zacatecas – vagando

The Ineluctable March of History or How We Clogged a Toilet in Zacatecas

Atotonilco, Zacatecas to Zacatecas, Zacatecas

It is one of the coldest mornings of our trip and my 28th birthday. I am slow getting out of bed as we agreed the night before not to push on to Zacatecas. We vow to move slower, take it easy and enjoy ourselves. We ride hard anyways, the miles clicking by as we glide past the Tropic of Cancer. The toucans and banana trees are strangely absent.

Most of our conversations on the bikes are related to the landscape and signs, but occasionally an exceptional piece of trash or uniquely mangled animal draws our attention. The road stretches out before us, we are flying. Tarantulas lurch across the pavement, Mormon Crickets rape and canabalize one another. Rediculous construction projects abound and astound: a pedestrian walkway in the middle of nowhere, concrete posts line the highway that have all fallen over. All of it constructed by highway crews that impressively appear more indolent than their American counterparts. A truck painting lines on the road drives on the wrong side of the road as it twists and turns through the mountains, without advanced notice. A man slumps behind the wheel of his car looking dead with all of the doors wide open. Deep red blood is smeared across the road for extraordinary distances in places. Animal carcasses are flattened by traffic and baked into the pavement, their teeth and bones made planar with the road surface. A man sits on the side of the highway after an accident, all of the skin missing from his forehead leading to blood cascading down his face. Police and paramedics stand by him talking. Billboards constantly remind us of the money the government has spent on automotive infrastructure improvements so that Mexicans can ‘Vivir Mejor.’

We find ourselves in Fresnillo for lunch, cursing the topes and traffic after the sumptuous country. Over lunch we sit quietly eating until one of us brings up the possibility of making it to Zacatecas today, we speak as if we are two superstitious pitchers trying not to jinx ourselves.

We set out from Fresnillo riding hard, averaging 25-30km/hr for over an hour, drafting and pushing with slow strokes. We take a quick break on the side of the highway to consume food with purpose, not relish. Clouds build to the Southwest, rolling across the plains in a torrent of flashes and columns of rain. It is late and we are exhausted, Zacatecas is still quite a few kilometers out. The rain starts falling on us, a sign says ‘Zacatecas 20km.’ Two kilometers down the road there is another sign saying ‘Zacatecas 20km.’ The mileage markers on the roadside skip down to 20km from 22km, then there are two 21km signs, then another saying 20km.

I think about all that the world has given me and how little I give back. I am not sure how I am still alive nor how I have the fortune to live as I do. I no longer have the option of dying young, of burning out rather than fading away. I tried. Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Robert Johnson and Jim Morrison couldn’t hack it. I live during a time on earth of incredible tranquility and freedom, only by virtue of our own ignorance do we believe otherwise. The world is not perfect, nor is my life, yet if either were devoid of ugliness or suffering they would equally be devoid of beauty and happiness. The strange journey continues. Fuck! A tope!

As we arrive into town the rain starts falling harder, serendipitously timed with our descent down the incredibly steep cobblestone streets of Zacatecas. The city center is marked by colonial buildings of roughly hewn stones and intricately worked iron in a beautiful state of decay. We check into a hotel and I quickly put on a tequila blanket to warm myself and celebrate my birthday. The bottle of tequila is nearly empty as we set out.

The night comes on strange. We are standing on the street drinking beer when a guy pulls up in a pickup and rolls down his window.

‘It is a bad idea to drink in the street.’

‘Oh. That guy over there told us it is fine.’

‘Well he is an idiot. Where are you guys from?’

He invites us to take a ride with him around the city as he throws his empty beer cans into the back of the truck and moves his cold beer to make room for us in true Mexican fashion. He speaks broken English that brings a smile to my face.

‘I hate blacks, they steal and don’t work hard like Latinos.’ He proclaims proudly.

‘But there aren’t any here.’ Brin says, neither of us not touching the subject any further.

‘Good! Let’s keep it that way!’

We toss cans into the bed as we drive along.

‘Do the cops ever stop you here for drinking and driving?’

‘As long as the car is moving you are fine, if you are standing somewhere or your car is stopped they will hassle you.’

We blare Paradise City and You Could be Mine by Guns and Roses before he aggressively switches gears to Avril Lavigne. I do most of my laughing in my head, just three drunk men riding around in a pickup blaring teenbop pop. We learn how to piss in public with minimal risk of a police confrontation: we pull the truck over, lift the hood and stand contemplating a nonexistant problem as urine splashes onto the pavement.

We arrive at a karaoke bar where I promptly sign myself up for several songs in a row. I sing the first song with the Dj, one that I stumble through as I have never heard it before. Afterwards I scream and shout myself through I Feel Good by James Brown. I wait for the shepard’s crook that never comes, the audience reverently maintains their quiet. After the song ends I refuse to relinquish control of the microphone, instead giving a riviting and eloquent speech introducing myself, explaining the circumstances of the day and expounding upon my travels in Mexico. Everyone is so engrossed, hanging on my every word as they wish for my oration to continue without end, that they forget to clap.

Brin and I step up to the stage together, I can feel the Mexican crowd’s demand for something nostalgic and heartwarming. A piece of the old America. I choose You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling by The Righteous Brothers. Our velvety vocals lead to swooning and frustrated boyfriends. I deliver a final monologue so prolix that its contents are lost to me forever. I decide to leave on this high note, Brin stays for a bit longer.

I am awoken toBrin spraying me with water and dumping peanut shells upon me. I obstinately refuse to go on the hunt for streetfood with him. I wake fifteen minutes later as a cheeseburger slaps the side of my face from the other side of the room. I eat it and go back to sleep.

Zacatecas, Zacatecas

I prematurely leave breakfast in spine tingling, sweating horror. I cannot run or I will have the runs. As I sit on the toilet looking at the map, which I am wont to do, I take stock of Mexican town names: Pie de Gallo, KM 59, Delicias, Poblado 1, Poblado 14, Santa Rosa Matagallinas, Nombre de Dios, Agua de Puerco, Ojo de Puerco, Cantuna, Los Mexicanos, 6 de Enero, 15 de Septiembre, Nuevo Casas Grandes, towns with the same name only a few kilometers apart…towns named after individuals like General Rodrigo M. Quevedo, Oscar Soto Maynes. I see Comitan de Dominguez and am reminded of what is still referred to as the Comitan de Dominguez Incident by everyone involved. The memories clog my mind as I sit on my bed and hear a second incomplete flush as Brin uses the bathroom.

‘Remember what happened in Comitan?’ Brin asks as he exits the bathroom with a look of worry on his face.

‘I have never forgotten compadre, will never forget.’

An event seared into both our memory, the worrying and guilt never having left us. After a similar night of drinking last year, we awoke to stirring and churning at the same time, leading to a rapid assault on the toilet. No flush would dislodge the heavy dike constructed of tacos, burritos and low grade meat left to ferment overnight in a mix of mescal and several liters of beer hemorraged out in an inhuman form that resembled none of its constituents. The room was befouled with a permeating miasma of shit. We descended the stairs to the front desk with our bags packed, moving quickly with the hope of being well clear before the discovery was made. Images run through our heads as we walked away from the hotel looking over our shoulders: The maid entering the room before the appointed time, alerted by the scent. Something is wrong, very wrong. Screams echo through the courtyard as she gazes in transfixed horror at the brimming brown bowl. A mob armed with broken plungers and mops rendered into trash combing the streets in search of two conspicuous gringos guilty of a crime so heinous the women are at a loss as they try to explain to the media.

As we are walking out the door to change hotels, after the dike has remained in place for over four hours, we hear the sucking sound of the bowl vacating. We change hotels anyways, the bathroom has run its course. Our new hotel still has a flapper flush valve, not a flushometer or pressure assist, but a larger sized drainage pipe and higher capacity water tank with a more forceful flush increase the stool capacity of the toilet. There is a balcony overlooking one of the main streets of the city; an elderly female musician serenades me from below, playing one cord on her broken guitar incessantly for over an hour.

Zacatecas, Zacatecas to 8km outside Loreto, Aguascalientes

As we sip fruit juice blended with raw quail’s eggs, Brin disappears in search of a public restroom. I sit idly sippling my drink and pondering the 30m Christmas tree sprayed with fake snow and covered in Coca Cola ornaments.

‘That was a disaster.’ Brin informs me upon his return. I ask no further questions as I assume that the outcome was therefore normal. He starts giggling as he sips his drink.

‘What is it?’

‘I forgot toilet paper.’ He grins.

‘Uhm.. so what did you do?’

‘I wiped with my hand.’

‘Ugh.. did you wash it?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘What the hell do you mean?’

‘First I looked in the used toilet paper basket for something reasonably clean, but there was nothing, then I thought about the nice sinks I saw on entry, all Sloan stainless. I couldn’t button or zip up my pants with just one hand so I came out with my pants undone to realize that none of the sinks were connected. I suddenly understood all of the shit smeared on the wall. I did the same. I managed to get my pants part way zipped up and then washed my hand in the fountain over there by the Coke tree.’

‘That is rock bottom.’

We ride a treacherous highway to Guadalupe engorged with traffic. As we ride a rural highway and make a few stops we are refreshed by the friendly and gregarious people that joke around with us and toss us fruit. Outside of Luis Moya we hit 1610km or 1000 miles, we take some pointless photos. Loreto appears to be a rough town as it is patrolled by a multitude of police, military wearing black balaklavas in humvees and an armored personnel carrier. A tatooed drunk tests my patience by stroking our bikes while telling us to go fuck ourselves as we eat tacos.

As the sun sets we ride quickly out of town, a full chicken stuffed in my pannier. The concrete rectilinear sprawl of the city stretches further than expected. We keep pushing at our limits until an open pasture appears to our right. Two men are working in the adjacent field, a fire dances and colors their figures. Fireworks irregularly explode above us, more sound than noise. Ancient ruins lie within a few hundred meters of us as an outcropping in what is otherwise farmland.

We play cards in the dark. The men in the nearby field continue slashing corn stalks with their machetes for cattle feed. We hear a man spit nearby and we both freeze and turn our lights out. We get up and shine our lights in the direction of the sound, but see nothing. We go back to our cards before the sound of a machete chinking through corn or brush approaches us. We hear footsteps. I see a silhouette under the full moon coming our way with a machete dangling by its side and a sombrero on top.

I have been in this situation several times in my life, twice with Brin. The air is pregnant with tension. Who is this? What does he want? Why? These are probably the same questions he is asking himself. The only option is to quickly defuse the situation, to exude tranquility.

‘Buenas noches.’ (Good night.) I announce as we slowly walk towards one another, measuring each other up. The moonlit man with the machete stops dead in his tracks as we near, his face is cloaked in moonshadow from his hat.

‘……Buenas noches.’ He replies with weariness in his voice.

‘¿Todo bien? ¿Todo esta bien?’ (Everything good? Everything is good?) I venture, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

‘¿Quienes son?’ (Who are you?)

‘Somos viajeros…….’ (We are travelers……) I give our whole story rapidly, my adrenaline spewing it out. I tell him that darkness overtook us and we needed to rest somewhere.

‘You are just here to camp?’ I can hear a change in his voice, he has relaxed.

‘Yes, nothing more.’

‘I needed to come see who you are after seeing your lights. Many people steal animals here, so we stay late to guard them.’

‘We are good people. Is it safe here?’

‘Yes.’

‘As long as we aren’t animals, right?’ I try to inject some humor, only I laugh.

‘You will be safe here. I hope you rest well.’

I introduce myself and almost forcibly shake his hand, something that I see as indespensible in self preservation: being seen as a person. We bid him goodnight.

Brin falls asleep quickly, his breathing slowing. I lie awake as the random explosions continue. Thumping basslines layered in horns resound from at least two different locales. I am still slightly worried about being hacked to death with a machete, but not overly.

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Santo Riots

30km outside of Balleza, Chihuahua to Hidalgo del Parral, Chihuahua

I take a shit under a mesquite tree as the sun rises, its orange glow illuminating the road to Hidalgo del Parral. Brin is already packed by the time I start. As I ferry my gear down towards the road, early morning ranch traffic rumbles past. They generally honk and wave.

I frequently stop to stretch as my muscles tighten, cranking on my IT band and causing the outside of my knee to bother. We ride through rolling hills, I am too exhausted to sprint up them, instead slowly limping upward. Brin disappears ahead leaving me to wallow in my ego’s corrosive monologue about how I am going to go home with my tail between my legs and fail. I will be out on the street fighting packs of wild dogs for scraps of blankets, forced to fight other bearded smelly men for coveted spots over warm exhaust grates on the sidewalk as the gilded graduates of my highschool take photos and instantly disseminate them with expensive technology that I have never even seen before. I consciously shift my thoughts to the rolling pasture filled with Cholla and Mesquite, surrounded by mountains made hazy by the distance. I think about my family and friends, everyone I wish that I could talk to at this moment.

I find Brin reclining on the side of the road reading The Milagro Beanfield War which leads to a brief discussion of the Snuffy Ledoux Santo Riots as we alternate taking swigs from bottles of honey and caramel.

‘So this is where we are at, huh?’

We push into a rugged mountain range, it looks daunting with sheer rock faces and a mass that quickly rises from the landscape. It is intimidating to look forward and be unable to perceive a route through an area. I put my bike in the lowest gear, put my head down and just keep pedalling. I occasionally look up and stare vacantly, as drool wavers in the wind from the corner of my mouth, at the red, yellow, orange and brown rocks that comprise the range. I don’t bother looking at traffic anymore, I just hope that they are conscientious enough not to hit me.

We crest the range and I suddenly become aware of how awful I smell as I try to breath deep the mountain air. The click and whirring of my bike on the downhill merges into one consistent howl with the wind as I descend. We see a pickup truck with the following cargo in the bed: three cows, one donkey and one horse. There is no food at the junction where we were told a restaurant existed.

‘It’s really close.’ Fuck! You aren’t the one who hasn’t eaten all day and is riding a bicycle. We ride a few kilometers down the road before eating at a restaurant where a woman rambles nonsensically and bitches about the two guys who are working for her as we alternate responding with ‘Si’ through mouths plugged with tortillas and chorizo. We pulled up and saw the two guys laying in the grass at 10:30am each with a litre of beer listening to the radio. I wouldn’t want to work for this crazy lady either.

As we climb into Parral a logging truck paces us and drowns us in black smoke. We hit 1000km just outside of the city. I savour the moment surrounded by barbed wire on both sides, broken glass under my feet and vultures circling overhead. Constructions workers urge us on as we climb into the city. I stop outside of a mechanic’s shop to ask for directions as Brin rides a bit ahead.

‘Thanks. I am going to catch up with my friend.’

‘Yeah, you should. There are a lot of murders and gun fights here.’

‘You have been watching too much news.’

‘Just kidding!’

We navigate the sprawling wasteland outside the city before taking winding

At the Pancho Villa museum in Hidalgo del Parral.

backroads into the plaza surrounded by churches and colonial edifices. After being warned by countless Mexicans about how dangerous and ugly the city is, we are pleasantly surprised. We ask a few of the fifty men in the plaza wearing white cowboy hats for a hotel and roll our bikes into the lobby.

I eat the following from at least five different eating establishments before the night is over: one gordita de mole, one burrito de lomo, one torta de lomo, one order of tacos de barbacoa, 1 order of tacos de bistek, one glass of champurrado, four apples, one cone of cookies and cream ice cream and one cone of chocolate ice cream. The tacos de barbacoa have smell rocks in them that almost break my teeth. I ask the owner:

‘Are these rocks in my food? or are they bones?’ I unfortunately give her an out.

‘Oh they are just bones, little bones.’ I know they are rocks. I pay her anyways.

We are frequently stopped by these laidback country folks who regale us with tales of meth, cocaine, deportation and violence.

Hidalgo del Parral, Chihuahua to 16km outside of a town with no name in Durango.

We ride out of town on fake cobblestone streets brought to us by Cemex, one of the largest polluters in the world. We are flagged down by a nice local who offers for us to stay with his daughter who lives in San Miguel de Allende, but reconsiders as he is writing down her phone number and gives us his instead. I don’t blame him. Brin mentions that his Achilles is hurting him slightly, but I figure he is due to suffer a little bit too. We ride into the state of Durango as we fight to make up kilometres lost from our leisurely start. Chihuahua is the largest state in Mexico and the most violent, it is feels good to ride out. The landscape gradually becomes more lush as we ride. We pass into piñon/juniper country where we hop a locked cattle gate surrounded by barbed wire as the cows eye us with suspicious rendered useless by indolence.

I am riding a fine line between a crippling injury that will lay me up for a long time and steady progress. I know what getting back into the saddle means and it isn’t pleasant. I bought some anti-inflamatories in Parral that a pharmacist recommended without asking how much I should take, when, contraindications or duration. I did ask if I could drink beer while taking this medication and was given a reproving sideways glance and a stern no. I also take some ibuprofen as well for good measure. My insides feel like they are corroding for some inexplicable reason.

16km outside of town with no name to Durango, Durango.

I rise before the sun has crested the rolling brown plains. Brin wakes crippled, but we both assume it will pass as everything always seems to hurt the most in the morning. We are completely soaked from dew and pack everything up wet.

Riding always clears my head and warms my body in the morning. Brin nurses his heel on the ride to breakfast, which is more than fine with me. Five kilometers after breakfast we arrive at a junction where Brin lays his bike down in excruciating pain. He tapes his ankle, takes ibuprofen, stretches… nothing seems to make much of a difference. I talk to a drunk who waves around his empty breakfast bottle. He has worked as a farmer and a rancher since he returned from the states. I get the distinct impression that he does not get much work done.

‘Do you want to buy some dynamite?’ He slurs through his rotten teeth.

‘Yes. Yes I do!’ How else can anyone respond to such a question?

‘Do you have any?’

‘Yes. Look.’ He pulls out a stick of dynamite from his pocket and then quickly puts it away.

‘Wait a minute. Let me see it.’ He hands me the stick, which I examine.

‘Where is the fuse? How do you light it?’

‘You just hold a lighter to this end and then throw it.’

‘How does that possibly work? How do you not lose a hand?’

‘You just have to do it quickly.’

‘No. I don’t want this type of dynamite.’

We make it a few more kilometres before Brin hops of his bike and throws his helmet down.

‘Fuck! God fucking damn it!’

We try and rest for a bit, hoping the pain will abate. We play cross cribbage in the grass and hold our cards as cars pass. His ankle worsens, he can barely walk as we sit in front of the gates of a bizarre narcohacienda. I lean my bike against a roadsign as we try to look like pitiful hitchhikers. Gringos in distress! We quickly catch a ride in the back of a Dodge pickup, sharing the bed with a man named Candi Castro who just keeps telling me that it is dangerous here and that we shouldn’t be here. Over and over.

‘Muy peligroso aqui. Muy peligroso acá en Durango. Mucha violencia.’

We are dropped at an intersection and gas station where we catch a solemn ride on a bus to Durango. I feel like this is the end of the line for Brin, the end of our trip together. There is no way tendonitis in his Achilles is going to heal in a few days.

A woman from Juaréz on the bus tells me that the situation there is perceptibly improving due to the control of the Sinaloa cartel. The murders and kidnappings have slowed, although now they are just more systematic. Every business within Juaréz, all the way down to the taco stands, must now pay protection money to the cartel.

We pass what she claims will be one of the largest solar arrays in the world and I let my rational pessimism flow forth. I tell her that no alternative energy source has made significant headway as nothing is a viable alternative to oil, yet we have a limited supply of oil that even at current prices is incredibly undervalued for the important role it plays in our lives. Secondarily, the energy from renewable sources is difficult and inefficient to transport in comparison. Everything represents a significant increase in the cost of each unit of energy over oil, which will inherently lead to cost increases for our agroindustrial, energy intensive, globalized economy. Growth is dependent upon cheap energy and broad scale adoption of alternative energy would likely lead to a shrinking of the global economy in a way that would be inherently threatening to global stability.

Once we arrive in the city, I run into Walmart to try and find some ibuprofen. The stores always leaves me with an impending sense of doom. The teeming mass of humanity is lewdly displayed, unabashedly demanding, wanting more. Constantly more. The demands have no end, but the resources are finite. I want to run out of the store. It is El Buen Fin, the Mexican equivalent of Black Friday. It coincides with the celebration of the Mexican Revolution and most of the people we talk to cannot distinguish between the two.

Durango, Durango

A young man named Mauricio talks to us at the bar and the conversation moves towards natural topics such as political corruption and drug trafficking, although they are almost indistinguishable here. I chose to ignore the only specific advice the pharmacist offered. Mauricio confirms what the woman on the bus told me: that since PRI won the presidency in July, the Sinaloa cartel has been actively aided and has consolidated power within Mexico leading to a significantly calmer atmosphere. He claims that Chapo Guzman, the mythical leader of the cartel, indiscreetly lives in the mountains of Durango. Stories constantly circulate about Chapo, Mexicans are concerned and object when I tell them that my nickname is El Chapo. They tell me I shouldn’t say that.

We leave the bar in pursuit of street food and find nothing but tacos in front of a whorehouse. The taco stand proprietor yells at the police as they pass.

‘¡Pinche policia! ¡Hijos de la chingada! Pendejeando todo el tiempo.’

‘Why do you hate the pigs?’

‘Because they stop by here all the time and steal food from me, saying it is protection money.’

Durango, Durango to 10 km outside Vincente Guerrero, Durango

Brin decides to try and continue, adjusting his cleats and his riding style to minimize the movement of his Achilles. We eat breakfast at our standard restaurant, but something peculiar happens as we swing out legs over our bikes to set out on the next leg of our journey. A short balding man in a sweater and slacks approaches Brin. He stares awkwardly at him.

‘Buenos días…’ Brin ventures. It doesn’t seem to be well received, if at all. He sticks his hand out to Brin in a strange quick motion, which he shakes.

It builds in volume as he proceeds, I can only phonetically spell it out. I watch in captivated horror.

‘Ahí chia pet. Ahí chia pet! Ahí chia pet!! AHÍ CHIA PET!’ He emphatically and confidently repeats it over and over as he faces down Brin. He abruptly departs as soon as he finishes this….

‘He just hexed you! I know what I saw!’ It doesn’t bode well for Brin’s future.

20 kilometres outside of Durango Brin gets a flat from a piece of glass and we pull over onto the roadside to fix it. We ride another few hundred meters and I feel my back tire go flat. I patch the tire and cannot find the cause, but it is obvious that it is the hex and it is severe. The Hex of the Chia Pet.

We make it a few kilometres more before Brin’s rear tire goes flat again. The valve stem has separated from the tube. That fucking diablero!

We stop for lunch at a bamboo shack on the roadside and eat smoked ham. As we ride away my tire is flat again, requiring another patch on the roadside and the removal of a piece of glass. Four flat tires. We pass through Nombre de Díos and over a luxuriant river coursing through this parched desert full of Prickly Pear cactus. so large that they resemble trees.

We move towards Zacatecas slowly, but an afternoon tailwind descends on us like a miracle. We draft behind two pickup trucks stacked high with corn stalks that will be used for livestock feed for the winter. We are making a steady 25-30km/hr huffing their exhaust with ease.

As lightning strikes to the North and rain is visible in wavering virga illuminated by rays of sun radiating from below the cloudbank, we pull into a fallow field with an open gate. A truck leaves a dust trail as it heads towards the mine on the mountainside in the distance. We ride out to a good spot and another truck approaches us an then stops nearby, seemingly watching us. A few minutes elapse, we start riding towards the truck to see what is going on. They drive away as we approach, strange. The storm passes to the North, the distant strobe of lightning continues throughout the night. The mine continues operating as well, the lights of machinery traversing and illuminating the mountainside.

10km outside Vincente Guerrero, Durango to Atotonilco, Zacatecas

We move quickly in the morning, but Brin is hurting. The landscape changes dramatically in Zacatecas, different from anywhere else we have been. The soil is an iron rich red. The mountains are not very prominent, we traverse a high rolling plateau full of

corn. The unplanted areas host massive Prickly Pear cactus, spiny Joshua Trees and Acacia. The cows that inhibited the North are gone. The sweeping backdrop is illuminated by shards of light that piece the cloud cover. Ancient structures grow out of the ground, composed of adobe bricks.

My body is a machine at this point, veins spiderweb across my legs. I can ride all day without feeling the fatigue that I felt initially on the trip. I could barely read or write at night earlier, constantly overwhelmed by exhaustion. The road is smooth, rolling resistance is almost non-existent. In Sombrerete we stop and reprovision. A taxi driver tells Brin that there are some hotsprings further on, near Atotonilco. We ride in anticipation of Atotonilco with beer, bacon, six pounds of mandarins and five pounds of bananas. We arrive slightly deflated at an old

From inside another abandoned structure.

decaying mansion with several cesspools full of leaves and algae. We speak with the surly owners who direct us further down the road. We sit in the pools, my muscles soaking in beer and hot water. We take runs down a waterslide made for children, it sways and creaks under my weight.

We arrange to sleep here for the night, next to the pools. We have a protracted traditional Thanksgiving feast. I list everything for which I am thankful before I shut my eyes. A bar nearby blares music late into the night, sleep lingers over me like a fog that never fully descends.

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