The following day I got a look at where the cane came from. Evidently it was a major crop in the area; trucks plied the highway, laboring under enormous loads of fresh-cut cane, and here and there, passing through the fields, cane stalks popped under my wheels. I tried to imagine what the life of a cane cutter must be like, and couldn't; it must be even tougher work than picking cotton.

One aspect of this trip was definitely not living up to expectations: sunny Mexico my detras, it was cloudy and distinctly chilly. Maybe it was the same front that had frozen me up in Texas, pursuing me on some sort of mysterious vendetta. Later in the day it warmed up some, but the sun never did come out.

Suzie was running very well, indeed impeccably, so far. With her high-compression engine, she preferred the excellent Pemex Extra, but when I couldn't get it - not all gas stations had it - she digested the lower-octane Mexican regular all right, as long as I kept the gears low on hill climbs and didn't accelerate too hard. And I was really beginning to appreciate that shaft drive; I hadn't realized how much time and trouble I'd put in on other bikes, just fiddling with chains.

Everything just kept looking tropicaler and tropicaler.

No more cane fields along the road now; this was fruit-growing country.

Off to the right rose the outer ramparts of the Sierra Madre Oriental.

It was getting on toward lunch time. I pulled up in front of a bamboo-walled roadside establishment run by a smiling Indian woman. Specialty of the house was acamayas, but I didn't know the word and it wasn't in my Spanish dictionary. (Later a Mexican friend, who didn't know it either, said it was probably Huastec.) She led me to the kitchen and showed me: crawfish. The biggest God-damned crawfish I ever saw, like something out of a hungry Cajun's dreams, served with avocado sauce - and, of course, indescribably delicious. She came by and asked how I was doing. I said, "Muerto, y en el Cielo," and she giggled softly. I asked for more lime; so help me Dios she reached out the window and plucked one off a low-hanging tree branch.

The place was alive with running, laughing children; it turned out there were only four but it seemed like more. I went out to the bike; I had collected a bunch of small toys that my daughter had outgrown - little dolls and stuffed animals, tiny cars - for just such occasions, and I brought a handful back in and distributed them, dolls for the girls and a Hot Wheels car for the boy. This instantly made me Man of the Year, and not just with the kids; the surest way to a Mexican's heart is to show an interest in his children.

They introduced me to Lorenzo, a semi-wild parrot who apparently lived in the vicinity and came around to bum numnums. Later I asked for the location of the facilities, and they directed me to a bamboo outhouse out back. Even the seat was bamboo. Toto, we're definitely not in Kansas any more....

Afterward I asked if I could take the family's picture. The idea seemed to please my hostess; she rounded up the children - with some difficulty in the case of the boy, who was ecstatically roaring about under the tables playing with his new car - and they all lined up next to Suzie, Number One Son experiencing a sudden case of the shys.

Riding away, I realized suddenly that I had had maybe one or two more cervezas than was a good idea, considering where I was and what I was doing; but I made myself take it easy until the general euphoria began to wear off. By now I was getting close to the day's destination anyway, coming over the last hill above the big Moctezuma Valley.

Tamazunchale is a pleasant little town built on a steep hillside overlooking - and even overhanging - the Rio Moctezuma. I took a room at a big old hotel and went out to see whatever there was to see.

I liked the place right away; there didn't seem to be any historic or otherwise significant sights, but that was fine with me, I much preferred just watching ordinary people go about their business. I stopped at a little cantina and had a Dos Equis and listened to a pretty good four-piece band - guitar, fiddle, accordion and guitarron - but the proprietor began suggesting that I might like to make a request, which I knew would mean a donation, and when he became pushy I left. It was getting late but I was still full from that incredible jungle lunch, so I settled for a couple of tacos at a sidewalk stand.

In the twilight I wandered down toward the plaza, pausing outside a rundown building where some kind of Pentecostal sect - increasingly popular in Mexico, where the Catholic Church still carries associations of wealth and power - was doing some spirited hymn-singing. And later I found a little basement beer bar where a group of young Mexican guys, college age or thereabouts, were passing a guitar around and singing; so I went in and bought a beer and took the guitar and sang "Me Estoy Muriendo", blowing their minds somewhat, and that was how I wound up spending the rest of the evening, drinking beer and singing old songs like "El Abandonado" and taking turns on the guitar (getting a loud round of applause when I played a little blues) and shooting the shit about this and that. My fluency in any language always improves in direct ratio to the amount of alcohol consumed.

Finally the woman who ran the place chased us out and we walked back up the street toward the hotel, where they paused to admire the big Suzuki. They asked if I was on my way to Mexico City; they looked surprised when I said no. It was chilly by now and they were hugging themselves and shuffling their feet and glancing enviously at my leather jacket. One of them said, "Please, take this gringo weather back with you."