the JOURNAL

 Article written by Rafael Distance covered: Since San Francisco: 4500km Since Mexico City: 600km

After spending almost 2 weeks in Mexico, it was time to leave this big city, very interesting but tiring after a bit! We did it again on our bikes, but in two days to get closer from the exit and the next day having time to go over the 3200 m mountains. Then we stopped in Iztapalapa at our couchsurfing with Jaime and his family in the eastern neighborhood of Mexico city, we had to go through a very busy and stressful traffic, hopefully just for 30km. The day after, was a little tough as we had 1000m of elevation gain and 75km after a 2 weeks break, but going up, and up, is always beautiful with volcanoes and city views, and more entertaining than boring flat roads! After this big uphill we just had to leave our bikes roll down to a little town before Puebla. The toughest part of the day was probably to find a place to sleep, we arrived there asked in a church where we waited an hour to get the answer of the father which was just a NO without even a look at me… Following the advice of the church secretary then we tried the police station where we had our passport checked for another 40 minutes and the night was coming and we hadn’t other choice, but they accepted us after all being sure we were not terrorist or so!

The next day we got to see Puebla quickly on our way to Raquel’s house in Acajete where we spent 2 days. In her house, la casa de piedra we helped her plastering her walls with cob, and learnt about all the workshops she did (about recycling, cob construction, permaculture…), how she is involved in her town to promote sustainable living and ate delicious meat cooked in a cob oven for her mom’s birthday!

From there we had 4 days left to get to our final riding destination, Oaxaca. This stretch has been probably one of the most hilly, but also one of the most beautiful in the mainland. We stayed on the highway for most of the way, however it was very quiet, and the road was swinging in desert landscapes, canyons with limestone cliffs, higher plateaux and at the end greenish hills. It has been tough as we were never sure of how big and long were the hills expecting us, but the beauty made it very enjoyable. We slept the first night in the main plaza of San Mateo Tlacoxcalco having dinner in the middle of kids and policeman questioning us, the second one in an unofficial motel in Tepelmeme, and the third one in a totally lost village in the mountains North west of Oaxaca. Arriving there we met the mayor after spending 15 minutes looking for somebody in the village and he left us set up the camp in basketball field. We met him again the next morning when he woke us up with shots of Mezcal after for him apparently a big party! He made us experience a very typical Sunday breakfast in the village, some sort of corn grits cooked with a lamb on top in a buried bricks and Maguey leaf oven. Everything is eaten on top of a Maguey leaf with a Maguey leaf spoon and a little bit of blood cooked in the stomach. Now we know we get to Oaxaca, Mezcal country (which is actually distilled Maguey).

In Oaxaca we spent a little more than a week, had time to visit, chill in the laid back plaza, and meet some interesting persons for the project, but also just interesting people!

We stayed 2 days with CACITA, an organisation building bicimaquinas, see their work, helping them building a filter for their dry toilets, and fixing bikes!

We also had the opportunity to ride the paseo nocturno de Mundo Ceiba, and interview them.

Another funny meeting were Salvador, a retired professional cyclist we apparently crossed the day before getting to Oaxaxa who absolutely wanted to invite us for breakfast, which we had the opportunity to do after our visit of Monte Alban a Zapotec Archeological site.

We also met again with Jorge, a friend we rode with in Baja California, and try some of Oaxaca nightlife with lots of Mezcal! From there, it’s been like in La Paz, meeting many bike tourers, from UK, USA, Switzerland…

After this last stop in Oaxaca as we were mentioning before we decided to stop the project for now, and hopefully another team will ride the last stretch and learn from the interesting project in the last stretch to Costa Rica. On our side we will start publishing some more contents in the sustainability Tool-kit, and let you know what we did exactly, in the next few month.

Good bye everybody!

Rafael

Distance covered since San Francisco  3900 km

As our connection is not very good, we haven’t been able to illustrate that article with a lot of pictures but you can see our last abum following the link

Article written by Emilie

We stayed almost two weeks in the Mexican federal capital. The city has even more facets than its several names : la Ciudad de México is also el Districo Federal or simply el D.F or México as it is called by the Mexicans.

Those two weeks were rich in discoveries : new friends, interesting cultural sites and creative sustainable initiatives. Mexico city is famous for its museums and we took advantage of our time in the city to learn more about Mexican history and culture with the national museum of history in Chapultepec’s castle where you also have a good view of the city. The famous anthropological museum is also a great way to get deeper into Mexican culture.

Walks into the historical Center lead you to the Zocalo surrounded by the main Cathedral, el Palacio National and some very busy and well-known pastry shop. Art is also present in less touristic buildings such as the secretary of Education where Diego Riviera expressed his ideas about Mexico and its people throughout his frescos.  If you want to go out of the city’s core, you find Teotihuacan North and South you can plunge into Frida and Diego life, visiting their Casa Azul in Coyoacán.

Yes D.F. is perfect if you want to do cultural staff but thanks to our hosts we have been able to discover the lively neighbourhood of Roma, spend a Friday’s evening at the “ Arena de Mexico” for some lucha libre crazy fights, or just take time to chill out watching a movie on a rainy Saturday’s after-noon (yes rain happens sometimes and at that moment it is good to have a cozy place with new friends when you have been travelling for three months

Don’t worry, we haven’t been forgetting about our journey’s reason : documenting sustainable projects and Mexico city is full of them ! Meeting people we heard about a lot of projects going on, we have been focusing on three of them …

How to be brief about what Bicitekas, one of the main cyclists organization there, is doing … Let’s try to summarize what we learnt with our main guides, Ernesto and Agustin, and during the time we stayed at Casa Bicitekas.

Starting with a bike ride (which is still running every Wednesday for 13 years), the organization opened 1,5 year ago the Casa Bicitekas which is a small version of a bike kitchen. You can come there to use tools, speak about bike, look at the small library and more than that share time with people (the idea is to create a community and not only to be bike fashion). Bicitekas is also working on an advocacy and educational level by publishing for instance “El Manual del ciclista urbano” and“Por mi Ciuadad en bicicleta : experiencas de ciclistatas en la ciuadad de Mexico” (you can download for free the second book on their website, not only good stories but also cool pictures We have been able to share our journey with the bikers of the city, throughout a talk and the presentation of some pictures too.

The citizen network is really strong in Mexico City (and more generally in Mexico). Bicitekas has been involved for instance with an urban activist group willing to democratize the public space called Camina, Haz Ciudad. One of our hosts introduced us to their last public intervention : painting a bike lane to make politicians faced their responsibilities.

Thanks to the Mercado El Cien, we have been able to learn more about fair-trade produces and organic food in a 29 million inhabitant city. The market is taken place every other Sunday in the Roma’s neighbourhood. The producers are coming from 100 miles or less. Not only can you find veggies but also meat, fish, some Mexican-German pastries and bred, some household produces… If you are there around 11.30 pm, you can take part in a workshop (it was about organic chocolate when we were there … ). As we are very serious detectives we have been willing to visit one of the producers… Our investigation led us at Juan Rojas Jiménez’s place in Xochimilco, the south part of Mexico city. This young organic producer has been relieving his father and is also involved in the preservation of the canals’ water quality. The whole area used to be a lack back in the Aztecs’ times…

The Sembradores urbanos ( or urban sowers) have been developing their non-profit to promote urban agriculture for 5 years.

They have currently two main sites. In the urban agriculture centre, you will find at least 5 ways to garden in a small space (what about a vertical garden where you can grow plenty of veggies:). The whole space has been thought to follow the principles of permaculture : the roof’s water is collected, you will find three types of composts, and the gardening’s sets are made from recycling materials… In their urban garden, situated on Reforma, one of the main avenue of the city, you can participate in workshops about urban and ecofriendly gardening. The three musketeers have a lot of projects in mind to develop their activities

Leaving Mexico city, we are taking the road again and for our last stretch. The final destination of that second riding part, which started in San Francisco, will be Oaxaca. The project will carry on. After that riding-part, we will fill up the Sustainable Tool-Kit with the projects that crossed our way. We thank all the people who have been helping us throughout their donations:)

Stay tuned for our last month of ride !

Emilie

Hola from Toronto, everyone!

Kristi here. I’ve been following the PEDAL crew’s posts with great interest since the launch of Part Two, and I thought I would share with you a little of what I’ve been doing since returning from PEDAL Part One last January.

Starting in April, I began a course called ‘Sustainable Building Design and Construction’, with the infamous straw bale builders Chris Magwood and Jen Feigin. The course was offered through Fleming College in Peterborough, but is now offered through Chris and Jen’s new learning centre, called The Endeavour Centre. Check out their website – they offer many great programs for people with all levels of building experience.

The class on the cabin porch

The course was amazing fun, and I gained tons of new skills. The core project, undertaken by a group of 15 students, was to build a small cabin for a charity camp just north of Peterborough. The work site was on an island, which was an idyllic place to be all summer, especially on the hottest days when we got to go for a quick lunchtime dip.

The cabin we built (from southwest side)

The cabin was a true hybrid: two straw bale walls, one slip straw wall and one hempcrete wall. All this was topped off with a layer of earthen plaster on the inside and lime-cement plaster on the outside. Lime based plasters are more durable against rain and weather conditions than pure earth, which is why they are often used externally.

As part of the course, I also got to design a building, and chose to design a ‘dream home’ for Garrett and I (to be built at our future homestead). For those who have not seen the model I built, here it is.

My model

After completing the Sustainable Building course, I set off to Killaloe, Ontario, which lies in the hills of the Ottawa Valley (between Algonquin Park and Ottawa). My reason for going? To work with Living Sol, a local green building and design company as an apprentice. I learned so much from my time working with Frank and the crew and enjoyed life at Morninglory, the ecovillage where the building was taking place. For most of my time there, I stayed in a small A-frame cabin in the woods and was warmly hosted by the Anderman family (recipients of the new building). Garrett and I spent the month of December house-sitting in a beautiful straw bale cabin nearby.

Straw cabin we house-sat

Straw bale house with bales installed

Frank and Jodi work on the bales

Emma shapes bales with the chainsaw

Kristi shapes windows

Now I am back home visiting in Toronto, catching up with family and friends and looking forward to the 2012 building season, when I will hopefully be involved in more great green building projects. Please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions!

Thanks for reading folks! Hope you are all well too

Kristi

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Here are some great green building links for you to explore:

http://www.strawbale.com/ (great FAQ and videos about building with straw bales)

http://www.osbbc.ca/ (Ontario Straw Bale Building Coalition)

http://harvesthomes.ca/building/straw_bale_primer.pdf (Straw Bale Building Primer by Harvest Homes)

http://www.strawbalecentral.com/ (Really good ‘Techniques’ section – briefly explains many eco building methods)

http://www.strawhomes.ca/resources.asp (list of interesting books and publications)

Distance covered: – since San Francisco  3900 km

                                     – since Morelia 300 km

Article written by Rafael

After enjoying aïoli, tequila, mousse au chocolat and crèpes to celebrate the new year, we had to hit the road again and head at some more mountains… Our first day brought us in Huajumbaro, about 500 meters higher than Morelia, entering another sierra, and starting to face winter temperatures (maybe around 5 degrees in the morning)! We ended up in a church in this small town surrounded with mountains, and were happy to enjoy the warmth of a room they left us to spend the night. The next day had been almost all the way downhill to reach Zitacuaro our starting point to see the Monarch butterfly sanctuary. Getting there we face a big traffic jam, with lots of people walking on the side of the road, and arriving closer, we saw there was a strike in the middle of the road, apparently against something related with the police in Zitacuaro, but I’m not sure exactly what it was about. The police who were more and more impressive as we get closer to Mexico, with 10 policeman, shotgun in the hand  standing on the back of the trucks going around cities. We also see more and more private security in the front of stores, in the streets.. not necessarily reassuring!

So the next day we went to the monarch butterfly sanctuary of Cerro Pelon, cheating as we used public transportation, but it was fair as it was supposed to be a rest day and it was 500 meters higher. In addition we still had to hike up to 3000 meters to get to the sanctuary. Although it is not the high season and a little cold, it was definitely worth it to go there, see trees entirely covered with butterflies, butterflies flying around you, hitting you, resting on you… Lots of butterflies! Going back we had an amazing dinner with pozole (sort of soup with sort of corn and chicken), Pambazos (small sandwich with deep fried bread) and some more food to stuff us. However it wasn’t that necessary, we had some pretty lazy days, and same for the days after, but we keep eating the same quantity which make us feel like being pregnant when we start riding after lunch (although I’ve never been pregnant in case you’re doubting).

After Zitacuaro, we had 4 days to get to Mexico City and arrive there on a quieter day, Sunday. In spite of the fact those days were pretty easy I started being lazier and lazier, maybe the crisis of 3 month riding! It wasn’t all bad though as we had to stay in a good variety of places, a farm beside a lake in Villa Victoria, in the middle of stone stable, cows, agave and cacti, a school close to Toluca where we had some Tequila drinking classes and Miguel’s house in San Miguel Ameyalco where we experienced an authentic Mexican home and drank beer with Jesus on top of the hill. We also had some good elevation gain (which is mostly less boring than flat straight roads), from 1900m to 2900m, then down to 2600m, again up to 3200m, and today down to Mexico city at 2300m. And I don’t talk about the 10% grade hill we went down to San Miguel and had to climb this cold morning! Yesterday we went across Toluca the administrative capital of Mexico state where we visit a botanical garden inside a giant stain glass greenhouse, very beautiful, the rest of the city is not that interesting but it was still nice. The traffic going out was crazy, a little stressful, with the feeling you could die every 5 minutes but we survived! After all, it was worst than going into Mexico City, we entered it this Sunday morning which was much quieter as everybody was sleeping, and it’s a very steep downhill so you’re almost as fast as the traffic (or at least the big trucks).

Now here we are, in Mexico City where we will spend one or two weeks before continuing our way to Oaxaca!

Raf