Bici-bici-bici

On Sundays, the municipal government closes down a passage through town to make a street fair for cyclists. The last Sunday of the month, they also (or instead, according to the website) shut down Avenida Paseo de la Reforma, one of the major streets that has lots of monuments and famous things along it. Since we had such a great time at a similar event last year in Merida, I thought I’d try it today. I had made a list of 4 bike rental places, so after breakfast I set off to find them and enjoy the fresh morning air. It should come as no surprise that an hour and a half later, I had found none of my bike shops. As far as I can tell, none of them have ever existed. But I did run into a different one, which turned out to be a government stand that rents out bikes for free. The bikes only came in Mexican-size, so I looked a little like a circus bear, but you get what you pay for. I set off with hundreds, if not thousands, of fellow cyclists, rollerbladers, and dogs.

We cycled past some monuments, the Palacio de Bellas Artes, and a statue of a gorilla with a banjo. At some point, the route appeared to split. I hadn’t been expecting that, but I followed the pack onto a side street, figuring the two routes would rejoin eventually. They wouldn’t.

While I was waiting at a light outside an early Hispanic church, a girl pulled up next to me. “Where are you going?” “No idea. Want to come?” So Lucia-from-Uruguay and I formed a confederation and continued on our way. The route took us through a market street that was so packed we could hardly get our bikes through, but the blue traffic cones and police officers stationed at every intersection assured us that we were on a sanctioned bike route.

As we got to the end of the historic center, the scenery began to change. The street widened; stonework gave way to bright paint; men scurried among the bikers balancing 50-pound grain bags on their shoulders. “Really, this neighborhood isn’t safe at any time,” said Lucia, who no one had asked. “But as long as we stay with the bikers, we don’t need to worry.” I pedaled harder. The next few miles were at times uneventful, and at times best described visually.

To be clear, at no point did we deviate from the sanctioned bike routes. Or at least, not much, and not for a while yet.

Once we got near the airport, which was nowhere near where I had intended to spend my day, or any day within the next 2 weeks, we crossed a street and got onto a (closed-to-traffic) three-lane highway with lots of sloping overpasses that would have been fine if I hadn’t been on a mountain bike for ants. We saw more and more people turning back, so we figured the end of the route must be near. After a few more miles, though, we started to wonder whether “near” was a relative term, and we decided to turn around. Lucia was on a short-term rental city bike, and it was already overdue. I needed to get back across the city to return my bike by 1:00.

While we were cycling back, a woman shouted at me for a not-insignificant length of time. Lucia explained that she had wanted me to keep right and stay out of her way.

A few minutes later, another group yelled at us, even though we were leaving plenty of room on our left for passing. We shrugged and pedaled on. When we reached the turnaround where we had entered this segment of the route, a sign directed us to follow a sort of U-turn, which we dutifully did, only for a man standing in the middle of the U to yell at us to stop. And that’s how we learned that we had unknowingly crashed a professional bike race.

Whoops.

It was a little gnarly getting back onto the correct route, but we managed it.

Having finally set rubber on the approved route again, we started looking for a place for Lucia to swap out her bike so she wouldn’t have to pay the hefty late fees (even an hour overdue costs more than an annual subscription to the rental service). At a traffic circle, we very safely cut across oncoming traffic to find one. Being so far from the city center, I wasn’t sure that we would find a bike change point in a hurry, and I was starting to worry about getting my own rental back on time. As we pedaled down the sidewalk past empty storefronts, my distress must have been clear, because Lucia started trying to reassure me, “Don’t worry, no pasa nada. I know this is a bad neighborhood, but as long as we’re on the bikes, we should be safe. They don’t attack people on bikes.” So now I had 2 things to worry about. Eventually, I was able to make her see reason, and we returned to the bike route and sped back into town, with me sometimes following Lucia’s lead and sometimes jogging along on the sidewalk as she performed impressive feats of traffic anarchy.

Finally, we got back to a small square in front of a Baroque church where Lucia could return her bike at a kiosk. She very graciously accompanied me back to where we’d met, and then we exchanged phone numbers and hugs and parted ways. The rest of the trip back was more law-abiding and uneventful, and I’m grateful to now feel totally justified in spending the remainder of my trip in Condesa, the polished and slightly ritzy neighborhood where I’m saying. The sketchy side of Mexico City? Been there, done that.

Some sights from the trek:

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Not dead yet: The first evening

I was walking and talking to Anna Rose and, after getting lost for the 100^th time (or never having gotten found to begin with), I had worked up an appetite. A fancy-looking (read: servers-with-uniforms-having) place advertising its tacos al carbon saved the day.

This nice older couple at a nearby table overheard me ordering (apparently very badly) a Diet Coke. The husband came over and explained the menu to me in excellent English, assured me that all of the meat here was good, and encouraged me to try one of their “exquisite” juices. I ended up with an alambre– cheese in lavash with roasted cactus—and a mamey juice. It was great, but I think I’ve eaten a pound of cheese today. They also have these crazy appetizers that are like a giant curved fried dough thing. It’s thin like a Swedish pancake and 15 inches long. Never did figure out what those things were.

 

Meet the metro

I love the women-only cars/waiting areas on the train. The front 2 cars of every train, at every hour of the day, are reserved for women and children under 12. The waiting area is marked off with traffic barriers, and, for better or for worse, there are plenty of cops around to enforce the division. Not only are these cars often empty enough that you can sit down for at least a few stops, but it’s really nice for the solo traveler/commuter to not have to worry about Men and their Bad Decisions for a few minutes.

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The metro doesn’t always announce the stations, and the stations themselves don’t necessarily have their names posted on the walls. It’s not the least helpful public transit signage I’ve seen (cf. the woman who laughed at me for asking for a map of the bus system in Cherepovets), but there’s clear room for improvement.

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The stations aren’t nearly as deep as in Moscow or Peter (I read the entire 2^nd Hunger Games book – in Russian – in a summer’s worth of riding on St. Petersburg’s metro escalators), but they may very well be more spread out. I wouldn’t be surprised if I did a few kilometers of underground walking today, and I didn’t even get lost down there. While I was walking down one of the endless tunnels, I found myself behind a guy with native features, dreads, and a set of juggling clubs poking out of his ragged backpack. For a second, I could have thought I was in Berlin.

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Somehow, through forces of the universe that still are not clear to me, what I thought was a straight shot from the airport to my hostel turned out to require FOUR transfers. I think I did it wrong.

Probably this has something to do with my insistence on stopping off for a few snacks at the market. 10/10, would stop again, although when the rhythm, not to mention the geography, of la Merced is completely foreign to you, it makes for a rather terrifying quesadilla adventure.

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Thoughts from Coach

They say: “We’re expecting some bumps in the departure due to a weather system in the south.” I hear: “Say goodbye to your loved ones forever.”

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I think it’s interesting how an airplane seat for a man always seems to have two armrests, whereas a seat for a women only ever has one, max. I waited, tense, for a good 10 minutes on the tarmac for Mr. Seat A to scratch his ear, allowing me to reclaim those precious 3 inches of Seat B that are, after all, my ticket-given right. I’ve had to cede them again to write this, but I remain hopeful that justice will prevail.

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Stroopwaffel? United must be atoning for something.

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Social anxiety is doing nothing when your neighbor puts his elbow on the armrest that houses your TV controls, thereby muting your documentary. Twice.

 

Days, maybe weeks

 

An actual map of my neighborhood

Or: why I can’t go half a day without getting lost

 

Semantics

I then proceed to spend the first and last half-hour of the flight second-guessing every decision the pilot makes. “No, there’s no way we’re at takeoff speed yet.” “Isn’t this approach angle a bit steep?” “Whoa, seems early for the landing gears…”

 

Heads-up

I am planning to blog from Mexico City (we’ll see how it goes…). But since I didn’t bring a computer, I’ll be doing a lot of it by just photographing pages from my actual journal. I will try to keep it interesting enough to make it worth wading through my handwriting.