After retiring in 2017, we moved out of Houston, after 35+ years. Moving to deep south Texas was a bit of a culture shock. I would say that I still have not adapted to the deep south Texas vibe, which of course is heavily Hispanic. I took two years of Spanish in High School, then two more years in college. It didn't stick. I didn't have a lot of opportunity to practice it in Houston. When we would visit south Texas (where my Hispanic wife was from), she would handle the Spanish duties. I would never enter Mexico without her. In fact, once in Cancun, we were about to get ticketed and likely jailed for a traffic violation when my wife and her sister took over, in Spanish, and eventually paid the fine (can you say "mordida?") to the police officer so that HE could pay it for us when the courts opened on Monday. Right. Nowadays, with the cartels wreaking havoc, we simply do not go to Mexico, even if it is only 10 miles away.
Anyway, never go to Mexico without a fluent Spanish speaker. Even now that I am living in deep south Texas, and am exposed to much more Spanish than ever before, I just don't "get it." I watch some Spanish TV and it's like they are speaking a different language, which they are of course, but they talk so damn quickly even my wife can't tell what they are saying half the time. I know a ton of Spanish nouns and verbs, but the conjugations fuck me up almost every time, as they do for many people. I basically have resigned myself to never speaking Spanish, and I'm ok with that. It's not for everyone. I often feel like a fish out of water down here. Not that I actually know what a fish feels like when it is out of water, but you know what I mean.
Where was I going with that? Hell if I know. But it's a way of saying that I am going to start including more personal observations and experiences on the blog. Why not? Life is too short not to. Life is also too long not to.
Speaking of life, the wife and I decided to try to catch the total solar eclipse back on April 8. We found a hotel room in Cotulla, TX and planned on getting into Uvalde for the event as Uvalde was smack dab in the middle of the Path of Totality. However, the weather did not cooperate. Heavy clouds, occasional peeks at blue sky. We decided to skip Uvalde and just drive north on US 83 looking for clear skies, watching the progress of the eclipse from the sunroof.
As the moment of totality approached, we rolled into Junction, TX and stopped at a Shell station with hundreds of other eclipse chasers. We didn't get an uninterrupted view of the total eclipse, but enough breaks in the clouds revealed the spooky sight of the moon blocking out the sun, a black disk totally covering the bright disk of the sun. You've seen the pictures (I didn't get any good ones.) There was a flock of blackbirds screeching up a storm until the eclipse was total and they fell silent. The temperature dropped 10 degrees and it looked like nighttime at 1:36pm. Eerie as fuck. I actually had the thought that, shit! now I have to drive the rest of the way in the dark! No, you doofus, you don't. Weird feeling.
If you ever get the chance, go, do whatever you can to get into the path. I can only imagine what people 500, 1,000 or 5,000 years ago must have thought when it happened. Where's that virgin to sacrifice?? (Now we have learned that, rather than sacrifice an actual young female - too valuable - males would dress up, or be dressed up forcibly, as a woman, and THEY were the ones offered up to the gods. As if the gods wouldn't know the difference?!)
We had a fantastic road trip up into Colorado. More on that later.
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