Mex 1 shoots out from under us like a black snake, wrapping around the jagged contours of the desert as if to constrict and consume it. Wildflowers explode from the hills and blur into streaks, a painter's pallet of color and life. Baja is in full bloom.

We roll into the next puebla like some knockoff Steppenwolf, waxing poetic about the heavy metal thunder of life on the road, our steel machines thirsty for oil. We're chasing ghosts that we can never really relate to, separated by the chasm of time. But we try. We're hounds on the hunt for clues to understand the past. Or are we just gringos desperate to connect with a life that was never ours? Outsiders looking for a way in?

What are we in this place? Leather gloves fraying under pounding vibration, gasolina burning around our pistons, a turn of the wrist away from oblivion? Or a couple of nerds with too much free time, way over their heads, and batting far above their pay grade? Wanna-bes with a death wish?

The people and places here vibrate with a rustic intensity, a convoluted contradiction of hard-earned experience and rural niavete. Baja is a liminal place, always on the border between progress and regress. Boom and bust. To try and capture it is a Sisyphean task. But we try.

All we can do is try.