Category: Mexico

Day trip to Cancun

Don’t you wish you could drive to Cancun for the day? Just a short 4 hour drive will put you on the beach in Cancun. Spend the day and drive home. What a trip.

Our day was not quite like that, but we do live that close.

We were taking our son to the airport so that he could fly to my brother’s house and spend a couple of weeks with the cousins. On the way to the airport we blew out a tire. Fortunately we had a spare and were able to change it fairly quickly. But, it put us in the airport late. Thankfully not too late to get on the plane though.

After the flat, we called some friends and had them look up a Costco in Cancun. (If you ever need directions to it, just post a comment here and I will get to it eventually.) We left the airport and found a McDonalds to eat at before heading to the Costco. We replaced the two front tires on our car, said goodbye to $130 and hit the road.

The trip back was almost all night driving. Something we never do if we can avoid it. You never know when a hole the size of Lake Okeechobee will be in the middle of a road. And it most certainly will not be marked in any way. You just disappear to never be heard from again. So if I ever just stop posting here, you will know what happened.

We got home tonight and had a voice mail from my brother telling us that our son arrived safely.

BTW, we did not go to the beach. It was freezing there today, especially with the rain pouring down. It only got up to 75 degrees today. I felt a little bad for the vacationers, but that is life sometimes.

Florida v Ohio

I am not a college football fan. Therefore I won’t talk much about the game. Florida won if you did not know.

What I wanted to write about is the fact that I went and saw the game tonight. I had a friend call this morning who told me that he and his dad (both missionaries) were going to one of the local pizza joints to have a pizza and watch the game this evening. I was invited along. I had no interest in the game, but I did have interest in chatting for 3 hours. So I joined in.

I got to Boston’s a little before we were supposed to meet there. I was the first one there. They were closed. When the next missionary arrived, he said that it was probably closed because it was a Canadian holiday. From what we understand, Boston’s is a Canadian restaurant. I did not think they would close for a Canadian holiday. But we went to the front door to see if there was any info posted.

To my surprise, there was. What was the great reason they were closed? Christmas. Today is January 8 and they were closed for Christmas. The reason was that their staff had to work Christmas Eve and did not have the chance to be with family. Here in Mexico, Christmas Eve is when they have the big family meal. So, today they celebrated Christmas and we did not have pizza.

We went to TGI Fridays instead. I have never liked the atmosphere at Fridays. I prefer to not go there at all. But we went. And, it was noisy. We did, however, get a table for 10 people (we invited a few more to come along) that was right in a corner with a TV. We were able to see the whole game without being bothered by others. We could not hear a thing about the game and had to yell at each other for 3 hours just to talk, but it was fun.

Marathon Results

There are not many details of the marathon today in the newspaper, but here are the important details.Front runners

First and second place were men from Kenya and third place was a Mexican man. First place was Reuben Chesang with a time of 2:22’11”. Second place was Mark Chepses Kipkosgei. His time, as well as the third place time by Ranulfo Sánchez, was not reported in the newspaper. The race for first and second place was decided in the final sprint. With just 30 meters to go the winner pulled ahead of second place.

A lady from Mexico City won the women’s race. Penélope Lona Guerrero also won this event in 1990 and 1991. The fastest local female runner, Carmen Méndez, had a time of 3:13’01”, which is a new record by more than 3.5 minutes.

The fastest local man was Jorge Joel González Pérez with a time of 2:38’16”. That is about 10 minutes slower than the current record.

The attendance was down according to the newspaper article as well. There were only 217 participants in the marathon, which is down from the previous year’s 314.Race Start

According to the newspaper article, the runners were not very well attended by the police and volunteers. Apparently there were several intersections where runners had to navigate the traffic on their own. Some runners had to run on busy stretches of road without volunteer or police intervention for the traffic. I did not experience that in the 5K. We were well attended. But it is much easier to cover the shorter distance when all of the runners will be within 30 minutes of one another. For a marathon distance you have runners on the roads for 5+ hours. To cover every intersection and provide escort to 200 runners would be difficult. Though I have experienced intersection crossings where the police were clueless and stopped the runners to let traffic pass. But not in this race.

I leave you with the quote from the winner:

“I am very excited to win this marathon for the second time. It was very difficult yet at the same time exciting in the final sprint when I had the good fortune to overtake my compatriot Mark Chepses. The time on the clock is high, but this is due to the weather in the area [it was 72 at race start] as well as the fact that there was not much pressure given by the other runners.”

[Estoy muy emocionado por ganar por segunda ocasión este maratón. Fue muy difícil y a la vez emocionante, sobre todo en el momento del sprint final, cuando tuve la fortuna de superar a mi compatriota Mark Chepses. El tiempo que cronometré es alto, pero eso se debe al clima de la región, además de que no hubo mucha presión de los demás corredores.]

Marathon today. I ran!

Yes, that’s right. There was the annual city marathon today. It commemorates the founding of our city. Mérida, Yucatán, México was founded 465 years ago in 1542.

Now that that is out of the way, I have to admit that I ran just the 5K race and not the marathon. I am not marathon ready yet. Though people think that because I run several times a week and that other people run marathons, that must mean that I can run a marathon. These are obviously not runners and they have no clue that marathon training is something that takes many more miles a week than what I am currently putting in.

Besides the fact that I am not ready for the distance, I am not able to participate in a Sunday marathon. Why do all the races around here have to be on a Sunday? The runners took off at 6:00 this morning. I needed to be in church by 10:30. That does not take into account the 30 minutes I need to pick people up on the way to church. Nor the fact that I need recovery time after any running before I am ready to head out the door. I usually have to be done with a race by 9:00, or 9:30 at the latest, to be ready for church. That would mean that I need to run a 3 hour marathon. Not likely since my 2 half marathon finishes were in the 2:30 (hour:minute) range.

Instead, I ran a 5K race today. Actually, 5.2K. My time was not that great. I did not push myself too hard. Final time was 29:32 for a pace of 9:08 min/mile. Not a PR, but not a horrible run either.

I did get a medal in this one. The first 300 people across the finish line got one. They had fruit and drinks afterwards too. Because the race started so early, I was able to stick around for a few minutes. Normally a 5K starts at 8:00 am around here. Today we started at 6:45. I think that was to be able to have our race finished before the marathoners started arriving.

When I was driving home, I saw the first several runners from the marathon coming down the road. The first 2 places were African looking men. After that there were several Mexican men and a few Africans.

I arrived home and walked to the end of the block and cheered several people as they came by. They passed within 1/2 block from my house. It was cool to walk down and see them running. My house was about the 19th mile of the 26.2 mile event. I had to leave before seeing the mortals (3:30+ marathoners) come by.

I will post results of the race tomorrow if I can remember to buy a paper.

Brithday party!

Our son turned 9 today. We invited a few friends over. Not many. There were 12 people in all. We had 6 parents and 6 kids.

While the kids played and did whatever kids do, the old people sat around and talked and played a game. I think we had more fun than the kids did. We played a game called mafia. Here are three sets of rules that give you an idea of the game. We did not play it quite like any of them, but similarly.

We don’t normally get a chance to hang out much with other missionaries just because we are all busy during the evenings. But the last couple of weeks during the holidays has afforded us the privilege of getting together more.