Growing up I had a great fascination with computers. I spent most of my time programming, which meant that pretty much every other facet of my life suffered. Anything not tangentially related to programming took a back seat at best. I got by in school with the absolute minimum to get decent grades that would assuage my parents. It is therefore unsurprising that having taken 2 years of electronics as part of a computer science degree, I probably couldn’t unhook a car battery without seriously injuring myself and the car in the process. That is… until a lack of basic electronics kept me from properly enjoying a vacation. How hard could it be to hot wire a motorcycle? In the movies, thugs do it in 15 seconds flat, after having sprinted half way across town while dodging cars and cops.

I did what every computer savvy person would do. I spent a few hours googling everything from “Yamaha electrical diagram” and “how to hot wire a motorcycle”, to “how to steal a motorcycle”. Luckily I found the entire electrical diagram for one of the bikes. Unfortunately, I still couldn’t tell the difference between a resistor and a transistor. But I’d be damned if I couldn’t figure it out.

While Alejo slept, I came up to speed on ignition systems, starters, and spark plugs. Thankfully it wasn’t hard to figure out. All I needed was a short cable to bypass the key locking mechanism. When Alejo woke up, I brought him along for a short trek around town, asking for a “short wire to hot wire OUR motorcycles”. In retrospect, that probably wasn’t the best opener. No matter how we spun it, no one believed two homeless looking guys had brought two motorcycles across the state while leaving the keys behind. The local mechanic suspiciously agreed to give us a few short wires, with no advice or help whatsoever.

After only a morning of fiddling around (I never said I was a good thief!), I was able to find the right set of cables to bypass. Short cable in place, and voila– lights on, and the bike starts cranking. Unfortunately, Yano’s bike (which always gets experimented on first) takes a while to crank. While I’m cranking, I’m doing the dance of joy, which got quickly interrupted by Alejo screaming over the noise “hey smartass, if you ever get the bike to turn over, how the hell are you going to fill it up with gas without a key?”. Uhhhh… hmmm… “And if you manage to fuck up the ignition, I’ll kill you when the keys do arrive. I only get one week of vacation, unlike you nerds which work from home and seem to be in a permanent holiday every day.” Fair enough… I put the bike back together, and we drove around the park in the 4×4 pickup.

At this point I must add that Big Bend National Park is absolutely breathtaking, and is sadly one of the least visited parks in the US park system. The restaurant has been revamped to cater to a more gastronomically demanding crowd, and they’ve done away with the traditional hamburgers and chilli that plague campgrounds the world over. The food, though pricey for a state park ($10-$18/plate), is wonderfully succulent. The entrees are varied and are hands down better than most restaurants. There’s everything from fillet mignon, and smoked salmon, to grilled portabella mushrooms and peppers for the vegetarian crowd. The home-made soups are delicious, and the desserts leave you feeling as decadent as you’re used to.

So all in all, bikes or not, we’ve been having a blast. The views are spectacular and the food is great. Below is a link to the pictures so far, which may spoil the rest of the story, but are well worth seeing. We’re both pleasantly surprised. Big Bend has not left us wanting.

And as you can see, we eventually get our keys!

A doctor and an engineer go on vacation…  While this is most likely the beginning of cruel joke, so far it hasn’t disappointed.

When you live in the southern most part of Texas, there are a limited amount of places you can visit if you can’t convince your fellow vacationers to visit Mexico.  I’m in the unfortunate dilemma of having a few more weeks of vacation than Yano this year, and my friend Alejo is in a similar predicament, having vacation but being restricted by his US visa status to stay within the country.

We originally planned to go on a road trip with our motorbikes, but being limited to a week, we quickly realized that Texas was far too big to get out without inflicting permanent damage to our buttocks.  Instead, we wussed out, and decided to take the bikes on the back of the pickup truck where we could drive in the comfort of a/c for longer distances.  Unfortunately, we ran into the cruel reality that is Texas geography, and realized that a day an a half would only get us to El Paso which is just like McAllen, but with less things to do (if you can imagine such a place).  So, the only logical vacation not involving airplanes, involved driving as far out within a day or two, and that turned out to be Big Bend National Park in the middle of nowhere Texas (as everything in Texas is, with the notable exceptions of Houston, Dallas, Austin, and some say San Antonio).  We’d drive with the bikes on the bed of the pickup, stay in the park, and ride on and off-road all day for a week.  Meanwhile, the women would stay behind– tending the children, or in my case, the dogs and the operating rooms of McAllen.

Everything went according to plan until mile 500, when Yano calls and asks “do you have an extra pair of keys for the bikes?”.  Alejo and I look at each other with eyes wide open, and slam on the breaks.  The bikes almost ended up in the cabin and I nervously responded “huhhh… why do you ask?”.  “Cause there are two pairs of keys on the dinner table here.”  My fault entirely, I couldn’t blame the doctor for anything more than the sad state of medicine in the south of Texas. There were various insults, mostly flowing in my direction, and numerous threats of taking my bicycle wheels (which I’d brought too), to make sure I would be under the same inflicted boredom as he would be starting tomorrow.

There was no sense driving further, so we stopped at Marathon, Texas (see previous comment about nowhere Texas, and multiply it by 500).  It turns out FedEx drops by every other day, and most popular carriers will sporadically deliver this far out.  Luckily, the Gage Hotel and Spa is a quaint hotel not unlike what you’ve seen in popular westerns: cantina, guns, and pretty girls.  I’m not really sure, but I think we are the only visitors here tonight.

12 Gage Hotel

We’ve arranged with Yano (who hasn’t stopped laughing), to ship the keys overnight. “Overnight” being an euphemism for “if you’re lucky in three days”, but hey– at least we’re not in McAllen– and there are mountains [I’m not allowed to ride on the bicycle].

p.s. Oh yeah, stay tuned for a week’s worth of insults (hopefully involving running bikes).