-man. After about an hour or so, we decided to go back to Aldo's house, as we were already exhausted before finding the parade.

The End!

Public Service Announcement

2009-02-25T20:35:00.006-06:00

Hey dudes and dudettes!

I have a question and a psuedo-PSA and a mini-PSA:

Question:

Do you have any ideas of how I could better advertise this blog? Specific forums, ideas on advertising, people we could contact? I am a little stumped as to who to reach out to right now.

Reason/Psuedo-PSA:

Ben and I make a pittance via advertisements that are (hopefully) not super intrusive and occasionally from donations from really awesome people (who are probably afraid we would start eating cactus and coyote roadkill if they didn't throw us some money). So the more people who read this occasionally or regularly, the more money we get.

This is good, because it means that we can do this a bit longer and that we can do more fun things, because everyday we have to decide on whether we want to have one more tank of gas, or if we buy the part that we desperately need so that the motorcycle doesn't explode on us. We are not King Solomon, you know??

It also means that we make more friends because then folks are like 'Hey these guys might be cool I should meet them' and then we have more things to write about and everyone wins. Oh, and if you have a really rich uncle who likes sponsoring hardworking crazy kids like us, give us his contact info.

Mini-PSA:

Also! Please don't forget that if you like us, you should link us! We will link you back!

And! Please check out our photo albums at: http://picasaweb.google.com/jenandtheart We are very diligent about trying to keep them organized and up-to-date! Not all of the great photos that we have show up in the blog! We also try to keep our latest photos rotating in the slideshow to the left.

And! We now are posting videos because I became brave over at: http://www.youtube.com/user/jenandtheart If you have a youtube account, you should rate them like one bazillion percent so that other people will see them too, and so that we can maybe one day beat out all the Miley Cyrus videos that show up on youtube.

Ok. That is all. Thank you. I am working on getting our videos up from Mardi Gras in San Luis Potosi, and once that happens, I will post a blog about it.

Love,

Jen

Real de Catorce tunnel

2009-02-24T12:12:00.001-06:00

A little video of part of the 15 minute tunnel ride. Pause it around 10 seconds to see into the shrine located about a quarter of the way into the tunnel ride.

Non-Sequiturs in Spanish

2009-02-23T12:01:00.006-06:00

We made it finally to San Luis Potosi, but as we get further into Mexico, I get less interested in blogging about it, and more interested in trying to speak the language fluently. To date, our travels have taken us to Monterrey, Real de Catorce and now to San Luis Potosi (there is an accent mark over the i of Potosi, but heck if I know the keycode for it on this computer). Everyday is emotionally exhausting--speaking in Spanish "es muy dificil" and depending on who Ben and I are talking to, it can be fairly easy, or incredibly hard. Most conversations I start off with "Hola. Lo siento, pero no hablo espanol muy bien." or "Buenas dias. Lo siento, pero mi espanol es asi-asi." which translate to: "Hello, I'm sorry, but I don't speak Spanish very well." or "Good morning. I'm sorry, but my Spanish is so-so." I become incredibly shy when talking to people in Spanish and usually break out into a cold sweat when in a situation where I feel pressured to talk. I cannot think of any other activity more intellectually, emotionally and physically exhaustive than speaking in a language in which one is not fluent.

So hilarity always ensues when I'm talking in Spanish. The last time I had a non sequitur moment, Ben and I were in El Museo del Palacio, originally the Government Palace, where the state congress met in Monterrey. One of the docents took a liking to us, I think because a lot of folks get a kick out of chatting up gringos in the same way that Americans can't get enough of foreigners' accents. He starts talking to us, in fairly difficult Spanish about the neoclassical style of the congress' auditorium "y los otros estilos diferentes" present in the room--the gold leaf on the ceiling, the "mascaras," the masks, located at the corners of ceiling panels, the type of tiling used throughout the building, the original wood dias, the bullet holes in two of the front seats, and so on.

Ok. Repaired bullet holes in the chairs, I can dig that. The auditorium is beautiful. And then all of a sudden, he is asking me, I think, about the Native Americans of the United States. Que, senor? I try to explain, in broken Spanish that there were hundreds of tribes in the United States before most of them were wiped out by colonists and the American government. I am saying that this is unlike in Mexico, where there is a greater focus on the macro-cultures of the Mayan or Aztec people. But, I say, the one thing that all the Native Americans of the United States have in common is that the United States tried to kill all of them. Hilarious, right? The United States! What a cruel, colonizing bully of a nation! Hahaha, or jajaja, as they write in Spanish.

Good conversation, right? Sigh.

Last night, I told our host, Aldo, in Spanish, about two of the most distinct memories I have from when my paternal grandmother died: the memory of aseptically packaged cow tongue sitting for weeks afterward in our refrigerator and eating beef fajitas for the first time the night of the funeral. His family owns a carneceria (a butcher's shop) and we were talking about eating menudo (a soup with cow stomach in it that Ben nonchalantly ordered yesterday at a Sunday market for lunch in Cedral) ad other unusual meats. Presumably, cow tongue tacos taste good. I can't report yet on the tongue tacos, but menudo is definitely an acquired taste.

In short... or perhaps more accurately, in other words, talking in Spanish is like playing a dadaist word game. Nothing makes sense, including the ridiculous things that you come up with to talk about, because in the end, we speak Spanish like babies with big heads.

La Huasteca, or Ansel Adams, eat your heart out

2009-02-19T17:04:00.006-06:00

Ben and I got exceptionally lost, crossed over La Puente de la Unidad, also known as the Puente Atirantado:

...and then got ourselves to La Huasteca National Park. The majority of these photos are from the back of the motorcycle as we drove through the park. Now we only need to figure out a way to mount a tripod to the motorcycle. Ansel Adams, eat your heart out.

Gaby, our hostess with the mostess, says this is the Mad Scientist's house. She says that her parents' used to tell her this as a little girl, but it turns out that all of her friends' parents used to tell their kids this, too, so it must be true.

Wooooie!

Border Crossing in Mexico

2009-02-15T13:20:00.003-06:00

Border crossings are fun!

These guys just give a little tug on the rope, and the pulleys do the rest of the work. A genuine hand pulled ferry crossing into Mexico.

That is how they do it at the Los Ebanos ferry crossing.

Hello Mexico!

Goodbye America!

Jen's new sunglasses. They were given to her by the first person we meet in Mexico.

First things first. We headed off the main route and onto a somewhat less frequently traveled road. These bumps are not so bad.

Flying down the autopista towards Monterrey.

The mountains into Monterrey.

We are getting closer

and they were all shot at 110km/h. Good job Jen.

That's right Mexico.

Monterrey just goes on forever. We have lots to explore. More to come soon.

Benjamin

Roadside Mechanics Series #3

2009-02-12T09:14:00.004-06:00

That is right, what Jen said. "Hell Yeah Mexico!"

So how did that happen. Two days ago we were fighting a broken starter, and xs500 still did not want to start right with the kick starter. Yes it was running well, when it was running, and did a great job on our test ride to Boca Chica, but it was not perfect.

So, yesterday morning our baffling motorcycle problem of extremely hard cold starts, and a screeching noise that occured on while the engine was starting was finally exposed.

I was recommended to perform a cold engine compression check by Vanya, an "old motorcycle" mechanic whiz on advrider.com. The procedure for the test is the same as in our earlier blog post for the Roadside Mechanics Series #1, except the test is performed while the engine is cold. The idea behind performing this check was that our hard cold starts were caused by a small air leak that can only be present when the engine is cold. Therefore, the air leak did not effect the operation of the motorcycle at normal operating temperatures because as metal heats up it expands thus closing off the air leak.

So first thing I did at 7 am on the day we are supposed to leave for Monterrey, Mexico, was pull the gas tank, remove the plugs and setup the compression tester. Our initial results for both sides were very poor at 90psi and proved Vanya's point. We had a cold engine compression leak.

Vanya suggested that if this test resulted in poor compression, I should check that the eight head bolts were tightened to 25 ft-lbs. This is where I discovered our problem! The head bolts were just loose enough that they did not created a good seal with the cylinders until the engine was warm. That is why the warm compression check didn't expose the problem with our compression.

Through this process I have learned that discovering the origins of a problem in a troubled engine requires following a series of steps to make sure that the three main systems of compression, spark, and fuel are opereating properly when you perform a tuneup, and that to check them in that order. First, make sure the engine has good compression. The main check should be when the engine is warm, but if your engine will not start then a cold engine compression test could expose the underlying problem of why the engine won't start. Then, and only then, should you proceed onto checking the electrical system to make sure that a healthy spark is being delivered through the spark plug, and that it is being delivered at the right time. From there you should go onto check the fuel flow. All of these ingredients combine to make up a running engine, but the first systems have to be functioning flawless make sure that you are diagnosing the true problem.

After I tightened the head bolts I got a healthy reading from both of our cylinders.

The motorcycle started right up when I put it back together, and is a breeze to start with the kick starter when warm, all of our gear is strapped on, and Jen is sitting on the back of the bike. Hurray!!!!!

Benjamin

p.s. Now I am going to go through the other systems and make sure they are functioning flawlessly with the correct compression. Just another step in maintaining a 1976 Yamaha xs500 in Jen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Mexico!!!!!

2009-02-11T22:18:00.002-06:00

HELL YEAH, MEXICO!

That is all.

Surprise Content!!

2009-02-10T01:34:00.004-06:00

Ben is asleep right now!!! I just took this photo of him, and he didn't wake up! This is him, asleep, with his new glasses! They are big "so he can look down at the map without having to move his head while we are riding on the motorcycle."

(I should start a members' only subscription blog just for insider photos like this. :P) Ok, don't forget to read down past this. I just wrote this long, long post on our weekend at Boca Chica State Park.

-Jen, obviously.

Boca Chica State Park, before and after

2009-02-09T23:35:00.007-06:00

This blog post will be excessively about me, because for the first time in the trip, there are quite a few photos of myself. Usually, I am the one behind the camera, because lo! the motorcycle has exploded! Eek! the motorcycle has died on the highway! Egads! the motorcycle needs more work! That is when Ben is fixing the motorcycle, so there are plenty of glamor shots with him up to his elbows in, well, elbow grease.

Therefore, I feel no shame in producing this Jen-tastic blog post, because I have a substantial number of photos of me looking fairly lovely and I must take advantage of the opportunity to narrate them.

This weekend, we decided to get out of Gulu and Tessa's hair--we've been here too long and I am already getting nostalgic for being here, an oxymoron, because we haven't really left yet. This is what happened in Galveston though, and I can just taste Mexico; Gulu and Tessa live less than fifteen minutes from the border, as the crow flies. So we traveled east to Boca Chica State Park, which first required Ben and I finding lots of phone numbers for the Texas State Park folks--Boca Chica is listed on regular maps, but it is unlisted on the Texas State Parks website. It is one of those liminal places where people can go, for free, and camp there, probably forever if they wanted to, in a tent. Not that you would want to do that. There aren't really rules there. Too many people leave trash at the beach, or as we found out, even worse: too many people listen to trashy trance music blasted on their car subwoofers at two in the morning on the beach. Otherwise, it is a beautiful, lunar landscape at night, and a hazy, limitless distance of sand, ocean and blazing sky during the day.

On the way to the beach, I was stung by a bee! I had to finally use our designated emergency signal--me patting/smacking Ben repeatedly on the back until he pulled over. This was very effective. Good response time, Ben! We pulled over, I jumped off, and had him pull the stinger out of my wrist. Mom: Good news, I am not allergic to bees. Then with his help, I bandaged myself up with a get-better-you-deserve-it Hello Kitty band-aid:

We got to the beach right as the sun was setting, and we drove up and down the packed sand, until we decided we should park as close to the dunes as possible, to avoid the tide line. We, of course, got stuck. Then with the help of some plastic soda bottles and Yankee ingenuity, we got ourselves unstuck. We headed back to the paved road and parked there, finding ourselves a nice spot where we could see the ocean, the beach, and especially the motorcycle from the front flap of the tent:

The first day we got up before the sun rose. This photo was taken at sunrise, which is why I look out of my mind, and Ben looks ecstatic:

We spent the first day trying to find clams (there aren't clams in the Gulf, by the way), and then later oysters. We found an oyster bed with helpful advice from a Winter Texan, but all of the oyster shells were filled with mud, but mysteriously still held together. I sunk into the mud at one point up to my knees and had to get Ben to save me by pulling me out. After we were both cut and bleeding and without a single oyster to our name, we decided this was probably a Bad Idea and gave up.

For the rest of our three nights and two days on the beach, we spent a lot of time cooking:

a lot of time catching tiny animals (and setting them free):

a lot of time staring at pelicans:

a lot of time getting sunburnt; some time collecting interesting seashells:

and only a bit of time contemplating this creepy eyeless, babydoll head on a cross before we decided to leave it, and the two other memorial crosses, to be creepy by themselves:

The babydoll cross is the only thing that trumps availability of multiple photos of myself to strew across this post.

On the second full day, we headed over to Port Isabel, to see the lighthouse, where Ben took some nice photos of me:

the lighthouse:

of me:

a fake pirate galleon that we could see from the top of the lighthouse:

and a series (to be fully uploaded once we get some good Internet access) of ridiculous pictures of him, and me:

Later we headed to South Padre Island, to figure out what all the tourist hubbub was about. South Padre Island was uneventful, except for a last minute conversation with two college professors. If you are reading this, hello! Maybe we'll see you in Guatemala, Fernando? They were hilarious, and saved South Padre Island at the last minute from being a charmless, history-less, friendless version of Galveston Island.

On the way back to Gulu and Tessa's, we stopped at a barbecue joint and split a brisket sandwich. There we met Joel and his son Tevin, who rides bulls for fun!!! He is maybe three-quarters my size, half my age and already way more badass then I am. Actually, this photo trumps the babydoll photos. Do you see the look on his face? That is the face of a genuine bull rider:

Smoking Joe's was just off the side of the road, somewhere between Mission and Brownsville on Route 281. Here is a photo, so when you are going there to eat barbecue, you will know it when you see it:

We also got to take a photo with Smoking Joe himself, in front of huge his carousel smoker:

This was a success, as Ben and I had had some lousy barbecue in Kingsville, TX. This redeemed Texas barbecue in Ben's eyes. Mine, too, but I haven't eaten enough barbecue to really know anything about it except that this barbecue was really fantastic and its crossed our minds to "accidentally" end up back on Route 281. So hello! and thanks for the good food, Joel, Tevin and Joe.

Whew. If a photo is worth a thousand words, then I must've written a dissertation. Ha, ha.

Love,
Jen.

Off to the seashore!

2009-02-04T20:57:00.002-06:00

Hello!

While we wait for our fancy sleeping bag to ship, along with the other post-Christmas miscellany, we are going to the Texas seashore to stare at the murky Gulf waters one last time before they start to turn crystalline. We'll be missing in action for a while, but we'll get some good photos of seagulls. From there, we'll go back to Mission, Texas, grab our stuff and leave for Mexico for real.

And I swear, if that sleeping bag is worse than the one we have now, I am going to Monterrey with the jumbo extra large sleeping bag and finding a new sleeping bag in Mexico.

-Jen

Roadside Mechanics Series #2 Check, Double Check:

2009-02-03T01:34:00.005-06:00

The fuel line was clogged in the petcocks. I had forgotten there was a filter in there. Jen and I had even cleaned them in Dallas, and before we left New Orleans, but I forgot about checking them in Galveston. There was just enough crud getting through the old filters in the petcocks to make it look like our in line filters were doing their job and giving me the false impression that our fuel system was clean. Check, double check, and get it done right the first time.

Our gas tank was in need of an overhaul due to rust. There are many methods to clean out a rusty gas tank. Some people would say the best method is to go on ebay.com and buy a new one, but for our situation we were going to have to get dirty. The prevailing methods for cleaning out a gas tank use a three part system with the last step being the addition of a plastic liner.

I went with the first two steps. This involved shaking the tank excessively with a handful of nuts and bolts inside for over an hour. I even tried to sell this bit of work as a workout and get others to pay me to do my work. Unfortunately that didn't pay off, but my labor did. After the nuts and bolts were drained, the tank was ready for its acid bath. For this part I used a ten percent solution of muriatic acid and filled the tank all the way to the top. I let this sit for 2 hours while I cleaned out those pesky fuel petcocks. Once the acid bath was complete I washed the tank out with cold water, and dried it with an acetone to remove the last bits of water. Now it looks like a brand new tank on the inside.

Our engine starting is still hard. When cold, I can't kick the bike to life, but the starter button gets it going in about twenty seconds. The screeching is still there and the one mechanic that looked at the bike said the noise was related to an air leak. When warm, I can usually get the bike to start on the first kick. The starter button tends to hesitate when the bike is warm, but quickly gets the juice from the battery that it needs to complete the job, and it fires up in three seconds.

I took the carburetors off today to look at the flaps and fit some new gas lines. I found a little bit of Permetex gasket maker on the right side flap. This is in line with the diagnosis that our system is leaking a little bit of air. I also feel that the our RPMs are hanging at 2,000 when I pull up to a traffic light. I have heard that this is a signature sign of an air leak in the intake.

This is what we want our spark plugs look like after our tune-up.

Jen says this picture looks like the spark plug is going to hit on the motorcycle. Oh baby-baby.

My speedometer went out on me in Galveston. I haven't fiddled with it since then. So no diagnosis yet. I will take it apart and see whats up with it when we get a new front tire. When we started the ride I had to fiddle with it to get it to work right. I am not sure exactly how accurate it is, but most of the time it feels pretty consistent with traffic and those speed indicators that police forces use.

80 mph on the freeway is great. The bike handles well, and has lots of guts still to make passes. At first I assumed that we would be cruising at 60mph max, but soon enough 70 mph rolled around just fine, and when we were in a hurry to get to New Orleans 80 mph was no problem.

Benjamin

test, test, 1 2 3!

2009-02-02T18:35:00.005-06:00

Hello!

I am currently updating the look of the website... I am working through a few kinks in the design right now; I speak XML, CSS and HTML like I speak Spanish--awkwardly and I usually finish by saying something offensive by accident. Just kidding.

If you are reading this and know something about coding, leave me a comment. I could use a little help with troubleshooting. Also! Only some of the tabs are working presently. While it doesn't seem like a big deal, I am most proud of convincing the Blogger XML parser to let me get away with putting up the map code. It isn't a 100% accurate map of our trip thus far, but it will give you a good idea of mileage. We'll update it occasionally and if we're your in area and you want to hang out, contact us! We are always open to visiting new and exciting places and are Master Detourers.

If you are seeing things that look funny and aren't working (excluding the press packet, the wishlist and the darned weird unevenness between sections that I am still trying to fix) give me a heads up with what type of computer you're using (Windows, Linux, Mac) and what browser and browser version. Thanks!

Kisses,

Jen

An order of supreme Thanks, right on target.

2009-02-01T23:06:00.003-06:00

Vanya, an xs500 whiz on advrider.com, has been helping me get to the bottom of our motorcycle troubles. His advice has been right on target, and has helped me through a full tuneup of the bike.

Before we left on this adventure, our stead Bonnie rested at my folks' house in Oregon. She was not forgotten there, but didn't get out very often while I lived in New Orleans and Seattle. During this time her gas tank sat empty and her seat withered up. The seat was rebuilt in Oregon before I went to pick Jen up in Seattle, and since New Orleans, Bonnie has embraced a great seat cover that carries our pillows. Now the gas tank has been cleaned up; the rust that was plugging our lines and stranded us on the side of the road has been cleaned up. We are once again getting ready to carry on.

So thanks to Vanya, and everyone else on advrider.com.

Benjamin

Thanks for the spanks, hu-hum, I mean support.

2009-02-01T18:55:00.002-06:00

Our tenacity to attempt a trip that most would call foolhardy is only possible through the wonderful help we receive along the road. Does anyone remember our guardian angel, Mike? A fella down on his economic luck, without a lick of motorcycle knowledge, who stopped to make sure we were okay when we broke down outside of Edinburg, Texas. He helped us throw our bike in the back of his van, a feat we were only able to accomplish with the help of a mini-cooler. Don't ask me how, it's a dream I keep telling myself.

For others, their help comes in the form of donations for gas, or like Alan Brandon's donation went to an oil change. Leah Weston donated for gas money that got us to Mission, Texas, and David Kahm, whose name reminds me of an old friend, David Kime, but that could be a coincidence. His donation has helped us purchase some parts for our latest tuneup.

So thank you everyone believes in us, and supports the limb that we are out on. That means you too, Gulu and Tessa. We love your house in Mission, but promise we are not moving in forever.

Texas Citrus Fiesta, and a parade to remember the fallen

2009-02-01T11:08:00.004-06:00

Mission, Texas has become our new home. The neighbor children are no longer afraid when I say "Hi" to them. The apartment maintenance guys always wave as they cruise along in their golf carts on their way to fix something or another. Like Galveston, we seem to be getting some friends around here, and have probably been here for a little bit too long. That's why I was so surprised when low and behold, I saw some unexpected bleachers on the side of the road. However close I feel to this community, I am out of the loop. Something big was about to happen, and I was just catching wind of it. Something was going on this weekend. Jen had overheard the barista in town talking about a parade that she would be working. My curiosity was piqued when I learned that there was going to be a parade. A parade for whom, for what, where, and most importantly when.

Since my time in New Orleans, parades have taken on a new meaning. When I learned the parade was for the Texas Citrus Fiesta, I started to imagine the armloads of grapefruits, oranges, lemons, and who knows what else that would be thrown from floats decorated in the aforementioned fruits. That however, would be indicative of a New Orleans style parade.

The main event for the Texas Citrus Fiesta would be Saturday evening. At seven p.m. sharp, the floats, bands, queens and kings, princesses, and military regiments would parade through town. We arrived a little early so we could sample some of the local fare like:

Hot Cheetos with nacho sauce.

Some of the worst barbecue I have ever had

Gulu had some hot cocoa:

This guy:

Onto the parade. The floats were decorated, but only sparingly in fruit slices. The overarching theme for the floats was Winter Texan R.V. Parkers who were honoring POW, MIA, and "the troops that gave some, and those that gave all."

The first place prize winner:

Some of the princesses:

Of course, motorcycles (and even in the dark you can tell they are Harleys):

And the never ending parade of cops. Unfortunately, this is how most of my photos turned out:

By the end of the parade, we had only caught one orange. It wasn't a hapless victim of a float either. The Pooper Scooper was filling his time in between picking up road apples by handing out fresh Texas citrus. Yum Valencia oranges, my favorite.

Benjamin

La Lomita Chapel, A Ghost Story

2009-01-27T20:44:00.004-06:00

This afternoon Ben and I scooted over to La Lomita Chapel, in Mission, TX where we are currently staying with Gulu and Tessa. La Lomita was originally a Catholic mission en route to Brownsville, and founded on a ranch. All that is left is the little chapel built on the little hill, hence the name, "La Lomita."

We ate a picnic lunch under a shaded picnic area and got eaten by tiny bugs and little, vicious mosquitoes. After that, we headed up to the chapel and wandered around in it. The building is made of slabs of sandstone, and the floor is laid, but loose brick. Ben found two bricks that had obviously been replaced, loosened and picked up in the center aisle of the chapel. Ben being Ben (ok, I would've done it if he hadn't beaten me to it), he picked up the bricks and underneath one of them found this note:

"I have been seeing spirits and angels lately. It's rather odd, but awesome. I came to pray that all the spirits that enter are pure and NOT bad. Amen and thanks."

On the outside of this note, it said "RAO" and had a heart drawn on it. There was another note, about loving God. It wasn't nearly as creepy as this one. I wonder if this person really is seeing spirits and angels... What if whatever they encountering isn't, uh, real? Take that the way you want to. RAO, I hope you are O.K.

Ben also attempted to sneak a pose on me of us standing at the altar holding hands and getting married. I ran away from that photo. That is why it is not on this blog. I could make a Sex and the City reference here, but I won't.

In the back of the chapel was a huge altar to the Virgin of Guadalupe. And outside a shrine to someone, someone I should probably know. Maybe Mary? Maybe Mary Magdalene? I am not totally savvy about this stuff, so you are welcome to leave a comment about who this woman is, because everyone else probably knows.

The last odd thing at this historical site was the oven that looked like a big rock. We can only assume its an oven, because there was no information otherwise about it. During lunch it had looked like a normal, funny rock. The photo Ben took of it is just as creepy as the rock was--see the ants with the big leaves? And the cobwebs?

La Lomita is said to be haunted by the ghost of a nun, a woman or something else. We didn't see her there, but the place was definitely odd, a little off. It was missing too many informational signs to be informative, but had just enough dust (butt prints on the pews) to make it a tad eerie.

Oh! I fixed all the comment issues! Leave me/us/Ben comments! Kisses, kittens.

P.S. Ben dropped the motorcycle today!!! I had nothing to do with that. On other fronts, it is working the best it has in a long while. We even have blinking turn signals!! Good job, Ben!

Winter in Texas, It's just a stone throw away

2009-01-26T02:13:00.010-06:00

Feels good to be on the border. If you get a bad case of cabin fever here in the States, you can just up and jump the river. So that is what Gulu, Tessa, Jen, and I did on Saturday, without the motorcycle.

We visited Nuevo Progreso, a small border town that could be called "the real home of the Winter Texan." They are kind-of like snowbirds, but with big trucks. We on the other hand are just visiting Texans, and come in a smallish package. Nuevo Progreso's main strip is along the road leading up to the bridge that crosses the border. It is full of souvenir shops, bars, shoe shiners, leather stores, and hawkers. But of all the merchants, the dentists maintain a strangle hold on business.

-Benjamin

Roadside Mechanics series #1 engine compresion test

2009-01-25T01:06:00.012-06:00

So I finally broke down and bought an engine compression test kit by Actron, that includes the right size 12mm spark plug adapter for my engine.

Unfortunately, the compression testers you can borrow from Autozone, or O'Reilly auto parts, through their loan-a-tool programs, do not have an adapter for the 12mm spark plugs that our motorcycle uses. The loan-a-tool program has been great for me in many other situations, and this tool is still valuable for most people because they do work for standard size plugs on cars and trucks, and some motorcycles. Beware though, if you do borrow from them, make sure the gauge works, and the rubber gaskets are in good shape.

With my fancy new tool I checked the compression and found out it was low. Real low. I pulled the heads to adjust the valves, a common source of pressure leakage, and this is when I found out why we died on the road.

In order to adjust the intake valves and the exhaust valves on the engine it is necessary to rotate the engine until you have one cylinder at top dead center (TDC) on the timing plate. This position is the beginning of the firing and exhaust sequence, when all valves are closed so the spark plug can ignite the fuel/air mixture. For my motor the sequence begins on the left cylinder side.

When I rotated the engine to TDC for the left side, my valves were engaged! Right away I knew something was amiss. I stepped back from the whole thing and took a second to think about why my exhaust valves were open when my timing plate said my engine should be at TDC. After thinking a moment, I figured the valves were probably where they were supposed to be and the timing plate was probably wrong. Bingo! I looked at the timing plate and the nut that holds the whole thing together was stripped and about to fall off. This my friends was the cause of our breakdown outside of Mission, Texas.

Well, I figured we still have hard starts, and that happened before I ever touched my timing, so I will continue on my line of work checking the compression. Plus, I had the valves open, and I have been wanting to adjust them, and now things were lining up right.

My first check of the compression, before adjusting the valves, in both cylinders, was 60 pounds per square inch (PSI). The importance of having good compression cannot be overstated. This is the third element that is imperative to have in a running combustion engine. The first, is fuel, and that includes air and lots of it. Next is spark. Getting a good reliable spark has been my goal with replacing almost all the parts in our ignition system. I also figured we should do it now while we can still get the parts for a good price. Lastly, and just as important is good compression. Compression in the cylinder is what creates a good seal in the cylinder to draw the air/fuel mixture in, and then compress it, so it can be easily and readily ignited by the spark. That sets into motion the crank, to turn the gears, and get the wheels going. When the piston reaches the bottom of this stroke it comes back up completing its forth stroke, and forces the exhaust gasses out of the chamber, ready for the intake, and TDC. That is the principle behind a four stroke engine. Most cars and trucks run a four stroke engine. Some motorcycles, the really really loud ones, can be two stroke engines.

After adjusting the valves I started to get 90 PSI consistently from each cylinder. This is better than before, but our 1976 Yamaha xs500 likes to have between 128 PSI and 146 PSI on each cylinder, without too much difference between them. So I know that my cylinders are acting the same, and are both producing low compression.

I have some more testing to do tomorrow, so we will leave off here.

I am starting this as the first of a series in Roadside Mechanics. I will go back and change some posts to reflect this, so they will be beta posts of the series. Some will be long, some will be short, but I will try my best to include all of them, and with good pictures. There will be internal linking to cross reference to ideas and things that I have already discussed so look for the links to past entries.

Benjamin

Big Agnes Dream Island Sleeping Bag

2009-01-23T00:35:00.007-06:00

Ben and I got so psyched on the ride to Gulu's when we realized that we would finally be able to try out our new sleeping bag. We had it shipped to her house, because we were unsure as to when we would be leaving Galveston, and we knew that we'd be able to get it down in Mission.

So we returned our sleeping bags to R.E.I. for a third time. R.E.I. has an incredible return policy for their co-op members; I highly recommend becoming a member (Ben is, I'm not), because they give lots of benefits to their members, including great tag sales at the beginning of the year, good deals and, because it is a co-op, you get bits and pieces of your investment (twenty bucks) back in dividends towards other merchandise. They also have a pretty sweet outlet store. And the return policy? If you aren't satisfied, they will take it back for a full refund.

The last time we had bought from them two Lafuma bags, and they were sized long. They were "mateable" which really meant that if you zipped them together, when the planets were aligned just the right way, you and your cozy-up partner could spend the rest of the night fighting over the limited space. We had already had problems with Lafuma bags before (different versions of bags won't mate up to different types, they have to be the same type, with left and right zippers) and we decided to get a new sleeping bag.

So my mom, in her eternal Jewish-wish to make sure her daughter was safe, sound and warm, bought us for Hanukkah (and/or Christmas) a two-person sleeping bag from Big Agnes, the Dream Island 20 degree synthetic doublewide. Thanks, Mom! We bought them from Moosejaw, another outdoor supplier that has limited retail storefront, but good deals and good customer service (and a good return policy, too).

We got to Mission and were all, "Oh my god! It's Christmas all over again!" And we opened up the boxes and were, well, pretty quickly dismayed. Big Agnes makes sleeping bags for very specific types of campers--you won't necessarily find one that suits your needs unless you can afford to pay a good deal for it.

Big Agnes bags are, as far as I know, made differently from other, more conventional bags. They exclude a bottom insulating layer because they argue, by sleeping on the bottom layer, and therefore crushing it, you loose almost all the insulating properties of the bottom layer. If you've ever slept on the cold ground in just a sleeping bag, you would have experienced this. So they utilize the insulating properties of sleeping pads and are able to presumably cut off a good chunk of weight from the bag. Only, the local outdoor sports equipment store's sleeping bag guy we talked to back in Connecticut, before we made a purchase, told us he doesn't trust Big Agnes pads (which are blow up and heavier), because they aren't made by Big Agnes. And they can cost up to 160 dollars!!

We weren't going to take a 9.25 pound pad and a nine pound sleeping bag and spend 300 dollars on eighteen pounds of extra weight (our old sleeping bags were about three pounds each with a pound for sleeping pads, for clarification). So we had to buy new, bigger sleeping pads from Therm-a-Rest to fit the sleeping bag. The new pads are 'Deluxe,' which means the ridges of support are more like pointy mountains than curved hills. And they're huge! Like the size of a duffel bag! Add to this that there is no cushy insulating layer between us and the pads and it feels like sleeping on metal grating all night. Ben doesn't seem to mind, but I think he could sleep on rusty nails if he was tired enough.

Then there is getting the pads into the sleeve on the bottom of the bag. I struggled for about fifteen minutes in Gulu's well-lit spare room trying to get them to fit in anBd not overlap (and it still isn't perfect). I can't even imagine what it would be like after a long night on the motorcycle, trying to pitch the tent with a dim little head lamp and my cranky attitude. I can't fall asleep comfortably in it even though it is so big we could fit another grown adult inside it and not have any problems. They also include two sewn-in pillow case holders for... you guessed it! Big Agnes sized pillows. Ben and I have these mega pillows that we use both for sleeping and as the filler to the huge seat cover I made. The fancy hood becomes a pillow case holder and loses all its functionality with our setup.

Big Agnes advertises the bag as a bag for couples who do car camping. If you're carrying an electric coffeepot and a full-sized barbecue grill with you on your camping trips, this might be a successful sleeping bag (if you buy the suggested doublewide pad and proper pillows with it). Ben and I had figured that our motorcycle is like a car, kinda, but in the case of this sleeping bag, our motorcycle is more like a runt pack mule.

We're a little sad, and I am a little cranky in the mornings right now (Ok, I am cranky in the mornings all the time!) But we're looking forward to our next sleeping bag purchase and maybe, you know, the fifth time's the charm. Right now we're checking out the North Face Twin Peaks sleeping bag and going back to our smaller sized Therm-a-Rests. Don't worry, there'll be a full update and 'Girlfriend Quality Check' to go along with it, too... once we get it.

-Jennifer, Jennifer and Jennifer.

The last leg, on a broken leg

2009-01-20T00:19:00.009-06:00

We did it! We left Galveston! Some of you might have thought we would be there forever. We almost thought the same thing. In fact, we only limped out of Galveston, and forty miles from Mission, Texas, our final destination in the US, the exhaust pipes started to scream, pop, hiss, and breathe fire. However cool it may sound, we lost power due to the excitement.

While in Galveston, we had been trying to eliminate some erratic behavior in the tuning of our machine. The hard starts, the loss of mid-range power, and occasional failure to start. We came to find out, when everything was said and done, all we needed was one of Jen's hair ties--well at least to help with figuring out why we were failing to start. After our last job with Tim, on the West End of the island, we couldn't get the bike to start. I figured it was just the points acting up again. I checked for a proper spark first. None. So we followed the connection back through the plug wires, and to the coils; when I got to the kill switch and hardwired it, the bike fired up and ran. So I cleaned the contacts on the switch and reassembled it to work normally. With the bike running, we buttoned her back up and started for home. Once we got on the highway, the engine cut out. I had missed something, or had I? I looped Jen's fabric rubber band over the ignition's kill switch, helping the contacts in the switch complete the circuit and transmit the necessary twelve volts to the coils. It worked again. When we got home that night, I took the switch apart, cleaned it up real good, made sure all the parts were functioning as they should, and presto, old is the new, new. Well, almost.

The engine is still hard to start/won't start. Jet Ski Joe, mechanic extraordinaire, and friend of Tim, an Adventure Rider (Princess Jamaica), told me our hard starts have something to do with the scratching sound we hear when the engine is starting, and that it is an air leak. To find out where the air is leaking, he advised us to spray starter fluid around where the carburetors mount to the engine head. If the leak is around the intake valves, the extra fuel will cause a spike in the engines RPM. To check the exhaust valves we will have to hold a burning match up to where the exhaust pipes mount to the engine, and watch for any movement in the flame. This will tell what gaskets need to be remade or ordered to fix the problem.

During our last days in Galveston, I bought a sort of insurance policy. New coils, four in fact. I figured we had replaced almost all the other ignition parts, short of installing an electronic ignition. Two of these coils were meant to be returned. I was able to find some car coils that were a match for the coils already on the bike and needless to say, the ones on the bike are not the right ones. So, I also bought the right Hitachi type Cm 11 coils for the bike, from MikesXS and had them shipped to Mission, Texas. My logic was that we could return the one set we picked up in Galveston when the right ones arrived and no one would be the wiser. Why the hassle? The idea was that if we did break down, and we did need the new coils between Galveston and Mission, we would have them. Guess what? It was a damn good "policy" I bought. When we broke down, I found one of our old coils was leaking oil. I think this is what caused our backfiring, but alas, when I changed them out, the problem persisted. We checked our spark, it was great; reset the timing, and fiddled with the carbs a little bit. Before we called it a night, I could get the bike to start up for about ten seconds, and then it would slowly die out. It would allow me to do this every fifteen minutes or so.

So that is where we are at. Oh, and the best part. We got a ride to Mission, Texas. I wasn't sure what to say when Mike, the second person to stop and ask us if we needed help, offered to throw our bike in the back of his van. I assumed it would be too large, and too heavy, but we did it.

Again, so this is where we are at. The bike runs, but only for a few seconds. Is it the carbs, or is it the valves? The engine running says to me it is not the valves, but the carbs, and the dying off to me sounds like there is blockage in one of the jets on the carbs. I guess there is only one way to find out. Pics coming tomorrow, or whenever we are at an Internet connection that will allow us to upload our pictures.

Be well
Be welcome
Benjamin

Link to us!

2009-01-16T22:33:00.006-06:00

Hello my fellow bloggers and bloggerettes!

Please feel free to link to us using our little button (or your own link)! Here is the code!

<a href="http://jenandtheartofmotorcyclemaintenance.blogspot.com/" title="Jen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_awjr4mJGriU/SXFfr7ptmeI/AAAAAAAAASs/asEILWyLhuk/s320/linkbutton.jpg" /></a>

Here is what the button looks like!

You can either save the button itself by right clicking on it, or you can just paste in the code. :)

(Note: If it doesn't work, please tell me. I have spent my last years as a blogger with livejournal, Wordpress and Greymatter, and this whole blogger thing is kinda new to me.)

Timing and Yardwork and Weight

2009-01-14T13:25:00.008-06:00

The last few days can be characterized by being really cold, working on the motorcycle timing and yardwork for "the legendary" Rex Bell (he is legendary, I put that in quotes more to make fun of the way Ben refers to him).

We met up again with Tim from Adventure Riders and he helped us out by getting us an inductive timing light from his friend, who also drove Ben to the hardware store while the motorcycle's timing stuff sat in pieces. I spent the whole day being really cold, sick and miserable because we'd planned to keep warm by running around and doing landscaping for Rex or being inside and cleaning his house. Instead I pouted through most of the day, drew a picture of the motorcycle:

and read the book Ben bought me for Christmas, The Diary of Frida Kahlo. I love Frida Kahlo and if I said that anything less than 5% of this trip is about going to Mexico to see her childhood home and her home with Diego Rivera, I would be lying. I am still in little knots of joy about having seen the Frida Kahlo exhibit in San Francisco while we were there and kicking myself for not going to the Georgia O'Keefe museum in Santa Fe.

The day before, we hacked through the trees behind Rex's fence and pulled out all the bamboo, weeds and weird miscellany that had built up and bent over the chain link fence. Some of the weird things we found included a stuffed fish toy, a Bible half-eaten by bugs, and a lawn chair. Even more curious was that a lot of the other things we found were almost targeted at us: heavy duty thread, maps of the area, a collapsible water bladder, a sponge that Ben wants to use on the hydrogen booster, amongst other things. Whomever this stuff belonged to, this person was definitely an avid adventurer, or at least a recreational fisher (Or maybe our DOPPLEGANGER!!).

Today is being spent "Coming to Jesus" about our overall weight. If you aren't familiar with the colloquialism, it loosely means a not-so-happy ultimatum, repentance for sins, or a life changing experience. Ben is on the war-path and I am debating as to whether I should hide the band-aids from Ben. He has been threatening to toss all of them out (except for the Hello Kitty band-aids, which are a prized possession) to lose weight on the motorcycle. Periodically, he says he'll send his violin home to lose a few pounds, but then the look in his eyes when he says this would soften even a Scrooge and I need to then vehemently defend carrying the violin on the motorcycle--otherwise he might cry himself to sleep or lose a small part of his soul.

So I've been doing a little packing today to save the band-aids and the like, trying in an anorexic-style to make all of my stuff appear as small as possible. Ben tends to be meticulous about our packing, which I think allows us to get away with having all this extra junk, because it is condensed so tight and heavy. This has also been a problem because to maintain this balance, he needs to strap everything down super-tight, wearing out straps and smushing bananas in the process. Most of the time I can't even pull the straps tight enough to fulfill Ben's goals and he has to come around a second time to make sure nothing is going to fall off. My methodology follows that if I pack it neatly, but not excessively so, the size and the weight will be at an optimum point where it isn't too heavy and it isn't too full. I also do not like to eat smushed bananas, and tend to go lighter when strapping stuff to the bike.

We'll see what happens. I have been sick a lot lately and have been hoarding medicine like a hypochondriac-in-training. I might hide some of this stuff in my purse until we get on the road again and I can slip it back into its appropriate bag.

-Jennifer

Connecticut and back to Galveston

2009-01-10T19:00:00.011-06:00

A few days before flying out of Connecticut, Ben spent several long hours on the Internet, trying to figure out how to get us a ride from the Houston airport to Conroe, TX to get the motorcycle where we'd left it at Katie's parents house. His last ditch effort involved posting onto the Adventure Rider forum and asking for a ride. Surprisingly, despite numerous other attempts on rideshare websites to no avail, we had over five phone calls one after the other with offers from folks to pick us up. At one point, while still in Connecticut, Ben turns to me and asks, "Hey--tomorrow. Do you want to get picked up in a BMW?" and I, thinking he is joking, replied, "Yeah, totally." He was serious and we were picked up in a BMW the next day by Billy, a member on Adventure Rider who was exceptionally flexible (or as the joke became, "pliable") in picking us up, taking us to Conroe to get the bike and then inviting us back to his house in Humble, where we met his wife (and the better half of the motorcycle duo), Anna.

They were wonderful and funny and best of all had a lot of good advice about what to see, particularly in Mexico, and some times for maintaining the motorcycle. All I gathered from it was: white lithium lubricant for the chain. I will swear on this tip until the day I die or until it locks up our chain and we go flying from the bike. The other advice I received was from Anna; she told me to go to Guanajuato, Mexico,

and you could tell by the way she recommended it that it was more than just a destination for her, but a place she really, really loves. They showed us some of their photos, and they are definitely the crazy adventure riders types that I aspire to be.

We spent a few hours in downtown Houston in the Museum District. The de Menil Collection was pretty amazing--it is a multi-building museum free to the public and created around a private collection of art spanning from the prehistoric all the way to the 1990s (with new acquisitions). The docents were jerks (running around, tapping their pens, chatting and staring at you like you're about to steal something), but that doesn't detract from the quality of what we saw there.

What kills me is that I didn't realize that Houston had such an outstanding museum district. When you Google 'Things to do in Houston' the first two things that always come up are 'The Galleria' and 'The Houston/NASA Space Center.'

The Galleria is a SHOPPING MALL. The Space Center isn't really in Houston, or if it is, it is only because Houston is the size of many former Soviet countries. Ben and I also ran into the Houston Children's Museum for the hour that it was open, but we were treated like creepy, second-class citizens because we didn't have any children in tow. I am only 22. I am obviously still interested in how phones work and other industry-sponsored exhibits about oil, money and engineering. If you're ever in Houston, don't be turned off by the illustrious Galleria, although I secretly wanted to go see it, because I can only imagine how fabulous this place must be if it is THE BEST PLACE IN HOUSTON.

Now, we're back in Galveston; which is more and more like home everyday. This is bad when you are on a road trip, but good when you really like the place and the people. We're here until Tuesday, because the bike needs some er, maintenance and so we can do a couple of days of glorified yard/hurricane work for, as Ben likes to proclaim him, "the legendary Rex 'Wrecks' Bell." It's like doing yardwork for Bob Dylan or Lucinda Williams, I guess.

Kisses, Jennifer

Feliz Ano Novo

2009-01-02T15:22:00.007-06:00

As another year falls behind I am feeling exhilarated! I am no where near where I thought I would be a year ago, and I can only speculate where I will be at the end of this year. For me that is as close to perfect as I can get. Feliz Ano Novo the title of this entry is Portuguese and roughly translates to Happy New Year. I am thinking that when this year comes to an end I will be learning a new language and on my way in Brazil where Feliz Ano Novo will be the slogan of the country I travel in.

We are still on track towards Mexico! I find it amazing how many times people have asked me. "So when are you guys going to get started?" Our trip isn't a one shot there and back vacation. This is our life. Traveling, figuring out where we will be next, finding temporary work, making wonderful new friends, we are gone, we cannot go back to where we started. We no longer have a house in New Orleans. Our presence is where we are at the moment, be it Connecticut, or a roadside gas station. Come along for the trip.

Our stay in Connecticut is almost over. My only regret is that my camera wasn't close at hand. The array of pictures would have included the foods we cooked, a sunny winter day in New York City, and a trip to the woods out behind the house. The most important meal we are missing photos of are from that of last night. In one and a half days the family transformed our home into the grounds of a new years eve celebration.

Our New Years eve menu was drafted from timeless favorites and flavors that would culminate this season. Jen and I had learned about mulled wine in New Orleans when the days were short and the cold winds blew in from the north. Experience has shown that a smooth full bodied red wine is better than a cheap Merlot or Cabernet, we used a Spanish Tempranillo. To mull the wine, heat it to around 160 degrees, zest an orange, then cut it up and throw it in along with some lemon juice. Add cranberries dried or fresh as well as cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, ginger, and a pinch of sugar or honey to create the perfect hot drink. We also served our friends and their families hot apple cider and chilly champagne punch. The punch was simply the cheapest champagne, a splash of pomegranate juice, fresh pomegranate seeds, and a little orange juice. The flavors were lite and fresh. A full spread of food including turkey, baby quiches, fresh french bread, cupcakes, a baked brie and many more tasty treats helped us all get through the night.

So here we are moving along again, forward, towards another day on the open road, alongside a hot campfire, an outdoor kitchen, and a little motorcycle maintenance.

-Benjamin

Equipment is a bummer

2009-01-01T23:59:00.008-06:00

Finding camping/travelling gear is a serious endeavor. There are very few standards to judging gear, online or even in person, and if you think buying jeans online is hard, you haven't spent hours chatting up folks about glorified fancy underwear. I am pretty close to going and buying every single variation of sleeping bags, small plastic containers and base layers to just stop wasting my time looking online for good clothes.

From what I can gather, base layers (the fancy undies), are a relatively new thing. Everyone knows about those funny Union suit long underwear and those cotton waffle long johns, but the new stuff is "High Tech." Now, if you're like me, you thought that the cotton waffle stuff was good or at least sufficient. But if you tell that to a outdoor sports salesperson, they'll tell you that you're crazy and you will freeze to death and die and it is EVEN WORSE THAN JUST WEARING NOTHING AT ALL. And it kinda makes sense--if you've ever sweated through a t-shirt in the summer and then went into icy cold air conditioning, you realize how awfully cold and clammy your cotton t-shirt can be. Therefore, I've been seeking out definitive advice on undergarments and here is what I've figured out:

Dressing for the elements is divided into three major layers: the outer layer, the insulating layer and the base layer. You could have more than three layers, especially in the insulating category, but the outer protects against the appropriate weather, the insulator, uh, insulates and the base layer is meant to wick away moisture. But!! The base layer can also be the insulating layer, and that's when you get into this awful conundrum of what makes a good base layer.

A lot of real human beings and websites say that there is only scratchy merino wool and a multitude of scratchy, synthetics base layers that have acronyms that aren't pronounceable like: MTC, SNWRW, STE, RKI, &c., &c. (I made most of those up or tried to remember the real ones). But!!! You can also get silk base layer undies! But!!! No one can tell you for sure about how warm they are. Some people say silk makes you cold. Some say it will make you toasty warm when you need to be, and nice and cool when you also need to be. Bamboo and coconut have also been mentioned in the various literature I've found, but it's always in a blend with synthetic fibers or merino wool. It is processed, charred fiber--the logic I've made out of it is that the plant charcoal sucks up odor. So it's not anymore soft (like a hairy, hard coconut) than synthetic fibers.

Then there is the handful of double layered long underwear, that usually consists of a cotton or cotton-blend interior with a merino wool or wool blend outer layer. This obviously negates the first rule of not using cotton against your skin, but who am I to say what works?

Then all the variations: Your base layer can be your only layer, your base layer could be transparent, so you should have a layer underneath your base layer, your insulating layer can also be your base layer (but you should then still be wearing a base layer because your insulating layer won't necessarily wick away moisture), your outer layer can just be a shell or it can be an insulating layer itself. And then everything is some level of elastic-y tightness that swears their interlocking flat design is the best and will not chafe (despite that they are all made out of stuff that is so itchy you don't want to move). &c., &c.

The red butt flap onesie looks very appealing, doesn't it?

So. If you have anything to offer on the base layer debacle, feel free to put in your two cents.

Love, Jennifer

Christmas eve cooking

2008-12-25T00:23:00.002-06:00

Let them eat cake, cinnamon rolls, quiche, and fresh fruit on Christmas morning. Jennifer and I have put quite a feast together for Christmas breakfast. I promise it will be great. Hanukkah dinners have been splendid also. Maybe i will record one, and you can all hear how great I am at singing the blessing.

Benjamin

lets get on with it

2008-12-20T20:33:00.004-06:00

Wonderful. That is usually what i have to say when i get good news. Great news in fact. I just found out that I did in fact buy a battery with a warranty!!! Wonderful. NAPA auto parts was more than accommodating when I called them and let them know that the battery that I bought from them less than 4 months ago was dying. They told me that the battery had a 12 month warranty, and even though I didn't have my receipt, they would be happy to give me a new battery on warranty. So in the same breath I must thank our wonderful Couchsurfer friend Katie from Galveston TX for letting me borrow her car to go and drop off the old battery and pick up the new one. Thanks Katie!!!!

In addition Jen and I decided that we would go ahead with the purchase of the battery tender. We decided on the Deltran Waterproof 800 battery tender. The idea is that whenever we have stopped at a city and are working on the bike, or on financing our trip, we can keep the bike's battery plugged in and keep it charged, but not overcharged. I have the new battery plugged in right now in Conroe TX.

That brings me to the final note of this post. We are in Connecticut right now. Jen's family brought us up here for the holidays! While we are here we are having our boots resoled with Vibram soles. This will give our cowboy boots the traction we need to get through the Andes, and the Amazon. While still looking good enough to attend dinner parties and work banquets, biker rallies, and paint the inside of a house. Like this interior we completed at our friend Jet's house. It is a western themed room with this great Blaze Folley picture hanging on the wall.

So let the reminiscing begin. We will be in Connecticut for 3 weeks. almost as long as we were on the road from Seattle to New Orleans. Have we told you about that trip yet???

Benjamin

Galveston-->Conroe-->??

2008-12-16T21:59:00.005-06:00

Tonight is our last night in Galveston for a while. We went to Pho 20 (ha, ha) for dinner and we saw Margaret and Travis there. And so we ate first dinner with them. And then Lindsey and Sandra walked in, but we were about to leave, so we didn't have dinner with them. Ben and I know maybe fifteen people on this island. And four of them walked into the same restaurant tonight.

Then went to the Panaderia on Broadway across from the Vietnamese restaurant and got some really delicious pastries. The best part was that the lady running the cash register didn't speak English and for like the first time EVER (except with maybe Mama Anaya, my childhood friend Liz's Ecuadorian mother) Ben and I got to speak in Spanish with someone who actually wanted to talk to us in Spanish! This may sound like I am being a ridiculous gringa, because, well, I am. But to be able to have someone listen to you and be nice to you and speak slowly for your benefit is just SO GOOD. Like warm fuzzies. Because she was thrilled that we spoke Spanish (however badly) and pleased that we took the effort to talk to her even though someone was willing to translate for both sides. We were thrilled that she would take the time to listen to us and was so nice and understood that our toddler Spanish required us to speak stiltedly. Or maybe it was just because she was such a sweet lady and she smiled at us and you don't get people this nice on an everyday basis selling you these huge delicious pastries called "besos" (kisses), "concha blancas" (white shells), and "tortugas" (turtles). Then we went back to see Katie and have second dinner/dessert which was vegetable soup (oh so good on a cold night!) and delicious pumpkin bread with a million mini chocolate chips. I am still ill from over-eating two hours later.

We are going to be coming back here soon though, for the Galveston Song Off! on a Wednesday after the New Year. It is tentatively looking like it is going to be held at the Old Quarter Acoustic Club down by The Grand Opera House during Open Mic Night. In case you or someone you know would like to participate: you have to write a song about Galveston. I, being totally inept at "real" music, am making a song for tape. Similar to how some songs are made for a string quartet, this is a song that I am making on Audacity and that I am going to burn onto CD so that I can hit play and stand there awkwardly as everyone stares at me.

IT IS GOING TO BE THE BEST!!! I WILL POST IT HERE AFTER IT DEBUTS.

Anyways. We're off tomorrow for Conroe, Texas to spend the night at Katie's house (Katie is a Couchsurfer and our current "neighbor." John is her boyfriend and the Couchsurfer we're staying with who lives next door.) I heard there is going to be a bonfire and it is going to be cute and I imagine because everyone is musical (except me; except when I get to sing "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow" while inebriated) there will be music, too.

More on that when it happens. In the meanwhile, I am skirting cleaning work while Ben cleans to "Hey Jude." I imagine his little black turtleneck sleeves are rolled up and his handsome, muscular arms are in soapy water. Ahem. :D

Also! A photograph of home from Jared, who I guess is in New Orleans right now?:

If you can't figure it out, it is the streetcar (I presume the St. Charles line) decked out for Christmas. It always has little garlands tacked to the forest green exterior, too and it rattles up and down the track. It is just adorable and makes me miss New Orleans and everyone I love in it.

One of my least favorite things about travel is missing the people and places you've visited, even if it was just for a short period of time, sometimes just a layover. Facebook photographs are even worse--all of your damned friends having fun without you; the photographs are almost taken close together enough that you can see the jerks dancing in their kimonos if you flash through the images quickly enough. On certain days when the wind hits you with just the right amount of chill and humidity I can be brought back to a midnight stop at a railroad station on the border of France and Spain or a particular day in Connecticut where I was working on the high school newspaper or a cold winter bike ride in New Orleans in glitter eye makeup and a ridiculous outfit (not necessarily Mardi Gras, probably just any old Friday night). And sometimes I am even transported to the lousy days that I'd rather not remember. Whatever and whenever they were, I am a sucker for nostalgia and I leave a little piece of myself everywhere I go and I just can't seem to collect them back up. I think Galveston is growing on me like that.

Love, Jen

Before we leave Texas.

2008-12-16T00:05:00.007-06:00

The Yamaha xs500 came with an alternate kick start for the very good reason that one day it knew you would find its battery dead. The starter wants to turn the engine over, but just doesn't have the power to do so. Almost all motorcyclists have come across this situation, and the same goes for most car owners as well. Some reminiscent memory of the lights being on when you went inside, or my usually habit of forgetting to turn the key off, drifts to mind as you sit there, cold, on a dead battery. We are lucky to have the alternative kick start on days when the bike isn't fully loaded, but i can just imagine the nightmare of jumping up and down on the motorcycle trying to kick start it with all our gear strapped on.

I digress, we have been having an issue with the bike not wanting to start up right away. Getting on the motorcycle and starting it up is a sort of ritual. I always ask Jen to wait to get on until I have it started. Most days it starts just fine. Perfect in fact. Usually all I need to do is touch the starter button and the bike fires up. On cold days the choke becomes a factor, and getting the idle set just right is always an issue. Since we left Louisiana the bike has been hard to start, very hard to start.

When I push the starter button a weak chug-chug emits as slowly the starter motor picks up a little steam. A slight scratching sound of unburnt fuel in the cylinders can be heard as the chug turns into va-va-va-va (I want to start but I am not going to do it) churning. I start to give it a little bit of throttle and the va-va gets quicker. At this point it seems that the engine is doing about twenty percent of the work and the starter motor is doing the other eighty. After about twenty seconds the ratio of work being done by the starter motor and by the engine turning its self over changes as the engine picks up all the slack and starts running on its own.

Before I go to the parts store and plunk down another 50 dollars for a new battery we are going to try to see if a battery tender will save the one we already have. A battery tender does just what the name says, it tends to the battery. It does this when it is plugged in and charging the battery with a current of house hold electricity. Battery tenders are more specifically used while motorcycles, boats, cars, and lawnmowers are parked, or garaged for the winter. For around 30 dollars battery tenders will keep your battery from dying of misuse, or in most cases just plain old non-use. The battery tender maintains a charge level in an unused battery without overcharging it. What I am suspecting is that our daily rides have not been enough to fully recharge the battery, and so we have been slowly draining it to where it now refuses to hold a charge. I need to do some more investigative work but I believe we should be able to install a battery tender and plug the motorcycle in on a daily basis to make sure it is fully charged everyday. I will let you know just how it goes once i have the answer to my dilemma.

Benjamin

French Toast & Fruit Compote

2008-12-14T23:47:00.015-06:00

I don't know a lot about a lot, but what I do know about is how to make good food. Ben and I are working on our gourmet cookery over a camp stove because otherwise we would be eating those weird dehydrated foods that you find at your local camping store. They are gross and expensive! Don't do it! And when you instead turn to the cookbook selection, skip those, too. They tend to either require weird dehydrated unprepared food and Bisquick. Just say no and use common sense.

So on one camera happy morning while we were still in Lake Fausse Pointe State Park in Louisiana (outside of St. Martinville), we took a lot of photos of our meal and the set up. This is obviously not for the intrepid hiker climbing Mt. Everest, but we can go about three days without needing supplies, provided that we can carry enough water and go prepared, rather than willy-nilly, although the latter is usually the case.

This is me probably not preparing food, but probably preparing to eat it. I am only really competent enough in the morning to be a sous chef at best. But this is the best photo regarding layout. You can see here (from right to left):

-Our little Costa Rican coffee filter
-The top of our thermos
-Milk
-The handle to the pot
-The French Toast cooking
-The honey behind it
-The butter
-The coffee thermos

You wouldn't think it, but contrary to what your mother told you, it is ok to eat dairy and eggs well after they've been sitting out overnight. We've been blessed/tormented with some cold weather lately, and that has been helping us keep our dairy and eggs, too. Ben actually likes his cheese to sit out a bit. It gets stinkier and he likes that. I live with it, but when it starts to sweat, I'd rather cook it up, just because the texture tends to have a weird mouthfeel. Don't knock it 'til you try it. Butter is especially long lasting--it will stay for just about forever. And unlike oil, it is more versatile, tastes better and tends to leak less, because unless it is a hot, hot summer, it will probably be solid or semi-solid in a sealed, water-tight container.

When we buy animal products to eat, we tend to eat them up fast. A half dozen eggs becomes part of a meal of French Toast, usually with a loaf of bread we've been carrying around too long and the milk leftover from coffee. The leftover eggs make for hard-boiled eggs (uck), egg salad (ok), fried egg sandwiches (good) or omelettes (my preferred method).

First we cut up a bunch of fruit into bite-sized pieces. This time it was plums and apples. Berries, stone fruit, bananas or whatever you've got on hand would be delicious. Cranberries are in season right now and they tend to cook a bit different from other fruits: you can stew them down into a delicious mess that is somewhere between a compote and a freshly made jam. Oranges or any other citrus fruit would be good, too. Or, consider zesting a bit of orange (nothing fancy, just scrape your pocket knife, serrated or straight, or use a metal fork and make do) into cranberries or any fruit that would benefit from a bit of citrus. We saute the fruit in a little butter until they're tender, but not overcooked. There is a spectrum of sauteing fruit: delicious apple pie-styled apples, gross apple mush and smooth applesauce. Aim for either end, and don't get stuck in the mushy baby food middle. We throw this when it's done into a little tinfoil because we don't have anywhere else to stick it.

From there, we mix together three eggs, a couple splashes of milk and our sweet spice mix of cinnamon, cloves and allspice into our big pot. This gets beat with a fork until it is well mixed and a bit frothy. Low on eggs or on milk? Sub in a bit more of the other to even it out. You could probably even thin it all out with a bit of water if you're trying to stretch what you've got.

This is made in the "saute" pan (i.e. the shallower pan). Slick it up with a bit of butter and get cooking. Make sure to cook it all the way through, you can turn down the heat or put on the lid to assure that you don't get a soggy middle. This is especially important when you've been carrying your dairy and eggs for several days because you don't want to mess with salmonella in the middle of the woods.

We then take the finished toast and put a few scoopfuls of fruit on top, and we pour on the honey. You can use maple syrup, agave nectar or throw in some brown or white sugar into the fruit right before taking it off the heat. Add water if it needs to be more syrupy. Fold up the sides and eat it taco style to avoid knives and forks and a much greater than necessary mess. This fills the both of us up pretty well, adjust accordingly for the number of your party.

Love,

Jen

Might Go Back Down To Texas

2008-12-13T03:32:00.008-06:00

I'd like to stay but I might have to go to start over again
Might go back down to Texas, might go to somewhere that I've never been
And get up in the mornin' and go out at night
and I won't have to go home
Get used to bein' alone
Change the words to this song
Start singin' again

-Blaze Foley

So Ben and I are finally getting our act together and starting to write a blog about our motorcycle journey. We have a lot of anecdotes to relate already--it doesn't seem worth it to record what you're doing until at least a baker's dozen worth of folks tell you that you should be writing down your experiences (and taking notes for your 'expose-all memoir' to appear at a later date).

Right now we're in Galveston, and we've been working a lot of miscellaneous jobs to make a bit of cash before we hit the road again. We're for all intents and purposes broke, but with pretty fabulous credit for youngins' (22 and 26, respectively). So like all good Americans, we hold true to the founding tenets of the American dream and spirit: We believe we live in the land of the brave (which explains why we're foolhardy enough to try to make it down to Tierra del Fuego, the southern most tip of South America) and we live in the home of the free (credit).

For those interested, we're riding a 1976 Yamaha XS500. To me, what that means is that it is very small, brown, and old. We stick out like a sore thumb at the Galveston Motorcycle Rally, where we've been working for the past two days at a food booth. We are the oldest bike I have seen thus far, and I think the only Yamaha (although I've seen the guys with the Yamaha leathers on, so presumably they are not flaunting Yamaha gear in a sea of Harley aficionados just because they want to get the shit beaten out of them. I presume this is what motorcyclists do in their spare time, because that is what the television has taught me.)

What is really great about having our cute, sweetheart of a vintage motorcycle (her name is unofficially Bonnie), is that we meet a lot of really great people in really odd ways. Folks love to see us riding a 1976 motorcycle because most of the old guys and gals remember riding them and loving them. And as for the young guys and gals, well, they think we're crazy! for riding such a old beast. We meet a lot of good people who wish us well and we tend to have a lot of good karmic interference. This will probably be a major theme of our trip, as everything tends to land into place in really great ways. Without wanting to jinx it--while setting up a thematic element for this blog--the universe conspires to help us. And by universe, I mean lots of really good folks.

Ok. That is the end of the first entry. The rest of it will be easier than this. And hopefully we will catch up with all our reminiscences from our starting point in Seattle/Southern Oregon, down to New Orleans and out to Galveston. We've already been on the road since August. What a long, strange trip this will probably end up being. Maybe.

Love,
Jen

Jen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: 1976 Yamaha XS500 travel blog

Creating Miss Margaret

Bad news

Tres Marias Motorcycle Rally

A Taste of Mexico City Contest!

Twitter Updates

Dogs

Changing & Daring: Sierra Gorda Biosphere

Mexico City!

The best of San Miguel de Allende and onwards.

In Guanajuato, Motor is OUT!

Muchas Gracias!!!

Videos on the Road

Oh no, Mr. Bill (Ben)!

Real de Catorce in words & images

Some Loving, Some Blog Hating & Nature Photos

Mardi Gras! Mardi Gras! (Anticipation!)

Public Service Announcement

More Real de Catorce video

Real de Catorce tunnel

Non-Sequiturs in Spanish

La Huasteca, or Ansel Adams, eat your heart out

Border Crossing in Mexico

Roadside Mechanics Series #3

Mexico!!!!!

Surprise Content!!

Boca Chica State Park, before and after

Off to the seashore!

Roadside Mechanics Series #2 Check, Double Check:

test, test, 1 2 3!

An order of supreme Thanks, right on target.

Thanks for the spanks, hu-hum, I mean support.

Texas Citrus Fiesta, and a parade to remember the fallen

La Lomita Chapel, A Ghost Story

Winter in Texas, It's just a stone throw away

Roadside Mechanics series #1 engine compresion test

Big Agnes Dream Island Sleeping Bag

The last leg, on a broken leg

Link to us!

Timing and Yardwork and Weight

Connecticut and back to Galveston

Feliz Ano Novo

Equipment is a bummer

Christmas eve cooking

lets get on with it

Galveston-->Conroe-->??

Before we leave Texas.

French Toast & Fruit Compote

Might Go Back Down To Texas