Here are some of my favorite pictures from the 8-day motorcycle trip through Texas and Mexico:

The trip started with a cloudy but warm day and one of the coolest parts of Sunday’s ride was the stop on Hamilton Pool road over a piece of the Pedernales River. The air was crispy and cool as our three bikes took a rest near the water crossing. The water was a stiff 80 degrees despite the cool air being pushed in by the front. I couldn’t help but wander around the area and ogle at the palette of my favorite natural shades of green to light brown that filled my vision.

After finally getting my heart rate down from the exciting ride and plentiful colors, I couldn’t help but be drawn to a small pile of rocks on a larger stumpy boulder. I invited my father and college mate to join me in interacting with this collaborative work of nature and enjoy the simplicity of a balanced stack of stones.

Before we took off from this wonderful mini-oasis, I couldn’t help but snap a quick picture from the distance. My dad never was one to just give in and go with the human-imposed flow of things:

I jump a day ahead to my next favorite picture: a group of guys just hanging around as we were, looking for different feelings along the trip, facing in different directions, but united by the common blood of exploration and wandering. This is after we had arrived in Ciudad Acuna, just across the border from Del Rio, and tucked away in a restaurant with only one other family partaking in a late dinner in this still but warming town.

Waking up after a comfortable night of rest, I was alarmed by a sound that I need not hear; a sound that would hamper my trip with its natural fury: the sound of rain pouring down outside. I snap up onto the concrete floor, orient myself upwards, and head towards the window, still attempting to establish my balance. As I pull back the heavy curtain/blanket, I realize that the sound is coming from the restroom: the shower. I exhale a breath of refreshment.

I turn on the television and tune into a staticy weather channel as they dictate the wind speeds and air temperatures in slightly familiar packages of Spanish vocabulary. I see ice heading where we should be heading and lists of negative degrees Celsius. After a long walk but a quick breakfast, we head back to the hotel with a looming wonder of where to head next. And before I can even shake the overhanging feeling, we ask the hotel overseer if he can find out when the next bus to Monterrey leaves.

He comes back in about 85 seconds with a small piece of paper that says “Coahuilenses: 10:15 am” and it also has a bus number on it. I look at the clock on the stand right as he calmly tells us, “Esta dejando en cinco minutos. La estacion es una cuadra de esa y tres cuadras de esa.” I look at my friend for a nod of approval, but instead am returned with a look of indecision. The bus is leaving in five minutes and it is seventy-seven dollars for the round trip. My dad gives his regards and gets back on his way to Houston. I excitedly turn back to my friend and ask, “Are you ready to go?” And, well, I’ll let the next picture of the bus bathroom facilities speak for our decision to go or not:

After hitting my head on the bathroom ceiling a few times as I relieve myself, I shuffle back through the tight center aisle on the bus and plop down back in my comfy seat. Three more hours to go. I tire from watching the Spanish dubbed movie at the front of the bus and pry back the heavy curtain separating me from the view outside. Ahh, almost there.

With lots of blanks to be filled in later, after all this is only a best of my favorites picture tour of the trip, I continue on to the next day. After a few good meals and a plethora of broken word exchanges with the locals of Monterrey, me and my friend walk for miles and miles down to check out the mountainside and be immersed in the culture of Mexico. We head off towards the local Santuario de Guadalupe church with no other routes or distractions in mind. Just walking and looking, always having a third eye out for a good picture opportunity.

We notice droves of businesses, banks, and restaurants that are closed on the southerly walk. On a Wednesday? Add this as another odd thought that infiltrates my mind and has to find out the solution by some line of practical reasoning. I keep walking, and thinking. We get closer to the church and just like we crossed into the cold front and had it smack us in the face and torso, we cross into an area with thousands of people lining the streets. Aha, my brain is placing the elementary ideas together in a deductive and airy style: this must be some sort of holiday or festival. We round the corner of the church:

After a fantastic day of pictures, life, travel, experience, culture, food, people… we finally settle down for the night and as I glance in my wallet for our remaining stock of pesos. I pull out six coins and head to the local 7-11 for a round of the night’s entertainment. Paying for a pack of beverages with change has never been so fun, or real, as I realize that we are running down to our last 200 pesos for the trip. Nonetheless, we have a great end to a fantastic day.

The last day leads us between two major roadways in an empty river bed. We walked about 15 miles this day as our brains walked about 1,500 miles as we took in the sights and sounds of this mountainous cityscape.

Soon enough, nightfall comes on our walk back north, and I stop on a bridge to play with the long-shutter speeds on my camera. The massive amounts of vehicle traffic going by make me wonder how people think of these Mexican cities back in the U.S. Sitting atop this pedestrian bridge, I breathe in a cool breath and feel more of my ideas of the world flourishing. I look at the back of the digital camera screen and see how much bright light the aperture has taken in only six seconds, and I wonder how much light and culture the aperture of my eyeball has taken in on that 15 mile walk of the day. My brain and thoughts reassure my heart of the amount as I continue the walk back to the hotel.

Coming back towards the Macroplaza area, I run into a tree lit by Christmas lights and try to capture its fluid glory with the camera as best as I can. The way the lights flow over in a haphazardly fashion is quickly overcome by the soft pulsing and flowing of the blinking pattern. “Why didn’t they wrap the other trees?”, I wonder out loud. But it really serves me well that the one tree there is appearing like it does so peacefully, despite it being surrounded by an inflow and outflow of what looks like 900 cars per minute.

Fast-forward over a six hour bus ride back to Acuna and a long walk back inside the U.S., and I meet a friend while I have my hotel door open to take in the breezy, chilly December air:

On the way back to Houston, we decide to stop by San Antonio for Saturday night and visit with my family. And then, on the way to San Antonio I quickly pull over right before arriving in a small town called Sabinal and their appropriately named river, the Sabinal River. The colors again comfort and appease me. They also remind me whose trip this really was, it was a trip of nature with me just following along as an observer.

Night falls and a cold and clear night sky lights up the great ceiling. I fall asleep in San Antonio on my cousin’s couch from exhaustion and pure vitalization.

The final day comes and I still haven’t had a chance to ground my thoughts. Don’t get me wrong, I can express my thoughts, but my head is in the clouds after so many sources of inspiration on the trip: human and non-human; cultural and intangible. In fact, as I write this on the Tuesday after getting back, I still haven’t really returned to earth. And I love it. Thanks for the trip, Mother Nature and people of the world.

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I’ll be posting more mini-stories and topics of the trip in the coming weeks. And I have lots more pictures to share with you. However, if you just can’t wait and wish to cheat, you can view the full album at my Google Picasa Web Album.

Thanks for reading.

Well, that was most certainly one of the coolest electrical storms and cold front entrances that I have seen in a while. The air was dead silent, then the treetops jolted over sideways and one of the brightest yet most opaque skies opened itself up to chilled rain. The front moved right through and the air temperature dropped by about 15 degrees in 20 minutes or so.

Nature speaks in many ways. Take the time to enjoy it and listen in every once in a while.

View the whole album

It’s interesting how your priorities can change if you let them - by withdrawing fear. This is progress chomping away at its practical feast - your everyday life. Three weeks ago, I was concerned with attending meetings, managing paperwork at school, eating anything just to get by, and wanting to find a good fishing rod.

Right now, in this night filled with dark yet refreshingly cool air, I am relishing in the ideas of a diet without animals, wanting to be obsessed with writing a guide or book on fire dynamics simulator, contributing to the FDS project, lessening my negative impact on the world, and planning a way to integrate motorcycling trips into my (shortening) workweek. All of this, of course, along with succeeding in my remaining classes and developing a healthy fire protection society at my university. This concept of freedom develops from a mix of inputs involving running into interesting strangers, writing out your thoughts to develop stronger questions and approaches to your life experience, reading the vast amount of knowledge that surrounds us in the world, and other healthy mental dieting habits.

(Photo from Flickr user nouknouk)

This freedom that I am moving towards is what I want to make up life as I know it. The way I write can sometimes come across as plentifully vague - like deeply staring at a piece of abstract art trying to extract some meaning - yet its implications are endless in my thoughts, and hopefully yours. How long is the journey until your daily life becomes doing what you like to do 97% of the time? To me that is when the journey itself becomes the journey - there is no final stage.

Your priorities define what you “have time for”, which is really a phrase that masks the idea that you simply do what you want to do - constrained only by the time and schedule that you have invented and invested in. Time is flying by anyway, no matter your interests. I have the same time that you have, I have the interests pegged well enough for now - now I just need to turn that into some usable output that can affect the largest amount of people via value and substance - something for anyone to ingest in their mind.

I think the much-needed visit to the woods this past week/weekend was more important to me than I initially thought. Now, have a great day.

On a whimsical decision, I took off into the place I call home: the forest. Nature in its many forms helps me to get back to and understand the deep implications of “time”. It helps me to relate the concepts that I see in books day in and day out into a practical experience, most of the time in a way that is not describable in words or pictures. It speaks a different language. It helps me to see my place in the world and the direct resources and experiences that I am trying to preserve. And that is just on a night’s visit.

“The boy awoke as the sun rose. There, in front of him, where the small stars had been before, was an endless row of date palms, stretching across the entire desert.
‘We’ve done it!’ said the Englishman, who had also awakened early.
But the boy was quiet. He was at home with the silence of the desert, and we was content just to look at the trees.

He still had a long way to go to reach the Pyramids, and someday this morning would just be a memory. But this was the present moment, and he wanted to live it as he did the lessons of his past and this dreams of the future. Although the visions of the date palms would someday be a memory, right now it signified shade, water, and a refuge from war. Yesterday, the camel’s groan signified danger, and now a row of date palms could herald a miracle. The world speaks many languages, the boy thought.

[...] He had only one explanation for this fact; things have to be transmitted this way because they were made up from the pure life, and this kind of life cannot be captured in pictures or words. Because people become fascinated with pictures and words, and wind up forgetting the Language of the World.” - The Alchemist

That being said, here are some pictures from my visit, as it is one way I can try to share the beauty - just don’t forget the Language of the World. To see all of the pictures, click on the photo albums link on the right side of my blog (or click here) and then the Fall 2007 Efficacy Album.