My journey had just begun and now it was at risk of ending, just 65 miles south of my first border…

    America was beautiful and I had been blessed by good weather and good company for 2019 miles through Montana, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and California in mid/late December.

    Kolob’s Canyon and Zion National Park (Utah) and the Hole in the Wall Campground (California) were each gorgeous for their own reasons.  I forgot coffee for both of those stops.  Rookie.

    I got to spend priceless time with my brother and my father.  

    I crashed on my college roommate’s couch in Los Angeles.  It was hardly the first time.  I had way overstayed my welcome at his and his roommate’s place in Sunnyside, Queens in the Fall of 2000.  It got weird enough that his roommate flipped out and flung a bowl of popcorn about the living room during an argument.

    Matt had had a front row seat to my hitting bottom, which pretty much consisted of me realizing that I couldn’t stop drinking and doing drugs for long, that I was put on the earth to create, and that I would betray this purpose and my gifts were I to continue.  I finished my finals and went to rehab.

    22 years later, we watched New Year’s Eve on television, ate at Swinger’s and talked about how weird life was.

    I reunited with a friend I hadn’t seen since high school.  Tawnie lived in Fallbrook and made room for me amongst her husband, two boys, and her goats and chickens.  I received a few last shipments at her address.  We researched, shopped, and laughed about possible setups for a poop bucket, but I just couldn’t pull the trigger.

    It was at Tawnie’s place that I had to pause for a bit.  The Mexican government had raised the price of gasoline by 20% on January 1, 2017, and people were incensed.  Oh yeah, the Mexican government is the largest stakeholder in the largest petroleum company in Mexico.  Pemex is one of Latin America’s most successful companies, in terms of annual revenue.
Protests ensued throughout the country, some of them turning violent.  A man drove his truck into a group of federal police officers who had been deployed to protect a Pemex refinery in Rosarito, just 10 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border crossing at Tijuana.  The attack prompted the closure of the border crossing.  

    Sadly, predictably, my American thoughts were not with the Mexican people and the impact of this price increase on millions of lives.  My great concern was the impact it had on one single person and the ramifications these rumblings had on my dream.  We Americans are a self-centered people.  I was glad to be leaving people just like me far behind.

    During the day of January 5, I heard the border had opened up again.  Although it was raining, I saw a break in the greater storm and decided to go for it.  I made a few final runs, said “Hasta luego” to my friend, placed my things in the van, and busted loose for Mexico.

    I broke one of the two major rules for Pan American travel right off the bat.  I did not travel during the day, instead crossing my first border at night, and during a driving rain.  My heart was keeping time with the windshield wipers on high.  There was no one in the booth at the border, no vehicle check, no passport stamp.  There was just me in my van and my foot on the gas.

    I had made it 65 minutes south, to Norma’s house.  My host was a kind woman in a simple home in a non-descript part of Ensenada.  I would spend my first four nights south of my first border in an extra room at the back of her house.  My heart sank as the protests grew and gasoline became hard to come by.  A contact in recovery advised against my desire to begin my zig zagging down the Baja Peninsula at the northern apex of the Gulf of California in San Felipe.  “There’s no gas here.”  I researched this route and that route, trying to ensure fuel sources along the way.  It seemed pretty bleak.

    …so there I was, just over the border and itching for more, now, full of self-pity, burdened by inconvenience.
Norma could feel my pain and restlessness and reached out to some friends along the west coast of Baja California.  They told her there was gas, that all was calm, and that I should travel in their direction.  There was another break in the clouds. I sprang.

    Minutes after receiving that news, I was in my van and on my way.  I busted out 186 miles south, to San Quintín, to a parking lot that was labeled as “Wild Camping” on iOverlander (along with MapsMe, the two mobile apps that proved most valuable on my roadtrip).

    My first night south of the border on my own, in the van, was in the parking lot of a bar/restaurant named Molino Viejo.  I told them I was going to eat and asked if I could stay overnight in the parking lot.  They said yes, and that the security guard would lock me in.  And by “lock” they meant “attach the other end of the cable currently on the ground to the opposite supporting post.”

    I paid for my meal, thanked them, and went across the road to my van.  I felt safe as a kitten as the guard secured the cable two feet off the ground.

    I spent this precious first night in a rather large, otherwise empty parking lot.  It was glorious in its unadorned imperfection.  It had begun.

    I awoke earlier than usual the next morning, maybe ate a bit of something, snapped some pics of my first real stop, and headed down the road.  I could not imagine that I would repeat these basic actions nearly 200 more times over the next 447 days.