El Golfo

I was talking about Mexico with one of my staff today, and low and behold she has been on the beach there camping before. Her jeep had an issue with a broken shock mount and when they were fixing that they discovered how rusted the exhaust system was. We talked about speeding down the beach on the hard pack, and just how out of the way that place is.....miss those times. I never really missed the "sleeping" on the beach, but those days of running the beach all day, looking for shells, and then a cold beer and a camp fire in the evening were great.

I need to dig up some of those old photos and post them. (Chris...if you read this and have some good old shots those would be good!!) We hope that we can make the run down there again this Thanksgiving....last year was a wonderful time and I hope I can make that a tradition.

First Power Bill......and other things of note.

We had a great time in Mexico this last week end with Chris and the gang. His brother and wife from Montana were down along with Stephanie's and her two boys, as well as Chris's and his two girls ...for a total of 11 of us. They did not all stay in our house as it would have been tight to all sleep there.....at least that was the plan. They ended up renting the two story house to the east of ours right on the beach. They got down the Thursday before us, and all was good for that night. Then as they are cooking dinner on Friday the power in the house goes out. They tried to reset the inverter over and over again with no luck. It was a little warm so we had all the kids stay in our house as the kids could then sleep well as they could run the ceiling fans, while the other couples stayed in the rented house. They tried to recharge the batteries the next day, but as we found out one of the batteries had failed, and such the entire system would not hold a change.

Josh (Chris's brother) loves to fish, and Matt had been wanting to go fishing for some time. I am not a good fisherman, and I told Matt this would be a good chance to go out with someone who knew what he was doing. So early Saturday he and Matt and one of the other boys hit the estuary, and low and behold, Matt caught five fish....two pan size fish that we cleaned and cooked up on the grill that night....Josh called the fish Bar Jacks. Matt wants to go hit that spot again, and you never know i may learn to fish with the help of my son pushing me along. The photo attached is of a Bar Jack I found on the Internet.....not of Matt's fish (which would have been cool)....I will need to have the camera ready for the next one he hooks.

The rest of the Saturday was good. The group went to town and got shrimp and we enjoyed the beach and the great weather. This week end the first electrical bills arrived for our community and we had been anxiously waiting for this first bill to get an idea of what the costs could be. It was a run around, but we got the bill and what a surprise!! $807 pesos, and that included a $430 peso meter fee...that was for two months, and included about 8 days of some hot days running most of the AC units in the house. With the exchange rate of 12 to 1 that is a total bill of $67.25 dollars. We think the bill will run a little less then $20 per month which is awesome. Of course we plan to switch back to the solar system that we paid a lot for during the months we can, but to know we can run the AC in the summer week ends and it will not break the bank is a nice feeling. Check out the shot of the power control panel running over 4000 watts when we had our big group at the house on Labor Day....never could have done that without city power!!

That night the mosquitoes showed up so the patio was not the best place to be past 9:00....and I was beat so by 10:00 pm or so it was off to bed early. Chris and his gang packed up and got out of the house around 9 am on Sunday. We stayed until 1:30 m that day and enjoyed the beach for a few more hours then it was back home...back to reality.

NEW TRUCK!!!

Well...the old trooper that Vincent was driving was on it last legs: we thought the computer or something was really wrong with it as it would run, then would stop running and just shut off; Not good. With a ton of soul searching I now have a new truck...and my son is driving the Toyota Tundra. Attached is a shot of the new truck....a GMC (these are photos off the Internet as I do not have any good shots of the real truck yet). I know....What, a GMC???!!! But I liked the styling of this truck over the Ford, I have never trusted that a Dodge would last. I was back and forth between this truck and another Toyota. The long and short of it is that I now have a USA made truck for the first time over 15 years.

So far I really like the truck. It handles better then the Tundra, and has more power, but about the same gas mileage so far even with the bigger engine (the tundra had a 4.3 liter and this truck has the 5.3...but with the 6 speed transmission). A run to Mexico will be the real test. Also, the Bose stereo is great, and the built in i-pod system is a very nice feature.

On a connected topic, I was shopping for Mexico insurance for the new truck and Chris said to try Costco (I never would have thought about them). I went to the Costco site, and with the HUGE discount you get as an executive member (35%) full coverage on the new truck for the year was $345. I checked the site that I normally get the year policy and it was close to $500.

Thanks for Chris for doing some extra digging.