Hermosillo

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I slept in. I didn't plan on doing much today so I was not going to miss anything. I had no idea if this hotel had hot water or not but I really didn't care. I turned on the cold water and just got clean and cool at the same time. After that, I stepped outside in search of food.

But I started to get flashbacks from the first trip like this I took. On my first day in Chihuahua (the city, not the dog), I had no confidence in my ability to read a menu or translate anything so I just gave up without trying and went to Subway. I do not know if I felt more stupid or just ashamed. All of that travel, much like yesterday, and my first meal in Mexico was a 6" sub. But this is a different trip and I was already tasting the enchiladas and burritos and tacos served by the many street venders by the local market and along most of the streets. But all I found were hot dog carts. Mexico has gone hot dog crazy. In the parks with all of the shoe shiners were hot dog carts. Up and down the crowded sidewalks were hot dog carts. Just outside the Hotel Washington, hot dog carts. I found a restaurant and ordered some chilli reyanos, rice, and beans.

After food I stocked up on bottled water, peanuts, water, multigrain bars, and more water. I did not feel like doing much mentally or physically. I walked the sidewalks full of stores and people, got aclimated to the area around my hotel, sat in the park for a while and watched people watch me. I look a little out of place.

Earlier that morning I saw a young guy in the hotel lobby, in his early twenties. What I noticed about him was that he had a Lonely Planet Mexico book in his hand. Ah, a fellow go-er. Then I started the comparison. He had the entire book that looked new, while I just had the Sonora section ripped out of my six-year-old edition. He had a nice looking, tightly packed backpack while I had a second-hand, faded L.L. Bean bag that I traded a bicycle for, a Schwin (hi, Troy!). He had a nice tucked in shirt with long cargo pants while you could tell that I had on yesterday's clothes, already damp again with sweat. He had new sandles with the velcro grips while I was wearing my old tennis shoes that I wore when I push-mowed the yard, with the green rim around the bottoms of them. Yep, he and I, we're brothers. Haven't seen him since.

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