June 15-20, 1997 R80G/S 23606 Austin Texas- Dave & Christie's house We stayed at a house of a former room mate of mine. He had just moved to Austin six months before working for Motorola. His wife Christie was a lab technician who recently quit her job and is now at home and expecting in about six months. They have a beautiful four bedroom house in a new subdivision Just South of Austin. They put us up, fed us, and showed us around Austin while we were there. I was able to use Dave's 128kbs ISDN to ISP connection from his house to wrap up some stuff I wanted to do on the internet. I've gone cold turkey from having a T1 connection to nothing this past three months. It felt good to be able to surf again. They showed us around Austin. We went down to 6th street which seemed to me to be a texas version of New Orlean's Burbon strret. For several blocks there are interesting looking bars/restaurants all with some style of live music. It's unbelievable how many live bands play here, even on a Tuesday night. We visited the bat bridge which I'm told is the largest urban population of bats. Under a bridge that spans lake Austin is a huge population of bats. Next to the bridge is a park where people gather as if there were a lawn concert to watch the bats swarm out from under the bridge at sunset. We joined the crowd above the bridge to watch. As we did, a tour boat floated under with a spot light on the bat colony. Christie took us up to a park that overlooks lake Austin, and is nestled in an area of well to do homes. nice view. We wrapped up our things we needed to do in the US here. We sent back our sleeping bags thinking this would free up some space to where we could better redistrbute some weight. We hadn't been using them much in the heat. We figured we could buy a cheap blanket when we get into the Andes. Sent back and cancelled the cell phone which we carried for emergencies. We visited the BMW dealer in Austin (Lone Star BMW), which has one of the best stocked accessory areas I've seen. They were busily preparing for the Fredricksberg national BMW rally which is about an hour west of there. I asked them if they could sync the carbs on my R80G/S since it seemed a slight bit off. Mike (the mechanic) did it in no time and didn't charge us. I asked if they could replace the stearing head bearings to which they said they were booked up until the 2nd week of July due to the rally. We saw a Vance leather jacket there that was completely perforated with breathing holes. Trying it on, I could feel the a/c blowing from the vent through the perforation making me drule with desire. Because of the weather we had been driving through, the only reason we didn't buy it was due to lack of space on the bike. We were looking for a tank pannier for the R80G/S to redistribute some weight up front. We didn't have any luck trying the ones they had since the bike has a huge stange shaped Acerbis 10.5 gallon tank. Then Denise, who worked there, pulled out her tank pannier and told me to give it a try. It fit perfectly. She offered to sell it to us for $10, to which we quickly accepted. She said that since we were already touring, she would have a lot more time to find a replacement than we would. One night I woke up thinking that the entire Austin S.W.A.T. team must have descended on Dave and Christies neighbors due to all the flashing strobes I could see by the curtains. Several times a second for over a half hour lights flashed. I looked out the window and discovered that this flashing was caused by lighting in the clouds. The lightning didn't seem to strike the ground, and there was rarely any thunder. I was later told this is called heat lightning. This is a phenomena we don't have in Illinois. On another night as Sharon and I were about to go to bed, Sharon asked "What's that up on the ceiling? better go check it out. Could be a spider". I've had some bad luck with spiders crawling across me as I sleep leaving several spider bites across my body that take months to heal. It turned out to be a half inch long brown scorpion. I was a bit surprised to see this in this just built house in a new subdivision. I had always imagined this type of thing one see in old rickety houses with crevices for creepy crawlies to enter. The scorpion was promptly removed from this world. Sharon had met an Egyptian woman on a plane 6 months back who had suggested placing bowls of water at each foot post of thre bed to prevent scorpions from crawling into the bed with you. Apparently scorpions don't cross water. However we weren't about to do this with their nice wood bed frame. I told Dave in the morning, he said that they hadn't noticed any, but their neighbors had. He did point out however a black widow spider web about 2 feet from the front door. He was waiting for it to come out of it's crevice again so that he could squish it. Changed the oil in both the R80G/S and the R100GS even though they only had 2.5k miles since the last oil change. I figured it would be easier here than in Mexico. June 20 1997 R80G/S 23764 R100GS 15786 We left Dave and Christie's place around 5:30pm with the intention of missing all of the heat. We drove South on 183, 80, 181, 72 to a place called Three rivers which looked like a nice area on the AAA map. We stopped at Choke Canyon state park about halfway between San Antonio and Corpus Christie around 9:30pm. Temperature was in the low 80's with what felt like ~99% humidity. We set up our tent. There was a ~10mph breeze which mad the high humidity/heat much more tollerable. Even with this breeze however, the mosquitos were ferrocious. I'm sure this would have been hellish without the breeze. After setting up tent we went to take a shower. There were a couple of dead scorpion carcasas squished on the floor in the bathroom raising our anxiety level as we walked back to our tent in our tevas sandals in the dark. We slept with the rainfly off since it was so hot and muggy. At about 3:30am the tent started shaking and woke us up as a storm front rapidly approached. We ran outside and in the dark attempted to put the rain fly on and stake down the tent before the imminent thunderstorm started pouring rain. The winds had really picked up, and the rain fly blew every which way as we tried to figure out the proper orientation. This fierce wind, and lightning got us thinking about tornados, and how we would have very little warning if one happened upon us. With adrenalin pumping, we set out searaching for a ditch with our flashlights. About 30 yards from our tent, we found an excellent ditch with storm drains that went under the road and were large enough to crawl through. Sharon reminded me of all the flash flood warnings that the weather channel shows in Texas, and brought up the possibility of drowning should we crawl into there. Death by drowning or by tornado... I chose to defer that decision until later. I grabbed my radio, and scanned for radio stations. I found one that was reporting a thunderstorm warning for some counties. Not knowing what county I'm in, I assumed it was the one we were in since we were in a thunderstorm. 10 minutes later they identified themselves as broadcasting from Iowa, over 1500 miles away! I switched to FM hoping to get something more local. Several of the stations sounded like they were playing prerecorded programs and were of little use. I stayed up on tornado watch until 4:45am scanning and familiarizing myself with the terrain mostly by light from the heat lightning, and little bit of moon light that shown through the clouds. June 21,1997 Corpus Christi We woke up at 8:30am, and by 8:45, another storm blew through. We had what looked like a 2 inch per hour down pour that fortunately lasted for less than an hour. The tent and ground clothe held out pretty well. After the storm, I got up, and looked around, it was the first time we saw the area by day light. As I put on my boots. I felt several sharp stinging sensations on my legs. The entrance to our tent was ontop of a large fire ant colony, and after the down pour, and having just been stepped on by a big clod they were pissed. They swarmed my boot and leg as I danced and swatted. We had in mind to avoid this kind of thing as we set up the tent, however, these things are difficult to spot in the grass by flashlight. I got about 20 bites from those little suckers. They sting worse than a pin prick. Within 24 hours, the bites on me became merichino cherry red, with puss blisters that really itched. We had some instant oatmeal for breakfast, and were on the road by 12:30pm. On the way out, we were able to see this place. It's a man made lake, that looks more like a bulldozer created water reservoir. The area we saw was not very atrractice, and looked recently created. The swarming mosquitos may be a sign that the ecosystem around here hasn't balanced out yet here. We drove South to the town of Alice which claims to be "The main hub of Southern Texas", and then headed on to Corpus Christi. All along the way, we were hit by gusts of wind coming from the south that I would estimate were 15-25mph. This was annoying as a head wind, but when we turned East this became an unnerving side gust that rocked our bikes back and forth. The side gust did have the bonus of blowing into my unzippered jacket giving me some relief from the heat which a bank sign proclaimed was 97 degrees. Half way between Alice and Corpus Christi, we started to get rained on, and so pulled over at a gas station to put on our rain gear. After topping off the gas and filling ourselves up on Gatorade and Pringles, it had stopped raining, and so we just hopped back on the bike. Sharon got a bit shook up as we enetered a town and a side gust hit her bike pretty hard. At slow speed, she didn't have the two big gyros working for her, and the weight and height of the bike, not to mention the large panniers and top box of the bike make the side gusts even more dangerous. We had a late lunch around 4:00pm at an excellent texmex restaurant called Casa Roy. Roy said he could tell we weren't from Southern Texas. Must have been our power rangers uniforms. Roy gave us directions to some motel areas... Largely influenced by the lack of sleep and axieties of the day, we decided we really liked touring texas, except for the 97 degree heat, 94-100% humidty, heat lightning, severe thunderstorms every day, F5 tornados, pouring rain storms, flash flood warnings, 25-30mph wind gusts, scorpions, rattle snakes, black widow spiders, swarms of stinging fire ants, ferrocious mosquitos, vast straight planar roads. :-} Actually, we really liked Austin with all of it's cool culture and interesting landscape. We checked into the Catlina Motel in Corpus Christi on Ocean Dr. We zoned out to some HBO for about an hour where they were plaing mission impossible. We walked along Ocean Drive to the public beach and watched the waves and seagulls until sunset. June 22, 1997 Harlingen TX - Horizon Inn A Nasty storm came through last night, so we were glad we were in a hotel. At noon, we were reminded that 11:00am was check out time. We checked out at 12:30, and drove around town to look for places we could run some errands. I found a copy shop where I could xerox and laminate my license plates. Several traveller's had suggested driving with xerox/laminated license plates so that should I encounter a license plate collectorunknowingly, I won't have to try to replace my plates while away from home. Unfortunatly, to use the color copier I had to go through the clerk who I named "church boy" since he was going to Brazil next week for mission work for his church and getting school credit. Church boy wouldn't duplicate the plates on the color copier because he wasn't allowed to duplicate any federal documents. I argued that the plates are issued by the state of Illinois, and so are clearly state not federal. I told him why I wanted to duplicate them. He decided to err on caution in case I might be a federal agent on mission to test the color copy clerks at his store. I settled for a black and white copy. The road down to Brownsville (77) is straight, long, flat, surprisingly busy, and goes on for as much as 60 miles without a building along side the road. This road is well patrolled by cops. We saw several people pulled over along the way. We stopped in Harlingen, TX and stayed at a motel called the Horizon Inn. Of notable merit was the free playboy channel that came in on the cable tv. While looking for a motel in this area, my kickstand foot broke off. Fortunately I was able to backtrack and find it. I'll have to find a welder to weld it back on. All that is left is a peg that will certainly dig into any hot pavement. June 23, 1997 R80G/S 24004 Matamoros, MX This morning, it was warm and rainy. We had planned to get up early, and possibly cross the border by 10:00am. We figured this would get us into ciudad victoria in the afternoon where we would then spend the night. We decided to get as far away from the border towns as possible since we guessed it would be cheaper, nicer, and safer. This didn't happen, We stayed up late, got up late, took our time waiting for the rain to clear up. It didn't, so we stayed in our room until we got booted out at noon. We had some breakfast at the Pancake House, and by 1:00 we were on our way. A half hour later, we were in Brownsville, TX. I noticed People drive a little different around here than the rest of Texas. Likely Mexicans over for the day. Crossing customs was very easy. On the US side of the Rio Grande river, I paid the $.25 per bike toll ($1.00 for a car), and then crossed the short toll bridge. I drove right on through and I was in the city of Matamoros. This was way too simple, so we turned around, parked the bikes, and went into the Migrcion office we had passed. We founf out that what we should have done was turned off immediately to the right after the toll bridge. This leads into the parking lot where inspections are done. After parking the bikes in an inspection lot, we went inside and got our tourist card/paper from the Migracion office which is at the North end of the building. We then stood in line to get our temporary vehicle import pass. This required our title, passport, drivers license, tourist card, and a major credit card. The customs guy sent us across the hall so that we could xerox the first four items. They charged 87.78 pesos, for something. I had to sign a piece of paper authorizing them to charge my credit card should we not take the vehicle out of the country. All the paper work took about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, while we stood in line, I watched the extremely bored soldier dressed in combat gear play with his M-16, lazily swinging it around like he was trying to remember an arms presentation ritual. His helmet chin strap moved from his chin to his nose, to his chin, to his nose as he figetted in bordom. After the paper work, we went out into the customs inspection parking lot. They decided to check out my bike outside in the light rain. The offcial asked me to open my right pannier and then my topbox as he went through and checked out what i was carrying. He took interest in my spare rotor, and asked if it was for the moto. He asked me if I was carrying any guns to which I said no. A big tour bus pulled into the parking lot, and he lost interest in me, gave me a green card indicating I had been inspected, and then we left. They didn't check Sharon's bike. It was instantly obvious that we had left Texas. Driving styles were different, road conditions changed. stores, streets, street vendors, etc all seemed familiar to when we travelled third world countries in SE asia. I stopped at the first bank I saw to pick up some pesos. They had an ATM machine that worked on cirrus, plus, and a couple other systems. The amount to withdraw at this ATM is a multiple choice question. Not thinking in pesos yet, I chose 200. (US$25 Doh!). I then put in another card and withdrew the max which was 1000 pesos. btw, the bank closes at 3:00pm, but the ATM is still accessible. It was then 3:40pm. The rain got harder and the road wasn't looking too good, and the chance we would make it ciudad victoria which we estimated was 4.5 hours was not looking too good. We decided to find along the way. After driving a little further, and just missing a man whole cover that had the entire inside blown out such that there was a big gaping hole with sharp metal edge waiting to punture some unsuspecting gringo's tires, and that there were free standing puddles on the hiway, and mud, etc. we decided it may not be a safe idea to push it being our first exposure to mexican driving and and with bad weather conditions. We stopped at what looked like a relatively nice motel. It has a pink wall surrounding the motel complex such that no one driving by could see the vehicles inside. There is only one gate to enter aand exit, and it is manned by someone. Each room has a walled parking slot in front of the room for a vehicle. We asked to see a room, it was nice enogh with a new color tc and air conditioner, hot water, etc. He asked if we are staying tonight to which we said yes and then he asked for 100 pesos. I asked me to write down my plate numbers on his list of all guests. I noticed that all the other guests were charged 30 pesos, to which I found is the going rate per hour, but for an overnight stay it's 100 pesos. Given current conditions and lack of hotels we had seen, we decided to stay. I asked for the key to which I was told it was unlocked. I guees this is an odd question at this kind of motel. Most people probably don't walk in with luggage that they would want to lock up nor would they have a reason to leave except to check out. Sharon noticed it didb't come with sheets. Fortunatly we have our sheet sleep sacks. Sharon turned on the TV to see if we got a weather channel on this satelite fed tv. What came on would probably make the playboy channel seem tame. Our bathroom gives off wafts of sewage gas. I was surrounded with signs of being in a third world country motel, and got really excited about having just crossed our first border. Since it was raining, and there is nothing within walking distance, we mixed up some cornbeef, canned potato, and onion and heated it up on our campstove. All of the ingredients we had bought in Lousiana for camping. June 24, 1997 R80G/S 24050 I didn't sleep much at the hotel. I woke up at 2:30am to what sounded like a hammer banging on some metal. I was a bit paranoid about the the bikes even though they were safely locked up. I kept hearing cars coming in and out, people walking by, and hardware clanking, sawing etc. My imagination pictured the d-locks, security cables being pounded and sawed on. They were working on the hot water and sewage system all through the night, so occasionally I would smell sewage gas wafting in through the a/c vent. And even after asking and being told there is hot water, there was none to be had. I think when I asked if they had hot water, the check in person thought I meant hot water plumbing. Sharon got up at 6:30am, and we were on the road by 8:00am. It was overcast, but not raining. Heading down highway 101, we passed a military check point approximately 20km out of town who just waved us by. A little bit futher, we passed the immigrations checkpoint where they verified our tourist card, and vehicle permit that we picked up at the border. After the permit checks out, one drives by a red light/green light. If the supposedly random light turns red, you're suppose to pull over for further vehicle inspection. Fortunately, we both got a green light. Soon after the 2nd check point we passed under a dark front where it then soon started pouring down rain. We found a large truck stop gas station with a large roof over the pump and waited a while under there. Fortunately the gas attendant didn't seem to mind. BTW, the gas sold for 3.07pesos/liter (US$1.47/gallon), and was available in leaded and unleaded... octane rating unknown. Gas prices in the US were as high as $1.40 in Chicago, and as low as .99 in rural parts of Arkansas and Texas (87 octane unleaded). The roads from Matamors to San Fernando de Presaras are two lane and warped. Similar to an old paved county road back home. Average speed was about 50-60mph After San Fernando de Presaras, the road opens up into an unmarked four lane which is mostly new pavement. The clouds lifted and the scenary was beautiful. We passed through another military checkpoint shortly after where 97 and 101 join where again they just waved us through. We stopped at a nice restaraunt in the middle of nowhere after San Fernando de Presaras and had a very nice first experience of real Mexican food. I had a Chirizo con Huevo, while Sharon had manchamadas ranchero. The owner ws very accomodating. We arrived in Ciudad Victoria, and searched for the place our guide book suggested staying. in the center of town. Things get pretty fast paced and one feels like they're in a floating down a fast moving stream accept instead of water you're in a sea of cars. Signs are missing, or are easily missed. It took us a while to find the central plaza that some nice hotels are marked. We drove through a residential area where we had our first experience of an idiot cop. We were driving down a narrow two way road when a cop in what looked like his own personal car, and a buddy on the side drove headon to where Sharon was stopped leaving a foot of room between his car and her bike. He wanted her to back up and drive around. This was obviously a weak show of dominance. Sharon can only back up while seated on the bike on a perfectly flat surface due to her in seem and the height of the bike. He wasn't going to move and motioned for Sharon to back up. I hopped off my bike to help Sharon back up. When the cop realized what a commosion he was producing, he backed up and took off. What a weenie.. We decided to back track through town to find a hotel since we were not getting anywhere. There were some hotels on the outskirts of town. It had started raining again during the half hour we had been in town. While driving on the outskirts, we missed a stop sign. Sharon slammed on her break to try to catch it fishtailing her back end. This shook her up a bit as it was her first fishtail. After a little pause in the rain, we got back on the bike and backtracked by GPS. Unfortunatly, the backtracking lead us to some one way roads which we could backtrack on. While trying to get back on course, we just happened ot stumble upone the area we were looking for. For future GPS travellers, the coordinates for Plaza Hidalgo, and a large concentration of nice hotels is: N23d43.919m, W099d08.660m. We stayed at the Hotel Los Monteros which turned out to be a very nice budget colonial style hotel with a night time guarded parking lot in the back. We checked out the town and ate some dinner. I had a polo mole even though I actually ordered an enchilada polo mole, and a Bohemia beer. Sharon had some chicken and rice with a carta blanca beer. June 25, 1997 Ciudad Victoria We stayed here another night. We slept in late, ate, napped, did some laundry, studied some spanish, etc.