I used to be the one honking

For years I was one of those guys. On Sunday mornings I'd run into the barriers of the vía recreactiva (the avenues Guadalajara closes to cars so people can walk, skate and ride) on Chapultepec or México Avenue, and I'd honk. Not at anyone in particular: at the universe. I had a car, I had somewhere to be (usually the supermarket or my mother-in-law's) and there were all these people on bikes, on skates, with strollers and dogs in sweaters, taking up the street I paid for with my taxes. I said exactly that, out loud, in those words. My ex-wife would glance at me sideways and say nothing, which I now understand was a very thorough comment.

I had my arguments, too. I'm an accountant; I always have arguments. How many businesses were losing sales, how traffic got pushed onto the small streets, how there were other places to exercise. Once I did the math on a napkin to prove to my brother-in-law that the vía was costing the city who knows how much. The numbers were wrong. I know because I redid them recently, out of curiosity, and felt embarrassed.

How I got on

I got on by accident, more or less. After the divorce, on the first Sunday the girls weren't with me, I woke up at seven with nothing to do and no desire to stay home. There was a bike in the garage I'd had since 2014, a mountain bike I bought on impulse and rode twice. I pumped up the tires with a foot pump I found behind the moving boxes and went out without thinking too hard.

I didn't get far. I was worn out after twenty blocks, sat on a bench and bought a green juice I didn't like. But I watched a man of about seventy go by with a speaker strapped to his handlebars playing Juan Gabriel, a whole family on bikes of different sizes like nesting dolls, a young woman teaching her father to roller-skate and the father falling and laughing. And I thought, very clearly: these are the people I was honking at.

What I see from the bike

It's been almost three years now, every Sunday I can. These days I ride all the way downtown and sometimes beyond. I have a route, a favorite tejuino stand on Federalismo, and a nod I exchange with other men my age who also wear a helmet and a belly and surely also have a story.

What I like most isn't the exercise, although I lost four kilos and my doctor stopped making that face. What I like is seeing the city at the right speed. From a car, Guadalajara is traffic lights and potholes. From a bike it's the smell of birria drifting out of a garage at nine in the morning, it's jacarandas, it's a man hosing down the sidewalk, it's buildings I drove past a thousand times and never looked at. I discovered that on the avenue I cursed the most there's a beautiful house covered in green tiles. It was always there. I was busy honking.

What I haven't worked out

I don't want to make this a religious conversion. There are still Sundays when I'm driving, I hit a barrier and feel the old, physical urge of my hand going for the horn. I don't honk. But I feel it, and it makes me laugh a little and cringe a little.

Ximena came with me twice. The second time she got tired at La Minerva and we walked back pushing our bikes, talking about a teacher she can't stand. It was about forty minutes on foot. If someone had told me at thirty-five that it would be one of my favorite mornings of the year, I would have honked at them.