Going The Distance

Barbara insisted that we stay an extra day in Mazatlan. She wanted to show us the beautiful Stone Island, with its long beach, straw-roofed restaurants, fresh shrimp kebabs… Ok fine.

We interviewed the couple who run one of the restaurants on the beach. They have been married for 34 years, they have 6 children (4 of their own, 2 adopted) all of whom live and work nearby, they had many grandchildren, one of whom – a little dude called Emilio, 3 years old – was happily running around the restaurant and in the sand. It was our first interview in Spanish, and it seemed to go pretty well. Mike is conversational, and I’m pathetically Italian – speaking as much Spanish as I know (little) and filling in the many gaps with Italianish. Mike kindly pointed out that instead of saying “puedo” (’I can’ or ‘can I..”), I say “pueblo” (village). Confusing no doubt. Village ask you a question?

Lety and Felipe were totally wonderful: warm, devoted, and very Catholic. God was a big part of their lives: if they go through a tough time (as they are economically now), they pray to God. When we asked what advice they’d give us for a strong marriage, they said “respect and work hard”. And you could see that they did, they had built a thriving restaurant up from nothing, and done it together. Lety said that Felipe had got better over the years at opening up to her and sharing his frustrations, rather than – as he used to in the early days – storming off and raging on his own. The family was very very important to them too. They are very much all in it together, and what a cracking family they are.

We’ve made it to Mazatlan. Whilst up in Auburn, Seattle, Mike parked up in front of a bikeshop, leaving me in the sidecar. This is a usual state of affairs as I’m usually buried in stuff and getting out is not easy. But it does mean that I am fully vulnerable to the Ural Effect: people starting conversations. I am happy to do this – and this particular time, I get chatting to a biker couple. When the wife hears about our route, she says that she has a house in Mazatlan, and her sister lives there. So, 2 months or so later, we descend upon the wonderful Barb in Mazatlan. The house is a haven, Barb has set up a couple of interviews for us, and she insists that we actually get some holiday while we’re here.

Our first interview is with Greg and Gude: a couple who have been married for 41 years. She is Mexican (and 6 years older than him), he is a California surfer dude of the 60s. When they met, Gude had never seen the sea, she grew up on a rancho inland and was one of many children of a poor family. In fact, they talked about the first time Gude’s father (now 99) saw the sea (he was 87). Tears streamed down his face and he said that he could never have imagined that God’s work could be so beautiful. He asked Greg what the “little mountains” in the sea were (the waves).

Gude and Greg’s story is about bridging two cultures, about the resistance Greg received from Gude’s family, about the cultural differences which colour their own relationship. Greg talked animatedly about how he had to work hard to teach his kids that they needed to be punctual, how it is NOT OK to be an hour late for appointments, Mexican-style. She talked about how she needed to chill him out – he was raised by German parents who didn’t allow speaking at dinner, who wouldn’t feed any child who was one minute late for 5pm dinner (”this is a house, not a restaurant”). Greg gave us a great piece of advice – never compare your relationships to other people’s: noone can ever know what goes in between two people, and every relationship is different.

Now, this is where the blog must bifurcate slightly (Oh no! I hear you say, not a bifurcating blog!) as we are now in Mexico, and there’s the down right different element to get in – a “travel blog” if you will. I have no plans to bore you with “then we saw the most amaaaaazing sunset” but I thought I’d put down the things which stick out. And the thing which sticks out about Mazatlan, beyond the fact that it’s a gorgeous seaside town, with a seafront boulevard to rival Cannes or Beirut, and the home of Pacifico beer, is the phenomenon of Banda Music.

Banda really has to be heard to be believed. It came from this part of the world – the state of Sinaloa, Mexico – in the 1880s, and if you can try to imagine, it has its roots in the overlapping of Mexican music with German polka music. Yes, indeed, it sounds just like that. Greg had a story that a German ship was shipwrecked, they raised up the rusted and broken instruments and played them like that. It really sounds like a group of muppets hitting, banging and blowing any metal they can get their hands on. We went to a restaurant popular with the locals (and no gringos) to hear it in action. I ended up, in my crappy Italianish talking to a blind guitar player for half an hour, who is a favourite with the narcotrafficantes because he can play at their parties and not see any of their dealings.

We start the day with an interview with the local Sonora paper, El Imparcial. They interview us for about an hour and take a photo of us in suits on the bike. It then appears on the front page of the paper. Arriba arriba!

Time to turn up the heat and cover some miles. Our dodgy tyre has cost us valuable days, so it’s time to burn it to Mazatlan, and our next rest stop with a friend. Captain Mike bravely says that he can cover 8 hours driving, so off we set. In the midday heat, the temperature gets up to 45 degrees C. It’s bastard hot. We’re totally drenched. No roof, no A/C and no respite, we cover huge distances listening to A Short History of Nearly Everything.

We take refuge from the 1pm sun in McDonald’s in a seaside town of Guayamas, where a friendly American comes up and starts chatting about the bike. Ah, the Ural Effect, we know it well by now. But it turns out Chris is a Jehovah’s Witness, here from Oklahoma with his wife, to lead bible groups and spread the word of the Witnesses. He and his wife, Rachel, agree to an interview. They are a young, sweet and earnest couple – he’s around 24, she 21. They have real belief in what they are doing, and they have a strong marriage as a result.

We asked them about the foundations for the marriage and how important their shared beliefs are, and it seems they are everything. The young couple met when Rachel was 18, and the two of them were working together on the construction of a Kingdom Hall in Oklahoma. They eventually got together and marred about a year after that. They spoke with the fervour and passion of the religious, and it was nice to see how it bound them together (in the same way that Mike and I are bound by a forced faith in the Russian Burro we ride). We heard their sweet love story, asked questions to get to the bottom of stereotypes (door knocking? “Well, if people don’t want it, that’s no problem, but we want to share the word”; refusing blood tranfusions? “if there was no other way, I would have to let him die. But we believe we will be reunited after death”) and the thing which we really took away is that Rachel and Chris were required, before they married, to think hard about the practical elements of their forthcoming marriage. Not wedding, marriage. Watchtower publishes a small book called The Secrets of Family Happiness which requires the spouses-to-be to think about tough topics like what happens if one spouse gets ill? How many children? What if we have an unwell child? What happens if a parent gets ill? Though I’m not religious myself, this seems to me like a very good idea: forcing young lovers to think about the practical side of an impending union. A lot of the advice we’ve heard from experts and couples alike is that shared goals, and mutual understanding is vitally important. In fact, Dr Gottman has devised an exercise for couples in crisis where couples are required to talk about their ideas on key things – ranging from “how do we celebrate Christmas?” right through to “what are my ideas on God?” etc (sadly, we couldn’t fit the cards on the bike, so I’m doing that from memory, but you get the idea) But that’s my thought for the day (Oh God, I’m Jerry Springer now. One Reuters article and I think people are actually reading this gubbins…) strip back the lovey dovey and think of it as a business partnership for a second: where do you want to be in 10 years? What do you want to achieve together? Is it travel? Is it a big house? Is it a menagerie of kids? Is it a lapdog and no talk of little people?

BEST BIT OF MEXICO SO FAR: I take over driving the bike for a while to give Mike a bit of a break. I find the bike very heavy, and I’m quite a nervous rider. I spook quite easily (turning to the right can be hard for a weakling) but for short bursts, Mike can kip in the sidecar and feel a bit restored. After half an hour, I pull over – ill-advisedly on the run up to a right hand turn, so Mike and I can swap places. Mike decides to take a piss. At the side of the road. BIG MISTAKE. This is against the law in Mexico, we learn. A policeman comes over and starts rabbiting in Spanish. Mike speaks Spanish, but not perfectly – what he did glean was that the policeman said “it is an offence to our pristine and beautiful public highways that you whipped your cock out and took a slash”. Much threat of being taken down to the station. Until $5 sorted it out. Saweet.

Mike Clear and Alanna Boylan went on a blind date together on Sunday, September 25th, 2005. What better way to celebrate than in the baking heat of Mexico? Mike and I tuck into a fajita and a Pacifico beer then potter around downtown Hermosillo, which is very lovely.

Bike needs attention so we head to the nearest Ural dealer to the Mexican border, 87 year old Red, in Sierra Vista. With any luck, we’ll actually cross the border today…

Whilst Mike is fixing the bike with Red, I coerse the Indian owners of the motel we are staying at to appear in our film. They represent a crucial missing piece of our marriage discourse: the arranged marriage. They have been married for 24 years, and agreed to do a quick interview with us (sadly, it ended up being only about 10 minutes). Those 10 minutes were not a great advert for arranged marriage… They said they had no regrets, because that’s what society expected of them, but they wouldn’t enforce (inflict?) an arranged marriage on their daughter.

They were introduced by a mutual uncle (by blood on one side, by marriage on the other), and they met for the first time after the marriage had been arranged, at the uncle’s house. Neither could remember the moment they first saw each other – which seems strange to me, surely that was a massive moment? Maybe it was something they blocked out. They said that arranged marriages could work because no one was left on the shelf… The one thing which we did learn from them, though it wasn’t the most uplifting of romantic thoughts, was that any marriage could work if you work at it. These two worked hard at the motel they ran together, and they lead a life which works for them. Not sure I’m totally sold on arranged marriages though. Not sure she was either.

Damn and blast. We get a flat tyre just outside Yuma, Arizona (as in “3.10 to…”). It’s pitch black, we’re on the side of a major highway, and Mike’s already been driving for 5 hours.

Much sweat later, new tyre is on the back of bike. We realise, despondently, that our dream of making the border tonight (in order to make for a whole day’s driving in Mexico the next day) is over. We limp back into Yuma.

The biggest story in San Diego, without doubt, is the story of the border, and the thousands of people who try to cross illegally everyday. In fact, on the very next day, Tuesday, 3 trucks carrying 74 people burst through the border at Tijuana resulting in gunshots from the US authorities, and 1 critical injury.

We really wanted to be able to tell the story through a couple separated by the border, or one who had struggled across the border and made the American Dream work. It’s proven to be the hardest story to crack of our entire trip, and we have, shamefully, had to give up.

We contacted a representative at the Mexican Consulate in San Diego who put us in touch with representatives from 3 charities who work with the immigrants, specifically, trying to prevent the two deaths a day which result from people trying to cross the border. We started by trying to track down Rafael Hernandez, founder of a group called Angeles del Desierto: volunteers head into the borderlands to leave food, water and sometimes clothes for those stuck out there (http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=21518) Rafael and his wife are now US citizens, having come across 21 years ago. We organised an interview – joy! – but at the last minute, Rafael had to pull out to make a trip into the mountains on a rescue mission. When we spoke the next day, his wife was no longer with him, having to go north to be with her ill sister. We were crestfallen.

Hours later, I receive a call from Enrique Morones, San Diego native and founder of Border Angels. www.borderangels.org, inviting us to come and hear him talk at the San Diego Activist Group meeting. Border Angels does food and water drops in the desert to save lives of illegal immigrants, but also campaigns politically to raise awareness of the plight of Mexican workers (and what drives them to make the treacherous crossing), and the importance of Fair Trade. One of the issues high on his list at the moment is that of Friendship Park (www.borderangels.org/friendshippark.html), an area established by First Lady Patricia Nixon in 1971, on the US-Mexican border at San Diego-Tijuana where families divided by the border can go to talk to each other, hug through the bars. Since the US government vowed to strengthen the border a few years ago, the park has been closed because of the added 3 layers of wire fence which now separate families. Campaigns now rage to reopen this vital and important link between two worlds.

Enrique gave us a contact in Tijuana, Micaela, who runs a refuge for people deported from the US back to Mexico. I spoke with her in the hope of finding a couple who could tell the border story, but she said that she only had single women in the refuge at the moment. We left San Diego deflated by our lack of luck in being able to tell this story – we will try in Nogales, but it’s unlikely we’ll have much luck with the short time frame we are operating under.

We meet Arielle Ford, author of  The Soulmate Secret: Manifest the Love of Your Life with the Law of Attraction. Arielle met her husband, Brian, in extraordinary circumstances: she manifested him. It sounds new age and weird, but she’s extremely convincing on this matter… and she’s not some wooden-earringed, long-armpit-haired hippy, she’s an extremely successful publicist credited with launching the career of Deepak Chopra, among others.  The basic idea of manifestation is that you put all your energies into imagining something, in a really positive way. Not “I want”, instead – in the case of love – thinking of all the love you DO have in your life, rather than the one love that you don’t.

13 years ago or so, Ariel decided that it was time to find her soulmate. She compiled a list in her head of all the things she wanted this person to have, then she visited the Hugging Saint in India. When she was hugging the saint, she said outloud what she was hoping for, the saint smiled, and after that Arielle started to have dreams about the person. One of which suggested that this person needed to let go of a person called Beth.

One month later, she flies to Portland with work. A friend of her colleague offers to pick her up (though never having met her), so she gets off the plane and is met by a man she has never met before, Brian. As soon as she sees him, she feels something very strongly. She suspects, just a little, that she’s going mad because she hears a voice which tells her that this is the man. She says nothing, the day rolls on, then later that day (where they are working hard on the booklaunch of another writer), Brian turns to her and says, “you know I have met you before”. It turns out that since Arielle had met the saint a month before, Brian had been having vivid dreams in which Arielle would appear. He also had a relationship with a woman called Elisabeth which he was stepping away from. Arielle and Brian were engaged 3 weeks later, and remain passionate about each other 12 years into their marriage.

It really is quite extraordinary to be around them. They exude a positive and all-encompassing energy which is almost intoxicating. I’m a bit of a sucker for all this kharma stuff – but even Mike is listening intently to their story. They talk very compellingly about attitudes (whether you like the manifestation and mysticism, the idea that people should strive to be happier in daily life is convincing), and it’s clear to see that the relationship that they have is very strong and healthy.

They are both high-powered individuals, in a very 21st century world, who have made time for individual and shared spirituality. I joked with them that we’d only find people like that in California, and they agree, but there is something about them that I do feel Mike and I can learn lots from. One of the things Dr John Gray talked about in his book is about how marriage has evolved and one of the struggles is that working women have to balance the masculinity required in the workplace with the feminity required in a relationship. And the same is true of men, they too need to find a way to augment their feminity to bond and understand their partners better.

These two have worked out that balance. Arielle is feisty and an achiever, but she takes time at the end of her day to purge that inner ball breaker (she calls it her “smiling and dialling” self). She takes a hot bath, pets a cat or goes for a short walk. Brian, equally, finds time to tune into his wife at the end of his day. He talks about preparing himself to listen and be there for her. Whatever they are doing is clearly working. Whether or not soulmates exist, the fact that both of these two believe that they have found their soulmates is the key to their success. They both put a lot of love and nurture into their relationship, and they are handsomely rewarded.

We are also rewarded because they make us a delicious dinner, and we happily watch the Emmys together.  

The day starts with our kind hosts, Ben and Dave, agreeing to take footage of the bike on LA’s mean streets. We drive around, with Dave driving a truck in front of us with Ben sitting in the back of it like a dog, filming our every move. What dudes.

The two of them, with their guitarist Isaac, form together The Lincoln Bedroom, http://www.myspace.com/lincolnbedroom.  

The Lincoln Bedroom

They are just in the process of finishing up their first album, Broken Record. Rest assured, punters, that as soon as we are allowed to use their music, it will appear on every edit you see.

After 2 weeks of some dizzying ups, and some very low lows, we leave LA.

Our next interview is with a couple in Culver City: Dr Lula and Carl Ballton. They have been married for 40 years, and we managed to get hold of them through their church. After we spoke to Hill Harper about the decline in black relationships, we wanted to talk to a happily married black couple to get their views on the matter. We arrive an hour late, which means that I am extremely tense, overly apologetic, and the Balltons, justifiably, are dubious about what awaits them. Never the best start to getting people to open up.

It turns out that it doesn’t matter at all. They talk at length about their relationship – they met young, married quickly because Carl was in the draft for the Vietnam war – and have been very very happily married for 40 years. When Carl heard that he was going to be posted to Delaware, he realised that he had to propose to Lula quickly – he did and they were married a week later on Thanksgiving. The entire community chipped in – making the food, the dresses, the ornamentation – and they ended up having 300 people to their Chicago wedding.

Again, they are a couple with a great dynamic. I have had feedback from discerning readers who would like a bit more criticism in this blog, but genuinely – and I apologise! – that’s not really the nature of our interactions with people. They open up their homes and their hearts to us, and we take inspiration and advice from them for our enduring relationship.

The most extraordinary coincidence about meeting the Balltons is that Lula has just published a book of advice to her daughter on her wedding day, advice designed specifically to aid matrimonial harmony, called 50 Saturdays Before You Say I Do. Lula had no idea that we were coming to talk about their love stories and advice, we had no idea that she had just had the book published.

She wrote the book as a present to her daughter, and gave it to her a year before she got married. Each Saturday has a different piece of advice for how to make the marriage work. When her friends saw it, they loved it and wanted a copy – and so it was that Lula, and her daughter, decided to publish it. I can safely say, of all the books that I have read on the subject of marriage, all crammed with advice and ‘How to’s, this is the most charming, wonderful and sage of them all.

She has written in the most charming and motherly way – so that the advice is not cold, hard advice from a PhD who, in general, has been through divorce or is quick to make a self help buck, this is written with all the love of a mother to her daughter on her wedding day – from the point of view of a woman who has had a very very happy marriage, through good times and bad, over 40 years. As soon as I can access the server with all our footage on it, I’ll copy up a couple of the “Saturdays” advice.

When asked about what they thought about the decline in black relationships, the couple became animated. They said that it is entirely natural that the poorest segments of society suffer a higher rate of divorce because of adverse external factors, and when black people are given opportunity – like the Balltons themselves – they are in a much better position to be able to buck the statistical trend. Fair enough point, but I wondered whether we should have found a black couple who had made it work from a generation below. Once again, despite the fact that we work all the time, I regret not being able to work a bit harder to find a younger black couple to interview alongside the Balltons.