Saturday, December 31, 2005

Sunset at the end of the year

What my part of Mexico looked like at sunset December 31, 2005

Sunday, December 25, 2005

sick and dazed

Every day there is an adventure here. Some days I handle it with equanimity, others I’m less than adult about it all. Today is Christmas and we spent the day relaxing. The tradition down here is to open presents at midnight on Christmas Eve, so we were up very late. We went to Laura’s house first thing this morning for the traditional Christmas breakfast of menudo. It smelled awful, according to Mom, but I tasted it anyway. Yik. Can I have some scrambled eggs instead?

I’ve been fighting a cold or an infection for the past week. I started out taking cold medicine, but switched to penicillin as I thought it was an infection. But it’s still not gone, so Pati suggested I get an injection of medicine. Apparently you can purchase injectable medication over the counter here, along with the needle. So around 4 in the afternoon, I was laying on my bed watching Cynthia prep my next round of medication, my pants pulled down to expose my haunches. She was very professional. She rubbed my butt with a cotton swab doused with alcohol. Rub, rub, rub, stick, rub. I barely noticed when the needle punctured my skin.

We had decided to open the bar today to see if we would get any business. But with the cold and the massive amounts of various medicines racing around my body, I decided it was a good night to stay at home. Around two in the morning I woke up, still drugged from the medication. Luis was nowhere to be found. My mind went into overdrive. He had left the bar and was out with friends, partying. He was off doing something that was fun for him, forgetting me completely. I looked outside. The Murano wasn’t there, but the Cadillac was. I debated. I looked to see if the Cadi keys were on the key holder, they were. I went back to the room and pulled on a fleece and my shoes. I went out and opened the Cadi, got in. Tried to turn the key in the ignition, but it wouldn’t budge. I was getting more and more frustrated. Where the hell was Luis, why was he out there having a good time without me, why couldn’t he care about me enough to call or come home? And why wouldn’t this damn Cadi start?! I went back inside and put on Luis’ peacoat and grabbed my bike.

When I got to the bar, I heard music blaring. What was I going to find inside? My mind raced with various unacceptable scenarios. I walked in. The place was packed. Luis was standing at the register, surprised to see me. He hadn’t been drinking or partying or having fun without me. We were just busy.

Merry Christmas to me.

Saturday, December 24, 2005

Mr Smith goes to Mexico

How to describe the odd sensation of flipping channels on Christmas eve and coming across “It’s a Wonderful Life”, that famous and classic movie starring Jimmy Stewart, beautiful in black and white – dubbed into Spanish?

Sunday, December 18, 2005

the newbies

I saw a truck loaded down with suitcases and a US license plate. New arrivals. Mexicans who live in the US coming south for the holidays. For a moment I don’t feel like the newbie anymore. I’ve been here for two weeks now, they are just arriving. I somehow have a leg up on them... for the moment.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Rescuing the Jeep 3 - La Migra

The next day we got up and had to return the rental car. We moved all the stuff from the Focus into the Cadi. Surprisingly the Cadi had a smaller trunk. So there would be very little space for the three of us in the car. But hey, it was only a 15 hour drive back to Tuxpan, how uncomfortable would it be?

We met back up with Tavo so we could finish legalizing the Cadi. We found a shop next to Tavo's office where the deal they offered was good enough, and left the car with them. The whole process would take a few hours, so we told Felipe we'd be back across the border in a few hours. We drove to the border again, and up to the US Immigration stop.

Last time we had gone across they asked if we were US citizens. We had produced my passport and Luis' green card, and were waved through. Luis told me that I didn't need to show my passport because I really was a citizen. Punishment for claiming to be a citizen when you weren't was pretty steep - a minimum of 2 or 3 years in jail - so not many people would try to get across the border by lying like that. I figured I would test this theory. We drove up to the checkpoint and showed Luis' green card. "What's your business in the US?" "We're returning this rental car." "Why do you have a rental car?" "Our other car broke down in Texas and we had to get our belongings which were in the car." "Do you have friends in the area?" I wasn't sure where this line of questioning was going, so I turned to Luis. He answered a few more questions and then we were waved into the search area.

We pulled into a parking space and an Immigration agent came up and asked us to get out of the car. We stood in the cold wind and answered some more questions. "What is your relationship?" "Boyfriend/girlfriend." "Why did you rent this car?" "We needed to rescue our belongings." "What are you doing in Mexico?" "Vacation." "Do you have any medications on you?" Huh? "Yeah, some acetominaphin and a few BC Powders." "Ok, you two will need to go inside."

Wow! They really think we've got something going on here. I guess I could understand that. Here we are, a US citizen and a US resident in a rental car, coming back across the border from Mexico with some story about giving away a car and living in Mexico for 6 months just because we can. Later, Tavo said he had heard that Mexican men traveling with American women were complaining because they were being stopped and questioned more frequently lately. So we go into the interrogation area and they call me in first. A polite female agent. She asks all the same questions we've already been asked. She asked how I met Luis. In a bar. She asked how I could afford to live in Mexico for 6 months. It's cheaper in Tuxpan than you think. She looked through my purse. She asked me who Jade was and why I had her number written on a scrap of paper. Jade is the girl who we gave the car to. A few more questions and she let me go. It was Luis' turn next.

I realized as I sat back down that she would probably ask Luis the same questions to see if we had our story straight. When I was talking to her I wasn't sure how much I should say, how much detail I should go into. And, in a very American way, I felt it was none of her friggin' business how I had met Luis and who the hell Jade was. So I had balanced my answers between telling her the answers to her questions and not telling her more than I was comfortable with. Now I realized that it wouldn't have mattered how much detail I had gone into, and in some ways it would have been better if I had. Luis came out after about 15 minutes and we were let go. It was an odd experience, to be questioned like that.

We pulled away from the immigration area and headed for the evil empire - WalMart. Like it or not, it was the only place to get a handful of things we needed. Christmas lights, burnable DVDs, etc. We returned the Focus and called Tavo to come pick us up. Felipe called us to say the Cadi had been legalized and was ready to go. Tavo showed up and said we had to go on a work task with him. He is a Mexican Customs agent dealing in Import/Export, which is why he can freely cross the border. We drove to a warehouse and he looked through boxes of computer parts to see if they matched the import list. They did so we loaded them into his car and headed for the border for the last time.

As we crossed the bridge into Mexico, Tavo pulled his car to the side and we got out with our purchases from WalMart. The car had to be left there for other Customs agents to inspect before it could be driven into the country. We had to walk the last 200 yards across the Rio Grande and into Mexico. What a picture. Me, Luis and Tavo, carrying WalMart bags, walking into Mexico. At one point Luis turned around and there was a semi about 10 feet behind us (remember this is a two lane bridge)! Unfortunately my hands were full or I would have taken a picture!

We met back up with Felipe, said goodbye to Tavo, crammed ourselves into the Cadi and took off. Fifteen hours later we drove back into Tuxpan, exhausted, but with all our stuff finally home.

con abrazos,
laura

Rescuing the Jeep 2 - Back into Texas

The road we were driving on was dark and there were a lot of deer in the area. Luis told me to keep the high beams on as much as possible and then snoozed off. We had grabbed some coffee on the way out of Del Rio, so I was ok, but still....

I saw a shadow move across the road a few hundred feet ahead. A deer! I slowed down and saw it slink off the road safely. A few dozen miles later I saw another shadow, smaller than the one before, and closer. I hit the brakes. Luis woke up. I looked at the shadow. It was a tire skid track on the road.

Maybe some more coffee would be a good idea. And keep Luis awake.

All in all I saw three deer - two alive, one dead in the middle of the road.

We hit Sanderson, Texas, about 60 miles away from Fort Stockton, and stopped to get gas. The gas station had a fast food joint inside with a handful of teenage boys running it. But we we're only interested in coffee. Sixty more miles and we were back at the Jeep. It was about 9pm and we had the same 200 miles to drive back through before we could rest. We got the Jeep running, and got right back on the road.

We had forgotten the walkie talkies for this leg of the trip so we both drove along in our separate cars. We passed the place the Jeep had broken down originally, we passed the spot where the semi had jack knifed and dropped it's load. We were 10 miles outside of Sanderson and I was looking forward to stopping again and getting more coffee. Then the Jeep ahead of me slowed suddenly and pulled off to the side of the road.

Shit. Not again.

I pulled off behind Luis and turned the blinkers on. A semi zoomed past. I got out of the car and Luis said, "It's dead again." Somehow that car didn't seem to want to go any further than Texas. The temperature had dropped again, it was below freezing I was sure. Luis pulled a back pack out of the Jeep, and pulled two coats out of the back pack. We sat in the Focus warming up, weighing our options. We waited for a while to see if the Jeep would cool down and start up again. No luck. A local police officer pulled up to check on us. I'm guessing one of the truckers had reported us, and the cop wanted to see what was going on. We were still close enough to the border so that we might have been suspect. He drove off after telling us where the local mechanic in Sanderson was. We waited for a while and tried to start the car again. Still no luck. We had one option left.

We emptied out the Jeep and fit our remaining belongings into the little Ford Focus. I tell you what, that thing has a big trunk! We grabbed the registration out of the Jeep, squeezed ourselves into the Focus and headed to Sanderson. At the gas station, we figured the boys running the fast food joint might be interested in a car. But it was too late in the evening - about 1am at this point - and the food area was closed, no teenaged boys to be found. The only person working there was a teenaged girl.

Luis left it up to me to talk to her. But how do you start that kind of conversation? "Hey lady, wanna free car?" I wasn't sure how well that would go over. So I wandered around, got a coffee and some BC Powders, then went up to the register. "Is that all for you?" the girl asked me. "Yup. Unless you want to buy a car from me." She chuckled, "No". "I'm serious. Do you want a 1992 Jeep?" She looked at me and Luis, who had walked up to the register at this point. "How much do you want for it?" "Nothing," replied Luis. He explained our situation. No time to wait around to figure out what was wrong with the car, no need to keep the thing either at this point. "Hold on," she said and picked up the phone. Whomever she called wasn't there, so she left a voice mail. "Ok, how about this. We leave the title, the registration, and the keys with you. You find someone who is willing to get the thing back to town and fix it up, and it's theirs, no strings attached." She thought about it for a minute and said she thought she could find someone who would take it. So I signed the title, and gave it to her with the registration and keys. She gave me her phone number so I could check up and see if she had found someone, and off we went, back to the border. I figured at the worst the car would be left on the side of the road and eventually I'd get something in the mail about it. At the best, someone in Sanderson, Texas would get a free car. Good karma points for us.

One hundred twenty miles later, no deer sightings this time, we were back at Del Rio. We drove across the Rio Grande, past Mexican immigration, and on to our hotel. Felipe was crashed out, and we followed suit.

continued...

Rescuing the Jeep 1 - The Trip North

When we last left the Jeep, it was safely abandoned at a mechanic's shop in Fort Stockton, Texas. To quote myself:

"So we moved all the important stuff into the Murano, and packed the Jeep with the items we could live without for a while. Told the mechanic to look the Jeep over and we'd call him on Monday to find out what was wrong. In the mean time we'd head south with half our stuff."

We actually ended up calling Charles the mechanic on Tuesday. Good news! He said he had tightened the flywheel and the car was running again. The bad news was that this probably wasn't our only problem, but Charles either didn't have the tools to figure out what the real problem was. So we took the good news and hoped the Jeep would at least get us the 200 miles to the border before it konked out. It had come 2200 miles already, what was another 200?

We left Tuxpan around 3 in the afternoon. We brought Luis' nephew Felipe so he could drive one of the cars once we were back in Mexico. I probably could have handled the majority of the drive in Mexico, but there was Guadalajara to consider, and the long hours Luis liked to drive, plus anything else that might pop up. So Luis felt better having Felipe there to drive.

Around 1 or 2am, we pulled off the highway at a city called Saltillo. At a gas station Luis asked for a close hotel. The attendant gave us directions and we pulled into a rather fancy looking hotel. It had an odd layout which I didn't figure out right away. Each room had a garage attached to it. The price was also very high, but we were all exhausted and figured one night at an expensive place was easier than getting back on the road to look for a cheaper place. So we pulled the Cadi into a garage, the hotel attendant flipped the circuit breakers for our room on, and we closed the garage door and went into our room for the night.

It was quite spacious. There was a small sitting area with two chairs and a table, two beds, a bar-like area with a room service menu, a sink area, and a large bathroom with a toilet and a big stand up shower. There were heavy curtains over the windows, which Luis pulled closed, and a lazy susan type thing that would allow food and whatnot to be delivered to the room without having any interaction with the person who was delivering it. There was one piece of art (or rather "art") on the wall. That was what explained it all to me. It was a 1980's style print of a naked woman.

Ok, let me add this up. A garage so you don't have to be seen getting out of your car. Heavy curtains so no one can see into your room. A private delivery system so even the hired help don't know who you are. And a print of a naked woman on the wall. I turned to Luis and asked, "This is where men bring their mistresses, right?" "Yup." In the morning I found that along with the shampoo the hotel left a condom. And the menu included condoms and cigarettes. Cool, we're staying in a "by the hour" hotel. I was too tired to care at that point.

The next morning we were back on the road. The temperature had dropped as we headed north and it was about 7 or 8 degrees centigrade (about 45 degrees farenheit). I saw a news program later in the trip and found out we were in the middle of a cold snap that hit the middle of the country and the southern US. None of us had heavy coats, but it was ok for the moment.

We hit Ciudad Acuña around 2pm. We met up with Luis' friend Tavo, had some food, and worked on getting the Cadi legalized. We called Charles in Texas and found out he closed in about an hour. Not enough time for us to get up there. So we paid the bill via credit card (a whopping $65) and asked him to leave the key in the car, we had another one so we could get in.

Legalizing the car was a process I won't claim to have understood. It involved going from office to office asking for the best deal. It's not like one place is the only place to legalize a car. There are a bunch of places and each will give you a different offer. Tavo thought he could get us a better deal than we had heard, so we decided to finish the process the next day. Ever since we had parked the car outside Tavo's office, men had been walking up to Luis and asking how much he wanted to sell the Cadi for. It was like flies to honey. Cars like the Cadi were rare in Mexico and those guys who dealt in cars knew what it was worth. The best offer we got was $2500. We considered it, but needed to go get the Jeep first.

We left Felipe in a hotel, gave him some cash, and had Tavo drive us across the border to rent a car. We got a car - a nice Ford Focus - in Del Rio, Texas around 5pm, said adios to Tavo and headed back into the southern Texas scrubland.

continued....

Saturday, December 10, 2005

Getting to Mexico 5 - La Frontera

As we got closer to the border (la frontera en Español), we saw more and more Border Patrol cars. I had been listening to AM radio the previous day or two when Bush had made his speech about protecting our border and creating a "guest worker" program, and thought about how stupid he was. Here we were, driving through southern Texas scrub land, it's pitch black, and there are long stretches of nothing surrounding the road we were on - how the hell does he think he's going to stop people from coming across? And what was he smoking when he thought illegal aliens would voluntarily turn themselves in to be put into a database only to be forced out of the country after three years? But this is too big an issue to discuss here.

We passed a check point for people traveling in the opposite direction. Luis told me that it is the Customs check at the edge of the "free zone". There is a zone on each side of the border, maybe 50 miles or so, where you are free to travel and bring items to and fro without paying customs tax (assuming you've been cleared at the actual border that is). But at this point, you will be pulled over and asked to declare what you are carrying with you, and possibly pay a tax. There was a corresponding one in Mexico, but it was to check for illegal items being brought into the country. On the US side they check for both material goods as well as for illegal people. People go one way, electronics, tools, and the like go the other way, and both sides try to stop that flow. A few miles after the check point we saw a car parked on the side of the road. Luis suspected that it was a lookout car. It would watch for the Border Patrol and then radio out to hidden cars and people when the BP was out of the region so they could move north and into the US for work or whatever.

As we got closer to la frontera, I got a bit freaked out. Here I was leaving my home country, the only country I ever lived in, to go to live in a small town where no one spoke my language, and the habits, traditions, expectations were all different from what I have been familiar with for the past 38 years. So many of my friends have told me how excited they are for me, what a great adventure this is going to be for me. But at that moment, I was nervous. Would I fit in, would I learn the language, would I be able to adjust to all the differences and lack of familiar items and activities? What do I have in the States that I might not have in Mexico and will I be able to adjust to that? I'm a pretty low-maintenance person to start with, so it's not like I have a great deal of specialized needs, but this time in Mexico would probably point out those that I did have.

We drove ever closer and I saw a line of lights. I guessed that they were along the border. They winked and blinked and looked like they wanted to burst forth and come across to where we were. We found a Wal-Mart (again with the Evil Empire, but when you're on a mission to get somewhere, it's "any port in a storm") and bought last minute items - toothpaste, soap, socks, shampoo. We stopped to fill the tank as well. As expensive as we American's think gas is in the states, it's much more expensive in Mexico. There is only one gasoline company - Pemex - and they set the prices. They don't even bother to list them on their signs like American companies do. You simply drive up to a pump and tell the attendant which gas you want (roja o verde) and how much you want to pay. Then we drove on to the border.

As we crossed the bridge into Mexico, Luis explained to me the insane process of legalizing a car into Mexico. If you have items packed in the car, you pull it over into the right lane on the bridge (it's a four lane bridge, so there isn't much space to start with), and empty out your car. The border agent comes out to inspect your car and then they take it into Mexico to do the paperwork. When they are finished, they bring the car back, you load it back up, and go into Mexico, where you then go through immigration. What happens if they won't let the car in? Do you stay with your belongings, or do you go with the car? What if it is only you traveling, do you trust strangers with your stuff? I have no idea as I didn't have time to ask more about all this.

We drove into the customs stop and Luis got out to talk to one of the agents. He casually waved us over to a parking space and we went in to get my visa. While we were taking care of that, Luis' friend Tavo showed up. Tavo works as a border agent, although I'm not sure what part he actually plays in all of this. But he is a good guy to know when you're going through the paperwork as he is friendly and talked to all the people who were processing us. A little grease for the wheel. My visa cost $21 plus a $5 tip for the guy because he made photocopies for us. This may seem a bit outrageous to many of you, but making copies isn't part of his job and he could have left us hanging, running around trying to get photocopies so we could go on to the next part of the process. So it's like a waiter giving you excellent service, you tip them for the extra service.

The next step was getting a permit for the Murano. We walked across the way and presented all the paperwork to a woman in another office. She was very friendly and was training someone in the process, so it was a lot of explaining things to her coworker, then turning to me & Luis to ask a question or two. The permit for the car was $30. So for $56 I and my car were legally in Mexico.

We drove out of Immigration and into Ciudad Acuña. It was like stepping into a Hollywood set. Everything instantly looked like Mexico. I thought that a city on la frontera would have a more American feeling to it, and apparently some do, but this one didn't. The buildings were built with the same materials as other buildings in Mexico - some adobe brick, some concrete brick with plaster over it. The wiring in the buildings was the same as that I had seen in Tuxpan - bare bulbs and to my American eyes some questionable wiring practices. Even the air smelled different. It was an odd sensation to step so quickly out of one culture and into another.

That night we spent in a hotel. Tavo offered to let us stay at his house, but we were leaving early in the morning as usual, and Luis didn't want to wake Tavo's kids. It was probably the best night of sleep I had had on the whole trip. I don't think I moved once during the whole night. All four hours of it.

As usual, the next morning, bright and early we took off again. Luis said he didn't want me driving in Mexico just yet, so he drove the whole 15 hours to Tuxpan. Nothing had changed since I had been there the year before, and I recognized a lot of places. Now I would be expected to remember people as well as places, but I have a whole year ahead of me to accomplish that.

More later... about the bar, the town, the people....

con abrazos,
laura

Getting to Mexico 4 - Texas

The hotel we stayed at had a continental breakfast, so we ate for free that morning. Luis saw two guys walk in and start to eat. Something must have looked odd about them because he commented that it would be a great idea to just scam on hotels offering free brekky. As long as you knew which hotels offered it, you could show up and act as if you had stayed there the night before, then have a free meal. Maybe next time we do this drive....

This was our last chance to get a Starbucks coffee. From here on out, we would hit small towns, then the border, then Mexico. And although you might think otherwise (Juan Valdez and his mule is American marketing fluff), coffee isn't a big drink down here. It's instant Nescafe or nothing. We had stocked up on Peet's coffee before we left Portland, knowing that our favorite drink would be rare in our new home. We found a Starbucks which was open early, and took our travel mugs in. The girl at the counter was friendly and asked us where we were headed. Mexico, we said. What's down there, she asked? A bar, Luis replied with a grin. She laughed, then saw that we were serious and her face changed to something between confusion and a polite Starbucks smile. Really, we said with big grins, a bar. We're running it for the next year. Ok, she said. Have a good time!

And back on the road we were.

We drove across the Texas west and eventually arrived at Fort Stockton. This was where we turned off the major freeway for a two lane 200 mile drive to the border. We got gas and started down the road. Ten miles outside of town, Luis jumps on the walkie talkie and says, "something's wrong with the car". We pulled off to the side. "I think the engine just died," Luis said as I walked up to the car. "Seriously?" "Yeah." Then he got on the phone to his friend who worked at the border to see if he could help us. Maybe he could drive up with his trailer and rescue us. We could abandon the Jeep at this point, but it was full of our belongings which we didn't want to leave, obviously. His friend, Tavo, had just sold his car 3 days before, so he couldn't help out. We moved the bike rack to the Murano and turned back into town to find help. Now, this Fort Stockton place is a small town. Small enough to not have a regular tow service. We had to go to two places to find someone who could even tow the Jeep to some local mechanic.

$85 later we were in front of the mechanic's place. It was just him and his very old father at the shop. He wouldn't be able to look at the Jeep until later in the day. It was noon. We had to decide what to do. Do we rent a truck and sell the Jeep to this guy? Do we wait to hear what he thinks the problem is and then decide? Do we drive the 3 hours down to the border, empty the Murano at Tavo's house, then return for the rest of the stuff in the Jeep? We took a much needed food break and decided to wait and see what the mechanic had to say. We hit up the local Wal-mart to buy undies for Luis' nephew Sergio who is about 5 years old, plus hair product for us. Then we took the old alternator to the local Napa Auto Parts and got $60 for turning it in. After burning off about an hour of time, we went back to the mechanic to hear what news he had.

He still hadn't really looked at it. So we called U-Haul to see what it would cost to rent a truck. The smallest they had was a ten-footer which was about 100 miles away (a town which didn't have a tow truck certainly wouldn't have a U-Haul), and would cost us $225 to get to the border, gas not included. Our options were narrowing. So we moved all the important stuff into the Murano, and packed the Jeep with the items we could live without for a while. Told the mechanic to look the Jeep over and we'd call him on Monday to find out what was wrong. In the mean time we'd head south with half our stuff. Luis has a Cadillac which needs to be legalized into Mexico, and that can only be done at the border. So we would have to come back almost this far anyway, we'd just drive an extra 3 hours further north to pick up the Jeep when we brought the Cadi up.

A note on American vehicles in Mexico: There are odd laws on what cars can be brought into Mexico and for how long. The Murano, for example is too new a car - only cars between 1992 & 1996 can be made legal in Mexico. And I believe until recently you could only legalize trucks into Mexico, not cars. That doesn't mean you can't bring a newer car into Mexico, only that it can only reside in the country for 6 months. They give you a pass for this which you put on your front windshield. After 6 months, you must return to the border to renew the pass. You cannot get Mexican plates for those cars. Cars which are within the legalizing window are allowed to be brought into the country and given Mexican plates. The Jeep qualified for this, so our plans were to bring it in and legalize it. Then maybe sell it once it was here. We'd have to see what our best option was. The Cadi had been in Mexico way beyond it's 6 month pass, and it had to be either removed from Mexico or legalized by the end of November or Luis wouldn't be able to bring any more cars into Mexico.

So we leave the Jeep at the mechanic and head south again. There were two road workers at the beginning of the two lane highway as we turned onto it. They stopped us to tell us there had been an accident 50 miles ahead, and that we should watch out for it. Small town, small highway, lots of nothing between them and the border. We passed the spot where we had broken down and kept going. Fifty miles of nothing but Texas borderlands later, we came upon the accident. A semi had jack-knifed on the road and dumped it's load. They were still cleaning it up as we passed, driving on the side of the road to get by. Suddenly I felt like we were pretty damn lucky to have broken down a mere 10 miles from that dinky little town. We still had another 120 miles to go to the border.

continued...

Getting to Mexico 3 - California

From Redding to Sacramento is about 3 hours. We arrived into town, pulled over and called Luis' nephew Oscar to see if we could use his shower. He was awake and invited us over. After cleaning up, and trying to get a few moments of sleep while Luis was showering, we went out to a pancake breakfast. We ate well, drank lots of coffee and caught up with Oscar and what was going on in his life. Then we got back in our own cars and took off once again. Our stops were few and short, and I wasn't sure how long I could go at this pace. Luis is more accustomed to driving like this, so he had a bit of an easier time of it. But he says he's getting older and it's harder to do every year.

We stopped at a Target to return an item we had been carrying with us since Portland (a sign of how quickly we left town), and found a Starbucks. Two large coffees later and we were on the road again.

We headed out of Sacramento and into the great valley of California. There isn't much to look at on that highway. Some stinky cow farms, lots of agriculture.... nothing much else. I remembered driving it at night on purpose when I lived in Cali and was driving between Berkeley and Los Angeles. That way I could imagine the wonderful things on the side of the road that I couldn't see in the dark. Driving it in the daytime was disappointing and boring. The hour or so of sleep I had gotten the previous night started to wear on me.

Then we hit Los Angeles. Man! Those people drive aggressively! I thought it was bad in Atlanta, but this was much worse. Or maybe I had been in a nice polite smallish town for long enough to forget what it is like to drive in a major city. No one wanted to give an inch. And they all drove at least 80mph. At least. Here we are, two out of state cars, loaded down with stuff, trying to find our way through the maze of highways, and everyone around us is zipping along probably annoyed that we were on their highway to begin with. Add to that the fact that the Jeep's right side rear view mirror didn't work and wasn't adjusted in any way for Luis to see what was in his blind spot. So i was his spotter - I would change lanes before he did so he could see that it was clear for him. That didn't work smoothly in LA.

By the time we got out of that and onto the edge of the desert, it was 10pm and we needed to stop. We found a hotel, brought the bikes in, and fell asleep.

The next morning we were desperate for a Starbucks. We figured none would be open at 5am, so we drive for 2 hours and stopped for breakfast. Their coffee wasn't too bad, but there was a Starbucks nearby, so we hit them up for more caffeine and got back on the road.

By this time the lack of sleep was starting to get to me. A lot of this time is fuzzy in my memory and I can't remember which hotel was in which state. I remember drinking coffee wherever we could find it. I even tried one of those high energy drinks (the Red Bull type), but it had no effect on me. Scary. Either it wasn't what it said it was, or I was so tired it couldn't break through that wall.

We made our way across Arizona, then New Mexico, and hit El Paso, Texas. It was early - 9pm - but we were both exhausted, so we stopped, had a "real" meal at Appleby's, and once again fell fast asleep.

continued...

Getting to Mexico 2 - Heading South

We had purchased walkie-talkies for the trip since we were going to be in separate cars. We were aiming to get to Sacramento that night around 11pm or midnight. But about 2 or 3 hours out of Portland, Luis changed lanes to get off the highway. He radioed me and said that something was wrong with the Jeep. We pulled into a gas station and opened the hood. He said he thought it was the battery. I suggested it might be the alternator since the car would still crank. He agreed, but pulled the battery and took off in the Murano for a nearby car parts store. Ten minutes later he radioed me and said it was the alternator. He could buy a new battery, but it would only last about 3 hours before it died too. In three hours we would be on the border of California and in the Sisquiu Mountain range. We decided we needed a new alternator, not a new battery.

As I sat in the car I wondered where we were going to find a mechanic at 5.30pm who could replace an alternator in a timely fashion. We'd lose at least one day. Then Luis pulled back into the parking lot, pulled out a rebuilt alternator and a socket wrench set. Then over the next hour and a half, he proceeded to pull out our old, dead alternator, install the new one, and get the car cranked back up. I knew he was pretty handy, but I didn't know he was *this* handy! What a score I had made!

Back on the road at 7.30pm, we realized that we probably wouldn't pull into Sacramento until very early in the morning. We still had the Sisquius to deal with, and the radio had said that the first winter storm had been plowing through the mountains that day. I thought maybe since it was the first storm nothing would really stick, it would just be slushy at the worst. No way to find out but to drive on....

As we climbed up and up, towards the highest point on the highway, the snow started to fall. We saw snow on the sides of the road. But we were almost at the top and it seemed fine, like the snow wasn't really sticking to the pavement. As soon as we crested the high point (some 4000 feet above sea level), the fog set in. Really thick fog. Fog that reduced visibility to about 40 feet. Luis was ahead of me and he slowed to a crawl, but kept going. I had both hands on the wheel and wasn't interested in taking one off to call him on the walkie talkie. So we kept going. A line of cars formed behind us, all of us giving each other wide berth, but not too far away so that we lost each other in the fog. The snow had started to stick and the road was slick, but I didn't see any black ice. About 5 miles of this and we descended enough for the snow to melt a bit, and the fog to lift. I called my mom to tell her that we weren't out of the mountains but we were through the worst of it. Little did I know....

Our next big landmark was the Mount Shasta area. About 20 miles before that, we started to see semi trucks parked in rest areas and on the side of the exit ramps. I'm not sure if Luis thought anything of this, but I started to think something was wrong. Then again I had heard that truckers had recently been legally limited to a certain number of hours on the road. Maybe they were all taking a break at the same time? We passed a sign saying "Chains required 20 miles ahead". One of the walkie talkies had a battery issue and they were both with Luis being charged, so I couldn't ask him what he thought of this. Another sign five miles later, and ever more trucks parked on the side of the exit ramps. Finally, about 10 miles from the required chains, I flashed the brights at Luis and we pulled over to discuss what to do. Of course we didn't have chains, and after going through the snow earlier I wasn't too excited about the prospect of what lay ahead. Let's just go on and see what the deal is, he said. So we went on.

Three miles before the required chains, a line of trucks parked along the side of the highway appeared. Something was up. I had never seen that many trucks just parked at the side of the road. It was a bit eerie. We slowed down and saw cars interspersed between the trucks, some with chains, some without. As we got closer even the trucks had chains on them. We pulled towards the head of the line and looked to see if there was a cop at the front checking for chains. There was. So we parked the cars on the left side of the road - there wasn't any space on the right side - shut down the Jeep, and we both sat in the Murano, preparing to have a long night amongst the truckers. Suddenly a cop car pulled up behind us. I thought maybe we weren't allowed to park on the left side, but the cop who walked up to my window said, "We just opened the road to cars. You should be fine. Have a safe trip." Wow, what timing we had! I asked how bad it had been. One and a half inches of ice, with people spinning off the road, which had been closed for hours. We both had 4 wheel drive and a lot of weight packed in our cars, which would help us over the next 50 miles.

We headed past the chain check point and into the snowy mess. It seemed ok for a while, but we were a few cars behind a snow plow. I remembered my experience with snow and ice in Maine a few years ago when I had run off the road, and gripped the steering wheel tighter. The snow plow pulled off and we were on our own. Other cars passed us, and we passed slower cars. Up and around the mountain. It was quiet and dark, with snow falling at times. I looked off to the side and saw tall pine trees covered with a heavy pack of snow. There was ice on the road, but it was freshly sanded or salted, I couldn't tell which. Both lanes were pretty open, surprisingly. Some time later - time seems to expand and contract in situations like this - I saw a snow plow blocking an on ramp in the opposite direction. A mile or so later i saw the trucks parked on the side of the road, waiting to be cleared to drive north through what we had just passed through. We had made it. It was 1.30 in the morning.

We kept driving a bit and reached Redding, California. We pulled off and checked at the first hotel we saw. No vacancies. So again, we closed up the Jeep, both jumped into the Murano and tried to sleep. After one hour, the cold woke me up. I didn't want to turn the car on, so I snuggled deeper under my leather jacket and tried to sleep again. But sleep eluded me for the most part. At 4.30am the alarm we had set went off. I was so cold I had trouble talking. I think my body temperature had dropped a bit more than it should have. I turned the car on, turned the seat warmer on, turned the heat on. And off we went.

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Getting to Mexico 1 - the kitchen


How to describe the month before we left Portland? Hectic.

We had decided to remodel the kitchen at our house, figuring that with Luis' experience in dry wall and my experience in cabinetry, it would be.... not easy, but not overly difficult either. The first step was pulling the old cabinets and flooring out. Until we pulled the countertop off, I considered keeping the same cabinets, just updating the doors. Then the countertop came off and exposed the cheap building process that had been used. I couldn't, in all good conscience, put those cabinets back in. So out they went into the back yard, and a call was made to the Rebuilding Center which is a local company which promotes reusing materials pulled from houses. They came and took all but one of the cabinets - the one having suffered from rain damage while in the back yard, and further damage by one of their employees when he was moving it.

Next was the old wall board. I went to work one day (I was working my day job throughout all of this) and Luis tore the walls out of the kitchen. What remained was old insulation in the ceiling, tongue and groove siding on three of the walls, and what appeared to be external siding on one wall. There wasn't a bit of insulation to be found in the walls, which is common for a house built in 1897. Ever since I had purchased the house, I had assumed that the kitchen had been added to the original structure at some point. But we found out that it was original and had probably been a porch. The floor had a distinct slant away from the back of the house, which a porch would have had to keep the rain draining away from the house. We also found newspaper (a common insulator at that time) on one wall with a date of 1897. We cut one board out and saved it, the rest was unsalvageable, and pulled all the tongue and groove off the walls.

We carefully took a bit of subfloor off to see what was underneath it. We found what appeared to be wide fir boards. Man, we were excited about that. We had been planning on tiling the kitchen, but now we could sand and refinish old growth fir, original to the house! The next piece of subfloor we pulled up exposed a hole that had burned through the floor when the house had suffered a fire some years ago. (The fire wasn't a surprise, i had known about it since I had purchased the house.) Instead of patching and fixing the hole, someone had put the subflooring on and then put awful laminate over that, which is what I had inherited.

So we had to pull the whole floor up, down to the joists. I came home one day to no walls and no floors in our kitchen. Truly gutted. Luis decided that while we had access to the joists we should level out the floor and insulate it too. That took a few days, but we (he, really) got it done. Then he drywalled, taped, textured, primed and painted the whole room.



A few days later we went up to the Rebuilding Center to see if they had any used cabinets that were in better shape than ours, and within a reasonable budget. No go. But we found a fresh pile of old growth fir flooring that had just arrived that day. It was reasonably clean, and would look better in the kitchen than the tile options offered at Home Depot. It was also cheaper than tile. So we bought it and Luis brought it back to our house the next day where it sat, wet and slowly drying, in our Jeep Cherokee since there was no other place in the house to store it and it was still raining outside.



We ended up finding a guy to install and refinish the flooring. While he was at it, we decided it would make sense for him to also sand and refinish the back bedroom floor which had been painted at one point. And, heck, since you're here why don't you also refinish the maple flooring in the living room?! Basically we gave up the space of three of our five rooms in the house for a week. The cats were sequestered in our bedroom (along with their food and their litter box - ugh!), we brought the stove, dishwasher and futon couch into the bedroom too. It was snug.

When he was finally done, the floors looked great, but he was 3 days beyond his original finish date. We were supposed to stay off the floors for at least 24 hours, and be gentle to them for 48. Twenty minutes after he left we were moving stuff out of the bedroom. The floors stood up to the activity and we all stretched out a bit.

Now the pressure was on. We were leaving November 28th. My last day at work was November 23rd. We started to install the cabinets on November 19th. Somehow we actually got it all done.



Around midnight the 27th, we finished the install of a whole new kitchen. The dishwasher (which had been donated to me by a friend) didn't work, and the new garbage disposal sounded like it had a fork in it, but.... it was done.


The next day we packed all our stuff into the two cars (the Jeep and the Murano), put the bike rack on, then the bikes, and by 2pm we were on the road.

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