Playing with blocks

The bricks and blocks are going up.
As soon as the floor was set, the truckloads of blocks and more cement arrived. It seemed to be going almost too fast. I had drawn my sketches where the walls, doors and windows would go, but I wasn’t getting my “mulling it over” time.
Fortunately, I still have my councillors, our neighbors, Bob & Dale to talk things through with, and clarify a few ideas. The plumbing was an early fait accompli as the drain pipes were set into the concrete poured floor.
I like to design kinetically, so when the floor was established, I came in with some boards and big felt markers to show where the walls of the dividing section -- half bath and closets would fit.


Then came the decisions for the location of the electrical plugs and switches. With a little experience from last time, I was able to incorporate the conduits into channels inside the block walls, rather than drilling through the walls and ceiling later, and thus avoid a maze of conduits along the outer walls and roof. Already I have cut 19 plug outlets running around the perimeter of the rooms (you can never have too many plugs), and several switch places, and run the wires to the location of the sub-panel.
Each couple of hours I walk through the rooms, monitoring the walls going up and marking the openings for the 8 windows and one sliding door.
Even tonight, after our workers had gone, I realized that another light and switch was required, so will be threaded in tomorrow morning before they pour the wall headers.

I am pleased to say, that my guys, Lucio and Paulito are doing a pretty good job. They put in full days from 7 am to dusk, and are easy to talk to - as well as I can with my Spanish building terms, and otherwise they talk cheerily in native Mayan.
The best news is that so far the walls seem to be going up straight.

The Machine Age

In our five years here in PaaMul and before that our travel up and down the west coast of Mexico, we have had opportunity to observe many building sites. Actually it is hard to miss them if you are traveling through a village or here in the PaaMul park, because of the tradition and practice of mixing concrete on the ground, right out front, on the road or street. First comes the piles of gravel and sand, then the bags of cement and stacks of re-bar.
Then come the workers with their short handled shovels who portion out the ingredients in a pile and adding water, start to mix it all by hand. This works fine when making mortar, which in only needed in small quantities and are transported onto the work-site in pails, but for mixing up larger batches of concrete, even if they are mixing a large batch of sand, gravel and cement, there is only so large a mix-patch you can handle with short shovels, so it takes a while, mixing and pouring over and over again and makes for lumpy, patchy surfaces.




Well much to our surprise, two pieces of motorized equipment showed up at our build. The first was a gasoline riven thumper to tamp down the calica fill that is the base for the floor. This replaced the hand tamper and water hose technique that went on for days when we first were building the other side of our palapa floor a couple of years ago. The thumper hopped around our casita base for several hours, but it compacted very well, I think.


The bigger deal was the arrival of a motorized cement mixer. The first one any of us had seen in PaaMul and attracted a lot of attention. With a crew of four to keep the mixer going, running in and out with the wheelbarrows, and another guy “screeding” the pour, we got the whole floor done in one day. And to top it off, the floor was very level and quite smooth. The modern techniques didn’t go as far as “floating” the surface to get a finished surface such as we would have in our basements or garages up north, but at least is was quite level, and will be quite easy to lay a finished floor.
Yes these motorized tools went faster, and did a better job, but it sure was noisy for a couple of days.

The 3rd Little Piggy...

“The first little piggy built his house of straw. The second little piggy built his house of wood, and the third little piggy build his house of bricks...” Well you probably remember what happened. “The big bad wolf...etc.”

From that old fairy tale, let me take you through a brief history of Paa Mul. PM started out as tent camping on the beach, which evolved to a trailer park, which evolved to people building palapas for shade next to their trailers, which evolved to building bigger palapas and parking the rvs under them, which evolved to adding patios and outside kitchens which evolved to building part of the structure with cement blocks, and then to building mostly out of block. These are still all under the classic PM palapa.

This may be obscure minutia to most of you readers but bear with me.
Paa Mul is technically a “trailer park” and up to the recent past, all of PM palapas included rvs. Some of the older trailers have been here for 20 or more years and like trailer parks anywhere and especially here, these old trailers were not standing up well to the years of tropical weather. Some of these trailers have been modified and upgraded with stucco exteriors, more substantial floors, new doors and windows, etc. But underneath, they were still flimsy rvs.
A couple of years ago, PM palapa construction went through a phase of “faux” trailers, in which the trailer part of the building was permitted to be built on a steel beam frame, off the ground, with an old axle under the frame, and the rooms built from lumber and sheetrock. Quite complicated and expensive.
Then last winter a few palapas were being built from the ground up with all rooms of cement block. This is basic tropical construction -- very sturdy and inexpensive.
Last spring, we applied for a renovation permit from the office. For unclear reasons, they brought a halt to these cement block non-trailer structures.

Over the summer we found “new/old” trailer and brought it down to be our permanent home here. But as often is said here in Paamul, “Just wait, things will change”.
When we here arrived a couple of weeks ago, we saw that the all-block building had started again. This time our visit to the office was greeted with positive response and our all-brick casita construction is a go.
I brought out my plans, got a quote from our Mayan builder, David, and we are under way. We have moved the trailer across the road to another lot and will live there for the next month or so. The foundations have been dug and this morning as I sat in the loft and wrote this, there was a crew of 4 mixing concrete to pour the footings.




This “casita” will essentially replace the footprint of the trailer, with two rooms and a half bath adding up to approximately 12 x 34 feet and 8 feet tall. Being all cement and stucco, it will nicely compliment our existing rooms -- the kitchen, living, dining, bathroom and bodega.

In the interest of full disclosure, our Mexican home will be made of straw (the palapa roof), wood (the palapa posts and beams), but mainly of bricks (and tile). So I say, bring on the big bad wolf (hurricane), let him/her huff and puff and our home should stand.

Its Ancient History

Almost everyone who travels into Mexico will become aware of the ancient cultures that once populated this part of the world and the cities they built. Over the last decade of traveling in Mexico we have visited several of these ancient sites, and walked on stones that were laid so many centuries ago.

The indigenous people of Mexico domesticated of corn about 9000 years ago, and went on to build large, complex societies.
Much of this Mesoamerica legacy stands in the remains of pyramids scattered through the country and down into Central America. According to one source, there are 4000 separate sites of ancient ruins, most of which have not been uncovered. These cities, each flourished for many centuries, and for various reasons, expired, and were abandoned. The jungle then grew back around them and over them, and they mostly disappeared.

We stopped at the RV Park in Cholula and walked across the city to the site of The Great Pyramid of Cholula, also known as Tlachihualtepetl. It is the largest archaeological site of a pyramid (temple) in the Americas. The pyramid stands 55 metres (180 ft) above the surrounding plain and in its final form it measured 400 by 400 metres (1,300 by 1,300 ft).





We got a very good guide, Proferio, a retired biology teacher, who spoke excellent, if deliberate English. He first took us through the museum and explained the models, and then on a hike around the site. When the Spanish arrived, they built a church on the top of the pyramid.

A couple of days later we arrived at an rv park we knew near Palenque.
The Palenque ruins date back to 100 BC to its fall around 800 AD. After its decline it was absorbed into the jungle, but has been excavated and restored and is now a famous archaeological site attracting thousands of visitors.




By 2005, the discovered area covered up to 2.5 km² (1 sq mi), but it is estimated that less than 10% of the total area of the city is explored, leaving more than a thousand structures still covered.


As we approached the coast we had an opportunity to stop along the highway near several more sites. We were at a Pemex (gas station) when the attendant spoke some English. We were considering staying there for the night, and the Pemex guy, Abram mentioned that he was soon coming off shift and could take us to visit the nearby ruins a of Kohunlich. We all, including Pippin, squeezed into Don & Pat’s van and spent a lovely afternoon hiking around another remnant of ancient life.
The site was settled by 200 BC, but most of the structures were built in the Early Classic period from about 250 to 600 AD.






Abram showed us a tree that had peeling bark, which the locals call a “tourist tree”. Yes, it is because many of the pink people from the north come down for their holidays and get sunburned.

It is somewhat mind-bending to see these old sites and hear about these ancient history. We have learned that little is clearly known about these ancient cultures. Their populations grew and subsided several times. They were scientifically advanced in many areas, and very spiritual, building great temples wherever they settled. For this they needed to cut down vast forests of trees to burn limestone to make cement which may have caused a breakdown in their water and food supply.
There are few remaining traces of their written history, as when the Spanish arrived in the 1500’s, they destroyed all that they found. Still, their descendants have survived and largely adapted and integrated to modern life. True indigenous people make up a very small proportion of Mexican population. The vast majority is comprised of Mestizoes -- people of mixed heritage. A nice blend to what there is from the old and the new, I think.

SMA / GTO/ DH

We drove a day and a half from the US border to San Miguel de Allende, one of our favorite stopover points driving through Mexico. This is our 5th visit to SMA, and a great place to take a breather and smell the fresh air.
On some trips we have spent a week or two here where we have taken intensive Spanish language classes,festivals and and once the “Day of The Dead” celebrations, as well as lots of strolling along the bustling streets and markets. If you don’t know, SMA is one of the more popular places for US and Canadian ex-pats to visit and settle. At 6000 feet, it has an “ideal” climate -- never too hot in the summer, and at this latitude, pleasantly warm in the winter. It is a haven for many artists and musicians with an active bilingual cultural life.


Each visit we scour the Artisans Market and pick up a few things for our palapa.


On Sunday we lingered in the main plaza and eavesdropped on a couple of the strolling mariachi bands.

Our regular rv place, La Siesta, is now under re-development, so we are very comfortably parked at the San Ramon Balianerio just a few kms up the road. As well as having a warm swimming pool and a hotel, it is a working farm with fields and animals on the property. It is just enough off the road to be peaceful in the evenings, and fortunately, does not have barking dogs and crowing roosters nearby, which always seem to be in the next yard in city parks.

Yesterday we took a day trip to Guanajuato and Dolores Hidalgo, two other special cities in this area.


Guanajuaoto (GTO) is a Unesco Heritage City, is set neatly in a valley of narrow winding streets, stairways and colorful buildings. It is also known for its university and cultural life.


We took the fanicular up to an overlook place for an amazing vista view. Susan suggested that it looks like looking into a bowl of brightly coloured candy.


In Guanajuato has a unique traffic system where virtually all traffic is diverted to underground tunnels, sort of a subway system, except for vehicles. They are dimly lit, narrow, and usually just one lane next to parked cars. We had a little help from a tourist guide who hopped on the back of the truck, calling out directions, “a la derecha” (right) “derecho” (straight), and “esquierda” (left) and led us to a parking garage near the plaza centro. At the parking garage, Don got out to guide me through the forward and back turning to get us around the tight turns and ramps up to the only available spot on the 5th level. Tunnel driving and parking garages -- just part of the adventure!


We drove back through Delores Hidalgo, which is the centre for the ceramic industry in Mexico. There are dozens of factories and warehouses with huge displays of their products. Once again we found a few items to add colourful Mexican winter home.

No Warranty -- No Recall!

The gypsy life of living in a “caravan” has now reached five years full time, 80,000 kms, and still going strong...


It was summer, 2006, when we packed up our house in North Vancouver, put a few remaining household possessions and keepsakes into storage and took to the road with our truck and 5th wheel. After that winter in Mexico, we came up to Ontario to visit our kids, and have made Ontario our regular summer home.


Our trusty 06 Chevy Silverado diesel passed a significant mark this summer, as it crossed 160,000 kms (100,000 miles). It has been very reliable, having only needed oil changes and tires. So a couple of weeks ago, I treated her to all new fluids, as in: tranny, differentials, rad, brakes, etc. One of the cooling hoses had a small leak and was replaced, and we should be good to go for many more years. This is our second GM truck, (our first was a 99 GMC 1/2 ton) and I am a great believer in the quality and durability of domestic trucks, especially the GM’s.

As for our Cardinal 5th wheel trailer home, it has served us well. We have adapted to living in 250 sq. ft. A couple of months ago, I was reading an article in the travel section of the Toronto Star where the reporter was bemoaning his experience rv-ing across Canada with his family (which included two teen-agers). I wrote him a letter suggesting that he was missing a few points. I said in part: “Space is relative. We have lived in all sizes of houses, with all kinds of family members. All you need is a little willingness, and, you can accommodate living space to almost any size.
“We have rv-ed, full time, all over North America for 5 years. Just today, sitting under our awning, reading and watching the birds, I asked my wife when she was thinking we'd be moving back to a house. "Not for a while I hope", I was happy to hear.”

This summer I went through a small ledger which I keep a record of our various trips. Driving from Ontario to the Texas/Mexico border is over 3000 kms. On our trips north through the US, we have usually meandered a bit, going along the Gulf Coast states and up the Atlantic. We have been to New Orleans, Charleston, Savannah, and Washington each a couple of times. Our longest drive through the US has been 4600 kms.
Once we cross the border into Mexico, it takes at least 2800 kms to reach our beach home in Paamul. In these five years we have been around much of Mexico - up and down the Pacific coast, the interior, and along the east Gulf coast.
With five years of the north-south, and some trips around Canada, I added up the distances that the Cardinal trailer had traveled and was surprised it added up to 80,000 kms. That is twice around the circumference of the earth! I think that is unusual milage for travel trailers.
So we have decided to give our Cardinal some rest. We have “winterized” it for the first time and put it in storage for our return to Canada in the spring.
We found a second 5th wheel trailer, and now taking it down to Paamul to be installed in our palapa. It is a Prowler, about the same size, a little older but in good shape. So we moved “house” transferring our goods, sorting what we will want to bring that will remain in Mexico and what gets left behind for our summers in Canada. Well, actually, our summer and winter stuff is much the same, shorts and t-shirts with a few pair of jeans and a fleece or two. Which sandals and running shoes are we leaving behind and which go? Tough choices!

I suppose we will continue to drive -- it is a beautiful continent, and there is more we want to explore, but it will be more relaxing to travel without the 12,000 lbs on the hitch. We might put a small camper on the back of the truck, but eventually we will start flying down.
Who knows what the future holds?

As I am finishing this report, we are in Austin Texas, about ready to cross into Mexico. We have met up with Susan’s brother and wife, from BC, and will be showing them our route and our favorite stops along the way. We try to follow the dictum of “Life in the slow lane -- it is not about the destination, but the journey.”

Stormy weather...

For all the years we have been rving, we have been aware that when Mother Nature gets rowdy, it is often the trailer parks which suffer the worst damage. Hey, that is where we live!
Our place on the beach in Mexico is in an area that hurricanes sometimes visit. When a hurricane is forming it is tracked for days. The last hurricanes in the Yucatan were in 2005, when one battered Cancun, 80 km to the north, and another made land near Chetumal about three hours drive to the south of us. There were some storm surges that affected Paamul, a few of the older, smaller palapas were damaged and some roof repair was required. Hurricanes which form over the ocean are followed for days, and their paths are forecast with enough time for people to batten down the hatches and get in a vehicle and generally avoid them.

However, tornadoes (twisters) are different. I’m no expert on the whole meteorological thing, but from what I see, twisters happen here and there as storms pass over wide inland areas where people live and rvers like us travel. Tornadoes form quickly and within minutes are creating havoc, with their paths having little predicable pattern. However, they are usually small in dimension and (we cross our fingers) they won’t find us.
When we left Texas a week ago as there was some heavy weather in the forecast. As we drove through Arkansas, we heard that there were storms behind us. When we stopped in Nashville we had a few nervous days as it rained hard for periods but the worst passed to the north and the south of us. Then as we headed further east in bright sunshine, we heard the news reports of the massive destruction that has raged through wide swaths of the US southeast.


The next morning we drove from Tennessee into Virginia and we saw first-hand some of the destruction. The news showed pictures of whole flattened neighborhoods and a death toll reaching 340! Ayee!

Sometimes I think we’re the Blessed Irish...
“May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields...”

Notes from the Road North

Packing up our winter home is never easy. Each year we have added more stuff to our palapa that needs to be dealt with. Our last week in Paamul was also very hot and humid, so I suggested to Susan that we take it in little bites -- work an hour, then escape to the A/C of the trailer, work another hour, and go for a swim, etc. The swims were particularly refreshing and energizing.

Still we got things together, on schedule and Wed. morning were hitching up the truck. Then a setback. Well, 3 actually, as in bad luck comes in threes...
The first started a couple of days earlier as I was servicing the two batteries that run the 12 volt circuits in the trailer. One of them was way down in water, and when I added more, got all hot and stinky. These are special deep-cycle batteries that work hard for us 12 months a year. The first set I had to replace after two years. I replaced them premium ones and they have now worked for nearly 4 years. So with one battery out, I bypassed it and we are now working on the one left. With less reserve power, it will restrict the time we are able to be dry-camping.
The front of the trailer rests on two jacks that raise and lower it to fit on to the truck hitch. The jacks are driven by a low-geared 12 volt electric motor that always seems to be straining hard to lift its weight. The two jacks are connected by a drive shaft and that morning, one of the jacks decided that it had had enough and snapped off its connecting pin. The one jack still worked, so I brought out our little bottle hydraulic jack, and between the two were able to raise up the front enough to get it hitched.
And the third; well, the bedroom slide is acting wobbly. I help it go in and out, but that too will have to be fixed when we get to an RV service depot NOB.

With consideration to all the fatigue and delay of the pack-up, we drove just 4 hours down the road to a lovely park in Chetumal, where we overlooked the sea and a brisk warm breeze blowing from it.
On many of our trips up and down Mexico, we have overnighted in Pemex (the Mexican national fuel company) truck stops. They are usually free, though sometimes you tip the night watchman, they are always noisy, as they are right on the roadways, with transport trucks coming and going. and usually hot and sticky, because we only have one little 12 volt fan.
This time I set a schedule that would take us from RV Park to RV Park.
So the second night, we made our first visit to a park in Villahermosa. It was handy, just a couple blocks off the highway, much quieter, and much cooler with all our electric fans going.

The next day I got overoptimistic. Going west down Hwy. 150, there is a long stretch of expensive toll road that has always been in very poor shape. Last fall, as we drove down with Joe & Marilyn, he showed us the alternate “Libre” (free) road that runs sort of parallel but through farms, villages and towns. It is a much prettier drive, but slower.


I knew it would be slower, but how much slower, we soon found out. There were just two narrow lanes, filled all kinds of traffic, from transport trucks to old farm vehicles. And there seemed to be more villages than I remembered, each with their many topes (speed bumps) to ease our big trailer over. Then a couple of hours into the route, the traffic came to a complete stop. A few vehicles would go through, and then stop again. Eventually we were at the front. I walked up to see what was going on. It was a protest by local people about injustices. There were plenty of signs and cel phones. “Codeci Demands Justice” and “We Demand the Liberation of Cuauhtemoc”

There were perhaps fifty people milling around. The police came and left, and came back and left again. Assurances that it would be just a while longer dragged on. Fortunately, we had our diesel truck that could idle forever, and we had our books. Four hours later, they pulled back the barricade and the huge lineups started moving. By this time we were well out of range of our destination, and so found a truck stop and settled in as best we could. The afternoon temp had risen to nearly 100F and it barely cooled at night.


The next day we got into the highlands (over 7000 ft.) to Cholula, and settled in to a tidy RV park surrounded by blooming Jacaranda trees -- with Susan’s favorite beautiful purple blossoms. Cholula a suburb of Puebla, and we rested and did some sight seeing.
Puebla is a planned city begun in the 16th century to be the stop-over between Mexico City and Veracruz. Work started with the main plaza and the government buildings and the huge cathedral around the square.

About a block away was the oldest house in Puebla, the “Castle del Dean” which was finished in 1580. Quite different from the frontier cities to the north.

Puebla is the birthplace of Mole Poblano, the unique sauce that I wrote about last month. We got on the local transit bus and it took us racing to Puebla Centro where we walked around and then started asking about where we could get a good Mole for lunch. We ended up at a hotel off the centro, where we had a five course lunch for under 10 dollars. I soaked up all the mole sauce with tortillas. Yum.

From Cholula, we had a short drive to Queretero another city we have long wanted to check out, but with the trailer tethered to the truck, we stayed in the rev park. The next day, we spent our last Mexican night in Matahuela. That park at the Las Palmas Hotel, was another good addition to our travel possibilities. It has a large clean pool that was just the thing after a hot afternoon drive. It also has great wifi, and checking the rv.net forum, I found there was another couple in an rev park a couple of hours north of us who were inquiring about different crossing to the US.

As many of my readers will know, there has been a lot of reports about the trouble and violence in some of the border areas. The general consensus is now to avoid our old route through the congested east side. I responded that we were returning north right up Hwy. 57 (the way we came down last fall) and would be happy to hook up and lead the way. We left Matahuela early and joined up with Randall & Pam a couple of hours later, and had a very easy trip up to the frontier and breezed through the border, getting to US customs by 5 pm.

We love Mexico. We love the Mexican people we meet. WE love the friends that we have made who share our winters. However, some aspects of Mexico’s casual nature and random bureaucracy can be frustrating.
The roads and highways are getting better every year, but navigating the signage and the routing can be challenging and tiring.
Crossing into the US, being given a thorough cavity search (the truck and trailer cavities) by surly US border officials, it was still some relief to be back in the land of English; the land of wide roads and good highway signs; the land of GPS;and the land of 30 amp electric.
Our first night in Texas was spent at the border town of Eagle Pass, inn the RV parking area of a casino. What a culture shock. I have never seen the appeal of casinos, even Las Vegas, but for convenience, we wandered through the casino to the overpriced and overcooked buffet restaurant. To get there we had to go through the maze of the slot machines, through crowds of glassy eyed people in front of blinking lights and ringing bells. It seemed so gloomy, so commercial, so inauthentic, and so unsocial. Of course the casino offered no wifi (the outside world shall not enter the gambling den) and now on our second night out of Mexico, we are at a park just outside of San Antonio, near where we will be getting our trailer serviced, and while they advertise wifi, it is almost non-functional. Hmnn, after enjoying good internet all our trip through Mexico, we feel a little cut off from the big wide world.

Our six months in Mexico are over for another year, and now we have a few weeks to wander through the US. Each trip we see some neat places and meet some good people. WE will never see it all, but we will enjoy the journey.

Mañana Month

I haven’t been blogging for several weeks, as many days I felt, “mañana...”.
Mañana everyone knows is Spanish for “tomorrow” -- as in, “I’ll do it tomorrow”. Its one of the aphorisms down here that when you ask a a Mexican “When?” and you get the answer “Mañana,” it doesn’t necessarily mean “tomorrow”, but rather, “just not today...”.

A whole bunch of stuff was happening through Feb. and most days were too busy and nights too tired. Ahh, mañana...
Susan’s brother, Rob and wife Cheryl came to visit again for a couple of weeks. They have really taken to this area and once again rented a car for a week and did some exploring.
Of course we did a lot of eating, and one night Rob & Cheryl put together a Mole chicken dish, which was delicious. (Mole is pronounced like olé!)

I didn't get a picture of our plates but it looked something like this pic.
Mole Chicken is a classic Mexican dish, and over many years, I have tried it several times in restaurants and never quite liked it even though I thought I should. Besides spices, most mole contains a lot of dark chocolate, and I like chocolate. However, since that dinner a few weeks ago,I have been converted. I have even had it at taco stands, and Susan made mole chicken at home again. Maybe it is an acquired taste, but I am now all about the Mole. Of course it is not that simple, because there is mole and there is mole. At all the big food stores here there are vats of several kinds of thick, brown or green, suspect looking mole paste. I’m not competent with my culinary Spanish to make informed choices. Some of it is labeled with “dulce” which means sweet, which we chose to avoid. The one we tried the first time was labeled with “anjoli” which we call Angelina Jolie. Then we found out that “anjoli” means “sesame seeds”.

Music Update --
Our band went on hiatus when Carlos returned to Spain, and Mike’s family when for a trip to Guatamala, but Jim and I soldiered on with rehearsing a few new tunes for another Saturday Night Live. This time I brought out a Chris Smither song, “Don’t Call Me Stranger”, and a Valentine‘s dedication to Susan of Leonard Cohen’s “I’m Your Man”.

It was another lovely night with several of our previous performers plus contributions from our neighbor, Dot, with a poem about gossip in Paamul,

and Susan recited the classic “Albert and the Lion”. Our featured set was from Kevin Shipman, who worked for years as a successful musician.

Fitting a square peg into a round hole...

For the past weeks, I have been slowly building a screen room in our loft. We love sleeping up there in the fresh air, but it was a big nuisance getting tangled in the mosquito net hanging over the bed. So I would lie there thinking about how to enlage the space. The new room takes up about half the loft. Others who have build screen rooms said that the downside was looking up to a screen that collected dirt and dust above your head. So I designed it to have a short solid wall along one side, which then becomes a solid section of ceiling going up on an angle under the roof beams. Then the balance of the ceiling and the other three walls are screen. As the palapa is build with poles, sticks and grass, its structure is not square or straight. So every piece of the framework had to be carefully measured and fitted one by one. We chose to coat the plywood sheets, frame and trim pieces with varnish. Two coats of varnish on every piece after it was measured and cut took a lot of brushing and waiting for drying. So what I concieved to be a simple framework structure, went to go on and on. It is virtually done, with just a few pieces of trim to install, but we are sleeping in the new space -- quite grand!

Hey-- I’m with the band...

When some folks get to talking about gettin’ old, as in being retired and not having much ‘regular’ stuff to do, they might say it‘s a good time to tap into some dreams of their youth. To revisit their childhood, to get down to some fun stuff, to go and play.
Of course it is important to find a good yard to play in, where you can find some good playmates.
Such a place is our winter home here in Paamul.
I wrote in this blog last winter about the joy of rekindling my old folk singing roots. We had a “guitar /song group” that met once a week. Our group, Joe, Mike R., Jim and I have been joined by a couple of others, Kahish and sometimes Richard and others.
There are a couple of others in PM who are working on their music : Mike M. and Carlos. Mike, who with his wife Veronique, have a boutique vineyard and winery in Quebec, has taken up the Fender electric guitar, and Carlos, a massage therapist, who comes to Paamul from Spain is a drummer.
You know when you throw a pebble in a pond and it makes ripples? Well, if you want to make some bigger ripples, you got to get some rock!

Rock on!!!
Jim, who started in our guitar group a couple of years ago, decided to take up the bass. He has always wanted to be in a rock band, so this year, asked me to join him, Mike and Carlos and see what we could put together. We only had Carlos for a month, so we had to work quickly. We had access to a couple of amps and one mic and began to make some noise.
Once we started, we seemed to click. First we thought we might only work on a few tunes, but it seemed to be going well and we added a few more.
We rehearsed a few different places in the park and attracted a few listeners. Then we were invited to play at a party at Lester’s house. Our debut went pretty well, with our 10 song repertoire and we thought we should do it again. So I came up with the idea of an all music evening in our back yard -- Saturday Night Live!

I set up a lighted stage area on our patio and put out the word. It was a great evening as about 40 people brought their chairs and drinks. This time we had our guitar/ song group join in with a few tunes each, ending with “the band” .

We have been throwing around a few names for our group but nothing has stuck.


One more time!
There is a popular bar in Playa del Carmen called Bad Boys. It is right on the beach, and two nights a week, it has a live rock ‘n’ roll house band, “The Nasty Bastards” The “Bastards” are a 6 man group who do straight ahead rock cover tunes. It‘s their tradition to finish the evening with guest appearances, usually vocalists who join the band to sing a number from the band’s playbook. We thought we might show up as a group and give it our shot.
What a blast! The place was packed - drinking, dancing and enjoying the big sound system. As I was listening to the “Bastards” performing, I feared we were way out-classed. However, we were on the list and couldn’t stop now. Besides, a couple dozen of our Paamulians had come along to see us.
After the band’s break, we were called up and shown where to plug in, and before we could take a breath, we were off. When the MC asked us our name, we jokingly said it was “To Be Determined” He added a “Yet”, then shortened it to “YTBD”
We knew we could only play a few tunes, so we started of with Dion’s “The Wanderer”, then “Love Potion #9”, and “Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be The Day”. When the guy in charge gave us the nod for one more, we jumped to Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B Goode” Mike was shredding on the lead guitar, Carlos was hopping on the drums, Jim was driving a wonderful big bass sound, and yours truly thrashed out the rythm guitar and vocal.
Yes, it seemed that we did okay. I thought it was our best. Several strangers in the audience give us props and our friends were most complimentary. I just wished I could have been out front to hear it too.
As our group sauntered along 5th Avenue back to the parking lot, I will admit to feeling a little high. No doubt this was helped by the triple chocolate Blizzard I was eating from the local DQ!

Two-wheel Tune-up.

Susan and I have old bikes for riding around Paamul. I bought mine at a yard sale about 20 years ago - a real solid Kuwahara mountain bike - no shocks, but strong enough to last for years more. I was riding through Guelph Lake Park a couple of years ago, a very popular biking place, and another rider commented as he overtook me “Wow, a classic”. I took it as a compliment.
Anyway, I have hauled our bikes south and north for years, bouncing around on a bike rack, adding dirt and other road detritus to their patina.
(I’ve always liked the word “patina”. While it properly refers to tarnish on bronze and other metals, or the wear and weathering of lovely things like wooden furniture, I often use the exalted “patina” to glorify an old pair of work jeans, paint splatters on my shoes or the state of my t-shirts from my careless eating habits. But I digress.)
After several seasons of wintering first on the Pacific coast and then on this Caribbean, the coastal salt air has added a lot of rust. As some gears were not used regularly, some metal parts had gotten jammed up good. Maybe this was the time to give my “Classic K” a little service.
I had thought about a bike tune-up last summer up in Canada. My main sprocket gear shifter did not budge at all, and the rear shifter was sticky. Several bike shops quoted me a “Spring Tune-up Special” of $75. (reg. price $90.) with parts extra. That seemed steep for my old machine, as I had only paid $60 for it in the first place. Still not having all my gears did limit its capabilities around the Ontario hills.
When I unpacked the bike this fall, I found that one tire would not hold air for long, and with the other issues I lifted it up into the truck and took it into town.
I knew this little bike shop near the tennis park, and took it there. I communicated that the rear tire wouldn’t hold air -- new tube please. No problem. Quanto? (How much?) $25 (pesos -- the Mexican symbol for pesos is the same as our dollar sign, very confusing).
Then I pointed out that the cables running from the handle bars to the gear shifters were badly rusted. Change them? Si, $40. So two guys went to work on my bike, installed the new tube, and then sprayed penetrating fluid and other oils on the shifters. The main sprocket shifter, which hadn’t moved in more than a year, was frozen, requiring a new shifter. How much? $90. Okay. So they put on the new shifter, got all the gears adjusted and working well, give it an overall spray and wipe-down with silicone, and I’m good to go.
Altogether, it took close to 45 minutes. Time to pay up?
Quanto? Noventa. Ninety? For everything? Si.
As we were adding repairs to my bike, they were giving me the running total, not the individual costs, as I had assumed.
In the end, I gave the guy a hundred with many thanks. A hundred pesos is somewhere just over 8 dollars Canadian. A good job, a good deal, and I’m a good little boy riding my bike again.

Happy New Year in rhyme...

Last night, as we were enjoying New Years Eve dinner with our neighbors, Bob and Dot, we of course, got to talking about the year past and the year ahead. Then Dot pulled out a sheet of paper and shared the poem below.
I suppose it is a little personal, but I would like to share it, firstly because it is so sweeeeet and secondly, because it expresses a bit more of what I try to portray of our life down here.
Regular readers of this blog will know that we met Bob and Dot our first year here in Paamull, and after we both decided to build palapas, chose to build them side by side and share in a lot of the planning, building and finishing. We have our back yards and patios conjoined and Susan and Dot do our gardening together. Bob and I designed and built our kitchen cabinets together. We are always sharing rides in to town for building supplies and groceries.
As Paamul is an ex-pat community far from our northern homes, I observe that it is quite usual for this sharing and caring with our fellow Paamulians.
However, I have to say that Bob and Dot are special. Dot has a habit of bringing a some newly minted verses to celebrate birthdays and anniversaries that we share. Indulge us here in which which Susan and I would like to “pay forward” our best wishes for a Good New Year to you.


New Year’s Eve 2010

I thought I’d write a poem inspired by our way
of living together, harmonious every day
It’s quite amazing isn’t it, the way we work it out?
The sharing and the borrowing and never once a shout.

Our individual quirks are just accepted as okay
In fact I’ve grown quite fond of yours, those funny little ways.
And mine, of course, are minimal and normal by all counts
Unless you note that thing I do, that snippy little trounce.

But that’s enough of harping on the things that could annoy
I really meant to talk about the things that bring me joy.
Like asking for an onion when I’m desperate for one
Or sitting sipping beverages at the setting of the sun.

Or even just concurring that so-and-so’s an ass
Then gossiping about him, with you it seems not crass.
Admiring Glen’s pajamas & his arctic robe as well,
And Susan’s recitations -- now those are really swell.

I guess I’d sum it up by simply saying this,
You are truly very special, and when summer comes we miss
Your lovely smiling faces but it brings us peace to know
That in the fall you’ll join us when harvest moon’s aglow.

Long winded though I am, there’s something more I need to say
This evening‘s very special cause tomorrow’s New Year’s Day
A day when we look forward to good things that are our due
And when we do, the list is topped by who else but you two.

Happy New Year.