tbaroundtheworld

We went shopping a couple of days ago for a handful of things we forgot to buy on the way down. One of them was minced garlic, an almost daily staple for us. Yes, I know we can mince our own garlic, but the pre-cut stuff is a lot easier for me as I am afflicted with some sort of weird skin condition that retains the smell of garlic, shallots and onions for days after I handle them. And yes, I know about those stainless steel bars that supposedly absorb all the garlic smell from your fingers via magic. I have one and it barely works and in any event it's home hanging on a nail under a drive out skein of garlic cloves. We went to the place where one might expect to find it, the spaghetti sauce aisle, and it wasn't there. Not dissuaded, this is the store after all where the matches are stocked with the candy, my second thought was with the vegetables and lo and behold there it was. Not packaged in nice glass bottles with leak proof lids, but rather in a can like green beans. But...

We always have a housesitter when we travel, so it's a case of "no news is good news" when it comes to knowing what's happening on the homefront. However, while we're almost a thousand miles south, we encounter lots of little New Mexico-isms on a regular basis. First there are the license plates of the guests at our vacation spot. Then there are the Kokopellis that grace much of the tourist-wares for sale in town. And then a boat or two in the marina with a New Mexico placename on the back and even the catamaran here on the beach that hails from Santa Fe. We're far from home but never far away. Some reminders are less pleasing that others. Like the Mother of All Goatheads we found in the lawn two nights ago. We had just that day been opining that Goatheads didn't seem to grow down here, surprising considering the sheer volume of those awful green ground clinging vine producing abominations we have at home. But in truth we had never seen a single one, tha...

I knew we were in for an experience when I saw the waiters peeking around the corner of the building as we walked up the sidewalk to the door. It was on the early side, so being the first guests of the evening was not wholly unexpected but there was something about their sense of surprise that worried me. But since we're always shopping for an experience, we forged ahead and chose a table on the edge of the restaurant, overlooking the sea. One of the waiters brought a floor fan over and set it on a table so we'd have a breeze. He took our margarita order and went off for menus. The view was wonderful, a crescent moon setting over Tetakawi, the water in the cove slowly turning to inky black. MLW told me the story of how she'd found the big Abalone shell she still has, under the cliff off to my left. The waiter returned with our drinks, in plastic birthday party glasses. We found this a bit odd considering one can buy those giant margarita boats at just about any store. Oh ...

Every year we try to come in early October, and every year we swear we're never coming back in early October. Well, I don't know if that's literally true but it sure seems that way. The water is hot which allows us swim every day, the only time of the year when this is possible outside of summer, and no one comes here in the summer. The problem is early October is close to Columbus Day and school holidays so the place fills up with vacationers. This shouldn't come as a surprise since this is a vacation spot but given how we like to spend our time away, the people and the noise can be quite jarring. We do persevere and enjoy ourselves in spite of it. And really, the people are mostly okay except for those with dogs. As the place fills up the courtyards ring with the sounds of abandoned animals, their sad howls echoing off the stuccoed block walls.  Turns out there's a gal next door with a dog that barks plaintively whenever she leaves it alone. We didn't much l...

Last year I had the extreme misfortune of getting stung by a Stingray. The Eastern Pacific Round Stingray (Urolophus halleri) is common in the shallow waters of the Gulf and in the Pacific off of Baja from April through November. 2012 was apparently a banner year for them, I got it once, MLW got it twice and some little girl swimming close to us got it too. I knew that because of the way she howled as she limped out of the ocean. While it hurt a lot, a real lot , the pain went away within an hour and the whole episode became nothing more than an interesting tale to relate to friends back home. Particularly friends who think that sharks are waiting there to eat them. But here we are a year later, and for the past month or so the site of the one-time wound has been bugging me. Not hurting per se, but just a feeling that something isn't right. Like there is something embedded in the inside of the arch on my right foot. Kind of a "presence." At first I attributed it to Yo...

October is beach time. Just about every year for the past 20 we've packed up the car for the long haul down south. Two days, roughly 11 hours and 762 miles. But it's always worth it if only to bob in the ocean and watch for those interesting little tidbits that make getting out on the road interesting. Day One from Albuquerque to Tucson usually doesn't offer too much to get excited about. On this trip it was mostly about giant grasshoppers sitting idly on the pavement waiting to be run over. I suppose they might be better known as "locusts" as in Biblical plague locusts because they are really large, probably two or more times bigger than the cousins that eat my Zinnias. They sit there daring the traffic to run them over and I will admit that I try to avoid them as much as I can for no reason other than I hate uselessly killing things. I wonder how many meet their end under my wheels?  Not so lucky and harder to dodge are the migrating butterflies. Thousands o...