Tag Archives: Mexico

Cinco de Mayo

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ChrisCincodeMayo

There was an article on one of the news outfits on the Internet, CNN or MSNBC I don’t remember which, asking “Why do we celebrate Cinco de Mayo”. I was surprised by this as the answer has always been “because it’s Chris’s birthday.” This is so simple a problem to answer I couldn’t believe it warranted an entire article on a national news service, all they had to do was give me a call and I could have told them saving a lot of angst on their part.

As one of Chris’s parents I was always mildly surprised that an entire country chose to celebrate Chris’s birthday. I  noticed that shortly after he was born Mexico began celebrating Chris’s birthday. I was a little surprised that they chose to call it Cinco de Mayo instead of Chris’s Birthday Day, but then I thought that his being born was so great that celebrating the day was an even neater way to celebrate it rather than calling it Chris’s Birthday day. I realize he is a special person but a whole country stopping in their tracks, not to mention other folks around the world joining in to celebrate his birthday for an entire day, well you have to admit, that is pretty cool.

 It shouldn’t be that unusual though, Chris always has been a special person doing exceptional things even as a young person. Here he is shown after a hard day working on the railroad. He was instrumental in completing the Ferrocarril Chihuahua al Pacifico railway, a rail line known for its dangerous tunnels and high trestles that span 1000′ deep ravines. That was an amazing feat for someone as young as Chris, but was it enough to get an entire nation to celebrate his birthday. We think so. When we look back at those days now and ask Chris what he thought about it, all he can say is “Boy o Boy O Boy that was some crazy stuff” in his usual modest way.

So there you have it. We celebrate Cinco de Mayo day because it is Chris’s birthday. That’s it. Short and sweet. Happy Birthday son. I love you.

Spa Day

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SpaDay0973

It’s Friday again, I know, how could that happen, it was just Monday a minute ago but it is. And as you know this is the day we give you ideas on what to do over the weekend. This weekend we thought we might offer something a little different. Last weekends suggestion of jetting off to Cape Disappoint on the Washington coast in your private jet was a big hit with some of you. Actually very few of you but the ones who went said it was great.

This weekend we decided to scale it down a bit and offer something for the ladies out there. That’s a big fat Spa day! Guys can go along too, but I’d recommend skipping the pedicure session Saturday morning. Ladies and some who aren’t really, like spa days and find it a big treat to go to them and have stuff done to them that they can’t get done in the privacy of their own homes.

So what can you do at a spa and more importantly what can be done to you in a spa, you might ask. Well lucky for you, you’ve come to the right place for answers. Listed below, in no particular order, are spa treatments you can order at your local spa, or if they’re unavailable there, where you can go this weekend to get them.

First is a Snake massage.

Hop over to Israel where you can get a massage from several non-venomous snakes as they slither up and presumably down your spine. Cost $70 US.

Or try your choice of the Tea, Coffee,red wine, sake, or Ramen noodle bath in Japan.

This is one is a little closer to home and I’ll bet to ladies hearts. That’s the chocolate wrap you can get at the spa in Hershey, Pa. They will wrap you or more concisely smear chocolate all over you and they mean all over and then leave you alone for a while. As a guy I have to wonder why they would leave you alone for a while but women do some strange stuff so we’ll just leave it at that.

Gold. In Japan, they give you a gold facial. That’s gold painted on your face for as long as you want it there. The cost, a measly 250 bucks, and I gotta say that if you can afford the plane ticket to Japan and back that’s pretty darn reasonable.

How about a cactus massage? In Mexico you can get rubbed, whacked, stroked or whatever with a spineless cactus paddle and pay for it. The cost $245. It doesn’t say whether that is in peso’s or dollars

And for those of  you with more agrarian roots there is a Wet Hay Wrap in Italy where you get wrapped in wet hay harvested from the meadows of Alpe di Siusi between mid-July and early August then lie on a special 100° waterbed until they harvest you I guess. As a special bonus for those of you who make it you receive a foot treatment where a fish named the Garra Rufa eat away whatever may be lurking on your feet.

I saved the most special treatment for last. That’s the Fanny Facial.  I know it seems like a contradiction in terms but that’s how it’s listed. In New York City, like where else except maybe most of California, can you get a fanny facial? I mean it’s strange even asking the question. What happens is you go in and ask for this deliberately, obviously they don’t just give you one without asking, then they perform a exfoliation of the fanny areas with a papaya-mint scrub, followed by a micro-current therapy where they apparently zap your hiney with low-voltage current to remove in their words, “any lumps or bumps from your butt”, then the whole business is finished with an organic spray tan so your fanny glows like the noon day sun. This has got to be special people. The cost was not revealed but I got to say it has to be worth it.

So those are just some of the treatments available to the Spa goer. Yes they may seem a little irregular to those who don’t frequent spas regularly or that only go to low rent ones where these special treatments aren’t available but our job is to bring you the newest and trendiest things out there, and these were certainly out there.

The ladies pictured above have just completed Yellowstone’s interpretation of a spa which is, as you can see, a snow spa, where you can spend a leisurely hour or two in the sub-zero waters of the Yellowstone river, then be rubbed down by brawny park rangers with snow before finishing the day next to a warm geyser. Upon asking we found that the Fanny Facial is not offered in Yellowstone.

There you have it. That’s the special weekend activities for you ladies. I’m sure you can’t wait to “hit the spa” as they say somewhere I’m sure. For you guys I might remind you that there’s a game on almost every minute of the weekend and beer in the fridge. Just give her the credit card and don’t ask.

Drama In The Desert

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DramaIntheDesert8Saguaro cactus Arizona                      click to enlarge

This is one of those old pictures of the desert with its Saguaro cactus I dug out of my archives because I realized I hadn’t been there in years and it is time to go back and update my portfolio. The Saguaro cactus hang out in southwestern Arizona and Mexico and are fond of sun, adequate but infrequent moisture, and nature. They like to stand in one place for very long periods of time and are impatient with chain saws or people who dig them up for yard décor. I believe that they are predominantly Gemini, Cancers or the occasional Sagittarius, although the one on the right is definitely a Taurus.

I was on a road trip to see an old friend when I stopped to see these two specimens standing along the road. I was interested in them for several reasons. One of those reasons was I was lost and wondered if they were edible. They’re not. Another was to marvel at how well they fit into the scenery, it’s as if they were native to it.

The Saguaro have many uses, from being a friend to the Indians who first dwelt here, and providing condos and town homes for small birds and other creatures, to being a tourist magnet which generates mucho dinero, which is Spanish for, a ‘huge freaking amount of money’ for the local economy. They are also used as a geographic waypoint establishing ones position on the earth as being in the Southwest portion of the United States. This is handy if you’re not sure what your position is on the earth. With this knowledge in hand you can figure out where someplace else is and go there.

Having rejuvenated my interest in Saguaros I now fully intend to revisit them and update their current conditions. I know they’re off this dirt road that you turn on just past that stand where they sell Indian jewelry and you go like maybe 18-19 miles until you’re absolutely certain you don’t know where you are and they’ll be right there on the left. See you there.

Cold Duck Warm Feet

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ColdDuck0785click to enlarge

The last time I was at Bosque del Apache I noticed a new phenomenon amongst some of the ducks there. I had always wondered if ducks had nerves or any feeling at all in their feet as they could stand on ice or in ice cold water and act as if they didn’t feel any cold whatsoever. How do they do that I would wonder. Finally when my curiosity got the better of me I called on our resident duckologist, Dr. Bils Orange, from our Oslo affiliate, to answer my questions.

The Institute of Regained Knowledge or IRK as it is known throughout the academic world, has affiliate branches in nearly every backward country in the known world, like France ( the Sorbonne calls us ) England (Oxford, we’ve stopped taking their calls because they always call collect) and so on ad nauseam. We have a wealth of talent that we can draw from to get the information we need instantaneously. The Worldwide Headquarters of our media Empire sits like a fat, but ugly, spider in the exact center of this web of information, controlling its flow and deciding with all possible fairness and at what price, who gets this information. We may run the show but we glory in it. It is a little known fact that what we know as the world-wide web was actually invented here (regardless what Al Gore says)  at the Institute of Regained Knowledge, or IRK, back in 1926 way before the introduction of the computer. We’re very proud of that.

It turns out that the answer to my question was something I never could have imagined. Ducks have been fooling us for sometime. They feel the cold, I mean Duh, its ice, what we see as indifference on their part is actually a numbness that spreads up to their little tiny brains and freezes them solid. Recently though some enterprising members of the Duckus Aquaticus, (Latin for birds with flat feet) have begun showing up with the ability to actually stand on that freezing ice and be as warm and toasty as you or I would be standing on the cooktop in our own kitchens. The answer is as simple as it is mysterious but that is usually the case when you make things up, I mean, search for new facts. Ducks feet have secretly been fitted with a new form of thermoplastic outer covering made from the same stuff that didn’t make it onto the last shuttle flight.  Where could they have obtained this stuff we asked. We thought maybe Cabela’s but after checking both their print and online catalog found that even they had nothing like this. Finally after an exhaustive search we were told by an unnamed source that this procedure was done at a secret clinic in Mexico. It’s orange, the foot covering not the clinic, it looks like a duck foot, it has those little bumps that ducks have on their feet, and the average or even below average person cannot tell it from a real ducks foot. The properties of this material appear to be nearly mind bending. All the duck has to do is stand on the ice where the sun can shine on it and within moments the solar produced heat begins to flow and literally melts the ice below them. They simply stand there until they melt through the ice and then being in open water they can begin feeding much quicker than the non-footwear wearing ducks can even move, hence their robust and chubby appearance. Dr. Bils Orange is presently taking a crash course in Mayan which he mistaken thought was still spoken widely in Mexico, and will then track down the clinic where this procedure is practiced, find out the straight skinny and we will then spill the beans, I mean, share this information with the world. We need to get our IBM Selectric fixed so that we can publish this startling new information and soon you will see it in major sources of academic excellence everywhere. Meanwhile you, our loyal readers, get a first hand preview of this incredible new finding. That’s it, mystery solved. Chalk up one more successful research project from IRK and we’re on to the next. Watch for us at strange events everywhere.