The time went by quickly reading, meeting friends and going almost daily to the bicycle night ride during two whole weeks. I felt home in calle Repùblica de Nicaragua 15. Everything proceeds always very slowly in Mexico. Some guys from the Terremoto crew (a group of brakeless fixed gear urban cyclists who meet up at Monumento a la revolucion and goes around the city howling on monday nights) and I go to check some new cheap steel frames.Obviously the tourist package includes a long and boring tour around the bike shops of the calle San Pablo. I was looking for the bottom frame for my talbike and we’ve been pretty close to it. The day after I went searching for tools (vise, metal brush, discs for the angular grinder, electrodes for arc-welding etcetera) with Rafael, a bikemechanic in the circle of Bicitekas. He came with his brother who was looking for an air compressor and his nephew was sitting in the basket of the trike.
CALLE CORREGIDORA AND HIS CROWDS
We rode to the calle Corregidora, the hardware shop block. You can find there anything. Any shop sells the same items but the prices are slightly to totally different. I spend then (just for the first time of a long series) a couple of hours looking for tools; in the name of Santa Graziella: damned be the capitalism! I get some protective lens and a metal brush, I take notes on which shop sells what and at what price asking how much does the transaction cost paying by credit card. I knew it from my first stay in Mexico, when I looked for a fine classic guitar in Paracho. To buy anything else than a taco or a tamal in this country is a full-time job!
As it’s wednesday night I am definetely going to the Bicitekas’ Paseo Nocturno. After a wet first half of the ride some technical problem occourred and I took my time to eat a couple of tostadas with Rodrigo, one of the local bike messengers. He works for the local cooperative messengers’ business Bicienvia. We chat about the job, I am willing to work again on a bike and I would love to do it in a cooperative frame. They are the concurrence of Bicimensanjeros DF, for whom Rodrigo was used to work, as far as I understood.
I think that Rodrigo and some others quit and build up the cooperative because they were not happy to get only 30% over the delivery price. Ollin, Joakim and another core member of Bicimensanjeros DF (they also hire 3 or 4 other guys, students or so) keep the business going. I recently met Ollin, he doesn’t seem to bother about the split, he’s got a point of view about the business and the way he wants to run it. I find him a nice guy and as I know how hard the messanging sector is I understand that he’s trying to keep some money aside for harder times to come, eventually. Cooperative business is a fine theory but rarely works as fine as expected. It’s maybe because of selfish tendencies, that drag everyones’ efforts to the bottom of the range starting the mess. Many options can bring a cooperative to breakdown. It’s sad for the “best way to run a business” to be so hard to implement just because the ones who could loyally lend a hand do not find a personal immediate return. Some austrian messengers told me about this kind of mechanism. It’s hard to keep a self-managed business going. The price of “no leaders” is high. I prefer to let those minds go and think about the present time, where I spend less cash to eat and I can earn it by playing in the street for a couple of hours a day. I feel like I am getting into a theme that is not the one I wanted, which is indeed my daily life here in Mexico. We get on our bikes after the snack-pause. I meet then a spanish guy called Ivan, the one who broke his sproket and got all the rain on his head while repairing it, allowing us to have the joyful break. We head to Coyoacàn, an ancient artist’s neighbourhood that became a middle-high class one. Gentrification is the given name of the process. We cross the central square of the ancient Coyoacan village, I was here two years ago and I remember the colonial architecture, the small roads, the parks…but I notice that my point of view has changed now! There is nobody in the streets, as anywhere in the Distrito Federal and we stop at a night shop, that in Europe we would call a “paki” because of the huge majority of pakistanese people running that kind of business. When we stop I notice again the truck following us since the beginning of the ride. It’s full of gorillas, two of the cyclists get closer and have drinks and food…it seems that some rich guy and his escort came with us tonight, tells me some friend.
Mexico is a country where social gaps are wider than elsewhere. My friend Alister told me that it’s not wise to classify this like “rich VS poor”. It’s true but if somebody earns 50$ (pesos) a day and some other >3000$ I think that the difference is evident right away. And it does not matter to me if in the second category there are millionaires, bohemians, hipsters, artists, foreigners etc: to me they simply can spend a workers’ wage in a day for..chips. This is a good reason to do of all of us a class even if I am aware that the responsibilities on the missery of the workers conditions are not shared equally among all of this group of people. It’s a matter of personal philosophy which brings on a long and complex reflection. I get to understand it more and more as I am living here in one of the poorest neighbourhood of the center and I will try to understand the situation as much as I can. I don’t feel, nor consider myself a turist nor an “expat”. My speaking abilities push me to try to melt among locals and I will more and more try to be as mexican as my camaleontic skills will allow me to be. Whistles, screamings, ringbells…we get on our bikes and head to the Angel del Indipendencia again. On the way an accident happens where one of us has to go back in an ambulance. There was one ambulance already there, eventually caring for our rich friend and the stretcher bearers of the two teams almost got into a fight to get the wounded guy. I guess they are payed by the piece, wonderful way to guarantee the people’s health…
The last stretch of the ride goes faster and faster, the group falls apart. It’s becoming a race. Our caring angels with the radios can not keep us toghether and safe, some cars get to break in. Fortunately nobody gets hurt and we all arrive safe to the Angel del Indipendencia. I go back home, alone. I sense almost no danger in one of the most dangerous cities in the world, Mexico city. One of the most dangerous cities, so they say. The capital of a nation who gave 60.000 lives to the “war on drug traffic”. And the Centro Historico, where the Casa Biciteka is situated looks like one of the unsafest neighbourhoods. You have to be careful, to know how to act, told me Alfredo….well I think I got it. In the shop in front of the door there are a lot of young people. It’s 3am. Nobody bothers me anytime. I guess it’s just the bounch of people who are (or just look) rich who have to be scared of getting kidnapped and robbed. I seem to be just another gringo loco and I feel myself safe. Does the class struggle pass trough criminality in Mexico? I don’t know. I just dare to leave with my tallbike as soon as possible to explore the rest of the country.
I go on with my quiet way of living, I buy the bottom frame on the second friday of my stay and for the upper one I just recycle it in the Casa Biciteka. I can finally start working. I shape the frames with the angular grinder, metal saw and file, I prepare the reinforcements and I train my welding skills by building up a tandem with a couple of other frames found in the bike kitchen.
TANDEM FRAME WELDED AT CASA BICITEKA
The welds are very poor and I get to some acceptable results after a while. It’s strong enough to fool around the city but I need better stuff for the ride that I am going to pedal all the way up to San Francisco. I could think about doing it myself if I had a welding guide, a teacher in other words. If someone showed up anytime it would have been possible…but also this is Mexico. Inch’Allah tomorrow comes today!
I spend over one whole week chasing any known welder with no positive results. Everybody just faded away with a latter excuse just before the time to do the job, so I had no other choice but to wait and seek for another, then another….
One after the other several people did it like this. I arrived two weeks ago and according to my plans I should be pedaling already. If there was an italian proverb fitting this country it would be: “Do it yourself, you’ll do as three men would”!
THE TWO FRAMES STANDING IN SHAPE
I look for a decent welding hand ten days long and then I finally find the one I was looking for welding with MIG tecnology…one block away from Cental del Pueblo! I find him thanks to Armando, one youngster from Casa Biciteka. The guy’s name is Rodrigo. He does the job perfectly in just a couple of hours. Even if he was not exactly on time I thank him for his job!
I start testing one part of the bike at a time. The frame comes first so I build the bike with recycled parts and I test the resistance of the frame itself then I change the parts step by step. I brought some bicycle bags from Italy but they are far too big to fit. I lend them to Alessandro who will carry his stuff with them. I buy two new ones from “Bicibolsas”, who design and make them here in Distrito Federal. Victor also modifies them especially to fit my bike. I buy a Shimano derailleur and I recycle some quite crappy V-Brakes. I also buy and lace a brand new wheelset with a new Miche aluminium hubset and a couple of Mariluz (never heard before brand who does the job perfectly!) 26” double-coated mid-profiled rims. The adjustements are what parts me from riding out of the monster city. The tent will be Alessandro’s one, the stove to cook will be the simplest DIY one from www.zenstoves.org .
THE ZENSTOVE THAT LAND GAVE ME
Oh yeah, I forget to talk about Alessandro! Alessandro Bo is a chilango güero (an non-indio indigenous) born and grown up in the Distrito Federal. He’s the son of an Italian father and a German mother. We met before the start of the Biciteka’s “ride to the dawn”and I told him about my plans. We met again after two weeks. He came to me and said that he had some details to check but he was convinced to come travelling! I cannot believe that I found someone who’s going to ride out of the Distrito Federal! He’s going to ride his french steel frame Peugeot from the 1970’s, narrow tires and no index derailleur named in french “La Nana Bleue”. No mountain bike with disc brakes…to ride just a few km a day! Nope, this guy is going to take the challenge to cross the whole country on an old fashioned bike, which indeed is good because it’s easy to fix and easier than a new one to understand. Alessandro does not look a lier to me thus I guess there are good chances that he’s really going to join the trip to San Francisco. I will not believe it 100% until the day final day comes. But I start to trust him enough to be quite sure. Besides him a few other people talk about joining the ride. Just talked.
All’s going for the good but the timing of an organizing machine like the one required for this adventure has got to wait for the mexican commerce pace too. A lot of work is to come but there is a huge price: freedom! Freedom to live outdoor and let behind all the craziness of the biggest metropolis of the american continent. My bike is ready on sunday. I go to the Paseo de la Reforma and I try it. One block away I have a flat tire. One more block and I lose the left crank. My fault…I guess I did not screw it properly. As I arrive in Riforma my left pedal shows some bad signals…then just falls apart, like a child’s teeth.I stop and I consider it with a perplex face in the middle of a crowd of sunday cyclists. I hear from behind a voice: “Hey do you need a pedal?” “The left one!” I promptly answer to that voice. As I turn around one guy is walking to me with a left pedal in his hand. He just changed his ones because his right one was dead…and some people are still skeptic about Santa Graziella’s powers!!!
I have been witness of at least two or three of her miracles! One of them occourred in Rome during the friday Ciemmona in 2008 in front of hundreds of people at dusk. In a steep street the chain of one of the monster three-layers-tallbikes that we brought to Rome to show how the crew from Toulouse was kick-ass broke suddenly. Alex or I don’t know who else was riding it. And I had, thanks to my stupid beliefs, a Santa Graziella’s cross around my neck.
Thanks to my “belief” I could repair the chain without a problem. Then I started screaming “Santa Graziella did the miracle” and the crowd went crazy around me! It was clearly due to the saint’s intercession.
Let’s go back to the story now. I am in the test period now. I have to be careful not to go to fast and take my time. I just would like to ride my bike away but I would not see the things go bad. I want it to ride 200km before I take it out of town. The first road test is ok. I have to check the brakes and I align the wheelset right when I am back home.
I attend the most bicycle rides of the week. Bicitekas on wednesday, Mujeres en Bicis on tuesday and Desarrollo Suave on thursday. I ride alot between all of the bicycle shops on monday, to get the parts that I still need. The next day is may the 1st and I take a day off as a mechanic to go playing in the Chapultepec park with Pierre. The worker’s day fills Paseo de la Reforma with demonstrations and the main entrance of the park stays closed. We have to turn around, cross a bus parking and then pass under a bridge. There we find the police officers cleaning up the pass. It seems that there was a heartquake just a few minuts ago and they fear the bridge to fall on the crowd.. As they let us go we cross another big bridge and we found ourselves on the other side with no problem. It’s a hot and sunny day, we got moved by an officer who says us that we’re just under a security camera and he had a call for us. That means “I don’t give a shit but I had a call…so please let them leave me in peace.” We head then the inner park and we pass through some market, where they sell junk, fresh drink and chinese sunglasses. We have a sit on the sidewalk and we play for less then one hour to get money to buy ourselves a beer, then we cook some eggs on the zenstove and chat until the end of the afternoon. I sponge one shower at Pierre’s place (he lives right in between the park and the center of the city) and then I go home. Tomorrow is another day to work on the tallbike!
I get the parts to build the wheels and the rear one is laced by wednesday night. To get the spokes for the front one I stay in trouble one whole day until…I find that there were enough at the Casa Biciteka to do it! I have the two wheels and I put on also the new rear derailleur. For the front one I choose the same technique used by Gustavo and Leon for their green tallbike. A diagonal tube coming out of the bottom bracket to fix there the front derailleur. I will call back Rodrigo to do the job, in exchange of a few pesos and some service to his bike. The frame comes finally to his last upgrade. I just have to find the good position for the handlebar and some other small details. Alessandro is still far from being ready and it’s wednesday the 9th. I start getting nervous. I don’t dare putting up a call to come with us on the internet because I am not totally sure about the day we’re going to leave. We should leave on saturday, I end up getting some last things on friday, as I just should meet people to say goodbye. It does not matter. We set the start on saturday at 2am. Just 4 or 5 people (thanks to everyone, but as few as we were it would not be safe to ride!) come to join us and we decide to leave at dawn. I charge the bike, and go to bed. Alessandro sleeps already, I struggle to get asleep as Gustavo snores very loud. I really like this fella. He’s one of the guys who were welcoming me on march the 30th. We did not know each other but he and some other guys from Pachuca were very nice to me! Three hours sleep and we wake up. Something in between fear, excitement and impatiente let me awaken, all toghether with Gustavo’s sound.