Day 2 on the road, and in the wind.

The first day went really well until about dark.

Straight roads, no long stretches without a gas station, no cops, nice temps, and partly cloudy.

I was climbing the mountain headed to Saltillo when I found out that truck drivers in Mexico are one crazy bunch of fellas.

I wish I had more pics, but I was pretty preoccupied with trying not to get crushed between two semis.

The temperature was dropping and all I had on was a long sleeve shirt and a wind breaker.

Luckily the rain was more a sprinkle than full blown rain, and it didn't last long.

These shots are from just before I began to climb the hill.

I got to the toll road and the craziness began, tailgating, speeding, it was an exciting hour or so.

At the end of the toll road, the last of the light was gone, I paid my cuenta in a puddle of oil I was lucky enough not to fall over into and began to proceed in an orderly fashion when a hole, 18 inches deep, 3 meters wide, and 4 feet across opened up in my lane.

I missed that bike swallowing hole by about 6 inches.

This was when I decided to stop until daylight.

There was a Pemex just past the toll booth, so I pulled in, put the bike on the centerstand and took a few minutes to reevaluate my trip through the mountains.

Come to find out 52 degrees farenheit was not the best waiting for daylight temperature, so after two hours I put on addtional layers and headed into the dark.

I made it about an hour and that was enough for me.

Luckily I stopped at a BP and the nice young guy that made his living by washing windows on the trucks told me to pull around back and take a nap, he would watch my stuff.

That was about midnight, about 4am I gave up on trying to sleep and went into the convienence store and got some hot chocolate.

Daybreak was just after 6 and I was back on the road only to find this:

You can see my headgear and blue windbreaker.

I have ridden in subfreezing temps with these, but that didn't make this day feel any warmer.

I hung out for a time and as the fog began to burn off I took to the road once again.

I stopped at a truck stop just to stretch my legs, but ended up getting lunch, too.

I wish my appetite had been better, but I still had no certainty about my destination and left most of this uneaten.

They called it 'guisado' and was soup with bistec(beef) y papas(potatoes).
It was really very good, though the 90 pesos (4.5usd) seemed a little over priced, though it was probably not for being on the hiway.

The fog had mostly burned off, and I had come back down the mountain so the air was warming up, so no excuse to not get back onto the road and back to the adventure.

This was one place the federales had a checkpoint, but it was only for the folks going north and they didn't look at me twice.