Cuernavaca and Mexico City!

So on our last day in Guadalajara we took 2 separate buses from Guadalajara to Cuernavaca. All of our bikes wouldn't fit on one bus so we split up into two groups of four. I went with Corey, Dave, and Andrea. It was a 10 hour bus ride from 12 am to 10 am. I slept for the majority of it but I hurt my knee from climbing some hills in Guadalajara so it was kind of uncomfortable. So when we arrived to Cuernavaca, I realized that the whole city was on one big hill. We met Enyo( I dont know how to spell it). He has been setting up the band with all the shows in Mexico. He rode his moped through the city while the 8 of us followed by bicycles up one big 15 hilly city to his house. On the way there up the big hills we saw a bunch of mexican military men with big guns and hummers flagging random cars over. There were also a lot of fruit stands and the usual taco,torta stands. There was barely any pollution in Cuernavaca compared to Guadalajara. There were some times when I had to put my handkerchief of my nose and mouth because the pollution was bad in some parts. Enyo's house was really nice and his mom was really friendly and accommodating. We had beans and eggs made in a pan with handmade tortillas and the best coffee I ever had in my life. It had cinnamon in it and it was definitely local and delicious. Enyo told us that the every tortilla taste unique because some of the natural salt from the makers hands is put into ever tortilla. They were amazing tortillas, they were really soft and warm and semi sweet. It was like paradise staying at his house. His dog Jack was a tough boxer kind of looking dog who was in love with everyone legs or back. And he kept attacking my toes. Then later on that night we rode all the way back down the huge hill we originally came up to a blog past the bus station to a universidad where we played a show. The show was fun and we had a couple of technical problems but everything went well. The crowd was large and really fun and into the whole project. People instantly lined up to pedal the bikes once we started.

I started having stomach cramps and deadly gas. Last night we went back to the house and I let a small but powerful flatulent out which made everyone cover their noses and clear the room. They also decided that I should sleep alone outside in my tent. I enjoyed sleeping by myself outside in the beautiful yard. I was surrounded my beautiful flowers, papayas, huge agova plants and other exotic plants and trees. So I decided I will be vegetarian for a couple of weeks to clean out my system. I enjoy eating vegetarian and vegan dishes anyways since I have a lot of friends who are vegan and vegetarian so hopefully that will make my system nice and cleaned out. I decided that I shouldn't trust the meat from every taco and torta stand I go to. Even though they have basically all been delicious and yummy.

So we had quesadillas with more extravagant coffee and left to go downtown to catch another bus that was only 50 pesos to go to the outskirts of Mexico City. We are currently at Dante the engineers shop. He is working on fixing some of the generators and we are doing some minor work on some of the bikes. The plan is to stay in Mexico City for 2 weeks and play a lot of shows. Tomorrow night we will joining in on the weekly sunday night critical mass ride in Mexico City. There are going to be about 500 to 1000 people, maybe even more. Then after the ride we will play show. I am not sure where we are going after Mexico City, but I do know that I am thinking about living in Guadalajara for about 4 or 6 months after the tour. I have been telling a lot people who live here about the Earn A Bike program, and I have been thinking about helping start a couple of different programs in different locations. I would like to collaborate with recycled bicycle programs such as Bike Not Bombs or Worcester Earn A Bike or other programs closer to Mexico like in Texas or California in the United States. The idea would be to raise money to get a container shipment of donated bicycles that are in fixable condition shipped to Mexico where we would restore, fix and teach people how to fix a bicycle while earning one for themselves for free.

There are more people who ride bicycles and there are way more bicycle advocacy groups then I imagined when I first thought about traveling through Mexico. I have met a lot of great people and keep more and more who are really passionate about bicycles and using a bicycle as their only source of transportation. The culture is really interesting and intriguing and I am curious and would like to know more. That is why I would like to live here for a while so I can help clean this planet up one minute at a time.

Oh yea when we were in Guadalajara we rode our bicycles with the mayor for the opening of the ciclo pista, which is a bike path that is built on the side walk on a lot of main streets.

I am just having a great time and my mind is just filled with marvelous sights and unbelievable stories. I wish I could write down everything but I can't, so maybe the next time I see you we can exchange stories of our lives.

So until next time. Hasta Luego!

Last day in Guadalajara

So today is our last day in Guadalajara, we will be taking a bus to Mexico city tonight around 8 and arrive there in about 9 or 10 hours. We might be spliting up and some of us will be staying at a girl named destinee´s house I found on couchsurfing.com and the rest might stay with the engineer for the band.
Last night we went on a huge bike ride with about a thousand people!!! It was a site I will never forget. It was really organized and fun. I saw about 10 crashes and a couple of break downs. I saw one really bad after effect of a crash of the only bicyclist with a fixed gear. I talked to him earlier in the night because he knew spanish. At first he thought I was disrespecting him because I shouted WOW A Fixed Gear. But then I told him I respected him for riding that because they are so dangerous sometimes. He was going to fast and hit a huge hole and cracked his head open. Kipchoge, Jared, Cara and Dave were riding around with there low glow flourencent green lights on the bottom of their bikes last night, which made it easy for me to spot them in the huge crowd. Kipchoge has been riding around soul cycling. Soul cycling is when you attach a battery to a huge speaker on the back of your bike while playing music on a music player like an IPOD. It was a pretty intense 2 hour ride. The largest and longest ride I have been in and seen since I became a 24 hour non stop hardcore bicyclist. After the ride we arrived at a big statue with all of the riders and started to set up and play a show. I set up all the bicycle generators to the power source. Last night I couldnt get Jared´s bike to work properly, There are a couple of problems we have been running into since the begining but they will out get fixed up once we arrive in Mexico city and meet up with Dante the engineer. He is the one who put the generators together. So hopefully I will learn a lot about the system and get a better understanding of it all.

Yesterday evening another member of our crew showed up at the house we were staying at. Her name is Andrea and is from Mexico. Chava is working on setting up her bike today so it will be ready to go for tomorrow. So now there is a total of 8 crew members. We might get more in the future possibly. We will see what happens.

Mexico!!

So a lot has happened since my last post. We rode our bicycles from North San Juan California to Sacromento California which took about 1 day and a half. We took our time in Grass Valley where we stayed at a recording studio called Sun Sound Studios. The day after that we rode about 35 miles to Folsom California and slept at a camp ground. The day after that we rode on the beautiful American River bike path which was about 30 or 35 miles to Sacromento. When we got to Sacromento we went to the Mercy General hospital where Kipchoge visited his friend Issac who was in a car accident a couple weeks before. Then the whole gang met up at an Auto Zone where the Mexican bus picked us up. I was pretty nervous because it was my first time leaving the country and I didn´t have my mom with me. Before I go on any further I will introduce my traveling partners. I am traveling with the bicycle powered band called the Ginger Ninjas. I am their bicycle mechanic and bicycle power engineer. The lead singer is Kipchoge, the bassist is Jared May, the drummer is Dave Scandurra from Boston, then the second guitarist is Corey, the spanish pro is Matt, and the lovable Cara handles merchandise,food, expenses, etc. Kipchoge is the singer at guitarist. I met them last September while they were on their east coast tour. They were looking for a show to play and Worcester so I helped them out and got them a place to stay for the night. Then the next day, which was my birthday, I went to Boston with them for three days where we met Dave the drummer. So back to my story...

So we were on the Mexico bus for about 16 hours from Sacromento to Tijuana. Then after we crossed the boarder we took another bus which was about 36 hours to Gaudalajara. We packed all of our bicycles on the bus and about 30 bags of personal/band equipment. So we got to Gaudalajara where I currently am now. We stayed at his friend Chava´s house for a couple of days. Now we are staying at his friend tzintzuni´s house. She is really cool and has a big house. We have already played three shows so far. I am in charge of hooking up the generator system which connects to the bicycles. People ride the bicycles during every show to generate electricity to the equipment, for example the P.A system, amplifiers, etc. It is really fun and interesting. I am having an amazing time and will keep having a great time. My Spanish isn´t so great since I got seperated from the group last night and couldn´t find them for a couple of hours. I tried asking a couple of people where I last saw them but I couldn´t understand. Then a couple of people pointed in a couple of directions so I just kept going straight and eventually I made it to downtown. In the meantime the band realized I wasn´t behind them and started seraching everywhere for me. I should of waited in the spot where I lost them. A bag fell off my xtracycle trailer while I was the last one in the group riding. So I stopped and put it back on. Since I was busy I didn´t realize they took a turn just up ahead. So after I got situated and fixed my belongings and I kept going straight instead of turning, since I didn´t know I had to turn. The rule of thumb is to wait for the last person riding if you are the second to last person. It´s an important job, but the last person who did it, which was Corey I think, didn´t. So I kept going straight and eventually got to down town when I went to the same exact plaza where the band played the night before. I biked aroudn the plaza a couple of times searching for anyone the I recognized from the night before. I didn´t recognize anyone but I did find two cool people sitting on a bench. Their names were Marcela and Christian. I went up to them and said ¿Hablo Inglis? and the Marcela said she did a little. So I told them my situation and we didn´t know what to do. Christian barely speaks any English at all. So we got to an internet cafe we I emailed Kipchoge and told him I was lost and was downtown. Then after I emailed them Marcela said I could stay at christians. I said yes even though I should of waited at the cafe for a respond email. So Marcela went home and me and christian went to his house. We couldn´t communicate since he doesn´t speak english and I don´t speak much spanish. Then I used his computer and saw the response from Kipchoge saying to meet him at the plaza. So after a moment of confusion from mis communication, I put my belongings in Christians sister or friends car and followed the car to the plaza by bike. I finally met up with Jared at the plaza and thanked Christian by saying mucho gracias over and over again. I kept saying chido too which means cool, i think. So the moral of the story is..... have fun whenever you get lost in Mexico. And don´t talk to sketchy people, which I didn´t. So check out pleasantrevolution.net for the band´s blog and tour shcedule and see the picture of the whole crew. You can´t see me because I am behind dave, but you can see my helmet and hands in the air.

The Begining of my trip...

Hello everyone. I took a plane from providence Rhode island to Sacramento California on January 7th with Dave Scandurra from Allston Ma. I got picked up by Kipchoge and his really awesome friend who gave us a ride to where he lives which is in North San Juan California which is an hour and a half drive. It was really foggy outside and the roads were scary at times. That night I stayed in Kipchoge's pad which is really small. I originally slept outside on the porch but it was about 30 degrees or so outside and my sleeping bag is only good for 40 degrees and higher. So I was freezing. I could barely fall asleep and when I finally did I woke up about an hour ago shivering so I went into the shack and snuggled up with my road mates. It has been an amazing time so far in Northern California. We rode are bicycles up this huge beautiful mountain that after I finished putting my bike back together since I had to disassemble it and put it and my xtracycle in a box for the plane. The mountain we rode on was pretty much all unpaved on the way down. I had about 80lbs-100lbs of gear on my bike while going down a really steep unpaved mountain. It was an amazing feeling that I have never felt before. It was pretty fantastic bumping and sliding and dropping things out of my xtracycle down the mountain. Then at the end of the mountain we crossed a bridge which lead us to a 7 mile mountain. There were some hills along this trip which made me want to fall over and die. Some hills were just too much for me so I walked a couple of times. Walking is a last resort but when I felt like my heart was going to jump out of my chest and run as fast as it can away from me, I walked. So at the end of the ride ,which was about a 12 or 15 mile ride total, was the really cool hip town called Nevada City. There was an environmental film festival going on all weekend so got to go see a bunch of independent environmental movies. The band I am traveling with called the Ginger Ninjas played a really low key show at an art gallery in town. We actually ended up staying and sleeping in the art gallery for the past two days. We had tons of fun and went to a couple of parties. I have met so many people so far and have gotten a lot of numbers. Everyone around here is so nice and friendly and very welcoming. So after we spent a great weekend in Nevada City we started to head home. We took another route back to North San Juan which was paved. It was a highway which was very narrow and it was very steep and had a lot of blind turns. I was going really really fast down the hill but I still wasn't fast enough because I was the last person in line. I have been biking with 6 other people. We are all a team and watch eachothers back, which is great.