May 11, 2020
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| Path to the Beach |
I wanted to run but needed to buy fruit
so I packed my wallet and hand sanitizer into my grocery bag and set
off to walk around the marina and back past the grocery store. I got
an earlier start than usual. Even if I had been willing to run with
my bag, I would have arrived at the store before then opened at 8:00.
Looking for something new to photograph, I took a slightly different
route to the marina. I accidentally discovered a path to the beach
when I ventured off the street to photograph a floodlit palm tree.
It was still dark when I got there. I walked a short distance along
the shore to the breakwater and then resumed my normal path.
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| Pre-Dawn Beach |
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| Mario's was Closed |
Despite trying to go slowly, I still
arrived at the grocery stores before they were open. I considered
waiting, but figured I could get what I needed at my neighborhood
convenience store. Lately, I had avoided that shop because it was
small and usually busy. I put on my mask and went in. They didn't
have everything I wanted, but I managed to get a pineapple, bananas,
tomatoes, limes, and flour. That would hold me until my next
shopping trip in a few days. The store had installed a glass
partition between the customers and the cashier. I was glad to see
that they were taking social distancing seriously. The supermarkets
had done that, also, and the bagger had been wearing both a mask and
a face shield.
Before I showered, I chiseled the scale
off another section of tile in my bathroom. Directly under the
shower head, the going was slow. It took me an hour to clean one
column of tiles. I couldn't muster the enthusiasm to tackle a second
column. I spent the remainder of the morning practicing the guitar.
After lunch, I sat down to polish my
nails and work on my blog. The hardest part about doing my own nails
was that it took so long for them to dry. The salon used a gel
polish that dried in one minute under UV light. The standard polish
took quite a long time and I was constantly damaging it.
While I was writing, I received an
invitation to sail to Ensenada with the boat on which my friend,
Leslie, was crewing. I hadn't planned to leave until June, but it
was an attractive proposition. I had no idea how much it would cost
me to fly and it was likely that any reservation I made would be
canceled or changed. I did not relish having to make connections in
Mexcico City or Los Angeles with the possibility of having to spend a
night in a hotel on the way. On the other hand, I knew nothing about
the skipper and very little about the boat other than that it was a
sixty foot ketch. I needed to think about it.
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| The Doorway to Summer |
I spent most of the afternoon
completing a blog post. People kept interrupting me and I found
myself getting uncharacteristically annoyed. I needed to talk to the
skipper of the ketch, but didn't want to do it when I was in a
grouchy mood. When I finally finished the blog post, I made cheese
and crackers and poured myself a glass of wine. When two-thirds of
it was gone, my attitude was sufficiently adjusted to talk to Jack,
the owner of Magic Carpet.
We had a nice chat
and agreed that I would come to the boat for dinner later in the
week. They also proposed inviting my friends, John and Elinore. My
first reaction was that this was a rebellious idea. An actual
grouping of five people on a sixty foot boat! It also sounded
heavenly.
Attitutude
corrected, I spent a pleasant evening pursuing the usual activities.
I realized that reaching the peak of infection didn't mean than
numbers would necessarily go down any time soon. It just meant that
numbers would stop climbing. In theory, we had reached the point
where recoveries would balance new infections. It still seemed like
a crap shoot.
May 12, 2020
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| Stranded Panga |
The days continued
to get longer and the sun was rising earlier. I had been unable to
run in the hills in the dark because the road was very rocky and
uneven. Now, by the time I made a loop around through Matlali Hills
and back to the road, it was light enough to see. Towards the end of my run, it grew foggy, something I had never before seen in La Cruz. The humidity of suumer was coming.
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| Foggy Morning in the Hills |
I ran close to five miles and then came home and swept the front patio. I was beginning to understand my mother's obsession with keeping the house clean when I was a child. As a housewife, she had nothing else to do. I was playing house a lot during this quarantine.
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| Shower Tile Before and After |
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| Loaf or Brick? |
I worked on the
shower until I had completed my column of tile for the day, ate
breakfast, and then practiced the guitar. By the time that was done,
I was ready for a nap. I ate lunch, instead, and then dug out the
bread machine and experimented with making French bread. While that
was processing (a nearly four hour process,) I wrote and sketched
possible shapes for the double necked guitar that Matt wanted to make
for me. We were trying to make it as small as possible so that it
would not be too heavy. With two necks, the necessary width made it
tough to come up with a proportional shape without adding a lot of
extra length.
The bread rose well
the first time, but did not rise much after the machine punched it
down. The resulting loaf was tasty, but very dense and nothing like
French bread.
Dinner was the
chicken wings adobo that I bought from the local butcher. They were
twice as big as the ones I got at the grocery store and very meaty.
I cracked a bottle of red wine since it looked like I would be
leaving soon and wouldn't run out.
I practiced, again,
after dinner and then watched a little Netflix before dinner. Monday
had been a bad day for deaths in Mexico. Three hundred and fifty
three people had died that day, although only two in Nayarit.
May 13, 2020
The radio woke me
up about 1:00 in the morning. Someone was distraught and hailing
Magic Carpet, the boat on which I was considering heading
north. That caught my attention, but I couldn't really tell what was
happening. Usually, when someone hails in the middle of the night,
either a boat has dragged anchor or there is an attempted theft
happening. Neither seemed to be the case. Radio chatter woke me
several more times, but I didn't learn what was happening until
later. The cat from Zero had gone overboard, possibly in
pursuit of flying fish, and there were several dinghies out looking
for her. She was located at 3:30 in the morning, calmly grooming
herself on the breakwater, 450 meters away, wondering what took her
people so long to get there.
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| Cloudy Morning on the Beach |
Despite my lack of
sleep, I got up at 6:00 to walk at the marina. It was a cloudy
morning and the sun was nearly up by the time I got there. If I
stayed, I would soon have to rise earlier to beat the heat. I cut
through town on my way home and met my friend, Lynne, bringing in her
garbage cans as I passed by. We chatted for a good twenty minutes.
It was very nice to see her.
After my walk, I
scraped another column of tile in the shower. The walls were nearly
complete and the worst was behind me. The floor would be a different
matter. I wanted to finish before leaving.
After breakfast, I
lay down for a nap, but Zero hailed someone on the radio every
time I dropped off. By 13:00, I gave up and got up to eat lunch.
Then I practiced for an hour.
I spent the rest of
the afternoon refining the colors on my painting, finally arriving at
a satisfactory palette. I painted the edges of the canvas black, in
lieu of a frame, and hung it on a screw inserted in an existing hole
in the wall. Hanging a picture on a masonry wall required an
electric drill, which we did not possess.
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| Completed Painting |
May 14, 2020
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| Sunrise Horizon |
Day 58 of
quarantine was just another day. I got up to exercise even though I
had been up late the night before. I walked through the hills to the
ridge and down to the highway and then ran the two miles down the
highway back to town. The gate was open, so I didn't have to squeeze
myself through the narrow gap. One of the roadside fruit stands was
open. There were a lot of trucks heading south on the highway,
making it uncomfortable to run there. I would not be running on that
highway in the future.
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| Fruit Stand Was Reopened |
It was a normal day
of scraping the shower and practicing the guitar. I took a long nap
in the afternoon and then baked another loaf of bread. I tried using
the dough setting on the bread machine and it rose nicely but, when I
went to switch it to bake, it stirred the dough once, causing it to
fall. It never rose again, so I ended up with a loaf identical to my
first attempt.
I had forgotten to
thaw the chili for dinner, so I heated a can of lentil soup and had
that with bread and some watermelon salad. I would have forgotten to
listen to Cheko's Thursday night concert if Matt hadn't reminded me.
By the time that was over and I had done the dishes and practiced
again, it was bedtime. I watched an episode of Netflix and went to
bed by midnight.
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| Beach in Daylight |
May 15, 2020
Magic Carpet,
the boat on which I was considering sailing home, was due at the dock
for a bottom cleaning at 9:00. I was supposed to meet them to check
out the boat and meet the skipper. I decided to walk later than
usual so that I didn't need to make two trips to the marina. I left
the house at 8:00 and took a couple of turns around the marina before
they arrived.
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| Magic Carpet |
After touring the boat and deciding that I was going to go with them,
Leslie and I set off to the wholesale produce market to provision.
It was a long walk over cobblestones and dirt roads, dragging a
flimsy hand truck. The market wasn't as well stocked as usual, but
had everything we needed. Customers were no longer allowed into the
cold rooms. Employees brought us anything we needed from there. We
bought five dozen eggs and filled a large plastic bin and my backpack
with fruits and vegetables. Then we began the tedious process of
dragging everything back to the boat. The hand truck was much harder
to maneuver when laden. It was nearly noon by this point and quite
warm out. We took turns dragging the hand truck and eventually made
it to the relatively smooth pavement of Calle Langosta. From there,
it was all downhill to the boat.
We unloaded our
booty and then set off to the grocery store for another five dozen
eggs, boxes of milk, lunchmeat, canned goods, cream cheese,
beverages, and yogurt. I had hoped to continue home from there but
there was no way that Leslie could transport all the groceries back
to the boat without breaking the eggs. I helped her rattle the cart
two blocks over cobblestones to the entrance of the marina and get
all the goods safely aboard. Then I made a break for home. By the
time I walked back, it was nearly 13:00 and I hadn't had breakfast.
I stopped at the Oxxo near my house for an ice cream bar so I
wouldn't perish from hunger.
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| Lime on the Shower Floor |
I was behind
schedule, so launched into doing laundry as soon as I got home. Once
the washer was going, I attacked the tile on the floor of the shower
and managed to remove the lime scale from three rows of tile. It was
looking unlikely that I would be able to complete the project before
leaving unless we were delayed. We were hoping to leave in three
days.
After such a long
time of very routine days, it felt very strange to have a day so
busy. It felt very out of control. It was 17:30 by the time I had
hung out the last load of laundry and sat down to practice the
guitar. Realizing I was never going to fit in two practice sessions,
I practiced until after 19:00 before breaking for a dinner of
leftover chili and homemade bread. Then it was time to update my
corona virus statistics for the day and work on my blog.
Mexico now had over
45,000 confirmed cases and 4,767 deaths. California had 76,618
confirmed cases and 3,136 deaths. Solano County, where I live in
California, had more cases than the entire state of Nayarit, with 410
cases vs 287 in Nayarit. If I had not had repsonsibilities that
needed attention, I would have preferred to remain in La Cruz.
May 16, 2020
I got up to take
what I thought would be my last run in La Cruz for the year. After
walking thirteen kilometers the day before, I didn't want to overdo
it, so I only ran about two miles through the town and up the old
road to Punta Mita before turning back.
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| Darkened Calle Coral |
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| Sunrise Over La Cruz |
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| Dawn on La Puente |
I had reached the
point where I was starting to do things for the last time before
leaving and it made me sad. I swept the front patio and the sidewalk
for the last time before listening to the net and saying goodbye to
the fleet. Then I chipped some more lime off the shower floor. I
realized that, at some point, there must not have been a shower
curtain in that bathroom and the side of the toilet facing the shower
was also coated with scale. I scraped and scrubbed most of that off,
too, before I got so stiff I had to pack it in for the day.
After
breakfast, I practiced the guitar a little and then took a nap. I
had planned to pack but, by the time I woke up, I had messages from
Leslie about our dinner plans and barely had time to practice a
little and change clothes before it was time to leave. Leslie and I
had been apprehensive about having dinner with Jack's friends because
some of them had just arrived and we didn't know them. It seemed too
risky. She and I decided to have dinner with our friends, John and
Elinore, instead. We ordered pizza and salad from Casa Hule and had
a lovely dinner in the cockpit of their boat. We even had
margaritas. I shared some of my coroncello after dinner. It was the
most fun I had had since we got back from Zihuatanejo.
After Jack picked
Leslie up to take her back to the boat, Elinore and I went out to
feed the cats on the breakwater. They must have been hungry because
they were all waiting for us. They were so cute. I had been told
that there was a golden cat who was friendly and I had looked for
him, earlier, when I thought I was going to be alone in the house for
a couple of months. I never found him and then Cherie ended up
coming back, so I stopped looking. I finally found him. He was quite
friendly and even liked to be picked up. He followed us when we
walked further up the malecon to feed the second group of cats. I was
sorry that I hadn't met him earlier.
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| St. Elinore of the Food Dish with Her Charges |
I had a nice walk
back home. Two of the Dock 4 cats greeted me and followed me all the
way to the plaza. They had never been so friendly. They must have
been hungry. There weren't a lot of people on the street, but people
were out in their yards or on their stoops, enjoying the beautiful
evening. Red Chairs was selling tacos to go and the taco vendor by
the bus stop was open. I realized that I hadn't been out in the
evening for two months.
I was disappointed
to learn that Jack had invited another couple to join us for the trip
north. They were strangers who had been sheltering in Cancun and
would have to fly to join us. I seriously considered backing out.
We had been so careful for so long and didn't want to risk getting
ill in remote Baja. After getting a little bit more information
about them from Leslie and discussing the situation with her, we
decided we could manage. We would barricade ourselves in the forward
cabins and keep them in the aft suite. We would not take watches
with them and would bring plenty of cleaning supplies, eating and
storing our food in our cabins, if necessary. We weren't sure why
they wanted to come, since they weren't U.S. citizens and were unlikely
to be admitted. We encouraged Jack to discuss that with them. It
wouldn't be a problem for Leslie or me, but Jack would be responsible
for them if they got trapped in Ensenada. We really hoped they would
change their minds about coming.
May 17, 2020
I slept in until
9:00 and then got up to chip scale off the shower floor for an hour
before I took a shower. Then I made pancakes for breakfast.
I practiced for an
hour and then began the process of packing. I didn't want to leave,
so it was hard to make myself pack. I put all the things I might use
on the boat into one duffle bag and packed the more civilized clothes
I was taking home into my carry on bag. I sorted through all my food
and loaded snack foods into a grocery bag with my cleaning supplies
and hand sanitizer.
Since I never knew
exactly who might be staying in our house over the summer, I needed
to pack all the things I was leaving behind, as well. I loaded all
my belongings into three plastic bins. This also protected things
from roof leaks and insects.
Our
neighbor, Reynaldo, came over to invite us to come over for lunch. We
didn't have a lot of time, but Cherie and I stopped in for a while to
taste their wonderful ceviche. Our neighbors were fishermen and were
having trouble selling their fish because of the lockdown. It was
nice getting to know them. Our neighbor was a widower and he lived
with his son, nephew, and a Guatemalan friend that he also called his
son. They spent a lot of time cooking and drinking in the shade of
their palm thatched shelter. They had music blaring most of the
time. The father and son argued over what style of music to play.
We preferred the son's rock and roll.
After lunch, I
finished packing. Then our neighbors dragged Cherie, John, and me
back over there to help them eat grilled fish. The fish was really
tasty. Reynaldo was pretty drunk by that point and he decided we
should dance. We danced while his “sons” watched and laughed.
He swore he was going to track down whomever had stolen my bicycle.
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| John and Cherie Dancing with Reynaldo |
It was nice getting
to know our neighbors and learn something about them. However, I had
things to do before I left and Reynaldo was getting a bit too
friendly for comfort, so I said goodnight. Cherie and John stayed
for a while longer. Before they left, they were invited back for
breakfast. We had been adopted.
I practiced for
another hour and then wrote before going to bed. Our two additional
crew members had unfortunately arrived. The boat would be coming to
the fuel dock in the morning and I needed to meet them to load my
luggage aboard.
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