Its Kinda Like Cocaine, With Less a White Powder and More Electronic Wires

At some point during my senior year of college I made a list of all the things I was addicted to. Now, I’m a nerd, not a rockstar…and not a Williamsburg Brooklyn live like a bohemian and buy coke with my parents credit card nerd…but an actual nerd. So, everything on the list of things I was addicted to was perfectly legal. It looked something like this.

1. 1. Video Games

2. 2. Gummy Candy

3. 3. Fast Food

4. 4. TV

The TV addiction is still alive and well (as you might have guessed from this post). I have more or less broken the fast food habit, and much like a “reformed” smoker I only really crave it when I drink. The gummy candy addiction is still alive and well and if I could I would gorge myself all day every day on sourpatch watermelons and jelly beans. I’m not kidding. I’d get diabetes so fast I’d have it before I started eating the sugar. Luckily the LR, understands my plight and stands firmly between me and my candy. She can be very persuasive when she puts her mind to it. Actually, given that she does the shopping, and I don’t know how to say gummy bear in Spanish it’s not that hard to keep me sugar coma free I guess.

Then there are the video games. I got my first Nintendo system somewhere around 2^nd grade. It game with Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt. My mother decided that she didn’t want to encourage violence in her children, so when she caught me pointing the gun shaped controller for Duck Hunt at my sister she confiscated it for what she said would be six months. She assumed I would forget about it, and that would be that. She underestimated my love for shooting ducks. Six months to the day later I asked her for the gun back, she had thrown it out. I still hold a grudge…but I learned my lesson. From then on shooting games were played at arcades outside the house. I wasted countless quarters beating Area 51, Police Squad and several Time Crisis games over the course of the last twenty years.

Over the next two decades I had the Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Game Gear, Playstation, Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64, Sega Dreamcast, Xbox, Playstation Portable, Xbox 360 and of course the Wii. Needless to say, I am quite addicted to video games. So, while you may think that the most difficult thing about my move to the drug war battlefield formerly known as Mexico might be the getting shot at, or the not understanding anybody, or two hour wait to cross the border, or any number of other things. It’s not. The single most difficult thing about moving to Mexico was having to wait three months for my Xbox 360 to get here.

The LR and I had our stuff get here in three stages. The first stage came in the car with us. Try as I might I couldn’t quite convince the LR that my 360 was more important than the four suitcases of clothes, the kitchen stuff, or other assorted household goods we packed. The next two stages were shipped on the slow boat and fast boat (which are actually an airplane and a train but that’s beside the point). It’s done that way because the LR’s job does it that way, and they do it for free. Which is great. Except that part of the deal is that the slow boat takes an exceedingly long time, and the safety of electronics is not guaranteed on the fast boat.

So, for the second time in my life I was without my video games (the first time being my freshman year in college, when my parents thought, incorrectly as it turns out, that not having video games would help my grades). And, as the LR can attest to having suffered through my withdrawal I am still thoroughly addicted.

The moral of the story? Unless the Mexicans start selling Call of Duty, or Gears of War they are in the wrong market to hook me.

This blog has been gang violence free for 58 days.

Body Count: Still 0

Yo Quiero Taco Bell

Well, on the bright side there’s always Mexican food right? Being on this side of the border I should at least be able to enjoy some authentic tacos while getting riddled by bullets shouldn’t I? Jalapenos so hot it makes my face look like a cancer patients (for those less quick on the uptake that means it singes of my eyebrows and makes me look like I’m undergoing chemotherapy. Its probably less funny now that I explained it, and because of the whole cancer thing), giant blocks of amazing cheese (or queso as the natives say. See, I’m blending in), and mole sauce, whatever that may be.

I assume that all exists, somewhere. I wouldn’t really know though. In two months we’ve been out to dinner on the Mexican side of the border precisely once. And that was for Italian food. Which to be fair was really not bad (definitely better than Olive Garden, especially because I really have no desire to be invited into any Mexican’s family). Why Italian? Well we were at the mall shopping and our options were Italian or Applebees. Now that’s some authentic Mexican options. It was a very pleasant experience…a little like dining in little Italy in NYC. The food wasn’t as good obviously, but you still got to look at your fellow diners and play guess the mob member.

Before we got here we had heard some stories about eating out down here that both amused and horrified us (so they were amusifying, maybe horrimusing?) Things like, people being out to dinner when a Mexican drug lord decided he wanted to dine at the establishment. Said drug lord would walk in and his cronies would collect the cell phones from all of the restaurants patrons (note: this was not an optional activity). El Drug Lord would then sit, dine on a fine meal (in my mind it must include a four digit priced bottle of red wine, although I have yet to find a restaurant down here that has such alcohol…although to be fair I haven’t exactly been looking), and then when he was done his cronies would return all the cell phones and leave. While that sounds like my idea of a raucously good time, we still decided to maybe avoid most of the places south of the border.

As for the northern side of our immediate area-- there may be some good grub places there. I don’t know for certain. See there’s this thing I may have mentioned, it’s called a puppy. Puppies apparently aren’t supposed to be left alone for long stretches of time. I know, who would have thought? So, after a long day of running all the errands north of the border that we can, when its finally time to enjoy a break and get some good food, the LR and I invariably go to the same place. We hit the Taco Bell drive through. That’s right, we are 2100 miles away from home in a place where possibly the only positive is authentic Mexican food, and our dining venue of choice is cheap fast food knock off Mexican. I felt really bad about it for a while, but I’ve come to peace with it. I’ve decided that its really no different from eating Burger King in the states. Of course, when I was in the states I pretty much never had Burger King, but that’s not the point.

This blog has been gang violence free for 50 days

Body Count: 0

How Do You Say Catch 22 In Spanish

Guess what kids, today is a day that ends in Y? Know what that means? You guessed it, time for another story about driving in Mexico. Or is it time for another story about police and crime in Mexico. Or is it time for another story about not going out after dark in Mexico. I can’t remember. So, I’ll just do all three.

The first thing you need to understand is that driving in Mexico is a little bit like driving in New Jersey. There are no left turn lanes. In general in order to turn left you have to go past where you are headed and make a u turn. In New Jersey it’s a minor annoyance and not a big deal. In Mexico its taking your life in your hands. The spaces in the road set aside for turning are not well lit, stop lights with green arrows. No, they are, tiny little, pull out across 3 lanes of traffic bearing down on you and hope that if you hit somebody they won’t decide to shoot you, u-turn lanes.

Our community is off a smaller side road, so you can only turn onto our road from one direction on the main street (which by the way is street number 1 from this post). Usually if we are coming from the other direction we just go around the block. That’s fine, usually it takes all of three minutes. Except that one night earlier this week the intersection to get onto that street was closed. Yes the whole intersection was shut down, not like one lane of traffic going through, or lots of traffic. The whole intersection was shut down.

This actually isn’t all that uncommon. Police Activity. I’m not sure what it actually means. Was there a crime committed there (there are some stores that got robbed from time to time on the corner there, but generally the police don’t seem to care)? Are they looking for somebody? Have they been paid off to stop traffic for some reason? The answer is lost to the mists of the drug war. All we know is that we get a text message from one of LRs coworkers to let us know that the entire intersection has been closed.

It turned out not to be a big deal, since we were already home that night. Lets be honest, what nights are we not already home watching tv-- its what we do. But, if we had been out (as some of our friends were) then it would have been impossible to get home. With that intersection closed, and there being no way to turn across traffic onto our block we would have been stranded outside at night in Mexico. Its not exactly like you can go kill an hour window shopping or something.

It’s a wonderful situation, get a text message saying, there is police activity near your community, go home as a precaution to be safe, only to discover that the police activity prevents you from going home. Yossarian would be quite proud.

Its yet another reason not to go outside. Even if you don’t get shot, mugged, kidnapped, conscripted into being a drug mule, run over by a crazy driver or bitten by a stray street dog, you might not be able to get home again due to “police activity.” See what I brave simply to amuse my adoring public.

This blog has been gang violence free for 50 days

Body Count: 0

Winter Wonderland?

I’m supposed to be in the desert. I know because there is sand everywhere. Dust gets into everything, and the temperature in a room goes up fifteen degrees if you just think about the sun. So I have one very important question. Why the hell is it cold? I know its winter. But winter is supposed to be like a pleasant spring day here. That was its selling point. When we found out we were going to the border the LR and I said, well at least we won’t have to deal with winter. LIARS.

There is snow on the ground. Let me repeat that. There is snow, on the ground. As I write this little flakes of frozen water are falling from the sky and landing outside. I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised, the weather forecast this morning did say 66 degrees with a chance of snow storms. This might seem confusing so let’s take a bit of a walk down science lane shall we? Water retains heat. When cold air moves into an area it cools the water in the area (either in the ground or the sky). This blunts its impact on the surrounding air, slowing down the cooling process. The border has no water, so the cool air is not blunted, making sudden temperature drops possible. It just so happened that this time the cold air brought with it already cooled water in the form of snow. And voila for the first time in two years, snow in the desert. I should probably note at this point, that I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about. But the sciency type stuff sounds convincing even if it’s just random weather words strung together.

Regardless, it is miserable. It’s possibly worse than being shot by drug dealers who mistake me for a rogue drug mule. Although, I m slightly biased. I really don’t like the cold. I’d say super cold temperatures were the direct cause of at least five sick days over the past two years (back when I had a real job and stuff). And sure, I don’t have to deal with zero degree weather here as I would occasionally deal with in NYC (and by occasionally deal with I am of course referring to curling in bed under a giant blanket and not moving). But the fact remains it gets cold. Even when it doesn’t snow, when the sun goes down, with no water in the air to retain the heat, the temperature drops like a rock.

I could, of course, just not go outside after dark. Even without the temperature issues this seems logical. After all, people do things like get shot after dark, or carjacked, or have bad burritos. The border after dark is not the place you want to be, unless you are trying to illegally cross it. Then again, pretty much all of that goes for the day time too. And, I’m sure during the summer (or as its been described to us, the hellish miserable dust storm months) I’ll want to not go out in the day time with the 110 degree heat and what not. But, as for winter not going out at night is not an option.

See, there’s this puppy. And this puppy needs to learn to use the facilities. And he’s a puppy, so the facilities are outside. And he’s a puppy so his bladder is the size of one of those angels Thomas Aquinas said could fit on the head of a pin. So he has to go out at night, often. And, as I believe I’ve mentioned before, the not gainfully employed half of the couple gets to take him out. Yay. So I get to freeze my behind off on a nightly basis in the desert. So, the one thing I was looking forward to about the desert has been taken away.

But, at least the Notorious D.O.G. a puppy born, and now being raised in the desert had the chance to play in the snow. If I was a sappy family sitcom I’d say it made it all worth it. It didn’t, but it was closer than I expected.

This blog has been gang violence free for 43 days

Body Count: 0

Of Hipsters and Bird Dogs

Today’s post was going to be epic. There was going to be pathos, and gravitas, but not so much that it overwhelmed the inherent humor. I was going to cause you to completely rethink the way you looked at the world, while putting a smile on your face at the same time. I was going to change your life. All in about 600 words. Unfortunately you don’t get to read that post. Why? Because I’m too tired to write it. Why? Because on Saturday the Notorious D.O.G. came into our life, and he poops at midnight and 2am like clockwork and since the LR is gainfully employed and I’m not so much with the real job, guess who’s taking the Notorious D.O.G. outside.

So instead of poignant social commentary you will get something else entirely. I’m going to do something that comes easily and naturally to me, something that I can do despite losing brain cells to worrying about whether or not the pup’s poop is too watery or not. I’m going to complain about hipsters. Now, I miss a lot of things about New York. I miss the fact that there were more Indian restaurants that delivered to my apartment there than there are within an hour’s drive of here (and it’s not even close). I miss tricking taxis into taking me to the airport by hiding my bag behind a mailbox while I hailed them. I miss Ditch Dogs (that would be some amazing hot dogs with mac and cheese on top found to the best of my knowledge only at a place called Ditch Plains). What I don’t miss are hipsters.

Which leads me to Saturday. The LR and I are somewhere in the New Mexizona desert having just picked up the D.O.G. We stop at what appears to be the only rest stop in a 700,000 mile radius. I walk inside to use the restroom and get us some sandwiches, and what do my eyes behold. Three guys and a girl, all with bangs (obviously) two with those annoying plastic sunglasses with brightly colored thick temples (the part of the sunglass that connects the lens to your ear, and yes I had to look up what they are called), and skinny jeans. It’s the middle of the freaking desert. There is literally nothing but a highway and sand around for forever and they are in skinny jeans.

It comes as no surprise then that they were shopping for little gimmicky souvenirs in the rest stop store. Ironically of course. Four incredibly annoying people in Brooklyn had evidently somehow wandered into a worm hole that pooped them out in the same cat litter box of a desert I was driving through. I didn’t even want to see hipsters when their center of the universe in Williamsburg Brooklyn was one subway stop away from my Manhattan apartmentn and I certainly didn’t want to see them on my authentic trek through the southwest. I wanted to see the guy in the beat up army camouflage hat who looked like he hadn’t bathed in a week. That’s authentic, especially when he mentioned that Golden Retrievers are great dogs (that’s the Notorious D’s breed) and that his always kept the freezer full. I must have looked somewhere between confused and horrified as he explained that it was a great bird dog. Yup, that’s what I plan to do with my puppy, hunt birds so I can eat them.

Still at least that was expected. I mean really what’s next. Are there going to be hipster Mexican drug dealers? They still sell drugs and smuggle them from Mexico to the U.S. but they do it ironically. They’re just making fun of the real drug dealers. Maybe they can argue over which obscure smuggling route is the coolest. Then, if one route gets too popular they can say it sold out and it really sucks. I can see it now, hipstercanos. After all, they already have the coke.

This blog has been gang violence free for 36 days

Body Count: 0

Lies From My Childhood

I have very little experience with the desert. Shocking right. For me, the dessert was something Mario had to deal with in the second world of Super Mario Brothers 3. (Brief sidebar: I hate how much I am dating myself with that reference, and come to think of it I hate the fact that I am old enough that I can actually date myself. More than that, I am blown away by the fact that video games have been around for long enough that I can reference one and date myself. Remember when you couldn’t save a game, so that the only way to win was the sit motionless for hours and hours and hours while your parents went from being angry at how long you spent sitting on the couch to being convinced you were autistic. No? That was just me? Anyway back to poor old Mario in the desert). Given my frame of reference I sort of figured the key to survival in the desert was jumping. Got stuck in quicksand? No problem, just jump really fast. Are evil drug dealing Koopas getting you down? Easy solution, just jump on them. Although, if evil drug dealing Koopas are all of a sudden offering me mushrooms, then I might have a moral conundrum on my hands.

I am sad to report though that the depiction in Super Mario Brothers is not all that accurate. Jumping is in fact completely ineffectual (although to be fair I have yet to experiment on any actual drug dealers which might have to do with why the counter at the bottom of each post remains incredibly boring). So, what follows is a thoroughly incomplete list of things that are unrealistic about Mario in the desert.

First of all how could that little plumber, or his brother, not wear sunglasses. Now, I’m not a sunglass guy. I had one pair of expensive sunglasses in my life, and somehow I managed to get them run over (thankfully not while on my head). While in New York once every eighteen months or so I’d decide to try sunglasses, buy a five dollar pair, wear them for two days, lose them and then return to my trusty baseball cap. Here though, that’s not an option. Your choices are sunglasses or blindness. Except for those times when your options are sunglasses and blindness. If Mario refused to wear sunglasses than he should be to staring into the worse glare of his life, squinting grotesquely trying to make out vague blob like forms that may be koopas while praying to whatever god will listen to him that a turtle doesn’t come out of nowhere and sideswipe him while he drives along at twenty miles an hour. Ok, that may not have been entirely about Mario.

Another thing that Mario got wrong is walking in the desert. The LR and I did some light hiking the other day. We found a nice two mile trail in the desert. There was a lake nearby. I didn’t think a lake in the desert was allowed. I thought if you had a lake the desert naming committee would send an inspector and revoke your desert license. It seems illegal. But, what do I know? And anyway, I digress. Again.

Even for my mostly atrophied legs a one mile trail isn’t that tough. Now, my brain knows that the desert is made of sand. I have walked on sand before. In fact, I have spent a fair amount of time on beaches in my life; I know what sand feels like to walk on. But for some reason, my brain didn’t put together the fact that walking on the beach can be difficult with the fact that the desert is made out of sand and come up with the conclusion that walking in the desert is not like walking on a dirt path. It is more difficult, by a whole bunch. I blame Mario. I blame the fact that his stubby little legs churn right along the same as they do on any other world. He taught me that the ground in the desert is the same as the ground everywhere else, and I’m damn well going to believe it, even as my legs are working twice as hard as they are supposed to be.

I suppose as the months go by I’ll continue to look for things that don’t jive with Super Mario Brother and alert the world. After all, you need to know these things. I mean what’s next, frog suits won’t let you breath under water?

P.S. This post has nothing to do with the fact that I was bored one day and found a good Nintendo simulator to while away the hours with. I swear.

This blog has been gang violence free for 30 days.

Bodycount: 0

Keep On Truckin

As you can imagine there is always a lot of traffic on the Mexican side of the border. The bridge over the nonriver is basically a parking lot as the US border guards do a thorough job of examining entering cars. Frequently (which means all times that aren’t 5am) the backup extends well beyond the toll on the Mexican side of the bridge and back into the major road. That wouldn’t be a problem, except that there are other things on the road, things like stores and restaurants, and most importantly the only place to buy the Mexican equivalent of an EZ Pass for the bridge.

The Mexican solution to this problem is a left turn lane at the intersection about fifteen car lengths behind the border toll, which has room for about five cars. I can count the number of times that a car which wishes to turn left can reach the turn lane without sitting in traffic on one thumb. In general that would seem to mean that in order to go buy an EZ Pass (neither EZ nor Pass are one of the 35 words of Spanish I know) you have to sit in a long line of traffic that is waiting to cross the border.

Unless you are Mexican…or the LR is you passenger. I was prepared to wait patiently in the left lane as the traffic inched slowly forward towards the border, confident that I’d reach the turn lane sometime just before the next millenia. A handful of cars in front of me were not. They pulled out into oncoming traffic and zipped away. The LR looked at me expectantly. This wasn’t a three second move here, this was a good 45 seconds at least driving in the oncoming traffic lane. Visions of head on collisions and Mexican Jail danced in my head. I’m delicate, I couldn’t handle American jail, let alone Mexican jail. Still there wasn’t any oncoming traffic really, and the LR was making it clear that sitting in traffic wasn’t on her list of things to do today.

Just then two SUVs pulled out from the line of traffic behind me. Like a cyclist breaking away from the back I figured there was safety in numbers and jumped out behind them. Besides with two SUVs blocking in front of me, if any cars should appear they would safely absorb the blow. Right?

For the first twenty seconds or so it was no big deal. No cars were coming; our little phalanx of SUVs was zipping right along. Then, out of the dust rose a giant, a full on eighteen-wheeler. How it got there is a mystery since there is supposedly a separate bridge for trucks. But nevertheless it was certainly there, a big looming image of certain death on eighteen wheels. Getting back onto the correct side of the road was out of the question, cars were packed bumper to bumper there was certainly no way to pull back in. One of my blockers, clearly thinking faster than I (most likely because he had way more practice at this kind of thing) pulled across the other lane of oncoming traffic, which thankfully had no cars, and onto the oncoming traffic’s shoulder. The car in front of me stopped. That seemed like a good idea. I stopped, and prayed that the truck was paying attention. One blocker didn’t seem like nearly enough to absorb the blow that was headed my way.

Thankfully the truck saw us, and changed into his right hand lane with plenty of room to spare. It zoomed by and we continued on our way with little incident. I had passed my first mortality test, and it wasn’t even at the hand of a Coked-up automatic rifle bearing drug runner, just a run of the mill narrowly avoided head on collision.

This blog has been gang violence free for 30 days.

Bodycount: 0

TV: All It Kills Are Brain Cells

I cannot live without television. A quick browse of the DVR in our house will reveal 18 separate shows that we record, and that’s not including things that air daily like the Daily Show, Colbert Report, or PTI which I watch more days than I don’t. That number also doesn’t account for at least half a dozen shows that are currently between seasons. And then there’s the hours and hours of sports I absolutely must watch. I couldn’t get by without my Yankees and Giants, and to a lesser extent Knicks. Given all that, it will come as no surprise that by hook or by crook, even after I crossed the border, I was going to get myself American Television.

And as always, by “I” I don’t mean I. I am incompetent. But the LR talked to some of her coworkers who informed her that it was very possible to get Direct TV, even though we’re on the wrong side of the border. It’s not, technically, actually, really, oh, what’s the word, legal. But, its apparently common practice enough that companies…well company, specialize in it. So, as we were moving into the new house a very nice gentleman with a Direct TV truck pulled up and went through the processing of drilling holes in our walls, and climbing up on the roof to set a satellite…all so that I wouldn’t miss a minute of American Idol.

The installer was a very pleasant man, a local from the area. Now granted, when you say local things get kind of confusing. Was he Mexican and commuted across the border to work in the US each day so he could spend the day driving into Mexico from the US in order to set up American TV in Mexico. Or was he perhaps an American citizen by way of being born here, despite his Mexican parents and family. You’ll notice I assume that he is not an American of many generations, and that is because he told me that he is a big fan of the Mexican national soccer team, and more than what your papers say, the country whose soccer team you root for determines your nationality.

How, you might ask could I possibly know that much about my satellite TV installer. Well, as most of my conversations do, it started with me answering the question, “Where are you from?” Clearly my skinny pale Jewish figure, while dashing and breathtakingly handsome does not allow me to pass for a native. It turns out that the TV installer of either Mexican or American origins had visited New York to watch Mexico play there in the World Cup. All in all we had a very nice chat.

I’m sure then he thought he was being quite encouraging when he said to me as he was leaving. “I don’t understand why some installers don’t want to come down here. Tell your girlfriend not to worry about it. It’s still a city with lots of people, just stay away from the people doing all those things you hear about and you’ll be fine.”

I’m sure this was supposed to be comforting. I’m flattered that he assumed I wasn’t worrying, being all manly and stuff. Although I suppose it’s possible he looked at the 17,000 channels I was ordering and assumed I was planning on never leaving the house, which is true. But seriously how messed up does a place have to be that the cable guy feels the need to reassure you when you’re moving in. Suffice to say the encounter did not leave me feeling relieved. But on the bright side at least I could watch my Giants lose yet again this weekend.

This blog has been drug violence free for 24 days

Body Count: 0

The Thing About Driving To Mexico Is You Have To Get There

The sky was very blue. Aggressively blue. It was as if the blueness of the sky was defying the notion that clouds could ever exist. To the left of the aggressively blue sky is more aggressively blue sky. To the right of the aggressively blue sky is more aggressively blue sky. Its 4:30 in the afternoon. The LR and I have been on the road for two hours. It might as well have been fifteen. Nothing changes; not the sky, not the scenery, not the clock. Hours pass between ticks of the clock. We are in Western Texas and there is nothing around us.

If you are from the northeast this might be hard to understand. There isn’t any nothing in the northeast. It’s hard to miss it, since after all, it’s nothing. Until I left, I always believed there was nothing; out in upstate New York maybe or possibly in Maine. But until you witness Western Texas nothing, you just don’t understand what nothing is. I am getting a crash course in nothing.

There are no trees. This means there is wind, lots and lots of wind. The kind of wind that means you are constantly steering the car five percent to the right.

There are no roads. Literally. Lots of exits from the highway end in dirt trails.

There is no water.

There are no cars.

There are no radio stations. Need to find a fun way to pass the hours when there is nothing around, hit the radio station scanner button (am or fm doesn’t matter) and watch the numbers go round and round.

There are no speed traps, since there is nothing to hide behind (which makes the fact that somehow a cop still managed to appear from nowhere and give me a ticket for doing less than ten miles an hour over the speed limit especially galling).

There are no lights, which makes the roads so dark the night time speed limit is 15 miles per hour lower.

There are no gas stations. When the tank was about two-thirds full I would ask the LR to look in the GPS for the closest gas station. “You can get off the highway in ten miles, or one hundred and fifteen.”

There are no buildings.

There is no farm land. Nothing grows.

It’s very very diffent than anything I’ve experienced before. It’s a real actual factual desert. And while driving through it, it becomes readily apparent that I am in a radically different place than where I come from. And I’m not even in Mexico yet.

This blog has been gang related violence free for 21 days

Body Count: 0

Three Roads and a Dirt Field

Driving is a little different in Mexico. I can’t actually read any road signs so I pretty much have no idea of whether or not I’m breaking the law. That’s ok though, since near as I can tell nobody else has any idea either. I’ve been told that it’s ok to go through some red lights as long as you don’t hit anybody/thing/cars. Mexican drivers are pretty horrific. It’s unclear to me whether they subscribe to the Boston school of driving (they have no idea what the rules of the road actually are) or the New York school (they know the rules but consistently decide to ignore them). Either way, on a daily basis I am thankful that I went to the Yankee Stadium training academy for aggressive drivers.

And it’s not just learning to drive here; figuring out where I’m going presents its own set of challenges. We have a portable GPS in the car which would be helpful, but it doesn’t seem to know any of the smaller roads. That’s not too big a problem, since I don’t like small roads. Muggings and carjackings happen on small roads. Big roads are safe(r). Besides, when you move to a new place the easiest thing to do is figure out two or three big roads. Remember where those new roads are and then fit everything into your mental map from there. Sure, sometimes you end up going twenty minutes out of your way, but at least you don’t have to ask for directions (and now that I can’t understand the language I have an actual reason to not ask anyway). I learned three major streets when we got here. We crossed the border on street 1, the street that the Leggy Redhead works on is street 2, and the street that gets us from those two streets to our house, which I creatively remember as street 3; all major streets, all easy to drive on, and all easy to find on a map. Simple enough.

Until last Wednesday. It was a nice normal day and I was just getting ready to pick the LR up from work. Easy drive…right turn, bear right, right turn again, and then work is on the left (granted to actually get to the building you need to go past it and make a crazy u-turn across three lanes of traffic, but hey when in Mexico…). That is, until the security alert email.

“There are major police actions against drug cartels occurring on street 3. In response the cartels may be targeting random cars for drive by shootings. We advise everybody to stay away from street 3 if they must drive today. ”

Now I get to try and find an alternate route. I understand that this shouldn’t be a big deal. After all, I have a map. This is a large city; there are lots of ways to get wherever you need to go. How hard could this possibly be? For starters it took me fifteen minutes to realize I was looking at the wrong side of the map. Once I figured that out, though it seemed to be smooth sailing. I figured out where I was going and memorized a string of lefts and rights in my head, and then out the door I went.

One might have expected me to take the map with me. Well, one might be ascribing way more competency to me than I actually have. And two turns into a drive that should have taken me six minutes, I lost the ability to tell my left from my right, zigged where I should have zagged, and ran out of road. Literally. One minute there was pavement in front of me, the next dirt. And not like a dirt road kind of dirt, but more like giant bumpy uneven dirt field kind of dirt. I want to say that I proceeded undaunted. But I didn’t. I proceeded quite dauntedly, driving over this dirt field and praying there was a road on the other side.

Then, like manna from heaven, I saw a billboard. For the last week I had only been driving on three roads, and usually during rush hour. That meant plenty of time to stare at the pretty pictures on all the giant ads around me. Lucky for me I have the attention span of a gnat and wasn’t actually paying attention to the road those mornings, because I remembered starting at the sign of a guy sticking his tongue out at a watermelon; a sign which I could now see over the trees in the distance on the other side of this sea of dirt.

I later found out that the sign I used as my North Star was an ad for a grocery chain, and that those billboards are all over the city. Kinda wish I didn’t know that now. Oh well, at least now my geographic knowledge consists of three roads and a dirt field. I guess its progress.

This blog has been drug gang related violence free for: 19 days

Body Count: zero

I have my Passport I Swear

I did not have high expectations for Mexico. I assumed that we would get to the border, show our passports and drive into the abyss. Right on the other side of the border crossing we would witness our first gunfight. Visions of a pitched battle between drug runners besieging the bridge crossing, striving to get their product to the border, and the military defending it like the minutemen at Bunker Hill danced through my head. I would break out my heroic driving moves, and tires screeching twist our trusty SUV (so trusty that it was on its second engine of the road trip, but that’s another story entirely) through the hail of bullets and navigate safely through the battle, only to make the fatal mistake of stopping at a red light (ever the law abiding citizen even in my nightmares/fantasies whatever you want to call this I still stop at red lights).

My rookie mistake would cost us and a handful of masked gunmen would jump out of nowhere, hijack our car and steal all of our earthly possessions leaving us stranded and alone on the side of the road roughly thirteen seconds after leaving the safety of my home nation. It seemed reasonable at the time; given that before I got here all I knew about the border was that lots of people get killed, all the time. It was even a little bit optimistic, I mean, I didn’t imagine us being killed only threatened and robbed.

Well, fourteen day veteran of the Mexican border that I am, I can laugh at how foolish my original assumptions were. Not so much about the gunplay and the hijacking, since that still seems pretty reasonable (one of the Leggy Redhead’s coworkers suggested avoiding driving in the middle lane of three lane roads because the side lanes offer better escape routes, just in case) but about the having to show our passports. Not once has anybody at the Mexican border crossing asked us to show our passports

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Unlike how I envisioned it in my head, crossing from one country to another is fairly simple. Where we are, the US and Mexico are separated by a river with very little water. It’s more like a muddy basin. That riverish thing is spanned by bridges with U.S. border guards on one side and Mexican ones on the other. You deal with the Mexican border patrol on the Mexican side of the bridge only when you are travelling from the US to Mexico, and you deal with the U.S. guys on the opposite side of the bridge when you are going the other way.

The U.S. side is how you would expect the border to be. They are very very serious people. They give off the impression that if you blink too many times they will give you a colonoscopy. There are sunglasses, drug dogs, gates, barriers and barbed wire fences. It’s a pretty intimidating place. Now, the Mexican side is intimidating too…mostly because there are lots of army guys standing around on trucks with great big giant machine guns. The sight of them makes me very much want not to be a bad guy. On the other hand it’s hard for me to imagine how they figure out who to shoot, since nobody at the border seems to be assigned to look for documents of any sort. You drive up, if you get unlucky they give a cursory inspection of your car, but for the most part you talk to nobody, show nothing to anybody, wait about fifteen seconds at what looks like a tollbooth, then the gate goes up and you go on through.

I guess they figure nobody would be dumb enough to come here if they absolutely didn’t have to. And then there’s me.

This blog has been drug gang related violence free for 14 days
Body Count: 0

Hola Mexico

Last week I woke up on the South Side of the Mexican border. That’s not a euphemism, although if it was a euphemism I shudder to think what it would be for. Not to worry though because while I don’t speak any Spanish whatsoever (ok, that’s an exaggeration, I speak a grand total of 35 words of Espanol -- see that’s one right there), at least I also don’t have a job. So, I’m all set.

Oh, and just in case you didn’t know. There’s a giant drug war going on. And it’s not like the little, oh no there’s some shady guy across the street from the high school selling pot to our kids, we must protect the youth, kind of drug war. It’s more like the army guys with great big giant machine guns and multiple drug related assassinations a day kind of drug war.

Before this month, I lived in New York. I had an actual grown up job (during the week I had to shower on a regular basis, set an alarm, and show up at an office and everything) and did things like take wine classes and go out to bars and even sit in the upper deck at the new Yankee Stadium – I also occasionally did things not involving alcohol, but I’m having a hard time remembering what those were at the moment. In short I lived a normal Manhattanite existence.

So, what am I doing here? Well, if I did drugs, bought drugs, sold drugs, or was interested in stopping anybody from doing drugs, buying drugs or selling drugs then there would be an obvious, rational answer (then again I’d also be employed on one side of the law or the other). Given that I don’t we must turn to the obvious irrational answer. I followed a girl here.

The girl it should be noted does not do drugs, buy drugs or sell drugs. Nor does she professionally endeavor to stop people from doing drugs, buying drugs or selling drugs. She apparently found the one job on the whole Mexican-American border that does not involve drugs. It should also be noted that the girl is a leggy redhead, and she has offered to pay for things. Not just things, but most things. So, when she asked if I wanted to come, I like Menelaus before me (way way way before me) followed my woman into what quite possibly could end up being an abyss.

Here we are then, for better or worse I have arrived in Mexico. Hopefully over the coming weeks and months and dare I say years this blog will contain all the whacky borderland fun you can stand. Look for updates twice a week and if I miss a deadline just assume I was mistaken for a druglord (after all my tall skinny New York Jewness makes me look tremendously similar to a Mexican drug cartel kingpin) and know that I had a good run. Just kidding mom, I’m fine really I swear. Also as of this moment:

This blog has been drug gang related violence free for 9 days

Body Count: 0