Sorry for the break, I fell off the edge of the internet enabled world for a while and those stories will come later.

Back in Cabarete, I booked a one day mountain bike ride with Iguana Mama, an adventure tour group, that was to traverse the El Choco area, mainly an old dirt road that used to be used to haul bananas in from the country side. Carlos, a very personable young dude was my guide and we spoke Spanish most of the time, until I hit my inevitable dead ends that is. The whole route was 45km(!) some paved road, but mostly the dirt road that lead up into the mountains through scant little villages, pastures of grazing cows hiding under trees clearly bored out of their minds, plenty of horses, palmy mountain vistas, other large jungle-leafed foliage and rubber trees and, well, forget it, the names of trees and plant life will forever will elude me. I know the Magnolia in front of my house because it craps 100 pounds of leaves and cone things onto my steps, yard, and sidewalk every year. There is a Mahogany tree Carlos says. I say, “ahhhh,” as if I´d been waiting to see what one looked like my whole life. Ascent. Head down, pedal, life reduced to the revolution of the pedal. This is so very opposite of the anti-gravity nature of kitesurfing. This is something you do to prove that you are human, to know and feel it, to probe the limits of what it means to be a creature limited by gravity and lungs. We are so weak. As a sometimes mountain biker I am in reasonable shape though, so the only thing really killing me is my ass, which has not so much natural padding and is being pummeled by the Dominican countryside. Up up up, the rocky dirt road, horses closer, a wild dog that takes a swipe at us (we must have looked so bad ass to him, helmets and rad bikes and all), hola shouting children waiving, dinky little tin-roof and concrete shanties. My right foot going numb due to shitty bent pedal, also my right pinkie and next finger one over (does this one have a name?) We ascend what Carlos says is the steepest ascent, and then it´s pretty flat for a while, great open views. Still 20km to go though. Christ. I´m starting to wonder if I can make it without a powerbar, but they don´t have those out here. Finally we hit paved road again and through more angelic palm-mountain vistas and are heading back to Cabarete with mostly road to ride, which is good as my neck is falling down I cannot really hold it up anymore and, but the pedaling is automatic, it´s miraculous like this when you can just keep it going with absolutely no energy available to you. In this sense, it is gravity defiant as well, or entropy defiant at least.

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