A Short Intro To The Crazy

So. Spoiler alert – I did not die on this trip. No major injuries. Let’s talk about the why and the where:

So this is North America. A place I hadn’t been since…November 2019, the sweet innocent “Before Time,” when I bid farewell to my home to travel the world for a spell.

I wandered around Spain for a bit (that’s another story) and then landed in Seoul, South Korea, one week before the COVID-19 shut down all entry and exit from the country. I spent the Plague Year comfortable and secure in lovely, civilized, organized, South Korea. A wonderful place to be when you need social order and cohesion and every following the rules and all things Done Properly With Paperwork. But a bit lacking when it comes to a) tacos and b) harebrained and hazardous schemes and unplanned adventuring.

So as I sat there in my classroom one day, after my little students had left, I found myself on Ed Calderon’s instagram page. Ed is a former cop from Tijuana, sometime poet, and storyteller, and through his eyes you get a glimpse of the music and food and culture of the ordinary people that you meet on the street. He also posts tantalizing pictures of something that I had never tasted before – birrea tacos.

(Insert amazing Instgarm pictures here)

Well shucks. The only thing I love more than finding the local mom and pop food shop…is the local mom and pop Mexican food shop. And after the helpful but slightly restrictive structure of South Korea, it would be nice to be in a place where you can wander off the beaten track and explore at whim.

So I convinced the lovely Lindsey to take a week off work so we could go visit the Baja California and eat some tacos and not be freezing cold in the middle of February. A week of amazing food and brilliantly curated Air BnB’s (Lindsey has a gift) later, Lindsey had to pack off back to the United States, and I had conveniently forgotten to buy a plane ticket back to the US. Oops. Guess I’ll have to wander around the Baja for a bit and practice my Spanish. My original plan was to take local buses and work my way northwards, and then Greyhoud from San Diego to Boulder to settle into Normal American Life with Lindsey and find a job and climb some mountains and drink craft beer on the weekends.

And then I found Suzy the Super Burro on Craigslist.

Suzy came to me with 2200 miles on the odometer, a fresh change of oil and filter, the owner’s manual and factory toolkit, a California license plate, and a chance to fulfill a dream I’ve had ever since I watched Dust to Glory on Netflix: to ride a dirt bike 1000 miles through the wilds of the Baja California.