Brian A. Hopkins
Adventure Bumpkin

Bahlobo y los Gringos:
"South of the Border"
(Copper Canyon, Mexico) 13 - 22 April 2007

GETTING THERE: Friday the 13th ... what were we thinking? Mother Nature -- that cantankerous bitch! --  threw a freakin' fit at our sheer audacity. 

It stormed and hailed. Tornadoes ripped across Oklahoma and Texas. Just north of the town of Seymour, TX we caught the worst of it. Hail the size of walrus testicles hurtled out of the black sky. Rich crept forward at about 15 mph. You couldn't see ten feet through the blinding rain and the pounding hail stones. The hail sounded as if it was about to punch through the roof of the van. Danny and I put our palms to the headliner and traded concerned "Oh Shit!" expressions as we felt the beating Rich's van was taking. Of course, there was absolutely nothing to hide under in this part of Texas ... and our bikes were OUTSIDE, strapped to the trailer. My beloved BMW was taking a serious beating. Watching, I expected at any moment to see the windshield shatter, the mirrors crumble, and the paint chip away from the faux tank panels as hail the size of ping pong balls plummeted from the heavens. I needed a Valium!

Our trusty steeds caught out in the storm.

"Oh my God, it's hailing on my Beemer!!!"

Eventually (seemed like a lifetime!), the storm passed. We rolled into the town of Seymour, where the streets were under a foot of water, the ground was covered in hail stones, and everywhere we looked there were downed limbs, spider-webbed windshields, and pock-marked autos. We stopped at a gas station to fill up and assess the damage. Amazingly, the only damage to the bikes was a two-inch tear in the BMW's seat cover. A hail stone had actually punched a hole in my seat! Sonofabitch! Unfortunately, Rich's van was not so lucky. The roof of the van was stippled with hail craters. Danny, Chris, and I felt terrible about it, but Rich seemed to take it in stride. "At least it's isolated to the roof," he said, "and I never look up there anyway."

We pressed on, undaunted, arriving in Presidio in the wee hours of Saturday morning, where we got a room at the Three Palms Inn and crashed.

Seymour, Texas: flooding, hail the size of your granddad's goiter, and many a broken windshield.

A very wet day in Seymour.

After the storm: blue bonnets carpet the Texas countryside.

Rich to the young'uns in the back: "Don't make me have to pull this van over!"

Danny sleeps en route to Presidio. Ain't he precious?

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