Altitude adjustment

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. -- We're now on Day 4 of our mountain adventure. The Mini-Humans have seen a lot of very cool things for the first time.

We spent the weekend at the home of The Wife's grandmother in Colorado Springs. We spent a fair bit of time driving west on U.S. 24 from there. We saw Cave of the Winds, the Indian Cliff Dwellings, and Manitou Springs, a very well-kept little mountain town with a serious dose of weird. Had some great Mexican food at a place across the street from the hemp shop.

We drove up the mountain Monday to the cabin in which we are staying with 13 of The Wife's relatives. This is an emotionally volatile group, for reasons both valid and otherwise. The occasion is Grandma M's 80th birthday (which is actually in October, but you don't want to be in a cabin in the mountains in October, I'm told.) It's a highly charged atmosphere, and some sparks are flying already.

But when you look past those, you see a group that is deeply devoted to each other underneath some of the stinging insults and thinly veiled judgmentalness (is that a word? It is now). It's an interesting case study into the role of the matriarch, a role which might be dying out with our generation.

Grandma M is probably the biggest influence in my wife's life, and there could be no better role model. She's a woman who carries herself with class and dignity while at the same time also being a helluva lot of fun. She cares about nothing more than the happiness of her family, and in an age where it seems there's suddenly a whole lot of things about which to care, she still keeps her priorities focused. She's a beautiful woman, and it's a beautiful thing to be able to watch her be her first-hand.

It's just before 9 a.m. Tuesday up here in the mountains right now. We're getting ready to gather for a family photograph and then will scatter off to various mountain-y places. I'm going to go take a few (really deep) breaths and continue the acclimation process.

All I never wanted

Getting ready to head out on a non-vacation vacation on Saturday.

Week 1: Colorado, shuold be a semi-delightful trip to place I haven't seen in 20 years and my kids haven't seen at all. Can't wait to see their reaction.

Week 2: Well, more to tell when there's more to tell.

I can say I very much will welcome the break from work.

Eensy weensy tenny weeny yellow polka-dot bikini

Hey, Walden: Need some commentary on this story. My two cents: She's an idiot.

Norteño, sureño

SAN DIEGO -- I slipped away today.

For about 30 minutes, I was completely out of reach of United States authorities. Nobody knew where I was. I had stealthily slipped across the border, and nobody recorded my movements. One minute, I was in the United States; the next, I wasn't.

OK, it wasn't so stealthy. I just walked through a turnstile, and then another, and then I was in Mexico. Apparently, that's all it takes to cross the border in that direction.



I'm a guy who's been held up by zealous Customs agents who thought it was their duty to prevent me from going into Canada. I'm used to having my passport stamped, my picture taken, my iris scanned, everything short of a full body-cavity search.

To get to Mexico, however, all you have to do is pay the guy at the border parking lot $7 to keep an eye on your crappy rental car and walk for about five minutes. One turnstile, two turnstiles, and there you are, in Tijuana.

Frankly, the place kind of freaked me out a bit. I called The Wife as soon as I was across the border. "Don't drink the water, don't drink anything with ice in it, and don't eat anything," she said. "And watch out; the little girls selling beads are actually pickpockets." Just then, a little girl came up to me offering to sell me beads. I politely told her "No," put my hand on my wallet (which I had placed in my front pocket after buying some pesos) and walked on a bit.

In every direction, I saw ... well, I didn't see taco stands; I didn't see souvenir shops; I didn't see restaurants and bars. I saw ... pharmacies. Lots and lots of pharmacies.



This is what Tijuana offers tourists. Not a taste of Mexico, but relief from the fucked-up United States health care system. An opportunity to beat Big Pharma at its own game.

Past the first wave of pharmacies, there was one restaurant, which sported big Corona banners and looked very much like a Mexican restaurant you'd find in St. Petersburg, Fla., or Rockford, Ill. I decided not to walk past the aggressive shopkeepers down to Avenida de la Revolucion. I turned around and headed for the northbound border crossing.

I walked past a long line of folks who I presumed were waiting to cross the border. I kept walking, though, following the gringo family that seemed to know where it was going. After about 150 people, I determined the line was for the U.S. immigration office. This is where people who were not carrying U.S. passports had to wait. I walked past all those people and went on through Customs, where I was subject to the wary eyes of the agents, a scan of my passport, and a muttered admonition to "have a good day."

We're trying so hard to keep those people out. They're trying so hard to get here. Why? It's not because we have more pharmacies. It's because they believe in the promise of a better life in the U.S. And many of them are willing to work their asses off for it.

Take a look the next time you drive past a strawberry patch or a construction site. Listen to the Spanish flowing from the tongues of the workers. Say "hola" to the woman who's cleaning your toilet at the next hotel you stay in. Then, take a look at the guy with the sign standing in the median. Bet he doesn't speak Spanish. Now tell me who has the sense of entitlement.

These people come over, and we give them jobs. We give them jobs because it helps us balance our books better. We give them jobs because, in the words of The (Holy Crap, This Dumbass is the) Leader of the Free World, "they'll do jobs that Americans won't do." You want to prosecute somebody? Don't prosecute the illegal workers; prosecute the companies who hire them illegaly. Yeah, that's gonna happen.

All I needed to go south was to spin two turnstiles. All they need to go north is to stand in line for hours, days, weeks, years, and beg for permission.

As I emerged from the border crossing, safely back on American soil, with my steps having been scanned and noted by the Department of Homeland Security, I crossed the pedestrian bridge over Interstate 5 in the San Ysidro neighborhood of San Diego. The first thing you see at the foot of that bridge? An outlet mall. God bless America.

Don't talk to me, and nobody gets hurt

SAN DIEGO -- I was an asshole this morning. In my defense, it was completely justified.

I have a very well-defined System that takes me from one place to the other with maximum efficiency. It's very important, for a guy like me who goes from one place to the other with great frequency, to have an efficient System. That's how I get from one place to the other without losing things like my passport or my credit cards or my right ear.

Part of the system involves how I carry my bags. I have a basic roll-aboard suitcase, and a backpack that plays the part of "small personal item," despite the fact that it basically has the contents of an Office Depot inside. The backpack is strapped to the suitcase. On cross-country flights, such as the one I was on Monday morning, I strap one of those neck pillows to the suitcase-backpack rig.

So I'm getting ready to board the shuttle that takes me from landside to airside at the Home Airport when a salesman-looking guy spies the rig. You know the Salesman Guy: Tall, in good shape, mid-40s, polo shirt, black Dockers. Being a Salesman Guy, he has a pathological need to make small talk. "So, you got your pillow; you're all ready."

Now, he doesn't know that I'm pathologically opposed to small talk; he doesn't know that before 7 a.m., I can be violently opposed to small talk. I gave it my best, "ha-ha, yeah, I got a long flight."

He doesn't get the message. "So, you got a blanky packed away in there, too?"

I gave him a look of utter contempt, and just barely by the skin of my tongue stopped myself from saying, "Man, shut the fuck up." I proceeded to untie my shoes; this is part of the System, also. I have a hard time finding shoes I like, given that I wear a size 6 1/2, and all the shoes I own have laces.

"Ah, yes, you'll learn someday," he said. "Slip-ons for travel. You don't do this very often." He continued to leer.

By now, I'm openly fuming. He's attacking my Travel Skill. "I travel a lot," I said, through a fake smile, "and I like these shoes." I then gave him the Shut-the-Fuck-Up look again. This time, he did.

I needed THAT start to my day at 7 a.m. when I was faced with sitting in a middle seat from the Western Edge to Phoenix. Fucker.

Later, after some soothing music, I realized the guy is just one of those people who have perpetual diarrhea of the mouth. Well-meaning, but possessed with a belief that people want to hear what they have to say. Poor guy couldn't have been more wrong at that particular moment, but hey, everybody has his weakness.

I tried to get some of the good travel karma back. I managed to get an aisle seat for the second leg of my trip, but gave it up so a woman's 6-year-old daughter could sit next to her. I was also excrcuiatingly nice to the person sitting to my left in the new seat; her headphone thingy wasn't working, so I let her string the headphone wire across me to my seat so she could watch the movie. Having already had my Asshole card punched for the trip, it was the very least I could do.

Bombs away

Never one to miss a chance to participate in an apparent Google-bombing attempt, I must make reference to a Hairy gymnast. Don't ask. I don't know, and I'm probably better off not knowing.

Somebody else's bad day in the air

I've been in New York's Kennedy Airport once. It was awful. Apparently not as bad for me, though, as for these people. Particularly liked the part about how the guy's wife called Delta to ask about the status of her husband's delayed flight, and Delta said "it took off hours ago," and the wife said, "well, no it didn't, I just talked to my husband," and Delta said, "well, fuck you." Or something like that.

So we've been pretty hard on American Airlines in this forum. Now it's Delta's turn. Who's next?

13

I'm the parent of a teenager, as of today.

The Old Daughter is 13. I'm not sure we're ready for that. I know we don't get a choice.

She is 100 percent as perfect as one can expect a 13-year-old girl to be. Which is to say that she's often a pain in the ass, but not so often that it's the first thing you say about her. She's smart, which is to say that in some moments, she's not as smart as she thinks she is, and at others, she knows way more than she gives herself credit for. She's beautiful, which is to say she's beautiful.

I'm the parent of a teenager. I need a few minutes to digest that.