Give 'im FI' DOLLA'!

The local cops in Los Cabos have a reputation for “ticketing” poor unsuspecting tourists. It’s a little unsettling at best to be stopped by the police in a foreign country and very often the timid traveler will shell out the shekels without knowing why. They have even managed to squeeze 5 bucks out of me more than once.

Well they wouldn’t be getting any money from me this fine evening. My tags were current and I wasn't speeding although no municipal cop has ever stopped anyone for speeding. Yep, they were going to have to go pick on some poor tourist. I was totally legit! Ha!

The very second that thought began to age in my mind like a fine wine, I saw red flashing lights in the rearview mirror and the cop horn beeped.
I pulled over and thought smugly, "You don't know who you're dealing with Mister. I live here." I could hear my little voice saying, "Ahh just give ‘im fi’ dolla’ (my inner voice has an accent but it's hard to put on paper) and wish him merry Christmas and save us both some time." I considered it but 5 bucks is 5 bucks!

This cop walked to the car, shined his flashlight in the windows briefly and greeted me. We chatted about the weather for a few moments and finally I politely asked if there was a problem because after all, he had stopped me. He said “Yes, I'm afraid that you have a taillight that isn’t working.”

Taillight?? Carrumba!! I smiled back and told him “No, I didn't know that but don’t worry. I will get it fixed first thing in the morning.” Then I thanked him profusely for bringing it to my attention hoping that might be the end of it.
"Very good" he replied "It is for your own safety señor but there is a problem, this is an "infraction" and requires a ticket."
Ahhhh, there’s the rub. Well, he had me fair and square but I wasn’t ready to cave in just yet. I kind of shrugged my shoulders and said innocently, "But sir, there's not a police car in Baja that has all its lights working. Can you give me a ticket for that?" He gave me a grave look and told me to get out of the car. Uh-oh this was new. No Baja policeman had ever asked me to get out of the car before. My inner voice had very recently sounded like a zen master while giving me advice but was now large and angry and racing around in my mind screaming, “Why you not give ‘im fi’ dolla?? You a stupid!!” Point taken.

The officer stood behind my car and pointed at the offending tail-light. I casually tapped the plastic cover hoping it might come back to life. No luck. Then he told me to stand and face his patrol car. I looked around hoping to see Rodney King holding a video camera. No chance. Then I thought about asking to see his badge but if he would have said, “We don’t need no stinking badges” I would have laughed so hard that I'd probably still be in jail. So I calmly turned toward the patrol car while the little voice continued to insult my intelligence. He walked back to the driver's door of the car. His mustache-adorned face glared at me as he reached in the car. Suddenly the left blinker started flashing. Oh no, not the old Chinese blinker torture! I still didn’t understand what he was up to. Then he nodded towards the front of his car and asked, “It works, no?” I looked back and answered, “It works, yes.” He then proceeded to operate all his blinkers and flashers and high and low beams. I nodded in approval at each one and then I was told to please walk to the rear of his vehicle where I watched as went through his whole repertoire again and even showed me the brake lights for good measure. His license plate light even worked for cryin’ out loud! He got out of his car, walked up to me with a smile on his face and dollar signs in his eyes. “All your lights work” I said. He waited patiently as I pulled out my wallet hoping I had at least 100 pesos. The entertainment value alone was well worth the price of admission. Unfortunately all I could produce was a 50 which he graciously accepted. We wished each other Feliz Navidad and he reminded me to get my taillight fixed. I sat there smiling to myself as he drove away and realized I had just enjoyed being stopped by the police. Go figure.

My little voice reminded me that I could have just given him the “fi’ dolla’ in the beginning. Yeah maybe, but look at all the fun I would have missed.

The Coffee Shop, Part 1

We were sitting around the coffee shop one day taking another morning to solve the world's problems all over again. (This actually was my coffee shop that my now ex-wife and I opened in 1997. I'll tell you about it someday. Great place).

We had been reminiscing about the good old days of Baja before the land was worth anything and the developers came. The good old days were when the phones worked poorly when they worked, the grocery stores had about 5 products and every time a storm blew through, you were stranded with no gas, no water, no lights, nada for days or even weeks. (There was always beer and birria (goat meat) though). If you actually had some gas, you had to drive through flooded arroyos to get anywhere because the few bridges that existed were washed out.

Those were the good old days. Go figure.

We drifted in and out of subjects mainly abusing our friends who hadn’t made it to coffee that morning. Finally someone's indignation flared up over the abundance of poor drivers, another daily subject that we endlessly flog. Someone else complained that nobody ever gets stopped for speeding and how dangerous it was to drive the highway to Cabo from San Jose. When the weekend came, it got worse because not only do you have speeders in the left lane you have drunks in the right lane weaving slowly towards home.

After we had voiced every possible opinion and a couple more, a local Mexican friend had finally heard enough, "I'll tell you what the problem is. You Americans don't know how to drive drunk." (Now there's a sobering thought) "In the U.S. you're scared to get stopped by the police so you act sober and drive 60 mph when actually, you're HAMMERED. Here, before there were drunk tourists on the road, we drove with our flashers on and crept along the shoulder (where a shoulder actually existed) at about 20mph. Everyone knew you were drunk and avoided you. It was a good system"
While I was trying to wrap my brain around that concept, Señor Oso weighed in with his latest issue: "What's the deal with space?" Space? I wondered how we made the quantum leap from drunk driving to space.

"You know, you're driving along with some space in front of you and out of nowhere, somebody jams their car in YOUR space that you’re trying to maintain for your own peace of mind and it turns out he's only going another block and has to jam himself back into the space he came from. Or how about parking space? Nobody builds parking space here for their business. Ya gotta park on one side of town to get groceries on the other side." Ahh, that space. I've wondered that myself actually. Maybe space really is the final frontier.

If you come down, DRIVE CAREFULLY. The fine folks here in Baja Sur have developed their own driving culture that is sometimes completely at odds with the way we Americans as a whole, learned how to drive. Pay attention, don't get in a hurry and you'll be fine. I have plenty more to tell you about driving. Wait 'til you hear what the left blinker means.

To be continued...........