We start in the middle of the journey, in the El Cielo Biopreserve, a day's ride from our nomad base in Ciudad Victoria-

Captain Scott in Eden  

Oh, i'm pinned in a neotropic Perfume Storm,
in rocking hammock trapped like netted game,
weeks now, not able nor willing to think clearly;
sirened soul consumed in cool green jungle fire
beneath flying towers of lum-in-ous cum-u-lus,
live mushroom-clouds pregnant with roiling drafts
of pollen water, flower petals, butterflies, & birds; 
i bare manage brief tropical-nectar forays.
How long can one live thus? Ancestors, hardy,
eked two-hundred-thousand years, hardly.

Hammock accidents are no laughing matter,
BONK victims hammock-ridden to recover.
A hammock that doesn't crash still leaves cruel
waffle-marks on bare flesh, plus junkie's peril
of false orgasm, swinging in a grav field,
inner-ear cilia in rhythmic sway; basest
body-high abuse; Swinger in dappled shade,
tropic-of-(skin)cancer sunbeam-strobe on 
translucent eyelids, epileptic trigger. So too
do flaring firefly flashbulbs jam normal
celestial observation, fierce stellar
glare already preventing sleep. Worse,
how the moon sings & howls, & so must i.

Then, ever the surprise attack at dawn,
& again at dusk, by crepuscular bird 
orchestras so loud none hears you scream, 
never-mind the endless tropical critters
that already sound like human screaming.
One struggles feebly in golden-green light,
as if drowning in drugged honey,
magnetic compass frozen uselessly,
as paradise whirls madly about.  

Like being lost in a polar white-out,
rainbow-blinded by a tropic Lovely-Out,
no ugliness for reference, unable even
to tell up from down, nor can you care.

i pack my bike & quit Eden for Victoria,
reentering chaparral, then...N-O-O-O!,
not a Gold Tornado- fragrant dust-devil
romping in chrome-yellow bee-covered
blooming huisachal...t'was El Dorado,
the rightful golden horn-of-plenty,
a whirling wish granting genie, itself
more than anyone could ever wish for.

Marauding hyperboreans learned to
resist paradise by trashing it, shooting 
first a path directly to the biggest tree
& chopping it right down. Their trick-
Kill Everything before it enchants you.

It was the tail end of the dove migration, too long after the glorious monarchs had passed. Way late, i was leaving our bike nomad base in Victoria, Tamaulipas.

Once again, i entered the spring shock-wave along the border, strangled by rainbows while sprinkled by bubble-clouds. Suddenly my glowing bike broke the Flower Barrier, i was a northward streak 10X faster than the proceeding solstice, butterfly-buffeted, birdsong-blasted, balm-drenched, & nectar-quenched, a meteror in the explosive blooming. In such conditions one risks losing sight of the pavement in pretty glare or, delirious, forgetting to steer.

Now, after months on the road, my wheels "came off". I could no longer feel my legs, though they seemed to pedal more madly than ever. I was a flying Chuang Tsu, once a philosopher, now a butterfly risen & shining in fluidic paradise, fast-living in slow-motion, steering lazily within the wafting wandering Eden Zone, while dreaming at light-speed.

Thus we bike-nomads learned to surf global upheaval, keen to assist folks sunk in alienation from nature & body; their hands, arms, legs, & deepest organs withering & bloating at the same time, their spirits progressing from irritation to numbness to fear to hypochondriac wreck, until drowned in paralytic timidity. The return to nature is a return to rich sensation. Our bikes are lifeboats.

We plain out-ride the brutalized grinding work-world into a more intense world of super-productive play, fluffy post-work, the endless celebration of Nietzsche's eternal holiday. Play is a topmost essential freedom, status as freedom to play. One isn't forced to play, one lives to play.

Why We Fly

Five years into our bike-nomad seasonal migration experiment, some non-migrating Austin friends question whether bike migration make sense. Consider-

We are born head-first from the womb as if shot from a cannon. Our body is boldly molded to move forward, facing the future while mooning the past. We are upbeat, not downcast, & climb better up than down. Our brow's lofty summit is the condor or eagle's eyrie. We go like tornados, flow like volcanoes, run like rivers, etc.. Even at rest, our souls stir like the Ocean. We are not to be chained, tethered, fettered, bound, lashed, or caged. We are Sky herself; migrating geese trumpet in our blood, the Stars blaze in our Hearts. Born to soar, even dreaming we fly.

============

Clueless Bike Nomads Expand Search for Ambrose Bierce

Author's Fate Still Indeterminate

Cold Indifference of Modern Writers

New leads- The Chihuahuan area has long been searched without luck. Perhaps Bierce wandered a bit east into Mutant Bike Nomad territory, where a new search is being conducted.

Bierce's teeth, at least, must still be somewhere to be found scattered across Northeastern Mexico, so we're searching for things bitten by Bierce to compare with bite-marks found in Mexico, like The Great Writer's Pencil or a mummified taco too hot to finish. Failing that, isotope ratio analysis of a Bierce tooth, matched to his California homeland's isotopes, can identify him.

Let's not forget that Antonin Artaud, on his pioneering eurotrash peyote tour in the 1930s, may have run across a ~103 yr old Bierce, where paths crossed. Artaud's asylum wall's fecal scrawls may have been The Map.

============

Rad Safety

The precautionary principle calls us to action, not paralysis.

Strong Safety Cultures arose in high-consequence domains like traditional seafaring & early aviation, developing further in high-tech warfare, nuclear power, & aerospace, as well as modern medicine, childcare, & consumer design. Safety Culture spawned numerous services & commodities accessible only to privilege, an imbalance calling to radical activists, some of whom discern in Safety Culture a radical potential, a sort of Techie Way-of-Nonviolence. Yet Safety Culture's adoption by radicals is slowed by a fog of misunderstanding & emotional resistance to the technical negativism of the prevention mentality. It can be hard to see past the crumbling icon of the traditional white male sea captain or airplane pilot; a patriarchic facade of "professional pessimism". Inactivists in particular are passive vessels of partial radical beliefs; deeply fatalistic or apathetic toward action. A very few, the wispy fringe, believe in redemptive violence more than nonviolence as essential safety. Such views deny safety as a happy way-of-being.

Another obstacle to radical safety is the beautiful but naive bravery of a mostly youthful demographic trapped in the false consciousness of invulnerability. What kids (& fools) need is balance; matriarchy nurturing voluntary paths to greater safety more effectively than the same old coercive patriarchy imposing "security". Most social radicals are endowed with great affect, but are too often weak in technical realms characterized by abstract or procedural complexity, thus metrical approaches to safety (i.e. accidents per 100,000 events), & formal discipline (check lists, detailed protocols) can elude them. Radical Safety Culture will have to be user friendly for maximal adoption.

Still, aptitude for Safety Culture has been shown by the marginalized. Think of the women-of-color captains of the great proas of the Solomon Islands, Canadian Inuit miners taking modern mine safety to new heights, or the Black Seminole Scouts, whose perfect safety record endures as a historical "miracle". The current reality is that our Austin subculture's safety is admittedly complex, a fussy discipline for obsessives, a condition we call Astronaut Syndrome. In response, a "sandbox" concept evolved at Biosquat, originally to protect creative artisanal projects from incompetent disturbance (gardens, sculptures, etc.) & increasingly to ensure safety standards. Sandbox mistakes are low-consequence yet enlightening. Safe places, bunny hills, baby steps, training wheels; all these are useful safety culture development metaphors.

Whatever the problems, some radicals will revolutionize safety, in little ways & big, seeking to extend by personal choice (not guv'mint) basic safety rights to all living things, even the biosphere itself. Cycles of Nonviolence, a "mutant bike" nomadic collective & Biosquat, a utopian ecovillage experiment, are elements of Austin's radical community actively integrating Safety Culture into new forms of activism, as the activists extend themselves into high consequence activities such as extreme nomadics, self healthcare, mass food recycling, structural design, etc... Low social status is the most comprehensive predictor of human mortality, not income, health care, or "stress". Status is the the high-consequence psychological currency of the Domination System as handed down from Babylon.

Heidegger declared "As the danger grows, so grows the saving power". Safety progress is too much grimly paid in blood. Could Safety Culture thrive on theory? Ironic if violent simulations help avoid real violence (felt as pain), but purer versions of practical nonviolence need no recourse to computer games. Helpfully, aviation proves one need not (for)ever crash to learn crash avoidance, aviation subculture fills the knowledge gap. Subcultures' lessons transfer, thus riding a bike well is enough like another's sailing or flying that the tale of someone else's plane crash or shipwreck can prevent your bike crash.

It will be a long time before relative immortality becomes real, but we move persistently in that direction, ever reducing risk in common activity, freeing safety margins up to acceptably take on new risk. Call this"danger rationing". A clean glass of water is iconic Biosquat Safety Culture. Eliminating mundane danger in the kitchen or bedroom frees up risk for meaningful actions, truth hang gliding to power. The secret of new realities of "good luck" is as simple as Prevention-of-Harm.

We have a special hazard- Poetic mythmaking can lure victims into peril. Goethe unwitingly triggered a suicide craze that swept Europe when he published The Sorrows of Young Werther. Many died on the hand-cart migration so beautifully proposed by Joseph Smith. Many died in the early days of hang gliding lured by the romantic dream of DIY flight. We must turn-down-the-volume of "siren songs", so that innocents aren't lured to doomward. Austin mutant bike nomad subculture struggles against "sketchy migration". In Fluffy terms we need a slow response net, that begins to act long before tragedy manifests, & perseveres in healing long after. We need emergency clowns as conscientious first responders plugging critical gaps in tired response paradigms,

How To Bike Killer Highways

In 2000, on our second day ever biking as a caravan in Mexico, our friend, Debbie was hit by a truck's mirror, but luckily was only thrown & bruised. If our vision of bike migrations was to proceed we had to solve the problem of biking narrow highways, whistling death kissing past at 100 kph.

The key was Perseus's trick to survive deadly Medusa- the rear-view mirror. We learned to sustain attention to the mirror & the oncoming lane, spotting choke moments & twitchily diving off-pavement.

Now its second nature, & i'm secure hopping on & off the highway all day long, from smooth pavement to rocky-thorny "mountain" biking on kevlar tires, & even just to be polite to keep cautious drivers from slowing, thus saving thew sress & fuel. By-the-way, taking up a whole lane, Critical Mass style, is suicidal & antisocial along the border.

A bonus is always knowing when to safely get out into the lane for faster pavement, without constant head-twisting to see behind, even going faster overall.

Note Mirror Below

photo by Alexei Hay

bike nomad safety protocols

rearview mirror & rearward awareness; scouted routes, local guides or familiarized companions; punk poverty look (seeming pre-victimization warding off brigands); caravan caboose bike with extra visibility, ditch-dive routine, fair-weatherism, v-brake upgrade for cargobikes, mtb skill mastery, intense road reading, bottleneck sprinting, fatigue retirement, explicit safety culture, rearward awareness as forward enablement, chill-routes (bypassed highways, secondary roads), toll-road crashing (overpasses & avoid counter lanes), hitch-hopping to avoid suicide-stretches, fairing puff-up enhancing visual footprint, reflector & blinky madness, night/dusk/dawn avoidance (except for moonlit potholeless chill-routes), head mounted lamp to zing oncomers, plus tracklamp.    

 =====================================

Icarus Vaporized

The Fallen Jet Set  

fallen flight v. sky as liberation  

In order to fly the travel consumer ponies-up a sizey sum, thus pre-approved as official suspect of phobic order, then meekly undergoes ritual preflight humiliation; herded cattle-like thru magnetometeric chutes, stripped at will, where all jokes are taken seriously, & one may be shot first & then, ha-ha, "questioned"; the Beast's sense of humor.  

First class may now board, while coach stews jealously, for explicit classicism prevails in the para-militarized prison-galley seating patterns of the airplane cabin. Still,

First Class is White Collar,
the same ol' yoke & fetter,
as ever, still the Dog Collar,
no better, 
donned for a stinkin' dollar.  

Preparing to fly, the old shaman-pilot-priests of paleo-aviation huddled before a gleaming altar of glowing symbols, the control panel, performing the checklist ritual, an oral incantation of scientific faith to be done precisely, if the plane would rise.  

Flash forward; the shaman's replaced by a jaded bus driver too close to a TV screen, but with the old solemn motions, brakes are loosed, throttles goosed, & an apocalyptic take-off roar ensues, one's carnicles flung forward, space-thime drags & warps tighter. Oh what bestial roaring over the land, as what turns out to be an aluminum & plastic Behemoth, consumer of consumers, shudders & moans in air-polluting orgasm

In picturesque terms inspired by Wink ;^), a radical theologian, given the moral problem of jet travel, take-off stands revealed as a monstrous consummation, in harness, no less, thrust at from behind, no kidding, of union with Satan (or secular equivalent).*

* Ethically superior bestial power-sublimes are found about volcanoes, earthquakes, storms, white-water torrents, wild-fires, & large surf; in sailing large boats, or contact with whales, elephants, & such.

After "take-off", before the domination scheme was so complete, it was once allowed the victim to light a cigarette & move about a bit, unbuckled. On landing one may not stand until given permission. i make none of this up.  

So,

Take-off completed,
that spent womb, Old Earth,
just drops away...
Quick! Wave goodbye to 
Grandma on the quay.  

This is the dividing of families & friends for profit. McTravel  

Squint thru the myoptical jet-plane window, a scratched peep-hole show where heaven's blinkered grandeur is ultra-processed into fogged plastic bits consumed with junk-food & airport novels (lobotolit for anti-reading. even the worst book reads better beneath a tree.) Anything worth seeing by the passenger/prisoner is relentlessly torn away & left behind, no lingering gaze allowed* Go ahead, snap a picture; mockery, the glory is gone.

* Compare with bike travel.

Somewhere the naked eye yet rocks, but the deadened frequent-flier eye blankly stares over a brown blanket of air above a vast ape-scarred rape-scape. Night brings no relief, for the starry deeps are bleached away in the plane's throbbing robot glare.

Climate Control is but the Tomb's dead air, a false eternal-spring where nothing, not even a plastic flower, really cares to bloom. 

Psychic jet-lag is the failure to transform en-route as travel becomes instant. The gradual accumulation of the rich intensities in slow travel is lost to a compressed time sequence.*

* Compare to Slow-Time radicalism.

To never experience how the land & sea is knit, stitch by stitch, instead one's spirit is cookie-cut & sardinified to a machine-fit, clipped people visiting family & friends prison-style. To always arrive unimproved, damaged even, is chronic diminishment.

Petro-travel as toxic plastic wormholes in space-time; force-fed geo clip-art hyper-consumed from tubes: Mass-transitory life pissed away in fleeting encounters without meaning, where strangers stay strangers- MacTravel.

This is the culture that rains death from above, for whom high ground is nothing but the ultimate real estate, & the low are mere videogame targets in environmentally-racist collateral-damage zones drowned in jet-engine "white-noise", or the chopper's giant death-rattle. Dare rhapsodize the minor-miracle of cocktails-in-the-stratosphere & two rows back, a socially conservative air marshal high on adrenalin, slips the safety off.

A passenger is a carried infant or invalid, helpless to self-move in the world. In a system that seeks to eliminate pilots & maximize passengers the joy of wandering flight is murdered for the slavery of forced flight. 

Real flight is panoramic & self directed. The free pilot, goddess-like, rises on her own wings & looks about afresh, to the Garden returned, to see what's blooming. DeExupery flew on his own wings. What mere passenger ever wrote so bravely? 

Who flies airlines by free choice? It is empty experience hollowed-out of meaning, a living death endured for supposed convenience, particularly "red-eyes", flights "caught" like some disease; repose postponed or aborted; one is routinely startled from sleep by, of all things, an "alarm", to gaze groggily up at a barren ganz-field of sheet-rock nothingness. Better the bike nomad's cheery reveille of songbirds on flowery sun-gilt branches.  

The forever uncompleted air travel consumer subsists in Thoreau's "quiet desperation" zone, of junkie craving, in a state of permanent irritation, never actually high, at best bleakly "normal" until mortally dis-empowered by addiction to the very services that promised liberation. In Illich's Energy & Equity, the future Frequent Flier died stillborn as a desirable way-of-being; a mindless bourgeois fancy created out of false consciousness by marketing that yet pumps the corpse.  

On the other hand, we, bike nomads, attain cosmic communion in sky-gazing, direct initiation by wonder without stinkin' priests, a prevention of postmodernist Sky Deficiency that leads to Dropped Gaze in an assigned cubicle.

=================================

Notes: Up & Away

Cielito Libre- Natural Aviation

That lost innocent age when the Lindberghs, Anne & Charles, seemed a new, heavenly, Adam & Eve. Then came the fall(s), & ultimately the airline crash as collective annihilation where group flesh shatters like so many glass Icaruses, a lead-mine of morbid fear, better the distributed risk of everybody winged.  

Wiley Post as cyclops paleo-astronaut in the first pressure-suit, who discovered & surfed the jet-stream, pilot to Will Rodgers, that crazy Indian-of-the-future, typing away in-flight. Wiley's loan from the devil called. Will Rodger's flying ghost, completing his aborted flight blog.  

Story Musgrave, singing astro-geezernaut, fixing the Hubble so easy, like fixing a flat. The flying village called Graf Zeppelin on its round-the-world lark.  

Victor Serge's aerial-view inspired art, naked eyeball's embrace. Space exploration as experimental way-of-being  Flying as Being   free aviation, save the fliers, Poets in Space- cosmological imagination, bike as but a wingless airplane

------------------------------------

aerospace engineering concepts-

Rear stabilizer as intermittent prop/generator turbine

for small aircraft cabins, reverse pitot drain rail-gun ultra-light aircraft catapult, electric rail-cart deadweight, spiral reel accelerator, solar powered, -/+ rails

ribbon wing- an arbitrarily long flexible wing that snakes through convection fields.

a flying-carpet-like floating sheet that self rolls into an airfoil sectioned wing

minimalist flying sub- a "flooded" style submarine bike that also flies by parawing, mountain touring equipped.

an arbitrarily high aspect ratio pontooned flying wing with kite-keels  

TZ/LZ Framework Along Sierra Madre Oriental Front Range Ridge Soaring & Texas Dry-line Thermal Cloud-streets, Sailing Yacht TO, ram-air kite furling- ear-launch, center-launch, accordion furl  

analogy between long boom irrigation and long wing control

Soar NE sector hurricane arms from tropical Atlantic to mainland.

Intermittent direct solar power (leaving cumulus shadow) between thermals in cross country soaring to flatten out downdraft drop (super capacitor structural composite airframe).

Aerofaired Kiteline made by variable diameter strands

Kite Net- a web of kites muulti tethered to an Anchor Net (or Kite Keel or Cart Net)

Giant Flying Carpet- a sort of inflated graphene "pool-raft" of a giant high altitude semi-balloon (cupped down) that uses waste heat on its undersurface. The moisture would be harvested from water vapor (clouds), heat would be the by product from hydrogen producing electrolysis)

a holstered retracting tube-tethered unisex urinal with modesty shroud for cramped aircraft.

================

Misc. Concepts & Inventions-

grav-hack tip- super hi-frequency phased piezo array preserves molecular bonds while ramping up field strength

brain display cap- EEG brain-state is actively displayed on outside of head

a bristled bike helmet or head travois, helmet runners that fend collisions 

guitar handlebars- steer while playing  

Bike with endo somersault hoop, just hit front brakes hard to initiate.   

a hand air pump that registers pressure by an incrementing pointer on a flexing handle.

The Rewilded West- grizzly taser headlamp

heavy-duty air-bag as clothes wringer  

fansuit- a salvaged 12 volt computer muffin fan affixed to chest of painter's coveralls; tested in (low humidity) heat in Victoria, worked well. One might comfortably stroll Death Valley at noon pushing a shaded solar stroller.

camera iris mechanism as variable thermal pot skirt.

ventable swim goggles- double as safety/dust goggles (little watertight vent caps).

travois unicycle

Artificial drowning hazards (like water buckets) in the garden can take a huge toll on amphibians, reptiles, & small mammals. Swimming pools drown many creatures. Escape ramps & floating islands, say a foam block or stick ladder, especially in drought.

bi mode sustainable ehating & cooling- same winter solar thermal water heater panels could be folded into a fan or breeze blown mist box to make a dry air evaporative cooler in summer.

Freight Cycling & Perpetual Camping Nets

Freight Cycling- Bike-bookmobile with Wi-fi based home delivery & pick-up, donation based, OCLC/public library support

Capture a comet with an asteroid and place both in earth proximity using only the kinetic energy of the objects. A long elastomeric sling cast sideways & quick shackled onto the already slung passing comet could yank the asteroid out of its orbit & capture the comet hot wire or rope saw a comet, use a bucket like the water buckets used by fire-fighting helicopters. Bola rotation of two masses. If you have a lot of water, say on a comet, you can vacuum dry your laundry. Smash comet & asteroid containing materials in nets.

2fer- personal electronics embedded in body armor.

grid-shack- at edge of off-grid ecovillage as low duty adjunct to to ultra-low consumption. Floating grid-shacks in otherwise organic built flood zone.

temper the insipid wild persimmon with the too-tart wild grape for a perfect flavor.

bird collision avoidance gazing- window of frosted, silvered, or colored vertical stripes as optimal maximization of protection v. transparence.

peizo toned acoustic fields along guy cables & high rise windows to prevent bird hits.

carbon (graphene) towers so light thay fall slowly if toppled.

winged tower resists wind loads & oscillations

artificial liquid made of graded ball bearings

spectroscopic driven electrostatic sorting

spiders of electronic components that clip & plug on-the-fly into whatever device desired

a weighted cart on a super-lever arm

The Gravity Rocket is born from streamlining the laden mountain-cargo bike & loosing it down big mountains, reaching otherwise impossible speeds over 100 kph. Extreme psychogeography indeed, gravity rocketing down exotic sierras, vinted adrenalin sipped from "golden goblet".

Holstered Computing, the Thigh-Top advantage, to saunter the streets in Old Guerrero, an uncontested cyber-vaquero hung with nerd-power. Enables squat-surfing (outdoor shitting online), Bug Report- the system strikes some as a suicide bomb. Work-Around- Avoid Israeli public transport.

Ultra-light nomad trick- carry just one (symmetric) glove & use a pocket for other hand; half the weight.

cobb earth patches work well to quickly, cheaply (free), & sustainably patch holes in conventional construction for vermin & weatherproofing. Embed salvage mesh as desired. In many cases Katrina fouled construction could be neatly cobbed-out.

nonviolent First-person Unshooter Computer Game where, say, a little Mario-Ghandi by fasting provides less vulnerablity to bullets. Caracters like Anti-whalers, tree-sitter/huggers, etc..

hammock airbag- with drop-sensing airbag under it.

"catcher" for elderly bird watchers who tend to keel over tracking a bird flying overhead. Superannuated RC model airplane pilots suffer the same ill.

(oval) tracking solar panel/cooker/etc. can creates a useful constant shade-spot

foot-lights- knee, shin, or shoe mounted path lights.

counter-lit/shaded surfboards & wetsuits to be invisible to great sharks below.

==================

Dog notes-    

The Victoria, Mexico bike club dog eats almost anything, including plastic & shits a true plastic turd, unlike the fake variety found in Gringo novelty shops, a rare case of southern overtness mimicking rare northern bio-mimicry. This exhuberent mutt thinks its name is "NO!". 

Dog-bite at La Perra- Just after Carlos gave away a litter of puppies, i stumbled out of the jungle into the ejido. The mama dog performed admirably complex, if flawed, logic concluding the only stranger about, me, ate the pups & so set upon my ankles at every opportunity. Unlike the pool-hall education, here my soccer skills paid off, gently fending a toothed orb in a high-stakes horizontal hacky-sack game, until the mobilized populace could drive her away. But, in its first surprise attack the dog had scored, my shoe had a fang hole, i had toppled in social class until a cunning repair could be effected by a Victoria shoe doctor.  

A dog lies down in the dirt & sighs heavily before sleeping, blowing loose dust away from nostrils, to then breath clearer air.  

dog panting as high-frequency thermal efficiency superposed on low-freq. respiration, create panting standing wave in waveguide;  

Monterrey's small dogs bred with a big bark,

the dog wiped my blog    

Avoidance Image Conjecture- Dogs bred along highways develop an inbred fear of the highway, without need to see other dogs killed.

high tech dog bike needed

Dog Mode, "carne de perro"; established DogMa,

random trip notes-

Redemption & Grace in Linares

Something magic always happens to us in this town where once a SWAT team detained the mutant bike caravan, but a councilman intervened & the mayor apologized. Now, bike nomads returned, on a sunday evening, the town band played joyously in the central park gazebo, the community's sonic & spatial heart, there, at the center stood an aged Down's child played a grooved gourd, proud, offbeat, no greater love hath any Carnegie Hall.

=================== 

Below: My bike at Balcones Ruins, note aerofairing, bamboo tripod stand, solar film on tail box, & microhammock.

Feb.6, '06 Greetings from the Balcon de Moctezuma ruins, a Mayoid Machu-Pichu high on the front range of the Oriental Sierra Madre, as i contemplate fallen & reborn civilizations from a computerized micro-hammock.  

Janis Alcorn's work [Alcorn, '84] on the "Huastec Maya" supports the independent elaboration, in 2005, of my "Huastec-Mayoid" cultural thesis to explain a common architectural masonry tradition, & many other traits, across vast distances, all the way from the "Mayoid Kogi" of Colombia to the Northern Gulf Coast & up the Mississippi Valley. Perhaps the genetic evidence will show Asian Pacific "canoe people" formed a migratory stream down the American Pacific coast, early-on crossing the continent at the narrow Isthmus of Tejuantepec to again take up the coastal lifestyle along the Gulf & Caribe Coast, as Paleo-Mayoids, while the continental altiplano backbone was the province of more "Mongolian" hunter-gatherers as Paleo-Chichimecas.  

Here a mysterious so-called "Indian Nation" developed a WAN (Wide Area (comm) Network) of full duplex free-space optical links (fire & smoke signals) with Morsesque codes for warnings & calendric observance, plus signatures, business & travel info, even joking signals, ever evolving toward complete language. 

Over millennia an established attention economy emerged, of dedicated signal watchers bridging diverse biomes, from coastal to alpine, cloud forest to desert, & every mix (How cool to soon find myself, in the El Cielo Bio-reserve, tagging along with modern tech teams installing comm links along some of the old free-space paths).  

In a "Middle Biome", Balcones straddles a saddle ridge, a sheltered defensive eminence that creates a mountain-top valley effect, yet commands a large bend of river canyon. A spur ridge at a middle altitude that is a crossroads of biomes. Goods flowed (mostly) uphill to the comm & trade hub, otherwise poorly capable of supporting itself, despite extensive garden terraces. Mountain folk live on top of a gravity well as if geo-synch orbital over lowlanders. We bike nomads still toil food & water up to Balcones &, like early astronauts, its only a few days before supplies run out & we descend, undergoing re-entry to splash-down in some cerulean swim-hole.   

To forever huff goods from biome to market to biome was no mere drudgery, but the way to hang with friends & relatives & experience varied geography. Mexico is Wal-mart resistant as so many prefer to buy from an aunt or in-law selling an equivalent product, as part of a social visit, even at higher prices (In fact mercantile Mexico is but a great medieval Wal-mart, full of greeters).