Our Living Room in the Garage (ENLARGE here)

We are scheduling departure for Mexico on Tuesday – so we are jamming with last minute things.

When we were in Pueblo we most often left a day or two or more after scheduled departure. No such luck or convenience this time. Our power source is moving out of their place this weekend – so come Tuesday the electric will be gone and most likely the water as well. So Tuesday is the schedule and Tuesday it will be.

We have been VERY fortunate with the weather – aside from one rainy day we have had good weather for the last two weeks.  So I am getting Mexican Insurance, printing out direction to Brownsville from here and finalizing the packing.

We have made some new friends and renewed friendships with others here in Capitan. But, we are looking forward to getting SOB (south of the border).

Splitting things between New Mexico and Old Mexico has been a bit of a chore – I am sure we will not end up with everything we had planned to get to Mexico. We were pressing to vacate Rancho Calypso and the boxes became catch alls by the last few days.

The neighbor across the street brought in a huge pickup load of firewood. Today is the first day of fall and you can feel it in the air – definitely time to get south of the border

The garage living was OK – we didn’t get as much done as we expected – but we never do. I figure if you finish all your plans, you didn’t plan enough.

It was a fine two weeks and we are hoping for it to get still better. So Stay Tuned!

We are getting our little campsite together here in Capitan – although Anita seems to be getting a little antsy dealing with ants, flies, spiders and a small ‘living’ space – living in a garage.

We do have TV/music, internet, microwave and cook stove. We are showering and bathrooming at the neighbors.

Last night we had a family incident. We bought Butterfly Breaded Shrimp imported by Beaver Street Fisheries. Anita fried the breaded shrimp on our Coleman stove. This isn’t your Forrest Gump shrimp boat shrimp – no – this is farm raised Chinese shrimp where the water in the tanks can get fouled – the solution apparently is to throw in a bunch of antibiotics to keep the shrimp from fouling out.

An hour or so after eating the shrimp I had a pretty severe allergic reaction. I am VERY allergic to penicillin. It was a bad night to say the least. My breathing gets short, face gets puffy and basically I should have an adrenaline shot to combat the reaction.

Because there were no emergency care or hospital facilities within 15 miles or so I took a couple Benadryl and suffered through a dangerously uncomfortable couple of hours until I finally fell asleep exhausted.

I have had perhaps five or six serious events like this over the last 50 years – they are quite frightening. About forty years ago I was warned that my reaction to penicillin is so severe that each time I have and ‘event’ the reaction will be increasingly severe. I have gone to emergency where I would get an adrenaline shot in the past, but I was concerned about my ability to travel and muddled through the most severe part of the reaction grasping for breath.

This morning Anita and I discussed what might have caused this problem. I had all but decided it was the shrimp. We did some web research and found that the Chinese and Koreans that farm raise a lot of shrimp imported in the U.S. are responsible for adding antibiotics to their fouled water tanks. This is illegal in the U.S. but apparently not in those countries. – grrrr.

Then there were accounts of demonstrations and complaints about the FDA’s inspections or lack thereof of these imported shrimp – ugh!

Anita retrieved the package from the trash. I verified that the shrimp were a “Product of China – Farm Raised.” So not only are their toys dangerous but some of their food products as well.

Actually there was quite a bit of information about this danger – of course I read it after the fact.

So shrimp is off our list unless we are sure it was raised here or we get it fresh in Mexico. It is disappointing how tax payers spend a lot of money to have protections against such things and yet somehow these dangerous products get in under the radar.

I am feeling a lot better this morning and will drive on – we are heading into the town of Ruidoso for some supplies and a Shopvac. Stay Tuned!

We are still in New Mexico expecting to be here a week or so more.

We are more or less camping out in our garage. About 9 years ago we bought an adobe house with two garages in Capitan, New Mexico. We had purchased three acres in Nogal, New Mexico some ten miles from the Capitan property. The Capitan property was essentially bought to store things we were moving from Arizona to New Mexico.

The thinking was that while we were building on our 3.5 acres in Nogal we could store all our household stuff. The adobe house was not in livable condition with no reasonable electric or plumbing. I thought at some point I would restore the house which is real adobe, 1100 square feet on a large corner lot right in the center of the town famous for being the home of Smokey the Bear.

It is true; Smokey is buried here in Capitan. Here is the story from Wikipedia:

The living symbol of Smokey Bear was an American black bear who in the spring of 1950 was caught in the Capitan Gap fire, a wildfire that burned 17,000 acres (69 km²) in the Capitan Mountains of New Mexico. The cub was in the Lincoln National Forest. Smokey had climbed a tree to escape the blaze, but his paws and hind legs had been burned. He was rescued by forest rangers fighting the wildfire.

At first he was called Hotfoot Teddy, but was later renamed Smokey, after the mascot. A local rancher who had been helping fight the fire took the cub home with him, but he needed veterinary aid. New Mexico Department of Game and Fish Ranger Ray Bell took him to Santa Fe. His wife, Ruth, and their children, Don and Judy, cared for the cub. The story was picked up by the national news services and Smokey became an instant celebrity. He and the Bells were featured in Life, cementing his star status. Soon after, Smokey was flown in a Piper Cub to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., where he lived for 26 years. Upon his death in November 1975, Smokey’s remains were returned by the government to Capitan, New Mexico, and buried at what is now the Smokey Bear Historical Park

Smokey rests less than a third of a mile from whence I am typing – in our garage at 6 AM Saturday morning.

Capitan is a charming small town, population 1500; its citizenship is made up of cowboys, Indians and retirees. It is way up at about 6350’ in the woods Smokey once roamed. It is about 10 miles north of Ruidoso and about 3 hours to Albuquerque to the north and the same to El Paso, TX. to the south.

Even though we came south from our home in Colorado some 400 miles we shortened our trip to Mexico by only 200 miles – 1500 miles instead of 1700.

The weather and environment is similar to Pueblo, CO. but a whole lot smaller town by a factor of nearly 100. It is a good place to be in America. It will be our base camp in the United States and our adobe house and two garages house all our US worldly possessions. Well we did leave some things in Colorado that we will retrieve next spring – what can I write we are spread out in two States and two Countries.

This afternoon we will attend a party for our next door neighbor and friend Pearl Tippin who just yesterday was sworn in as a citizen of the United States. Pearl is from England. Married to George for many years, but now has become a U.S. citizen – congrats Pearl!

So we have a busy day ahead. ‘Still trying to get new wheels and tires for the big Ford truck. We do have television and Internet, a queen size air bed on a nice futon frame as well as a microwave in our garage accommodations – don’t feel too sorry for us. Soon we will head on out to Mexico – Stay Tuned!

Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel ‘On the Road‘ is considered one of the defining works of the Beat Generation. It was my bible in the early 60’s. He too spent a lot of time in Mexico – if you haven’t read that book – you should, it is a classic.

In any case here we are 50 years later On the Road to Mexico. We got a late start. Those of you that have moved from a house you have lived in for more than five years know how difficult that last day is getting all the details together for the new owners, leaving the house clean, turning off this and that etc. It is a process.

Then stuffing as much as we could in two trucks and a small trailer; deciding what to leave if we simply couldn’t get it all (we did really) and finally leaving the most important area of our life for six years – well you get the idea.

So we hit the road about noon. Everything traveled pretty well although one straight back antique chair became highway toothpicks at some point – we are not sure of the exact time – but apparently it didn’t lunge through anyone’s windshield – not a lot of traffic thank goodness.

260 miles into the 420 mile total jaunt I blew a left rear tire out. One of our projects while here in New Mexxico was (is) to get new wheels and tires for the Ford truck. In the tire industries infinite wisdom they have decided to discontinue 16.5 inch tire which now makes our tires and wheel obsolete.

Our spent tire (Click to ENLARGE)

I won’t bore you with the details other than to write that I have been juggling old tires on and off the truck until we were ready to commit to new wheels and tires – which we did a couple of weeks ago. But alas all good plans 150 miles or so to the new trie location we blow out a tire.

This was one of those Daytona 500 blowouts – a huge blast and then smoke pouring from the wheel area at 70 plus miles per hour. Anita was following behind in the Dodge truck. I was pulling the small trailer. Yikes what a blowout.

We made it safely to the roadside. It was nearly five o’clock. We were in the middle of no where. It was 30 miles back to Las Vegas, New Mexico and perhaps 50 to the next town in the other direction.

Standing out there pouting about or bad luck; how we were only 150 miles from new tires, an older Ford truck pulled up with two Mexican gentlemen in it. As it turned out they were father and son; the latter was no spring chicken himself.

I tried to buy the spare tire and wheel off their Ford truck. This didn’t seem to be something he wanted to do – can’t blame him. They said they had a friend down the road that sold used tires – they would check it out and come back – off they went.

I remarked to Anita, “We’ll never see those two hombres again.” We agreed that either someone would come to our rescue or we would have to spend the night there and in the morning drive the Dodge back to Las Vegas and buy a wheel and tire; not a wonderful prospect as worn out as we were.

I dug out a tire iron I had packed at the last minute and loosened the 8 lug nuts as a way of letting off steam and I rationalized that should someone happen along with a jack and an 8-hole Ford wheel with a 16” tire I would be ready.

Twenty minutes passed by. Perhaps one car drove past. It was looking more and more like we were going to be pulling an all night-er.

Suddenly we saw the Ford truck run by the father and son hombres. They came back ! How cool is that?

They had a tire and wheel that would fit for $60.00 AND they had a jack – we were saved!

I installed the tire, thank them and gave them 10.00 additional dollars for their doing this. Call it what you will but my take was a couple of gringos would not have stopped – the Mexicans are just like that – help where they can – and maybe make a couple bucks to boot.

Back on the road I could see my new used tire and wheel was slightly bent – never mind! We are mobile. We made it in at 9 PM. Having started this day very early in Pueblo, Colorado we decided to get a motel some three blocks from our little adobe house.

Current Location – Capitan, New Mexico (Click to ENLARGE)

Anita enjoys coffee in our motel room this morning.

It just seemed simpler and less of a hassle. We could take showers and behold they have an unsecured WIFI connection – we rented it – here we are at the end of day one – exhausted.

On a sad note I should add that on September 11th my friend Joe Zawinul died in Vienna from a rare form skin cancer; only days after being on tour. Joe was 75 years old. He and I worked together with the Cannonball Adderley and later with his own great band “Weather Report.” Joe was a rather quiet fellow who took his music very seriously and left a wealth of great music and some fond memories for me personally. Joe you will be missed. Stay Tuned.

Today we will finish packing up. Tomorrow we will leave Rancho Calypso.

It has been a fine place to live. It has offered us a secure, safe and sometimes adventurous sanctuary.

Anita reminded me that six years ago this day, not only special as the last full day here but the more important 911 Day, that we were to be moving this same day six years ago. Instead we watched the events of the day unfold on a small television in our camper in Las Vegas, Nevada.

That was a day not unlike today – beautiful, sunny and full of expectations. 911 six years ago changed all of our lives and ours in particular in that among other things we decided it was probably not a good time to move to Mexico – as it was we couldn’t even easily get out of Las Vegas as Boulder Dam was sealed off and it would be hard to leave the area, let alone the Country – and for how long?

Whether the delay in our plans was good is not up for question at this point – it is merely our history now as is the very sad day of those attacks on U.S. soil are remembered in so many memorials, we share those memories with each other and pack up the two trucks to caravan to New Mexico sometime tomorrow.

We do have a wifi connection in New Mexico – we will answer email and perhaps get a Blog entry written.

Somewhat like that travel time six years ago – a lot is undecided because of what is going on in life beyond our control – hurricanes and tropical disturbances have ravaged the roads and bridges in Mexico. We are still undecided as to whether we will head down the middle of Mexico to Puerto Escondido or drive to Brownsville and head down the east coast of Mexico some 700 miles to Xico.

Marvin calls us daily with road report updates – we will decide in New Mexico where to go from there – Stay Tuned – the adventures continue.

We are getting down to the final stages of moving. If you have been reading along you know this has been no small task for us.

We have always evacuated room by room – do you move like this? We have emptied out the garden cottage (mother-in-law quarters), chicken house storage area, metal garage, and the entire upper floor of the house. We are 90 % out of the small bedroom downstairs leaving only the living room and kitchen.

We returned from New Mexico on Tuesday evening. That was the completion of our third trip there. Virtually everything left to load here goes to Mexico, but we will go by way of the New Mexico house as we continue to watch the weather down there. We are looking for road reports and conversing with Harvey and Marvin regarding their perspective areas of Mexico. The hurricanes and tropical storms have certainly put us on alert about just packing up and heading to Mexico.

Nancy and Paul will be driving down to Matzatlan in less than a week now. Their count down is less than 7 days – ours still less.

Thursday Gordy arrived on the scene after having left here more than a month ago for Sturgis and points east. He was loaded with new stories of his adventures including a small spill (if there can be such a thing as small on a tipped over Harley) and a major breakdown wherein one of his cylinder bottles separated from the lower part of the engine at high speed – yikes.

Gordy is one of those fortunate people that take all things in stride; none the less his telling of the adventures was an exciting report. He took a lot of phone camera photos that he shared including this one of Gordy and another Gordy – G. Gordon Liddy the famous Watergate burglar mastermind and now syndicated talk radio show host. While Liddy and I have been on the opposite side of a lot of issues going back to the sixties when he staged drug raids at Dr. Timothy Leary’s Millbrook estate subsequently arrested and unsuccessfully prosecuted Leary.

For Liddy’s role in Watergate, which he coordinated, Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, burglary and illegal wiretapping, and received a 20-year sentence. He served four and a half years in prison before his sentence was commuted by President Jimmy Carter.

Liddy appeared on a celebrity edition of the NBC TV show Fear Factor filmed in November, 2005). At 75 years of age, Liddy was the oldest contestant ever to appear on the show. Liddy beat the competition in the first two stunts, winning two motorcycles custom built by Metropolitan Chopper. In the final driving stunt, Liddy crashed and was unable to finish.

I knew Liddy was a Harley owner and wasn’t surprised to know he was covering the famous Sturgis Harley event in South Dakota. I was surprised to see him and Gordy on Gordy’s cell phone . I guess Gordy has looked past political differences as apparently Timothy Leary did when he and Liddy went on joint lecture tours in the 80’s. after they served their prison terms.

Gordy helped organize a load of stuff in the big white Ford truck. He has lost few steps from the days of being an expert band equipment handler. Later he loaded up; and sporting colors he rode his Harley up our drive heading home – hopefully he will safely arrive in Canada Sunday. Stay Tuned!

Today is Saturday. According to Nancy and Paul’s count down timer – we have 13 Days, 11 hours and 20 minutes before we leave Rancho Calypso (24 hours less than Nancy &Paul).

We were scheduled to leave yesterday for New Mexico, hauling our last load of stuff to store there – leave the Dodge car in our driveway and head back here for the last load up and then to Mexico.

Then the weather became our master. There were storms in New Mexico. We are hauling with our open to the air 16 foot car trailer. It has four foot sides on all but the rear closing gate – but is open to the weather from above. So far in the past two trips we have been lucky to get out of Colorado and into New Mexico between rain storms.

We cancelled yesterdays drive as it was to be the end of a couple days of rain in New Mexico. Today is calling for isolated thunderstorms there – so we decided to wait another day.

But the news from Mexico is not good. Esther reports of constant rains in Xico and now a single lane bridge that is on the main road going into Xico has crumbled – thankfully with no traffic on it. This along with sketchy reports of washed out roads heading down from Brownsville to Veracruz has us concerned.

Additionally there are tropical storms Henriette on the west of Mexico and Felix which is projected to hit Mexico’s mainland about next Wednesday as a full fledged hurricane.

We have lived a sheltered life here in our little valley at the base of the Front Range of the Rockies. It is seldom windy; the windiest day since we lived here was the second day our buyers visited. There is rain and snow and occasionally hail – but all rather mild mannered to date. The biggest problem at Rancho Calypso was the fire that licked the edges of Red Creek Ranch a couple of years ago.

Now we are tracking hurricanes, tropical storms and bad roads and bridges. We are looking at heading down the middle of Mexico via El Paso, Texas ultimately landing in Puerto Escondido until the weather and roads are reportedly safe in Veracruz?

This would be four or five months ahead of the plan to be down there in December or January. This would also limit what we haul down as we were going to pull a small trailer and a truckload of stuff to Xico.

It is early yet to make a decision other than knowing we have to be out of here in those aforementioned 13 days and some hours.

Anita says it will all work out – I trust her calm perspective at this point. Stay Tuned!

I have been around the track a few times being that I am in my sixth decade on this mortal coil. A couple of observations about the times:

There are so many incredible news events that few startling facts alter the path of one’s daily life. People seem to just continue to go about their business no matter how perverted or corrupt our (the United States of America in this case) leaders seem to be.

Statistics abound with the advent of computers. This being the case supporting ‘evidence’ for an opinion can be extrapolated to put just about any spin on an issue.

Perhaps we can sum up the above two points by writing that little surprises anyone these days.

A belated Blog entry comment caused this train of thought this morning. I have a lot of detractors due to my leanings towards open borders especially in this age of warring, corruption, deceit and general distrust of one’s fellow man.

Karen drew my attention to an op-ed piece she read in the Indianapolis Star. It reads as follows:

July 24, 2007

Today’s editorial
Illegal doesn’t make them criminals

Our position: There is little evidence that undocumented immigrants are more likely to commit violent crimes.

Last week’s arrest of 14 illegal immigrants for their alleged ties to two notorious gangs might provide interesting insights into how those groups operate.

Last week’s arrest of 14 illegal immigrants for their alleged ties to two notorious gangs might provide interesting insights into how those groups operate.

But the arrests should not strengthen stereotypes that paint immigrants as law-breaking desperados who came to the United States to expand their criminal activities.

Young male immigrants, including those who arrived in this country without proper documentation, are five times less likely to land in prison than their native-born counterparts, according to a 2005 study of U.S. Census Bureau data by Kristin Butcher, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and Rutgers University criminologist Anne Morrison Piehl.

Young male immigrants — who made up 17 percent of the total young male population in 2000 — accounted for just 4 percent of the prison population in 2000, the study showed.

These statistics offer further support of some sort of reforms that accurately reflect the economic and social realities created by and faced by immigrants.

President George Bush recently made a strong move for reform, but it was rejected by the U.S. Senate. Though passionate debate over immigration reform has cooled since last year’s round of rallies, the stereotype of undocumented immigrants as violent criminals remains one underlying reason against more liberalized immigration laws.

The gang-related arrests in Indianapolis, which has experienced an increase in crime as its immigrant population has grown, perpetuates the stereotype. So do other highly publicized incidents such as the 2004 scandal at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, in which four workers allegedly aided undocumented immigrants in obtaining licenses. In another case, a man was returned to his homeland after facing child molestation charges.

But the research done by Butcher and Piehl shows that criminal activity is more the exception than the rule among immigrants.

In their analysis of census and crime data, the researchers determined that urban areas with the greatest increases in immigrant populations have also seen the greatest decreases in crime. More importantly, those committing felonies are sent back to their former homelands; 31 percent of those deported were sent back because of criminal activity.

Entering the country without documentation is illegal, which is why that description is commonly used. The problem lies not with the immigrants, but with a dysfunctional immigration quota system originally created to ban certain racial and ethnic groups from the country.

The fact that some immigrants must wait more than 20 years to become permanent legal residents suggests weaknesses with the system. Stereotypes and generalizations shouldn’t be allowed to further confuse this complex issue.

Most illegal immigrants quickly integrate into the nation’s economic and social fabric. That reality, not the myth of violent crime, is what deserves notice in this debate.

Following the article there were 2712 comments – wow! – kind of puts me in my place for my fledging Blog. I often am pandering for interaction here. Ten or more comments is a fistful for this Blog.

Most of the negative comments to the Stars opinion had to do with the point of obeying the law. Of course I have raised up the question of obeying bad laws before herein. That becomes a different argument and set of premises to statistically justify one’s position in all this. But I do think the Star’s point and statistics relating to “illegal” immigration is valid and appreciate Karen’s pointed it out to us.

Stay Tuned!

Need to send a private email to me: The email address si: blog (at sign) vivaveracruz (dot) com.