Clandestine Travels

first few flew bye

Take It Easy

Lounging on one of two queen sized beds, eating a salad of mixed greens, vegetable medley, and shitake sesame dressing, allowing myself to settle in only long enough to write this update, this is me.....right.....now. We made it to the Extended Stay in Sierra Vista, Arizona, just north of Bisbee, where we had originally wanted to stay. Due to a cheaper price, we settled on Sierra Vista, got to cut those corners when you can. We arrived a little after 9pm, local time, which was 8pm in California, but since Arizona doesn't honor Day Light Savings, half the year Arizona is an hour ahead of California. The drive today took a little more than 8 hours, with two stops for peeing and streching. The first day we stopped a lot, and we only went from Oakland to Redlands. I think we got our rhythm down a bit more. Tomorrow will be the real test, as we are waking up at 6am with the goal of crossing the border by 8am. This is to ensure we arrive to our beach town destination by nightfall as we don't want to drive in the dark.

Our first night was spent in Redlands with our good friend Joe and his siblings, and it was wonderful. To arrive to a warm house, fireplace all aglow, with a homecooked meal waiting for us, was just unbeatable. What a way to start our journey, to reconnect with a friend, play games, and be treated so kindly, we couldn't have asked for anything more. Our second night finds in us a less welcoming environment, but we are all happy to have plenty of outlets to charge all our devices, large beds to sleep in, and the chance to do a little reorganizing and packing before we venture into the unknown of Mexico.

For those of you interested, we are crossing over at Douglas/Agua Prieta, in case you want to check current conditions at the border tomorrow morning. After that, we are cruising down to Guaymas, or at least that is what we're shooting for. Hopefully, we will find a nice place to stay there and we can maybe have a day or two to relax a bit after a few long car days. It would be nice to swim in the ocean a bit and let the dogs have a car free day. We'll see how the town suits our needs.

I'll leave you with the prominent song from the trip so far. What else would you expect from a road trip but: The Eagles.

Sleep When You Die

The days are longer now, with nothing to do but wait. I am reminiscent of our last attempt of leaving the country via RV through Mexico and the waiting game that we played last time. I should be grateful that this wait should be done by Saturday morning, whereas last time, we waited for 5 weeks in New Mexico for a title to our RV that never came, only to find that when we crossed the border, we didn't need it anyways! Funny how screwy life is sometimes, or rather how silly you can feel when you make a plan. That being said, here is our plan for the next few days.

We will leave Saturday morning. Guess that's what happens. I wanted to leave this past Monday, December 10th and now it will be Saturday, December 15th. Ce la vie! Our first port of call will be the LA area for up to three visits. Hopefully we can link up with my sister and her husband who live in Irvine, Jahsiah's friend Nik, who is in Hollywood, and our friend Joe, out in Redlands. We're going to try to make it work to see them all, which shouldn't be too hard as we are hoping to leave at 9am at the latest on Saturday morning, which puts us in LA around 3pm that afternoon. Then after one last night in California, we will head East, to the Extended Stay America in Sierra Vista Arizona. Not the nicest digs, but the nicest that our modest budget will afford for a cohort of 3 people and 2 dogs. After our luxuorious night in Sierra Vista, we will drop South to the Border!!!!!!

Copper Canyon, Mexico

Crossing the border at the Douglas/Aguas Prieta, our first Mexican destination will be the beach town of Guaymas, along the Gulf of California. New waters for all 5 travelers. The drive from Douglas to Guaymas is about 6 hours, according to Google maps, so we will be crossing the border at 8am, at the latest, to ensure we arrive before dusk to Guaymas. From there, we have two objectives. The first is to make a journey inland to Copper Canyon, a canyon system in the Sierra Madre that overall is larger and at parts, deeper than the Grand Canyon. Other than this little stint, we will mostly be hugging the coast, so this will be our chance to see some non-beach terrain. Our second objective is reach Zihuatanejo to meet up with my sister and company, who will be celebrating her 30th birthday. Time is getting short with this objective happening, but I remain hopeful. The reason I had wanted to leave on December 10th was to ensure plenty of travel time to join up with my family. The reality is that we have been delayed a full week. I'm not sure how it will play out, but I won't let myself get down, not now.

I have already warned Jahsiah and Timmy that I will be a bit of a tyrant on the first few days of our trip, making sure we stick to early morning departures and early evening arrivals. We have the short days of winter working against us in terms of driving time and I want to make sure that the lackadaisical beach time is complimented by the ardent departing of the United States. I will be the annoying one waking people up at 6am on Monday morning. But really, what's a little early wake up when you have an adventure to take? My thoughts are: You can sleep when you die.

So that's the new GP. GP stands for Game Plan, in case you didn't know. Keep your fingers crossed that we get our good car news tomorrow, Friday, morning. That will be the deciding factor. We need positive thoughts now, in a big way.

“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” – Lao Tzu

Slow Down Everyone, You're Moving too Fast

The past few days have brought some unsettling blows to our expected departure date of what was hoped to be this past Monday, December 10th, 2012. As it were, we are still in Oakland today, Wednesday, December 12th, and will most likely be here for another two days.

On Saturday night, we were at our good friend's house, having a little going away get together of sorts. Nothing crazy, just about a dozen friends, eating food and spending some time together before we go our separate ways for a while. Our friends live up in the hills of Oakland, not the super rich hills, but the hills nonetheless. I, Liz, decided to call it an early night, as Sunday was going to be a busy day, and I like to stay on point when getting ready for a trip. Around 1:00am, I declared it my bedtime, offered rides to anyone who needed or wanted one as I was the driver for the night, said goodbye to loved ones, expecting to be leaving in two days time, and walked out the front door. What did I discover? My car was gone. Stolen. And, it's not even really my car. You see, I had been car sitting for our friend while she is out of state. I've had the car since April, and never has a problem occurred, so you can see my aggravation that literally just as we are trying to leave the country, we now have this to deal with. What's more, is that since I am not the registered owner of the vehicle, it was a less than pleasant experience reporting the car stolen to Oakland Police Department. OPD can't report a car stolen by anyone other then registered owner, and the registered owner needs to be present to file the report. So at 4:30am, after waiting three and half hours for an officer to respond to the call, I was told there was nothing he could do, and that my best bet was to do what the dispatcher had told me at 1:00am, which was to have my friend get something in writing notarized, saying that I had her permission to drive the car. I had to take this notarized document to OPD on Sunday to file the report.

So, after a lot of tears, frustration, a lack of sleep, and a set back in travel preparations, not to mention a missed birthday party for a one year old, we found ourselves a little shaky Monday morning to get back on track to leave. There were still things to do! And a lot of them. So we began plugging along again, packing up every last thing, storing all the remaining important pieces of our lives, one more night with more friends and family, the dogs trip to the vet for Good Health Certificates, and then......more car trouble. Our Yukon had an engine light come on with the error code of cylinder 5 misfiring. Oh great.

What does it all mean? Is there a greater message in the events or are they random? When things go wrong, the first impulse is to find the underlying sign, the reason things are unfolding in this manner. But maybe there is no greater meaning, maybe it's all just chaos theory, like Jeff Goldblum so eloquently describes in Jurassic Park. We did our best to stay positive, to realize that if we couldn't handle some bumps in the road now, in the comfort of this place we've come to call home, how would we fair with difficulties on the road, of which there will be many. We forged ahead.

Silver lining: We took the car down to my good mechanic Stan, at 5th Street Garage, perhaps the most kind and honest mechanic the world has ever known. He hooked the car up to his little electric gadget that reads the computer chip in the car and surmised that the flaw is in the error code, not the cylinder itself. He reset it, told us to drive if for a day or two, bring it back and as long as the light hasn't come back on, we should be good to go. No charge for this service and mostly, peace of mind. So, we have two days to kill, even though we are ready to go and my thoughts are this, we've been moving too fast. OPD has an 80% recovery rate of stolen cars, so the good news is if we stay around for a few more days, I might get a phone call saying the car has been found, which is great for everyone involved. Also, some important mail has yet to arrive and while I can leave without it, I would rather be here for it. That being said, a few more days isn't the worst thing ever, just a reminder that things happen at their own speed, and you can't control the timing of everything. And if I can't learn that here and now, I'm doomed in Central America, where time has it's own agenda and won't care what I think or feel about it.

The theme song for today? Inaudible Melodies by Jack Johnson. This was a very important song for me in my early college years and I think it's fitting that it has been stuck in my head all morning, reminding me that this is not a race, this is life, and it's meant to be enjoyed, highs and lows, good times and bad. Relish in all of it, because as my good friend Benny so aptly put it once, "It's not always gonna be like this". The reason all of this is happening, is to make us slow down, take a breath, and leave here leisurely, completely ready, not rushed and panicked, hoping we remembered to do everything we wanted to. We have more time, and this is never really a bad thing, just a chance to make better use of the time you have been given.