seeds of construction

Summer is having a fitful death in Oregon.


The last few days have started out cloudy.  But the humidity promised high temperatures by noon.  And Mother Nature delivered.


Septembers are usually pleasant in the Willamette Valley.  What is missing this year is that sharp coolness in the morning.  Reminding us that Jack Frost's wand is not far off.


But it also means great tomatoes.


One thing I have missed in Mexico is high quality tomatoes.  Melaque offers excellent fruit and vegetable choices.  With the noticeable exception of tomatoes.  Most of the tomatoes are as tasteless as the sad choices at my local Safeway.


And, of course, most of the year in Oregon, that is what we are stuck with.  Tomatoes that are indistinguishable from the hard and tasteless nectarines on the neighboring shelf.


But not in September.  That is when the heirloom tomatoes are at their finest.  And, usually, at a premium.  When my Safeway has them, they usually run around $12 (USD) a pound.


The best place to buy heirloom tomatoes is at the local Saturday Market -- a few blocks from my house.  The tomatoes are fresh from the field.  But they usually cost about the same as Safeway's offerings.


Not this last Saturday.  Due to some unseasonably early rains, the tomato (and wine grape) harvest suffered.  I ran into one small retailer who was trying to move the last of his inventory -- at $2 (USD) a pound.  A real bargain.


I grabbed a few treasures and scurried home with them -- where they became the star attractions in a Greek salad.  The best I have had on my trip north this year.


What I now need to do is grow some of my own heirloom tomatoes in Mexico.  Jennifer Rose found some heirlooms in Morelia.  She saved the seeds and started her own crop.


The last thing I need in Mexico is to be tied to a vegetable garden.  After all, I have put off buying a dog until I get the travel bug out of my system.  But I should be able to deal with a few tomato plants.


This weekend, I will pick up a few overripe tomatoes, dry the seeds, and slip them across the border in November.


It may turn out to be the best of both worlds.
 

peter, paul, and mary take a trip

 Nostalgia can be an eccentric tour guide.

Yesterday I was making my final plans for my return home to Mexico.  Plans that turned out to be a bit more convoluted than I had anticipated.

Maybe it is my age.  Maybe it is my love of music.  But the more I tried to focus on setting up my airline reservations, the more I could hear Mary Travers's warble:  'Cause I'm leavin' on a jet plane/Don't know when I'll be back again.

I thought my return to Mexico would be rather simple.  I was going to buy a motorcycle and head south around the end of October.   

That plan fell through when my right ankle refused to heal enough to handle the weight of a nice road bike.  There would be nothing more humiliating than dumping an eighteen thousand dollar piece of machinery simply because I had the ankle of a ninety year old anchorite.

That left airplanes.  And I knew snowbird season would quickly limit my options.  About six weeks ago, I look at flights to Manzanillo for 30 October and 6 November.  Almost completely full on both days.

My return date depended a lot on the Latin American Bloggers' Conference in mid-November.  Because the conference is on the other side of Mexico (in Merida), I decided to fly -- until I saw the prices for internal flights in Mexico.  I could fly to London from Portland for the price of a ticket.


But I remembered a little trick used by a Mexican business friend.  He often takes flights from one Mexico city to another by adding a leg to a city in the United States.  His advice was sound.  I could save $500.


So, here is my drill.  I will be flying to Cancun from Portland on 10 November where I will meet up with a blogger friend.  We will drive to Merida for the bloggers' conference, and spend a few days touring Yucatan.  There should be plenty of blog tales there.


Then I will fly to Los Angeles from Cancun -- and on to Manzanillo.  Even flying first class, I will save money.


There is a lesson here about the downsides of airfare regulation.  But that is for another post.


For now, I am simply happy that I have plans to be heading to Mexico on that elusive jet plane.  Fueled with nostalgia.
 

capitol fog

The walk to work this morning could not have been better.


Well, it could be.  I could be enjoying retirement, instead.  But everything else was a Goldilocks morning.


The temperature was 60.  Nice shirt sleeve weather.


More like an early summer morning.  No nip of fall.   Just right for sitting outside drinking coffee and eating croissants.  As some are wont to do.


When I left the house, the sky was perfectly clear.  And the sun was just beginning to peek over the Cascades.


Despite the warm morning weather, though, it is fall.  By the time I started walking through the state government campus, an autumn fog rolled in from the Willamette.


My walks to work are starting to become utilitarian.  How I get from A to Q.  As a result, I am losing my pedestrian instinct to enjoy my surroundings.


Today was no different.  My head was already at work.  But, as I walked past a fellow drudge, he looked past me with a bit of amazement in his eyes.


I turned around to see one of those sights that makes walking a joy.  The sun was just above the horizon shining through the fog around the Capitol dome -- reflecting everything in a fountain pool.


One of those moments that remind me that Oregon is great place to live.


And there I was without my camera.  But my BlackBerry can operate as a camera.  So, shoot I did.


The resolution is bad.  Flat.  You cannot see the depth of the fog and the interplay of light on the water.  My Panasonic could have done justice to the shot.


But most things we photograph reside in our minds, not in our photographs.  And that is where this one will live.


Not a bad way to start a Monday morning.
  

ups and downs in so cal

I am back in Oregon after a week in southern California.

And a truly American week it was.  Disneyland.  The roller coasters of Magic Mountain.  Warner Brothers Studio.

Lots of activity.  And lots of life to digest.  But I will pass on only a few hors d'œuvre.


You have already heard the tales of Disney.  Even with the small disappointment involving the room reservations, it was a nice time.  All shiny and orderly.


Driving from Disneyland to Magic Mountain is like traveling from Sweden to Italy.  Where Disneyland has an aura of neurotic tidiness, Magic Mountain is as spontaneously disorganized as a Sicilian wedding.  And while Disneyland is fun, Magic Mountain is awash in adrenalin.


I remember the first time I saw Magic Mountain.  I was driving south to Los Angeles on I-5 in 1972.  Middle of the night through the San Gabriel Mountains.  And there it was.  Off to the west.  An amusement park.  All lit up.  In the middle of nowhere.  It looked as out of place as a harlot at a meeting of the Daughters of the American Revolution.


It took me 38 years, but I finally got there.  And it is not the same park I originally saw that dark night.


Magic Mountain is one of the meccas of the roller coaster cult.  From kiddie coasters to teen fright machines, they are all there.  17 roller coasters.  14 operating when we visited.  And we rode most of them.


At the top of the scream heap is X2 -- "the world’s first 5th dimension roller coaster," in rolliespeak.


Whatever that phrase means, and I think it means X2 will unloosen joints you never knew you had, it is an engineering marvel.  The seats extend off the track to the sides and hang mid-air --allowing them to rotate 360 degrees around the 3,600  feet of steel track.


Imagine being in a rotating chair on top of a 20 story building and being pushed off backwards.  At 76 miles per hour.  And then being rotated upside down through a cork screw turn.


I haven't felt a rush like that since my pilot training days.  And, like all good things, it is over far too quickly.


But that wasn't the only adventure.  The Terminator is a modern coaster disguised as a wooden one.  It may look classic, but it has the soul of a Ferrari.


If I lived in southern California, I would probably visit the park regularly -- even though the drive to and from Valencia is almost as exciting.


Hmm.  I wonder if there are any roller coaster parks back home in Mexico?

it's a sad world, after all

Rant warning.  Cantankerous author ahead.


I have turned enough pages in life to know no matter how much planning you do and how good your intentions may be, life simply does not turn out as you planned.


Disneyland is no exception.  I planned this trip as a thank-you present for the fellow who has been sitting my house -- and to celebrate his twenty-first birthday.


Because he has a technical background in sound and camera work, he had been looking forward to seeing Disney's new World of Color show at California Adventure.


During my last two visits to Disneyland, I have saved money on lodging by staying at the Best Western motel across the street from the amusement park.  It was close.  And, the accommodations -- as most Best Westerns are -- was adequate.


But I wanted to do something special on this trip.  I decided we would stay at Disney's newest -- and grandest -- hotel: the Grand Californian.


I am not easily shocked at room prices.  But I must admit when I looked at the room prices on line, I was a bit shocked.  And that was for a standard room.  I gritted my teeth and upgraded to a park view room with concierge service -- nearly doubling the price. 


In some benighted homage to my Scottish past, I unchecked the trip insurance box.  After all, you cannot be too extravagant.  And I noted we would be celebrating a birthday.


I paid my deposit, and a few days later I received a rather nasty email that I had not yet paid the full amount.  So, I sent off the balance.


When we arrived on Wednesday, we were greeted by some of the most cheerful people on earth.  Through all the mirth, you could almost miss the sucking sound of dollars disappearing from your wallet.


The moment we started looking for the room, I knew something was wrong.  We were on the wrong side of the building.  When I opened the blinds to the balcony, the hoped-for park view was an asphalt view.


A quick check at the front desk indicated something had gone wrong.  The reserved room was a standard room with no concierge service, but I was charged for trip insurance.  And no mention of a birthday.


Of course, there were apologies all around, but no park view rooms were available.


I would like to say I accepted life as it was.  After all, here I was in the happiest place on earth and I was letting a little room mix up ruin my day.  And I did.  Even after my house sitter said he was happy with the room.  After all, it was Disneyland he wanted to see. 


It did not matter that we were paying almost four times as much as we would at the Best Western -- and were still staying in the equivalent of a Best Western room.


I eventually recovered from my own disappointment.  World of Color turned out to be quite nice.  Nice enough I watched it two nights in a row.  And we have had at least one decent meal.


But all things tend to be ruined by repetition.  I may have had my Disney fix for this life -- or, at least, this decade.


I am looking forward to a day of roller coasters at Magic Mountain on Sunday, and to learn something at Warner Brothers Studio on Monday.


Even a rant cannot go on that long.

out of routine

In Mexico, I would start every morning with a bowl of cereal, a banana, and a steady diet of my favorite blogs.


While enjoying the morning sun in my garden, I would read up on what was going on in the various states of Mexico -- and add my comments to the conversations.  It was fun.  And as regular as the phases of the moon.


That memory got me to thinking about life here in Oregon.  Instead of reading the blogs at my leisure, I now feel rushed to get through them at the end of the day.  And I do not comment as much as I once did.


The primary cause is too obvious to even mention.  But I will.  Returning to work means my time is no longer my own.  I am selling it to my employer.  And I get a good bargain out of it.


And then there are the other demands on my time.  Because I am going to be here only for a limited amount of time, I have been booked for most evenings and weekends since I came north.


What was recreation in Mexico has almost turned into a task.  Like most tasks, it slips down my list of interests.  There is simply something about the rushed life style north of the border that turns joy into drudgery.  As if a mad alchemist had been turned loose amongst us.


But there will be a change in my work routine for the next week.  I am heading to southern California to experience Disneyland, Magic Mountain, and Warner Brothers Studios.  None of that lends itself to blog-reading.


But as my buddy Calypso says: STAY TUNED.

drained and dirty

News from Melaque.  The laguna has been drained.

Periodically, the dunes between the ocean and the laguna are breached to allow the lake water to flow out into the sea. The water.  The water hyacinths.  The sea lettuce.  And assorted bits of trash.

A friend informed me yesterday that the water in the laguna was drained, and our little inlet is bereft of water.  But there is still plenty of vegetation to be cleaned out.  The only problem now is working in the mud.  And it is a lot more difficult to work in that than in the croc-infested water.

There is no word on the young croc.  But they are resilient, and there is still plenty of water in the deeper part of the laguna.

I wish I had some photographs for you.  But, if you want photographs, my good friend Sparks has some for you.  What washes out of the laguna ends up on the beaches of Melaque.  Sparks has some great clean-up photographs.

Seven weeks from now, I will be able to give you my first hand observations.  It does not take long for the laguna to fill up -- and the water hyacinths to return.