I had planned to try to make Monterrey today; it was easily within range. But I stopped for lunch in a little town called Matehuala, a little way north of the Tropic of Cancer, and it seemed like a nice place, and I needed a rest; and so I got a room in a lovely small hotel, half hidden by masses of bougainvillea, and spent a lazy Sunday afternoon just drifting aimlessly, looking at this and that and basically screwing around.

In the evening I got to see a couple of rituals, no doubt happening on any Sunday evening in small towns all over Mexico: the local amateur brass band put on a concert down on the central plaza - pretty terrible, but very enthusiastic; some of the locals were laughing - and everybody who owned a car joined in a kind of strange vehicular promenade, around the plazas and along the main streets, in an endless loop, bumper to bumper, almost drowning out the band with the noise of largely unmuffled engines in bottom gear. Amazingly, there were no collisions and almost no honking horns or angry gestures; but then no doubt they'd had a lot of practice doing this. An old Kawasaki Mach IV, in bad condition and missing numerous parts, was in there too, operated by a husky young man with a wispy young woman sitting sidesaddle behind him; as far as I could tell it was the only big bike in town besides mine. I never figured out what the point was supposed to be but they all seemed to be having a good time.

The road north from Matehuala ran across a big expanse of serious desert, inhabited by many varieties of cactus - some really big - and not much else. The sky was clear and the sun almost painfully bright.

But then, very quickly, it began to change. The sky clouded up; soon the mountains to the north, that I had to get over, were blurred by fog. If I had known how to say "Uh oh" in Spanish I would have.

The road snaked up the mountainside and by the time I got to the top the fog was as dense as I'd ever seen anywhere. There was a kind of truckstop at the top and I stopped and went in and killed some time, waiting for the fog to clear, but after an hour or so it still wasn't happening - in fact it seemed to be getting even thicker - and so I went out and started the bike and headed cautiously down toward Saltillo. Or where Saltillo was supposed to be; all that was visible was a murky gray wall.

I knew before I'd gone a mile that I'd made a mistake, and that it might well turn out to be a fatal one. I could barely see beyond the windshield - which was opaque with beaded moisture; I had to lean to one side and look past it. I'd already removed the face shield, but my glasses kept misting up and the one time I stopped to clean them, they fogged again in minutes. I had to watch the edge of the pavement just to stay on course, and I could barely see that.

It was an insanely dangerous situation. Nobody coming from behind could possibly see my taillight soon enough to avoid hitting me - even with good brakes and driving skills, neither of which could be confidently expected on a Mexican road - and for that matter if anyone up ahead was moving slower than me, I'd probably plow into him. Hitting my brakes on that fog-slick pavement would be disastrous anyway.

Fortunately there was virtually no traffic; everybody else had had better sense. I met a couple of trucks coming the other way, creeping slowly along, but nothing going my way. Finally the road leveled out, and the fog thinned just barely enough to let me make out a couple of signs; and a few minutes later I was rolling slowly through Saltillo, looking for a hotel. It was only about noon, but there was no use even thinking about going any farther today.

Saltillo turned out to be a pretty interesting city, though the weather wasn't very suitable for sightseeing. After finding a room and changing into dry clothes, I walked around some, getting into an interesting conversation about motorcycles at a bike shop, and one about traditional Mexican music with a seriously hot-looking young woman at a record shop. Saltillo seemed to have a more European flavor, in some ways, than other parts of Mexico; more of the people had lighter coloring and Spanish-looking features rather than the Indian-blood look of most Mexicans, though that might have been my imagination.

At the hotel I struck up an acquaintance with a well-dressed Mexican guy, a bit younger than me, who was married to a woman from Massachusetts; an engineer, he had gone to school in England and his English was flawless. He was fascinated by the GS1000, particularly the engine; he'd ridden a BSA a little in England but he hadn't realized they made bikes with dual overhead cams.

A frankly devout Catholic, he took me to see the old cathedral; which was indeed impressive and even beautiful, though it obviously touched him somewhere I could never be.

In the morning the fog had lifted and I rode on, to Monterrey and then up the lonesome desert highway that I had taken southward on that first visit two years ago. At the US Customs at the Roma crossing, a young guard began going through my bags in a perfunctory sort of way. One of his colleagues came over and said, "Ah, let him alone. He's a good ol' boy."

I was back in the States again.