This New Habit

Buen Dia! I am going to take you on yesterday's bike route.

First we have to step over fat cat Cookies, who is sound asleep on the nice, cool bedroom floor. All 25 pounds of him were grateful that we left the mini split on all night long. Do not worry, he sleeps like this all the time......









I am going to do this kind of post ONE TIME ONLY. It has taken longer to draw the silly map than to do the post. Don't question street names and north, south, east, west stuff.
I barely had time for this. Not to mention I feel like a first grader in art class......

As you can see, my casa is on the left, the road route is yellow and La Aduana Arroyo is orange.



Here is the plan..............follow La Aduana, take the dirt road to El Fuerte, go on the opposite side of the Mirador, which is pink on the map, and hopefully connect somewhere with a road that will lead back home. We will circle the whole hill on which the Mirador sits......and take a couple of photos......


Senor and I consider ourselves experts on the back roads to El Fuerte. We have been all over them, sometimes many times over the same ones while we were lost. But while Senor is doing the driving, I am watching the little birds and pretty flowers. So, this will be a totally different experience as I am doing the driving. Also, we are not really planning to go that far. One back road trip in the truck to El Fuerte took about 12 hours. I am thinking, an hour, hour and a half.........

At 5:20am, we are cruising through town, the Mirador is up on top of that hill in the distance. We are going around to the other side of it.

We will take the dirt road that travels along the big La Aduana Arroyo. This is the arroyo that sustained the most damage from Hurricane Norbert, but other arroyos, Chalaton and Escondida, were also hit heavily. These are the 3 main arroyos where people's homes and businesses and vehicles and lives, were buried by mud or in some cases, simply washed away. Below, you can see the new arch that is being built to hold the foot bridge. There are several of these under construction now across La Aduana.A photo of the road we are traveling on. The sunday tiangus is held here.Work is continuing on the new sanctuary and the next photo shows what the finished building will look like. The sun is just beginning to crest the hill tops.On top of this hillside is the Mirador. From here, we can't see the flag post or structures, so we are already beginning to go around it. The Mirador is the highest point in town and I have shown you pictures of Alamos in earlier posts, taken from the Mirador. You can see the arroyo is filled with small streams of water and alot of algae and other green stuff.These cars are left over from the hurricane.From here, we can see the flagpole on top of the Mirador. We are getting ready to ride across the arroyo and onto the road to El Fuerte. Today I have my cell phone and we have been gone for one hour. It is 6:30am.

By 7am we are looking back at the road we have just traveled, thinking maybe we should have paid better attention to the road sign nailed to the gate way back there. It seems like we are going too far away from the Mirador.

Okay, really time to go back and look.

Alot of back tracking. But it is a nice, cool morning, the sky is slightly overcast.

Back at the sign by 7:30am.

New old bike does not know which way to go. Right or left?

I think, what would Senor do?

The sign on the gate says 'mirador', but the arrow is a little strange. Left or right? Down, or is that up?.....maybe that means straight ahead...............

The road to the right is going downhill.

The road to the left goes uphill. I think Senor would go left. We are going right.

We are looking good. We have found the main road to the Mirador and made a complete circle, well a circle with alot of detours, around it. Now we just have to go downhill on the cobblestone road to hook up with a nice smooth street, somewhere, to get home.
A long swig of topochico mineral water, batteries on the camera are pooped out so no photo can be taken to show the road to the Mirador. It looks just like this one, only it goes straight up. 8:10am.

We are going down and it feels like we are riding over thousands of little baby topes.

Back at the casa, a battery change on the camera and the cat is mad because we woke him up.

A quick note in my journal tells me I need: a compass, an odometer, extra camera batteries, a review on how to change a flat tire and all the equipment neccessary and a knock on wood, thank goodness that didn't happen this morning, a new day pack with more pockets, to bring the bike lock keys in case I need to lock the bike and hitch a ride to town, mas aqua and well, a little food might be nice because it looks like this bike riding stuff is becoming a habit.

que tengas buen dia! linda lou