¡Salud!

If you want to know what dwells in the ground below you; just slow down. Take a closer look at the speed bumps, which each overladen truck anoints with offerings of its vibrant cargo: coarse chunks of granite, the red dust born of loosely packed bricks bouncing against each other, shards of bark from rough hewn lumber, and the fragrance of freshly harvested agave. Perhaps these small towns erect so many jarring speed bumps in order to reclaim just a fraction of what the world takes from them.

On the way to Guadalajara, as trucks gave way to tankers, we knew we had entered the region of Tequila. Tequila is a "protected designation of origin product," meaning the genuine article can only be produced in Jalisco - if made elsewhere it's just *~°•sparkling mezcal•°~*. Of course we sampled some, but only a few aliquots of the stuff. This should come as no surprise as you probably know I don't drink much. But in Guadalajara it was a different story. Due to Gino's gregarious nature we found ourselves in the company of some gentlemen who owned a number of establishments and treated us to the world's finest mezcal, which went down a little too easily. They were extremely generous and there was nothing untoward about them, but around 3am I reflected on the fact that they had a bodyguard and family lawyer in tow. Maybe that's just normal there. Maybe the DJ table was 𝘢 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘪𝘰𝘯.

We were supposed to leave town the next morning, but still more drunk than hungover, we were in no state to get on the bikes. We spent the afternoon recovering and headed to Guanajuato the following day. With its colorful houses perched on precarious hillsides and an unusual network of tunnels serving as its main arteries, Guanajuato feels like a Mexican Florence or Venice (even Gino, the consummate Italian, agreed). There are also bona fide mummies here - simply exhumed corpses dessicated by the arid climate - but I won't post photos because they're really quite freaky. Slide into my DMs for that.

It was also there that several hundred dollars were stolen. I'll just consider it karmic debt for the fact that my suspension, liver, and kneecaps are still in pretty good shape.