Baja Breakdown
Navigating nerves on dirt roads in Mexico
Getting a flat tire on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere in Mexico has a certain kind of sitting duck feeling to it. If you’re excessively prepared, like many Baja surf hounds, then no hay problema. Swap out the flat for a full sized spare and speed off to the next empty wave or fish taco. In our case, let’s just say the spare on our Jeep Cherokee needed a spare, leaving us feeling exposed.
My brain started doing bandito math. The kind where you triangulate the distance between the nearest tire shop, the border, and a twitchy bandito with idle time on his hands. The goal is to solve for the fastest border crossing without ever intersecting said bandito. Not being a math whiz, I let the problem turn in my head while Jimmy had already arrived at an answer.
Never one to let a good time go to waste, Jimmy plunked down his chair and cracked open a cold beer, flashing his perennial shit-eating grin. He calculated that we’d be fine, and that he wouldn’t be changing any tires anytime soon. There’s always that one character in your crew who marches to their own drum. They drink the cheapest beer and the most of it. You know, so the fun never ends. He sat there happily, watching Dave and I struggle with the tire as the sun made its approach for a dip in the Pacific.
Mid-tire change, backlit Baja dust lifted from the road about a click out from our location. A rusty pickup truck snaked its way through desert sagebrush and appeared to be headed our way. Dave and I upgraded our alertness and exchanged a knowing glance that said hurry up and stay frosty. My thumping heart put me on notice that it didn’t like this equation. Jimmy sat grinning and sipping, oblivious to what was unfolding.
The pickup drew near. We hurried the work, but it wasn’t working. The mysterious truck lurched up on us quickly, skidding to a halt with what appeared to be two locals straddling the truck’s bench seat. I drew a deep breath and braced for the unknown.
The window creaked down while dust swirled around us and the truck. Facing west, the evening sun simmered in the background forming a silhouette of the driver. Slowly, he swung his right arm up and over toward me, grasping something metal that I couldn’t quite see with the sun in my eyes. A millisecond-long neurochemical battle erupted in my brain. My amygdala tried slamming me into fight or flight mode as my cortex counseled for calm. As the man’s arm pointed directly at me, his hand revealed a can of Fix-a-Flat. No la pistola.
Heart still bouncing off the inner wall of my chest, a huge wave of relief washed over me and our crew as we realized the stranger was offering help. We graciously accepted the gift and busily grabbed bills from our wallets to the square the ledger with the man. His bushy, gray mustache lifted and a smile cracked open his wrinkled face as he refused our money and offered a casual, “De nada ‘migo.”
The truck’s engine wheezed like an alley cat with a hairball in its throat as it hobbled east over the washboard road. With our tire remedied, back in the safety of our cab, a palpable silence filled the air. Each of us mulled over our recent lesson in humanity. Briefly, and potently, we had let the fear of lore dominate us instead of reading the situation exactly as it was.
Bad shit does happen in Mexico, just as it does everywhere else in the world I thought. It made me wonder, more broadly, just how much war, violence and conflict are driven by the stories of the past rather than being present with what’s present.
Fresh with a patched tire from the local llevanteria, the Cherokee shifted gears and we knew something deep shifted within us as well.
This short story is a fictionalized account of a real life event. Names were changed to protect the idiots.
