Don´t Cry for Us, Argentina

We left Difunta Correa in the dark, hours before daybreak. We had miles and miles to cover that day.

On the way out of town, we saw that a bakery was open, so we stopped for bread. The baker had just flipped a batch of semitas off the grill when I walked in. She did not seem surprised to see me. I wondered if Difunta Correa was a town of early risers or runners who liked to train before first light. I asked for four semitas, and she tossed them in a bag; her fingers were smudged black from the ash and soot of the parrilla. The semitas are like round popovers, but rise like puff pastry and break apart into soft, thin layers when you split them open. They were warm and steamed out of the paper bag and smelled like the bread my mother used to make on Sunday mornings when I was a child. I tucked them inside my handlebar bag, where all good things go, looking forward to having them glazed with raspberry jam or dulce de leche for breakfast on the side of the road in a few hours.

Daylight burning

There was no cloud cover so the air was cool on my skin as I rode. It was impossible to tell just how far the land rolled away from us, or how big the desert was, or where the sun would rise. I liked that. Our makeshift headlights on our bike racks carved tunnels of light out of the darkness, the only source of illumination in the wilderness, save for the pinpricks of stars scattered above us.

It seemed as if Deputy Dawg and I and the baker were the only people awake and moving in the world.

I felt a delicious thrill riding in the dark, let loose in the desert at that early hour, as though we were getting away with something that had been lost to us, though we'd not known it until just then. I felt as free and happy as I did when I was 8 years old, and had just learned to ride with my hands in the air, finding perfect balance between the forces in the world that keep you on the ground and those that have no such hold on you. When you are 8 years old and discovering your powers, the world seems more wondrous than anything you could have dreamed up, glittering with joys and secrets, which, if you were lucky or observant or both, would be revealed to you, one by one, over time. Riding out of Difunta Correa in the dark, cool morning felt like that.

We thought we would ride into Marvaes, about 100 km away, and stop for lunch, but when we saw Marvaes was nothing more than a few stone houses and a small market, we continued on.

The terrain was hilly, the river and creek beds were dry as bone. We climbed long, steep pitches of rock and scrub and I kept my eyes on the road, which always helps me to focus on the moment and nothing else -- not the next few seconds or those at the end of the day, after the ride and its struggles -- and at the top of the climb, I let myself look up, and there, in front of me, crossing the road about 20 or so feet away, was a horse. His mane was shiny in the sun and he was white with patches of brown. He showed no interest in me; he just crossed over from one side of the desert to the other and then he was gone, a spray of dust in the distance, as if he had suddenly remembered something he needed to run to. He was the most beautiful thing I'd seen that day.

When we arrived in Astica, it was 3:30 pm and we had covered 150 km. All the shops and the markets and kiosks were closed and we could not tell if there was camping in town. A woman who sold jam and chutneys and sweets on the edge of town told us that we could get showers and something to eat at one of the kiosks. She struggled to explain where the kiosk was, so she called one of her kids and told her to accompany us. Her name was Lourdes, she was 11, and seemed to be very popular for when we returned to the street, the Dep and I were suddenly surrounded by kids, about 18 or so, ranging from ages 7 to 12. We felt like Pied Pipers as we made our way to the kiosk, the kids chattering and laughing, curious about our bikes and our gear and about us. The girls were shy and sweet, whispering secrets to each other, the boys bold and full of talk, wheeling their mountain bikes around ours. They seemed to be quite certain we were at a great disadvantage with our touring bikes, which had skinny tires and no shock absorbers. As unflashy as they come. They smirked and gave each other the eye. It was clear the Dep and I had flunked out of the school of cool. They told us as much; we smiled and told them, si, si, claro. You are right.

The kiosk was closed, and so we hopped back on our bikes and waved goodbye to our young amigos who wished us well and told us we had to come back to see the town when everything was open, as though we could expect to see something truly marvelous then. Kids are wonderful like that -- the best things in life are the things they've always known, like their town, their friends, and their mountain bikes with tricked-out shock absorbers.

Our day passed in that way, each town or campsite that we rolled into either dashed our expectations or were without toilets, and so we would move on until we found ourselves in San Augustin del Valle de Fertil at dusk, exactly 13 hours from when we started that morning. We biked 200 km that day, our longest ride yet.

There are some days when you hop on your bike and you feel like you could ride forever, and the day answers in kind, opening a little bigger and bigger with each hour, unrolling beneath you like a dream you hope you'll remember always. And part of the feeling of forever is because you can't see how big the world is, you have no reference for anything -- not the stars or the sound of the desert in the dark -- but it's also because you remember the joy of riding with your hands in the air for the first time and remember again that a day of such new-found powers could lead you anywhere.

-- Mad Dawg copyright 2007