It's okay, I have an airbag, a gun, and a 40 cent benediction from the Black Christ

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It’s okay, I have an airbag, a gun, and a 40 cent benediction from the Black Christ
January 8-10 2010

When I was young, my mom always wanted me to wear a red flashing light when I was bicycling at night. I thought this was dumb, and I told my mother that the cars have head lights to see me with. It wasn’t until I was older and started driving that I realized that objects could blend in at night and were hard to see. I guess this is a wisdom that comes with age and experience. Through our experiences we become cognizant of the dangers and act more prudently. Well I’m 30 now; that should make me old enough to be somewhat wise but young enough to still do dumb things. But these guys… they are in their 40s and 50s…they should know better.

The other day I was riding my motorcycle the wrong way down a one way street (this is pretty normal in Guatemala; I think it is practically legal) when I passed Roberto, the nice gentleman who sold me my motorcycle (he was also going the wrong way down this street). So I stopped to chat with him. I felt pretty cool because I had a big 400cc motorcycle, and he, the BMW mechanic of Xela, was riding around on a little scooter. He told me that he and some friends were going to take a motorcycle trip to Rio Dulce (and some other place called Esquipulas which I had never heard of) the following weekend, and he asked me if I would like to go. I told him that it sounded like a lot of fun, but because I am a tour guide, I usually have to lead trips on the weekends. I told him that if I couldn’t sell the trip I had planned, I would definitely go. Well Thursday came, and I still didn’t have enough clients to do the trip I was trying to sell, so I went to see Roberto, and told him I was in. He told me that everyone was meeting tomorrow, (Friday Jan 8th) at 6:30 in the morning at the gas station near the stop light.

The next morning, I was surprised when I arrived at the gas station and saw that everyone else had new, very large, BMW motorcycles. Roberto was not on his little scooter; he had an 1100cc sport bike set up for touring. Everyone else had bikes of about this quality…except for me of course; I had my 1984 400cc Honda. For those of you who don’t know much about motorcycles, let me explain a little. My 1984 400cc Honda usually makes me the king of the road in Xela. The bike has a classic, even vintage, look to it. And 400cc makes it at least twice as big and twice as powerful as most of the bikes in town. When Guatemalans see my bike, they ask me how long I am staying here because they want to by my bike when I leave. But in the United States, my bike would be considered a good beginner bike because compared to many bikes in the US, 400cc is quite small. And with this group of Guatemalans with their big, new BMWs, my bike was not standing out because it was big; it was standing out because it was small. In total we were 12 motorcycles. Three guys, including Roberto, had their wives with them, so in total we were 15 people. The lineup of bikes was like this: 9 guys had very nice BMWs, 1 guy had a Harley Davidson, 1 guy a 1000cc Kawasaki, and I had my old reliable Honda.

Once outside of Xela, the first two hours of driving would be curvy, hilly, mountainous driving, and on the first uphill leading out of town when everyone zoomed past me, I started to wonder if my little bike could keep up. Well, I did my best to keep up, but after about an hour when I could no longer even see the other guys on the straight-aways, I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to Rio Dulce with these guys. I decided that I would stop in Antigua for the day and then on Saturday, I would turn around and maybe visit some friends in Lake Atitlan. (Lake Atitlan is only about 2 hours from Xela.) But there was no way I was ever seeing these guys again—they were too fast. Then, about 15 minutes later, I saw close to a dozen large motorcycles parked outside a roadside restaurant. I pulled off the road and was warmly greeted by my new biker gang. I asked Roberto, how long they had been at the restaurant before I arrived. He said 10 minutes, and I realized that maybe, just maybe, I could keep up. Now let me tell you, real motorcycle gangs aren’t like what you see on TV. At least not this rag-tag group of rich Guatemalans. We probably looked pretty tough, but the reality was quite different. The only person who probably got roughed up by us was the poor waiter who was probably used to almost no business and now he had 15 hungry, demanding bikers to serve. We were cold from the early mountain air and hungry. We wanted our cups of coffee and tea constantly full, our food now, and our basket of tortilla bottomless. I don’t think of Guatemalans as demanding, but they do expect there to always be a plentiful supply of corn tortillas.

After breakfast, I left at the front of the pack so many people would have to pass me before I fell behind, and I pushed my motorcycle to see what it could do. Well I learned a lot about motorcycle engines on this trip, and I learned that my motorcycle was a lot more powerful than I thought. I remembered watching the RPMs of my mom’s Toyota Camry while I was in Iowa over Christmas. Even when I was on the highway going 65 miles an hour, the tachometer stayed below 2000 revolutions per minute. My motorcycle on the other hand could be in fifth gear at 50km/h (50km/h is about 30mph) and thus when I tried to go faster than this the RPMs went way up. But while my mom’s Camry would redline at 7000 RPMs, my motorcycle, which didn’t redline until 10,000 RPMs, was just fine going 110 km/h with the RPMs up at 7000.

The problem was 110 km/h (about 70 mph) was fast—really fast. We were not on the wide open freeways of the United States, no we were Guatemalan roads designed for 70-80km/h travel. And I will be honest; these guys liked getting up to 120 or 130km/h. In my peripheral vision, I could see the beautiful landscape that we were flying past, and it occurred to me that it would be nice to go slow enough to be able to turn my head for a moment and look at it. But, I had to keep all my attention hyper-focused on the road. Glancing right to look out over the green fields blanketing the Guatemalan mountainside was not an option. My attention needed to remain on the road.

I will admit that I started to contemplate my fate. I had on my full-face helmet, my leather jacket, double-lined pants, and over the ankle boots. But I knew that this protective gear really wasn’t going to make a lot of difference at these speeds.

When we stopped for gas, I talked a little with one guy named Franz. I saw a cord hanging off his motorcycle and asked him what it was for. He showed me how the cord clipped into his jacket. His jacket had an airbag in it that would inflate if he were thrown from his motorcycle. I also couldn’t help but notice the handle of a gun poking out of the front pocket of his jacket. Now I will admit that I don’t really like guns. When I see the Guatemala police walking down the street in Xela with giant machine guns in their hands, I don’t really feel safer. When the US military was parading around US airports after September 11th with giant guns, I didn’t feel safer. But in this circumstance, riding across Guatemala on motorcycles which clearly attracted attention, I felt a little comfort (maybe foolishly) knowing that Franz had a gun with which to protect us. It wasn’t until our last day, while driving back to Xela, that I contemplated the foolishness of storing a gun in your airbag.

We arrived in Rio Dulce at 3:10. This means that we got there in 8 hours, or 6 hours and 10 minutes of actual riding—I think this trip is supposed to take a lot longer. We sat down to have an early dinner and while the guys kept feeding me beers which I didn’t want, some of the older and wiser guys started to comment that we had been driving a little too fast.

Later in the evening, Franz asked me if I wanted to go “explore” the pueblo with him. I put “explore” in quotes because he didn’t really mean he wanted to explore; he had specific ideas about what he wanted. I just didn’t know what it was he wanted to do.

Well we were walking down a dark alley and Franz turned to me and said in his broken English, “I have a gun.” It wasn’t until he reassured me of our safety because of the existence of his gun that I realized that maybe we were in a dangerous place.

We entered a bar, and it quickly became clear that he was trying to procure two women: one for him and one for me. Now normally I get a little nervous in uncomfortable situations like this, but I was pretty calm and collected this night—maybe it was the beer—I knew I was NOT going home with a prostitute. Well I told Franz I was ready to leave and because he did not have 600 quetzales (about $75); he decided that he would leave too. When we got back to the hotel he told me he was going back out to find a cash machine; I went to bed.

The next morning when Franz and I woke up, I wondered what he did the night before. Did he go back? For a moment I thought I would never know. I wasn’t going to ask; I was going to let this remain a mystery. But…then I asked. He told me he went back with money but the prostitute wouldn’t negotiate for the price so nothing happened. Well I sure his wife would be very proud: he was faithful to her AND he didn’t spend a bunch of money recklessly. If there are two things Guatemalan males are known for, it is barging for a good price and having more than one woman at a time. Nothing like having a night that so clearly supports stereotypes.

We had breakfast, and we were off to Esquipulas. Now, I didn’t know anything about Esquipulas before we I got there, but now I can tell you all about it. Esquipulas is known for the Cristo Negra (the Black Christ). From what I understand, the Catholic Church was trying to get more of the indigenous Mayans to convert to Catholicism so they put a Black Christ above the altar in the Cathedral. This so happened to be a very holy weekend when lots of people were making pilgrimages to this church. So we decided to go. Our BMW motorcycle gang pulled into the church parking lot. When we got to the motorcycle parking section, I noticed that the Guatemalan Harley Davidson gang had beaten us to the church. So there we were, in front of this beautiful cathedral. My friends in their airbag jackets and t-shirts and hats that said, “BMW of Guatemala”, and across from us was the Harley gang in there leather pants, shirts that said Harley, and headbands with flames on them. Well, in case you are worried; we didn’t get out chains and knives to fight. No, instead, one of the nice Harley Davidson gang members approached our gang and asked if we would like him to take our picture. After this, we went to the church to buy a sticker of the Virgin Mary and benediction for 3 quetzales (about 40 cents). Apparently, we were supposed to take this sticker and put it on our motorcycle and then later a Monk would come by with holy water and bless us and our motorcycles. Well, let me tell you, so much about this seemed odd to me. First, the church was selling God’s blessing. Second, it struck me odd that we could drive as fast and recklessly as we wanted through God’s country, but we could buy our safety for 40 cents. Third, I thought about the fact that the guy next to me had a gun in the front pocket of his airbag and had tried to procure a prostitute the night before. Fourth, we were the BMW motorcycle gang of Guatemala parked right next to the Harley Davidson gang in front of the church of the Black Christ.

We got our blessings. Roberto had an interview in the parking lot with one of the Guatemalan TV stations—this was big news in Guatemala. We attended a mass. And then we roamed the streets and ran into other motorcycle friends. The Harley and BMW gangs were not the only motorcyclists there. Apparently the pilgrimage weekend coincided with a motorcycle rally. I guess really this makes sense—motorcyclists need a destination and they probably need God’s blessing too.

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