life @ 13

One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world was better for this - Cervantes

apparently my earlier prediction about lots of internet cafes in el salvador was a little off the mark; even here in san salvador (san sal-va-DOR, fyi) i had to do some bus-scouting to find one. again i will try and keep this updated, but it looks like it won't happen much while i'm on the road.
starting from where i left off, the last couple days in guatemala city were relatively tame. through some combination of not finding bike shoes, subliminal coercion and generally not feeling up to it joel decided to temporarily abandon the whole biking thing. which i think works out well for both of us because this kind of biking is most rewarding when done alone. before leaving guatemala city i ran into a real veteran cyclotourist, vince, who had cycled in africa, iran, packistan, india, and western china -- pretty impressive stuff. besides the usual cyclist-banter the most useful thing about vince was his extra pair of cycling shorts which he donated to me, a very gracious and useful gift. my ass will be forever thankful.
so tuesday i left guatemala city alone, headed for the el salvaDOR boarder. neither the traffic or the climb out of the city presented much of a challenge, and i was on my way to descending about 3000 feet within 90 minutes of leaving. now that i've done a few of them, i've started to dread the descents. besides the fact that the stakes are much higher at 30mph, going down not only means that you're going to have to come back up again, but in this case it means that the weather went from delightfully temperate to oppressively hot. despite all the descending i only made it 100k on tudsday, short of the el salvador boarder.
having still not adapted to the heat (between 90 and 1000 in the valley near the boarder) and the constant head/crosswind i was already exhausted by the time i made it to the boarder only 17 k away, at which point i made my first boarder faux-pas -- not having enough cash to cross the boarder. figuring that since travellers cheques were changed at the guate-belize boarder and that the official currency in el salvaDOR is the dollar i would have no problem changing the cheques, i proceded to the boarder with only $5 in guatemalan quetzal. besides this, when trying to get my exit stamp from guatemala i was informed that i only had a 3-day transit visa, which i had overstayed by about 47 days, at about $1.25/day fine. eventually the boarder officer gave in to my look of befuddlement, dumbfoundedness and stupor and issued me a retroactive 90-day visa (which i should have recieved in the first place) and an exit stamp free of charge. to make a long story short, i took a bus back to the town i stayed in the night before, eventually changed some money, biked back to the boarder, changed my money again (at a really shitty rate), paid the $10 to get my el salvaDOR tourist card, and biked another 12k to an expensive but well-placed hotel with a very talkative owner.
thursday was comparatively uneventful, sometimes very smooth cycling on the smooth parts of the highway and rough cycling on the rough spots of the highway. for the first time in one hell of a long time there were some flat stretches -- my asphault oasis. nothing compares to the feeling of all your pedaling effort contributing directly to your velocity, especially after spending time going up and down mountain passes and the fact that the extra 40 lbs on my bike don't matter as much on the flats. after 90k i stopped in santa tecla just short of san salvador.
so then there was yesterday. somewhat less productive. i'm still not entirely sure how this happened, but my best recollection is that i was travelling behind a bus (typical, as we tend to share the right lane) on the highway near san salvaDOR, which happens to lack a curb lane. the bus slowed down, sped up, then stopped abruptly right by an on-ramp which i briefly glanced at to check for merging traffic. of course my brief glance was more than enough time for the bus to stop right in front of me, sending me smack into the back of the bus at about 10 mph. i walked away without any problems, although i can't say the same for the bike. a very friendly salvaDORian drove me to a national hospital in san salvaDOR for stitches (about 12 around my left eye) and x-rays (at $4 the only cost) to check for fractures, of which there are none. the care at the hospital, while not necessairly first-rate, was damn impressive, as i was taken care of pretty quickly and throughly, despite my nationality and spotty spanish. i actually quite enjoyed my time in the hospital as the female staff were not only friendly and helpful but particularly easy on the eyes. all in all i walked away with only a couple of scrapes, although i can't say i will look at the back of a bus in the same way for a while, which is probably a good thing.
today, and probably until monday or tuesday, i'm just hanging out around the city, not exactly a bad place to be stuck in. el salvaDOR has a considerably different feel than guatemala -- certainly less conservative -- the people here seem to have more flair than their relatives to the west. much, much fewer tourists here (only saw two, on the boarder). i've also made some headway for what seems like required reading for being down here, Don Quixote.
in short, it's one thing to be a tall lanky gringo off the tourist trail in central america, but it's another thing to be a tall, lanky gringo who looks like a pirate off the tourist trail in central america.