Bruce and I met through sailing. He worked as an engineer in Northern California at the time I lived in Santa Cruz but boats on the east coast drew us together. We are the proverbial chalk and cheese but share an iconoclastic view of the foibles of humanity and the world we are born into. He is my electro-mechanical sounding board when disaster strikes, especially in the imagination in the pre-dawn hours. He puts up with my intensity and deflates my pomposity as needed. He isn’t a saint but he is as close as might be necessary in my secular life.
He and his wife live in a rather comfortable trailer park in Benson enjoying those amenities that sometimes we miss as we sweep sand out of intimate creases of our swimsuits and look with a jaundiced eye on a sprayer of cold water. We are online as we moochdock in his drive and last night Layne remarked we never had a signal this strong in Mexico outside our nights in the Hilton in Tuxtla Gutierrez in Chiapas. That was a peculiar interlude with room service and strong Wi-Fi our reward for being blocked by a citizen protest in Mexico’s poorest state!
Speaking of which I had a Mexican moment my first day sunk into the land of lotus eaters found oddly enough in this Sonoran desert.
The showers have two units, one a narrow average monastic cell fit for purpose but not like the handicapped stall, an expansive regal two part room with space for a camper to spread his belongings and shower in a manner to which he is long since not accustomed. I prepared for my encounter with hot water and none was forthcoming. Dammit! Mexico strikes again, I swore in disbelief as I stared helplessly at the dry shower head. Luckily it is low season and there are few campers hanging around to brave one hundred degree days in the desert.
I left my stuff in t(e handicapped stall and removed myself a towel and soaps to the upright coffin next door. It was full of lovely water such that I could then repair, sparkling clean to my boudoir next door and emerge like a fresh new butterfly to face the world, dressed…in yesterday’s shirt. Ah yes supply issues strike again.
I have mentioned previously my shortage of shirts torn variously over the weeks by a dog on the beach, a barbed wire fence and an awkwardly placed thorn bush that ambushed me somehow. My intact pink shirt (which started the journey a manly maroon color washed out by the Mayan sun) has accumulated several less than attractive marks and stains impervious to sturdy Mexican laundry ladies, which marks are unfortunately suggestive of either incontinence or butchery by the wearer.
The back of the port of entry at Naco, the exit to Arizona.
That we might more easily sail through the Immigration inspection at Naco, I wore my sole surviving respectable shirt, a sober shade of dark blue free of too many wrinkles but also stains scratches tears of poorly executed repairs. That shirt has had to do duty as we wait for the mysterious supply chain monster to disgorge some replacements from the bowels of container ships or Malay sweat shops while a quick search through the racks of several box stores in Sierra Vista yielded nothing but oddly shaped and decorated shirts apparently designed for broad chested hunchbacks with stick arms and pirouette narrow waists. I looked around and saw no such body types in evidence and concluded I was late to the party and summer shirts are gone. Or local ballet dancers had cornered the market.
I think Rusty is enjoying being back. He lives an ordered life on a leash proudly striding up the lanes between parked RVs with his tail high flapping gently from side to side, his signal that all is well in his canine brain. When we spot other dog walkers he goes on alert for a second, no doubt remembering the sudden riot of Mexican street dog ambushes, but he slacks off when he spots them all leashed up and prancing along in proper suburban style.
Layne likes to say I want Rusty to have more freedom than he wants himself. He spends the day lounging as he used to on Cudjoe Key wandering between the gravel drive and the shaded overhangs popping indoors from time to time to cool off with the adults in the air conditioning. He knows change is on the way, as it always has been since we gave him a home and I suspect he won’t mind some wild camping at altitude away from the burning desert heat. We have some chores to do, booster Covid shots, and I want to get an alignment to check the tire work done in Hermosillo as poor alignment will kill our expensive Michelin Agilis 3 tires…and we are planning our next moochdock in northern Arizona next week.
After that we will boondock in the mountains in cooler air (I hope!) away from the forest fires north of Flagstaff. I read about that and was struck by an irony. Our wild camping in Mexico sometimes requires some clean up as public toilets are not widely available and the concept of removing you4 trash or burying your crap is not widely practiced…and I read the fire wrecking access to land north of Flagstaff was started by a camper burning his toilet paper! He left it smouldering in these dry forests and surprise, surprise! it set off a conflagration. Apparently he is not a dedicated outdoorsman but an unemployed wanderer looking for work from Louisiana so I doubt he will be in much of. A position to repair his well intentioned mistake. Oh well I trust they will overreact and ban camping or some other draconian response to stupidity. We travel around with a trash can of toilet paper and dump it in a dumpster from time to time keeping the toilet unclogged and easy to drain. If you were wondering. Meanwhile we pretend to be desert rats.
