Shock the Monkey.

Monday night, Vidna and his wife accompanied us to the orchestra. Not just any orchestra, mind you - but the New Blood orchestra, fronted by none other than Mr. Peter Gabriel.

It was a thoroughly amazing show, and while a little too political in places for my simple tastes, I accept that with Peter. He puts his money and his heart where his mouth is, and there is no doubt that the man has a passion for his work and is still at the top of his game.

I have never had tears in my eyes at a concert before, unless you count that one Click Five concert where I realized I was the oldest person in the audience and was forced to weep silently into my coke because I discovered that they did not, in fact, serve alcohol on the premises. No, these were a different sort of tears.

The first song that really hit me was "Wallflower" - one of my all-time favorites. I always thought it was either about someone in a mental institution, or a song about political prisoners. I guess from what he was saying, it's the latter. I think I got the mental institution idea from the movie "Birdy" for which Peter did the soundtrack. A weirdass movie to be sure, but one worth watching. There was just something about that song and the orchestra backing him... the raw emotion of the song was somehow multiplied ten-fold. If you've never heard it, here's a non-orchestral version. The orchestral arrangement made it truly haunting.

For me, the standout of the concert was the story he told about a yoga retreat he went on with his elderly father. It was a type of yoga where you use the other person's body weight to aid you in your stretching. He said it was the most intimate physical contact he'd had with his dad in years. When the trip was over, he said his father hugged him like he hadn't since he was a small boy.

Then he said, "This next song is a reminder to cherish the time you have with your friends and family, and let them know how much you love them, because you never know how long you're going to have each other." Then he played the song "Father, Son."

Until I heard that yoga story, I never really understood what that song was about -- but now it's brilliantly clear. Those words, combined with the orchestral arrangement and the black and white film of Peter and his dad walking side by side almost had me bawling like a little kid. I kept it together though, because I'm a mean, heartless son-of-a-bitch with no feelings.

That you know of.

Here's a video of that particular song, directed by Anna, his daughter. Go watch it now. I'll wait.

Added bonus -- We almost got to see a drunk chick climb over a row of seats and start a fight with a girl behind her who apparently told her to shut up. The shushing was warranted though, because for some reason the drunk chick had decided that an orchestral concert was the best place to have a loud, personal conversation with her friend. Security finally had to get involved and calm her down. I love people.

Also, this cracked me up. We parked next to this mobile dumpster:

Of course I had to get a picture, because number one, it was disgusting, and number two, I knew you bastards wouldn't believe me when I told you how bad it was unless I had proof. So there you go.

The funny part? When I was converting the picture file for this post, I noticed the name of the magazine floating on the waves of crap:

Mission: Fail.

(If that car belongs to anyone reading this -- Sorry. You really are a slob, though.)

Anyway, if you get the chance, go see Peter on this tour. Yeah, it's a little weird, and yeah, you might wonder if you should maybe wear a tux, but one thing is for sure. You won't regret it.

Tight and Firm.

Interested? Go here to check it out. You guys get first dibs, but don't blame me if you hurt your ass.

[Believe it or not, it's gone already! About three minutes after I posted it. Apparently, ass-blasting is all the rage.]

Also, this is pretty awesome. Thanks for all the great reviews!

Capitalism at its worst.

A couple of weeks ago we joined a group of our friends in Philly for a 5K cancer walk. We were doing it in memory of a friend who recently lost her fight against breast cancer. It was a pretty short one-day event, not like one of those three-day marathon deals where you end up doing sixty miles or something, but we wanted to be there for it.

She never let her disease define her, and she lived her life to the fullest every day. She was one of the best people I've ever known, and the memory of her laughter, her sense of humor and her simple every day kindness will be with me forever. We were honored to be a part of it, even though we had to wear bright pink shirts her husband supplied. On the front they had our "team name," and on the back, a picture of our friend sporting the mohawk she had for a few minutes before she shaved her head. Pink isn't really my color, but there sure was a lot of it on the walk, so I learned to live with it.

The crowd was pretty amazing, but there was one thing I didn't expect -- I didn't expect the freelance vendors using the event to sell their crap to the crowd. Like I'm gonna buy some sketchy pretzel from a dude selling them out of a ratty box sitting in a shopping cart. "Yeah, give me one of those $5 bubonic pretzels. No, I don't mind that you look like you haven't taken a shower in two weeks and you aren't even wearing gloves. Can I have one from the pile you just coughed on? Thanks."

At one point during the walk, my buddy Pete's wife (who is Australian) said, "Oh look! Fairy floss!" I immediately turned to see what the hell she was talking about, and I saw nothing resembling either end of that odd combination of words.

"What did you say?" I asked. "Fairy what? Floss?"

She pointed and said, "Yes, fairy floss, right over there." I looked where she was pointing and saw a guy selling cotton candy.

"You mean the cotton candy?" I asked.

"Yeah, we call it fairy floss in Australia. We have lots of different slang terms for stuff," she added.

I saw someone with a full-sized poodle on a leash, so to bust her balls, I pointed at the dog and asked, "So, what do you call those in Australia?"

Before she could reply, Pete says, "Those are Barkie Sheep."

I don't know why that struck me so funny, but I swear I almost had to stop walking I was laughing so hard. I still laugh when I picture that. Yeah, I know. I'm easily amused.

The worst example of capitalistic idiocy we saw was some d-bag loudmouth New Yorker selling tee-shirts right before the finish line.

The shirts had an American flag overlaid with a picture of Osama Bin Laden with the words "REST IN PISS" written below the picture. And of course he's screaming like a carnival barker. "GETCHER OSAMA SHIRTS HERE! REST IN PISS! RIGHT HERE! REST IN PISS! FIVE BUCKS EACH!" Ridiculous. I'm as happy as the next guy that OBL got what he deserved, but this wasn't the time or the place to be selling such trash. Some people have no sense of decency, I guess. I hope he bought 10,000 of those shirts and paid for them by borrowing the money from Vinnie Kneecaps, because I'm pretty sure he has about 9,990 left that he can't get rid of. Sometimes bad things happen to bad people.

And now for something completely different.

I recently went looking for a particular .jpg file on my hard drive at work and found a cache of temporary files stored by our instant messaging program. Apparently, every time you send a screen shot to another user, a temporary jpg file is created on your local drive. Some of these jpg files were a complete mystery to me, but I know I sent them to someone at some point in the past.

I discovered that I have a tendency to make fun of the stock photos they use in some of our computer-based compliance training. The training courses are required, and are usually about scams, phishing, diversity, privacy or security -- basically all the things a large corporation has to worry about. Thanks to a little program called Snag-it, it's very easy to grab some of the graphics and add a little text balloon to them, which I apparently have a tendency to do. For your enjoyment, I pasted them below:

This next one is the result of a co-worker's misspelling of the word "ominous."

This one? No idea:

I'm just including this because it was in there and it's still funny:

Do all the evil villains who try to sell you fake passports look like this? According to BigStockPhoto.com, they do:

My hands are HUGE. They can touch anything but themselves...

Just cuz:

I think this next one had to do with customer relations, but I added the last three lines so now I think it's about sexual harassment.

Anyway, enjoy your weekend. And rest in piss. If that's your thing, I mean.

Put on your smoking jacket and join me for a brandy.

A while ago I submitted my book to this site that interviews Kindle authors, and apparently it passed some sort of muster and I was deemed worthy to be "interviewed." I have no idea if that means I'm one out of a hundred, or simply the only one who stood still while everyone else took a step back. Either way, it was fun.

I wasn't interviewed in person, but that's ok with me -- that way I didn't have to change out of my Batman pajamas. They e-mailed me a set of questions and I e-mailed the answers back.

It just hit today, so if you want to know what makes my depraved little mind tick, head on over and check it out.

Thanks!

also:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Snitch, Houdini and Me

by Johnny Virgil

Giveaway ends July 11, 2011.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Anyone on goodreads.com?

I just joined this not too long ago, but have sort of stalled on it. If anyone reading this is a member, I could use a few new "goodreads friends" to share book lists with.

Check it out if you get a chance and join up if you haven't already. It's pretty cool.

Walk it off.

I'm on pager duty this week, and I'm hoping it's not as bad as it was when I had it a few weeks ago, but I'm not counting on it. I know it's part of the job, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. There's a few of us in the rotation now, so we only have it for about one week out of every four. I dread getting it, when I have it I'm cranky, I can't sleep, and all I want is for it to be over. I guess it could be worse. At least I'm not all bloated and crampy.

I've probably mentioned this before, but every place I've ever worked, right up until I was hired at my current place of employment, has gone out of business -- and every time I've managed to jump ship just before said ship sank to the bottom of the ocean. A few posts back I told you about one of the first jobs I had -- the one that involved cleaning rotten vegetation out of some guy's back yard -- but that wasn't my only pre-paycheck job. As far as regular "paycheck jobs" go, I've delivered newspapers, stocked shelves at a small supermarket, worked as a delivery boy for a local pharmacy (where I learned how to drive a stick on a POS Volkswagen beetle with no heat or air conditioning), worked as a pump jockey at a gas station, a sales clerk at a record store, a sales clerk at a tobacco store, and even worked at a music warehouse one summer putting stickers on LPs. Every single one of these places went tits up. After college, I put three more companies out of business. So, yeah. My kung fu is strong.

Since I've been at my current job for more than a decade, I think it's safe to say that either the curse has been lifted, or the company is so big it's like a redwood tree and I'm a lowly powder-post beetle. There was one other pre-paycheck job, and I'm going to tell you about it. I had almost forgotten about the whole thing because I only had it for about 30 minutes, and really, in the grand scheme of things, it probably shouldn't be considered a job since I never officially got paid for it.

When I was a kid, I played baseball. If you're a regular reader here, you probably already know I'm not really into sports, so this news may come as a shock to you. Even as a fair to middling player at best, I eventually worked my way up from standing around avoiding bees in center field to actively playing first base on a winning team. I was a lefty, so it worked out well -- I could snap the ball to second and third without turning my body first, and those precious seconds resulted in many an out. This position also resulted in my left foot being punctured by a fat-ass, cleat-wearing catcher who decided I was a little too high up on the bag. I think that bloody hole in my foot signaled the beginning of the end for any interest in baseball I may have had.

One benefit they bestowed upon us older players was that we could act as umpires at the intermediate kids' games for extra money. These were usually very boring affairs because nobody had invented Tee-ball yet, so most of the time the game consisted of 8-year-old kids getting walked around the bases, one bad pitch at a time. A few of my friends had done the umping thing, and they'd received nine bucks a game. That wasn't chump change, and it was totally worth it, even though the games were slow as death and got called half the time because of darkness. They should have been called because of suckness, but unfortunately, that never happened.

Every parent thought that their kid should play no matter how bad he was, and generally the team coaches tried to do a little of that. If one team had a giant lead, they'd start playing their shitty kids until the other team started to catch up, and then the first string went back in. This wasn't a league rule of course, so you had the occasional asshole who would run up the score just to make some sort of statement. Usually, these particular coaches were called "Dad" by a couple of kids on the team, and almost without fail their kids were little assholes too.

So I got a gig as an umpire. I was pretty excited, and a little scared. Unfortunately, there was one thing I hadn't foreseen, and that one thing was that I would be incredibly bad at it, and would never do it again as long as I lived.

It was a hot Sunday afternoon and I rode my bike to the park. It was a big park, and there were about four or five baseball diamonds, all with different games going on. I had forgotten the slip of paper that told me which game I was supposed to be officiating, so I had to ride around to each field until I found the two teams waiting impatiently for their ump. I introduced myself to the coaches, and they handed me a big pile of equipment. I had never umped before, and this stuff was a little daunting. I looked at the mask, the chest protector, the neck protector, the big, apple-shaped chest pad (which was different from the protector) and the shin pads -- and had no idea where to start.

I randomly began strapping stuff on, starting with mask and chest pad. At first I thought I had stepped in dog shit on my way to the field but almost immediately realized that it was the mask I was smelling. I pulled it off my face and looked at it. The backside was padded leather and apparently, I wasn't the first ump to use it that day. It was dank with some other person's face sweat. I could see the salty white marks near the edges where it was beginning to dry. I put the mask down temporarily and tried to put on the chest pad. The buckles were messed up on that one, and the last guy who had worn it must have been twice my size. The game was already starting late because I hadn't been able to find the right playing field, and now everyone was watching and waiting impatiently for me to dress myself in all this happy horse shit. I was getting more nervous by the second. I could hear a few muttered comments, a couple of exasperated sighs, and a few snickers from some of the kids. By the time I strapped on the neck protector, the shin guards and replaced the stinky mask, I felt like a blind, smelly turtle. I could barely move. I couldn't see much through the bars on the mask, and the shin guards were so long I couldn't really squat down without my legs feeling like they were going to separate at the knees.

Finally, I was ready. Or at least as ready as I'd ever be -- nervous, blind, sweating, and clueless. Right before they officially started the game, I got some bad news. Due to unforeseen circumstances, I would be the only umpire. Normally, there would be an infield ump too, for the runners on base, but I was informed I was going to have to do double duty and call those as well. No pressure.

The thing about having no infield ump was that I was clearly in no position to see what was going on out there. Additionally, each team not only had a regular coach, but also a first base coach and a third base coach, each of whom had some skin in the game because their kids were clearly legends in their own minds, and this shit was as serious as a heart attack.

They knew All The Rules, too. And if there was one thing you didn't want to get involved with, it was a fight between two douchebag dads who each thought they were Alexander Cartwright reincarnated. You'd hear them saying shit like, "No! A pitch is a ball delivered to the batter by the pitcher. It doesn't matter how it gets to the batter! No, Goddammit, he can try to hit it if he wants to. The batter can hit any pitch thrown! It doesn't matter if it bounced! Oh, yeah? Get a life, you stupid asshole!" (Note to all parents or prospective parents: Don't live your life vicariously through your children, OK? It makes everyone around you think you are an insufferable tool, and is completely embarrassing to your kids. It's just a game. Really, take it from me -- nobody will think less of you if your little Stevie doesn't get to pitch the last inning because the coach took pity on the other team and put in that slow kid who couldn't hit home plate with a conversion van.)

Anyway, this essentially meant that I was screwed from inning one. Oh, and have I mentioned that I had only the most rudimentary grasp on the rules of baseball? No? OK, stick that in there, too. I didn't really know a balk from a bunt when it came down to it.

Things started out OK. The first team had a good pitcher. And by good, I mean he really had no business being on the plate. This was good for me because (a) he never came remotely close to the strike zone, so I was pretty confident. It's easy to yell "Ball!" when you saw the baseball kick up a puff of dust five feet before the plate, and (b) the coach had basically told all the kids on his team to never swing unless they were three balls or two strikes down. Every single one of them walked. This umping stuff is easy money, I thought. After the pitcher walked three guys and the bases were loaded, the coach decided to change him out and things immediately went downhill. Not for them, but for me.

I had grown complacent. I got used to looking for the puff of dust, or seeing the ball sail over the catcher's head and yelling "Ball one! Ball two! Ball three!" over and over. Unfortunately an eight-year-old has a strike zone the size of a frigging postage stamp, and I hadn't been counting on this new guy and his ability to actually pitch.

The bases were loaded, and the pitches were coming in without the tell-tale dust cloud. I began to think that some of them were close to being actual strikes, so I called them as such. I was having a hard time of it, though. I started hearing things like "C'mon Ump! That was a horrible call!" and "Jesus, that almost hit him! Strike my ass!" and "Hey Ump, did you forget your glasses?" (Yes, I sucked, but also yes, these were grown men taunting a 14 year old trying to make nine dollars. My only solace is that most of them will be dead soon, and the ones that aren't will probably be eating jello cups in a nursing home and cursing their asshole kids who never visit. I'm not bitter.)

Anyway, all this taunting was really starting to get to me. I was badly flustered. I could barely remember to yell out what it was I thought I saw, let alone yell it out with any authority or accuracy. At one point, I watched a pitch come in and I didn't say anything. I suddenly realized that they were all waiting on me, so I yelled "BALL THREE!" and someone yelled back "The count was already three and one!" I immediately corrected myself. "I MEAN BALL FOUR!" I yelled. "BALL FOUR! Take your base, runner." So sue me. I had lost track. After we sorted out the confusion and a run walked in, at least one team was happy about the job I was doing. The next batter up was a big, hefty kid who looked like he would be stepping on first basemen in a couple of years.

The first pitch was right down the middle. The kid just stood there like he was waiting for a bus. "STRIKE ONE!" I yelled confidently. The pitcher wound up and threw the next pitch. According to my practiced eye, this one was just on the inside corner of the strike zone, so I called it. "STRIKE TWO!" I got a few groans on that call, mostly because the hefty kid had backed up trying to make it look like the pitch was closer to him than it really had been. Even so, I was reasonably confident about it. If this kid threw strikes, I had nothing to worry about until people started actually hitting the ball and making people run directly at me. That caused me to worry even more. Calling people safe or out at the plate? That sounded like a nightmare.

My worrying caused my mind to wander a bit from the task at hand. I still wasn't any better at envisioning the tiny little strike zone between the tiny elbows to the tiny knees. At least this big-boned son-of-a-bitch was making my job a little easier. The next pitch came in really high, so in my best ump voice, I confidently yelled, "BALL ONE!"

This was immediately greeted by a chorus of dissent. "OH, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!" "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, UMP?" "COME ON! ARE YOU BLIND?" I heard all these and worse.

Then the chanting started.

"UMP GO HOME! UMP GO HOME! UMP GO HOME!" Kids, parents, coaches -- it seemed like the whole world wanted my head on a stick. A few of the wives were telling their husbands to shut up and leave me alone, but it didn't seem to be working.

I took off my mask and threw it to the ground and yelled "IT WAS UP AROUND HIS EYES!" I was pretty much hysterical, and tears were about ready to start streaming from my eyes. "WHAT WAS WRONG WITH THAT CALL? WHAT WAS WRONG WITH IT?" I kicked at some dirt, and stood there defiantly, trying to maintain some semblance of dignity.

The chanting died down and everyone was staring at me.

One of the coaches said, "Uh, kid...he actually swung at that pitch."

I didn't say anything, but I could feel my face turning beet red. He had swung at the pitch. He had swung at the pitch, and somehow I had missed it. Fighting tears, I slowly took off all the smelly umpire equipment and stacked it into a neat pile next to home plate. Without another word, I got on my bike and rode home, thus ending my short-lived career as an umpire.

I don't think I even told my parents this story, so there you go. As you probably figured out, I wasn't asked to umpire any future games.

At least now when people ask me why I hate baseball, I can just point them to this post.

Suck it, baseball.

Should I be freezing my ass off in June?

Just curious. It was 91 degrees yesterday and today I have a coat on. I need to move to a place that doesn't have 4 seasons a week. I feel like I should be making an appointment to get my snow tires put on soon.

Speaking of tires, has anyone ever ordered from Tirerack.com? I used them a few times, and so far I like them. You can have your new tires shipped to a installation center near you, and then just drive there and they slap them on. You can also order wheel and tire combinations, and that's what I did. I finally got tired of paying $72 bucks every time I needed to switch from my regular tires to my snows and another $72 to switch them back. I figured if I purchased some cheap wheels, I could just leave the tires mounted, change them over myself and in two seasons I'd have made my money back.

Things never work out the way you'd like them to with automobiles, at least in my experience.

I went to their website and punched in my make and model, and then picked a good performance summer tire and the cheapest wheel they said would fit. They also told me I needed four tire pressure sensors, and that I would have to have my dealer activate them for me to make the big orange TPMS light on the dashboard go out. So I pulled the trigger on those as well, for another $138 bucks.

When the tires showed up, they looked pretty good. I jacked up the car, stuck them on and everything was great. They were quiet, the car handled much better and I was happy -- until I got another person in the car and happened to drive over a railroad track. The first time the tires were forced up inside the wheel-well, I thought I ran over a cat. There was a huge screeching-scraping noise as the tires and the outside edge of the wheel-well fought it out. The metal wheel-wells won handily, and the tires got pretty scraped up.

I also managed to find time to stop by the dealer and they told me it would cost $95 to switch over the new sensors, and that the computer could only store one set of numbers at a time. That meant I had traded a (2 x $72) expense a year for a (2 x $95) expense. So far so good. This idea was really starting to pan out for me.

I started researching that little issue, because that was bullshit right there. I found a little device that cost $150 and would allow me to program my own car computer, and switch between two sets of TPMS sensors. So for those of you keeping score at home, I would now break even in three years instead of two.

When I received the device, it was supposed to first suck the codes out from my winter tires, and store those in a "winter" setting, then allow me to input my "summer" values. I followed the directions, and the device wiped out my existing codes just like it was not supposed to do, and so now I have no way of knowing what codes are assigned to my winter tires without having someone take them off the rim and write the numbers down. There's an additional fifty bucks come November. Oh, and add another six months to my break-even. I'm clearly doing this wrong.

I called up Tire Rack, and told them that the tires were committing suicide on my wheel-wells, and they went away for a while and consulted their computer, then came back and said "Oh yeah, there should have been a warning on those wheels. They don't really work with your car. If you have an alignment done, they can add some camber to them so they might not rub. Or I can get you into a wheel with the right offset." I figured an alignment would cost me another 70 bucks, and I didn't want to go down the road with my tires looking like / \ because it would affect my mileage, and they'd obviously wear out faster, so I asked him what other wheels they had.

The only ones they had with the right offset (a) looked like rice-boy wheels, and (b) were twice the price of the ones I had originally purchased. I bent over and placed my order even though the wheels were butt-ugly. I didn't care anymore. I just wanted something that I could take on the highway without having to worry about the tires turning into grated cheese at 75 mph.

They did agree to refund my entire purchase price, including shipping both ways, so I can't fault them for their customer service, even though it was a huge pain in the ass and completely their fault.

So now I figure with the price of the new fancy rice-boy wheels, I'm up to about 4.5 years before I break even, which is probably about a year longer than I'll actually own the stupid car. To add insult to injury, the new wheels are much closer to the body of the car, which means it doesn't handle nearly as well as it did with the first set I bought. I was thinking of tinting the windows and adding a spoiler and one of those really loud exhaust systems that sounds like a swarm of bees, but then I'd have to buy a shitload of polo shirts so I could pop the collars, and really, who needs that added expense?

One for the geeks

I finally figured out who Darkseid reminds me of:

Early bird gets the (rapture) worm.

Our friends are coming over for dinner at 6 pm, so I put this on the front lawn:

I'm pretty sure I'll still be here in the morning...

Witchypoo.

For reasons that escape me, I had an opportunity to google "witchypoo" not too long ago.

What I got was the following screen:

I immediately thought, What in the holy hell is that thing in the middle? At first I thought some madman had grafted breasts onto other breasts, or someone's penis enlargement surgery had gone horribly, horribly wrong. Or maybe it was a lump of discorporate flesh somehow being kept alive by eldritch means. None of these possibilities seemed out of the question, even after I zoomed in:

I linked back to the website that was generating such disturbing images and just tossing them up on the web for unsuspecting surfers to see, and found this. Now I want one.

Also, I am trying to convince my wife to make me one of these.

In other news, I was the asshole yesterday.

You know that guy in the car behind you who beeps at your stupid ass when the light turns green and you didn't notice the change because you're putting on your make-up or texting your bestie or dicking around with your ipod? That was me yesterday.

I'm sitting at a red light, second in line behind some girl in a Ford Escort, just blasting the tunes and trying to get to the post office before they closed. The light turns green and she just sits there. I wait about five seconds, then give her a polite little toot on horn. She doesn't move. I wait another five seconds then tap it again. Ten seconds later, there's still nothing but brake lights in my face. Finally, I lean on the horn a little, thinking I didn't get her attention the first time. She looks up into her rear view, and I raise my hands in the universal "What the Fuck, Lady?" gesture...

... just as the ambulance rushes through the intersection, lights and sirens blazing.

So if you're reading this, girl in the Escort, I'm sorry I was an inadvertent asshole.

In my defense, my music was pretty loud.

Mexico 2011 - Part VI

OK, I'm back. I still have to finish this story of our trip home from Mexico, even though the trip seems like something that happened in a dream. Or maybe in a former life. I still vaguely remember being relaxed and on a beach somewhere, but that could just be a false memory. But then I find pictures like this one on my computer and if I didn't take them then who did?*

....anyway, to wrap this up, the next day was gorgeous, which was kind of a bummer, and it seemed like the water was much calmer than it had been the previous six days. Up until the last day, we had seen nothing but red flags and wind on the beach. Still, we were very sad that we had to leave.

We packed up all of our stuff, evenly dividing everything and trying to make sure that neither of our suitcases were over 50 lbs. I didn't want to get busted at the luggage scale like I did last time and be on the hook for an extra fifty bucks. Even so, I put all my dirty underwear and socks in an outside pocket just in case I had to jettison some cargo at the US Airways counter. I wasn't convinced their scales weren't set a tad light just to make some extra cash from people who had flights to catch.

When we got to the airport it was incredibly crowded, as it probably always is. We tipped our driver and sent him on his way and prepared ourselves to stand in line. It took us nearly two hours to snake our way around the velvet ropes to check our bags. Our baggage was under the 50 pound limit, we had no issues going through security, and our plane was even on time, so things were going great. The only casualty was my belt. It went into the x-ray machine, but didn't come out. Since nobody but me seemed too concerned about finding it, I let it slide, and just assumed it was jammed in the machine or something. I bet the lady x-raying the suitcases is probably wondering why every bag has the same exact belt in it.

Our gate was near a drugstore kiosk, which I found fascinating. It was basically a room made of four glass walls, and the walls were lined entirely with prescription drugs of every type, leaning heavily toward antibiotics, boner pills and anti-depressants, none of which I currently need. It was good to know they've got my future covered, though.

On every flight up until this point, we were always last in line to get on the plane, and this one was no exception. I'm not sure what you have to do to get out of "Zone 5" but apparently printing your boarding passes on line 24 hours ahead of time isn't it. When we finally boarded, it looked like we were in luck, because after everyone boarded, there didn't appear to be anyone sitting in the third seat in our row. We figured we could stretch out a bit on our way back to Charlotte.

Just before they were ready to back the plane away from the gate and take off, the last guy got on board.

He looked like a dirtier version of Tommy Chong. As he got closer to us, I could feel my wife starting to tense up. He had stringy gray hair and a scraggly beard, and glasses that looked like they had been dipped in olive oil and then rolled around in a pot of dandruff. He had a bandana wrapped around his head and when he smiled, he revealed a distinct lack of teeth. He continued walking toward us. He stopped at our row, and looked down at the seat next to my wife, then up again at the seat number. She visibly recoiled as he slung his filthy backpack off his shoulder and put it down on the seat next to her so he could dig his grimy sweatshirt out of it. His originally white tee shirt was yellowish-brown with sweat and god knew what else, and you could see the creases on his neck, which were all the more noticeable because of the sheer amount of dirt and crud that had been packed into them.

He smelled like a burning bushel of cow shit that a group of people were trying to extinguish by pissing on. It was horrible. After he shrugged into his sweatshirt, he reached up and put his knapsack in the overhead. Then he sat down -- in the row directly in front of us. My wife stopped praying. Out loud, at least.

Still, the flight to Charlotte was very long. I started out breathing through my shirt but then I realized I could direct the overhead air jets away from me at full blast. That induced some sort of venturi effect and I no longer smelled his unwashed ass as acutely as I had before. I spent the first five minutes of the flight looking closely at the top of his head to make sure there was nothing jumping around up there, and I'm not even kidding.

I think there should be some sort of sign at the airlines like they have at the amusement park. Instead of saying "In order to ride this attraction, you must be this tall" it would say something like "In order to ride on this aircraft, you must not be a dirty, disgusting scumbag."

Seriously, if you can afford a plane ticket, you can afford to find a way to wash your filthy ass before you get on a plane with other people. It's just common courtesy. And just so you don't think I'm making this up, here's my admittedly poor but totally un-retouched cellphone photo of him:

OK, maybe I embellished the stink lines a little. But they were there, trust me.

The gods of travel had smiled upon us -- or if not smiled, at least grinned sarcastically -- presumably to pay us back for the hell that was our last trip out of Mexico. Even so, they had also given us a little something to keep us humble, and remind us of who was in charge. I was OK with that.

So that's basically it. We escaped unscathed, and my wife even managed to not get sick when we got home. I went to work the following day and by 3pm it was like I had never left. It's amazing how answering e-mail for six hours can immediately erase a week's worth of relaxation. It doesn't seem fair. At least we have our CD by local musician Victor Mayer, so that will help us keep the memories fresh until next time. He could be singing about wolverines having sex with canned beans for all I know, but I still like it.

Playa del Carmen, we hope to see you soon. Thanks for another fantastic trip!

*my wife, in this case.

Holy rhythm method, Batman.

If I had a vagina, it would be tired just looking at that. It's your body, not a clown car, for god's sake.

Mexico 2011 - Part V

The next day our big plan consisted of eating, drinking, sitting on the beach and then, before dinner, getting massages at the "massage palapa" at the front of the resort:

They also have an indoor spa, but we figured it would be more memorable on the beach. I can get a massage in a small, stuffy room that smells like lavender and sweat right here in the States.

This beach option can be hit or miss, because you are still within a coconut's throw of the pool, and if the pinky-ponkey-donkey sisters were in, you'd have very little chance of experiencing anything approaching relaxation. We stopped in and spoke to the masseuse about scheduling, and she said that she was the only one working today, so we wouldn't be able to get them at the same time. There wasn't a waiting list so we decided to head to the beach and told her we'd catch up with her later.

My wife was still having trouble sitting and walking, so breakfast was short, since the wooden chairs were tough even on a non-boiled ass. You can't beat the view from the breakfast table though:

After breakfast we went back to the room and slathered up with 50 SPF sunblock, making doubly sure to get all the exposed but hard to reach spots. I had been doing pretty good with the sunscreen and was basically just as white as I had been before we left the snow and ice.

I think I scared the housekeeper one day because I walked out on the deck and she ran away screaming "Blanco Fantasma! Blanco Fantasma!" I thought she was saying I was fantastic, but it turns out that it meant something else entirely.

Rare sighting: Ghost of the Mahekal Beach Resort

We made some drinks and sat on the beach until it was almost too late to grab lunch, but we forced ourselves to eat some tacos (fish and chicken) and way too much guacamole. After lunch, we went for a little walk just so we didn't feel like total manatees, and when we got back, we decided it was time for the last little treat of the vacation: our massages.

My wife went over and talked to the masseuse, and she said she could take us right then. My wife decided to go first, and I grabbed a beach chair and read for a bit. It was a 40 minute massage, so I had some time to kill. I was pretty relaxed already, so I must have dozed off, because it seemed like only ten minutes had passed and she was back.

"How was it?" I asked.

"Amazing," my wife replied. "She said she's ready for you now. She didn't do much on my legs because they were so burned, but she was really good and the oils she used smelled great."

Now I have to tell you something about me and massages. I don't generally get them. One, I think they're kind of a waste of money, and two, I'm always a little uncomfortable with being rubbed down like I just won the Kentucky derby.

So this massage on the beach was going to be my second. Not my second on the beach, but my second ever.

The first was on a little anniversary getaway about five years earlier, and it was an "in room" massage at a hotel, and we were both there at the same time. It was OK, and nothing to write home about, but it turned out to be pretty relaxing. So I figured this one would be no different; some battle axe would pound on my back for 40 minutes and that would be that.

I walked up the beach and into the palapa and said hello, and she asked me if I wanted the same massage that my wife had -- the relaxation massage, I think it was called. I said yes and she pulled the sheets down over the doorways, handed me a towel and said, "OK. Please to remove everything, then lie down on the table under the towel."

"Everything?" I asked.

"Everything," she replied. "Your watch and ring, too. I will wait outside."

"Uh...what about my underwear?" I asked, just to be sure I wasn't misinterpreting anything. I didn't want to be the unexpected gringo penis she talked about at dinner that night.

"Everything," she said emphatically, then left the tent.

So I was standing in a building with two walls made of sticks in the sand, and the other two walls were made of sheets tied in the middle with ribbons. There were gaps between the sticks large enough to throw baseballs through, and the sheets were flapping madly in the breeze, opening themselves up to the beach and the pool in alternate flaps.

I quickly stripped down to my just my underwear, and waited for a break where nobody was walking by and the flaps were relatively calm and I dropped trou and climbed up on the exam -- er, massage table and lay face-down. I tried a few times to toss the towel over my ass, but failed miserably. I finally had to stand up, wrap the towel around my waist, then lie down again.

Finally, she asked me if I were ready for her, and I said "Yes, but this towel might not be." She laughed and came back in the tent. The first thing she did was untuck the towel and change its orientation -- she wanted it lengthwise, covering my legs from my waist to my feet. Then she put on some soft music, then adjusted the "face holder" in the table so it was comfortable. When I was situated, she got the warm oil and drizzled it on my back. She stood at the head of the table, and started working on my shoulders and upper arms, then moved to the side and started on my triceps and biceps, all the way out to my finger tips. When I was too tense, she'd shake my arm lightly, trying to get me to loosen up.

After a while, the hot oil and her strong hands put me into kind of a trance -- I was finally starting to relax. She hit the middle of my back, then my lower back, then walked around to my feet. She put oil on them too, and massaged the soles. Then she moved up my calf, and suddenly there was a blast of cold air on half my ass as she flipped the blanket over and started massaging my upper-inner thigh. She was getting right in there, too, and I must have tensed up because the next thing I know she's jiggling my butt cheek just like she did my arm earlier, however in this case her little universal signal for "loosen up" didn't work. Probably because I was lying there with a strange woman's hand on my ass and I knew she was staring directly at some pretty major back-ball and (oddly) I wasn't completely comfortable with that.

She flipped the towel over to the other side, and then did the same thing to my other butt cheek. It was this sliding, pressing motion that started at my knee and ended just shy of my prostate exam. I tried to go with it, but I felt a little like I had been abducted by aliens and was being prepped for my probe.

After she covered my butt with the towel again, she did a little percussion solo on my back again, and then she was done. She didn't actually tell me she was done -- she just stopped. I lay there for a few minutes waiting for her to say something but she didn't. Finally, I just looked up and she smiled and said, "You have a lot of tension in your shoulders." I think the tension probably came from somewhere a little farther south, but I didn't say anything. I thanked her, tipped her and walked back to my beach chair.

"How was it?" my wife asked.

"Um, pretty good, " I said. "Very relaxing, except for the part where she told me to get completely naked and then used my grundle as a stop block."

So then it was all over but dinner at our favorite pizza place one last time, and the trip home the next day. That will be my final installment, probably tomorrow if I can get to it. Don't worry, it'll be short because nothing major happened, other than they apparently give free plane tickets to homeless deadheads now.

Mexico 2011 - Part IV

We swam single file, then ducked behind a large group of stalactites that were touching the water, and into a tunnel. There wasn't much head clearance, and I was in front of my wife, trying to keep her from whacking her head on something. All you could hear was the Canadian lady hyperventilating through her snorkel and splashing like a wounded seal. I was worried my wife was going to flip out in the confined space, but she was doing great. Afterward, she said she wasn't nervous at all.

I, however, wasn't doing so great for two reasons. The first was that my snorkeling vest was too small for me. I tend to sink like a stone since I don't have much in the way of body fat, and in fresh water this vest didn't hold enough air to actually keep my head out of the drink. Hector kept stopping to make sure everyone was still with him and to tell us what was coming up, but whenever he did that, I'd sink to the level of my eyeballs. That was OK unless I was actually trying to talk. So that was the first reason. The second reason was because during his first stop, as I was kicking my feet to keep my ears out of the water so I could hear him, I inadvertently connected with some very rough limestone and took the first layer of skin off my foot. I'm pretty sure I tossed a choice word or two up through my snorkel, but I don't think anyone heard me over the sounds of the Canadian woman who was still trying desperately to use up all the air we had.

The second cave was very cool, and it made me wish I had sprung for that underwater camera housing I was looking at before we left home. There was a light in this cave too, but it wasn't very bright. Hector turned to us and said, "There is a giant spider in this cave. Do you want to see him?"

My wife is deathly afraid of spiders. There is no reason why, she just is. She immediately tensed up and looked like she was trying to figure out how to run, even though she was currently floating in ten feet of water in a dark cave. Hector started pointing his flashlight at the low ceiling, hunting for something. Finally, he found it. "There! There is the spider! Do you see?" he asked. Luckily for everyone involved, it was only a limestone formation that looked like a giant spider, and that was good because it meant that I wouldn't be dragging an unconscious woman back through the cave passageways.

Hector had been dragging around an orange rescue ring, presumably in case someone needed rescuing. After we looked at the spider, Hector told us the last cave didn't have lights, but not to worry, because we had the flashlights. He said if anyone got tired or scared, they could hold onto the ring. We started moving again, this time into a passageway that was so dark you couldn't even see the walls. It was at this point that I wished I was one of the flashlight guys because the guy in the back who actually had the damned thing was pointing it everywhere except in the direction we were heading. At one point the light just disappeared completely and it took me a second to realize that the guy was ten feet below me, looking at some kind of rock formation or something. When we were all finally in the last cave, we moved to the center and Hector told us to take our masks and snorkels off. I wasn't sure exactly why, so I was a little hesitant since when I did that it was difficult for me to keep my face out of the water. Everyone was sort of gathered around the orange ring, holding onto it with one hand. I stuck my hand out there too, and that helped with my buoyancy. I took my mask and snorkel off, and so did everyone else.

Hector said, "Now turn off the flashlights." The lights went out, and the darkness folded over us. You couldn't tell if your eyes were open or closed. Suddenly, it was a little harder to breathe. I think because the Canadian lady was still doing all the air.

Hector told us to be quiet and still, and to listen. He said, "Think about this. You are five miles into the jungle, in a cave twenty feet under the ground. You might be able to find your way out, but... you might not." I didn't realize right away that he was trying to set a mood, so I said, "So what you're saying is, we should tip you really, really well." He laughed and continued. "The Mayans would come in here with nothing. No lights. No snorkels. Nothing but their sacred beliefs, and the knowledge that they were approaching the entrance to their underworld. So take a moment, and be silent, and think of these people and their sacred cenotes, which you now share."

We sat there in silence for a few minutes, and it was an interesting experience. I've been in a few caves before, but never floating in water. It was a little claustrophobic, like I imagine being in a sensory deprivation tank might be. After a bit, he told the flashlight holders to turn the lights back on, and we swam back to the platform. I don't think we swam back the same way, but it's entirely possible. All the passageways looked kind of alike.

After we climbed back out of the cave, Hector broke open the cooler, and we had some drinks. The sun was incredibly bright, and the warm air felt amazing. I was starving at this point, so I passed on the beer, since I didn't want to be drunk for the brutal ass-pounding we were sure to receive on the ride out. The cenote owner had a large screen house there with a whole line of Mexican hammocks inside. We all grabbed a hammock and relaxed for a bit before we stuffed ourselves back in the van and headed out of the jungle. Next stop: Akumal.

On the way out, Hector stopped and picked some cotton from a bush, and handed it around, and told us about a certain kind of tree that was very important because of the sap inside. I didn't quite get what the sap was used for. It was kind of like a 5th grade field trip, only without the quiz. I should have been paying more attention.

By the time we got to the bay, Hector had my wife convinced she was going to be swimming with the sharks. Luckily, that wasn't the case. I asked Hector if we were going to eat first, and he said no, we were going to eat after we went snorkeling. I asked him why and he said, "We tried it, but many people, they get sick and feed the fishes." On the one hand, I didn't want to feed the fishes, but on the other I was hungry as hell and willing to chance it.

The snorkeling itself was amazing, and it was my wife's first time. She felt comfortable because the water wasn't deep, and hey, we weren't in the dark under 16 tons of rock. We were out there for a couple hours, and saw a giant red crab, an eagle ray, a stingray, about 4 or 5 turtles (which is what I wanted to see) and a bunch of smaller fish. The reef has a lot of sand all over it, maybe from the rough water, I'm not sure. After we were done, we finally got to eat lunch.

As part of the deal, we each had a wristband that allowed us into the buffet at the Akumal Beach Resort. The only kicker is, they don't let you go into the restaurant if you're wet. Since nobody told us to bring a change of clothes, I didn't have a dry shirt. Luckily, Hector had a spare shirt in the van and he loaned it to me. The buffet wasn't great, but at that point I would have eaten just about anything. After lunch we were allowed to hang around on the beach for a few hours, and then we were ready to head back to the hotel.

We were the first ones back at the van and Hector was already there, just hanging around and waiting. I dug 200 pesos out of my pocket and gave it to him. "Thanks for not leaving us in the cave," I said. He laughed. "Do you like Bon Jovi?" he asked, holding up a CD. "Uh, no. Not really," I replied. "Yeah, I do not either," he said, putting it away. I think he thought all Americans liked Bon Jovi. He dug around in his bag for a moment, then pulled out some kind of crazy Mexican dance music by someone I think he said was named Mia or Maria. He said she was a huge star in Mexico, but that this CD was "something else that she didn't normally sound like." It took him a while to explain it. "It is her, but not really, just her voice, and different music." It suddenly occurred to me what he was talking about. He didn't have the english word for "remix." I didn't have the heart to tell him I liked dance music even less than Bon Jovi. He asked what kind of music I liked and I rattled off a half-dozen prog bands from the 70's that he'd never heard of, and he laughed, shaking his head. "I'm old," I told him.

By that time, everyone was wandering back to the van and we piled in for the return to the hotels. Since we were farthest away, we were dropped off last. We got the tour of Playacar, a giant resort and then two other places in town. The weird thing is, I don't think anyone tipped Hector. They got out, thanked him for the trip, sometimes shook his hand and sometimes not, but that was it -- unless they had given it to him at another time, as I did. I felt bad so when he dropped us off, I slipped him another 100 when I gave him his shirt back and told him it was a "shirt rental fee." My wife hugged him, and I think he liked that. He was a really good guide, and I thought it was totally worth 300 pesos to come back in one piece.

When we got back to the hotel, and my wife got out of the car, she winced a little. I asked her what was wrong, and she said her legs hurt. I looked at them, and said, "Um, I think you got a little sunburn." Her entire body looked like this:

Apparently, she had forgotten to put sunscreen on her legs and ass. She had a perfectly straight delineation between the front of her body, which was pasty white, and the back, which was the color of an angry plum, if plums had emotions and were capable of rage. It was not good, and she knew it was only going to get worse as the night wore on.

By the time we had gone to dinner and made it back to the room, she could barely bend her legs. She will kill me for putting her ass on the internet, but some things have to be seen:

I could feel the heat coming off her ass from six inches away. I made Family Guy jokes which were not appreciated, then I went and got the aloe. I dug around in the first aid kit and came up with some swabs with benzocaine on them. So I swabbed her ass with those first, then tried ice, but she said it was too cold.

Thanks to US Airways, we only had a 3oz. bottle of aloe. I told her to lie down on the bed, and I used the entire bottle. She wanted me to put it on thick, and let it sit there since everything was too sore to rub it in, so I did. She looked like one of those guys who slather themselves with Vaseline in preparation for swimming across the English channel. Since she didn't want to lie there with her ass hanging out, she covered it with her nightgown. I started reading, and the next thing I know we were both asleep.

A few hours later, we woke up. She woke up first, and when she got up to brush her teeth and wash her face, she discovered she had a problem. The aloe had dried, and her nightgown was now stiff as cardboard and stuck to her ass like a coat of paint.

I have to admit, I laughed. Call me a bad husband or whatever, but holy crap it was funny. I told her to get in the shower until it loosened up, but she decided to go with the more painful "peel it slowly like a band-aid" method for some reason. Ten minutes later, after we had carefully and painfully separated her buttcheeks from her nightgown, we went back to bed.

The next day was our last day -- and we had planned to just relax, lie on the beach and maybe get massages at the resort spa.

Somehow, I didn't think a massage was in the cards for her, but she proved me wrong.

Continue to Part V

Lunch Lady.

Sometimes, if there's a lot of leftovers from dinner I'll bring my lunch to work the next day. Normally, I'll just grab a "recycled" Starbucks paper bag out of the cabinet, since we tend to save and reuse. This morning, however, these were my only choices:

Bath and Body Works was too bright, the LOFT handles were too ribbony and weird, and Miss Scarlett...well, let's just say the last time I had this dilemma, I tried crossing out the "Miss" with a Sharpie and writing "Mr." but I still got laughed at.

The obvious thing to do? I bought lunch at the cafeteria.

No, actually, I took "The Spa at Mirror Lake Inn."

I wasn't very manly, but at least I was upscale.

Mexico 2011 - Part III

When we got back to our room, we weren't entirely sure what animal we were looking at. The first three days were easy. First we had whales and a stingray, then an octopus, then what I am pretty sure was a mother monkey and her child...but then we got this:

I wasn't sure what to make of it. At first I thought it was a really bad crab, but then I decided that it was just a pile of folded towels with a face. If this had been an actual animal, I think its latin genus would be Noetiphucthis.

I think we got this one as a warning, because I didn't realize until after our trip that it's considered standard protocol to tip your housekeeper daily. Instead, what I did was wait until our second-to-last day, and then give her a lump sum in person. Little did I know that by day three she was probably cleaning the toilet with our pillow cases. I think we were cool after that because this was what we got on our last day:

I still wasn't sure what they were supposed to be, but at least they had recognizable body parts.

Anyway, by that time we had amassed a fairly large quantity of "eyes and mouth" stickers. Needless to say, they were stuck on some pretty hilarious body parts. Which is not to say that (as a middle-sized white boy) my body parts are hilarious, because they are no laughing matter.

This particular variation was named Antonio, and coincidentally enough, he sounded exactly like Antonio Bandaras:

Then this happened:

The funniest thing about that last picture (other than the fact that it reminds me of this) is that I completely forgot that I had stuck those there and I put my shirt on. We went out for drinks, and then for dinner, then more drinks, and by the time we got back to the room it was about 11 pm. They had been stuck to my nipples for over five hours, and I had forgotten about them until I took my shirt off to go to bed. At first we laughed and laughed. Then I tried to take one of them off, and the laughing stopped. Mine, anyway.

You know how they get those to stick to something as porous and rough as a towel? I'm going to tell you. My educated guess is that they use some sort of glue that is very close in chemical composition to Liquid Nails construction adhesive. Seriously, I almost tore my own nipples off. I swear they were stretched out two inches before the adhesive even thought about letting go. I immediately made a mental note to cancel my nipple wax appointment for the following week.

At that point, my tender nipples and I were ready for bed. Speaking of bed, I think there was something fairly large living in our palapa roof, because every day when we got back to the room, there were one or two little turds on the coverlet. They were either insect, mammal or reptile, but I'm no expert so I was hoping for reptile. The closest thing I could compare them to were caterpillar turds. Last year I had a "kissing bug" drop down on me and latch onto my face, so this year I came prepared. I bought this before we left:

No blood sucking bastard was going to give me Chagas disease if I could help it. The next morning I could tell that my purchase had been worthwhile because there was a cucaracha the size of my thumb on the wall above the bed. I have no idea what roach crap looks like, but in retrospect, perhaps he was the culprit. It also protected us from (in no particular order) three beetles, two centipedes, another smaller roach, a spider, and some kind of black and white creature with a face like a praying mantis. This is all a good thing since I tend to fall asleep on my back with my mouth hanging open. Incredibly attractive mental image, I know. I was thinking of asking for a different room, but I figured we were pushing our luck already with the first switch. I took the net down every day and put it in the closet so that housekeeping could do their thing, then put it back up every night.

The next morning we got up bright and early for our excursion to Akumal and the cave. We were supposed to get picked up at 8:00, but at 8:15 we were still waiting. Our resort is sort of on the north end, so it's usually either the first or last pickup, depending on where you're going, and where the other people in your group are staying. At about 8:20, a car pulled up and a guy got out, walked up to us and asked us if we were waiting for the trip to Akumal and the cave. We said we were, and he informed us that the van would be along shortly. He took our paperwork and disappeared.

A minute or so later, a white van pulled up with a bunch of people in it. There were no markings on the van. It looked rented. A young guy with a chin beard and soul patch got out of the van and said his name was Hector, and that he'd be our guide. The only two seats in the van that were still free were in the front, so we got in next to Hector and strapped on our seat belts. We drove out through town, and got on the highway. A few minutes later, Hector pulled over to the side of the road and put his hazard lights on. He then unbuckled his seat belt and turned around so he was facing everyone in the van.

"Hello," he said. "My name is Hector, and I am sorry to say that you will be stuck with me all day today. This is my first time doing this tour. I am sorry we are late, but I was in jail last night. I'm still a little drunk." He pronounced it "yail."

He then outlined what was going to happen. First we were going to go to a cenote and cave system that was on private property. After that we'd head to Akumal and snorkel, then have a late lunch at the Akumal resort restaurant on the beach, then we'd have a couple hours to hang out on the beach and then we'd head back to the resort.

After the details were ironed out, we got driving again. I wasn't sure what the purpose was of pulling over on the highway rather than just give us the spiel in the parking lot of the resort. Maybe it was to keep us from running away.

A few minutes after we passed the signs for Akumal, we pulled off to the side of the road in front of what looked to be an abandoned building with a 4-wheel-drive pickup truck parked out in front of it. We drove behind the building and then stopped in front of a dirt road.

Hector turned to my wife. "Have you ever had a Mayan massage?"

"No, not yet," she replied. "We're supposed to be getting massages tomorrow."

"Ah," Hector said. "You are about to get one right now. How about the rest of you? Have you ever had a Mayan massage?" Apparently, my wife wasn't the only one who hadn't.

Hector started the van moving again. "Here we go," he said. "One Mayan massage coming up."

We hit the first pothole and I almost crapped my own liver. "Is good, no?" Hector asked, a big grin on his face. Only 4,325 more potholes to go.

After about fifteen minutes of riding on this bumpy, narrow, one-lane road, we were pretty deep in the jungle. I kept thinking that we could all disappear and nobody would ever know. Every time we rounded a corner and I thought we were going to be there, it was nothing but more jungle and single-lane road. Once in a while, we'd cross another intersecting dirt road, usually marked with a rusty metal fence accompanied by a wrecked truck or a pile of debris.

Just about the time I thought none of us were going to live to see breakfast, Hector turned to my wife and said, "Tell me. Does anyone know you are here?"

"No, nobody knows we're here," my wife replied. Hector laughed and said, "Ah, good." He nodded and said, "You will be the sacrifice."

"Well, the resort. The resort knows we are here," she added quickly. "And our friends and family, of course. Everybody knows we are here."

"Everybody, ay? Ah, that is too bad," he said. "You would have made a good sacrifice. Now we will have to pick someone from Canada. Or Germany." He looked looked in the rear view mirror at the others in the van, and there were a few nervous laughs. "What are you laughing at?" Hector said. "I am not kidding." Then he smiled. That Hector. What a joker.

Eventually we came up on a small house in the middle of nowhere, with a few goats and chickens outside in a fenced in area. There was a chain across the road. Hector beeped his horn and a guy came out and they spoke to each other in Spanish. They laughed a lot and I was pretty sure they were negotiating as to who was going to get what part of the ransom money. After the guy opened the back of the van and took a beer out of the cooler, he dropped the chain and we drove on. A few minutes later, we came upon this:

(I still don't know much about this place, other than this "tour company" was the only one allowed in here. If anyone reading this knows what the name of this place is, let me know.)

Hector got everyone out of the van and pointed out the bathrooms, which he euphamistically referred to as "composting toilets" but were in reality just your standard issue smelly outhouses. He said that once we got in the cave, we'd be in there for about an hour, so he recommended that if we had to use the bathroom, that we do it now. He handed out snorkels, vests and masks and said we wouldn't be using flippers in the caves. He then said he had to run around the back of the building to turn on the generator so we'd have lights.

Being the sort of guy that I am, my thought process upon hearing this was: Generator. Cave. Water. 120 volts. Mexico. Fuck. I didn't share my thoughts with my wife, however. I'm dumb, but not that dumb. Once he came back, he led us to the cave entrance and we descended. There was a set of stone steps, then a really steep section of wooden steps that led to a platform in the main cave. Here's a couple of pictures from the platform:

Hector then told us some of the history of the cenotes, how they were formed, the significance of the underground rivers to the people of Mexico both today and in the past. He also told us about how the Mayans believed that the cenotes were the entrance to the afterlife. He wasn't kidding about that sacrifice thing, though. They seriously used to do that shit. He was actually quite knowledgeable, and it totally exposed his lie about this being his first tour. He was clearly a seasoned pro with a lot of historic knowledge about his culture. After he was done, he said that he needed volunteers to hold the flashlights. I was screwing around at the other end of the platform looking a dive line down in the water, so I wasn't paying attention. In retrospect, I wish I had been, because having one of the flashlights would have been helpful. He only had three, so he wanted one in the front of the snorkel group, one in the middle and one at the end, since we'd be going in single file, with him in the lead. He had a headlamp, and while everyone was taking pictures, Hector was putting new batteries into the flashlights.

My wife was a little nervous getting into the water, so I got in first. She sat on the edge of the platform and dropped in feet first. Unfortunately, she didn't push off, so she almost wrenched her shoulder out of its socket when her arm decided to stay on the platform while the rest of her was well on the way to the water. She was immediately in pain, but after a minute or two, she shook it off.

"We will be going through a tunnel into another cave," Hector said. "So do not hit your head on the stalactites. Your head, I do not care about so much, but the stalactites take over a hundred years to grow an inch."

"When we get to the second cave, I will count you again before we go on to the last cave," he said. "If you are still nine, that is good. If you are eight, oh well." He smiled, shrugged his shoulders and pulled his mask down over his face.

We headed into the dark.

Continue to Part IV