My Cheatin' Heart
by Marty
McLennan
Cataviña, Baja California
My bike is following me. And it watches with jealous intuition. We've spend nearly every waking moment together for the past three months and 2,000 miles. Five to six hours a day, we ride together. When I eat lunch, it waits patiently beside to taco stand; when I sleep, it rests at my tent door. In truth, it knows my every last move. I consider it a friend, a pal. But above all, it's a sexless piece of machinery. A eunuch.
Not that I haven't looked at my bike in a half-sexual way. It has numerous nipples, several lovely hydrating units, fantastic curves, and provides me with hours of fun without ever going numb. But it's a conscious decision, one I made long before entering the desert of south central Baja California; I had the power of mind never to give my bike a lover's name. Not even Bessy.
I concede, though, my bike does have a feminine side. One that has charmed the pants off of almost every stray dog in the Mexican countryside. In this respect, my bike is part female Chihuahua. And likely in constant heat. Dogs come racing out of the cactus forests, chasing me breathless for miles. I pedal maniacally, swearing insults at my bike's canine suitors, sometimes swinging my bike pump and others just hammering with the fear of dog racing through my veins.
At night, when I prepare myself for the hours of horizontal solitude in the desert sands, surrounded by scorpions and viboras -- the four species of poisonous snakes found here -- I boil up gallons of tea and drink until I've urinated an unbroken line around my belongings. But it's a worthless first line of defense. While the sun moves west and wakes up Asia, the coyotes come out howling. And I wrestle with grizzly fear, clenching my Swiss Army knife. Surely, my Sunday morning Looney Toon education, with a specialization in desert ecology taught by Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, and Speedy Gonzales, hasn't prepared me for this adventure.
Paranoid? I don't think so. But my bike is. It's become a little evil. Every time I think of anything remotely related to sex, it breaks down. Sure, the elephant trees resembling upside down carrots, the pink luminescent dry arroyos, and the avian raptors are magnificent. But the North American male mind does wander, every 15 seconds according to some researchers, to a sexual thought.
Now, just below the 28th parallel, when things just couldn't seem to get any worse for this forlorn two-wheeled Lone Ranger, it started to pour rain. So I pit stopped at the four-star La Pinta Hotel to use the can. Getting comfortable, there was a loud bang on the door.
"Excuse me," a kind but deafening RV driver hollered over the din of a scratchy hearing aid, "are you the Canadian cyclist? There are two lady cyclists stranded up the road a mile..." I was out in a shot, pedaling up the highway.
Word had filtered down
the Baja grapevine that there were two superfit, superhot, Lycra-clad French
Canadian cyclists who were a couple of days ahead of me. Apparently the desert's
frost-filled nights and freak, blistering rains had slowed them down to a standstill.
Surely this was the manna I deserved. Saddle ablaze, I raced the short stretch.
For the moment, I was Don Juan. A caballero. But my bicycle was bucking. It
understood the entire dialogue. By the time I reached the ranch, where the troubled
twosome were hiding out, my wheel was warped and a tire was flat. While we exchanged
excited two-cheek Montreal kisses and embraces, the odometer went blank.
© Marty McLennan
Bike,
June 1999