December 18, 2009

I am a lucky woman. How many women do not recognize they are in love, before they throw away their affair?

This was the day before I was to leave Mexico, and  I had come to realize I was in  love with Tope.  I still had a day to cherish, worship, and capture some of his personalities with pictures.

Who is Tope?

Tope is your average Mexican Speed Bump.

Oh, he’s a wily one, too. Often unpainted, he can sneak up on you and give you quite a surprise.  He can be rather stern and severe, and yet at times very gentle.  Sometimes he is easy to get around, and sometimes he is in the only place you want to be.

Tope can be smooth and gentle, and tope can go to an extreme.

Here are some of the many faces of Tope:

<>

There is a lot written on the internet about the Mexican topes, so I will not bore you here with that.  Basically, you either love ’em or you hate ’em. One thing is for certain: they are  e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e!!! I’ve seen them marked and unmarked, in small villages, in towns, on major highways, e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e!

I chose to love them–while they slowed other vehicles down, I used them to pass long lines of traffic that were generally annoying. Especially delightful for me was to pass trucks that I’d had difficulty getting around int he mountains, and when we’d come into a small village, they’d slow waaaaaaaaaay down. I’d slow down, too, but my dual-sport bike can handle them much better than cars and trucks, so I would sail over them.

(Thanks to the super suspension setup I got from Cogent Dynamics, I could FLY over them, giving me untold glee 🙂   )