Every failure teaches a man something, to wit, that he will probably fail again. H.L. Mencken
"Once out of town and earshot of the stern-faced, disheveled cop, Juan told me what had happened.
"I think he wanted to rob us," he said.
"No…"
"Yes. He wanted to know what we were doing in Guaymas, and kept insisting we spend the night in his town. He thought we were tourists. When I told him we were trying to help the Mexican people, his attitude changed. I convinced him that if we could take his photograph, we could tell our American friends how he helped support us."
"Smart thinking."
Things were different in the next town of Los Hoyas. Everyone was friendly. A man named Sam invited us to have supper with his family. We were served tortillas with beans, cheese, beef and a Coke. He allowed us to pitch our tent next to the family house and his mother offered us a blanket. I slept soundly.
Juan developed stomach pains the next day, but felt better in a few hours. I couldn’t say the same for me. I was in a bad way. I really began to understand the phrase, "Call of the wild." The dysentery was forcing me to make frequent, unwanted stops.
We had also run out of toilet paper, leaving only hot, sun-baked rocks to clean myself after each ordeal. Additionally, there was the problem of privacy. Shrubs were the tallest vegetation and barely a foot high. I was getting so sick though, I didn’t care if cars were passing or not.
In Esqueda, Juan pulled over and made small talk with a woman in a bright blue flowery dress who was waiting for a bus to take her to work. Standing next to her was two small children, a boy and a girl. When he told the woman about our mission, she whispered something to the little girl. The child left and returned in five minutes with two cans of juice and two sweet rolls. She told Juan she didn’t have much money, but felt she wanted to do something to help us.
After the bus picked her up, Juan pointed out her home: an abandoned box car on some rusted out railroad tracks. This really touched us. It was obvious she was poor and we doubted she had running water or electricity. She was the type of person we were trying to help, and yet here she was trying to help us.
We finally made it back into the U.S. on September 30, pitching our tent behind a Burger King in Douglas, Arizona. The first priority should have been to find me a doctor, but we were trying to watch our money and I fooled myself into thinking I was actually feeling better.
Juan’s bike was in serious need of maintenance so we spent part of the day repairing spokes and patching tires. My bike was still less than four months old, but already I could hear the bearings grinding up sand caught in the hub. My front sprocket, too, was bent, but still functional.
From Douglas, Arizona, we picked up Highway 80 Northeast to Highway 9, leading into New Mexico. The terrain was desert-like again. There were very few trees, just shrubs and rocks and shrubs and rocks, and an occasional cactus, which I was careful not to lean against with my bare bottom.
I felt better coming into El Paso. I was no healthier, but at least there were public restrooms along the way. The city straddled the corner of Texas and Old Mexico, holding close to 750,000 people. It sprawled out for hundreds of square miles, spilling into the desert and rolling foothills.
Juan wanted to pedal on into Mexico that day to look for the C.I. orphanage. I was delirious, but unaware or unable to communicate it to Juan at that time. He must have sensed it, because instead of pushing us onward, he suggested we set up camp next to a 12 foot high barbed-wire fence along the Rio Grande River in downtown El Paso.
I slept very little that night. About 2:00 a.m., I heard a vehicle pull up close to the tent and spotlights lit up our campsite. When I peered my head outside to take a look, I heard a gravelly voice yell, "What the hell do you think you’re doing here!
Squinting into the light, I could make out a uniform and a badge. It was the U.S. Border Patrol.
"We’re planning to bike into Juarez in the morning," I said. "We just camped here for the night."
"You’re fucking nuts," said the officer, checking Juan out carefully as he stepped out of the tent. "Do you realize that you’re camped at the edge of one of the most dangerous border crossings in Texas? Some of these Mexicans would just as soon slit your throat as look at you."
I tried to explain to him that I didn’t have the energy to uproot again for the night. He just shook his head, got back in his car and left.
The next morning, under a backdrop of a tomato soup sunrise, Juan and I witnessed a steady stream of Mexicans leaving their country and wading across the river. Many of them were naked, their clothes wrapped in a bundle and held high above their heads. What kind of way was that to live? I think I would have found it humiliating to be forced to leave my country on a daily basis to find work, to have to strip and wade across the Rio Grande, dodging armed forces on the other side. I knew at that moment how lucky I was to be an American.
We crossed legally into Mexico again. This time we entered Ciudad Juarez, a rough, crime-infested city of close to 1,000,000 people. The orphanage we were seeking was "Hogar de Ninos Emmanuel" (House of Children of the Lord). Juan and I pedaled for nearly two hours looking for the right address.
I’m sure we would have found it sooner if I hadn’t been feeling so poorly. My mind and body were practically useless. I pedaled on auto-pilot, but really didn’t care where I was going. I hadn’t eaten much in the last 24 hours, so the diarrhea wasn’t beckoning at every bump in the road. I hadn’t had much to drink either and was so dehydrated I felt like a chalk stick figure. I would find out later that I had lost 22 pounds since we left on July 1, but it was difficult to tell how much of that loss was due to the nearly 6,000 miles we had pedaled or the dysentery.
The roads, if you could call them roads, were the worst we had traversed yet. Sewage from local residents’ homes mixed with four inches of Ria Grande overflow and was running through a paved gully circling the outskirts of the city. After five slow-moving miles, our clothes and bikes were soaked with a foul-smelling brown liquid.
When the gully changed directions, we had to walk our bikes another two miles across a rocky, dirty road leading up and down rough gravelly hills. On each block-long mound of dirt and rubble were squeezed multiple one-room houses in no semblance of order. Some were unpainted brick dwellings, others merely sheets of cardboard nailed onto wooden frames.
Finally, we found the orphanage. I recall very little of the meeting with the orphanage’s director, Jesus Lopez Luna and the children. I remember they were all laughing and tugging at Juan and I, and asking a million questions. All I could say was "No comprende, no comprende!"
I recall too, that Jesus said his agency could not trace the parents of half the children in the orphanage and that the rest were from broken homes. They could only handle so many kids at a time and were currently having to turn many away.
Jesus also gave me the address of a doctor, and after we left the orphanage we paid him a visit. I don’t know if he gave me a shot or some pills, but within a few hours my strength and clarity of mind had returned.
As we re-entered El Paso, I knew it was time for another decision. I was in no shape to pedal the 1,700 miles back to Nashville with Juan. If he went, he would have to go it alone. We checked our money. Juan said there was enough for a plane ticket for me and food for him to return alone.
We pedaled to the airport and broke down my bike for the flight home. It should have been an emotional departure, but my emotions were numbed by the illness. All I could think about was getting back to Nashville and stretching out for a long rest in my 14 foot Casa Aluminum.
As the plane left the runway, I opened an El Paso newspaper and flipped through it. One of the headlines immediately caught my attention. It read, "Assaults in Mexico Stir Alarm". The article went on to say that the U.S. embassy may issue an advisory against traveling in certain areas of Mexico because of assaults on tourists by highwaymen. The bandits were believed to be former or active-duty policemen who preyed on Americans who stopped their cars when men waving badges and showing weapons flagged them down. In the past two months, three Americans and two Mexicans were killed and eight others assaulted on Mexico highways.
Was this the same Mexico we just left? What about that cop who stopped us on the mainland? Would he have tortured us, perhaps even killed us if Juan hadn’t convinced him we were there to help his people? In hind sight, it seemed foolhardy to enter another country without first researching the potential dangers.
When my plane touched down in Nashville, I assembled my bike and sluggishly hopped aboard for the two-hour journey home. I was drinking a lot of liquids and feel much better, but still had a long way to go.
One block from home, a black lab bounded out into the road barking and nipping at my front tire. Afraid I would hit him, I squeezed the front brakes and turned the wheel. As if in slow motion, I saw myself complete an awkward summersault over the handlebars and hit the pavement on my left side. I have no idea if it hurt, but I looked up just in time to see a woman grab the dog by the scruff of the neck.
"Are you okay?" she asked in a worried tone. "I am so sorry…"
I looked at her, looked at her dog and looked at my bike. Then I completely lost it, breaking into the heartiest laugh I have ever laughed.
The woman cocked her head and gazed at me quizzically. I tried to explain why I was laughing, but couldn’t stop long enough to get it out. Sensing that I might be a fruit cake, she hurried back to her house, dragging her lab with her.
When I was finally able to compose myself, the woman had already closed and bolted her door.
How could I tell her that I had just pedaled a bicycle for 6,000 miles, through 17 states and into two foreign countries without one instance of an aggressive dog? And then I get one block from my home and her lab is there waiting for me.
**
"Bike Riding For Charity A Flop." So read the headline of the state’s largest daily, the Nashville Tennessean. I was already despondent over the fact that I had pedaled 6,0000 miles (and Juan an additional 1,400—the last 172 miles in one day from Brownsville, TX to Nashville, TN) and we spent $4,500 dollars, with nothing to show for it but a great tan. According to CI, we had failed to get even one child sponsored. Now, the Nashville Tennessean had the gall to report the truth -- that we had failed.
We wanted to be the first sponsors, but were broke. We would have to wait until we got back to work and back on our feet financially.
I’m not sure if the Nashville Tennessean headline got its readers feeling guilty or if it was just a delayed reaction to our trip, but when I was finally able to sponsor my child in December, CI’s director Jeanne Clarke Wood attached a note to the paperwork:
"We now have at least six adoptions we can attribute to you and Juan, and perhaps as many as ten."
The child I sponsored was a young boy named Roberto from Acapulco, Mexico.
‘While Acapulco is one of the great resorts of the world, and mention of it evokes glamour and wealth," wrote Ms. Wood, most of its population must work at the menial, poorly paid jobs necessary to keep the luxurious hotels and mansions functioning."
I also got the warmest letter from Mom, announcing that she too was going to sponsor a child.
"My packet arrived Saturday," she said. "I think I am going to request my child be from Juan's home country of Costa Rica. Who knows? I may get to visit him or her one of these days!"