Punta Perula

Ron showed up yesterday and brought us $4000 which in Mexico means two hundred bucks in pesos which has cleared the way for us to sit still and do nothing. This photo is for Wayne who whined at me yesterday I don’t post enough beach pictures. Sigh. 

We have found the RV campground to be to our taste. And despite some cases of Covid among other campers we find ourselves sufficiently isolated we continue our lives unmolested. The other campers in this place treat each other with respect and everyone maintains a proper distance. The operators of the campground do their thing and never appear except to collect the modest campground fee.

I can’t tell if the seawater temperature is warm or if it is simply much warmer than the frigid waters we got used to north of here on the beaches of Sinaloa and Sonora. Whatever it is I spent two long stretches of time in the water yesterday and came nowhere near freezing. I regret the number of days we didn’t swim in the Keys because the “water was too cold.”

I got up early today, all of 7 am which because we’re in the Central Time Zone is just about when the sun rises so Rusty and I could meander the beach.

I was so tired last night after two swims some walks a few glasses of wine with dinner and conversation with Ron, a traveler with stories, I passed out.

A former colleague texted me the temperature forecast for Key West and because Rachel loves the cold I rejoiced for her at the prediction of 46 degrees.

I also got a message yesterday asking if I was homesick. One doesn’t want to be rude but home is where I park it these days. I miss the things, the people mostly, everyone misses when they are on the road and I shall miss knowing the reliable mechanic at Shifting Gears on Stick Island when the van breaks.

I miss bumping into Doug and envying his retired status. I miss ordering fried calamari and the eggplant stack to go from Square Grouper and riding the Vespa in the dusk to go pick them up. I miss dinner and conversation with Wayne and Chuck. I miss live theater and a con leche on the Bench during sound checks at the Green Parrot. I miss the mangrove walks with Rusty. Among other things. 

I don’t miss the state of public discourse in the US, the hair trigger tempers, the threats and the violence. I miss the self confidence of the country I emigrated to and the sense that if things aren’t right we can make them so. I don’t like the need by radicals to paint their political opponents as evil, or hell bent “on destroying America.”

To be a visitor in Mexico is to live in a serene bubble on the edge of world affairs. Without making any effort I have lost weight thanks mostly to the loss of inner turmoil worrying about the future of the 911 center and my suggestions to find a way ahead being ignored by my superiors. I guess they were right: no functions have been lost without me. 

Everyone is useful and no one is indispensable I reminded myself and walked away. Ron has to go back to the States  to work and from time to time Layne has to remind me we suffer no such constraints.

I hope when we return to Key West I will recognize myself as the traveler not the pasty tired office worker. I have no idea what lies ahead, illness exhaustion, mechanical failure, injury, one never knows. But that’s true anywhere and the best I can do is remind myself that the life lived to that  point is what counts. I had a motorcycle accident after a half century of riding. All the outsiders saw was me in the wreck, but what I saw was all the journeys, the commutes, the fun and the misery, the rain the cold, all the good and the bad that led to that moment. 

There are those who read these words  who get angry at me for defying convention and for “taking risks” and I wonder why anyone would follow this modest journey with that attitude. We aren’t pioneers, we aren’t carving new tracks across the planet, and god knows there are thousands of people wandering around living their own dreams on the road that you never hear from; trust me they are there! 

Mine isn’t a journey away from home, away from Gary and Barbara in Tennesse or Webb in South Carolina. It’s not a life that produces a sickness or an exhaustion, it’s given us opportunities to go and see and share lives otherwise not known. Watching snowflakes with Cousin Lynn (okay they were tiny but it was definitely snow) or climbing a saguaro canyon with Cousin David.

Punta Perula isn’t home and on Saturday we plan to get on the road and move our home down the road thirty minutes to a wild camp on the beach we’ve read about. It may work out or it may not. It’s how we live and as odd as it may sound I am happier than I have been in decades. No fixed abode suits me.

That’s about as honest as I can be to answer the question: am I homesick? I regret very little in my life and the regrets I have are the same ones you have about failed relationships, hurting people usually by accident and failing to measure up to one’s own standards. Nothing that happens on the road shall I regret. It’s not in my nature.Now I have to go for a swim and hunt down lunch in the village. Then a nap and another swim and a few more chapters of Nevada Barr before it’s lights out. How’s your day looking?