 Well, you're nice to wake up, too. Oh, you wanna play fetch already? Okay. Here you go. Ready? One, two, go! Okay, I gotta pack up my tent. Okay, give me a sec, bud. It's very cold every morning so far in the Baja Devide has been chilly. Much chillier than I remember last time. But the sound of these birds is making me happy. That's pretty cool. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we are back on the bumpy road. We've about 45 miles to the town of Mulehe. They have hotels, they have Wi-Fi, and I think I might take advantage of some of that because I'm feeling pretty dirty. I need to dry off all my wet stuff. This morning, we both put on very wet, cold shoes, but you know who's always in good spirits? Mira! She doesn't care about wet shoes or Wi-Fi or hotels or any of that stuff, so I'm gonna try to embrace Mira's spirit today. Look at that. Good morning, caballos! So last night at about three in the morning, I started hearing things. Something big and loud, snapping branches and stuff, and I made a sound. And I could hear all these horses running around, and it looks like we just found the whole family. Hi guys! You woke me up last night. I just want to say hi. You're beautiful. Let's go, Mira. Pull us, pull us all the way to Mulehe. So we just saw a sign in the middle of nowhere for this rancho that has food and cafe and Coffee. We're gonna go check it out. This guy's yelling at us from over the cross the way. Good morning! Good morning, friends! It's a big request to get here. Well, how are you? Rosalina. Rosalina, nice to meet you. Look at this, Mira. You have friends, bud. These are your amigos? And for how long have you been living here? We've been living here for about 20 years. 20 years? And what do you do here? Well, we make cheese. There are a lot of cyclists here. Something like that. Last year, a lot of them came. And you make cheese, right? Yes. It's cheese from the goat. Very fresh then. Yes. It's very tasty, isn't it? Very tasty. Do you have flour? Yes. Pure hand. Pure hand? Yes. Is it okay? It looks like a cow. You'll see what happens in the future. This is goat milk. You know, this is the nice things about the Baja, meeting these people. You know, you stop in here, you forget that these places exist. And money goes directly into the local pockets. And we get to see how they live. It's really nice. Gracias, amigo. Gracias, que le va bien. Gracias, gracias. Muy amable. That was a really great experience. They said they make about three or four blocks of cheese a day and they sell it in the town of Muleje. And just recently, they started seeing cyclists ride by. So they put up a sign about a kilometer away. I'm guessing some tourists, some bike tourists, you know, made the sign for them because it's all in English. And this is a great little side business for them. It's really fun to have experiences like this. This is why you travel. At least this is why I travel. It reminds me a lot of living in Honduras. Just a very simple way of life. And they've been together for 44 years this couple. 44 years, they've been a couple. Adios! That was awesome. That was really awesome. Walking through water again. Those are the only types of experiences you can have pretty much on a bike. Maybe you'd be on a motorcycle through here, but this is definitely not the tourist trail by any means. And it just goes to show when you take the road less pedaled, less traveled by, you are treated to some full-on treasures. And that really was one. That was a short experience, but a very impactful experience. We need a boat for this section. So I just checked the thermometer on my wahoo here. 60 degrees. And that explains why it was so cold last night. Right now it's perfect riding weather. But the guy back at the ranch said there is a cold front, un frente frio, coming through. But no rain. That's good. This is so clear. So I've been witnessing what it's been like to dog back for the last two days. And it's really fascinating. And I love to see the relationship with you and Mira. And it's really like your family. It's not like you just have this dog with you. She's your child. What has Mira taught you about life, travel, patience maybe? Yeah, definitely patience, but also being prepared for things. So I need to sort of think ahead in how much food she needs, how much water she needs. But you know, the greatest thing of it has been the conversations and the relationships that it starts. When people come out of a grocery store somewhere and there's people crowded around and saying hello and she's friendly and good-natured. In fact, her name came from people in Spain pointing and exclaiming Mira, Mira, Mira. As I would be riding by, they would want their friends to see this strange contraption. So that's been the thing. The people you meet and those relationships and seeing her with that too. As a person traveling alone, it's like this greeting to meet other people. It's fun, like for a dog, there's sticks and dirt and water and running all day long and then some camping at night. So it seems like as long as you can keep them safe and healthy, then you might as well go. You do have to adjust your expectations when you're going. So the distance you can go in a day, you know, you have to be attentive to your dog's needs. I mean, today we've done a lot up and down. So on the steep ups and maybe some of the very steep downs, Mira's out of the basket. So she's running or walking at those points. And so that takes a lot of energy out of her. Whereas if it was more steady, then she could be in the box and I could transport her down the road. All right, so how do you do hills? Because I imagine carrying a dog up a hill is no bueno. Yeah, I mean, do you think about adding 40 pounds of dog and food and other little things for the dog? You know, it's heavy. So fortunately, I don't have to carry her up. So as we get, as we approach the base of the hill, I'll ask her to jump out and then she'll run beside me or wherever she goes. And I just ride the hill at my own pace. And then as we get to the top here, the crest like we're at now, I'll stop and give her the command, up, up, up, and she'll hop into the back. And off we go down the descent or across the flat or this kind of thing. So cool. We're getting better and better at it. But it's a constant thing throughout the day. So going up is one thing. What's going down like with the dog in there? Yeah, surprisingly, like on the steep descents, it's actually really hard. You know, 40 extra pounds in the bike, sometimes your weight is shifting, you got loose terrain. So there's times when I just have to have her out. The brakes just can't handle it. I've got the biggest disc rotors I can put on this thing and four piston brake calipers, but they heat up something fierce. Are you tired, bud? We got 20 more miles. So wake up. Yeah. Okay, we're going. Oh, I need a stick. Yeah, that's a good girl. Get your stick. Okay. Bouncy bouncy? Yeah. Let's go. Let's go. Yeah. Good girl. Come on. She's all tuckered out. We got to go, baby. Sleep it on that seat, the bike seat. Yeah. We are out of the canyons. As you can see, we're far away, and we're on this road right here, which looks really easy because it is flat, but it is so bumpy and washboardy. My brain is going to be shaking tonight in bed. Sometimes it's nice to splurge on a hotel. This is only 500 pesos, which is like 30 bucks. It's not that bad. What a day. This was a hard 45 mile day. It took most of the day, and it was some pretty hard pedaling, but the highlight of the day was definitely meeting that old couple in the middle of nowhere who made us breakfast. They were just so sweet and cute, and we were riding by, and the guy was just like, hey, hey, come over here for coffee. And at the time, we both had eaten, and we didn't need coffee, but you know what? Those are the experiences. That's why you come here, is to meet people like this. We had a great 30 minutes together, maybe a little bit more, and I'll probably never see those people again in my life, but their memory, their spirit is always going to be with us. When I think back to this section of Baja, those are the people I'm going to think about. Yeah, I'm glad we met them. It's wonderful how the world works sometimes. So now I'm going to do some stretching in a really real bed, and we're going to get after it again tomorrow.