Mexico 2020: Traveling COVID Style!

 Mexico 2020:

Traveling COVID Style!

There's no sugar-coating it: 2020 has sucked in so many ways! Branelle and I have faired better than most (I refer to us as 1%ers with regard to COVID impact). Our jobs are COVID proof and our employers are awesome - we have a solid support structure to help out - we live in Texas, which is probably less affected by COVID regulations than just about anywhere - etc. The thing that's bothered me most (other than masks) has been the lack of travel options. 

Towards the end of the year, I was starting to get stir crazy. I had been tracking the travel restrictions all year and was well aware of what was open and what wasn't. Mexico had opened for business to a degree in the summer, but Chichen Itza had remained closed. It's on our "100 Places" wall and I didn't want to go to Mexico without being able to check that one off. Finally, the Mexican Government opened it up to 3000 people a day. I worked backwards - I booked a tour to Chichen Itza first and then tackled the travel and accommodations. Our friends Kate and Titus joined us as they were about as stir crazy as we were.

I'll cover Chichen Itza and some of the other things we did in subsequent posts, but this is just a quick one to talk about traveling these days.

Kate's on a plane! (Say it like Samuel L. Jackson)

Flying: Nel and I have done quite a bit of flying during the pandemic. It's actually kind of nice. The airports are fairly empty and some of the flights have been as well. There aren't really any special things going on other than the stuff they do for optics like plexiglass between the TSA agent checking your ID (you hand him stuff - are you kidding me with the plexi?). 

The only downside to flying right now is the masks. There are other places around the globe that are open like Croatia and Turkey, but I don't really want to wear a mask for 10 hours. Our flight from Houston to Cancun was less then three, and there's a simple hack for the mask issue: EAT! Just eat the entire time. If you're eating they'll leave you alone. In Delta they won't give you soda for some reason (even the flight attendants don't know why) but they will give you snacks and in first class they hand you a big bag of all kinds of snacks. I just sit there and slow roll the consumption of the whole bag and breath freely for just about the entire flight. You can just sit there with a pretzel in your right hand for minutes without taking a bite and they won't say a word to you. We flew United to Mexico and they didn't give us as much food, but it was enough for me to drag it out - and they had soda!

Side note on the flights: Our flights both there and back were PACKED! Airlines are complete hypocrites. I don't want to hear a word about safety measures if you're just going to fill the plane for economics. Once you do that, pretty much everything else you do is pointless. (To be clear, I'm fine with them filling the planes, just don't act like handing me a soda or my three-year-old's mask not completely covering his nose is going to get people killed. It's idiotic.)

Masks: Mexico was very nearly a mask-free zone for tourists. It seems like the unwritten rule that's been adopted is that all of the locals who interact with tourists wear masks, but the tourists don't have to. It was wonderful, and way more satisfying than it should be. There was nowhere on our resort that required a mask (other than the medical office). They hit you with the hand sanitizer often, but that was about it.

Speaking of the resorts medical facilities - I had to put this in here because it's one of my favorite pictures from the entire trip. Kate was having some leg issues from the minute she got off the plane. She powered through our Chitchen Itza excursion, but it was taking a toll. She finally headed to the medical office to have it checked out and Nel went along for "support". The doctor gave Kate the obligatory shot in the ass, and Nel felt the need to document the procedure. The doctor thought it was pretty funny too.

 

Dining: Restaurants were the same as everywhere else - no masks required but the staff wore them. They didn't have tables blocked off or anything, but most places were fairly empty so it wouldn't have mattered anyway. They also didn't have the pointless rule about wearing a mask until you get to your table.  

One interesting side note - there weren't many of those stickers on the floor like you see all over the place in the US telling you to stay 6 feet away from everyone else, but in the few places that did have them (like the airport) we noticed that they said to stay 5 feet away. Apparently COVID can only travel 5 feet as it nears the equator. 😉 

OK - So that's it for the COVID stuff. In a way, being in Mexico was like taking a break from all the COVID-Crazies...and it was glorious. I'll cover the actual trip in future posts.

One more thing:

This is Nel thinking about work while on vacation...

This is Scott thinking about work (and actually working) while on vacation.....

Nel thought it was funny that I put on a shirt for a meeting but was in my swimsuit south of the camera. I think that's pretty much working during the pandemic in a nutshell.

 

  

1991 Infiniti Q45

 1991 Infiniti Q45

This will be a short one, primarily because I only have a few pictures of it. This one goes back a long way - probably law school days.  My friend Andrew and I went to an auction. This was before my car auction days - it might have been the first one I ever attended. We were just curious, but didn't buy anything. 

As we left, a guy approached us in the parking lot and asked if we had any interest in his Infiniti (I know - weird, right?). We looked it over and decided to buy it. We had actually come to the auction with quite a bit of cash, and we ended up going home with a car. It had high miles so it we got a pretty good deal on it. 

The early Q45 was an interesting car. It was very tight and handled well for a luxury car. It also had a vary unique sound. After I detailed it and replaced one of the headlights it looked great. The Momo wheels gave it a lot of style.

Everyone who drove this car liked it. One of my friends even thought about buying it from me. I ended up selling it to a local woman when I was done with it. Here's a cautionary tale: I let the women take it to an Infiniti dealership and pay them a great deal of money to check it out. They came back with the typical stuff (brakes, belts, etc.) but nothing major. We agreed on a price and she bought it. About 5 months later I got a letter from an attorney stating that the transmission had gone out and I was responsible. They had no case of course, and I informed them of such. I never heard back. I'm not sure what she was thinking, but when you buy something from an individual and even have it inspected by a professional third party....I'm not sure what her lawyer was thinking. I'm guessing he just hoped I would cave to a threat and reach out to settle. 

"100 Places" Wall

 "100 Places" Wall

If you've been to our house, you've seen this in our entryway. It's another of the many 'make yourself travel' projects that cover our walls. I've already posted about the other two:

Europe Travel Wall Map

USA Magnet Map

The idea behind these is that it's really easy to find excuses not to do things, like travel. If you walk by a wall every day and see "Stonehenge", for example, you'll start saying to yourself - "We should go to Stonehenge!" - and then eventually you'll go. (Works for me anyway.)

This one started years ago in our previous home. I had just finished reading one of those "100 Places To See Before You Die" books, and Branelle and I happened to be heading to IKEA. I came across these 5x7 frames and the thought hit me to do something like this so naturally I bought 100 of them (101 actually - but who's counting). 

Now, if you happen to be Rainman-esque in your visual accounting skills, you will notice that there are actually 112 frames up there currently. The list is Dynamic. I add places and remove places from time to time, and I seem to add more than I remove.

 The initial iteration occurred in the office of our old house, and this is the only picture I have of it. It's grown since then (as has Gracie.....and myself if I'm being honest).

The premise is pretty simple. We made our list, printed out a map of each place on the list, and when we visit that place together we replace the map with our picture. Together is the key part to all of our travel walls. Nel and I had both been to the Grand Canyon before, for example, but until we made it there together a couple years ago it stayed a map.

I'm a little embarrassed to admit how time consuming this project was (and is). I had to remove hanging tabs from each frame and cut a groove into each with a Dremel tool. I also create the location labels with ink stamps - and each letter is an individual stamp! That part takes forever. And the locations are hung alphabetically, so every time I want to add or remove a location I basically have to take them all down and rehang them. It does give me a chance to dust them though.

The idea was originally for it to be a "selfie-wall"...for some reason. Most of the pictures are selfies, but it's a soft rule at this point. We've certainly added some that were taken by other people.

Even if the pictures are taken by someone else, I try to pick the ones that share a sort of selfie quality - ie, we're in it, but not the focus.

Another decision I've had to make more recently involved including other people, primarily our kids, in pictures. I decided to do it (Father-of-the-Year). It shows how I've embraced being a family man - ironically the biggest obstacle to traveling in our lives. Samantha has multiple appearances on the wall now as we've started lugging her around the globe. Brooks has yet to make it. He's still a little young to take with us but he'll be along on our adventures soon I imagine....against my better judgement. 

Interestingly, if you are at our house, you might notice another couple of faces on our wall. Our friends Dave and Becky were over some time last year and we were all out in the pool. At some point Dave headed in for a few minutes and while inside unsupervised he added a photo of them to our Chichen Itza frame. A day or so later I was sitting on the bench across from the wall and noticed it - and just cracked up! 

There are a lot of things about this that I love. For one, they didn't say anything until we noticed. For another, there's no way Dave could reach the "C's" on that wall, so I know he had to have grabbed a chair or something to stand on (as they are in the picture above - replicating their pose). Perhaps my favorite thing about it though is that while they had actually been in Mexico just prior to this, they didn't actually go to Chichen Itza. The picture they took was from the airport!

As a lover of elaborate pranks - and general tomfoolery - I vowed to leave their picture in the frame until Nel and I had one to replace it with. That wouldn't have taken long (Challenge Accepted!) buuuuttttt COVID! Mexico closed all of the ancient sites and we still haven't been. They just opened Chichen Itza back up to limited visitors on September 22nd, and I'm already planning to hit it up!

   
So that's it. I'm always open for suggestions for places that perhaps I haven't thought of yet. It gives me an excuse to dust.

1998 Jaguar XK8 Convertible (#2)

 1998 Jaguar XK8 Convertible (#2)

My weird attraction to these old XK8's in the early part of the century continued with this one, I believe the 5th and final one I owned. This was probably the ugliest, but also the nicest of them all. Finished in the very cliché "British Racing Green", it just wasn't flattering. It sort of looked like flat green. Color aside, the car only had about 25K miles and was immaculate. 

The Jaguar V8 - a good motor but not a great motor. It didn't have the raw torque that an American V8 had, but it was smooth and handled the size of the car well. When supercharged (XKR) its claws really came out (get it?).

This is the "J" gated shifter that Jaguar insisted on putting in all their cars back in the day. I hated it myself. It felt clumsy and didn't look great either. The key thing to notice here is the tiny button with the S on it and the red light. That's the "Sport Mode" button. Most cars have these today, but it really made a big difference in this cars feel and performance.

Jaguar's power top was pretty simple. It's one button and about 20 seconds up or down. The cars came with a leather cover that snaps into place over the top when it's down that makes for a much smoother look.

I had to put this in here. This is Jaguar's answer to the drink holder issue, and it very well may be the worst ever designed. Even if it did work well, which it most certainly does not, they break so frequently that Jaguar dealers would just have the repair kit stocked on their parts counter like keychains at around $50.

I like these cars, even today. They're starting to become retro-cool, and they don't cost much at all now. They're modern enough to drive every day with only minimal repair concerns. As a fun and cheap weekender, I say why not?

2003 Porsche 911 C4S

 2003 Porsche 911 C4S

NOW WE'RE TALKIN!! Truly one of the world's great sports cars, this C4S was just getting broken in when I bought it in 2004 and only had about 4500 miles on the odometer. The C4S is basically a 911 Turbo without the turbos...or the wing. It's an all-wheel-drive monster that will blow away just about anything on the street and virtually everything on the track.

 

Most Porsches are ordered as opposed to bought off the lot. As a result, they are almost always ala-cart with regards to options. Whoever ordered this one stayed with a simple and functional plan. It had about every comfort option, but not any of the weight saving track options (like carbon fiber dash and console inserts) and no odd colors - just a simple black and gray contrast.

Looking at a 911 engine is not particularly exciting. You can't really see anything because it's designed to be accessed from the bottom, not the top. Stepping on the accelerator on the other hand is very impressive. The C4S is quick (it gets to 60 in around 4 seconds) but the real magic happens on the track. This car can put every single one of its horses down with its all-wheel-drive system and huge amounts of grip and slip control. It stops as impressively as well.

One thing that makes this car special is that in spite of all its incredible performance abilities, it's also very refined and tame. You could drive this thing everyday with no issues and then take it to the track on the weekend and rip a new one for all your Vette and Mustang pals. I loved this car when I had it and drove it all the time. We currently have a Turbo in our garage and while it's not quite as refined as the C4S was, it's still fine to head to the store in or go out to dinner (and it's faster!).

Test Post: Nauticat 32