The morning was sweet. No gunshots, no trains, and good dreams. I went straight to the water to mediate and then go for a dip. It wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm. Actually just right for a somewhat balmy morning. Then I set about washing the truck. Don’t ask me why, ok maybe it had something to do with concern for the veggie-oil eating the rubber around the windows (unless it was synthetic rubber which would not be a problem). Or maybe I just need to do some cleaning to make me feel better. Despite a positive outlook, being far from home isn’t always easy.

Then Kris suggested that we install the interior lights. We’ve been using flashlights since all the interior lights on the truck were cut out when we took out the headliners to install the rack and the spare tire and mount the lock-box. So we spent the next couple hours doing a little home improvement.

Now it was miid-day and I was hungry and a little cranky. Driving around touristy Mazatlan, with no map and terrible street signs didn’t help my mood. We ended up just parking on the main strip and eating at a relatively expensive but good little hut on the beach. I was really in a rut at this point... And not just from being hungry, but frustrated cause we wouldn’t be in Mexico City tomorrow (my birthday) and just dealing with all sorts of questions in my head about life, love, work, and just being human in these times. Funny how all those troubles are still with me despite being thousands of miles away from home and sitting on a beach in Mazatlan. Am I neurotic or what?
Drink a few more beers. It helps my mood, but it’s only temporary. I’m having that feeling about how we only go away to come back. But it is still somehow necessary to go away. Some things do get left behind for good.... We just don’t miss those things. It’s the things that we miss that bring us back home. The things that really matter. Sometimes it takes getting away to gain perspective and clarity. Ok so I have some clarity. But I’m still thousands of miles from home, and still many more miles to go before heading back, and then heading back is another journey entirely! What have we gotten ourselves into!?! “One day at a time!” I keep reminding myself. That is all you can do. I think I’m learning about patience right now. Or trying to.

So now we try to leave Mazatlan, but it seems to have a grasp on us. Even when we get out of town and then stop to pump oil (which went so smoothly this time that I felt like I was at a Nascar pit-stop), we realize that it is so late in the day that we may as well stay in Mazatlan one more night and start early.

This actaully calms me down a bit. And when we get back to our beachfront real estate we bust out the cooking gear, light our stove for the first time and have kris’ world famous popcorn and beer for dinner, along with a full spectrum of new-age herbs and medicine hoping to avoid any retaliation from someone named Montezuma in our near future.