Dog Bites and Bee Stings

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  • Day 3

    My experience in Tijuana will be ending on Wednesday. I am leaving town, going to Oaxaca de Juarez, in the state of Oaxaca. That’s pronounced “wah-hahk-ah” I think. It’s sort of a hippie town probably filled with people “finding themselves” and getting cultured with Indigenous peoples. I’m excited to be going there. I hear the food is amazing and I hope to try some.

    Tijuana provided me the opportunity to cross the border by walking and I really enjoyed that experience. Everything else was just hectic and a bit scary but generally okay. This hostel has been good to me. I’ve met people from Turkey, France, and Atlanta. Good people and good introductions and I wish them well. There is one guy who stays in my room of six beds and I think he’s been in bed for eighteen hours per day for the last three days. It’s sort of incredible. I said hi to him a couple times with no response. Also, my bed linen never got changed. It truly doesn’t bother me but seems odd that other beds in the room got changed and cleaned. Perhaps I have bad vibes. There will be more stories from Tijuana, I just have to take the time to write them properly. Onwards.

  • Day 2

    I looked at my phone today around 10:30 am. Free breakfast at the hostel ended at 11:00, so I walked down five flights of stairs to the lobby. In the breakfast area, three old Mexicans were sitting at a table drinking coffee and conversing. I saw the coffee pot and some mugs and jars of sugar and cream on a table across the way and walked over to pour myself a cup. The woman of the house came up and asked me something about desayuno. On my way down to the lobby just before that, I was debating if the word for breakfast was desayuno or almuerzo. In Spanish, she asked “Do you want some breakfast?” I assumed she asked “Did you have any breakfast?” I replied no, and she looked confused so she asked again and I said “Oh, si, quiero desyauno! Donde?” She pointed towards the window. I sat at a little bar looking out at the street, drinking my coffee, and leafing through a National Geographic from 2004. Soon, she brought out some fruit covered with yogurt and granola sprinkled on. Healthy, not my first choice, but thankful for it nonetheless.

    The hostel where I am is the top floor of a little hotel, Hotel Paris, near the main drag of Downtown Tijuana. The woman at the front desk gave me a very cold reception when I showed up yesterday. She wanted a deposit of two hundred pesos in cash. I told her I had no cash and that I had paid my deposit when I made my reservation. “No, Hostelworld is not me” she said with an eye roll. Okay, I’ll go out and get cash and be right back. Is there a bank nearby? Oh, right it was Sunday. Wait, there’s ATMs everywhere in Mexico and they are always available. She had no patience for me, only frustration. I think she switched to Spanish and confused me just to mess with me when she had already shown she spoke English. I had read reviews of the place and had seen her mentioned as being rude. The internet was correct. Thankfully, she gave me my towel, which the deposit was for, and let me go to my bed in the dorm. I dropped my things and went out looking for an ATM. I brought her her precious two hundred pesos. “Muy rapido,” she said with a smile. Ah, when the money appears so too does the friendship.

    I have made my rounds already, walking up and down the street, checking out the area. I feel preyed on by the shop owners, very much like it is in a beach town. “Amigo! Leather belts, cigars. Nice cigars for you, my friend!” To be fair, it is a beach town, just a few miles away from the water, and a border town too. I can see the United States from the roof. The area might have been cool in the 70s or 80s but now it’s run down, dirty, and just a little shady. It’s as if I decided to cross into the US and spend a few days in Niagara Falls. A questionable choice.

    After breakfast, I sat on the sunny patio on top of the building and read. A girl came through and we said hello. She had dark hair and a darker complexion than my ginger ass, so I thought she was Mexican or maybe from California. She laid out on a pool chair across from where I was reading. It looked like she wanted to tan and I figured she definitely wanted privacy but I waited for her to say something and continued reading. Soon she sat at the table near to where I was reading and we introduced ourselves. She said she was from Turkey and was volunteering at the hostel for two months. I want to do the same thing, at hostels located in “not Tijuana”, so I was very intrigued. Her Spanish is as bad as mine, “un poco español.” She showed me pictures of her hometown in Turkey and I showed her pictures of snowy Buffalo I had taken Saturday. Soon, she had to go and we said our goodbyes.

    Now, I write and it is windy on the patio but the sun is bright and plans are forming for my escape from this town.

  • Day 1: Midway Airport

    I’ve never been “guy who is getting some work done on the laptop while at the airport” but I am at Midway in Chicago doing exactly that. Im in a cafeteria that I came across while walking to my mysterious Gate A4A, which feels like a ten minute walk from the rest of the airport (“It’s a long walk, isn’t it!?” says one Midwestern mom to another one while heading towards the gate.)

    I’m on my way to San Diego. I plan to cross the border of Mexico by foot and head into Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico later today. My plan is to travel from Tijuana to Patagonia, way down south in South America. I have six months in mind for a time frame, but honestly, who knows. Send me some money and I’ll keep writing and traveling!

    This is Day 1. Welcome.

  • An American’s Duty

    I have done it – I have completed my income tax return. It took a lot out of me, especially towards the end when the confusing and vague questions built up and my patience faded. Do I want to donate to the Presidential Election Campaign? I swear, the audacity to ask us that question. Do I qualify for this tax break or that one? I don’t know, I’m guessing, and I don’t want the IRS to attack me! Imagine a world where we didn’t have to do this. Tax us less and what tax money you do get, use it wisely. A man can dream.

  • Music Rules, Football Drools

    The Patriots are in the Super Bowl again. Football is a dumb sport not designed with the happiness of Bills fans in mind. Poor design, in my opinion. I cannot fathom looking at any sports related junk online today. The only good thing about the internet is Chris Luno videos on YouTube. He is a German DJ who apparently rocks the house every time out. I have never been to Germany nor have I ever seen a DJ perform live but one day I will get to Berlin and lose myself in the club scene. Don’t come looking for me. 

  • Sunday Morning

    It is snowing in Buffalo. I sound like a broken record when I say that. I think we are getting hit by a storm today but I’ll believe it when I see it. My mom and I went out to breakfast this morning to the Original Pancake House. I ordered some chocolate chip pancakes, which were phenomenal. My mom ordered hash and eggs with two pancakes on the side. She couldn’t finish the hash and offered some to me. She said she usually has no problem finishing her food, and I disagreed. “You always take leftovers home,” I told her. I guess we see things differently. We had as much coffee as we wanted, which is always nice and always turns into too much coffee. Now I am back home on a lazy Sunday morning. Life is good. 

  • Are the Snow Plows Drunk?

    While driving home from work today, the highway had long stretches of snowy, unplowed road followed by perfectly clear road. Maybe the plow drivers lifted their plows while working and missed some spots. It was really windy and there were some whiteout conditions at times, but thinking that the roads were covered in snow in some areas because it blew there from somewhere else was not convincing to me. It’s the closest thing to crappy driving conditions I’ve experienced in the past week, so I’ve been living good in that regard. I think there is another winter weather advisory waiting for us this weekend. It’s January in Buffalo, we should be under caution every day. Let it snow.

  • Buffalo and the Drama

    Buffalo is a dramatic place. That seems wrong. It confuses me. We are a regular Rust Belt city with mostly simple folk doing mostly simple jobs. We are not in Hollywood. And yet, the warm moist air mixes with the ice cold air in some combination to dump biblical snow on us, and it always happens around a morning commute or an evening commute. That makes everything wild and scary. And then, still in Buffalo, we have football people that are allergic to winning in a straightforward and easy way. Our quarterback goes wild during games, like an atomic bomb that might blow our opponents up or might blow us up. Our owner and “general manager” then fire the head coach and burp up their lunch during a press conference explaining their actions and everyone freaks out. Nothing is calm here.

  • Selling and Buying

    I sold an exercise bike to a woman online for $20. She came and picked it up from my apartment today after I got home from work. It was really cold and windy when I went out to load the bike into her car. The bike was really heavy and the two five dollar bills and the one ten dollar bill she paid me with were wrinkled and frayed. I took that money to Home Depot to buy black garbage bags and duct tape. Of course those things cost more than $20 so I paid with my card instead. I felt less like a serial killer at check-out than I thought I might. Just trying to throw some stuff out and tape it so it says compact, nothing illegal to see here, thank you. 

  • New Head Football Coach

    The Bills fired their head coach today. I look forward to a new feel around the team next year. They have been very intense while Sean McDermott has been in charge and I hope that with a new coach comes a new style, one that is more fun and loose and not brooding and intense but intense in the right ways and in the right moments. Part of our past failures has been the tightness within the team during the playoffs. We need to relax during the regular season and, once the playoffs begin, turn up and embrace the moment. All I see is success and glory in the future. Go Bills.