Statrix Redux

Unfortunately I was having some rather severe email problems with my old host. It seems the mail server has been tagged by a lot of places as server that is used for a lot of spam so I was getting blocked left and right.
Because of that, and because my experience with the other site I manage (for a non-profit), I’ve moved to bluehost. Overall the price is cheaper, $6.95 vs $10.14 per month, and, in my experience, the service is better.
Are there better hosts out there? I’m sure there are. My first host was great for a long time and in the last couple of months I’ve had trouble. Since renewal time was coming up, it made sense. I don’t bear the old host any ill will. Heck, in the future I may need to move again if problems crop up here.
Anyway, I’ve moved and am busy fixing small things that always seem to break when one moves. This is my second experience at moving and it does get easier.
Aloha!

I’m still thinking about this blog a bit – but since I’m currently in Mexico I just haven’t had the time to update the darn thing.
When I get back I’ll tell the whole story, but for now, my apologies to the 2 or 3 people who check this thing. Thanks Mom! 🙂
I’ll be back next week, after the Day of the Dead!! Hoo hoo
In the meantime here are some stone skulls to think about…

My flight from LAX to DF was only half full which was a blessing. I ended up in an exit row with 3 seats to myself. Originally I’d been in a different exit row (there were two rows together on this model for some reason) with a very nice couple from SF who were visiting her father in DF. I have their email and such and will keep in contact – they gave me their local number and said if I got in any trouble I should give them a call – her father is an important person apparently. I doubt I’ll need that number, but grateful I have it. We talked a bit and it turns out they were interested in bicycles, so I gave them a card on my folding bike. All good.
In any case, I got in around 4pm and had no trouble getting in, though after immigration I got to customs, pressed a button which randomly decides who gets searched and I drew the short straw. A very pleasant woman when through my luggage and found…nothing of course. I live a very different lifestyle these days. She did eyeball my prescriptions, but they were all in order so in I went.
Get a porter at the airport. He showed me to the ATMs, the first didn’t take my card – not on the same networks, but the 2nd did. Then he took me to the authorized taxi stand and got me a minivan. The fare was about $252 pesos or definitely under $15.
I’d expected that the traffic on a Friday afternoon would be terrible, Bangkok terrible, but it wasn’t. It was actually pretty easy as far as I could tell. I’d hate to be driving in it, but my driver was good and we made excellent speed to Casa Gonzalez.
He let me out in front of the hotel, though there’s no way to tell it’s the front. Basically it’s just a big metal door, blue I think, for letting cars in if necessary. I rang the bell and nice young woman came to the door and let me in. She asked my name and seemed to know I was expected. Check-in was very easy, I just filled out a card, then I was shown to my room.
I walked through the inner courtyard from the office to my room and it looked pretty much like what I’d expected from the pictures on TripAdvisor:
Casa Gonzalez images on Trip Adivsor
It’s really quite lovely in a homey, well used sort of way. I don’t mean to imply that it’s rundown, just clearly used for generations. I like it.
My room is quite nice, especially for the price. I’ve got two single beds, both firm and comfy. I recall one of the reviewers on Trip Advisor complained they were hard. I suspect they like very soft, back-killing, beds. I do not, these are fine.
The bathroom is small, just the pot and shower, but the tile is a lovely blue and white design – not quite Moorish, but headed in that direction. I’ve yet to achieve agua caliente (hot water), but I guess I can live with cold showers. I may have to ask about that though.
The rest of the is good. The floor is wooden, the furniture old but serviceable and there’s even some art on the walls that isn’t tacky. I’m on the exterior, across of the British Embassy, and on Rio Sena itself so I’ve some traffic and pedestrian noises, but it’s perfectly okay with me. I feel connected this way instead of in some sterile, could be anywhere, sort of room.
Once I checked in unpacked a bit and had a cold shower. Then I went to the desk and used the internet for a bit to catch up on email and find directions.
Then I headed out to look around. There is public art everywhere. A block from the hotel is a tiny square with a cubist sort of sculpture of man. It may not be cubist but that’s what comes to mind.

The shoes on the telephone line aren’t part of the sculpture. Those things seem to be everywhere in the world. If there are phone lines and shoes, someone has tossed a pair up there.
I saw lots of street vendors selling tacos and such. In the area where I headed a rock band was playing underneath the highway overpass and lots of folks, mostly young, were having a grand old time.
On my way back I found the local grocery store and picked up some crackers and more water. I could have gotten more, but was too tired to worry about things like that. It turns out Walmart owns part of the store. I found that out when I looked at the receipt later. Still it’s really a little grocery store. From my reading those are actually a fairly new phenomenon in DF, but apparently a welcome one for many Chilangos.
Then I went to bed and slept for quite some time, waking up after 10am the next morning. I’m afraid I just couldn’t get up after 24 hours of travel with very little rest at airports or on planes. It’s my vacation so I’m not going to fault myself.
When I woke up and got my blood circulating I decided I’d take a walk in the opposite direction from yesterday. I walked to the Roma Norte section of town meaning I passed through Zona Rosa on the way there.
The day was cool and a light sweater-like long sleeve shirt was perfect. In fact I saw many folks wearing almost exactly the same thing in almost exactly the same style. By complete accident I blend in it seems.
The neighborhood is a very nice one and I’ll have more on that in a bit. I didn’t want to stay out long, mostly I’d gone out to look for the meeting, have a bite to eat, and get some coffee. The place I chose for the food and drink was a quaint little café called Café ½ Luna. The half was, in fact, spelled out as ½.
I had an excellent café moka which has cinnamon in it here and is strong and delicious as well as a club sandwich which only vaguely resembles one back home. It’s a grilled affair with lots of meat and cheese as well as sprouts and tomato. The salad was sort of pea salad affair that was mostly dressing, but much better than it looked. In addition I was asked if I wanted some peppers and was given a bowl of chilies in a vinegary dressing, like Italian pickled veggies, and I loved that – hot, but not too hot – a perfect accompaniment.
Then it was back to the hotel to put my bike together for the tomorrows ride on Paseo de la Reforma which promises to be closed in the morning from bikers from the Alameda Central to Bosque Chapultepec. That’s plenty of distance to do some riding and siteseeing. I can’t wait.
Here I am in the hotel courtyard with my assembled bike.

And, while we are at it, here’s the bike in my room…

The bathroom has the same tile BTW.
It took a little while to assemble and I did have a bad moment or two when I couldn’t get the Dual Drive rear hub to work. I took a few deep breaths and tried again – perfect. Then it was out for a quick test ride around the block a few times. The bike works fine.
There are even some bike paths around…

There are other bikers around and mostly they are folks using them for commuting it appears. That is great because it means drivers will be used to seeing us and will probably try to avoid us if possible…maybe.
After that I did some online stuff – I had to update the website and such, so I was busy for a while at the internet booth in the office. Then it struck me, they should have wifi in the rooms. I asked the woman at the desk, a different one from yesterday, but quite friendly and helpful. She said they did and it was about $5 USD a day. That seemed expensive to me given how long I’ll here (though really it’s not that bad compared to US hotels where it’s not gratis). She must have seen the look on my face because she asked how long I was staying. When I said 17 days she said the wifi would be free.
She told me to go get my computer and try to login. I couldn’t but she said I needed to reboot. Once I did that it came up right away and now I have wifi in my room!
Having solved that problem I went out again and headed to someplace I’d been already that day, but I took a bit of a different route.
I’ve mentioned there is public art almost everywhere – lots of sculpture. While walking along Reforma, I took a few pictures and even asked a young couple photographing each other if they could take one of me.

And here I am…

As you can see, even the benches are art in this neighborhood! This is a great city. Really.
Then I came across Plaza Rio de Janerio that has a statue of David in the fountain. This was a great little square that looks like it was in the center of a very expensive section of town at one time. There were lovers, young and not so young, sitting together cuddling on the benches, children running around, a group filming something – I think they were students, and much, much more. There was a real vitality to the scene.

I sat to rest for a while and just took it in. After a while a vendor with a shopping cart full of steaming hot cauldrons appeared and she set up shop with her young child and big pink umbrella.

It turns out she was selling corn, both on the cob and boiled in Styrofoam cups. I just had to have some so I went over to see what was what.
You could get corn on the cob, a huge cob at that, as it was, or slathered in butter, dipped in cheese, and sprinkled with chili. That’s how I got mine and boy was it good.

The other way seemed good too. One of her cauldrons had corn that had been cut from the cob merrily boiling away. She would take a ladle and spoon about a half a cupful in the container, sprinkle with chili, add what I think was a splash of oil or perhaps melted butter, then add the juice of a fresh lime and finish with a little salt. Then she added another ladle of corn and garnish the same way. A smiling young couple ordered one of each and I got to watch the preparations before I ordered. As you can see, I got the corn on the cob with all the fixings. It was $10 pesons or about 80 cents I think. I was there around 6pm and I expect she’ll be back. If you go there, give it a try – you won’t be disappointed.
It was dark by now and I took of through streets that had really come to life. Earlier in the day the streets were by no means empty, but now the younger crowd came out. Every block or two I could hear a band playing and a crowd of youths would be outside acting cool. I used to fit right in – now, of course, I’m 50 and sober. But I really enjoyed watching their enthusiasm.
I made it back to the hotel walking through Zona Rosa which had gotten quite full of revelers, many of them gay and openly together. That pleased me given that I’m sure their status in this culture can’t be all that great. There were lots of other folks around too, including families out for a stroll and no one bothered anybody.
I stopped at a 7-11’ish sort of place for a bottle of soda and a bag of chips and learned that it is very wise to break up your money and carry small stuff – $1, $5, and $10 peso coins and $50 bills. The counterman wasn’t happy with the $200 peso bill I presented, but it was all I had on me – the ATM had given them to me. I’d recommend breaking that stuff up. It’s easier to use.
Then I was home. I wrote this out once as email, only to have it all evaporate. I’ve written it again in Word and added the images. I do hope I don’t lose this. ?
That’s it for now. But when I write again I’ll talk about riding on the closed Paseo de la Reforma – great fun, but after 2.5 hours I’m out of breath from the altitude and cold. 🙂
Aloha!

Well two thirds of my journey is done. All that’s left is the journey to and through DF. That portion begins in about an hour. In the meantime I get hangout with some nice families and a couple of guys who ate just way too cool and think they fit in here if they pace the lobby and talk loudly into their cellphones. I wonder if there’s really someone on the other end? 🙂

Thirty minutes ago I flew over the area of Seattle I stayed in when I visited here two years ago. In fact I think the plane flew almost exactly over the Space Needle which was quick walk frmo where I stayed. But Seattle isn’t my destination – LA is….no wait, that’s just another airport. I’m on a very roundabout way to Mexico DF.
The good news is that while waiting to get off the plane, sitting in the back as I was – just in front of a prisoner being transported from Hawaii to ??? – I got to see my luggage coming off the plane and being put into a trailer to be taken, I hope, to the next plane I need to get on – 6 hours from now. :-[/caption]
Aloha!

When I hit that “24 hours before the flight” mark I checked-in on the web and discovered that I owed another $25 for an extra checked bag. This was not in the plan. Now don’t get me wrong, $25 isn’t all that much, especially since I’m flying free, but still…
But rather than just accept it and move on, I decided to call the airline. It took quite some time to get an agent, and then it took quite a while for her to diagnose the problem, but it turned out I didn’t owe $25. The problem, it seems, is that I have a long layover in Seattle, not enough time to do anything mind you, especially since I have to be at the airport hours before my flight, but long enough for the software issuing my check-in to determine I was staying.
The agent, who seemed to be a very nice and genuinely concerned person (go Alaska Airlines!), fixed the problem and told me what to tell the folks at HNL tomorrow – because, as the agent notes, they are going to think I owe $25 at first, till they check the computers.
So that problem is taken care of – now for the rest. I had to juggle a few things to get my bags evenly distributed and I do wish I had an accurate large scale at home for this – but I suspect that would be quite a chunk of change…more than paying one or two excess baggage fees would be anyway. 🙂
All that’s left is to figure out dinner, watch some TV, get some sleep, get some breakfast, and…get to the airport. 🙂
Aloha!

I generally check-in for my flights online within 24 hours of the actual flight. That means in just a couple of hours I’ll be official as far as the airline is concerned. I’m pretty much ready to go though and only wish it were sooner. 🙂
I’m a little concerned about the weight of my TravelCase so I’m going to move a couple of things to my other bag and my carry-on. Since I have a “heavy rider” upgrade on my NWT I expect it weighs a bit more – heavier tubing and all. The thing is, I don’t really know how much this all weighs. I’ve tried carrying it on to my bathroom scale, but it’s really hard to tell with those things.
Now I’ve got to say that since my airline ticket was free, paying a wee bit more isn’t going to break my bank, but if I can avoid it, why go there? Ultimately I expect this means I’ll have a very heavy carry-on. That’s okay, it’s got wheels.
In any case, I just want to get home, finish packing, go out for dinner, and get a good night’s sleep. Is that too much to ask? 🙂
Aloha and Vaya Con Dios!

When I leave work today I’ll have one more day of work before I take off. My big worry at this point it making sure my bags are under the 50 lb. limit. I have a scale, but I fear it’s relatively inaccurate as bathroom scales go.
The good news/bad news is that the Mexican Peso seems to have plummeted against the dollar in the last week. This is sort of good for me as it gives me more buying power, but of course it probably means prices will rise at the same time, so it’s hard to say what it means for me.

Again, I’m not really sure what it means, but I do hope it helps me get by for a bit.
I just noticed that my plane departs the ground in almost exactly 48 hours which gives me a countdown clock of a sorts. I fly enough, several times a year generally, that I’m not at all worried about that aspect of things. I’m more concerned about spending the night in the airport at SeaTac – not my idea of good time. In addition I do have the worry of having so much luggage, but now that I think about it, when I went to Bangkok a couple of years ago it wasn’t any different. I didn’t, however, have a bike with me that time.
Aloha!

I took some advice I’d found on the YAK mailing list, or perhaps it was the on the Bike Friday site itself, no matter…
So I’m including some instructions on how to pack the bike. Basically I pulled everything out of the case today and started over, taking pictures along the way. It turns out packing the bike isn’t all that hard, it’s the wrapping up all the parts that takes the time. Here’s what I decided to included. It may be a little over the top to say it’s expensive and ask to have it taken care of, but that was the advice…we’ll see how it goes I guess.
Here’s what it boiled down to…

Aloha!

It was a busy weekend and I find I’m slightly behind where I’d planned to be in the packing process for my upcoming (Thursday!!!) trip. Still I did get important things done.
Most notably I packed my Bike Friday into it’s TravelCase. I’ve looked at the website, I’ve read the manual, I’ve even watched the video of it being done…

…and it still amazed me that the darn thing fit into the suitcase.
Just like the first time I folded the bike it took a bit longer than it will in the future. I was at it for about an hour – though much of that time was running the video back and forth and not actually packing the bike. In the end the bike got packed and seems to be “safe” in that I can’t hear anything rolling around when I shake the TravelCase a bit.
Tonight I plan on taking the bike out again, though I won’t be assembling it, and photographing the process of packing it. That will be for my use as well as for taping to the inside of the suitcase for TSA’s use should it become necessary.
I’ll bet those guys and gals have lots of practice packing though. I’d love to get packing tips from them, not necessarily on what constitutes legal packing, that seems pretty clear, but on how to make packing easy and simple. I mean some of them must travel, right?
In addition tonight I’ll do the initial pack of my suitcase. This is mostly to see that I haven’t gone overboard and to figure out what I can remove. I’ve got a cheap scale that should let me at least approximate what might constitute being overweight (the bags, not me – I know about me).
Enough for now!
Aloha!