 Thank you beautiful soft piece of land. I appreciate it. Let's go ride bikes. You know, it's exciting when all you have to do is ride a bike all day. That's what I'm gonna do. All right, everything seems to be tight. Let's do it. No crashy's way. These are flaties, baby. Good morning, son. I love you. Thank you. Good morning, Shadow. So today I'm gonna try to put in some fairly big miles. Got to go just over 60 miles to get to a town called Ciudad Constituciones. It's right on the main highway, highway one. There I will get a hotel. Yay. And sleep in a bed and find the best beans in town, of course. It's time for my morning chain lube. It's amazing how many times a day you have to lube up these chains and clean them off. There's a lot of dust out here. And while I'm stopped, I might as well have some chocolate chip cookies, right? The Maxi Tubo. I don't really have anything to say. Just sometimes it's nice to stop and check out the desert flowers. Yesterday when I bought the sneakers, I was extra excited. One, because it's the sneakers and they taste so good. Two, because it's the Bronco Snickers. Check it out. I've never seen one of these before. You all know me. I'm from Colorado. Born and raised. I'm a Bronco boy. And the random abandoned building of the day goes to this place. What is this? Wow, this must have been for cattle or something. Some shoots here. I think. Do you know what this is? I don't know. All right, well that was fun. It's lube time, ladies and gentlemen. This is the king of lubes, by the way. This is pretty cool behind me. These trees have these little balls of, you know, sticks and stuff in them. At first I thought, oh, there's a lot of nest in that tree. But as you look closer, they're not open. There's no place for birds to live in there. There are air plants of some sort. They get all their nutrients from the air, which is really interesting because this air is so dry. But it looks fascinating. It's nature's ornaments. This right here is what you call landfill. I must be getting close to civilization. There's a lot of plastic trash. All sorts of candy wrappers. Pretty gross, for sure. It smells bad. Well, there's an old baby crib. This is proof that plastic does not go away. I would say that 90% of the trash in here is plastic. And that's why I'm trying to be more mindful when I get water or sodas or whatever, not to buy them in plastic bottles. And this plastic problem isn't just a Mexico thing. It happens in the United States big time. I think we're probably the biggest consumers of plastic goods. We're just better at hiding it. And you've all heard of the giant garbage patch of plastic out in the Pacific Ocean. Yep. It all goes somewhere, friends. You throw that away, you recycle it. A lot of times it ends up in places like this. When I get to asphalt like this, I usually pump up my tires, so the pedaling is just more efficient when the tires are harder. When I'm out there in the dirt, in the mud, I like to let out a lot of the air so it's not as bumpy when you're going through all the washboards and stuff. My bike doesn't have any suspension, so these big fat 3-inch tires kind of act like suspension. When you let out the air, make them a little bit softer, you hit and hit in the rocks a bunch, it doesn't jolt you as much as if they were rock hard. I'm riding through this area and I see far off in the distance like these splatters of red, and it looks like some dead animal smeared all over the road. And nope, it's not. It's just a ton of chilies. And it's really like the air right here is spicy, like it's making my eyes water a little bit. Wow. They must have dumped a bunch of chilies out the back of a truck at one point. Only in Mexico will you ride through fields of chilies and actually on top of them. I'm rolling into the city and being here reminds me of 10 years ago when I was riding my bike into this same city. It was early afternoon, I just had a hard day riding out of Loreto and I see these Mexican dudes on the side of the road, they're just chilling under a tree and they waved me over. So I went over and said hi to them and they offered me a beer. And to make a long story short, we sat there for many, many hours drinking many, many ticates and had a grand old time. These are my new friends here. We're sitting under a tree. We were best friends by the end of that. And then I remember it got dark, they all had to go home to their wives and it was difficult navigating the city. Quite drunk looking for a hotel. So I've been hanging out with my new friends for about three hours now. We're a little bit borracho and I'm going to go find a hotel now because it's time for our stuff to go out now. But you know my experiences with Mexicans have always been positive. I've traveled all over this country and I find the people to be very generous and welcoming and carefree and fun and funny and you know I've always had a good time here and I know that the media makes this place out to be a war zone with all the narco stuff. You know and there's definitely some of that but for the most part Mexican people are incredibly warm and curious and they just want to make friends with everybody. And I guess it helps that I speak Spanish but I think most people have that experience here. Oh nice comfy bed. That was not the hardest day but it was still long. It was like 61 miles. Luckily not too much climbing and I'm here. It feels so nice to be done for the day. Good morning my friends or Buenos Dias. I feel nice and rested. That hotel was great. I went out last night and got some good street food. I bought some beans for the next few days of being off grid. I also got a haircut for 60 pesos. You can't do that in the United States. You can't see it right now because I'm wearing a helmet but believe me it looks amazing. So I'm going to be heading off today kind of into the middle of nowhere. Going to see one more mission and then yeah I'm going to be out there. No more cities, Wi-Fi, anything like that until la paz. Yesterday's pile of trash was bad. Well I have to say this is the first. It's the first time I've ever ridden a bike straight through a steaming landfill. This place looks like a movie set. An apocalyptic movie set. My question is how is it always on fire? Does somebody come out here and light trash on fire or is it your duty when you drop off a load of trash to light it on fire? And I'm guessing as more and more trash accumulates they just keep stretching the landfill down this road right? Good morning washboard I missed you. The thing with washboard is you can't go fast. Pedaling harder is not going to help. You'll just rattle yourself to pieces. So you just kind of got to go slow and realize that this section of road is just not going to be very fast. It's also good to remember that nothing lasts forever. The washboards, the uphills, the downhills, the tailwinds, headwinds, smooth roads, it all comes and goes. Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it's really hard and when it's really hard you just kind of put your head down and relax and pedal and when it's really easy you just smile and enjoy the ride. This is kind of funny. My phone just dinged and I was like wait a second. I don't have service. Nothing should be dinging and it was just my alert saying your screen time was down 65% last week. That makes sense right? I don't have service. I'm not checking it all the time. The only thing I'm using this for is a little bit of navigation and to listen to audiobooks at night time. One of the benefits of bike touring definitely is being a bit disconnected. You know I loved being in the city back there having Wi-Fi, checking in with everybody, posting some photos but for the most part it's nice just to wake up and ride your bike and that's all you have to think about. You don't have to check your phone every 15 minutes or how often you do it and it's nice to be free from that and I'd like to you know try to incorporate a little bit more of the bike touring ethos into my everyday life where I'm not constantly checking my phone. It's definitely a difficult thing to do. We are addicted to these things. I am just steps away from the mission and these people said come on over. We're making lunch. She's making beans of course. She actually has fresh cheese and this is their home but they also serve cyclists as they go by and I noticed this Christmas tree and I asked them why it's still up and I said they keep it up until February 2nd. The senora said that now that the Baja divide has become a thing bikes come through here every few days and she's been serving them meals and they love getting to know people from all over the world and that's really cool. That's one of the benefits of a route like this is it brings the whole world to small town Mexico so they get to learn a little bit about every country. And every part of this meal is from this rancho from this land which always makes it taste better and more healthy for sure and it's served with love this family is just so sweet and kind and gentle and this meal was made in about 10 minutes of me showing up crazy how fast it can all happen. That was a total treat I didn't think anybody lived in this town I hadn't seen anybody until that family. Oh I am really full she poured it on kept giving me food that's how they do it here. Hello goats hi there rock and roll loop time I think it's about 85 degrees today full sun feels pretty good I mean it could be a lot worse I've ridden in much hotter temperatures but for the most part of this ride it's been in the 70s today's kind of the first day that's really like it's hot I can feel the heat I brought a couple tubes of these electrolyte goodies and it's time more than anything I just want some water that tastes fruity this one is great for him so let's do it. Let me go by hello shadow oh I'm working hard today I'm by far drinking more water today than any other day thumbs up sir shadow all right this is really cute I was riding by this cactus and I see a little hand drawn sign on it and it says cuiremos el agua and this person looks like they might be like spilling oil on the world so cuiremos el mundo we take care of the world and it says water down here that's pretty cute some rancho kids must have made that I wonder how long it's been up there I like it kids are starting to think about how we need to save this planet I think I can I think I can is this the place I should jump in probably oh yes the water is the perfect temperature sometimes the world just gives you what you need when you need it yes oh there's an amazing echo here thank you beautiful oasis let's go bike time to ride a little more oh hi shadow what are you doing over there now whoo we're getting there buddy we're getting there I just found paradise look at this place this is incredible I didn't think I'd find another one of these exactly where I wanted to stop today let's check out where we are at I did 63 miles road for six hours and nine minutes max speed was 25 miles an hour total climbing of 2944 average miles per hour 10 and it is 5 p.m what a great day what a great sunday I keep on saying that my camp spots can't get any better but this is a pretty good one I'm going to sleep really well tonight you know last night I was in a hotel and that's exciting to have a bed but I gotta say camping out somewhere like this better than any five-star hotel in the world heck this is the 50 million star hotel last time the Baja beat me up and spit me out this time I just I think I have a different attitude about things whatever is in front of me is there and I'll take it and whatever speed I go is the speed I go and it doesn't matter how far I get and I'm just appreciating the little things and I don't have saddle sores that's very nice