As I pondered over how to conclude our yammerings over these past five months I found myself thinking of Seinfeld… How do we end the blog about nothing? How do we end a story that has no arch or plot but is based solely on the minutia of everyday life? I decided it should end just like the show did: with some truths about the stars of the show and what they did (and didn’t) learn about their experiences.
Entonces, here are 10 things I know to be true:
1. With the help of four boats we rode our motos through 14 countries in 138 days. Ernesto’s silhouette, complete with guitarra, led us 20,865 kilometers (12,965 miles) from our driveway to Ushuaia, Argentina. Almost nothing was as we expected and we were delighted to be corrected. When someone asks me about the trip my answer will be “it was everything”, as no matter what adjective I can think of is an appropriate description for at least one significant moment. The Americas are rewarding to explore, and for us that was because of its scenery, wildlife, and people.
I learned a new word on this trip: chorography. It means the mapping and description of regions or districts, and I think it originated as a very practical word intended for people seeking some sort of economic outcome. But I like thinking about our trip as “experiential chorography”. We mapped the flowers, trees, and rocks; the mariposas, mammals, and birds; the crops, snacks, and cuisine; the way people say hello and goodbye and the styles of both traditional and modern dress. Ernesto and I got to palpably and emotionally chorograph the Americas from Portland to Patagonia, and it was easy to pick favorites in these regards. So to the geology of Bolivia, the flora and fauna of Mexico, and the people of Nicaragua, we are so grateful we experienced you. To Colombia, you had it All. Muchas gracias por todo.
2. This trip wreaked havoc on my body, inside and out. My intestines are coated with a layer of processed meat products. My midsection is a squishy layer of Pringles and french fries. I haven’t exercised in five months and my legs are doughy and weak. For the past three months I’ve had too many “ah-ha” moments where I realized I wasn’t bloated, I just got fatter. My upper arms have this little pudge on the back side that makes them stick and slide against where my lats used to be. My boobs are a little big bigger, but not in any way that makes them better. My inner thighs don’t rub together when I walk, but it's damn close. My back hurts. A lot. My crotch and hips are still so sore that sometimes in the mornings my walk is more like a waddle. My snot is no longer shades of black from truck exhaust, but who knows if we did long term damage to our lungs. And I totally broke my foot in Panama. I think I had to lie to myself about it because stopping our trip to let it heal for a few weeks just wasn’t an option. Was it all worth it? Absolutely. I earned this body.
3. There is a serious amount of infrastructure, time, effort, and land mass dedicated to feeding the human population. Seemingly every acre of land that can be used is being used to produce an edible product. In the lush soils of Ecuador it was lucrative crops like coffee and strawberries and in the sandy, rocky landscapes of Argentina it was staples like cattle and sheep. As long as there is a little bit of infrastructure to collect and move what is being grown, people have found a way to use the land. Without that desolate highway in Northern Peru, those chicken farms could not exist in that driest of dry desert... For the 20K km of the Americas that we saw, we estimate that at least half of it and its people are dedicated to producing food. It was charming at first, learning first hand what different crops smelt like and how far off into the hills the farm patterns would stretch. But ultimately, it made us sad.
We had three types of “lows” when it came to eating on this trip. The first was when all the food around us was going to make us sick, either mentally (i.e., pizza) or physiologically (i.e., fresh vegetables). The second was when we “ate what the locals ate”, which was often palatable physiologically, but not mentally (i.e., hot dogs or shrimp). Our third was eating at “fast food” type places, whether that be a local take-away counter or a USAmerican chain. This food was not only highly salted, sugared, and/or processed, but it also involved horrific animal proteins like Peruvian chickens. Sadly, this was the most commonly available food to us (see point #2 above). Our best and rarest food was when we “ate what the locals ate” and it was both delicious and sustainable, like the woman who killed one of her house chickens in San Blas, Mexico. We felt great about eating that chicken, both ethically and because E and I got the protein we desperately needed from days of nothing but potatoes and diarrhea. She raised her chickens, people bought her chickens, she killed her chickens (probably with her bare hands), and when she got money from the sale of chickens she raised more chickens.
I used to feel good about buying organic fruits and veggies from the Americas, but now I’ve seen the illusion of some of it for myself. The organic bananas of Costa Rica for example, they have to put a plastic bag around each banana bunch to prevent the bugs and birds from eating them. So yeah, no chemicals are used, but they use a new plastic bag per bunch, per tree, per acre…There are easily millions organic bananas produced in Central America every year, so without knowing the details of each banana I have to make a guess and choose between what is right for my health vs. what is right for my planet. And then there are the adverse cultural effects we can have. For example, quinoa farming in Bolivia; if I eat more quinoa I am encouraging the locals to abandon alpaca ranching and engage in devastating boom and bust farming, and if I eat less quinoa I am reducing the demand on a market that has given Bolivians a new chance at wealth and prosperity. Lose vs. Lose.
Our local grocery store in Playa del Carmen is a Walmart (seriously). And like all Walmarts, there are rows and piles of fruits, meats, and processed goods getting purchased and restocked every day, if not twice a day. We’ve upscaled the production of animals and vegetables to feed billions and billions of people. Yes I’ve read a few books and watched a few documentaries, but I’ve lived in ignorance of how and where our food comes from. And maybe I couldn’t really appreciate it until I saw so much of it with my own eyes. I know these issues aren’t new, Ernie and I just understand them differently and deeply after this trip.
4. In June my mental state was basically that I wanted to take a big vacation and escape from my everyday life. Academia, especially since starting my tenure track position, had ripped out a chunk of my soul and I needed and deserved to spend part of my sabbatical getting it back. So off Ernie and I went, and our goal was each other and fun and adventure. Now that our trip is over, I have to come to realize that in addition to it being a very emotional and personal experience, it was also a very academic one. I studied ornithology and geology. I read the Voyage of the Beagle in situ. I saw, smelt, and touched flora and fauna that I had previously only read about in books. I learned about the history, social strife, and political issues in countries I didn’t know anything about six months ago. Tupac became something other than a rapper and Keiko became something other than an orca. I got pretty dang fluent in another language, and we navigated the America’s without GPS and solely with paper maps. If knowledge and perspective and experience aren’t the epitome of academia, then I don’t know what is.
5. I like thinking about global patterns, and I think the Americas are like a sandwich. The USA and Canada are one slice of bread and Chile and Argentina are the other. White bread or brown, most everyone has their own car and they drive for leisure at least occasionally. Both genders regularly wear impractical shoes and people run for exercise. Goods are generally sold in stores rather than on the street or out of their arms and antiques are a thing. Garbage gets picked up and dealt with, and most people recycle. Most people have cell phones that work almost everywhere, and as long as it is in their pocket they aren’t really alone. Communities went out of their way to protect historical structures, urban sights, and natural landscapes for people to visit in a (mostly) sustainable way. It is civilized, comfortable, safe, and clean. There is order and structure, and one would never park a motorcycle in a ballroom.
Mexico to Bolivia is the middle and customizable part of the American sandwich and it is whatever you want it to be. It can be simple and classic like ham and cheese or something batty like peanut butter, tuna, and mango. It is largely without the rules of the north and the south and with that there is both freedom and vulnerability. It can be unpredictable and unpretentious. It can be dramatic and surprising. There are still many places that are, without hyperbole, actually in the middle of nowhere. Receipts and boletas and facturas are really important, and the toilet paper can smell like vanilla, lavender, roses, or almonds. Business hours are rarely posted, and even if they are, they are merely a suggestion. Many of the people are overtly warm and welcoming to strangers and tourists, and they probably do think that gringos can “si claro siga!” because if they can do it, why can’t we? Its modern common threads are motos, corn, and chaos. The small things feel really big and the big things make you feel really small. I can’t emphasize that last point enough as it was the most invigorating and gut wrenching part of this experience; the small things felt so, so big and the big things made me feel so very, very small. The middle part of the Americas got to me in a way that bread couldn’t ever do. And I love carbs.
This trip has made me cynical about travel. There is little that is unique about anything any of us do when it comes to exploring. We are such predictable creatures… we stop at the same miradors, buy the same souveniers, and in the age of social media and shameless self promotion, we take the same pictures and selfies. We have homogenized it all into a generic experience that absolutely anyone can have. If one wants emotional growth during travel, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve it in “the bread”. I think it will only happen when one immerses themselves in the raw and naked feelings of a place that is not familiar. You have to leave your comfortable little world. Luckily for me I got it all on this trip. In Honduras, Peru, and Bolivia I went to places I didn’t think I was strong enough to go, and I am so very thankful. And then when I was too lazy to invest and all I wanted was “to take”, I had the Galapagos Islands, the fjords of Chile, and the beaches of Mexico. Again, gracias por todo.
6. The saddest thing about our travels through the Americas is the perros. What humans have done to perros in all of the countries we visited is heartbreaking. As a species we spent thousands of years domesticating this animal. We bred out traits related to aggression and selfishness and selected for loyalty and purpose. We fed them, making them incapable of hunting for themselves. We took away the sole purpose of a wild animal’s life when we decided if and how they were going to reproduce. Then, in one of the most callous group-efforts in history, we tossed them aside. We left them to struggle in the wild after we took away their wildness. We took away every tool they had to deal with the struggle to live and breed, and in a sadistic action left them to fend for themselves. It was cruel. Merciless. And now their behaviors are awry and ill-natured. Their neurobiology is abnormal. They don’t understand cars and humans. Their social structure is not aligned with their sense of territoriality. They are stuck in a place that is neither natural or unnatural. It is an ethical crisis that seemingly no one is doing anything about, including me. That beautiful black puppy that trotted alongside of us on the autopista in Northern Argentina… so tiny and frail and so desperate for help. I left him behind and I will never be ok with that. I cared more about our trip and how much we still had ahead of us that wouldn’t allow us to have a puppy that I made the choice not to save him. I am ashamed to be part of the species that created something so dependent on us and then so savagely let it become what it is today. Based on the amount of perros we saw, their sheer numbers prevents me from having any hope about this ethical crisis. I grieve for their future.
(pause)
7. The worst thing about the Americas is the environmental crises they are are facing with their plastic waste. It has been a daily sight, and some days and countries have been far worse than others. As a privileged Northerner, all of my reactions have been dismissive… like “how barbaric of them” or “they HAVE to know better”. Particularly from Mexico to Bolivia, plastic waste was a part of every landscape and every town. We’ve seen children and businessmen drop plastic trash out their car window or to the street below as they walked by. We’ve seen women of all ages sweep garbage into the street. We’ve seen too many citizens toss their plastic bag of who-knows-what anywhere and everywhere that wasn’t environmentally considerate. Too many communities are doing nothing about the pollution they cause in their own soils and streams. It is simply everywhere.
Before this trip I thought I was doing ok as far as respecting the Earth. I drive a Subaru, use Burt’s Bees, religiously use reusable bags, etc. Now I see that I can’t possibly consider myself an environmentalist if I drink Diet Coke out of plastic bottles and regularly order from Amazon Prime. One of the books I read on this trip was “Plastic” by Susan Freinkel. Right at the beginning she writes “if it is not made out of animal, plant, or mineral, it is made out of plastic”. Woah. I mentally went through our side cases and from toothbrush to stuff sac to all our clothing, it is all made of plastic. *Everything Ernie and I have survived on for the past five months is plastic* Woah. Much of the book focuses on USAmericans because statistics are easy to come by (compared to lets say, El Salvador). I don’t have the numbers, but I bet that even though the average Salvadorian throws their plastic waste on the street, they use a fraction of what the average Portlander uses and thinks they properly threw away or recycled. The amount USAmericans use is appalling: every year we consume an amount of plastic equal to the mass of every USAmerican. Soon we will reach trillions of pounds per year. It is an amount our Earth cannot handle, and we, as the in the global “we”, aren’t doing anything about it. We are shopping and eating and decorating and traveling and creating more plastic. Like the perros, I have no hope for this crisis. Soon the plastic traffic circles in Bolivia or the bulldozed street-side mounds in Peru will be the norm. The Americas are fated to choke to death on plastic.
8. If you listen real close, you can hear me swallowing my pride; my Keene’s were really comfortable and practical shoes. Sigh. When we got to Mexico we both bought a pair of cheap flip flops ($100 pesos, or about $1.25 USD). Day one I felt guilty about buying a cheap plastic product (see point #7 above). Day two the plastic strap rubbed lots of skin off my feet. Day three I wrapped my feet in band aids and tape. Day four Ernesto cut up one of my tshirts and wrapped the strap to try and make them soft and comfortable, and while it did help a little, I still couldn’t walk right and hobbled around in pain. By day five I had enough of a sunkiss that I could have been left alone by the tour salesmen on La Avenida, but my gimp was a false cue that it was my first soft-footed gringo day in flip flops. And by day six I had a visible blue bruise in the shape of a Y on the top of my feet. None of this would have happened in my Keene’s. They were ugly as hell but they were full of arch support and toe protection from the uneven curbs and construction bits that fill the Americas. Fucking Keene’s.
9. I am really excited for life ahead. This trip has reminded me how great my life is. Ernesto and I live in a nice house in a wonderful city. Our home has an ornery cat, comfortable furniture, art, hot water, and ice. We have great friends and good jobs. Yes, my work causes me stress and I imagine it won’t be too long until the appreciation of my washer and dryer will fade and my frustration with university politics will grow… But when it happens, I am happy to have earned a new and powerful weapon to deal with it. A new and powerful weapon in what was previously a small, pathetic arsenal of “ways for Tara to calm down”. It's really corny, but my new weapon is the rhythm and hum of my bike in sixth gear. Every gear on my bike has a different feel and sound, and I know them now as part of my own body. Sixth is repetitive and smooth and without the eagerness or tension of the other gears, and I can easily close my eyes and go there. I imagine it is similar to the “yoga calm” or the “meditation zen”, neither of which I have ever been patient enough to experience.
I know I worry too much… sometimes it gets in the way of my life. Ernie brutally but appropriately asked me on the first week of this trip if anything is ever as bad as it is in my imagination, and the answer is no. Absolutely no. It pains me to think about how much I worried on this trip, and I feel now how it was all for nothing. When I get home, I am hopeful it will be easier to not worry. It doesn’t matter if I burn the toast or if I didn’t get to reply to all my emails because if I’ve had my morning run, a hot shower, and wearing some clean clothes it is going to be a banner day.
10. Up and down we stayed committed to the ride. Relative to my life at home, the ups were so much higher and the downs were so much lower. When I first starting writing this blog it was mostly to keep a record of what we had done and seen so that we would remember the details of Grandma and Grandpa’s Grand Adventure. But as the day’s and week’s events became more and more foreign and drastic compared to a normal day (travel or otherwise), this blog very quickly became something that I needed to help me process. Up and down we very intensely participated in our lives. And I’ve never shared such dramatic, all day, every day experiences with another, much less for five months straight. With just a few hiccups our amplified sin wave took us through the Americas...
Sometimes I go too fast, and sometimes Ernesto doesn’t go fast enough, but working together we have the perfect tempo. There is nothing we can’t handle as a team, and I’m crazy happy and grateful we have found each other. After dealing with all the ups and downs from top to bottom, I have no doubt that we can and will handle anything ahead. I never thought we would be the kind of couple to have a song, but we are. Unfortunately, our song is “One Less Lonely Girl” by Justin Bieber.
A few nights ago we were relaxing on the couch. My head was in his lap and he was running his fingers through my hair. “Fast and Furious 7” was on TV.
He asks, “Would you like to get married?”
I said, as if it should be obvious, “Yes!”
…
“Ernesto, do you have any final thoughts?”
“The day we arrived in Playa del Carmen we were walking down a pedestrian-only souvenir shop street, and a store front hustler spotted my still shiny white legs and shouted ‘Welcome to your first day in Mexico my friend!’
I like that actually our first day together in Mexico was crossing the border in Tecate. After a short, hot, desert ride we took a break and bought a Coke at an isolated minimarket; as the woman behind the register handed us our change (pesos!), she smiled and wished us a “Buen Viaje…”
Entonces, here are 10 things I know to be true:
1. With the help of four boats we rode our motos through 14 countries in 138 days. Ernesto’s silhouette, complete with guitarra, led us 20,865 kilometers (12,965 miles) from our driveway to Ushuaia, Argentina. Almost nothing was as we expected and we were delighted to be corrected. When someone asks me about the trip my answer will be “it was everything”, as no matter what adjective I can think of is an appropriate description for at least one significant moment. The Americas are rewarding to explore, and for us that was because of its scenery, wildlife, and people.
I learned a new word on this trip: chorography. It means the mapping and description of regions or districts, and I think it originated as a very practical word intended for people seeking some sort of economic outcome. But I like thinking about our trip as “experiential chorography”. We mapped the flowers, trees, and rocks; the mariposas, mammals, and birds; the crops, snacks, and cuisine; the way people say hello and goodbye and the styles of both traditional and modern dress. Ernesto and I got to palpably and emotionally chorograph the Americas from Portland to Patagonia, and it was easy to pick favorites in these regards. So to the geology of Bolivia, the flora and fauna of Mexico, and the people of Nicaragua, we are so grateful we experienced you. To Colombia, you had it All. Muchas gracias por todo.
2. This trip wreaked havoc on my body, inside and out. My intestines are coated with a layer of processed meat products. My midsection is a squishy layer of Pringles and french fries. I haven’t exercised in five months and my legs are doughy and weak. For the past three months I’ve had too many “ah-ha” moments where I realized I wasn’t bloated, I just got fatter. My upper arms have this little pudge on the back side that makes them stick and slide against where my lats used to be. My boobs are a little big bigger, but not in any way that makes them better. My inner thighs don’t rub together when I walk, but it's damn close. My back hurts. A lot. My crotch and hips are still so sore that sometimes in the mornings my walk is more like a waddle. My snot is no longer shades of black from truck exhaust, but who knows if we did long term damage to our lungs. And I totally broke my foot in Panama. I think I had to lie to myself about it because stopping our trip to let it heal for a few weeks just wasn’t an option. Was it all worth it? Absolutely. I earned this body.
3. There is a serious amount of infrastructure, time, effort, and land mass dedicated to feeding the human population. Seemingly every acre of land that can be used is being used to produce an edible product. In the lush soils of Ecuador it was lucrative crops like coffee and strawberries and in the sandy, rocky landscapes of Argentina it was staples like cattle and sheep. As long as there is a little bit of infrastructure to collect and move what is being grown, people have found a way to use the land. Without that desolate highway in Northern Peru, those chicken farms could not exist in that driest of dry desert... For the 20K km of the Americas that we saw, we estimate that at least half of it and its people are dedicated to producing food. It was charming at first, learning first hand what different crops smelt like and how far off into the hills the farm patterns would stretch. But ultimately, it made us sad.
We had three types of “lows” when it came to eating on this trip. The first was when all the food around us was going to make us sick, either mentally (i.e., pizza) or physiologically (i.e., fresh vegetables). The second was when we “ate what the locals ate”, which was often palatable physiologically, but not mentally (i.e., hot dogs or shrimp). Our third was eating at “fast food” type places, whether that be a local take-away counter or a USAmerican chain. This food was not only highly salted, sugared, and/or processed, but it also involved horrific animal proteins like Peruvian chickens. Sadly, this was the most commonly available food to us (see point #2 above). Our best and rarest food was when we “ate what the locals ate” and it was both delicious and sustainable, like the woman who killed one of her house chickens in San Blas, Mexico. We felt great about eating that chicken, both ethically and because E and I got the protein we desperately needed from days of nothing but potatoes and diarrhea. She raised her chickens, people bought her chickens, she killed her chickens (probably with her bare hands), and when she got money from the sale of chickens she raised more chickens.
I used to feel good about buying organic fruits and veggies from the Americas, but now I’ve seen the illusion of some of it for myself. The organic bananas of Costa Rica for example, they have to put a plastic bag around each banana bunch to prevent the bugs and birds from eating them. So yeah, no chemicals are used, but they use a new plastic bag per bunch, per tree, per acre…There are easily millions organic bananas produced in Central America every year, so without knowing the details of each banana I have to make a guess and choose between what is right for my health vs. what is right for my planet. And then there are the adverse cultural effects we can have. For example, quinoa farming in Bolivia; if I eat more quinoa I am encouraging the locals to abandon alpaca ranching and engage in devastating boom and bust farming, and if I eat less quinoa I am reducing the demand on a market that has given Bolivians a new chance at wealth and prosperity. Lose vs. Lose.
Our local grocery store in Playa del Carmen is a Walmart (seriously). And like all Walmarts, there are rows and piles of fruits, meats, and processed goods getting purchased and restocked every day, if not twice a day. We’ve upscaled the production of animals and vegetables to feed billions and billions of people. Yes I’ve read a few books and watched a few documentaries, but I’ve lived in ignorance of how and where our food comes from. And maybe I couldn’t really appreciate it until I saw so much of it with my own eyes. I know these issues aren’t new, Ernie and I just understand them differently and deeply after this trip.
4. In June my mental state was basically that I wanted to take a big vacation and escape from my everyday life. Academia, especially since starting my tenure track position, had ripped out a chunk of my soul and I needed and deserved to spend part of my sabbatical getting it back. So off Ernie and I went, and our goal was each other and fun and adventure. Now that our trip is over, I have to come to realize that in addition to it being a very emotional and personal experience, it was also a very academic one. I studied ornithology and geology. I read the Voyage of the Beagle in situ. I saw, smelt, and touched flora and fauna that I had previously only read about in books. I learned about the history, social strife, and political issues in countries I didn’t know anything about six months ago. Tupac became something other than a rapper and Keiko became something other than an orca. I got pretty dang fluent in another language, and we navigated the America’s without GPS and solely with paper maps. If knowledge and perspective and experience aren’t the epitome of academia, then I don’t know what is.
5. I like thinking about global patterns, and I think the Americas are like a sandwich. The USA and Canada are one slice of bread and Chile and Argentina are the other. White bread or brown, most everyone has their own car and they drive for leisure at least occasionally. Both genders regularly wear impractical shoes and people run for exercise. Goods are generally sold in stores rather than on the street or out of their arms and antiques are a thing. Garbage gets picked up and dealt with, and most people recycle. Most people have cell phones that work almost everywhere, and as long as it is in their pocket they aren’t really alone. Communities went out of their way to protect historical structures, urban sights, and natural landscapes for people to visit in a (mostly) sustainable way. It is civilized, comfortable, safe, and clean. There is order and structure, and one would never park a motorcycle in a ballroom.
Mexico to Bolivia is the middle and customizable part of the American sandwich and it is whatever you want it to be. It can be simple and classic like ham and cheese or something batty like peanut butter, tuna, and mango. It is largely without the rules of the north and the south and with that there is both freedom and vulnerability. It can be unpredictable and unpretentious. It can be dramatic and surprising. There are still many places that are, without hyperbole, actually in the middle of nowhere. Receipts and boletas and facturas are really important, and the toilet paper can smell like vanilla, lavender, roses, or almonds. Business hours are rarely posted, and even if they are, they are merely a suggestion. Many of the people are overtly warm and welcoming to strangers and tourists, and they probably do think that gringos can “si claro siga!” because if they can do it, why can’t we? Its modern common threads are motos, corn, and chaos. The small things feel really big and the big things make you feel really small. I can’t emphasize that last point enough as it was the most invigorating and gut wrenching part of this experience; the small things felt so, so big and the big things made me feel so very, very small. The middle part of the Americas got to me in a way that bread couldn’t ever do. And I love carbs.
This trip has made me cynical about travel. There is little that is unique about anything any of us do when it comes to exploring. We are such predictable creatures… we stop at the same miradors, buy the same souveniers, and in the age of social media and shameless self promotion, we take the same pictures and selfies. We have homogenized it all into a generic experience that absolutely anyone can have. If one wants emotional growth during travel, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve it in “the bread”. I think it will only happen when one immerses themselves in the raw and naked feelings of a place that is not familiar. You have to leave your comfortable little world. Luckily for me I got it all on this trip. In Honduras, Peru, and Bolivia I went to places I didn’t think I was strong enough to go, and I am so very thankful. And then when I was too lazy to invest and all I wanted was “to take”, I had the Galapagos Islands, the fjords of Chile, and the beaches of Mexico. Again, gracias por todo.
6. The saddest thing about our travels through the Americas is the perros. What humans have done to perros in all of the countries we visited is heartbreaking. As a species we spent thousands of years domesticating this animal. We bred out traits related to aggression and selfishness and selected for loyalty and purpose. We fed them, making them incapable of hunting for themselves. We took away the sole purpose of a wild animal’s life when we decided if and how they were going to reproduce. Then, in one of the most callous group-efforts in history, we tossed them aside. We left them to struggle in the wild after we took away their wildness. We took away every tool they had to deal with the struggle to live and breed, and in a sadistic action left them to fend for themselves. It was cruel. Merciless. And now their behaviors are awry and ill-natured. Their neurobiology is abnormal. They don’t understand cars and humans. Their social structure is not aligned with their sense of territoriality. They are stuck in a place that is neither natural or unnatural. It is an ethical crisis that seemingly no one is doing anything about, including me. That beautiful black puppy that trotted alongside of us on the autopista in Northern Argentina… so tiny and frail and so desperate for help. I left him behind and I will never be ok with that. I cared more about our trip and how much we still had ahead of us that wouldn’t allow us to have a puppy that I made the choice not to save him. I am ashamed to be part of the species that created something so dependent on us and then so savagely let it become what it is today. Based on the amount of perros we saw, their sheer numbers prevents me from having any hope about this ethical crisis. I grieve for their future.
(pause)
7. The worst thing about the Americas is the environmental crises they are are facing with their plastic waste. It has been a daily sight, and some days and countries have been far worse than others. As a privileged Northerner, all of my reactions have been dismissive… like “how barbaric of them” or “they HAVE to know better”. Particularly from Mexico to Bolivia, plastic waste was a part of every landscape and every town. We’ve seen children and businessmen drop plastic trash out their car window or to the street below as they walked by. We’ve seen women of all ages sweep garbage into the street. We’ve seen too many citizens toss their plastic bag of who-knows-what anywhere and everywhere that wasn’t environmentally considerate. Too many communities are doing nothing about the pollution they cause in their own soils and streams. It is simply everywhere.
Before this trip I thought I was doing ok as far as respecting the Earth. I drive a Subaru, use Burt’s Bees, religiously use reusable bags, etc. Now I see that I can’t possibly consider myself an environmentalist if I drink Diet Coke out of plastic bottles and regularly order from Amazon Prime. One of the books I read on this trip was “Plastic” by Susan Freinkel. Right at the beginning she writes “if it is not made out of animal, plant, or mineral, it is made out of plastic”. Woah. I mentally went through our side cases and from toothbrush to stuff sac to all our clothing, it is all made of plastic. *Everything Ernie and I have survived on for the past five months is plastic* Woah. Much of the book focuses on USAmericans because statistics are easy to come by (compared to lets say, El Salvador). I don’t have the numbers, but I bet that even though the average Salvadorian throws their plastic waste on the street, they use a fraction of what the average Portlander uses and thinks they properly threw away or recycled. The amount USAmericans use is appalling: every year we consume an amount of plastic equal to the mass of every USAmerican. Soon we will reach trillions of pounds per year. It is an amount our Earth cannot handle, and we, as the in the global “we”, aren’t doing anything about it. We are shopping and eating and decorating and traveling and creating more plastic. Like the perros, I have no hope for this crisis. Soon the plastic traffic circles in Bolivia or the bulldozed street-side mounds in Peru will be the norm. The Americas are fated to choke to death on plastic.
8. If you listen real close, you can hear me swallowing my pride; my Keene’s were really comfortable and practical shoes. Sigh. When we got to Mexico we both bought a pair of cheap flip flops ($100 pesos, or about $1.25 USD). Day one I felt guilty about buying a cheap plastic product (see point #7 above). Day two the plastic strap rubbed lots of skin off my feet. Day three I wrapped my feet in band aids and tape. Day four Ernesto cut up one of my tshirts and wrapped the strap to try and make them soft and comfortable, and while it did help a little, I still couldn’t walk right and hobbled around in pain. By day five I had enough of a sunkiss that I could have been left alone by the tour salesmen on La Avenida, but my gimp was a false cue that it was my first soft-footed gringo day in flip flops. And by day six I had a visible blue bruise in the shape of a Y on the top of my feet. None of this would have happened in my Keene’s. They were ugly as hell but they were full of arch support and toe protection from the uneven curbs and construction bits that fill the Americas. Fucking Keene’s.
9. I am really excited for life ahead. This trip has reminded me how great my life is. Ernesto and I live in a nice house in a wonderful city. Our home has an ornery cat, comfortable furniture, art, hot water, and ice. We have great friends and good jobs. Yes, my work causes me stress and I imagine it won’t be too long until the appreciation of my washer and dryer will fade and my frustration with university politics will grow… But when it happens, I am happy to have earned a new and powerful weapon to deal with it. A new and powerful weapon in what was previously a small, pathetic arsenal of “ways for Tara to calm down”. It's really corny, but my new weapon is the rhythm and hum of my bike in sixth gear. Every gear on my bike has a different feel and sound, and I know them now as part of my own body. Sixth is repetitive and smooth and without the eagerness or tension of the other gears, and I can easily close my eyes and go there. I imagine it is similar to the “yoga calm” or the “meditation zen”, neither of which I have ever been patient enough to experience.
I know I worry too much… sometimes it gets in the way of my life. Ernie brutally but appropriately asked me on the first week of this trip if anything is ever as bad as it is in my imagination, and the answer is no. Absolutely no. It pains me to think about how much I worried on this trip, and I feel now how it was all for nothing. When I get home, I am hopeful it will be easier to not worry. It doesn’t matter if I burn the toast or if I didn’t get to reply to all my emails because if I’ve had my morning run, a hot shower, and wearing some clean clothes it is going to be a banner day.
10. Up and down we stayed committed to the ride. Relative to my life at home, the ups were so much higher and the downs were so much lower. When I first starting writing this blog it was mostly to keep a record of what we had done and seen so that we would remember the details of Grandma and Grandpa’s Grand Adventure. But as the day’s and week’s events became more and more foreign and drastic compared to a normal day (travel or otherwise), this blog very quickly became something that I needed to help me process. Up and down we very intensely participated in our lives. And I’ve never shared such dramatic, all day, every day experiences with another, much less for five months straight. With just a few hiccups our amplified sin wave took us through the Americas...
Sometimes I go too fast, and sometimes Ernesto doesn’t go fast enough, but working together we have the perfect tempo. There is nothing we can’t handle as a team, and I’m crazy happy and grateful we have found each other. After dealing with all the ups and downs from top to bottom, I have no doubt that we can and will handle anything ahead. I never thought we would be the kind of couple to have a song, but we are. Unfortunately, our song is “One Less Lonely Girl” by Justin Bieber.
A few nights ago we were relaxing on the couch. My head was in his lap and he was running his fingers through my hair. “Fast and Furious 7” was on TV.
He asks, “Would you like to get married?”
I said, as if it should be obvious, “Yes!”
…
“Ernesto, do you have any final thoughts?”
“The day we arrived in Playa del Carmen we were walking down a pedestrian-only souvenir shop street, and a store front hustler spotted my still shiny white legs and shouted ‘Welcome to your first day in Mexico my friend!’
I like that actually our first day together in Mexico was crossing the border in Tecate. After a short, hot, desert ride we took a break and bought a Coke at an isolated minimarket; as the woman behind the register handed us our change (pesos!), she smiled and wished us a “Buen Viaje…”