Wolfisaki on Wheels

Harvey’s been running like a champ. Over freezing mountain terrain and across blazing Mexico beaches, he’s unstoppable. The old Scenester’s still got some moves and he’s not one to pass up an opportunity to show them off, especially when it comes to the kids nowadays – with their fancy slide outs and push-button awnings.

Yesterday, though, there was a definite eggy smell coming off him, poor fellow. A little while later we lost power when the generator dragged to a grinding halt. Then, while searching for a source of the eggy smell we discovered a corroded house battery. Yeeesh, Harvey.

Eggy smells could indicate something as inconsequential as a full black tank, or something as panic-worthy as engine failure or a gas leak. Naturally, me being me, there wasn’t much time wasted spiraling into all of the worst case scenarios where we inevitably meet our untimely deaths. Would we die blowing up from engine failure or shall we pass away in our sleep from carbon monoxide poisoning? It's anybody’s guess. Everyone back home calling us crazy would shake their heads and sadly proclaim, “I told them so.”

Normally, when things go suddenly sideways, I will call upon my ever faithful village; Google, then I’ll go tuck snug inside the walls I’ve spent a lifetime building up all around me and wait for my resolution to be served up fresh and hot.

But we’re in Mexico where the internet is a tricky little beast and there are new and different circumstances to force me out of my comfort zone around every corner, including all sorts of forced opportunities having to do with relying on the kindness of strangers.

Accepting help is not my specialty, and accepting help without the advantage of a long-winded excuse or apology because I can’t speak the language is especially not my specialty.

P-noch and JJ have recently spent the mornings taking the pickup into town to find a few hours of work and some wifi at the local pandaria. José Alfredo is always on the day shift there, happy to greet them, chatty and eager to help as we’ve discovered most locals are – and so has since gained dinner conversation status within our group. I look forward to hearing about the fishing boat he’s saving up to renovate, and what his friend’s are up to, friends like Alfonzo who owns a construction shop in the next town. Alfonzo can fix anything, apparently, and we were invited to go see him if we ever needed help with Harvey. “Be sure to tell him José Alfredo sent you!”

And, somewhat serendipitously, we all at once found ourselves in need of someone who could fix anything.

We tracked down the little construction shop just off the road several miles away. It was clean and well organized and painted bright white, making it stand out like a teeth whitening ad against the dusty Baja backdrop.

We found Alfonzo and introduced ourselves and gave him a brief explanation of our dilemma, but I think what we actually said was closer to “Hello, how are you, José Alfredo makes the delicious cookies in our fractured vehicle. Please you come observe that now.”

Alfonzo, in all of his unflinching twenty-somethings, wiped some grease off his hands from a rag he dug out of his pocket as he walked slowly towards Harvey, squinting one eye thoughtfully.

“José Alfredo from Mulegé?” He asked dubiously with a thick accent.

“Si, señor.”

He leaned back on his haunches a bit and pressed his jaw between his thumb and pointer finger. After a brief pause, he asked us which José Alfredo, exactly, we had spoken to. We would soon discover, we think, that he knows at least two José Alfredo’s in Mulegé, one of them is worth his weight in gold, but the other one is a no bueno burnout. As if our current state of desperation and the language barrier wasn’t confusing enough, we come to find out that both José Alfredo’s are known for their delicioso “cookies”. Ay, caramba.

Finally, with an excessive amount of hand gesturing and stumbling through our pathetic use of the Spanish language, we’re able to establish that it is in fact José Alfredo from the actual bakery in Mulegé. Without a word, Alfonzo turns on his heels and marches back into his shop.

When he returns a while later, long enough to let us believe that he might not be coming back at all, he’s carrying all kinds of different wires and some pliers and other various tools that I’m willing to bet we’re supposed to have of our own to keep somewhere in Harveys undercarriage - perhaps where we keep the blow up floaties and the cooler full of cervezas.

Alfonzo looks P-noch straight in his eyes and says, “You and me… Amigos?”

“Si, amigos.”

“Amigos work together, si?”

And for the next hour that’s exactly what they did, side by side, elbow deep in Harvey’s innards, Alfonzo speaking in his broken English and P-noch in his broken Spanish, in mutual respect. At the end of it all, with a house battery cleverly rewired with spare bits and parts and polished to an industrial gleam, P-noch went for his wallet to pay and Alfonzo abruptly puffed out his chest a little and, looking a bit offended he shakes his head, “No, no, gracias, you, me, amigos now.” And it was one of the greatest human interactions I've ever seen.

By the time we got back to our palapa on the most beautiful bay in the whole world, Harvey was purring like a kitten and back to his normal sweet smelling self, ready to get back out there and show those kids how it's done.

Muchas Gracias Alfonzo.

11.22.2021

Just a tinge of Montezuma's Revenge. Not by any epic proportions but enough to keep the old el baño within arms reach. To my credit, I’ve not denied myself much of anything, including some dodgy ceviche (and leftover dodgy ceviche, regrettably) and $3 pickup truck pina coladas.

It’s near impossible to defeat this iron-clad gut of mine, but I’ve learned time and again that Mexico spares no one, and I mean no one. Not even the ones raised on Counter Roast.

For the last half of my teenage years it was just my dad and I, living in a rented duplex in Gresham Oregon with ratty old carpet and discount store furniture and hand-me-down dishes from a distant family friend called Uncle Ross who had recently passed away, and, as far as I know, had never been anyone's actual uncle.

My dad was a butcher by trade, so I guess you could say we were Paleo before it was a fad diet. On Sundays, after church, he’d make a blimp of a pot roast that he’d previously claimed from the Reduced For Quick Sale section at work. At dinner time, he’d take it out of the oven using a kitchen towel that served both as our dinner napkins and a set of potholders and would proudly set the roast on the counter. Then, he would leave it there, for days. Maybe it was too large to fit in the refrigerator, but it wouldn’t have mattered even if it had. Anyone who questioned his method would get quickly dismissed, “it’s fine,” he’d say, throwing the potholder-napkin-towel over one shoulder, clearly annoyed at the distrust.

On Monday he would cover the counter roast with a piece of tinfoil “to keep it fresh” and at meal times he’d saw me off another slab, taking care to scrape away the bits of white crumbly fat that had settled between the potroast and the tinfoil, then he’d serve it up on one of Uncle Ross’ old plates alongside a mountain of iceberg lettuce, drenched in Ranch.

By midweek the counter roast would get reduced to being served wrapped in a paper towel between two pieces of bread flooded with mayonnaise and ketchup which helped the now dry, fibrous tendons go down a little easier.

So I owe this golden gut of mine to my dad, without a doubt. Counter roast aside, I’m sure most everything he made was prepared slightly below industry standards, and with heaps and mounds of love, as dad’s are wont to do. These days my dad keeps only a two liter of Squirt and his slippers in the refrigerator at his memory care facility. What I would give for one more Counter Roast sandwich...

I made it out into the daylight this afternoon just long enough to stumble my way into town with Oscar for our one-on-one time, as promised. The town of San Ignacio looks like an adorable little movie set I’d like to scoop up and carry around in my pocket with me forever. Oscar got an ice cream and I got a bottle of coke to help keep me keepin’ on. The rest of my day was spent in bed, tucked into the fetal position, trying to keep all of the inside stuff on the inside. Viva la Mexico.

11.17.2021

We finally have ourselves a proper Sunday. JJ says Sunday’s are still Sunday’s even while traveling through Mexico, they’re just… Amplified. Instead of sleeping in and going to brunch and mowing the lawn, it’s ocean sunrises and eating tamales in a hammock in your bathing suit.

Along the whole Baja Peninsula there are tamales being delivered to eager little travelers, palapa by palapa. They usually come by way of abuela and niña, and usually just in time for breakfast.

Now, I’m not a Tamale Enthusiast by any stretch, Portland's tamales have the mouthfeel of dry mulch and they practically taste like it too, but these are admittedly next level, worthy of all of my spare pesos. It also makes me feel better about myself to pay more than the nominal asking price because where they are kind and hardworking, we are seasoned to pay through our noses for snarky service and the absolute minimum amount of work involved, which makes this level of quality and care feel like gold star treatment.

In fact, just about any goods you could think of are bargained for up and down the beaches here. Jewelry, ponchos, churros, rubber ducks, anything. I find it convenient, especially when traveling by RV makes “running into town for more water” a schlep of a process involving packing up our entire home and taking it with us.

Today, in addition to the usual beach vendors, there’s been a Toyota pickup truck rolling by every few hours. The bed of the truck has been cleverly remodeled into a mobile colada and smoothie bar - with a very curious water system in place that I've decided I’m not going to think too much about. I’ve never had a pickup truck Pina Colada before but I highly recommend it. I’m sure it's completely safe.

For me, a proper Sunday when traveling through Mexico is a day not spent traveling through Mexico - or otherwise consumed in travel related chores, like scouting our next camp spot, or getting our various tanks filled with various liquids, or the constant easter egg hunt for the elusive dump station. It’s a day we can all just spend together without agenda. Where I peel my sun-blocked thighs out of the hammock every so often to throw some snacks at the kids. P-Noch fusses over his beloved Birria slow cooking on the outdoor camp stove. JJ is off with her floatie somewhere on the Sea of Cortez. And the hum of my brother's dustbuster buzzing softly in the background.

11.15.2021

I just watched the sun rise over the bay of San Felipe from the snugly comfort of my very own bed and it did not suck.

What did suck though is that Queso went missing. After three cans of tuna and an outstanding performance with all of her Latina feline charm convincing us that she was meant to be ours, she just turned and bolted straight out the open door as soon as night fell.

Twenty-four hours passed, and the curtain fell on my hopes for her return. We were leaving San Felipe early the next morning, and we’d spent all the time we could searching up and down the beach, and back and forth to and from town for her. Left to assume that Queso had chosen the beach bum lifestyle over us, I quickly began redirecting my efforts on easing two little boys' heartaches.

Then last night while we were sitting out in the palapa just after the sun had gone down, intent on squashing all of the mosquitos into tiny red dots across my legs, my brother says so matter of factly “hey isn’t that your cat?” And sure as the night, there she was! We could barely make out her little black and white kitten body half camouflaged by the night sky, sitting so proper with her back to the sea, just quietly waiting to see if anyone would notice her. And we did. El gato came back.

Viva la Queso!

I think we just stole a Mexican street cat.

Since we’re in a region of Mexico known for its cheese, Oscar named it Queso.

Queso *Nacho*saki.

11.9.2021

We crossed the Tecate border as effortlessly as humanly possible and then, as if the universe put its proverbial hand on my shoulder and whispered in its best Morgan Freeman voiceover to chill the fugout, we made it maybe five whole miles into Mexico before pulling off at a tiny roadside restaurant for what was quite possibly the greatest lunch experience of my life, second only to the first greatest lunch experience of my life on my 16th birthday... A very special day where my mom uncharacteristically pulled me out of school to surprise me with lunch at The Truffle Hunter, one of the fanciest restaurants that 1990’s downtown Gresham Oregon had to offer. It was way out of our shoestring budget and it made me feel close to her in a way that we were not.

Even with all that hype though, my once in a lifetime mother/daughter luncheon was only slightly better than this one, today, at Asadero 13 just outside the Tecate border. I think I shed a tear when they placed the barbequed pollo entero (whole bbq chicken) down on the table in front of me, with tortillas and grilled onions and chilis for a whopping $9 USD. Nothing tugs at a Wolfisaki heart string more than a good deal on a massive pile of food.

We’re staying at the largest winery in Mexico where they’ve allowed us to park in their lot overnight. We all sat outside drinking their Chardonnay and watching Oscar fight back tears while feeding the emaciated stray dogs paper bowls full of Gerty’s kibble as the sun went down over the palm trees and set deep into the thousand acre vineyard.

11.8.2021

Just one more overnight stop before we yeet ourselves right out of this country.

Tomorrow is border crossing day, and it’s also daylight savings day, which is cool... It’s cool, I mean who couldn’t use a bonus hour of full-blown anxiety? I’ve already chewed my nails so far past the quick that there are ten, tiny, painful heartbeats thumping in every fingertip.

One brain hemisphere is full of Instagram photos of deliciously cheap tacos and adventurous families beaming from their cute, converted camper vans overlooking the Sea of Cortez. The other half of my brain is overrun with memes and Facebook posts from distant relatives and middle school locker partners preaching about a shithole country ravaged by drugs and crime and rapists. I mean, they can’t both be right! Can they?

So I’m doing what comes naturally and invoking my age old remedy of losing sleep and mucking up my thoughts with all sorts of graphic content wherein my family meets our untimely demise. Your basic gunpoint robberies and ransom kidnappings and why not throw in some extortion for good measure. All of the bullet points that various media and socials hype it up to be, which is to say; complete, unavoidable, doom.

And, hopefully some delicious tacos and a few photos of my adventurous little family overlooking the Sea of Cortez.

11.7.2021

Oscar’s making pancakes and Finn is beside himself because pancakes are his favorite food and he knows he’s played his cards right today in getting them from both camps. For the first time on this trip we’re staying at our first RV Resort, near the Salton Sea - a desert oasis vacation in the 60's, now a toxic swamp of ruins. At first look, present day Salton Sea seems a little... Quirky, in the same vein as Joshua Tree, with its towering displays of garbage art and the UFO monomaniacs. But Ari has spent some time here while on photo shoot assignments and insists it’s quirky more like “The Hills Have Eyes” occupied by societal rejects, nihilists, the tin-hat wearing types who don’t take kindly to strangers, I assume.

Ari grew up with JJ in southern Oregon and they’ve been tight since the 6th grade. I’ve never been much of a champion of my own friendships, so I tend to glob onto JJ’s, which has worked out just fine for me so far. It doesn’t hurt that she has exceptional taste in strong, stunning women. I realize I’ve more or less squeezed in there on a fluke because she married my brother and maybe didn’t have much of a choice but to include me, but I’ll take it goddammit.

Ari drove out here from the place she now calls home in L.A. to spend a few days with us at our “resort” with her pup tent and Palomas, her Zeppelin T-shirt and Jimmy Page shag. She also has ADD like me which makes her my favorite new person to talk to - not having anything to do with talking to the same six people for a month straight, because when two grown females with ADD are free to communicate in the way God intended, it occurs on this beautiful neuroatypical wavelength where the moderators of our brains take a backseat and we don’t pay any mind to things like volume control, or taking turns, or keeping to safe, surface subjects. There’s likely a surplus of hand gestures and maybe some minor flailing involved if it helps convey a point. Sometimes I’m vaguely aware of little pools of spit bubbling up in the corners of my mouth as I yammer on excitedly.

To any normal outsider it might look absurd, animated, like something resembling a mutual stroke. To me though, a lot like Finny here beside me, gobbling down his face-sized pancakes, it’s just someone in their element, being the person they were put on this earth to be.

11.6.2021

When Oscar was still on the inside, he would stretch and push into me with such force that I could often grab hold of a tiny limb, mid-kick, and palpate from one bony landmark to the next. A jellybean ankle led to a mini snickers kneecap, and, sometimes, if I got lucky, I could curl my fingers down into my flesh and wrap them around a Hostess Donette of a shoulder girdle.

After awhile, he would grow annoyed at our game of tiny body tug of war and throw a feisty little fist into the meat of my ribcage, sucker punching me from the inside. Gasping quick, tiny breaths with my restricted air capacity, I would make my way back to my regularly scheduled third trimester past time of slumping in front of the open refrigerator, chugging milk straight from the carton with ambition so great it could rival any ten year old boy in the height of a growth spurt.

Within his first week on the outside, Oscar continued to show off his physical prowess by raising his head straight up off my chest and swiveling it side to side on its axle, taking in a 180 degree view of his new surroundings, which mostly consisted of Buck, our lab at the time, eagerly claiming any spitup leftovers directly from his face.

It didn’t come as much of a surprise then, when, at four months old Oscar out of nowhere up and power-crawled himself across the nasty Vegas hotel room carpet while we were on our first little family vacation. Three months later would find him marching down the sidewalk with all the stature and confidence of a tiny drunk commando. The thought briefly crossed our exhausted, punch-drunk minds that we might look into increasing our health insurance coverage before he got any the wiser that his limbs could all someday work together in sequenced, orchestrated movements.

Since then, Oscar's been his happiest whenever he’s dropping into vertical cement bowls and flying over mounds of hard-packed snow upon various boards beneath him, not always landing right side up again. Today though, was the day he learned how to rock climb. We arrived here yesterday afternoon, at this climbing gym who are kind enough to allow us a night stay in their parking lot. Even before dinner, Oscar had already figured out how to scale three different peaks, each time waving proudly down at me with his chiclet-toothed, ten year old grin, from halfway up to heaven. After dinner he begged to go back for more, and again, first thing this morning.

With each new feat he adds to his sports roster my mama heart gets rattled a little bit more. Pockets of worried little bubbles escape from the cracks and hairline fractures caused by motherhood - the years of stress and overuse. They float to the surface of me, before drifting up and away in search of him. From his jellybean ankles and mini-snickers kneecaps to his chiclet-toothed, ten year old grin, halfway up to heaven.

Any Portlander worth their weight in cloud cover knows that we pay our dues with wonky joints and Seasonal Affective Disorders to earn our vast green landscapes, our water that flows like liquid diamonds right from the tap, and, for a few brief months every year - a golden burst of sunshine so pure and magical that it’s been known to warm even the coolest of hipster hearts.

(Really. I’m sure there are local, artisanal, sustainably farmed cheese plates that last longer than a Portland summer.)

Even when we’re sleeping in our coats and beanies and waking up under little poofs of our own breath each morning, I have a cheater’s heart... Like some kind of itinerant who’s forsaken their hometown for precisely the opposite of greener pastures, where you can see in monotone for miles and non-potable water is an everyday threat.

But being back under some trees for a brief respite feels like a weighted blanket for the soul. The boys flung open the door and raced out to climb the first ones they could wrap their lanky little bodies around before we’d even finished parking, and the wafting smells of pine and sap are like a postcard from back home. I imagine it would read something like this:

Dearest: The sunshine might give you a warm welcome but it will leave you with nothing but wrinkles and cancer. Please come home, your Stumptown pour overs and Pendleton throw miss you.

With Love, Portland Oregon

PS: The microbrews say hi.

11.1.2021

I read somewhere that Madonna works out inside a glass box suspended from the ceiling in her NYC home gym. To the same end; I just completed a full weightlifting circuit inside a ‘98 Ford Jamboree while traveling across the Mojave desert. So, maybe, I guess, regardless of status quo or circumstances, we’re all just a bunch of sexy meat sacks marinating in our quests for happiness and a good life balance.

10.27.2021

Harvey’s down the road getting some work done, like the dazzling old gay man that he is. We’ll pick him up tomorrow with a new working heater, and a swagger to go with it I’m sure.

“One night in Vegas” with kids is all about pint-sized debauchery, like eating junk food, and jumping on the beds, and watching Spongebob marathons with commercials - a special treat unto itself, kids these days.

And even if we don’t all have to be together, we will still all be together... So we had no choice but to insist on adjoining hotel rooms with my brother and his family, the connecting doors open wide, like any self-respecting codependent family unit.

10.26.2021

My brother and I have a handful of things in common even aside from sharing an Astrological sign and a set of parents: one; a kind and decent and loving alcoholic. The other; a volatile and willful and eccentric savant.

We were both also blessed with ragey low blood sugar issues, a zest for a clean space with smart organizational systems, and just enough childhood trauma to keep us honest.

As we close in on our first month of traveling alongside eachother, he with his trusty dustbuster and I with my bulk supply of Magic Erasers, I’ve realized (and not for the first time) that one of the greatest things we’ve ever had in common is our choice in partners.

I’m often rocked back on my heels a bit by how we both managed to have our wits about us enough to marry such cool and laid-back people. They’re the sorts who can sniff out the onset of our bullish temperaments and know precisely when they can be squelched with a slightly overdue snack. They’re able to comfortably sit back and give us the floor when we hit our stride in a good cleaning sesh, our eyebrows all tangled up in each other, using every muscle in our faces to curl our mouths downward, hoping we seem focused, not manic.

We weren’t exactly modeled things while growing up, like feelings or nurturing relationships or reaching for our dreams, so we’re totes winging this. Lucky for us though, we found our persons, the ones who come up along beside us every day, steady us, and remind us that life is an adventure, where to next?

10.25.2021

Several decades into this life of mine but I can finally lay claim that I’ve seen the Grand Canyon with my own eyes.

It’s just like how Clark Griswold famously said, “grand indeed… Yep.”

I can also lay claim that our heater kicked the bucket in the heart of the twenty degree nights recently, because of course it did. P-noch raced out to get us a Little Buddy propane heater in the interim, between freezing to death and our appointment for a repair next week.

Our Little Buddy was doing its job just fine right up until we reached this cute lil' Canyon - in all of it’s warm and sunshiny glory by day, but dipping into below freezing by night.

After reading the fine print in the manual we learned that it doesn’t often work above 7,000 feet, and, true to its word, here we are at 7,035 feet smack dab. Making my Little Buddy a Big Loser.

Otherwise, as far as letdowns go - here at the three week mark of our trip - the extent of my struggles have been limited to running out of dry shampoo, and, on more than one occasion, I’ve had to extend my half-n-half with milk in my coffee, which admittedly can make for a suboptimal start to anyone's day.

And P-Noch, he forgot his beard trimmer, so eating - and watching him eat - has become a bit of an awkward event. Like when he bit into a sandwich and got just a single beard hair caught, oddly, right in between his two front teeth, while still attached to his chin from the other end, trapping his mouth in a half opened, mid-bite position in what he calls “the dorkiest pain” he’s ever known.

10.23.2021

I’m getting my sea legs under me and feeling pretty proud. Three weeks ago I could barely manage taking a whizz while cruising down ice rink smooth Interstate, but here I am, one-thousand-some-odd Harvey miles later and pleased as punch that I’ve just parted out an entire chicken on near washboard roads.

Pro-tip: engage the core and get a good horse stance under you and remember your elbows are extensions of your hands - don't be afraid to use them!

So, will definitely be adding that to my list of supah-skillz, right up there along with my God-given ability to sustain constant eye contact while not hearing even one word you’re saying, and, having never in my life run out of gas, or toilet paper. Yet.

10.20.2021