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Baja – Part I
Loaded up, suited up, and ready to head out… San Diego, here we come!
132 miles later, we arrived at the Ramada Gaslamp Hotel. Those front desk asshats had somehow screwed up our reservation, and we ended up at the Comfort Inn a few blocks away. Ah well, time to have a cocktail!
Fortunately, there is no evidence… err… pictures of the evening. They’d mostly be blurry anyway. The Gaslamp District in San Diego is a fun place to kill brain cells.
Every true adventure begins with a hangover, and this one was no exception. The next day we headed for Tecate, and our first ever Mexican border crossing.
Border crossings are usually a nerve wracking experience, something about the uniforms, the guns and the bad attitudes always makes me a bit nervous. We drove up to a little hut, with nobody inside. No uniform, no gun… nothing. A light turned green, and that was it, we were in Mexico! I guess they don’t really care when people cross the border INTO Mexico….
First pics in Mexico!
We spent the night in Ensenada at the very nice Corona Hotel, a little expensive at $100 a night, but worth it.
In a small restaurant in Ensenada, Abi tries to think of the Spanish word for ‘Vegetarian’
Here is what he got to eat… I’d say he failed.
The Black Pearl, from Pirates of the Caribbean was docked at a marina right behind our hotel. I guess another sequel must be in the works?
One of the many Mariachi bands going to work. These ‘bands’ consist of a few guys with instruments – most not tuned to each other – that come into restaurants and charge $5 for a song. If you try to wave them off, they just stand around and stare at you while you eat. I eventually learned for $5 these guys sing LOUD!
Ensenada is fun. And a great place to go if you need a ‘Muscle Rexant’, whatever that might be… or anything else for that matter.
A lovely view of a valley somewhere between Ensenada and San Felipe. The thing in the lower right corner is a used car air filter, with a few flowers growing through it. For some reason it made me laugh.
A look down into that same valley. There was garbage ALL OVER, mostly at the bottom of the hills, I guess the local attitude is, If I can’t see it, it ain’t there.
The ride from Ensenada to San Felipe was incredible, other than the garbage strewn hills. I’d heard the roads were something to be feared, but these roads were tremendous, with fast sweeping curves and well maintained surfaces. At one point we crested a hill and slowed down to enter a small town. Good thing we did too, because there were three policemen standing on a hill with automatic weapons in hand. Not sure if they were waiting for speeding gringo bikers or not, fortunately we didn’t have to find out!
Abi, a native of Trinidad, feels a touch of homesickness come on as we pressed on to San Felipe.
Captain Knucklehead Speaking
Pre-takeoff announcement from the captain on this morning’s flight:
“Welcome aboard, ladies and gentlemen. We’re glad to have you with us today, mostly because our airline really needs the money. We’ve got some of the best flight attendants in the industry working for us, unfortunately none of them are here today. I hope these gals do a decent job for y’all.”
Secure (and Scent-Free) Skies
The jack-booted thugs at TSA are at it again. Yes, the Crayola sponsored terror threat color has been ratcheted all the way up to orange since those fucking douchebags got busted planning to blow up planes with liquids, gels and aerosols a few months ago.
So now, in addition to the security rainbow, we get another idiotic policy. 3-1-1. More stupidity to annoy frequent travelers in the name of making people feel ‘safe’ . Here is the TSA’s own definition of this brilliant policy:
3 –1–1 for carry-ons = 3 ounce bottle or less; 1 quart-sized, clear, plastic, zip-top bag; 1 bag per passenger placed in screening bin. One-quart bag per person limits the total liquid volume each traveler can bring. 3 oz. container size is a security measure.
Even though that last line is a bit ambiguous, following this new and simple rule, there’s no doubt we’ll all be 100% safe in the skies.
This morning after checking in, I stood behind an kindly looking older woman in the security line. She sighed heavily as she removed her shoes, dropped her one quart plastic bag filled with liquids, gels and aerosols in the screening bin, trudged through the metal detector, then waited for her items. With a sigh, she confided to me that most of these new security procedures are, in her opinion, “really fuckin‘ stupid” – an opinion I happen to share.
The alert TSA agent must have overheard her, and decided to search her belongings. Turned out to be a good thing too, because this sly old lady was trying to beat the system.
The vigilant guardian of the skies discovered a 75 ml bottle of expensive looking perfume in her handbag. I saw a smile flicker over the face of the TSA agent as he informed the woman she wasn’t allowed to bring this banned item on board. Never mind that the bottle was only 1/3 full, containing much less than an ounce of actual perfume, she was told that ‘the amount of liquid doesn’t matter, it’s the size of the container’ that determines airworthiness. And besides, the illegal liquid wasn’t in the requisite 1 quart bag, breaking the 3-1-1 rule not once but TWICE. Scandalous!
The poor old woman started to get belligerent. She wasn’t going to give up her perfume without a fight. And the TSA security specialist wasn’t going to back down. I was afraid the terror rainbow threat color was going to elevate from orange to bright red, much like the woman’s face was. Finally some real entertainment in a normally boring security line.
A supervisor came over to assess the situation. She said that while 75ml is in fact LESS than 3 ounces, since the item in question wasn’t in a quart sized plastic bag, the 3-1-1 rule was nonetheless being broken.
After a ten minute standoff, a compromise was reached, to the relief of the ever lengthening line of frustrated travelers. The highly trained security agent walked back to the airline counter, got a quart-sized, clear, plastic, zip-top bag, placed the woman’s perfume in it, then handed it to her. She promptly put the new quart-sized, clear, plastic, zip-top bag in her purse, along with her OTHER quart-sized, clear, plastic, zip-top bag, and walked away, shaking her head. Nobody on either side seemed to care that the third part of the 3-1-1 rule, the part about having only ONE bag per traveler, was still being broken, but at this point I guess it just didn’t matter.
After this whole fifteen minute ordeal, the rest of the line was allowed through, secure in the knowledge that TSA will do whatever it takes – no matter how insignificant and foolish – to ensure the safety of the flying public.
One of Those Days
Ever have one of ‘those’ days? The kind where as soon as you wake up, you can sense that something is just a bit off? That maybe a bit of suffering might be in your immediate future?
Superbowl Sunday was just such a day for me. I woke up with that eerie feeling, so I did the only sensible thing. I rolled over and went back to sleep.
All I really had to do was clean up the house a bit, and catch a 2 PM flight. Flying would take up most of the rest of the day. But, since the sports team from my area wasn’t in the big game, I didn’t really mind missing the spectacle.
Anyway, I woke up again, and – feeling of dread or not – I had to get going, or I was going to miss my flight. I stumbled to the bathroom, noticed a grizzly-looking mountain man staring back at me in the mirror, and decided to give my beard a little trim.
I grabbed the trimmer, turned it on and started on the right side. After the first stroke, I gasped in horror. OH SHIIIITTT!!! I’d broken the number one cardinal rule of beard trimming – CHECK THE TRIMMER SETTING FIRST. Normally I set the trimmer to a comfortable ‘3’ , but somehow the damn thing was set to ‘0’!
And for that moment of inattentiveness, I had a nice smooth stripe of pink skin where my goatee used to be.
Great.
Well, now I had two choices. Leave things the way they were and walk around like a nutter recently freed from the loonie bin, or finish the job I’d accidentally started.
Before
After
Between flights, I stopped at a bar in the Minneapolis airport to watch the halftime show. Ordering a beer, I was carded for the first time in 11 years! Hmm… maybe this clean shaven thing isn’t so bad after all.
That good feeling quickly faded when the bartender carded a 65 year old man that sat down next to me. Yeah, everyone gets carded at that bar.
Ah well, it’ll grow back.
DAMN YOU, PUNXSUTAWNEY PHIL!!!!
No shadow?
Spring right around the corner?
NOT IN MY BACKYARD!!!Blew it again, didn’t ya? Punxsutawney Peckerhead!!
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