I understand that you mapped your route. Which city was your first stop, and when did you get there? Which city is your last stop? When do you think you'll be arriving there?
My first stop was Brownsville, Texas, as far east as you can go on the border. I arrived there after 450 miles and five days of cycling from Houston, Texas, where I attended a conference. This was around mid-October. My last stop will be in San Ysidro, California—as far west as you can go. Initially I thought that the project would take three or four months. Then I thought that I’d be done by summer. Now I imagine that I'll probably go through 2006, all pending opportunity and circumstance. My plans are but approximations, and they’re usually poor approximations at that.
Do you travel back and forth between the United States and Mexico? Do you go to both sides of the line?
I do travel back and forth, yes, although my cycling is fairly limited to the United States side. The roads are better, the right-of-ways are wider (in some cases exist) and I’m a U.S. citizen. If anything were to happen—say, were I to get smushed by big rig—then medical care would be all that much easier to facilitate. On top of that, I’m soon to cycle through the Nuevo Leon area of Mexico. Amidst warring cartels and heightened violence, that is not a place that I ever want to ride a bicycle through. For me, it’s consistently safer to cycle across the northern side.
When I cross over into Mexico, I usually walk over or am with a guide or chaperone. It follows that the kinds of interactions I share there are understandably different. Many times, they are actually more intimate. In the company of knowledgeable and experienced partner, I walk into established, often profound relationships. I might be a fly on the wall at times, but I am certainly very much privileged in that position.
How often do you go to Mexico?
For every four days in the U.S., I spend a day in Mexico. Something like that.
Will it still be just you and the bike all the way to San Diego?
Unless you want to come aboard! I should have some buddies joining me on weekends along the way, but yes, this is primarily a solo trip.
How many days have you been riding?
Six weeks.
Did you drop a lot of weight on this trip? What did you weigh at the beginning? How much do you weigh now? How tall are you?
Gettin' personal now, aren’t we? I probably weigh about one thirty-five, one-forty right now. I dropped ten to fifteen pounds in the first five days and have more or less leveled out since. I'm five-six and change.
You picked a hard road. Rather than getting a job, you've gotten on a bicycle and planned to write a book. Do you ever have days where you wish you were working in an office? Probably not, but what else had you thought about doing before you planned your tour?
I thought about building a museum/community center in a rural Mestizo village in Mexico and volunteering as a human rights observer in Guatemala. Like I said, those plans fell through.
I'll never be one to work in an office. My work is outside and in the community. I'd go crazy in an office.
What is a typical day in your life like?
After cycling twenty miles, I start my day off with a prearranged meeting with whomever. Seeing that I've just ridden on a bicycle for two hours just to speak with him, that person most often is very generous with his time, advice and knowledge. I continue on and stop for lunch, clad in my spandex and jersey. People ask me about what I'm doing, and there's another opportunity for a conversation. Often people are as excited to talk with me as I am with them. I take a rest in the evening. Someone earlier that day, knowing that my traveling home is no more than a tent, offers me a place to stay for the evening. I'm invited into some one's home, to see literally from the inside how border community works. I go to sleep in a bed or on a couch, thankful for what I have and wake up again for the next day. And so on.
What has been the most difficult part of your trip thus far?
Traveling from organization to organization, house to house, I see the best and worst of what the border has to offer. One day I’m sitting in the executive office of a university president; the next I’m eating fruit with an impoverished family in the colonias. Day to day, my interactions are often completely different—consistently inspiring, but different. There are a lot of emotional high and lows that go along with that.
There have been additional challenges. Initially, I had no idea what I was learning. I was moving from house to house, city to city in a fury, without ever really having time to process the experiences. I got homesick. I missed my family and my friends. I was constantly connected and in contact with them, but the lack of proximity was, at times, challenging, and I'm sure that it will be so the next time 'round. On the whole, these are just demands to which you respond. They're not crippling. The project itself is continually motivating. Like I indicated before, I have enough difficulty sitting down.
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