The Willem

Where to, Sir? Home to Mexico, Jeeves.

// January 20th, 2010 // Uncategorized

Yep, it’s been forever since I posted. Ridiculous, I know. I’ve had crazy adventures, too.

One in particular was a 600+ mile drive I did in one day. Not “I was in the car while we drove.” More like “I drove over 600 miles in about 14 hours while the girls kept me awake and entertained.” Not gonna lie, I really enjoyed it, even though I was too close to the pedals and my driving leg hurt for three days from being too cramped. The whole trip was filled with laughter, from start to finish, with some occasional ridiculousness and a fair dose of confusion. I learned a lot. Namely, that Mexican road sides are like a nagging back seat driver. Every quarter mile or so there was another sign telling me how bad my driving was. It was awful.

Click here to see my route in Mexico.

My favorite stretch of the trip was between one place and another. I can’t remember their names for sure, but I think we had just left Saltillo and headed to Zacatecas. As soon as we left Saltillo (and boy was that city a doozy, the bridge to the toll road was out so we had to take the libre, which is winding, mountainous, and chock-full of topes, which mean speed bumps that are neither advertised nor painted, so as to trick you into thinking you can go a regular speed, but then will mess you up something serious) we noticed that we had about a quarter tank of gas. I asked Angela how far that would take us, to which she replied “pretty far, I get like 42 mpg.” I decided to keep going forward, just expecting to run into a gas station soon and fill up. About two hours and 160 miles later (yes, I was driving that fast, lay off), we were approaching the red line with no cities in sight. We’d passed at least a half dozen pueblas, but you’re lucky to find electricity in those, much less a gas station. I asked everyone to pray. We prayed for about 5 minutes all together, then spent the next half hour in silence, the girls praying and me thinking of what the backup plan would be if we ran out of gas. We finally rounded a corner and all the stress melted away, as we saw a much-beloved PEMEX sign. We filled our tank, emptied our bladders, and hopped back into the car. Thirty seconds down the road, we all started laughing about how Angela was praying for multiplication, because we saw another gas station. Then another one two minutes down. Then another one five minutes down. “ANGELA! You had them multiplying in the wrong direction!”

Here are a few pictures from the trip:

Other highlight moments include quoting Demitri Martin, flying over a giant tope so fast that Katlyn (who was asleep) hit her head on the ceiling of the car, me finishing a sandwich before getting out of the store, Katlyn and I making up stories on the spot (hers was about a purple elephant, while mine was a tragic tale concerning cockroaches and bullies), driving back a half hour to Nuevo Laredo to go get our visas because they changed the system without telling anyone, listening to Christmas music, and cresting the final mountain pass that reveals all of the midnight sparkles of Guadalajara in a single moment, causing all three of us to squeal with delight (well, less of a squeal and more of a squeak). Eventually, after that incredibly long drive, we made it home around 1am, but realized that none of us had brought our keys. Brilliant, really. We called Jen and woke her up, shuffled in, and promptly crashed. It was a journey, for sure. I’m thankful to have gone on it and I can’t imagine having had a better time, unless there weren’t any topes.