A Weddings Adventure Part III: The Journey

We got to the airport the next morning, exchanged currency, and met up with Kevin and Ellen.  We also met our first new Alaskan, Alexis, who had sent all of us a message that she would be on our flight and that she spoke Spanish, a useful skill when going to The United Mexican States.  We boarded what would be Becky's first international flight to Manzanillo.

The Alaskan airlines flight took about three hours, but it was significantly more cramped than our cross country journey.  We ended up sitting around some pretty grouchy people.  A person behind us demanded that an airline employee call her boss about him not receiving first class accommodations, while the lady next to me thought having a broken seat recliner was the worst travesty in the history of mankind and only shut up about it when they agreed to her request of a free drink.  Not exactly great for setting the mood for a relaxing sojourn.  On the other hand, the guy in front of me had recently discovered the Ipad 2's photobooth feature, and thought it was the coolest thing ever, showing off all the funny faces to his partner and passing flight attendants.

We arrived in Manzanillo at 3:15 local time, which happened to correspond with CST.   It was a tiny airport practically on the beach with only a handful of flights a day.  They rolled up a couple of staircases and let people out from the front and back exits.  We did learn our first Mexican lesson then.  Do not sit in the middle of the plane or you will be last on the very slow moving customs line.

Becky Debarking

The entire airport runway

While on the customs line I noticed that Alexis was talking to the couple who was seated in front of us. As it turns the Ipad enthusiast, Paddy, was best friends with Bo growing up.  In retrospect this shouldn't have been a shocking development.

Once customs conferred we weren't carrying more than 12 video cassettes, two musical instruments, or one portable typewriter, we were able to officially enter Mexico.  We shared the hour long taxi with Kevin and Ellen.  The driver drove through a couple of small towns and offered to stop for us to get beer, but we declined since we would get all the free drinks we would want soon enough.  The resort, Punta Serena, was built on a cliff, so the the last part of the treck involved a twisty, dizzying cobblestone road.

Taxi to the Resort

Weddings Adventure Part II: The Cast

Previous to the Mexico wedding we knew seven people who would be in attendance.  Nathaniel and Ariel are from Alaska and own the house Bo and Lia are currently living in.  We have spent more time in their house than we have hanging out with them, which greatly amused Nathaniel.  Bo and Lia are able to stay in their house as Nathaniel is currently away at farming school and loving it, two things that I don't remotely understand.

Bella*, the photographer, had taken taken Bo and Lia's engagement pictures.  She had recently given up a job in finance to start a career where she was more passionate.  We liked her work for them and commissioned  her to do our own engagement photos*. Bo and Lia liked her even more so they flew her out to Mexico to take their wedding pictures.  She got a nice vacation and some cash and all she had to deal with what the brutal taskmaster that is Lia (it is okay if you don't really feel like taking pictures, why not just spend the day in the pool?)

*While she was here we showed her our wedding pictures. While doing so, she asked if that was a Settlers of Catan cake.  Reason 27 I really like having had a Catan cake; you can determine if people are gamers by showing them your wedding pictures.

*She did not disappoint.  She shared our vision, was absurdly cheap, and produced outstanding pictures, some of which can be seen here.
 
Kevin and Ellen are our two really good Boston friends* who didn't spend the weekend getting married. Kevin really doesn't like going on vacations, but doesn't seem to have any objection to actually being on vacation.  After all playing Tichu while relaxing in the sun in Mexico is even nicer than playing Tichu in dreary Boston. Ellen on the other hand loves going on vacations, or rather loves having gone on vacation so she can show off how wonderful her vacation was in 6.2 million pictures.  At one point she was wandering around the resort while skyping, pointing the laptop at the majestic scenery.

*We actually met Kevin at Bo at the same time, on 11/11/08.  No I don't tend to remember dates like these, but this one I can look up.  Becky and I had gone to a local game night at Eureka, an outstanding game and puzzle store in Coolidge Corner.  There Kevin, Bo, and I played a game none of us had hear of before, a deck building game called Dominion.  We discussed afterwards getting together to play more games. Becky and I occasionally discussed this with other game night participants, but nothing ever came of it.  This time however, by the time I got home, I had e-mails from both Kevin and Bo about gaming the next night.  This is what is known as a good day.

Bo and Lia, our hosts, are Alaskan salmon fishermen* who spend half her year in Alaska and the other half in Boston where Lia works on a PHD program at BU.  I'm told Bo works absurdly hard as a fisherman, working upwards of 20 hours a day, but I only know him as someone who never has anything to do, which makes a rather useful friend.  Lia, on the other hand, we can sometimes with a concerted effort get her to take a 10 minute break from her studies.

*Yes like the show Deadliest Catch except no not really. 

A Weddings Adventure Part I

Just as a basic rule, if I'm going to try to keep people updated on my exploits, I should probably blog about any 3 city, 2 country, 2 wedding trips that I make.

I got off work at 5:30 am on January 4th 2012 for hopefully my last ever night-shift, which is good since if I mentioned Mexico to my coworkers one more time I would have come to bodily harm. Got home, packed the remaining few items in an intricately organized system*, woke Becky up and we were off. The taxi came on time, though  did park in front of the wrong building. Luckily, at 6:30 in the morning, you can kind of assume any taxi about is probably yours.

*It fit. okay?

We had a direct flight to LA with JetBlue.  The flight was relatively comfortable as JetBlue is built more for 6 foot 2 people than your average airline.  We got in about a half hour early*, even after having to wait for the gate to open up.

* I don't really understand this concept of early.  My experience with flying is that something random and unprecedented will go wrong leaving me or my stuff stranded in some random and often unplanned for city.  In fact, I have a friend's phone number saved under the name "stuck in ohare" and Becky and I have often played the "guess what city I'm in now game", but flying with Becky rarely involves things going wrong.  It is kind of unnerving.

LA was a steamy 81 degrees, which would have been even nicer if I wasn't wearing a winter coat.  I know, I know you are just brimming with sympathy.   There was an intricate mosaic along the walls to the baggage claim where colors faded into other colors which Becky really enjoyed.  The first sign we were at LA was the swarm of drivers in dark sunglasses holding up names of people they were picking up.  One of the signs looked like it was for a record label.

After some momentary confusion we waited for a shuttle to the hotel.  After about 4000 vehicles* passed by for various hotels and parking lots our ride arrived. We stayed at a Travel-lodge outside of the airport.  It was the quality you would expect if you chose a hotel entirely based on price and location, which makes sense since that is exactly how I chose it.  I'm used to hotel beds being way too firm, but generally the pillows aren't made of stone.  On the other hand, it had a 24 hour Denny's attached, which makes up for a large amount of flaws.

*yup in LA

We spent our one pre-Mexico night in LA in exciting fashion, alternating between sleeping and trips to Denny's. I got to bed at around 3:00 pm pct which is 6:00 pm est or absurdly late into the middle of the night in Joel's inner clock time.  Oh, how I'm not going to miss having to reset my hours again.