Old friend recalls 1973 motorcycle trip to Mexico City

 I sometimes reminisce about that trip we took to Mexico, me on the SuperHawk, you on the 2-stroke Kawasaki 750. There were some interesting episodes. 

We left Austin in October, on the coldest day of the year until then. Heading south to connect with the old Panamerican Highway, it started to rain at Reynosa. The further south we went, the harder it rained, but it warmed up a little. We spent the night at Tamazunchale, in a cheap hotel across the street from the bus station. At dinner the truck drivers at the next table began to regale us with baroque tales of spectacular road accidents. The next morning it was so foggy you could see the backs of the buses parked across the street, but not the fronts. Undeterred, we started up the mountain.

After a few times coming around the corner to find big rocks in the road, or big rocks falling from the cliffs through the clouds and fog onto the road, we figured out why there was no traffic. The truck and bus drivers knew more than we did. Coming to the first short straight and level stretch in many miles, I decided to dry off my front brake. I squeezed the brake handle, but nothing happened. i squeezed a little harder and the rusty spot in the cable came loose, the front wheel stopped turning and I went down. I had on a rain suit, leather jacket, good gloves and helmet. As I slid along on my back, I noticed the bike headed for the guard rail, and thought, "If it goes under the guard rail, there's about a 1500-foot drop." Then I thought, "If I go under the guard rail..." Both the bike and I stopped before we went over the side.

Neither I nor the bike was notably damaged. We rode on until we came to the big Pemex station at Ixmiquilpan, the top of the long climb up the eastern slope of the Sierra Madre. The gas station has a good sized restaurant which has a beautiful view on a clear day. That day the visibility was about 20 yards. We were the only customers in the big restaurant. We were soaking wet. I was covered in mud from my sliding excursion. You literally poured water out the the sleeve of your rain suit onto the floor. By and by a pretty young girl, maybe 15 or 16 came out to wait on us. She looked at us, held in the giggles as long as she could, but broke down and fled back to the kitchen. After a while we could see her and a woman looking through the window in the kitchen door. The girl came back out, collapsed in giggles again, fled, recovered, and finally kept it together long enough to take our orders.

Coming in to the outskirts of Mexico City traffic began to thicken. I was out in front, stopped at a red light, when I heard a couple of loud thumps. Turning back to see what was going on, I saw you methodically kicking the driver's door of a taxi that had been crowding you. The driver sat still and looked straight ahead, studiously avoiding eye contact.

In Mexico City we checked into the Hotel Yale, near the big train station. The neighborhood was pretty dicey, but the Yale was clean, cheap, safe, and had a walled parking area for the bikes.

Riding in the rain for a few days rusted the key into the SuperHawk's ignition lock, where it couldn't be removed. I figured it was okay, since the bikes were in the walled and locked enclosure. The next morning we found that kids playing in the parking enclosure had turned on the headlight and run down the battery. We walked a couple of miles to the only motorcycle shop I knew of in Mexico City to buy a new battery. There was a big burly Mexican there, with an impressive beard, working on a cool looking old motorcycle. A sign above his head read, in English and Spanish, "This is a 1937 Zundapp. It is not for sale, and I will not answer any questions."

You stood looking over his shoulder for a while, then said, "Making a wet clutch? I made one once..."

Soon you and the big Mexican were friends.

Heading back to Texas we stopped for the night in Matehuala, a dusty former mining town. Driving around looking for a cheap hotel I remembered, we passed some teenage boys standing beside a pile of dirt that had been dug out of a deep ditch along the side of the street. Wandering around looking for the hotel, we ended up driving by the boys again. They threw a few clods at us. After turning the next corner I didn't see you in the rear view mirror. Retracing our route, i came upon you standing beside the ditch. "Where are the boys?" I asked. "Down there," you replied, kicking a little dirt into the ditch.

We ate a bunch of flour tortillas and drank some beer at the bus station cafe, then walked around and came upon a nice big brightly lit bar. We went in and sat on bar stools. The back bar contained a line of bottles of different brands of tequila that was several feet wide. When we ordered shots, the bartender asked which brand. You indicated the leftmost. After finishing our shots, you indicated the bottle next in line and asked, "Have you ever had that brand?" "No." You ordered a couple of shots from that one. Then the next bottle was sampled, and so on, until I lost track.

How we made it back to the hotel is still a mystery to me.

Next day we made it through Monterrey, and onto the new highway north toward the border. When we came to one of the big cuts through a mountain for the new road, you said, "Let's take the old road."

It was narrow and twisty, and came out on a high cliff with a nice view of the setting sun. We got out the tamales we had bought in Monterrey and had dinner. Then you said, "We might as well smoke the rest of this dope before we hit the border." I am confident the statute of limitations has run on that criminal activity.

We started back down the mountain to the highway, turned a corner and found ourselves in the middle of a herd of cows crossing the road. You were in the lead. One panicked  cow just about charged into you, but you whacked her so hard on the nose she nearly went down on her knees. She stopped and turned away. Some benign influence similar to the one that got us back to the hotel the night before, led us safely through the herd of cattle.

We stopped for the night at Sabinas Hidalgo and checked into the hotel above the bus station, still feeling a little elevated. The desk clerk eyed us suspiciously, but took us down the hallway to the room. There were two beds. I tossed my helmet onto the one next to the window, to claim it. Laughing merrily, you picked me up and bounced me off the wall onto the other bed. The desk clerk was last seen retreating rapidly down the hallway.

After we made it through the border and the checkpoint a little ways north of Laredo, you fell in behind a big new Chevrolet full of people from Mexico, and disappeared over the horizon at about 95 mile per hour.

Linda, the kids and I used to head to Mexico between Christmas and New Years. A few months after the motorcycle trip we stopped at the Ixmiquilpan Pemex station in our big red Pontiac. It was a beautiful day. We were looking forward to a good lunch and a nice view. We went in and took seats. The same young girl came out. She looked at Linda, checked out the kids, and turned her glance to me. She recognized me as the mud covered motorcyclist, broke into giggles and fled to the kitchen. Linda turned to me and said, "I'm sure this is going to be an interesting story."

....at least that's the way I remember it.