OK, I admit it, I killed several VW Bugs back in the 60’s and 70’s.  The fire dept had to extinguish one in Holtvill, Calif. and I still managed to drive it to Dallas before it gave up.  In Dallas I patched up the poor thing and limped it back to Washington, DC where it died in front of my girlfriends house a smoking hulk.  The best of the VW stories happened one Saturday night in Virginia.  I was coming back from a coffee house where I played guitar and sang other people’s songs.  Yep, I was a folksinger.  My buddy Carl had come along that night and we were just getting the Bug up to speed when I heard Carl click his seatbelt.  We were just cresting a hill and doing around 45 mph when I saw four head lights lined up across a two lane road.  That was all she wrote.  Things went real fast for the first split second.  The girl driving the GTO on the wrong side of the road, over the double yellow lines, on the hill, on the curve, doing 65 mph in a 45, managed to lock up her brakes and swing the rear end of her car around like a giant baseball bat.  I had managed to just miss her front grill.  She swatted me deep into center field.  Both front tires of the VW laid down right where we hit and the front of the Bug went away.  One minute I was going south at 45 and the next I was headed north at about the same speed.  We took out a small billboard and began to roll down a small embankment.  I don’t remember just how many times we slowly rolled down it, I just remember Carl saying he’d had enough of it and opening his door to stop the next roll.  The next thing I recall was this girl with her face at my window screaming.  She hadn’t killed me in the wreck so now she was going to scare me to death.  Almost worked.  When I got back up on the road I could see her car was in two pieces.  There sat the frame and engine and next to it was the body with two people sitting in the front seat.  Except for the two people it looked like something you’d see on an assembly line in Detroit.  The fact that all the cars came apart most likely save our lives.  We went to a near by farm house to call the police and she called a wrecker service.  I didn’t listen to her conversation but I did catch that her uncle was the wrecker driver.  When the wrecker pulled up to the scene a guy gets out with a rubber mallet in his hand and looks at the two halves of the GTO, right away goes to his knees laughing.  We he regains his composure he tells the girl, “I think you’re going to have to tell your dad”.  When she called she had asked him to come fix the car so her father wouldn’t know about the accident.  I wasn’t in much better shape myself, I had borrowed my sisters car and was going to have to tell her it didn’t exist anymore.  I carved one more notch on my drivers license.

I’ve been so busy that I have let my blog go for some time.  The life down here is quite different and I have forgotten that it might be interesting to the folks back home.  We are all doing just fine and settling down to life on the boat.  We have had our ups and downs but on the whole things are fine.  Our days begin around dawn by walking the dogs in a near by field that is also used by quite a few people for their morning walks.  Back on the boat we grab a fresh smoothie and                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

some breakfast.  By this time even Mike is up.  Next we tune in to channel 22 on the VHF radio for the morning report from the Yacht Club that helps the Gringos  along We get our mail their and other information about what is going on in town.  After that we get to work on the boat until the temperature starts to get into the 90’s around 11:30 and then it’s time to get below decks and take a siesta that last until around 4 or 5.  During the last few months the heat index was staying around 117 with the temperature around 104.  The sun goes down about 7:30 and the cool evening wind begins to blow if we are lucky.  Mercifully , the temperature has begun to drop as the cooler season is beginning.  Today’ the heat indes is only 114.  There are two small bars at the marina where we can get something to drink,  I have discovered the Michaladas (sp I’m sure) which is a mix of beer and lime juice with salt  around the rim of the glass like a Margarita.  Except for the salt it’s much like the British Shandy.  There are two small pools on the roof of the marina buildings that offer an escape from the heat.                                                                                                                        After dinner we try to get some work done on the boat with the help of the spreader lights. 
We should have all work done on the boat by the end of December and at that time we begin our trip back to the United States. December also the time of year that the Pacific hurricanes that spin off the coast of Mexico are, for the most part, over.  So, even if the boat was ready right now, we would be staying put.
 We had hoped to be able to buy some more equipment down here but found it was ether not available or just way too expensive.  It looks like we can make it to Panama in about 30 days if the weather is on our side.  Getting through the canal will be a challenge.  Piles of paperwork and hiring pilots and line handlers to get through the locks not to mention the transit fees.  Now we find out that if we can’t make it through in one day we have to pay again for the second day.  We also need four dock lines that are 150 ft long.  Once we get through the canal we will head up the east coast of Central America and up to the Yucatan peninsula.  From there the final leg of the trip is crossing the Gulf of Mexico which will take several days.
We look forward to getting back home but will miss much of La Paz.  We have made many friends here that we will miss.  Mardel, the lady that makes the best shrimp burger in the world, Moi, the local policeman that spars with my son Mike and takes art lessons from me.  Raffa and Martine are owners of one of the small marina bars by night and are computer  programmers and marine biologist during the day.  We drink and talk of the culture of Mexico and sometimes revolution.  Martine’s little girl got on the boat once,  she climbed into a bunk and refused to leave and Shannon would have let her stay if her dad didn’t want her back.  Of the hundreds of people we have run into down here I have met only one that I didn’t care for.  All the rest have been very nice and much more patient with the dump gringos than we deserve.  Trying to learn Spanish from them while they try to practice their English on us is a lot of fun.  Our body language abilities have become extraordinary.  In short, we are having a great time and wish you were here.