Loggins-Jammin'!

This must be what they learn in those Women's Studies courses...



Women's Lib, 80s Style, I guess. Enjoy!

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Thanks, Grandma, For Teaching Me That Hot Dogs Can Be Boiled

It’s been about a week since I checked in, but a busy week it was. I got through the rest of Ana Karenina (it was great), and on Saturday Angela and I also went to Monteverde on a field trip with the English class that I teach on the weekend. If you didn’t know, Monteverde means “Green Mount,” more or less, and that’s a pretty apt description of the area. It’s to the northwest of here, and it’s got a lot of nature reserves and stuff like that. I’d never been there before, and it was pretty nice. All in all, though, when it comes to Costa Rican attractions, I have to admit that I’m more into the beaches and the hot springs than I am into the jungles. I think it must have something to do with the imminent possibility of encountering big-ass snakes in those verdant green areas. Call me a conservationist, but I’d say they’re better left to the beasts.

Another butterfly in Monteverde, with camoflague to make it look like an owl!

So, I liked Monteverde well enough, although with students in tow, it’s harder to have a good time if you’re worrying about teenagers doing dumb shit or getting attacked by tigers or pizotes. So we’ll probably have to go back on our own sometime to enjoy a quiet excursion and visit the Quaker-run dairy (yep, it exists).


It was also a big week in the sense that Angela ate her first hot dog ever! (The picture is one that I took at Chicago’s O’Hare airport about 5 years ago, and is for illustrative purposes only.) She had had hot dogs in rice before (sounds weird, I know), but never in a hot dog bun. When I heard that, we prepared hot dogs one evening, and we each promptly ate three of them. The purists would surely scoff, since they were chicken hot dogs, but at least we put on ketchup, mustard, mayo, sauerkraut, and jalapeños. Sort of an American- Latin- German fusion…on a sesame-seed bun. And, as the title of this post indicates, we’re indebted to my grandma for the boiled cooking process, since we have yet to get a grill (soon, though, dammit!).

I’ve also been watching all the episodes of Yacht Rock and methodically downloading the music featured in the show. Seriously, if you’ve not checked it out, you’re missing a lot. It’s pretty hilarious, and it’s like a having a syringe full of Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins injected straight into your heart. Thanks for rigging my boat to sail on the seas of smooth music, Chris!

Other than that, things are pretty calm at the hacienda. I’ve been watering the yard grass every night, moving the hose and our lame little sprinkler every 20 minutes. Two weeks after we put in the grass, sections of the lawn are barely hanging on due to our crappy luck with the rain. One would think that in the “rainy season,” there’d be at least a little drizzle now and then, but it’s been nothing but warm, dry weather and only about 5 minutes of rain in the last two weeks. But I guess we should be happy that the seasonal downpours haven’t begun to wash our new grass down the side of the mountain, either.

So that’s what’s new. I’ll try to do a few more updates through the week, and hope that everyone’s well!

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Better Polish Up My Polish!

"Could I get a cup of coffee and one of those little rolls... what are they, cinnamon?" I asked as I sat down at the local cafe one recent afternoon.

"Sure," the girl at the counter said. "Hey, you're from some place like Poland, right?"

Good: Apparently, I'm starting to lose my American accent.
Not as good: I'm gaining a Polish one in its place.

Na zdrowie, and have a happy Sunday!

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The "Yardwork" I Keep Talking About

If I’ve talked to you recently, I’ve probably mentioned that since I quit my last job and started my new one, I’ve had quite a bit of free time to work in the yard. I probably also mentioned that we’ve been working on fixing up the Crappy Casita. And I probably also mentioned that I’d put up some pictures on the blog eventually. Well, here are a few sort-of recent pics that you can check out:

Angela's face in this picture reflects our general approach to the Crappy Casita when we moved into our new house. In other words, we thought, "Oh my God, do we really have to do something with this shitty little shack in the back of the lot that blocks our view of the Pacific?" In the end, we've decided to try to fix it up some, but there's nary a day that goes by in which we don't dream of just bulldozing it.

Here's a slab of concrete to the side of the Crappy Casita. It was covered in mud, so I scraped it up into piles and then dumped it in other parts of the lot. In true Ryan Sitzman fashion, this was the first of my many yardwork projects that were rendered pointless by future work.

This is what I mean by "rendering pointless." The septic tank in the casita had to be replaced (the area to the right of the window is the casita's bathroom), so some of Angela's sister-in-law's brothers came by to replace it.

The new septic tank and tubing.

Next project: Cover the concrete area with some sort of roof. We're hoping to keep it as a sort of patio for drying clothes in sun or rain, so it'll be open on the sides. We may also have to eventually put in a water tank and pump for the dry months (or the months when the Berlin water service is particularly incompetent and cuts off the water around 10 AM).

A few of the metal pillars and trusses going up. The work was done by Nelson, Angela's sister-in-law Ligia's brother, and the welding was done by Ronald, Angela's brother.

ACCOMPLISH IT!
(At least Dustin and Sam understand this.)

Ronald and Nelson working. The roof panels go up quickly! These guys are real troopers, and we're grateful to know them!

Keeping on keeping on.

Some of the transparent panels in the back, to allow us to hang clothes even when it's rainy or windy (and so our neighbors don't have to see our clothes hanging in the yard).

To break up these pictures, here's our cat Cucho being adorable and arm-wrestling with Angela.

Next project: cut down the remains of a tree that halfway blew down. Tools needed: Machete and saw, preferably at the same time.

This is still a work in progress, but we had some left over cinder blocks, so I made a path from the Crappy Casita to the main house. Obviously, some of the blocks were shittier than others (hence the broken one in front, which I'll have to replace).

Finally, I gathered hundreds or maybe of thousands of rocks throughout the lot and put made them into a sort of border around the driveway and the perimeter of the house. That really sucked, cause I had no idea how much of a toll it'd take on my knees. But it looked nice, and it also paved the way for GRASS! The guy in the picture is Juan Manuel, our grass dealer.

We bought a couple hundred square meters of grass to go around the house in a little strip, as well as to fill in the whole front, and halfway fill in one side yard.

Here's the side yard. On the left, you can see my rockwall and (sorta) see the chiflera sticks I planted, which are starting to send out buds.

Another view, with the chiflera sticks.

The front yard.

What else to say but "HIGH FIVE!!"??

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Kystvakten

I know that I’ve been dealing with these fake bands quite a bit lately; in fact, of the 377 posts that I’ve written, a full 4 of them now have been about these fake bands. That’s 1.06% of my entire blog content!

But, I wouldn’t mention it again if I didn’t have something awesome to share with you. My friend Chris Sawyer (YES, like Tom Sawyer, you freaking Germans) sent me his fake CD the other day, and it’s so great, it may even be my favorite of all of them. It’s just such a good gelling of band name, CD title, and cover picture that it’s remarkable. Have a look at the band Kystvakten’s new CD, "Ecstasy at Your Feet":

Now, the inevitable explanation: First of all, "Kystvakten" means --of course-- "The Coast Guard" in Norwegian, and that's evidently the first Wikipedia article Chris came across. Also, the title, "Ecstasy at your feet," is evidently the end of a great quote by Franz Kafka. And the picture... well, the picture means something different for everyone. For me, it's wonderful Eurotrash, what with the skimpy swimsuit, the cigarette, and the veiny hand! And the people out of focus in the back of the frame! Wonderful! Magical!

Finally, as to the music itself, Chris mentions Roxy Music (at least because of the cover), and that the music is a sort of "new wave Scandinavian yacht rock." Brilliant, my good man!

Thanks for this submission, and if you'd like to learn more about yacht rock, a genre that I didn't even know existed, then check out the following hilarious video that Chris turned me on to (and there's a whole series where that came from).

Enjoy!

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Cars In Costa Rica: A Bad Idea Since 1962

As any tourist who’s rented a car in Costa Rica can affirm, driving here can be as much a hair-raising, terrifying adventure as any experience related to zip-lines, bungee jumping, or killer waves. If you live here, though, cars are more of a necessary evil, especially in Berlín. If you ever feel the need to get out of Berlín, there is a bus that goes a few times a day between Berlín and San Ramón; however, when you arrive, then you’re stuck in San Ramón, in which case the solution itself presents a whole new problem.

There are also taxis, as well as the option of attempting to constantly bum a ride from someone going down-mountain, but of those two options, the former is very expensive and the latter just plain sucks. Indeed, the only real workable solution to living in Berlín seems to be to buy a car. In the past, we had a RAV-4, but after seeing how expensive maintenance, gas, annual inspections, registrations, and especially insurance was becoming, we decided to sell it and downgrade to a cheaper sedan or coupe.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Costa Rica seems to be a strange sort of twilight zone for car depreciation values, in that the values of many cars here go up, not down, and the result is a terribly skewed pricing system in which a 1985 jeep-style Land Cruiser sells for $11,000, and in general the prices of most cars are about twice what they would be in the U.S. For a nominally poor, third-world country, I’m not sure how they can maintain this system wherein many families’ cars cost more than their houses.

The upside of this strange arrangement, though, is that I was able to sell the RAV-4 for quite a bit of money, even while offering it a bit below market price. I also barely lost any money by reselling it two years and thousands of kilometers after I bought it. (In fact, here I sold my 2001 RAV-4 with around 110,000 miles for about the same price I sold my 2005 Subaru with only about 10,000 miles in the U.S.…like I said, it’s weird.)

Once I sold the RAV-4, though, I didn’t have a car. My father-in-law Honorio graciously let us use his Land Cruiser for a while, but we didn’t want to take advantage of his generosity. We began looking for cars, but found a market inundated with expensive crap. Around the same time, I found some statistics in the paper regarding car sales in Costa Rica. Here is a breakdown of the most commonly-sold cars in the country, according to their percentage share of the market:

Hyundai—30%
Toyota—25%
Nissan—20%
Geo—10%
Kia—10%
Suzuki—5%

For me, this is very interesting. I’d like to see a breakdown of how these figures look in the U.S., just to compare, but I’m sure it’d be quite different. In any case, you’ll notice that with the exception of Geo, there’s virtually NO presence of American cars here, and a glance around on the street confirms this. On a recent trip to my old job, I made it my task to count all the American cars I saw. An hour later, after I’d counted about 5 Geo Trackers and one Ford Ranger truck, I finally saw two Ford Fiestas as I was pulling into the commercial park where I worked. I know I’ve already mentioned this, but to me it’s incredible that Costa Rica, with its close relations and dependence on many American things, can have virtually no American cars. Especially considering that it’s got to be much easier logistically to import a car from the U.S. than from Japan or Korea, this whole idea doesn’t really speak to well to the image or quality of American cars here.

But I digress. After searching for a few weeks, my goofy friend Luis called randomly to say that he’d found a Nissan Sentra that we ended up liking. We bought it a few days later, while our friend Annie was visiting. The car was unfortunately named “Campanita”— or “Tinkerbell” --and it had a totally lame sticker on the back window to confirm its handle. I scraped it off with a razor blade one evening while Angela was at work, much to her dismay. Hey, I know that Tinkerbell was kinda hot, and that guys often name their cars after girls, but I don’t think this is what they had in mind when they started this custom.

In any case, our car now has no name, but it’s been serving us relatively well, especially considering the sort of inclines it has to go up in order to get from Palmares to Berlín. And the best thing of all: It’s not a Hyundai.

Now all that’s missing is a Sad Jesus Head sticker.

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Some More Fake Bands

A while ago I wrote about my fake band, Iffeldorf, and then a bit later some friends sent in their fake bands.

In any case, in the meantime I've heard about two new up-and-coming fake bands, and I wanted to share them with you.

First of all, we have the band fronted by my buddy and ex-coworker Roberto Monterrosa (yes, that's his real name and yes, it is that awesome):

The band is October BANK Holiday (he insists on capitalizing and emphasizing the "bank" part), and the album's name is, obviously, "Now I'm beginning to believe it."
When he sent me the pic, he asked if I knew what the cat and bird represent. I was a bit unsure at first; perhaps a sort of racial tension? Two of the bandmates? A cat and a bird?
But, of course, I was a dumbass. The white cat represents cocaine, and the green bird represents money. Duh! How could I have missed that?
In any case, Robby describes it as a sort of rapcore band, but better!

Next, we all knew that my brother Paul made movies (check out two of the newest ones here and here... in this second one you can actually see Paul; he's the guy in the backseat who apparently has a camera in his crotch). But aside from movies, Paul's been producing his debut album with his new group Ocrad:

The title, juxtaposed with the gentle picture, is hilarious and says everything! I'm eagerly awaiting the album's upcoming release, but if it's like I imagine, it'll be blissfully wrathful, operatic Welsh music. Sort of like Enya at a rehab center in hell.

In any case, thanks to these two great gents for their contribution to the fake music world, and I wish them the best of luck!

Keep on rocking!

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Annie's Take On Coast Tasty

Wow, lately I've been so busy frolicking in the mud, cutting trees, and planting chiflera, that I didn't even notice that our friend Annie had written a blog about her visit to Costa Rica!

Be sure to check it out by following the link here!

It mentions all the best and the worst of this verdant land; in other words, it's got the hidden beaches but also the junta de agua de Berlín.

Enjoy!

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Oh, Tolstoy!

Tolstoy scaring some children.

Recently I’ve been reading Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina—but then again, who hasn’t??

It’s a great book, and for a 19^th Century Russian society novel, it’s pulled me in with surprising force. I’ve read and quite enjoyed books like Pride and Prejudice, so I’m no stranger to foofy, old-fashioned stories of debutantes at balls, unrequited love, swooning, and all other that crap. However, I can say without pride that my prejudice lies on Anna Karenina’s side. While reading the book, I intercepted this discreet note from Tolstoy to Jane Austen: “My dear lady, you seem to have dropped your ass. Please allow me to hand it to you. Sincere Greetings, etc, --Lev “Leo” Tolstoy.”

Yesterday evening, in fact, I had time to consider the book more during my “Girl’s Night In,” as I called it in my mind. I only named it that 'cause I realized while it was going on that it was a pretty girly way to spend an evening.* But as I was reflecting on the book over a homemade quesadilla, I seemed to remember that during my Tolstoy class in college, my professor noted that one of the author’s main interests was trying to answer the question “How should one live life?” I have also been grappling with this question of late, as I’m sure many of my friends and contemporaries are. And thus far, the answers have come out jumbled.

One would think that living with a beautiful wife in a foreign country, with a job I enjoy that gives me plenty of free time to--as my grandpa would say--putz around, that I’d be sitting pretty. And indeed, I am quite content with my life right now. But then again, there’s always that itch. What is it about human nature that gives us this striving for something new, something better, something—anything—different than our current position, regardless of how desirable our current state is?

I think I’m just concerned that if I’m not careful, life will pass me by, and that I have an obligation to try to live it to the fullest. Damn you, Ferris Bueller, you were right! But where does that take me now? Should I stay here and live for the rest of my life in this shit-kicking hamlet in the mountains of Central America that I have grudgingly begun to love? Should I abscond with my wife to my homeland of the Estados Unidos to get us some more advanced education, a better-paying job, and possibly better prospects for any future kids? Should we get my brother Paul on the phone who, for some reason, I really want to call and see if he wants to go to Japan? Should we try our luck again with the Germans? Despite all my efforts to the contrary, am I somehow nevertheless wasting my life?

I know that there is a certain urgency to these questions. As my last boss put it, “You gotta figure this stuff out; soon you’ll be 35.” Hmm, well, I hope he meant “30,” but with my hairline, the confusion’s understandable. 30, 35, even 25…whatever. He’s right. I do gotta get this stuff figured out, and soon, if possible. I guess that this confusion is possibly the root of human existence, and if we’re not asking ourselves these questions, we’re probably doing something wrong, or at least attempting to live obliviously in relation to life’s reality, the one, underlying fact behind it all: from the moment we’re born, our days or numbered.

Any suggestions from the crowd?

On a lighter, less wino-sounding note, today is mine and Angela’s second anniversary. At least I got the “essential companion” part of my life figured out. Angela, if you get to an internet café in the next three months and happen to read this, then Te amo! Gracias por todo el amor y todas las felicidades que me das cada día!

*Here’s how the “Girls’ Night In” evening went down: After working in the yard all day—Thank God I did at least something manly!--shoveling rocks and cutting stuff with my machete, I retired to the house. Angela was at work, so I poured myself a glass of cheap, shitty boxed white wine, drew a warm bath, and while listening to music I read through the new Martha Stewart Living that my mom sent me. I was going to read more of Karenina, but I wanted to be sure not to drop it in the tub and get it wet. Even though a lot of the music was stuff like Johnny Cash, Black Sabbath, or The Mars Volta, I still felt it a rather feminine way to spend the evening. All that was missing was a viewing of Angela’s copy of Sleepless In Seattle, a tub of chocolate ice cream, and those old sweatpants that only I like…

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"Hit of State" OR "Honduras to Costa Rica: Take Our President--Please!"

It seems that the other day there was a coup in Honduras (at least I think it was a "coup"; the Spanish phrase that La Nación is using is “golpe de estado,” which literally means “hit of state”… I’m gonna go with “coup” on this one).

In any case, I’m not sure if they’re reporting this much in the U.S. and elsewhere, but here it pretty big news. Sure, Honduras is a country or two away, but the country between Honduras and Costa Rica is Nicaragua, not exactly a paragon of order and stability over the last couple of decades. So we have a relatively good-sized buffer zone between “us” and “them,” but there’s a lot of regional identification around here, and people in Costa Rica are quite interested in what’s going on up north currently. In fact, Costa Rica did get mixed up in the whole affair initially, and it was in a way that was so weird that while reading about it in the paper, it seemed like the sort of quirky military coup that might happen in a Wes Anderson movie.

Costa Rica’s involvement started when the president of Honduras, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya (in the picture to the left, from Wikimedia Commons), showed up at our airport in his pajamas on Sunday morning. Apparently the Honduran military decided to take over the country, and after they arrived to Zelaya’s residence, they took him by gunpoint to an airplane. That airplane landed at Costa Rica’s Juan Santamaria International Airport at 8:10 a.m., at which time the President was “left” at the airport, while the military apparently returned to Honduras. Zelaya said in La Nación: “I left with the clothes I was wearing; I’m not wearing socks, I’m not wearing underwear.”

Now, we’ve all been in awkward situations like this, especially after a long Saturday night, but this has got to set some sort of precedence for weirdness. My particular interest lies with the Honduran military soldiers who kidnapped Zelaya: what did they actually do after arriving at the airport? Did they get out, talk to the guy who guided the plane to the gate with those glow sticks, and say, “Hey, here’s our President, do you mind watching him while we do some errands up north?” How did they address the radio tower? "Heads up, President coming in!"? Did they have to take him through customs or immigration—good luck, Mel!—since he probably didn’t happen to have his passport in his pajama pocket? Or did they just land without permission, open the pressurized cabin door with a whoosh, toss Zelaya out onto the tarmac, and then take off again? The newspapers are suspiciously silent as to the answers to all of these questions.

The day of his arrival here, Zelaya had a joint press conference with Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who looked somewhat confused in the newspaper picture (although to be fair, Arias often looks a bit confused in newspaper pictures). Arias condemned the coup and demanded that Honduras take back its mustachioed, V-neck T-shirt-wearing President.

As the days have progressed, Zelaya went to a meeting of Latin American Presidents in Nicaragua and apparently continued on to the U.S. to talk to U.N. General Assembly or something like that (I stopped paying close attention to the articles around this point). He eventually plans on returning to Honduras on Thursday (today). However, a new “President” has taken power in Honduras in the meantime, and this new guy with an Italian-sounding name has promised that Zelaya will be imprisoned if he returns to the country. The international community has rallied around Zelaya by demanding his reinstatement as President, and has proposing severing basically all ties with Honduras, up to an including an full embargo on shitty reggaeton record imports.

Anyhow, this situation is weird, and to paraphrase Brazilian President Lula* said, “We can’t permit right in the 21^st century, that we have a military coup in Latin America. It’s unacceptable.” And he’s right. Do they still even do military coups these days?

Maybe that’s what’s going on: Central America is suffering from 1980s nostalgia and trying to recapture some of the “romance” from that era.** Nicaragua’s current President is Daniel Ortega, the same Sandinista President from the 1980s that got involved in their country’s civil war. And our current President in Costa Rica is Oscar Arias, the guy who was also President in the 1980s, and who won a Nobel Prize for helping end the civil war in Nicaragua. Iran’s got some weird turmoil going on, possibly just to set up a new Iran-Contra Affair for this century. And finally, Honduras decides to throw a military coup.

And everywhere I look, all I see are Land Rovers from the late 70s and early 80s, and Michael Jackson’s music is on every station!

It’s Political 80s Night here in the isthmus! Put on your Member’s Only jacket and come on down!

* Brazilian Presidents, just like Brazilian soccer players, have only one name.

** I am obviously joking about this whole matter, and I hope I don’t offend anyone by taking it too lightly. My best wishes are with everyone in Honduras, and let’s all hope for a safe and speedy resolution to this debacle!

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Many, Many Pictures: Dustin and Samantha's Visit!

Dustin and Sam on a bridge near Termales del Bosque. Dustin is opening the glowing box made famous by the movie Pulp Fiction.

For two weeks in June, our friends Dustin and Samantha visited us from Colorado. That's the main reason the blog has been pretty MIA of late, by the way. I've got some good stuff coming up, though... don't you worry. In any case, it was really great to have Deuce and Sam visit, and I wanted to put up a few pictures from their stay. Hope you enjoy them, and that you're tempted to visit, as well! (All but the first four are from Dustin's camera... I didn't ask permission, but hope that's cool I'm putting them up, Deuce)

Angela and I at the waterfall near La Fortuna.

Some cows in their natural habitat: the beach.

Dustin and Sam at Playa Manzanillo, on the Caribbean coast.

Who doesn't love cows? Not this guy!

A weird Costa Rican anomaly: there are a lot of Holsteins here, but for some reason or another, there are tons of Brahma cows.

I was still employed during the first week of their visit, so there was a fair amount of sitting around during the first part of their trip.

However, the probable monotony of Berlín was occasionally interrupted for them by something exciting, like a random doctor's visit!

I was at work at the time, but apparently this doctor just showed up on his motorcycle, took everyone's blood pressure, and rode off into the mid-day sun.
Doctor's visits? Chickens in trees? Angela chasing cows out of the yard? How come all the interesting stuff happened when I was gone??

Another thing that happened while I was gone working: we got another cat. We kept trying to discourage it, but after hanging around on the back porch for two weeks, it seems to be here for good. We still don't have a name for it, but we've been calling it "The Other Cat." Notice Cucho scowling at it in the background, from behind the plants.
This cat kinda sucks in comparison to our other cat Cucho, to be completely honest with you.

During their visit, Dustin and Sam were able to enjoy some of the unique charms of San Ramón. Here, we see a "watchyman" carefully attending the parked cars near the church. Needless to say, when we left I avoided giving him any coins for keeping an eye on our car.
Right after that, we saw another possibly homeless guy sleeping on a park bench. This would be not so extraordinary, except this second guy had taken out his false teeth and they were sitting on his arm as he slept. And the set of teeth was missing random teeth.
Man, Sam Ramón is pretty shitty.

More Tico charm: We were all dazzled by the ridiculous titties on the Costa Rican manequins. I've already decided that I need to address this issue in a separate, exclusive post.

Ah yes, and no visit to Costa Rica would be complete without the ubiquitous "Floating Crucified Sad Jesus Head" stickers on the cars, buses, and, especially, the trucks. Last November I wrote about these stickers, but since then they've taken on a whole new level of interest for our American visitors. What started as an occasional remark while Annie was visiting morphed into an obsessive decal-counting game during Dustin and Sam's visit. I believe that our "Sad Jesus Head" sticker count on the way back from the Caribbean worked its way into the mid-60s!

More weird Costa Rica: the "guava" in all its broken-phallus glory. We bought these from a guy on the side of the road near a tollbooth. The weird thing: this isn't even a guava. That's just what everyone calls it. What we would call a guava in English, people here call a "guyaba." But I have no idea why this seed thing is called a guava in Spanish.

Guavas are freaking weird. When you break open the giant-green-bean-looking thing, there are little fuzzy white clumps. You eat that fuzzy white crap, and inside there's a big, cockroach-looking seed. For some reason, when God invented guavas, He decided to make them so that they could split open and serve as earrings (as Sam is modeling).

Dustin bought a souvenir spoon, and the shopkeeper threw in this Imperial bandana for free. At least that's what he claims.

Sam posing (awesomely) with her food and a napkin/flower Angela made.

A hermit crab with a sunscreen cap for a shell. Just a second ago, I accidently typed "crap" instead of "crab," but not that I've corrected it, I think I may have been right the first time around.

During our stay in Cahuita, Sam finally got her wish of relaxing in a hammock.

And finally, on the last day, we saw some beautiful Costa Rican engineering as a car pulled a moped on the highway. Remember, folks in the U.S., this is the Interamericana Highway, the one that goes all the way from Argentina to Alaska, and these guys were headed north. They may have graced America with their inspiring presence.

Anyhow, that's it for the pictures for now. Hope you liked them, and maybe you learned something (certainly not).

Thanks again to Dustin and Sam for visiting, and we hope to have you come back very, very soon!

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