Silent Rant

Remember this photo? Okay, look closely at the mountainside.

See that little house thing? It’s actually a tiny chapel.

Well after 3 days of discussion I convinced the owner of the local bike shop to let me rent a bike for a week. It actually didn’t take much convincing, but rather it was 3 days of waiting for him to find a suitable bike, which took several attempts. He looked at me like I was crazy when I disclosed my intentions. I assured him:

Nacî en las montañas

(I was born in the mountains).

The trail was a bit too steep and tight to ride up, so I mostly pushed. I passed only one other person; a elderly gringo who was hiking back down. He paused for a moment and asked:

Why the hell are you pushing that thing up here?

Because I intend to ride it back down.

How old are you?

Thirty!

I proclaimed, proud of my recently-acquired decade.

Ah, so you’re still immortal.

And with that he headed down the trail, and I continued to the chapel. Looking down at the town from up there surprised me a bit. The whole area is quite developed and modern. Or at least it looked that way. So now I can’t decide which perspective is the illusion.

Riding down was, as always, about 27 times faster than the journey up, although I was much more careful than I usually am. Somehow the thought of ending up incapacitated on a hillside in rural Mexico with no mobile phone and infrequent passers by had me gripping the brakes pretty tightly…