4, 3, 2, 1… GO!

Chapter 2

Is it just me or did it seem like it took forever to get to this day? That’s the last time I book a trip 211 days and 13 hours in advance.

Yesterday I spoke with our friends Richard and Nina (Ricardo and Ninja) who are currently in Vallarta and they have assured me that yes there still is some tequila left in the area, although they are gulping their way through most of the remaining stock.

Some street vendors have messaged me telling me that ‘almost free’ is now ‘almost free plus tax’ so I should bring more money along. Sly devils, everyone knows there’s no tax on styrofoam coolers with holes in them (we’ve had 2) and candied eel livers which are sold to the unititiated newbies that populate the beaches one hour after every flight arrives. ‘Uh, senior, Dónde está el baño, por favor’?

Okay, time to put down the tablet and watch Carol finish packing and make the sandwiches and then load up and head for the border on our first leg to Spokane. Look out world, ‘the chains have been loosened. Release the Kraken’!

Well, talk about uneventful. We drive the 30 minutes to the border and I’ve got my whole schpiel ready for the US Customs and Immigration folks where I tell them ‘Yes, your leader is doing a bang up job and the whole world has it all wrong. U-S-A, U-S-A rah rah rah, but instead it’s a great guy at the border who schmoozes with me about vacations and cars and we leave in about 30 seconds with a ‘highdy ho to you too’ and off we go down the road. Talk about anticlimactic, I thought at least we would be strip searched looking for marijuana.

Anyways we arrive in Spokane, Starbucks coffee in hand, and head for a grocery store to buy our fixins (Yes, that’s a real word in Arkansas) for our supper. Carol heads for the deli and I traipse over to the wine aisle looking for some liquid vacation. Ten minutes later plastic bag brimming with sustenance we get in the not-so-mighty Matrix and head for the hotel out by the airport.

While it was a tolerable 5C degrees in Castlegar when we left, it is 12C degrees in Spokane, and I’m definitely getting the out-of-country vibe that I’ve been waiting for. Of course this is just a precursor to the heaven that we will immerse ourselves in tomorrow.

Again, I’m steeling myself against all of the horrible situations that I had been fantasizing about having to go to the new U.S. and none of them are playing out. Everyone is just as nice as they’ve always been on the many trips that we’ve taken to the U.S. west coast over the past 35 years. In fact, at the hotel they upgrade us to a suite and waive the 3 week parking fee that we should have owed… WTF you guys, you’re supposed to be the backbone of commercialization where you gut the consumer to feed the bottom line. Didn’t you get that memo?

So I wind up watching 4 hours of tv on the jumbotron mounted to the wall (we haven’t had cable for 2 years and I was even nodding appreciatively at some of the commercials), slurp down my meal with the alcohol chaser and peruse the cavernous bathroom with tiled floor, walls, and shower, along with tasteful plumbing and lighting fixtures. Maybe they do have this capitalism thing figured out after all.

Anyways we chill some more and dive into the king size bed where neither of us will ever know if the other is wearing their jammies or not and even Carol’s breathing which simulates a CAT grader widening a logging road on most nights sounds like hummingbird wings in the tree tops (I’ve got to get me one of these) and lulls me to blissful sleep.

Tomorrow will still be a step up… and to all a ‘good night’.