Congratulations!!
Fred Bothwell

The FIRST winner in the
LONG WAY DOWN Adventure Stories Contest

He won a LONG WAY DOWN Prize Pack that includes:
	2-sided poster signed by Ewan McGregor LONG WAY DOWN Book LONG WAY DOWN CD	Fox Reality Channel (FRC) Tank Top FRC Long & Short Sleeve T-Shirts Other fabulous prizes

Winning Story:

We left the streets of Ciudad Valles in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental as light rain fell from a formless gray sky. Alfredo led us out of the city and into the countryside to the South in a staggered column. Pete and I on our BMWs, followed by Larry on his Harley trailed Alfredo’s green Triumph at ten meter intervals. In back of us, Jack and Bill lagged behind, with Pancho and the two wives, Pat and Sheree, bringing up the distant rear in a blue burro, a battered Ford pickup.

We motored southward, keeping the steep slopes of the Sierra Madre to our right, riding through the rain along serpentine two-lane blacktop roads over rolling hills of crops and increasingly lush vegetation at the roadside. Bright green leaves sprouted from the tops of fence posts along our route.

When we finally turned to the West to begin our climb, the rain, sweeping in from the Gulf and some sixty miles to the East increased in intensity.

As we wound or way up the mountainside we followed the serpentine blacktop through thick verdant rain forest leaning through sharp turns every 50 or 100 meters. The road up the mountainside rapidly became steeper, and darkly slick with rain. In front of me, Pete and his red bike floated in and out of increasingly dense clouds of white vapor as we twisted up the mountain unable to see more than 20 yards at times. An occasional truck loomed out of the fog and rushed past us in plumes of spray.

We gained altitude and the density of the fog and the thickness of the cloud layer increased. The temperature fell - and the forest began to thin. At the highest elevation it was chill, and dark as dusk. We could barely see 10 meters through the gray fog and constant rain; and the lush green trees, vines and ferns were replaced by an Alpine-like pine forest shadowy sentinels standing in timeless chill and ghostly silence near the crest of the Mother of Mountains.

Alfredo, long familiar with the road, had pulled far ahead of us. Pete, Larry and I concentrated on maintaining balance, traction, and speed in the incessant turns of the twisting, slippery surface. Jack, Bill and the Ford fell far behind. As we rounded one of dozens of blind left hand turns Pete and I followed closely by Larry had to make an unexpected steering angle adjustment toward the inside of the curve. It was a hazardous move in the best of mountain road conditions, a potentially fatal one on a slick surface at speed with limited visibility and oncoming traffic but a football-sized rock had fallen down the nearly vertical mountainside on our left and come to rest in the center of the line that we had all set up through the turn.

Fortunately there was no oncoming traffic and since our speed was only moderately fast, we were all able to sustain enough traction on the wet blacktop to avoid wiping out. Alfredo, riding ahead of us at a much faster pace, hadn’t been so fortunate.

As we pulled through the turn we saw him ahead, clambering out of a ditch at the roadside, and his silent bike laying awkwardly on its side in the depression. The three of us pulled off the road and dismounted. “I’m going to move that damn rock”, Alfredo muttered as he walked unsteadily past us, back toward the curve.

Some minutes later, the others arrived on the scene; Bill’s Harley and the blue burro bringing up the rear. Bill spoke as he came to a stop. I almost lost it back there when we got into the fog. The rear tire broke loose and I got a little sideways so I slowed down a lot!

We all needed a break from the continuous physical and mental stress of staying upright under challenging conditions riding in the Mexican equivalent of what Germans riders aptly describe as œsheissewetter.

After a few minutes of quiet conversation and cigarettes by the roadside, Alfredo signaled that it was time to renew our ride. We remounted and pulled back onto the narrow road in our previous formation.

As we resumed our climb, the thick cloud cover began to thin; the rain abated and we finally began to negotiate a series of flatter rather than climbing turns. We were finally approaching the crest of the mountain. Once again, Alfredo pulled off the road onto a rocky shoulder at the side of a rare straight stretch.

“Up ahead, on the left, there’s a chapel” he said. It’s where the truck drivers stop and pray that they’ll make down the mountain safely. The fog and mist had begun to clear, and we could finally see a half mile or so ahead to the chapel and across the valley that we skirted. We moved out again.

Bill, Jack and the burro stopped at the chapel. The rest of us trailed Alfredo as we finally crested the mountains and began our descent of the Western slope. The rain stopped. The sky brightened.

Rounding another curve, we experienced an incredible transformation of place. We had reached the rim of the high desert, where a brilliant sun and a cloudless sky arced over a limitless vista of mountainous desert where flowering cactus and scrub brush dotted an otherwise barren and seemingly lifeless landscape.

Looking back, the dense, thick layer of clouds rolling in from the Gulf cascaded over the crest of the mountains, only to be transformed into faint wisps of vapor that disappeared as they fell into the heat and light.

We pressed on, toward Tequisquiapan.