JONAH OWEN LAMB

The gray 1994 Honda Civic that sits on my cottage’s front lawn will soon carry this writer across a continent, over mountains, across plains and home. Besides the rust spots and the weird rattling that comes from the muffler, I am hopeful.

Since there is no cheap way to get this car across the country, I will be driving it. I hope it will hold up. If it doesn’t, I’ll just chalk it up to my year of car sagas. What could be worse than being stuck on a beach in Baja with a flu and a broken down car — for a week?

The car used to be my brother-in-law’s. He and my sister have bought a new car and were going to donate it for tax purposes. “No, No, No,” I told them. I can fix it. Three days later I had fixed the car after a minor series of struggles. I had to saw out the old alternator with a metal bladed saw. i had banged on the thing for hours before to no avail.

After three days, my injuries were minor: a couple busted up knuckles, a metal shard stuck in my cornea (I picked it out with tweezers), and a couple bruises. I did a little dance when my triumph over the car was complete.

In a couple days I head out. Wish me luck, and look for more bloging about “my road west.”

I am sitting in a McDonald’s deep in the farm country of western New York State — surfing the Web. What is the world coming to? I am sipping an all fruit smoothie for Christ’s sake. A steel framed Ikea-inspired light hangs over the table. In this poor Upstate village, surrounded by farms and orchards, the McDonald’s is not what it used to be. They even have newspapers. It’s like Starbucks got a hold of the share holders and told them to clean up the place. And they kicked Ronald off the premises. And the Fry Guys too.

“McCafe” (I know, it hurts) is what they call the place, and I guess this means that this fast food joint has joined the 21st century. But I don’t know what to feel about this move. Should I be happy, revolted or just confused? I mean, serving salads was one thing, but smoothies?

Look McDonald’s, these half assed attempts at making yourself appear like the health spa you will never be are trying. You serve fast food. As far as I can remember, fast food is not meant to be good for you. You serve fatty, fried things that make people fat and clog arteries. You make the heart attack possible. You are the godfather of obesity. I don’t want you to be anything else. If all of this world’s bad things all of a sudden turned good, where would we be? Christianity without the Devil? God without sin? The world without McDonald’s? Who will the Europeans hate then? Don’t try to be some weird hybrid McDonald’s. Soon this venerated fast food establishment – the original – will give back rubs and facials along with milk shakes and fries. This is one step too far. And it is just one sign of this society’s decadence and ensuing collapse. Of this I am convinced.

And then, and then… they are playing fucking Bonnie Raitt. Have a Heart McDonald’s. Have a heart.

At the center of the small, darkened arena, in a circular well of light, a gestulating wrestler stood on the third wrung of the ring’s corner post, invoking the crowds’ cheers. She and her teammates equally excited and reviled the crowd: some parrying insults with challenges to audience members and others spreading their arms to receive the cheers of their fans. These female wrestlers were only part of the spectacle of Lucha Libre or Mexican free wrestling, which included a line of curvy and scantily clad women, masked men posing like Greek god’s on to much wine, a crowd flinging insults and finally a wrestling match that more resembles a choreographed macho version of modern dance than anything like actual fighting. I don’t know why, but I had been expecting real wrestling not the Latin version of Hulk Hogan.

Tim and I bought tickets for the match at Mexico City’s smaller and central arena, not far from the zocalo. The vendors of wrestling paraphernalia occupied the street fronting the arena: dolls, masks, posters and even videos filled the make- shift stands.

Inside we took our seats on hard concrete bleachers and bought beers and looked down on the ring with excitement. The crowd beside us was mostly families with their young children. More little girls and boys muscled their way past us then beer-bellied bruisers.

In the pit-like arena’s center, a line of almost naked women flanked each wrestler on their way to the ring. Each made his own way on to the ring, some flying over the ropes, others hurdling underneath. Once on the drum of canvas they began a series of postulations that lasted a good five minutes. As their opponents entered the arena, two or three wrestlers stood atop the ropes and raised their arms or pointed their arms diagonally into the air as if they were lightning bolts.

When the fight did begin it was a confusing cycle of events. There were rounds, it seemed, and even moments of triumph and loss when the referee pounded the mat with three pats to indicant that there had been a pin. But the confusion of the fight, with three or more wrestlers on each team, some flying through the air or throwing their opponents against the ropes, made any attempts to make sense of the match futile. Trying to figure what team was the winner was equally difficult as the match spilled into the audience or saw simultaneous pins.

It was the good guys, usually better looking and dressed in lighter colored costumes, who won out in the end. The bad team – long hair, dark costumes – in ever match, began by claiming the first victory. But the match would end with their loss and long moments of melodramatic anger over this unfair and one-sided victory.

Some matches were better acted, with more of a flare for theatrics, while others were clumsy in their slow moves and uninspiring acting. But others were both subtle and spectacular in their gravity defying acts of mock violence and their enthusiastic playing of their parts.

It was the last match, which topped the night. The match began in the regular process of posing wrestlers that we had come to expect with entry of Ivan “the Russia” flinging the sweat from his chest onto the crowd. But soon this match degenerated into a chaotic circus of flying bodies and body blows after a midget dressed as a blue monkey entered the scene. Soon the midget was in the arms of a giant wrestler who began smashing his face on the corner post of the ring. On the other side of the ring, two wrestlers careened into the crowd, but softly. Soon this last match was a montage of bodies flying through air, above the ring, two wrestlers wide, as they slammed each other down on to the bending floor.

This round of fighting was almost practiced enough to seem real: the wrestler with his knees clamped to his opponent’s head, spinning in an arch, was just this side of violence. You could almost believe that the wrestler on the floor holding his head in pain was really in pain. But soon that thought returned from where it had come. Another choreographed bounce against the ropes revealed the match’s falsity as the wrestler to-easily moved himself into his next position. He was almost dancing with his opponent as if they were both actually in some other competition spinning in pairs across the floor, dancing.

Tim drove through Ensenada leaning over the wheel of his van with his elbows out like wings. He didn’t have his glasses on so his squinted up face awkwardly peered at the passing street signs. We were looking for a tire shop so as to fix our van’s last illness. Both of us had our eyes on either side of the road, and neither of us was looking at where the road ran into the hills.

That is when Tim ran an unseen stop sign, but we didn’t know it yet. We knew something was wrong when we heard the siren. Whoop, Whoop. Tim pulled the van to the side of the road and we waited. “Ya that’s a cop,” I said, as we tried our best in that strange and useless way people try to prepare for an interrogation; cleaning up the trash at our feet, putting on our shoes.

The officer stood in the frame of Tim’s window with the kind of look a parent gives a naughty child. “You gringo’s never learn,” it seemed to be saying. His gaze slid away from ours behind the aviators that shielded his eyes. “You know you just ran a stop sign back there,” he said. He pointed backwards. “No, officer we didn’t see that,” we said looking at one another and then back, in wonder, as if what he spoke of was a mirage that had appeared after we had passed it. “I will have to give you a ticket,” he said. We nodded in agreement.

Then things turned weird. “But we don’t give tickets here,” he continued in his broken English. We had no reply.” So,” he said, “we are going to have to go to the station to pay the fine.” He paused. We nodded to each other and thought this was the best plan. We had heard that the thing to do when pulled over in Mexico is to go to the station so that it is harder to be forced into a bribe. So we naturally thought that this meant we were not going to have to pay a bribe — this officer was honest.

Then he asked Tim a strange question, “How do you feel?” It was as if he were asking him several contradictory questions all at once: How is your health? Are you nervous? Does this feel legitimate? Well officer, he might have answered, I’ve had the shits for three days, and you make me nervous, and this does not feel legitimate. We were perplexed. The three of us hovered in a moment of silence, Tim and I only able to shrug our shoulders as if looking for direction in this matter from the police officer, staring down at us.

After a long period of very uncomfortable silence, I said something to the cop in Spanish, and he whipped around the front of the car and stood, now, in my window, looking down at me. In Spanish he gained a new confidence, as if he could more deftly use the subtly of language to take our money. “How do you want to deal with this?” he asked me. I still didn’t exactly understand what he was about. I said, “How do you want to deal with this?” And then all of a sudden we were on the same page. He smiled and said simply, “How much do you want to pay?” He was asking for a price. He was negotiating almost. I was just glad the ambiguity was over with. Now we could get this thing done and be gone. I said, “How about twenty bucks?” and he agreed. The next thing I knew he was handing me a folded slip of paper, not unlike a ticket, and telling me to put the bills inside the paper and hand it back. As I fumbled with my money belt he looked to his left and right as if making sure the coast was clear. I slipped over the folded paper and its hidden bills. Then he let us go. Thank you officer we told him as he walked back to his cruiser with our twenty bucks.

While my days south of the frontier have come to an end, this is not the end of the road for this blog. From this day forward it will act as a venue for writing about ideas, reflections, stories and my continued travels to as yet unknown destinations. Stay tuned…

“I don’t negotiate,” was the bus driver’s curt reply after I asked him if he could just drop me along the freeway in Sausalito. It was way past midnight and I was at the air port waiting for a bus home. Unfortunately, there where no more Marin airporters for the rest of the night. I had to make do with the Airporter express, which serves all points north of Marin. The driver said that for insurance reasons he couldn’t stop in Sausalito. But he could take me to San Rafael and then I could get a cab. I got on the bus.

As we rolled north, despite my fatigue from a three plane journey from Mexico, I was pissed. And immediately, I began comparing my situating with what I imagined would occur in Mexico. For one, a bus driver will drop you off just short of hell if you ask, and for two, in Mexico everything is open to negotiation. So when the bus driver refused to reason with me and I had to fork over 50 bucks for a cab and a bus home, I was understandably angry. I don’t negotiate my ass. My home coming was made bitter sweet because of this undeniably over priced and non-negotiable ride home.