Don´t Come Visit Us This Week

As much as I would love to have visitors, it´s just not going to work this week.

I´m not even sure that Mario will be able to get home tonight.

Or, better put, Mario will get home.  But I´m not sure where the car will be, as this is the view from our driveway.  

That trench right in front of our driveway?  Yeah, that´s at least four feet deep.  And it´s currently raining, so I´m doubtful that the construction workers will be able to lay the pipes today.  

On watching their progress up our street, they seem to do a very good job about starting work (aka:  ripping up the street) after most people are at work.  And, impressively, they finish or at least make the road passable, by 7pm when most people are coming back from work.   

 
 But, with the rain tonight, I´m not sure how they´re going to do that. 

But, on the bright side, the kids are REALLY entertained by watching the progress! 

Clearly, we are NOT taking the car anywhere this week.

Despite my nearly empty fridge.  

Thank goodness for corner stores and the butchers across the street! 

Oh, Texas . . .

We just completed the Saltillo-NE Indiana road trip. Ironically, it took about as much time as the Toluca-NE Indiana road trip did three years ago. Oh, the joys of having a toddler in the backseat.

But really, all went well. However, as a public service, I do feel compelled to comment on one teensy issue we encountered.

TEXANS--GET OUT OF THE LEFT LANE!!!!!

Entering Texas, I though it was just a US-driver-thing. However, as we skirted Memphis and entered northern Arkansas, suddenly most drivers realized that the passing lane it just that--for passing other cars.

Yes, people--this is the official name of the left lane. The passing lane. NOT the fast lane. I'll be honest--for years, I called it the fast lane myself. Knowing that I am a bit of a slow driver, I always stuck to the right lane. However, plenty of people consider themselves fast drivers. And according to this logic, they need to be in the "fast lane". All the frickin' time.

Or, as I tried to explain to Mario once, in the style of a high school geometry proof, "apparently it's cool to drive fast. And if the left lane is the fast lane and it's cool to drive fast, the left lane is therefore the cool lane and everyone wants to be there." Hence, the passing lane was dubbed the "cool lane" in our family.

But it's not. It is the passing lane. So once you've passing whoever you're passing GET YOUR ASS BACK OVER TO THE RIGHT LANE!

This brings me to the closely-related point #2. If you've got your cruise control set at 71 mph and the person in front of you has theirs set at 70.5 mph, it is NOT OK to take a full 10 minutes to pass this person. For 20 seconds, put your foot on the frickin' gas and PASS THEM ALREADY!

While one may think that it's cool to hang out in the left lane, the rest of us view said driver as clueless and inconsiderate. Furthermore, this is dangerous. Save us all untold amounts of frustration, a stroke on the part of my husband, and a high-speed (likely fatal) accident and only venture into the left lane if you're actively passing someone.

Then get back over.

Thank you.

Destination: Driving from near the border to south of Mexico City

Earlier in January, Mario and I looked over the calendar to see when he'd have long weekends. When we discovered that Constitution Day fell on the 1st of February, we decided to spend that weekend in Jojutla with Mario's family, celebrating Clara's birthday.

Our plan was to leave as soon as Mario got back from work on Friday evening, spend the night in San Luis Potosi (4 hours away) and drive the remaining 6+ hours on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, it seemed like everyone else in Saltillo had the same idea and they were all driving down our street, keeping the traffic at a crawl.

"So what do you think about leaving at 2am?" Mario suggested.

"Wow--that's a terrible idea," I thought in my head. However, what came out my mouth was something more to the effect of, "hmm . . . what do you think?" Mario did plan on doing the entire 12-hour drive himself, so it really was his call, not mine.

After hemming and hawing for about a half hour (and Mario admitting that he was already a bit tired), we went to bed at 7pm. We woke up at about 1am and were on the road by 1:30.

I thought it was funny when we stopped for gas at 4am that Mario and the gas attendant wished each other good morning. It sure seemed like the middle of the night to me.

But it really wasn't that bad. As we were passing Queretaro, the sun was rising and it was as if we were starting over fresh with the new day, the mountains surrounding us, and the desert behind us.

We finally stopped for breakfast in Santiago Tianguistenco (Estado de Mexico) and enjoyed some excellent quesadillas, chilaquiles, and a liter of blackberry juice. I never knew that blackberries could be juiced. They can. And they're delicious.
[For anyone interested, this excellent juice bar can be found on the road from La Marquesa to Santiago Tianguistenco, very near Santiago, on the right side of the road with a very loud orange awning. If you pass the Freightliner factory, you've gone too far.]

It was totally worth the 24-hour round-trip drive, and Clara's crazy mamitis that followed, so that we could spend our weekend warming up in Jojutla with Mario's family. Maybe we'll do it again.

But not anytime soon.