We watched the sun rise over the high-rises of Cancun's \"Zona Hotelera\" from our place's breakfast room before hitting the road. The ferry ride to Isla Mujeres didn't take long, and since we'd be staying there for three nights, we were more particular than usual in our selection of a room. We scored big-time with the Rocamor, a funky little place perched above the crashing surf. We quickly learned that the place to be on Isla Mujeres was on the beach (which even included a homoesque section full of smiling rent-a-boys), where we spent the better part of four torpid days vainly trying to fill in the gaps of our cyclists' tans and familiarizing ourselves with the geography of the local happy hours.
On our first full day on the tiny island, we exhausted the place's touring and cycling possibilities by 11am, having visited the lame Mayan ruin and a nearby snorkeling spot at the opposite tip. After that, it didn't take us long for us to learn that neither of us is cut out for beach vacations. The days seemed excruciatingly long for want of things to do. Reading, writing and drinking were our chief activities on Isla Mujeres. I suppose we attained our goal of decompressing after so many days of riding, but I think we both would have preferred more riding.
We were almost relieved when the day came to leave for the airport. I was intent on getting there by bike, while Fred kept wailing about a taxi. Our extremely limited funds necessitated the former option, though the pedal through the heinous Hotel Zone against an evil wind under threatening skies was anything but fun. It seemed to take forever; indeed, we were late checking in. The woman at the counter charged me for both the boxes and the transport of the bikes, and I was too tired to argue with her. On the plane back home, I could think of little else but our next bike trip.
Here it is, our trip was upon us. Craziness pervaded the last days in Santa Cruz. From closing our house, moving everything into storage, working out the details of our new web host, saying our good byes to finally getting into the car and driving off, we barely maintained sanity, most of the time.... The most trying moment, for Andy mostly, was the dreadful parking lot incident on our way south to Los Angeles and San Diego. As we pulled out of the burger joint in Salinas a pole leapt into the path of the truck as Andy backed out of the parking space.
As fate would have it the bikes were between the truck and the pole. Overcome by the initial shock of seeing my new bike with only 500 miles on it looking more kin to a pretzel than a touring bike we nearly cried in desperation. It took a few moments to convince Andy that jumping into traffic on the freeway was not a good solution to the problem. At first we thought both bikes were destroyed, but closer inspection made us confident that we could build one bike from the two damaged ones. On our way to LA we ordered a new one to be delivered the next day and once in LA enlisted the help of an off-duty bike repairman to help us build Frankenbike from the two damaged ones.
On the positive side, we would have lots of spare parts after all of this. A few days' R&R in LA hanging with friends and family put us back into the spirit, and we made our way to San Diego with my mom to meet Andy's.