Interference

Even though it was only October when I first started making travel arrangements for Mexico many apartments had already been booked. Although there were lots of high end apartments in the $1500-$4000 range, I was looking to reduce my expenses, not increase them! So it took a fair bit of creative web searching to find places to stay. Since it was hard to get a place for the full six months, I decided to pick places I really liked first and then do what I could to fill in the missing time.

So I booked an apartment for April, May, and June first. I also really wanted to stay at Jim and Therese's place so I booked with them for January. Then it was up to trusty Craig's List to find me a spot for Feb and March. Luckily one showed up the first time I checked. But to me this middle apartment was a bit of a wild card because it was hard to tell from the pictures how big it really was, and of course I didn't know the town so I wasn't sure what area it was in.

So the day before I moved I decided to do a walk-by to get to know the neighborhood I was moving into. The first thing I found out was that the street I was moving to wasn't even on the map! Luckily I was near the tourist office and the clerk was very helpful, giving me a new map and showing the location on the old one. So I started to walk. And I walked and I walked and I walked. After a long time I was in a slum-like section of town near the highway. I wandered a bit then bought a Dr Pepper like one of those thirsty cowboy guys in soft drink commercials and sat down on some dusty steps with the sun beating down on my head. I took out the map from the tourist bureau and of course being extremely dyslexic I'd ended up in the wrong area. So I walked back a number of blocks and eventually found my new street. By this time I was so tired I just wanted to get home and didn't look around the neighborhood at all.

I tried to call the new landlords on my cell but my cell wasn't working properly. So I called them long distance on VOIP. A man answered whose name I didn't know because the phone crackled when he told me his name. He seemed a little teed off that I'd waited so long to call. We set up a time for me to come the next day.

The next morning I got up at 7am to take out the garbage. Dyslexia struck again and as soon as I stepped out the door I took a bad fall onto the stone sidewalk and down the hill and couldn't move for a couple of minutes. Finally I could stand and took the garbage down. Luckily I didn't have a sprain and was only bleeding a little so I went back upstairs to finish packing.

Just when I was beginning to wonder what the whole deal was with this move everything began to turn around. Jim and Therese came up to return my deposit and check out the apartment and Jim offered to drive me to the new place. By now my cell phone was working again so I called ahead and said I'd be a little late, which was lucky as there were so many one-way streets in the area that it took extra time to get there. Jim dropped me off across from the new apartment, shook my hand, and wished me well saying he wished things had worked out so that I could stay longer. I scanned the map looking for a way for him to get out of the area but he jumped in the car with a smile, did a u-turn, and headed back down the one-way street. Facing an unpretentious blue door, I rang the bell.

To be continued...