Mom, maybe you shouldn´t read this one

Aqiula to Coalcoman, Michoacan:  I was in the town of Aquila and had been thumbing for a good couple of hours without success when a semi with a giant hopper shuddered to a stop on the speed bump in front of me. I swung up into the high cab which contained the driver Rodrigo and his brother-in-law Mario. I sat on the bed-space behind the two front seats.

"What are you guys hauling?" I asked.

"Iron," Rodrigo pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the hopper, "And weed." He nodded to the ample space below the bed I was sitting on. We began to move.

Rodrigo turned to me.  "Will you hand me that beer that's back there somewhere?"

Without a glance he tossed the can of the one he had already finished out the window.  Then he cupped his hands around his lighter and lit a cigarette.  With a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other and an an occasional elbow on the steering wheel, Rodrigo opened the throttle and we thundered up the Sierra Madre del Sur.

The Sierra Madre del Sur rises several thousand abrupt feet from the oceans before dropping off the other side into a highland plateau. The road clings to the canyon-sides and sweeps around the chaos of ridges and arroyos. There are no guardrails (as if that would stop a semi). There are no shoulders. There are no double yellows or dotted whites.

Rodrigo told me stories of his time in LA as a coke dealer: how he got busted and about his time in jail. He almost head on-ed a bus. When he ran out of subject matter he flipped on the CD player which pumped out frenetic Latin hip hop.  He put one set of tires in the dirt on the roadside, then pulled them out. Campesinos dove into the ditches and signs that said things like "slow," and "dangerous curve" and "school zone" rattled furiously in the wind from the truck. He yelled for another beer. I pretended not to be able to find it until he took his hands off the wheel and started rummaging around for it himself around for it himself.  I found it right away.

I discovered that between songs he drove slower and picked up the pace as the beat hit harder. I stared yelling questions to him so he would turn down the music. This led to the unpleasant discovery that around every corner the tires were shrieking as the empty trailer fishtailed behind us and righted itself, making the cab shudder hard. I continued to yell questions, pulling on every reserve of my Spanish and conversation-making skills. But having told me about his criminal days, he was no longer inclined to talk.  He was having more fun going nuts to regaetòn and making nine wheel turns (as opposed to 18 wheel) around passenger cars.

Finally we made a screaming descent into a town which I quickly declared to be my destination, hoping I wouldn't have to say its name because I had no idea what it was called.

"Hey I've got lots of friends here," Rodrigo told me. "You can stay with them if you want.  I'll take you to meet them!"

"Oh thanks so much man.  That's cool but yeah I've already got friends here.  Yeah, they're from Jalisco but they live here.  As a matter of fact they live right here beside this little store we're coming up on.  Yeah, so I have to get off right here."

Children and fruit vendors scattered as Rodrigo charged through the town and clattered to a halt. I descended from the bed and I staggered out of the cab. Then I just sat down on the roadside, giving thanks with all my soul for the blessed stationary pavement.