come down off the mountain this morning, on the way to las cruces, and there were hundreds of motorcycles on their way up. motorcycles all over the place, some stopped by the side of the road, some in formation, some with helmets some without, some actually not keeping to their side of the road. most of course did. as my brother said, when we got down there, they're just old folks, like us, not troublemakers anymore like they used to be.

of course, he lived in china for ten years maybe, and taiwan for about six; in taiwan everyone and their brother has a motorcycle, and it really doesn't mean anything. you have these young shop girls, they work in a 7-11 or something, and they ride around in a scooter, or a motorcycle if it's a permanent job. and they all make tons of noise and they wear these short skirts, even on the motorcycle. and they don't have tattoos, or long hair, or skull-on-leather jackets. they are basically not rebellious at all, as far as a person can tell. they're just trying to get around the city.

up here, turns out the motorcycle rally was over in inn of the mountain gods, on the mescalero reservation, but they had to do a poker derby kind of rally, where they came over this way to pick up proof that they'd been here. that put them 70 miles south of the rally itself, but forced them to check in at the local bar, which is an old friend of the motorcycle community, and possibly get a drink, but since they are on windy roads, 9000 feet up, with curves, narrow and with steep cliffs on the side, hopefully they didn't have more than one. or hopefully they are very large people, and can totally handle their beer. one hopes that they didn't encounter an elk, and have a showdown, or perhaps a mountain lion.

i personally remember the motorcycle gangs as a feature of a town as small as this one (~1000) and as being definitely rebellious, as they definitely had facial hair, pony tails, leather with skull logo-type jackets, the whole nine yards. something about them always screamed, don't tell me to quiet down or i'll take this silver tailpipe and shove it where the sun don't shine. and they were out on that edge where you definitely didn't want your daughter running off with them, because one wouldn't be able to protect her from the others, and she would be unsafe in all these bars. not to mention, on windy roads, 9000 feet up, when the driver's had a beer or two.

once i was hitchhiking in mexico and a guy on a motorcycle gave me a ride. i had no idea what motorcycles meant down there or if this guy was any kind of rebel; i had no cultural framework to use to judge him. but he gave me a swallow of pretty strong tequila and off we went. i felt a little woozy right away and had trouble holding onto him, but fortunately i didn't have to steer, and it wasn't really a mountain road. i can't remember if i had a helmet or not, but i had my backpack, and that made it a little harder to hang on, since it kept getting caught in the wind and pulling me one way or the other. it seems to me this was the guy who, when it was over, insisted on trading shirts, and i did, feeling like he'd saved my life, when in fact he'd endangered it, or rather, i had foolishly let him endanger it. trading shirts seemed like a good idea. down there all the mexicans wore american shirts, and all the americans wore mexican shirts anyway. so it seemed reasonable, and i did it. he was also one of the people that, when he really got to talking, i had trouble keeping up with him, because my spanish just wasn't that great. and also, i was just a little woozy, before the whole thing was over.

fast forward to new mexico. i have a high school teaching license now, qualified to teach high school social sciences. alamo has three jobs; the reservation high school has one. the reservation would be a longer drive, about sixty miles, and maybe 80 minutes, of windy mountain roads, each way. i'm not sure how teaching the res kids would be any different from teaching the alamo kids, but i'm sure it would be. for one thing, they have way more skills; they clean out their forest, and hunt, and tame wild horses, for starters. i'm not sure they do all that stuff before high school, but i'm sure that some of those kids are doing some of that stuff all the time. and some are working at the inn of the mountain gods. it's their local cash cow. it keeps the whole res in money and work, and most of this money comes from the outside. it's not the same old cash, being recycled endlessly. it's the real stuff, from texans or city people, dropped in the gambling casinos but dropped just the same. you don't even have to steal it, they're just giving it away.

i've never been there, to the inn of the mountain gods, but i've been past it, and i've been to a few other casinos. it's like vegas in that they try to have big shows regularly, big country stars, and they pay them to bring their entire entourage out there and stay out there, and put on this big classic show, and the customers, many of whom drink a bit, drop a little more money in the machines on their way back to bed. the machines and gambling tables are open as much as they can keep them open, as much as people will use them. i'm not sure if it's all mescalero apache working there, or if some of us white outsiders can actually get jobs there, and the same goes for the school really - do they really want some white guy teaching them history? i'm not sure. i can tell you this: their trucks are as good as ours. they plow through the same kind of snow, do the same kind of remote mountain rescues we do, and take pretty good care of their forests. they have hundreds of wild horses out there too - that makes them better than us, in my book. you see a few wild horses, you know you're out in the wild mountains.

back in the old days there were at least three major families of apaches, the mescalero, the chiricahua, and the jicarilla. there were a few more, including kiowa, further east, but these were the three we had in new mexico and arizona. and geronimo was a chiricahua. his wife and family were killed by mexicans at one point and he turned his rage against all white and mexican invaders of the traditional chiricahua lands. his stubborn refusal to give up or settle for living in some lousy no-count plains reservation, led him to keep fighting, until his people, the chiricahua, had lost even their own reservation down by the bootheel of new mexico and southeastern arizona. so what was left of his chiricahua band ended up in the mescalero reservation, which at least had plenty of room, and was beautiful mountains with plenty to eat. i don't know how important that is, though. one never knows about these things. it's like the u.s., you can live side by side with people for years, and not realize how racist people can really be, about their own neighbors and people they live and work with. i'm guilty myself, thinking "us" and "them" and wondering about the differences in "our" land. i can't expect to just transport myself to outside a culture where everyone, basically, is thinking "us" and "them" on some level, and if i teach there, i'm sure i'll deal with being one of "them" almost every day of my life.

sure would be interesting, though.