Flat Earthers

December 31st to 1st Jan 2009

Leaving Guerrero Negro behind, desert riding develops a by now familiar rhythm. We've dropped out of the Sierra San Pedro Martir and Sierra San Borja ranges, the world turns flat and the road arrows off into the distance in a parody of those perspective drawings from school art class. All parallel lines and vanishing point symmetry. It just look too precise to be real...



You develop a form of cruise control. Tick tock. You turn the pedals. The world moves slightly. Tick tock, the world moves some more. Like some vast screen image where your legs crank the film past the projector lens. Tick tock, see some more. More vivid, more 3 dimensional than any celluloid could ever be. It's hypnotic riding and time dilates.

I take another picture in another place and the world looks the same...



Then the day is done and we sleep.

And do it again the next day. Tick tock.

There's a kind of freedom to this terrain. It's not strenuous and there are no distractions, your mind soars and wheels on flights of fancy. It's a kind of liberation you just don't feel doing anything else. A meditation. And a minute passes. Look again and 2 hours have gone. Where did they go?

The next day's road....



And still later....




Then we stop and the sky is ablaze, a conflagration, clouds a scorching inferno of colour...



Then we sleep.
This is cycle touring.
I am not in favour of compulsion.
Normally.
Except on this one thing.
Everyone should be compelled, coerced, driven to cycle tour at least once.
It is their duty.