Hola!  Como estas?  Estudio Espaniol mucho pero apprendo muy despacio.  Pero, esta bien.  Yea, my Spanish isn’t much, but hopefully it will get me through Mexico for a week or so.

Quick word about the journey ahead:  I’m headed to LA to get my bike and then ride down to Cabo.  My tentative plan is to take mostly dirt on the way down, and then use mostly roads on the way up.  That way I don’t have to backtrack and see the same thing twice.  Not the greatest because I think it’s often better to see the road from both directions, but with time tight, I’ll err on the side of seeing more than seeing depth on this trip.

Tonight I take a late flight to LA.  And wow, the flying experience.  Yick.  Just like every time I make my way through an airport with these new search regulations, I find myself feeling like I’m in some futuristic movie.  You hear voices over the intercom telling you how much of an item you can bring, what line to stand in, and scary pronouncements about what you’re not allowed to do and who should be in what line.  Then you stand in a machine that whirs around you, and through x-ray vision gets a good snapshot of your genitals and insides.  Turn your head and cough.  And if that invasive method didn’t take, some old guy with ass-breath wearing a shirt made for someone twice his size pats your mid-section down and waves a magic wand over you to counteract the radiation from the x-ray pod.  Or at least that’s what I think it does – makes me feel better.  Meanwhile, your pathetic things, displayed openly for everyone, make their way down a conveyor belt, and if you’re lucky, you won’t have to open them up even more for some sadistic perv to rifle through them and make sure you’re not carrying a non-regulation toothpick or paperclip.  Then you get to put your belt back on – good thing they made me take it off – I may have hanged myself in the genital zapper box.  I mean, this is Total Recall without the three-breasted women, begging children, orcs, smoke, and sweat.  Just a more civilized movement of human cattle.  I expect Ahnuld to appear around every corner and take out some rogue droid.

I really don’t like being teleported the way planes drop you off in a new place with no time to adjust gradually.  I prefer to see a place coming – from the ground.  To smell the changes and feel the air moving.  To hear people talk along the way.  To eat the changing food and drink the local drink.  To arrive wet, sunburned, tired.  To have earned the arrival a bit.  But, alas, it’s what we must endure to see more of the world with the time we have.  Still, I’d prefer to walk, ride, or sashay into a new place than to be dropped into it from some unfriendly, lifeless new-world stork.

At least I have the emergency row with no one next to me.  How does that happen?  (If you’re reading this, please don’t mention emergency rows to anyone – please, please save them for people over 6’ 2” with back and knee problems.  How often do you see the five foot tall girl sitting there wasting all that leg room as you make your way back into the plane’s bowels to find your middle seat crafted by some medieval torturer?)   Anyway, nice uneventful flight later, and I’m in LA.  And what?  It’s cold!  But, it’s great to see Jonathon!

The tentative route down: