This is in the house at Pila Seca 5 in the center of San Miguel. I am writing at the dining room table with Paul Desmond playing on Pandora. The living room has sunlight streaming through the window but to balance the photo it looks as if we are in a cloud bank.
Long planned and looked forward to – Mimi and two of her friends are here as well, staying in this same house with me while Mimi is staying with her Mother. San Miguel is as beautiful as ever and continues to get more fancy each time I come.
I am writing this on Sunday morning. Let’s start at the beginning of the trip.
Normally the trip on the Marin Airporter after the commute peak takes less than an hour. Because of all the storms it took more than a hour and a half. Lines were long to get to the Gates. My flight was called as leaving from Gate 93. I was still in line for my hand luggage to be checked by TSA. And where the hell was Gate 93?
The flight was full, and I was given a center seat. At least I was on the plane. Storms had caused lots of delays though. And once we were all onboard we never moved from the gate. It was another hour and 10 minutes on the tarmac. Would I make my connection in Houston?
Yep, just barely. Houston Airport is huge. Of course I had to get to another terminal. During one of the train rides I learned that one of our strongest storms in decades hit the coast very hard and storm surges were going to be about 20 feet! That means water right up past my house on Calle del Pinos as far as Highway One at high tide. I did make the flight, again boarding with the stragglers. By the time I arrived at Leon Airport in Mexico I had a call from Margaux at the beach saying there had been no power for two hours and there was no projected repair time because of all the outages. I texted Rocky, my trusty helper to get in touch with Margaux ASAP.
After Leon Customs and Passport Control, the waiting room was a welcome sight. However no driver with a sign. After talking with two other drivers and asking if they knew the driver from Viajes San Miguel (no, but maybe I wanted to talk to them). At this point I had no pesos because of the late arrival at SFO, so my next search was an ATM… Yes, I found one, but it refused each of my three cards!
The driver finally arrived with a hand written sign for Margaret Woodring. He greeted me and said he had one more passenger, the other name on the sign. I thought she was probably still in the Customs Hall, but after 30 minutes I went over to Andres and asked where she was. Her plane had not yet arrived…. I told Andres I had no pesos, he aims he would prefer dollars anyway. How much? 30 dollars – did I have that’s amount to hand over… By some miracle, I did.
After an hour and half at almost midnight the car pulled up across the street from Pila Seca 5. Thea driver rang the bell and a couple came to the door – Vicky and Fernando. Was I happy to see them!
The house was warm! There were three floors of switches, five bathrooms, two terraces and a large kitchen – my brain was taking only a small percentage of all the info. All this training took about 20 minutes, maybe more. They said goodnight. I sighed, turned out lots of lights and went to my bedroom.
daily woodring 