Proeza en dos Ruedas
Desde Washington a Brasil y en Bicicleta!
Folks at my hotel helped me get these newspaper interviews. One of the newpapers, El Dictamen, is on the national level, and the other one, Notiver, is on the level of the city and surrounds of Veracruz. It is possible that Televisa, a national television station, will come momentarily to do a piece on my trip.
Staying in Veracruz has been nice recently. I met a girl named Lindsay from my home state of Minnesota. She is traveling around Mexico for a couple of months, and will do a three-week program of turtle conservation in Michoacan. I had lots of fun hanging out with her for the couple days she was in Veracruz. We met at the tourist office where she was looking for maps of Veracruz, and I was using the wireless internet to find maps of Central America--road maps. I want to plan out the rest of my trip with stops and dates and everything so I can plan my flight back to my sister Sarah's weddding and so I can present my trip more concretely to potential sponsors. I want to make this more organized, better supported by companies, and more effective with the media and fundraising for the cause. Capture the Carbon means preventing greenhouse gasses from entering the atmosphere in the first place, and extracting them after they are in the atmosphere so they can't keep doing their heat-trapping function. It's getting hot in here, and it's not cool. But try not to turn on the AC unless you've purchased green electricity: Renew US.
For my flight back to the US, I will offset the emissions with Native Energy or a similar carrier: Neutralize your pollution.
I am still waiting for my check card to arrrive in the mail, and then I will purchase my glasses, a new digital camera, and a few smaller things before heading south. My route south probably will include the precious Mayan ruins of Palenque, the beautiful colonial town of San Cristobal de las Casas, a stop at the house of the family one of my co-workers from the Brazilian restaurant I worked at before leaving (house in Totonicapan, Guatemala), a stop in Guatemala City where my cousin lives and works... and a bunch of other places further south. I figure I can make about 2,400 miles before the wedding, so I have to see where that puts me so I can buy tickets back for the wedding.
I am going to try to make an entry on the blog everyday; I heard that was the ideal format for a blog, and it kinda makes sense to me, too. I think I'll use my spanish blog, Bici a Brasil for entries in Spanish.
Last night was a birthday party for one of the workers here at the hotel. I want to make a bicycle for her for her birthday. I talked with one shop who said they would let me take down one of the frames in disrepair, put it together using their tools and parts and pay them something like $30 for the finished product. Perhaps I'll work on that tomorrow. And perhaps that is the seed of a new bike coop in Veracruz! (See Mount Rainier Bike Coop.)
We had fun at the birthday party. Lindsay attended and so did a guy we met at this circus out in front of the hotel at the zocalo. Yesterday and the day before at the zocalo was this awesome circus-like presentation/talent show. These guys, well the most impressive part, was two guys dancing to music, but using eachothers bodies to flip, roll, climb on top of, support, lift, and the most impressiv part--they intertwined bodies into a form that allowed them to continuously roll like a wheel with the hands and feet touching the ground--each person continuously flipping. Perhaps their is some sort of You Tube video of such an act.
We saw last night a presentation, a different one--it was "Miercoles Jarocho", or Wednesday night of the Veracruz person. Jarocho is a person from Veracruz. It comes from the fact that an artistic tradition here is to play the "jaranero", a little guitar. Well, at Miercoles Jarocho, we saw traditional dance with traditional live music. The music included a harp, jaraneros, and percussion. The dancers were dressed in white, the women with flowers in their hair, and long dresses, the bottom of which they fanned out with one hand holding the bottom of one side of the dress. The men wore hats and had shoes with hard soles that they used like taps shoes on the wooden stage. The dancers create a great beat with their steps, and they dance in pairs. If you want to hear some of this music, simply download some "jarocho" or "jaranero" music. It is great. The people playing the instruments also sing along with the music in a confident, announcing, but beautiful tone.
Veracruz is great--it has a large platform next to the water called the "malecon" where the community likes to hang out. Divers will dive for coins there in the daytime--just throw a coin into the water there in the port, and the athletic--adolescent through forties--diver will dive off of the cement/tile platform into the eight-meter water and fetch the coin, which he gets to keep, of course. It is pretty amazing, to say the least.
Where I have been staying, the Hotel Imperial on the zocalo, people hang out and events take place almost every night. My Hotel, which has about ten floors, only five of which are in use for rent, is just about the highest building in this colonial port city. On top of the hotel, I have grabbed spectacular views of the port, the zocalo and the surroundings of Veracruz. I am going to miss Veracruz when I leave, and all my friends at the Hotel, etc. Thanks for following...
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