Our recent annual Posadas Parties gig in downtown Los Angeles ended quietly on December 24th. As we were setting up several employees asked if the evening would end earlier than the other nights, and Yes, we said. We used less equipment and smaller speakers, and shortened the times between events, so that we ended about 9:15 instead of at 10 p.m.
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| Some of our equipment, waiting to be stored - up two flights of stairs - the life of a musician! |
We trudged up and down
stairs and put away our equipment in the storage room. We said our goodbyes to
the dancers, the puppeteer and the employees, and drove to our motel for our
last night.
In the morning we packed
up our equipment and clothing, and went to a local pawn shop to purchase a drum
machine we had spotted similar to the one we like to use for recording. We then
drove to a cousin’s house near Covina where we enjoyed a wonderful meal with
ham as a main dish (thank you, Sylvia!. In spite of all the excellent meats
available in Mexico, ham and turkey are two things that just are not of the
same quality. I am not embarrassed to say that I had several many servings
of ham. I had an extremely enjoyable conversation with Sylvia and her lovely
daughter while the daughter made guacamole as Christmas gifts for her friends.
They were so attentive I probably talked way too much. I do miss having women friends to talk
to, and I probably totally dominated the table talk.
As the afternoon wore on I
began to cast glances at the clock and fret a little about leaving on time. Our
car was due back at the rental agency in San Diego at 9 p.m., and I hazarded a
guess that it would be perhaps a three-hour drive. We left about 6:45 after our
goodbyes. While I kept driving at a steady pace for about three hours, Chon
napped off and on.
We were on an unfamiliar
freeway, and it just didn’t feel like exactly the right direction. When I began
seeing signs for San Diego, but not for the airport, I called my sister, who
was on the receiving end of a snow-and-ice storm in Arkansas. She speedily
looked for directions to the airport (she is really, really good at using
the computer), and told me if I
saw highway 163 I should take it. As her words came through the phone we were
just arriving at the off-ramp, and we zoomed onto it. Her directions were
perfect and in a short time we were near the airport; we gassed up the car,
checked it in and re-packed our things.
I may not have mentioned
that one part of our luggage was a large box (The Box) with digital recording equipment we had purchased
in Los Angeles. Chon packed it with clothing for additional protection. It had
carrying handles, but it was quite heavy and rather awkward. In addition I was
carrying a bag we bought at a thrift shop because it had wheels for ease of
movement.
Although we had taken the
Volaris shuttle from the Tijuana airport to the San Diego airport, we weren’t exactly
sure how to catch it back to the Tijuana airport. Although I was fairly sure of
the location, I hadn’t really thought about the lateness of our return, and
wondered if it would come. An extremely rude taxi driver tried to convince us
that my directions were wrong. We showed up, though, at the Amtrak station, and
I got directions for the shuttle stop right outside the door. It would arrive,
the attendant told us, at 11 p.m. Our flight was scheduled to leave at 1:10
a.m., and we were beginning to feel pinched for time. That is to say, this is
when both of us were feeling
that pinch; I had felt concerned since, say, about 5 p.m. There was one other
person besides us at the shuttle stop, a young man who told us HIS flight was
leaving at 11:45.
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| Our luggage under street lights, outside the Metro Station in San Diego, CA. See The Box? |
We looked at each other
wordlessly. IF the shuttle arrived at the scheduled time, and IF it took zero
minutes to officially cross the border, it still would just not be possible for
him to make his flight because of the 20-or-so-minute drive to the border. He
suspected it, and we knew it. He asked if we would like to share a taxi. There
was one parked a half-block away, and before Chon went to ask if it was
available, I asked him to make sure the driver wasn’t a complete A. He wasn’t,
and it was available. He wanted $50 to drive us to the border, and the other
passenger offered to pay half.
That made OUR taxi ride cheaper than taking the shuttle! We got a strong
young guy to help carry The Box, and HE got at least a chance to make his
flight.
We raced to the border,
the cab driver probably in a hurry to harvest more work on this busy Christmas
night. The cabbie had lied, however, when he told us that it wasn’t far for us
to walk to cross the border; “less than a block”, he said. We tumbled out of
the cab and unloaded our gear and began to walk on the new pedestrian path
across the border. My bag, the one with wheels, would begin to rock wildly if I
walked speedily or held the handle too high, so I brought up the rear.
We sweated our way along
the well-lit, smooth sidewalk that led to a small brilliantly lit room where a
sleepy-eyed female border agent asked us where we were coming from, and going
to. Chon told her that the three of us were a band, and we were making a
regular border crossing to play at a party. She waved us past her with a bored
smile.
And then we walked, and
walked. And walked some more. The sidewalk became a bridge. With many
switchbacks. Chon and the young guy made several changes of sides of The Box
because their hands hurt. Several times we passed a middle-aged gringo (and he
passed us), and one of those times he asked us, panting, if we wanted to share
a taxi. Yes, we did. As we finally arrived, panting, at the taxi parking area,
we beckoned to him to hurry so he could ride with us. The taxi driver quoted a
$20 price (yes, $5 apiece) and amazingly, loaded The Box and some other luggage
into the truck and tied the trunk lid down. The four of us piled in, and passed
around our smaller bags so that we could fit.
We started off for the
airport, and every time we drove across a pot-hole the trunk lid would bang and
the gringo with us would mutter “bad shocks”. We made it to the airport in
record time, and the young guy and Chon picked up The Box again and carried it
to the luggage scanner. We made it through that first hurdle and I had my visa
checked. The young guy began to slink away, and Chon called him back to haul
The Box to our check-in line, where he promptly and efficiently disappeared.
Who could blame him? He DID make his flight, though.
And WE pushed The Box
through the lines to the check-in, where we paid for the extra weight. Then we
headed with our backpacks to the security check, where we were told that we
could not carry our (brand-new, extra-heavy-duty, expensive) instrument cords in our carry-on luggage.
(What???? No electrical cables in carry-on? That is not something I have seen
listed as being prohibited by the airlines.) I waited while Chon ran back to
the check-in counter where the airline workers told him to leave his backpack with them. As
this was simply not an option (great NEW backpack designed for computer, with a
fine drum machine inside), he talked them into leaving only the cables with
them, and returned cum backpack
to the security check-in, and then, finally, we were through, and the rest was
easy.
The Volaris flight took
off and arrived on time (congratulations, Volaris!), and when we arrived I had
my first opportunity (??) to help carry The Box. After only a few seconds I was
so relieved that I hadn’t been the one drafted to lug it all the way across the
immigration trails!
A friend picked us up at
the airport, and as we headed for the highway to take us home, there were
hundreds and hundreds of urracas, boat-tailed
grackles, in enormous parvadas ,
flocks, flying overhead.
We got home about 40
minutes later, unloaded our things and went to sleep for four hours.
