El Che Vive!

"Dear U.S. Government,

I have a beard, a motorcycle, a diary, and a sudden distaste for how visitors to our fine land are treated. Don't give me a reason to start a revolution.

Cheers,

Bonne"

 

There were moments when I used to be critical of people who succumb to the natural impulse of our times: to use Facebook status updates as an avenue for venting. In essence, it's a cry for help or attention, at the very least. I do make an effort to be above it but sometimes... you carefully and deliberately shoot that proliferative virtual signal flare not so much as to wittily blow off some steam but provoke that right gaze.

I cannot recall ever critically addressing the powers that be in this great nation in my adult life since I learned early on that when in your father's house you abide by your father's rules. Many would denounce this Confucian ethic as a sheepish trait of an indifferent citizen but for the most part I valued harmony over dissonance. Hate hippies, stay the course, God bless America and all that jazz. But for once in my life I wanted up on that soap box.

Before I parted from Dora's hospitable company that morning, I read a text message from my lady that she was turned at the Canadian border. She chronicled the manner in which she was detained, interrogated and sent back in so many words. My blood began boil with the same short fuse that the Navajo were grieved with while I suffered the commercialization of their land and culture back in Arizona. Before it erupted into a closed fist plowing into the nearest wall, my host strolled in to tell me "good morning." My teeth grinded against one another as I attempted to reply with the same words. The facade was painfully maintained until we parted from one another, though I was purely sincere in thanking her for the most memorable stay.

Just before I saddled up Chance I took out my phone and reread her message. This may seem to have nothing to do with my story but it affected me enough to ride blindly off course and plague my mind for days.

Besides having to take a three hour bus ride across the border to fly out of a cheaper airport at 2 in the morning, Renuka, my longtime girl, had an unusually difficult time at customs. We've been visiting one another several times a year, sometimes even monthly and she had the stamps to prove it. Nevertheless, out of the blue, they accused her of illegally escaping into the U.S. because she apparently lacked ties to Canada. If I know her, she would fly a Canadian flag just by default as she isn't exactly fond of our diets, health, lifestyles, coorporations, economic and foreign policies and the big one, how we handled displacing the Native population. Ren only hit the accusation back with a proud nod to her free health care. They then grilled her about her plans which were to simply grace my eager family with her company and await my return, sticking around only until school started up again in September. The officer found her story sketchy with me being on a road trip then demanded to know everything about me. Her interrogator deemed a lot of what she was saying as fabrication (with what evidence, I do not know), denied her entry and called a cab. When my lady asked for her passport and phone back, the officer barked that the cab driver can give it back when she was returned to Canada.

What sent me over the edge was a combination of things. Chiefly, my parents adore her. She is the daughter my mother always wanted in a family of men and to my father, the sunshine who tempers a lifetime of hardships. Denying them that simple happiness was a cross against me already, especially with my guilt of being away and worrying them. Then there were the hoops she would have to jump through just to achieve a simple visit that hit our pocket books as we're no longer enjoying the benefits of free travel. My brother actually anted up half of the plane ticket out of selfless care for his fiancé who really needed her best friend, Ren, during a difficult time. Then, of course, there was just how she was treated with unecessary rudeness by my own representatives of a country I was falling in love with on the road. Not to mention that my own trip was spoiled. How exactly I was going to keep on riding with an injustice occuring against my loved ones, I did not know. Naturally, I took this incident personal.

The motorcycle's engined fired up and and recklessly sped out of Houston without any heed to the direction nor traffic laws. This time there were no vocal eruptions but rather a deluge of internal strife which my bike unfortunately suffered under my sharp impulses. Eventually a near-empty tank would yank me off the road to a gas station where the burning engine and the wind calmed to a halt, leaving me to somewhat come to my senses. Now lost, I pulled up the map to which was only partially loaded due to my remoteness and lack of wireless Internet. From what I could tell I had gone south as opposed to east. This irked me for but a moment as I noticed patches of blue were towards the bottom of the screen. I knew exactly what I needed to do for myself.

Instead of backtracking and returning to a easterly heading, Chance and a slightly cooled off rider carried on south...

In a little over an hour I was smelling the nostalgic aroma of a salty body of water. Catching glimpses of it coming over hills and passing by beaches irrationally put a smile on my face. It made waiting in line to board a ferry worth the sun baking and bird drop ducking.

Huzzah! Our first sea crossing! We were officially as south as we were ever going to go (for now...) and what a way to reorient ourselves towards New Orleans. From here on we'd keep the Gulf at our right. My troubles were far removed from my mind now. The road demands living in the moment, I thought in the seabreeze. Get as far as I can, enjoy everything on the way and only dwell on the problems of thousands of miles away off the saddle.

The ferry from Galveston to the Bolivar Peninsula was short but just what I needed. I had been landlocked for the last two months and having always lived on the coast no matter where on the globe I called home, this was a real treat. I made my peace with my mechanical horse on that boat and even thanked him for the off chance that I might have been lead down here.

We were the last ones to get off so once rubber was reunited with pavement it seemed as though all our seafaring companions had disappeared. This stretch of road on a skinny peninsula bordered by a bay and the Mexican Gulf seemed like a different planet. For one, the humidity was so through the roof that the camera lense continually fogged and it felt like I was breathing in water. It seemed mostly baren but occasionally there would be small settlements where all the homes were raised a dozen of feet in the air. It never occurred to me that such dwellings existed in America but considering how exposed this coast was, it made sense.

I thought about the tropical storm that had been battering Florida just a few hundred miles before us. Last I heard it would weaken before becoming a threat to anything west of the Mississippi so I wasn't deterred but we stayed mindful of exit strategies inland.

Something told me they weren't open today.

The decaying gas station - probably a victim of Hurricane Ike a couple of years ago - though it appealed to my fascination with human ruins being reclaimed by nature, I was actually hoping to find some gas. This lonely coastal road didn't seem to have any for miles and I didn't know how far before we could fuel up again. Not a fan of backtracking, we rode on.

The area was quintessential bayou. That optical illusion where the sun seems to make the end of the road look as if it were covered in water was difficult to discern at times from portions of the road that really were lightly inundated with swamp water. We ventured carefully although once again, the humidity and heat were begging my right hand to roll back the throttle more than I should. In time a motel attached to a gas station appeared but the motel was closed and the gas station hadn't been serviced as they were out. That was new but it must happen all the time, especially in removed places like this.

The road sharply veered inland and to our elation the first major towns were reached. The both of us tanked up and got our bearings. We were a mere 300 miles from the southern end of the Great River but in no particular rush to reach it as I had plenty of writing to do, a repertoire to cook up, a Cajun host halfway in Lafayette, and the border incident to address!

The country roads I took out of Texas and finally into Louisiana were some of the most pleasant, even with the trying weather. The sun set in a small town of Oberlin where I'd shop around door to door for a decently priced motel. The one I landed at was not only the cheapest but the best roadside accommodation since venturing out of the Rockies! After staying in so many you get to become a connoisseur of budget lodgings and for no reason at all, this place seemed to invest in all the little things that made life on the road comfortable. Okay, so they were a few paces away from a railroad track that sees and definitely hears a lot of traffic but it was worth it!

Now free to bathe myself in rage without the road, I got caught up with my lady. Her mother was furious, her father not surprised, and herself, very much victimized. Apparently she would try again with a new ticket and proof of her questioned ties to her Commonwealth nation the next day. The manner in which she described the experience seemed highly unwarranted and, to my naïveté, un-American. Then I got to thinking... Perhaps I'm not as American as I thought. Self-defeating is not my style, though, so maybe I was just finally waking up into the responsibilities of my citizenship which is to recognize injustice and refuse to tolerate it.

First I went about it in typical alpha male fashion, demanding the name of the customs officer and vowing to invert the direction of his snobby nose if I crossed his path. If I can afford assaulting an officer it's a done deal, though out of respect for the uniform I would resolve to provide him that permanent reminder in the middle of his head while off duty - mano-a-mano. A few years of jail time is no skin off my back as I've plenty to read and all the more to write.

Thoughts of a young Ernest Guevara came to mind while throwing a very contained and likely life-shortening fit in my quarters. I vividly recalled a scene in the biopic adaptation of his memoirs, The Motorcycle Diaries, where he assaults a mining company for their treatment of the local poor - essentially his first armed conflict with a major authority. Although it wasn't more than a few thrown rocks in the heat of what his best friend would call an overreaction, a notorious revolutionary was being born. It soon occurred to me that beating up a snot-nosed member of the border patrol would only satisfy immediate and personal vengeance, when in the larger scope of injustices, our country was treating countless visitors like criminals.

Before I high-tailed it out of Escalante, Utah what seems like an entire lifetime ago, I met a expatriate couple - an archaeologist and a journalist, as you may recall. The journalist, who I profiled as being an affluent upper class, older Caucasian man passionately denounced the welcoming party that bitterly awaited travelers at our borders. He painted a picture of the weary yet hopeful, herded into lines that decided fates after long journeys filled with high aspirations, now backfilling with anxiety before brands in the form of an overpowered stamps. Then, I only humored the conversation out of politeness but was more eager to hear about the duo's adventures.

My experiences with these guardians of the U.S. of A. have always been proud ones. Last summer was the only time I had undergone secondary screening due to my stamp-battered passport and devil-may-care decision to only visit the shores of Victoria, B.C. for an afternoon of English tea and be back home in time for an American dinner. When my occupation was revealed, my interrogator apologized, admitting to profiling my manner of dress to be that of a drug trafficker. If anything, I was flattered. All other notably smug moments before these hounds were often on coach busses between New York and Toronto. Usually the border crossing would be in the middle of the night and a chore to shuffle out of the bus for but when the officers would bark those holding U.S. passports to come to the front first, I'd usually be the only one and strut down the aisle as arrogant as an American can be. On more than one occasion would my stamp come with a sudden change in tone as if to apologize for interrupting my sleep.

Back then I was too full of myself to notice how everyone else was handled no better than livestock. My elitism and even racism kept me blind to the plight of many innocent people. Sure, a handful may have been here illegally but that desperate desire to be in this country against all odds needn't be met with such scornful and undignified protocols. Only now did I recall that on some bus trips my passport was handled more than once at remote locations surrounded by armed guards in the middle of the night which gave credit to the articles I had been reading regarding Customs and Border Patrol raids on domestic transportation. Even Greyhound and Amtrak have been accused of playing their part in taking advantage of and entrapping-

I am getting ahead of myself here, especially for a humble travel journal. The point I believe I'm trying to set for the record is that for the first time I may be forming a political opinion of which I intend to act on in some way. My anger hadn't quite parted yet so my first thought was to ride towards the Mexican border, make a lot of amigos and lead an armed uprising to inundate the United States with more immigrants than they would know what to do with. It sounded far-fetched as soon as the thought crossed my mind but I didn't shake off the notion of at least growing more politically active. Then again, who knows? Could this be the calling I've patiently awaited this trip to manifest?

Though I was not entirely a fan of the man before setting off, it's difficult to ignore how my circumstances have been playing out parallel with my dear Ernesto. What was the tag line to the film? "Let the world change you so that you may change the world," was it? It's doubtful that the young man who would become the infamous Che saw himself embodying the spirit of a world wide revolution during an innocent little motorcycling adventure but the seeds certainly were being planted. For now I will sow mine.

To hold myself to being more responsible for the land I call home, I threw that message in the introduction to this chapter out into the winds of the social networking world knowing that somewhere in Langley, Virginia, my journal and subsequent life will have gained a new and highly attentive audience. Then, instead of counting sheep to force myself to let go of the day's troubles, I contemplated where on this controversial hide would a tattoo of el Che might go along with Don Quixote's.