February 18, 2018
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| Bobby Lemon with Some of His Art |
My friend, Bobby, was having an art show at Ana Banana’s on
Sunday morning, so I walked down and met some friends for breakfast there. Bobby has a lot of friends and they had all
shown up at 10:00. The place was packed
and the restaurant had not scheduled enough staff to handle the onslaught. It took us 45 minutes to get drinks and the
food and, when it came, it was mostly wrong.
They were out of many items. Our
poor waitress was new, didn’t speak English, and had no idea how things were
supposed to be. It took us two hours to
eat and get our bill. Bobby did well and
sold a lot of art. The crowd was getting
restless from the poor service, so he and I each played a few songs.
It was a nice morning
and I enjoyed the company of my friends, but I had been supposed to meet Don
for the Sunday market and was much later than anticipated. Fortunately, Don was running late, also. I met him near the band and he and I spent an
hour or so listening to the Huanacaxtle Sound Machine, yet another wonderful
band from La Cruz.
My afternoon was spent practicing the guitar and programming
my computer to play the second part of the Bach duets I was learning. I was too lazy to make dinner, so settled for
chips and guacamole with a few pieces of chicharron (crispy, fried pork belly)
from the local butcher.
February 19 - 20, 2018
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| Our Front Patio |
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| Running at Dawn |
Monday was another running day and I managed about 2.5 miles
and a shower before the net at 8:30. I
drank a cup of coffee while listening to the net and then lounged in a hammock
in the shady front patio, playing solitaire and texting friends on my
phone. I did practice the guitar and
read, but I was sleepy all day and napped on and off. I couldn’t have been more relaxed.
Don and I met for dinner.
Many restaurants are closed on Mondays, so the choices were limited. Our favorite street taco vendor was opening
that night, but they were late getting started.
We opted to go to Enrique’s instead.
I had heard that Enrique’s made excellent (and affordable) fish tacos,
although they were not on the menu. This
turned out to be true. Fish tacos were
25 pesos apiece and shrimp ones 30. Both
of us ordered one of each. The tacos
were large and came with two tortillas each, so the two fish tacos rapidly
became four. Fifty-five pesos ($3)
bought us a satisfying dinner.
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| Tuesday Night at the Britannia |
After dinner, we repaired to the Octopus’ Garden for
Acoustic Night. People played everything
from Roy Orbison to Neil Diamond.
Towards the end of the evening, a band got up and played some
blues. Various friends stopped by our
table for a drink. I discovered that
Corona makes a non-alcoholic beer called Cero.
Since I limit my drinking to two alcoholic drinks a day, this came in
handy. It wasn’t any worse than a Bud
Light and would have been fine with lime over ice.
Tuesday morning was quiet.
I made coffee and listened to the net while I ate breakfast. Then I worked on my blog for a couple of
hours and practiced the guitar. I didn’t
really mean to go out in the evening, but somehow ended up at the Britannia listening to an
eclectic band that managed to get George Strait and the Talking Heads
into the same set.
February 21, 2018
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| Cruisers Practicing Suturing |
Wednesday was a busy day.
I got up late, so barely had time to get it together in time to get down
to the marina to attend a class on suturing.
A local doctor was showing us how to stitch up wounds. He had brought a haunch of pork and we took
turns stitching up stab wounds. We used
cat gut (disolving, artificial) to stitch the muscle and fat layers and then nylon for the
skin. It had been forty years since the
last time I had practiced, so it was good experience that I hoped I would never
need in real life.
After the class, I wandered around the building to the
Poolside Deli to meet with my music circle.
We had a big group that included four guitars, two mandolins, and a
keyboard. Simple songs without too many
different chords worked best for people to follow and I found that my
repertoire was rather low on such numbers.
It was always a challenge to come up with a good song when it came to be
my turn. Having to be physically able to
carry all of my belongings at once, I had left my big binder of songs at
home. I missed it. We played for over two hours and, this week,
my fingers didn’t feel like hamburger when we finished. I was adapting to the steel string guitar, at
last.
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| Lobo at the Black Forest |
After a few hours of downtime, I took myself to the Black
Forest Restaurant to hear Lobo play flamenco.
It had become clear that I suffered from a flamenco addiction that was
not shared by the majority of my friends.
Since I was unable to entice anyone to accompany me, I went by myself. I
actually had a lovely evening. They
seated me right next to Lobo and, as people finished eating and left, I
practically had a private concert. I enjoyed
my meal and apfelstrudel ala mode with two cups of decaf coffee. After the concert, I had a chance to talk to
Lobo about learning to play flamenco (a fantasy of mine), but he really wasn’t
able to offer me much advice, although he was very encouraging. I went home and discovered that there were
some very good lessons on YouTube. I
would have lots to work with. What did
we ever do before YouTube? People had
also mentioned watching videos on suturing earlier in the day.
February 22-23, 2018
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| Sunset on the Breakwater |
Thursday was productive.
I got up and swept the front yard.
The tree in front was dropping loads of blossoms and leaves, so leaving
it for more than two days left the house looking uninhabited. I spent most of the day writing, playing the
guitar, and working up songs to play in the music circle. In the evening, Don and I met at the free
movie night on the breakwater where they were playing Split, a well- acted thriller about a character with multiple
personalities. It was another lovely
evening that started out with a pretty sunset.
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| Roasting Chiles |
Friday, I got up and ran.
In the afternoon, I made chiles rellenos, a time-consuming process. The first step is to burn the chiles, which
causes the skin to char and bubble, making it possible (although not easy) to remove
it. This renders the chiles softer and easier
to deseed and, ultimately, eat. I was so
busy with cooking that I almost forgot my Friday night domino game at the
marina. I practically ran down there and
was still a half an hour late.
Fortunately, they were teaching a new person the ropes, so hadn’t really
started yet. It was fun to see my domino
friends. I had been playing dominoes
with them, whenever I was in La Cruz, for several years.
Later in the evening, Cherie and I went to Bucerias to see
some music at La Postal. There were two
groups playing, both of whom were good.
The first group was a young couple playing guitar and melodica and singing. The second act was a fellow named Alejandro,
whom I had seen before. He was
versatile, but seemed to specialize in Paul McCartney numbers which he
performed very well. The venue was
outdoors and it got strangely cold, forcing us to leave once Cherie had
finished her dinner. Having had a chile
relleno about 4:00, I just snacked on appetizers. They made killer virgin mojitos, which we
both enjoyed.
February 24, 2018
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| Christy's Breakfast Joint |
Saturday, I got up and walked to the far side of town to eat
breakfast at Christy’s, a breakfast place on the corner of Coral and Huachinango that I had been trying to visit for
years, without success. Finally, I found
her open and had a tasty and economical bagel breakfast sandwich with coffee and a banana
smoothie, or licuado as they are called here.
Upon returning home, I swept the front and back yards again
and practiced the guitar. A feral cat
had given birth to one tiny, black kitten in our bodega. One night, I was sitting at the kitchen table
when I saw something orange flit out through the bars of the security
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| Cat & Kitten Inside Our Couch |
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| Jenna Mammina & Rolf Sturm |
The San Pancho Music Festival has two stages and lesser
bands play on the second stage while the main stage is being readied for the next
act. The previous year, we had been subjected
to the same awful bands between every act, but this year they had a greater
variety. Unfortunately, Saturday night’s
lineup subjected us to sets by the aforementioned awful bands. Still, people were more forgiving when only
forced to tolerate twenty minutes or so of musical torture.
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| Everybody Danced to the Orchestra San Francisco |
After Jenna Mammina, Jeff Oster, Michael Manring, Chas Eller
and Celso Alberti played some very nice jazz.
Jeff Oster blows a mean trumpet and Michael Manring somehow managed to
elevate the electric bass to a solo instrument.
At times, it even seemed as if he were playing slide bass. His performance was literally amazing.
The last act was a group of musicians from all over the
world assembled under the name of Orchestra San Francisco (the official name of
San Pancho.) They played Cuban inspired
beats that had the whole crowd up on their feet and dancing. It was a nice way to end the festival for the
night. It was after midnight by the time
we got home.
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