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Nov.,'03- A fine load of bikes was successfully delivered along the bike migration route benefiting Mexican Field Biology and Village Collectives (ejidos). Riders and supporters this year supported 2 bike shipments, and 5 community bike shops.
Mi Vida Chulada
Vykeros de la Frontera
Countercultural Bike Nomads on Winter Migration in Mexico
(April '03) We're back in Austin after three months and ~3500 km. across Tex-Mex borderlands exploring radical conviviality and sustainable bike nomadics.
Actions and Ideas-
Biologists on Bikes- We provided, so far, around two dozen recycled mountain bikes for remote biological field work and community education. Users include international biologists at El Cielo Biopreserve and biology seniors and grad students at Tech University, Cd. Victoria, Tam.. The Yellow Bike Project and Bikes not Bombs of Austin and the Cd. Victoria mountain bike club volunteered to build and/or maintain further rides for the hip ecoscience. Two of the mt. bikers recently placed in national competition on recycled bikes up against the latest new bikes. Several test Biobike missions completed successfully.
Instant Biosquats - Ecocamps of short intermittent duration that work to restore biodiversity, unlitter, recycle, compost, etc. Keys include gathering invader species for food, composting sanitation, improved solar ovens and rocket stoves, litter pickup and hauling from every camp (unlittering). We've learned to create instant furnished kitchens, (tables, chairs, hearth, etc.) from found stone and wood, that are invisible to layfolk once we've left. Its smart to unlitter and create upon arrival rather than put it off till departure, but human nature- fatigue, laziness, and dark, etc. intervenes. Riders create personal zones with mosquito nets, rain flys, ground cloth, clothes lines etc.
Huastec Inspired Gardening- Mixed crop pattern language, bioregional microclimate adaptations, anticlinal natural terracing (Balcones de Moctezuma stunned a sort of northern Machu Pichu, but more natural), feral horticulture, long rotation, helper plants (nopal windbreak, seasonal vine shade), cross pollination from wild,
Traditional gardening worldwide tends to fall into two groups; winter rain crops in temperate regions and summer rain crops in tropical regions. As seasonal nomads we attempt both, planting and harvesting in spring and fall at each end of migration routes. We are gone during both hot/dry or cold/rainy periods as plants and fruit are dormant or mature, watched by local caretakers. We plant as we leave and arrive to harvest and feast.
ENSO (El Nino, Southern Oscillation) Gardening- mixed seeding for drought and rot avoidance, planting forecasts for drought or flood years, plenty chasing after desert flood years,
Streamlined Bikes- All our bikes were faired and the difference is awesome. Foam or fabric fairings proved much faster in headwind and downhill. Our big loads were less of a handicap. Foam doubled as flotation. Folks were amazed at our vagabond torpedoes scorching across earth.
Body Sailing- Lake navigation (La Presa del Chorrito) using bike fairing for flotation, multi pole for mast and sleeping pad for sail. Mast and sail also tested on bike successfully.
Playing Weather- ENSO Migration w/ ENSO seasonal (web) and 5 day forecasts (weather radio). Given the ENSO forecast, we took more rain and cold gear, less sun blocking and mosquito measures. With perfect timing we chilled at places like Padre Island waiting for big northers to kick us south. Returning we tacked across cyclonic systems to keep a tailwind and follow scenic routes without time or effort penalty.
Surfing Truck Pressure Waves kicks the bike a few feet extra and aids upshifting. Here's how- listen for truck then watch it in mirror. Stay right to keep truck right. Wait 'til the truck enters left eye (you are then in the trucker's blind spot, preventing alarm), veer smoothly at it, turning away just as the wake hits behind. Its both adrenaline rush and fool killer, take care.
Stealth Camps anywhere, urban and wild. At dusk locate a hidden spot without showing intention, double back and melt into the evening. Night after night we magically disappeared in brush by the highway. Slight depressions hid us in large open areas. We were once spotted in the open by police after dark in Bandera. Suddenly, by hooking about and laying the bikes in a shallow, we just plain vanished as they drove near. A million candle power floodlight swept just over our noses. The great light revealed nothing. Confused the heat moved on, seeking us far into the night. We were asleep in secondz..z..z..
Arrest Proofing Protocols- despite profiling and hypersurveillance, the activist prevails on street smarts and aggressive legal defense. Most of the time its best to avoid trouble by playing it cool, lay low. Turn road orange inside out to camo in a flash. Use brush, badlands, hideouts, even though you are not breaking any law, and you'll mess with locals less as well. Learn the law, hang with witnesses, use vidcams, and put a power lawyer on speed dial. If framed, often on some unrelated petty charge, fight like hell for acquittal before a jury with an activist defense, expressing truth to power plainly and from the heart, and, whatever the outcome, you'll feel better and the prosecuter will think twice next activist.
MicroHedonics- The use of tiny amounts of resources to perform epicurial, bathing, washing, gourmet cooking, etc. under rough conditions.
Tiny Power- Suites of small light solar charged mill watt devices that cheaply replace the wasteful consumerist energy complex.
Homebrew Jungle Hammock doubles as Giant Backpack with shoulder straps from hang ropes. With ultralight nomadic gear in it the fence mesh hammock rucksack was airier and lighter than expensive conventional stuff. Someday we may see a demonstration of a combined backpack/hammock/cape/bivy-tent/kite-wing-sail
Multi-pole as magic wand, bike tripod, tent fly pole, fishing pole, fruit picker, etc.. Bike tripod stand as shelter.
Ballbearian TV Cooker- Candle Stove as shadow theatre light source while cooking.
Augmented Chopsticks- attach toothbrush, alu spoon, etc. to light chopsticks, cut off as much handle as possible from elements.
Gimme Cap Sundialing gives full brim protection with less weight and windage. Spin cap, gangsta' style to keep shade on face and neck.
UFO Cookstands are tripods for pots and grilling from wire scraps found on-site in rural areas.
Micropad butt sized, also as pillow, bath mat, etc..
Citrus/onion Net Bag for Laundry Swimming. Use in the ocean or large lake or river, but don't use detergents, avoid degrading pure water, washing well uphill. Walk on bag on rock or log to wring moisture out. Prevents socks adrift at sea.
To Design and Fab- Hi-tech MEM Chip based tire pressure pump/computer/solar cell as tire cap. Road adaptive.
Bivy Facial Observatory- four season all weather face mask for viewing night sky, with features for ventilation, bug netting, etc.
Ultralight Rocket Stove- Rockets burn biomass safer and more efficiently than open fire. Specialized stove fuels are the curse of commercial camp stoves. Rocket stoves burn twigs and straw found anywhere. Our early rockets were derived from tree-sit tech. Improvements in combustion and usability resulted, but our stoves were still made of steel. Our new nomadic models reduce steel content to a bit around the firebox, the rest is aluminum, even alu foil in the lightest versions. We also reinvented the ancient tripod pot as mentioned in Homer and used by wagon trains. Ours are alu with spindly steel legs attached. See also UFO Cookstands above.
Trash worship Chapetes for "brushpopping" in the vast thorn scubs of the lower Rio Bravo valley. This technology was perfected by the vaquero and enables us to escape virtually all human oppression. A brush bike goes where horse and rider can't (under low branches). We are making body armor of used plastic. This stuff may also serve as protection from road crash, cop sticks, etc. Another group needing chapetization are hang gliding nomads along the summer Tx. dry line who often come down in brush and have to hike out.
Weedeaters- feasting on invasives and booming natives. Invasive Meat, such as axis deer and feral pig, as bioethical loophole.
Things Learned-
Lost Grids- Toward Monterrey we crossed a creek with a washed out bridge and found a luxurious camp of native palm thatch, completely unused. Thousands of rural bridges worldwide are swept away by overpowering flood and will not be replaced soon. Isolated regions revert to nature with abandoned shelters, roads, and agriculture available for nomadic use. Bike portaging goes where no 4x4 can. Bikes ride in any boat at human scale. Cars don't.
A toilet paper tree that grows where people in Tamaulipas need it. It is softer and tougher than TP. Another common bush (Drago) is a root toothbrush whose fibers are soft on gums yet brush well and it has a pleasant cinnamon flavor that leaves teeth clean and mouth fresh. Fiber from agaves comes in various forms, including a prethreaded thorn needle, instant paint brush, tie downs, lashings, etc.
Tacking XC- Often it pays to tack across one's route for favourable tail winds. In clockwise rotations of the northern hemisphere steer left at first then right to hit a destination, after awaiting the best starting wind.
Tepache is a refreshing native hooch fermented from pineapple peels and raw brown sugar in a clay pot. We now make this at Biosquat with amazing results, using surplus fruits and sugars of all kinds. Its good as a semi-continuous bioreactor process, tapping the pot every few days and adding fresh ingredients. Saccareze Cervesae (?SP.)
Reaping and Gleaning Invaders- Reaping roadside plants and gleaning harvested fields offer feasts along a migration route. In Mx. roasted squash seeds (pepitas) are great nomad protein/lipid source found post harvest over a period of months in mixed corn and bean fields.
Magical Self-Defense- The ability to disappear, amuse, confuse, and awe has many uses out in the world. Bike circuses foster illusionism. Some Mex. biologists friends train as ninjas in a traditional Japanese lineage. Worth considering is updating ninjaa, acrobat, magician skills and philosophy as activist self-defense in extremis and to witness truth.
ENSO/Seasonal Nomadics surfs waves of plenty, in a tidal zone between eternal spring and endless summer. Fresh life, abundant clean water is an attractive force to our bikes.
Handlebar Dowsing- unfocused wandering based on intuition, rumor, sat photos, etc. to expand the known
Wearable Architecture, the four season multi-climate eigenform as optimal analytic model.
Facial observatory- a mask that opens or protects against cold, insects, dew and rain. Sleeping outside to skywatch completes human happiness. Enjoy weather.
Hobo Effect- vagabond profiling tendency v. the ability to mainstream. Circus personae useful to counter bum rap. Involuntary Police Enticement is managed by low profile. In caravan mainstream looking riders tend to liaison with authorities and locals as the freaks hang back.
Civil Disobedience as Therapy against the brutalization of the soul imposed by society. Intentional Realities as reforming.
Road Pinata- nomadic bike crash. A loaded bike provides some crash protection but is clumsier on the streets. Our tailboxes and nose fairings are crush zones, but they keep us longer at more dangerous speeds. Our founding circle has yet to experience a fatality, just a couple gashes and broken bones. It is ironic to be menaced by the petrovehicles we reject, a "revenge" effect.
Rearoptic (mirror) Awareness relaxes road shoulder hugging, side by side riding and grabbing better pavement out in the lane.
Dive Reflex- On narrow crowded roads one watches ahead for passing traffic and glances in the mirror at every vehicle and steers off the road if a collision seems possible. At narrow bridges and missing shoulders one stops as needed to avoid traffic. At night one watches the passing headlights sweep one's shadow to the right. If the shadow is not moving, watch out! If diving off a cliff, slide, lose bike, and grab brush. Hitch over suicidal highways or use back lanes..
Ninja ShoulderCamping/NinjaCamping- Where only the roadside is available to camp, the ability to "lay low" in small depressions or behind shrubs and simply vanish.
Travel Narratives-
Leaving Austin- Early Jan. was a bit late to be leaving, we had waited for Mark to catch up from Nuevo Mx.. The immediate problem was a lack of quiet legal space in which to sleep each nite. Bike nomads hate to pay and camp next to giant RVs so we developed a desperate protocol called GateCamping, where, on secondary roads the bit of space in front of ranch gates was the only legal place to rest. The first night we tried this a County Sheriff spotted us but let us alone. The elderly rancher the next morning was profoundly disturbed by us and ran us off. We had better luck gate camping down to road, but nowhere in the US, except for my relatives, were we treated with actual hospitality, what a difference from Mex. were everyone except officials took a friendly interest in us.
Unlittering Raid on Padre Island- The town is buttoned down tight, only one known transient camping site. Police roll along the beach several times a day. Folks like us go up island to the dunes where no one cares. We cleaned all the visible trash in the area (six large sacks) and hauled it out to dumpsters. If you clean-up everywhere you go it is unlikely you will be bothered by locals or law. We avoided stepping on dune vegetation. At low tide the exposed zone was solid enough to carry our bikes with a one chain ring penalty (a rough indicator of slope and wind effects). Downwind was rather effortless. We collected small shells with a snail borer hole at the peak, for buttons, jewelry, nomad currency.
Then we found one freezone to the uncampable polis. At the tip of the island there is a 1km or so long granite block jetty going out into the gulf. The wind had turned to the SE so the jetty was protected channel side from the largest crashing waves. By walking bikes about 300m out and laying them down in the blocks the shore patrol could no longer spot us. We were at sea! The weather radio informed that wind direction would hold. Further out a huge Coast Guard ship kept watch, no terrorists bothered us. The waves at high tide did sprits, the wind came up in the night, but in plastic tacos (bikes too), it was ok. We harvested a bag of "sea lettuce" algae on the rocks, and could have harvested tens of kilos. This ultralight veggie sea-food proved superb in our soups and stews. We salted and dried it while doing sea laundry (salt washed, wrung, tiny fresh rinse, sun and seabreeze quick dry).
Palm Trash- It was dark when we lay down with our bikes and gear in a trailer park. A stern looking old man came out of a trailer next to us and scowled. We smiled and said hello but he did not return the courtesy, and turned and went in. I didn't think it rude, but others did. The next day he came out and his jaw dropped when he saw us. He explained that he had not heard or seen us, instead had concluded we were "palm trash", now our nickname on the island.
Migration Aced: We rolled onto the island on an expiring norther and full moon, camping the dunes in calm and rolling out to avoid the sandstorm of the next norther, which was for blowing us south into Mx..
Ejidotopolis, Bicitopia- Forget the US becoming a bike utopia anytime soon, many of the small village collectives (ejidos) and barrios across Mexico are already bike based cultures. We found one 10k stretch of rural highway where villagers put speed bumps everywhere and bikes rule. Its located where a crystal river leaves a splendid canyon. The water creates a neotropic eden the length of the bicitopia. Hundreds of micro-businesses provide everything a small city does. The bike nomads are scouting the area for a base.
Halfway to Monterrey we ran into Lupe Lopez, a spry Mexican buckaroo, "Hecho Y Derecho!", There are varieties of cattle rider, the charro, vaquero, cowboy and buckaroo, and Lupe was a seventy-something-old buckaroo (fancy far western cowboy), a oddity in Tex-Mex vaquero country, but he had cowboyed up in wyoming. Comicly tipsy, he let us sleep in an old foundry shop, but kept asking suspiciously ".. que no son La Ley? Eh?"
Border Liberation
Freedom on the border is for the rich and privileged. On the US side, Mexican Americans endure invasive highway police searches as part of daily life. The Mexican migrant worker is hunted like an animal. Prisons dot the land. The Mexico side is better, only by default. Post 911 hysteria fed an ascendant Mexican military/police state. Our nomad circus bikes attract police suspicion on three continents. The two wheeled dissenter is a miner's canary, a new Jew in a new Nazi order. An Austin Police copter circled over our departure party (Jan 8, 9:50 AM). A few days later in Harlingen's City Park a Border Patrol chopper hovered in sun glare, blinding eye and video, until we left. I didn't want to burn the CCD in the glare but got a little footage as it flew off. Now I'm primed to get the camera out and hope it intimidates. Cop-ters bug us on most trips. What irony, sustainability on bikes as million dollar gas guzzlers loiter overhead, watching....
Southbound in Mx., we passed a military checkpoint searching northbound traffic. One soldier jeered us, as if drunk, brandishing machine gun. We rode by fast, acting deaf and clueless. Scowling plainclothes agents in unmarked govt. vans and SUVs stopped to telephoto us as we biked by waving. Later, in Victoria, a host got threatening midnight calls from someone claiming to be police. In Linares, as we ate in a restaurant, a US equipped SWAT team swarmed us as "suspechosos". The town is marbled with narcowealth toward which the police are impotent. To frustrated and often corrupt cops, ecobikepunks seem fair game. Only the opportune & brave intervention of a passing city councilman kept them from detaining us. Later the mayor personally apologized at the municipal palace. Viva Linares!
We crossed Monterry with difficulty. These folks are like gringos or Singapore in their control ambitions. It was hard to find friends or camp. A manager of a tiny bus line allowed us to sleep in the bus lot. Around one in the morning, a university security guard saw us through a fence and called in both city and university police. Soon we were surrounded by cop cars and motorcycles on both sides of the fence and roused out of our sleeping bags. Lines formed of cops seeking to investigate us, our docs were shared from hand to hand. Cops licked pencil stubs and scrawled irrelevant misspellings, like first graders, in tattered notebooks. It was dream-like disco of dueling radios and whirling lights, with cops emerging from the glare like alien abductors. We had been here before; it would end soon. A boss cop came and sized us up. We had permission, visas, passports. A long pause..."Let them sleep," he decreed, the scene evaporated and we dropped back into our bags. Most vagabonds are not so privileged, especially in US.
The next day we were surveilled at a park. Carrying bikes over footbridges o'r gridlocked highways lost the tail. I played a geek card and struck up with young net sysadmins, who adopted us until we slunk off to the sublime Canyon de la Huasteca. We stealth camped by full moon in the most beautiful place of the whole trip. Locals provisioned us with native delicacies and beer, admiring such moxie as finds restorative paradise in Chihuahuan desert.
Returning thru Monterrey, in great shape after three months touring, we whipped in and out of rush hour traffic like born daredevils, onward to the border. But bikes are thoughtlessly forbidden on the toll highway, with its broad empty shoulders, the only safe route. The free highway is a suicidal bike ride, 50 km. of hilly winding shoulderless two lane highway packed with speeding NAFTA trucks. It was a half-day hitchhike past this little stretch, but all agreed it was a most unbikable highway, no bike tourism here.
We passed Laredo US customs given old school courtesy, then, twenty miles in we came to a notorious checkpoint. Human bones litter the vast countryside from migrants trying to hike around in deadly waterless summer heat. An officer spotted us riding in and came out with a dope dog to sniff the bikes as scores of trucks and cars gawked, passing unsearched. He was hostile and unprofessional. The dog was friendly and cut us a break, but we couldn't pet him. I griped about unreasonable search under the US Constitution; this guy needed reminding. He said he was now Homeland Security, and things were different now. True enough, resources now burn to bother even citizens, in our case the absurd profiling of circus bikes, well inside the border, as a flood of trucks rolled past, entertained. Most contraband now flows in NAFTA freetrade shipping and there are insufficient public resources to review even the humanitarian risks of the closed border (as this is written 17 migrants were killed (baked) in a "NAFTA" trailer waved through the Falfurrias checkpoint).
Further in a zealous Border Patrol agent tracked us to a rest stop on the Nueces River. He was proud of spying our faint bike tracks in the dust leaving the highway. The lesson is to cover your tracks if you are a hunted animal, a rag could be dragged to help. Such a bike drogue could be feathered at it edges and given a lateral oscillation to blend its own trace in. He left us reluctantly, and sent another agent on us, a half hour later, who loosed a dog on me as i napped. Sweet puppy, easy, nap over. These are weaponized creatures v. harmless folks. Austin police shoot barking dogs of homeless they arrest. Doggies are not securing our borders, their loving spirit warped to violate human rights to peace, privacy, and migration. Officers enjoy, for pay, a sadistic sport, human hunting while wrapped in the flag, IMHO. Others start decent, yet morally at risk, given police power, by a limited social outlook. These are also state victims, inferiorized by a poor Texas public education, like their dogs. Many are Mexican-American, recruited against their own blood. From a bike, Homeland Security is a giant jackboot step backwards on a sadly divided land.
True pacifist intellectual bike gardeners are rather unprosecutable and threaten public safety less than common motorists. One moment living the wonders of the borderland, suddenly we witness tragic human and ecological conditions. The warrior cop-soldier is called to protect the weak and innocent, not expand facism. We say to them- Please stop ruining (in this case, migrant) lives. Respect poor folks not like you. Forbearance is sacred.
Thermosentience*- Human Thermodynamics and the Carbon to Consciousness Ratio
While sustainability is too fuzzy to formalize, we can calculate thermodynamic efficiency (watts to task) and quality (renewable, zero emission, etc.) of human lifestyles. We migrate on bikes to Mexico seasonally, escape cold, avoiding heating fuel consumption in a measurable victory. On we race, north and south, faster than the seasons. A moving spring and fall zone rolls over the globe at 20 km. per day or so.
We may eat like twice as much food to thrust laden bikes, but its some-hundredth the CO2 and waste heat of a SUV. Because bikes scan earth so finely, bike nomad's food is choice; self-presenting, garden-fresh, orchard-sweet, and country-pure. We still eat "grid" too much, but as knowledge grows, dependence ends.
Our biosquats and nomad gardens are counter entropic carbon sinks. Onto stripped land from salvaged biomass we accumulate humus, in time as coal sequestered, marsh or forest above. Reduction is cool, oxidation is out. Keep soil hypermulched to stifle out-gassing (H2O, CO2, and N). Creative delay holds off decay; its universe preserving. Hang out in the garden and read or sketch, dreaming.
Our campfires ever collapse into smaller, brighter little stars, and easier to cook on. Standing dead branches served the old natives as fuel. Unburnt, such wood air rots, fungi out-gassing CO2, much as fire does. Little carbon is left for soil building, same as fire. So burning wood bits is not, perhaps, so terrible. A handful of twigs must suffice the new nomad. Humus flows from nomadic versions of our composting technology and use this for further gardening. Our homemade cook kits are ever lighter and tighter.
* Marsee, '03
A Thermodynamics of Love bridges physics and poetry by information theory, someday maybe to redeem science and engineering. A cooler thermoconscious ecology, our solar cooking and mill watt personal tech (mutant electronics) squeese more love per calorie.
Open Revellion, the post-opositional jubilee
Merrily, whirrily, our bikes
float beyond.
We are
Reborn Comanches in
a New Golden Age.
comment to: santos137@yahoo.com