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2/22/01 8 AM    Somewhere over California

Nothing brings you back to reality like having 16 kids to herd around. The life of leisure was definitely over last night. The kids had a small pizza party n the lobby at 8pm. The pizza was from Dominoes. Why not? They were about $9 US apiece. After pizza we put all the kids to bed, still wearing their clothes, around 10pm. I enjoyed my last Morelian meal for a while – Pollo Plaza, a specialty of the hotel. It was a fine way to end the “Bill Eats Morelia” tour.

I went to bed at about 10:30 , also fully dressed. The alarm went off immediately at 2:10 am. We all gathered the luggage and the kids to the front of the hotel and into the bus. Everyone settled accounts with the hotel before going to bed so it all went pretty quickly. We had to put some of the bulging luggage in the bus with us as we overflowed the bus baggage compartment. After a quick roll call, where I get to use my Palm Pilot and best drill instructor voice, we were on our way. After taking many bus rides that lasted for hours over the last two weeks, the30 minute ride to the airport was over in a flash. We then settled in for the check-in siege.

Air Mexicana does a good job overall. The flights are on time, the airplanes seem to be in good condition and they are clean. The check-in procedure however, is ludicrously inefficient. We all went to the counter in 3 lines. After seeing that we had a group the ticket agents started asking for birth certificates and other papers from everyone in the group, seemingly at random. After a person’s papers were presented (in some cases more than once when they forgot who had gone already) that person had to check in their luggage, regardless of where they were in line. This caused considerable further delay as people had to move to let the luggage go through. Since they called for us in some order known only to them, we were again scattered throughout the airplane. I can’t believe they can’t do better than this. We arrived at the airport at about 3:10 and barely made the 5 am flight.

An interesting thing happened while wasting away in the check-in line. I was taking pictures of the ticket agents and the line when a uniformed security guard came up to me and said “Stop it!”. No “Please”, no “Excuse me”, just “Stop it!”. I didn’t want to write a report on Mexican prisons so I complied with much apologizing. Still, it seemed kind of weird. I wasn’t being too obnoxious, I wasn’t using flash and this was just the ticket agent stockyard, not any kind of security area. Having mastered the methods of delay and confusion, were the powers at Mexicana zealously safeguarding their secrets from possible competitors in that cruel art? Perhaps they thought I was a secret agent from the California DMV.

But we did make it and the plane was largely empty except for our group. We stopped in Guadalajara for about an hour and a half . We took the opportunity to walk around the cabin, girding ourselves for the people-packing that was sure to occur as the US- bound passengers boarded. To our very pleasant surprise, only about 5 people got on.

While still on the ground and nowhere near ready to depart, an attendant told Miguel that he had to stop using his CD Walkman player. This was about an hour before we pushed back from the gate. Again, the airline was saying “no” to technology for no apparent reason. I guess they wanted Miguel to appreciate the music piped through the plane. It seems to be  a Lawrence Welk Christmas album. Throughout the flight we keep hearing Christmas songs.

After leaving Guadalajara the flight attendant offered me a choice of either American breakfast or chilaquillas. I went for the chilaquillas. Maybe that was a mistake. While the meal was much better that the standard fare on American flights, it was still airline food. Pre-packaged and designed to be a consistency that avoids spilling, it was a disappointing way to say good be to the Mexican food.

Whoa! We just hit a real good jolt. It’s getting hard to type and the kids are  rowdy, screaming with the large bumps. Guess I need to yell at them. I’ll continue in the bus.

 10:30 AM     The Airport Bus Home

The contrast between US and Mexican customs is pretty stark. To be fair, SFO has a brand new international terminal and the US has a lot more money to pay for equipment and agents than Mexico has. The problem with Mexican customs is more of staffing than policy. That said, we sailed through baggage return, immigration and customs. No grilling questions. No body cavity searches. And I showered before we left. What a waste.

After we were all done and gathered, Liz called for our chartered bus, we got on and performed the final roll call. It’s good to be back in some ways. We miss our families. It is comforting and a little odd to see signage in English, hear PA announcements in English, see our strictly-business boring money again. It was time to come home. I was thoroughly spoiled by the food, no longer excited by the variety and quality but pretty much expecting it. The thrill of eating was gone. After two weeks I was getting just a little tired of being a tourist. If I had stayed much longer I would have had to get a job or something. You can hang around only so long. Mind you, I could have easily gone another week or so, especially with a motorscooter, but not much longer, at least not without taking some serious Spanish lessons. That would be nice. Go to Morelia as a Spanish student.

The kids are all glad to be heading home and are eagerly awaiting reunion with their families. The weather actually appears to be clearing to welcome us home. Lets hope the bus doesn’t break down. Alfredo is too far away.