on the road to Zacatecas

Somebody suggesting blogging about my trip to Zacatecas to present at the Mexican Library Association conference, hmm! What a concept! Qué ocurrencia! A ver...

I decided to try Transportes Zavala to get me here; in February took the Grey dog and was not impressed. Needless to say, está pobre la patria - ya no hay $$ for air fare. Transportes Zavala picked me up in the Plaza Santa Cecilia parking lot. We didn't leave exactly at 11 a.m., but pretty close after loading everyone's stuff below... and it barely fit! I thought I saw a 19" flat screen tv...

It was a pretty comfortable bus, we picked up more people in OKC and again in Dallas. After that, it was straight for the border. I gained a large seat mate. An 80 year old slow moving woman, but she was game for all that! We hit the border in the middle of the night; the bus driver's helper asked everyone to pitch in $10 as a small incentive for the agents to overlook making us take everything off the bus to go through customs. Everyone ponied up, even me, who only took 2 little bags {travel light!}. Pues, we got there and the fiscal - a hard woman, according to the helper, was not taking any bribes. Too bad! Everybody and all their stuff off the bus. Hooray for the woman! The helper gave everybody their 10 bucks back... and we were held up for an hour or more, but justice worked - the people trying to get all that stuff across had to pay some hefty taxes on it, jiji!

By the time we got to our destination, we were all pals. My seat mate was trying to hook me up with one of the single men across the aisle, jajaja! No, thanx, I told her - been there, done that! One of the men on the bus did come up and say he thought he knew me. Turns out his kids go to Disney and they use the library.

Checked in to pretty nice hotel, thanx to my friend Antonio Gaytan - Elaine's ex who is from near Zacatecas. His hook-up got me a decent price for a Western Inn placed located right in the Centro Historico with this free Internet in the lobby, yay!

They are having some kind of BMX biking event in the main plaza. They have set up ramps for the kids to bike up and down, doing fancy moves uptop- spins, no-hands, etc. It seems like I see a lot of my customers here -their faces- Noe, Rey, German, Jose Luis. All guys participating, except one stubborn little girl with braids on a tricycle who insists on getting in harms way, right in the middle of the action - you go, girl! She is the only one wearing a helmet, jajaja!