Peenie Wallie

But no one is in the lobby at 4 a.m. Just a small dog lying on a couch.

In the morning, the young man shuffles into the lobby and knocks on the door where Sylvia sleeps. He works in the hotel, smoking and surfing the internet mostly. He touches the dog on the worn sofa as he shuffles by.

It's 4 a.m. and he's gently knocking on the door.

"ma MA."

Just so. After a few minutes, she awakens and calls out in the night.

She rouses from her slumber and comes to the door and greets him. She turns around and closes the door to get dressed as he shuffles back past me in the lobby. There is no man in the picture. I wonder where his father is, but it's not something you can ask.

There is a photograph on top of an old upright piano against the wall. In the photo, an very young nino clings to his mother's neck.

"Is tu y tu hijo in años pasado?" I asked her if it was a photo of her and her son, from years gone by.

"Ci. In años pasado." And she kind of sang it as she said it. I just sort of put that together on my own. 'Años' is years and 'pasado' means 'past tense', essentially. So 'Años pasado' means something like 'years gone by' and she picked it up right away.

So he's not had a father for as long as he can remember, and I wonder what that would be like. Growing up without a father. I think it would be a hard way to grow up.

Around 4:15 a.m., my buddy Jorge shows up and says he just needs to get a shower, then he'll be down and we can go. So I just nod and sit there like a retard, half awake...half dead. And eventually Jorge shows back up with his driver.

"OK. We can go. The truck we are in is a big yellow truck parked near the entrance to the town on the right hand side."

"Why don't you just back it up here so I can just roll the motorcycle into the bed of the truck?" I ask.

"It has a lift. It will be no problem."

So I kick start the motorcycle. Now, just for the record, if you ever decide to do something stupid like drive a motorcycle halfway around the globe without packing so much as a map, a spare tube, or a bicycle pump, you might want to consider getting something with an electric start. Just a suggestion. Because after kick starting this XR650R eleventeen times a day for 7 days, I can hardly walk any more. I'm about ready to chew off my right leg like a coon in a trap. But I digress.

I kick start the bike and drive through the beautiful little hurricane magnet known as Mulege (Moo Luh Hay) and at the front of the town, on the right, is about the largest yellow truck I've ever seen. Probably you would call it a moving van if you saw it. Not a truck.

It has this Tommy Lift tailgate contraption so they lower it and I roll the bike on it and he pushes a button and the bike and I rise magically into the air until we're level with the bed and I roll it to the front of the enormous empty truck bed and secure it to the walls with tie downs. Think of the inside of the largest U-Haul truck you've ever seen and that's about what this is.

Now, for my brother and everyone reading this that thinks I'm insane to load about $10,000 worth of electronics and motorcycle equipment into a vehicle and drive into the desert with strangers, you should know this. These people speak perfect English. Jorge is carrying a brand new Canon digital Rebel XSi. His uncle is driving a brand new GMS Evnoy. Their family owns the hotel that I stayed in in Mulege. So, I feel like I can trust these people.

So, we go to climb into the cab and I'm going to get in the middle, but Jorge insists that he is shorter so he climbs into the middle and I gives me the window seat and we head out of town.

We begin rolling North through the mountains, but the truck is not as fast as the motorcycle. It's a slow, lumbering process through the dark and I just can't tell you how dangerous it is to be driving a truck like this through Mexico.

Mexico 1 is a good road. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with the road surface, in and of itself. In the entire path from Tijuana to Cabo San Lucas, there are only a few short spaces where the road is in a state of disrepair.

But the road has no shoulder, and instead of a shoulder, has white cylindrical concrete posts about every 100 meters about 24" from the edge of the road. I'm not clear what their purpose is, except to penalize those that slip up.

I'm not clear how deep into the ground they go, as several are missing, but I'd wager connecting with one post at highway speeds of 80 km/hr would take the frame off a Japanese car in about a quarter of a second.

So we're driving this enormous yellow truck through the mountains north of Mulege in the dark, passing other cars, being passed by other cars. Just sort of generally accepting as a matter of course something that no sane person would ever consider.

The truck has no seatbelts. The seat is broken so that it slides from side to side with all three of us on it as we go through every turn. It has the old-skool windows where you can open the front piece of the passenger and driver's side windows and direct air into the cab while the main side windows are rolled up. I don't know what these are called, and I'd forgotten they even existed. The one on the driver's side has broken free from its top mount and flops around loudly on the side of the truck as we ride.

The truck is old and rattles across the road surface. On the XR, the road seemed like a magic path so smooth it harbored not a single imperfection. But in the battered old diesel the road feels as though it were made of cobblestones. Every blemish translates into a bone jarring impact in the cab and the windows rattle violently in their frame. Sometimes, I try to stabilize my side window with my elbow. Other times, I just let it rattle and wonder if it won't break and fall into the road.

The truck is diesel, of course, as that is the cheapest fuel down here, and in Mexico, you burn that which is cheapest and then when you run out, you stand by the side of the road and you wave a little plastic jug.

The truck lumbers slowly through the darkness and Jorge is talking excitedly in very good English about something and he's talking very loudly in my ear but eventually I trick him into believing that I've fallen asleep and he leaves me alone.

In the United States, it's easy to feel superior to someone who's trying to speak English and not getting it all dialed in perfectly. Here, we are stripped bare of this luxury. We must learn Spanish or suffer through mutilated English without the benefit of a an elevated predisposition.

And don't get me wrong. Jorge has taken English every year of his life since elementary school and it shows. His English is nearly flawless. Probably better than mine, all things considered.

But part of me feels like I wish I were on the motorcycle, racing along at 80 mph. I'm half-afraid that someday, somewhere down the road someone will say "well, you didn't technically drive all the way to Cabo San Lucas and back because you were in the "saggin' wagon" for a day or two.

But, of course, it's dark outside, and I would never drive on the road at night in Baja. The cows come out to sleep on the road at night for warmth and hitting a cow on a motocycleta would mean death. And not for the cow.

So I just sit here in the cab, rattling slowly through the desert, belching clouds of diesel into the night. I would not be going anywhere right now if it weren't for these two kind souls, I tell myself. I'd be asleep in bed. So, if we are in fact going slowly, we are at least going. Hurricane Rick is only moving at 14 mph but in 24 hours, it goes 324 miles. Slow and steady wins the race. This is an odd realization to come to in Baja, but this is where we are.

After an hour or two, the road leads us back down to the shores of the Sea of Cortez and through the pleasant little fishing village of Santa Rosario and Jorge says he wants to stop and take pictures but it's dark out. So he wants to wait for the sunrise and I'd rather eat my own hands that sit here in the dark doing nothing, but this is not my deal. I'm just along for the ride like a flea on a dog. If they want to stop and take pictures in the dark, then so be it.

The sky does begin to lighten and pelicans are flying back and forth dive bombing some poor fish below the water's surface. The sky gets lighter still and I decide that maybe shooting the sunrise over the Sea of Cortez wasn't such a bad idea after all and I get out my camera and begin shooting as well.

The shores of the bay are covered with debris from Hurrican Something-or-Other that hit about a month ago. That's why Jorge is down here. They drove down a truck load of supplies from Mexicali, if you can believe it.

Eventually, we return to our journey and the roads leaves the coast and now I see what he wanted. He wanted to shoot the sunrise over the Sea of Cortez because he knoww that we're leaving the sea and he'll be back in a Mexicali sweathshop before you can say "Chingow!".

Now, we're rolling inland again, toward San Ignacio. Every so often, we come to a military check point and at each point, we all spill out of the truck into the desert and stand there, stretching and groaning, while they search the truck. I'm never sure what they're looking for, though I assume they're looking for drugs. Instead, they find Jorge's spear gun and they're playing with it and joking around like kids on a playground.

Jorge explains to me that, although it's not technically legal to spearfish, they do it all the time and no one follows any laws in Mulege and I'm beginning to think I may need to move here.

The soldiers let us go and after rolling across the Vizcaino Desert for a few hours, we stop for breakfast in the little town of Guerrero Negro.

As we roll through the desert, Jorge is explaining to me all sorts of things. At first, I pretended to be asleep, or maybe I really was asleep, because I was exhausted and got very little sleep last night. But now, I'm more awake and Jorge is a fountainhead of knowledge. He knows the names of all of the plants and animals in English and in Spanish and I'm just taking notes in the cab because I don't feel like dealing with the laptop.

Also, he explains all of the road signs to me as we go by them. I read them all, and I'd try to obey them, but it's hard to obey them when you don't know what they say. I remember once sign said "Precauciones something or other". So, I knew that I should be watching out for something, but I wasn't clear what it was. So, I'd watch the road like a hawk for a few kilometers, but I never knew what I was looking for.

Sort of like if they ever raise the terror alert level in the United States. They can't exactly say what you should do differently, only that you should be more alert. So I'm very alert when I see these signs.

Know, Jorge explains to me that the sign means to watch for animals in the road, like cows (vacas).

So this is great. Now that I've driven clear across Baja, I finally know what the signs mean. Better late that never, I suppose.

As we approach Guerrero Negro (Black Warrior), Jorge explains that the grey whales come down here for the winter and that there are bird sanctuaries and whale sanctuaries all around Guerrero Negro.

Additionally, he explains, Guerrero Negro manufactures salt. It is, he claims, the largest salt manufacturing facility on earth. I know that they do this in the United States at the southern end of San Francisco Bay, and also at the southern end of San Diego bay, and if you've ever seen aerial color photos of these salt ponds, they are breathtaking. Different colored ponds from maroon to jade to aqua, but I don't know about here in Guerrero because I'm not in plane and the birds can't talk and my guess is that not a person in town has ever seen the inside of an airplane, but this is just a guess. I may be wrong on this.

In Guerrero Negro, we stop Breakfast of jamon y juevos (ham and eggs) with a banana milkshake. I pay for all three of us. The total is 130 pesos (approx $10.00).

The next open Pemex station is 250 miles from Guerro Negro. This is where I almost died in the desert coming down. (Note: I now believe that there is one open Pemex station about 30 - 40 km north of Guerro Negro.)

I like the idea of riding across the desert with my bike in the truck because, if the truck breaks down, I can just unload and ride away into the sunset. My tank is completely topped off and I am "belt and suspenders safe", as we say in English.

But if the truck doesn't break down, then I can just nod off and sleep while we're rolling down the road, which is what I do of course.

We're going faster in the desert than we were in the mountains and the cab ride is comfortable. The motorcycle seat I have is specially designed for riding through Baja, but even so, my hind end likes the cushy truck bench seat much more than the motorcycle seat.

And I keep reminding myself this as were rolling across the desert. All I have to do is just sit still, and we're going to make it across the desert alive. There is an enormous risk to crossing the desert alone. You could break down, crash, run out of gas, etc. Death could easily result from an accident. There are no helicopter ambulances down here. It's not like the united states. We are hundred of miles from nowhere, surrounded by nothing but a cactus forest for as far as the eye can see.

Every so often, we stop and get out and stretch in the desert. By the time we get to the exit for Bahia Los Angeles, I have adjusted to the new routine. I like riding with other people for a change. It's nice to have people to talk to and no people on earth could be nicer than Jorge and his driver.

The truck we're in is enormous, as I've mentioned before I think. Each time we stop, the driver opens the truck's gas tanks and sticks in a metal antenna to judge the depth of gasoline in each tank. He then throws a little dirt on the antenna to see how high the gas is on the stick.

As we crawl up one mountain range, Jorge tells me "this road is called the Devil's ...how you say...spine?"

"El Daibloe epsine?" I ask.

"Espinazo del Diablo," he clarifies.

I love having Jorge along. I ask him the name of each cactus that we pass. Now that we're lumbering through the desert, I have a little bit more time to take notes and to shoot, albeit with the long lens. But this is not an issue, as there's plenty of desert to fill the frame. The bouncing makes it a bit tough, but I do the best I can.

So we're bouncing through the desert and Jorge is pointing out the Cirio, Maguey, Cardon, Choya, Biznaga, and Yucca. The Cirio is the tall, thin one with the finger-linak tips. The Maguey is the one I first saw in San Diego with the unexpected tall skinny stalk protruding skyward with large seed pods. The Cardon closely resembles the Suguaro cactus of the American Southwest. The Choya is the smaller, oddly twisted cactus that closely resembles a coral that grows in the ocean. The Biznaga is a small red cactus that they make a special candy from.

After we come down the Devil's Spine, we pass the exit to Bahia Los Angeles and the closed Pemex station where a man pumps gas from a 55 gallon drum in the back of his truck. Now we're heading into the Punta Prieta desert when I very nearly died on the ride down. You just can't know what it's like to realize that you're going to run out of gas in the middle of a desert surrounded by nothing but cactus for as far as the eye can see. It's not a good feeling, I can assure you.

The desert is dry and I pull out my chapstick and reapply it for the eleventeenth time today. We continue bouncing across the desert and I tell Jorge "This is where I had to switch over to the reserve tank. I was sure I was dead."

And he doesn't laugh. He just nods. It's not joke. I'm sure people do die out here. It would not be difficult. It's not like there's a lot of traffic to pick you up if you have problems.

Plus, I personally would not stop to help a man in the desert, I don't believe. Certainly I passed several people in various states in the desert without stopping. The reason is that a man dying in the desert will do anything to survive, including kill. And when you drive by a man walking through the Punta Prieta desert, you can see death in his eyes.

When I was certified by the Red Cross as a life guard, one of they things they taught us was to fear people who are dying. A drowing man will do anything to save himself, including killing those that try to save him. It happens all the time. The fear of death activates a preternatural instinct for survival and man reverts to being an animal. Survival is our most basic, fundamental instinct.

A man dying in the desert might attempt to steal my bike and drive out of the desert leaving me to die. I cannot stop to help people in the desert. It is not a risk I can afford to assume.

It's so odd how our lives change. How one day we're just watching television and then on another day, we're praying to God that we make it through the desert. How odd this world is that we are all collectively stumbling through.
Eventually, we emerge from the desert and roll into the peculiar little town of El Rosario. This town is funny because it's not but a little bend in the road. The reason it exists, really, is that it's 250 miles south of Tijuana. So if you're trying to drive to Cabo San Lucas, this is where most people spend their first night. The reason is that the next gas station is over 200 miles away and there's precious little on the way. So this is a good stopping point.

I stop and buy a map while they stick the antenna in the gas tank to divine if we have enough fuel for them to make it back to Mexicali.

The map is a long vertical wall map that shows some detail of the Baja Peninsula. I imagine myself hanging it up when I get home and marking it up with a pen to show our route.

But when I return, there is some concern about the fuel. It seems they will not have enough fuel to return to Mexicali. Now, for the record, we've been driving all day and we've not put so much as a drop of diesel in this beast. Which is fine by me, as I was offered a free ride and I have a feeling those gas tanks we're climbing across to get in the cab could drain my savings account in the blink of an eye.

They call the driver's boss to have her wire money into some account so we can gas up at a Pemex, but she's not interested in wiring any money for whatever reason.

When we get to the town of San Quentin (San Kah TEEN), I suggest that we stop for Mariscos. They say that have no money for food and no money for gas, but I say not to worry, I'm buying.

Now maybe in this whole trip, I did very little research and so, no doubt, I missed some gems along the way. I promise you though that the soup they serve in this little roadside shanty with an outhouse out back is second to none.

When we pull up, he remembers me and asks about my bike. I tell him it's in the truck and tell him I want the same thing I had last time I was in here but he doesn't remember. After much debate, he understands what we want.. It is called "Campechano Calient" which translates as "Hot Seafood Mix", according to Jorge, It contains Pulpo (Octopus), Almejas (Clams), Ostion (Oysters), and Camarone (Shrimp). These are all cooked fresh while we wait.

He cooks them in a refrigerator lying on its back in the parking lot. The refrigerator is resting on concrete blocks. The guts have been removed. So, what he has is essentially an controlled environment around a propane powered burner. I've actually wished I had something like this for deep frying turkeys. The problem is that the wind blows the flame around and robs your heat. I usually turn over a picnic table to serve as a wind break, but he's gone a step further and uses a hollowed out refrigerator, which is insulated, of course. He lifts the refrigerator door (straight up) and puts the seafood into a pot of boiling water.

And pretty soon, we're all three drinking Coca Cola and eating the finest meal that money could buy. I paid for all three of us and I think that the total was 350 pesos, so it was like 9 dollars each.

And soon we're rolling down the road again only the sun is setting now and they're upset because they don't have enough gas to get to Mexicali and they don't have money for a hotel room, but I'm smelling a shakedown.

My brother is suspicious to a fault and he'd just as soon toss a dying man a stone to prevent being tricked into tossing in a perfectly good life ring. He once went across the country spraying oil on old people's roofs and driveways as a "sealant", and eating urinal cakes to survive. I know if he were here that he'd say "Look, I need y'all to unload my bike, and I'll see you later."

And I'm kind of in a funny position because they have my bike in their truck. And my gear. And it doesn't take a 3rd world criminal genius to figure out that I'm made out of money, relatively speaking of course.

I already bought them breakfast and dinner, and I did give Jorge $20 for gas earlier, just as a token gesture. I have no idea how much diesel the truck has consumed but we have ridden in it all day, so my guess is that its burned through quite a bit.

But these guys did drive me through the worst part of Baja for hundreds of miles. Not only are they friendly and fluent in English, but Jorge even sat in the middle as we rode half the length of the Baja Peninusla.

So, it does seem reasonable that I could help them out some, assuming that I am in a position to help them out.

"Look, when we get to Ensenada and unload the bike and get me checked into the hotel, if I can help y'all out some more, I will. I'll see what I can afford to do," I offer.

Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" while you're looking for a stick. I'm not in a position to negotiate and I'm well aware of that. Let's get my gear out of the truck and get the gringo checked into a safe well-lit hotel and then we'll discuss the terms of the shakedown.

"But it's not even that. It's just that his boss knows that we're out of gas and she won't wire us the money and it sucks," he continues. So, this is an interesting tack. If it was truly a shakedown, then I think he'd say "OK" or "Let's see how much you have now," etc. He seems genuinely put out by the situation in general.

So this issue continues late into the night. Every so often, we stop at a pay phone and the driver calls in and complains to various people in the dark in breathless Spanish. But no money ever appears, of course.

Eventually, we roll into Ensenada. I tell them that I want to stay at the St. Nicholas Hotel because that's where all the SCORE drivers stay that race in the Baja Mil, but no one is sure where the hotel is exactly, so instead Jorge points one out in the center of Ensenada and says "what about this one? I've stayed here before. It's fine."

And I'm like "fair enough." I honestly don't care where I stay at this point. I'm just so thoroughly exhausted that words can't describe my condition.

Jorge walks me into the hotel and talks to the lady at the hotel for me. Helps my carry all of my gear to my room. We unload the bike and get it into the parking lot and at the end of it, I give him some money for gas and they say thank you very much and roll off into the night toward Mexicali and I collapse in my hotel room, barely alive.

I'm beginning to regret drinking Coca Cola on ice in Cabo and La Paz.

My ears hurt from wearing ear plugs all day every day and never washing them. So I was my ear plugs and pour Listerine into my ear canals and then collapse for the night, more dead than alive.