Patrick Schulte's Blog

There’s always a bug peeking around the corner.

This is actually the driveway up to the indoor pool where Ouest trains. It’s a beautiful place situated on the top of a hill overlooking all this empty land. We’ve only gotten to see the train come by a couple of times, and thought it was really pretty with the dark skies threatening rain all around while the sun was still shining down on us.

First day of school. Ever. The kids are going to a small private school with about a 50/50 mix of locals and expats and bilingual classes. There’s only about 15 kids per grade, so by the time school started they already knew half of them and it was pretty chill. Kind of a weird feeling seeing them go off. This was their choice, so there wasn’t any, “Do I have to go?” Ouest was looking forward to it, and Lowe was basically, whatever. 

A couple of weeks later I asked Lowe if school was what he thought it would be. “It’s easier than I thought it would be, and longer. Honestly, though, I don’t get what everyone has been learning for the last ten years.” His fear had been that he’d be behind his classmates, and he was surprised to find that he wasn’t. I was happy to hear that my view of school, especially the early years, was correct. If you spend time with your kids, explore the world, pursue different interests, and read to them, they won’t be idiots. These two slipped right into 9th and 10th grade without skipping a beat. Feels like they got a ten-year cheat code.

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Matching patina.

The “pickup” 99% of F-150 owners really need.

And the pickup the other 1% need. Selling flowers in style.

I love that this place is right on Ancha de San Antonio, which is a main artery in and out of the center of town. We walk or motorcycle past here every day. The street is filled with trendy restaurants, boutiques, tourist shops and expensive barbershops. And yet every day you’ll find a couple of guys with a car jacked up right in front of here, fixing a flat, or changing oil, or probably just about anything you could possibly ask a mechanic to do. Look it up on Google Maps and there is zero mention of any sort of tire shop or mechanic.

I know, I know, I just love the bugs.

This is how our little pot-bellied pig sits.

Front tire sort of blocked up? Baby crib mattress on the roof? Let’s pull the engine.

I picked up Ouest from a friend’s house one night and as soon as we got on the road back down the hill I saw this guy up ahead of us and told Ouest, “That guy is drunk.” We were stuck behind him unless we risked passing him, which I wasn’t going to do, and when a few cars stacked up behind us I decided to just pull over and let everyone go by. A minute later we got back on the road, no cars in front of or behind us, and yet we caught up to the truck again. Everyone else had gotten by him so I just hung back and watched him. Into the tunnel we went, where the lights must have woken him a bit because he sped up. We trailed behind watching from a safe distance. We came up out of the tunnel and were approaching a light when I turned to Ouest again and said, “There he goes.” Across two lanes he went, and boom. Another ten feet to the left he would have destroyed the lives of the people waiting to turn left. Fortunately, he only destroyed his own truck. I parked and ran over, but he was already falling out of the passenger side. Airbags seemed to have saved him from any harm, but that truck is a goner.

There’s a great Anne Frank exhibition at a museum in town.

This is what kids will be doing with stacks of US dollars soon if we keep it up.

The kids have read the diary and know the story, but seeing the images again, and putting yourself in that space makes for an important reminder of what can happen with blind loyalty to a leader.

I’m sure this barbed wire was put on these drain pipes to keep kids from hanging on them or climbing on them, but a little more thought should have been put into the fact that they are about 5′ 10″ off the ground and would easily scalp me if I wasn’t paying attention.

Finally replaced our door knocker.

Overflowing with color.

They say it’s rained twice the average this year, filling up the reservoirs. I figured that was good news for our water consumption, but turns out the town’s water supply is actually from deep underground wells, not the reservoirs, which are used for things like irrigation, apparently. Regardless, in an area that has seen its share of droughts, the rain has been very welcome.

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Lest you think we bought a house in Mexico to sprawl out with tons of space. Our house is about 7′ narrower than our catamaran. Granted, it is a bit longer, and taller.

A lot of homes here are about as wide as a VW bug.

In Centro they have designated motorcycle parking, and not nearly enough of it, considering how many motos can fit in the same space as one stupid SUV. Space can get a bit tight, but nobody thinks anything of it. Just wedge it in.

Waiting on takeaway tacos.

Also waiting on dinner.

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Aunt Katy and Ouest hanging out on Grandpa’s always impeccable grass.

The neighbor’s passion fruit vine has climbed over the wall and into one of our patios.

Although I’m not sure they are going to last long by the looks of it.

It got all the way down into the high 60’s one day and we were hit with a nice hail storm. About as close to snowfall as we’re ever likely to get here in San Miguel.

Ali and the kids spotted a skink. They remind me of the salamanders we used to go out and catch at will in any basement window well when I was a kid. Must be forty years since I’ve seen either in MN.

Beautiful day to see the Willow Falls at Willow River State Park.

She’s been sitting on my feet since the kids left.

When nobody can leave the airport because the payment system goes down. Welcome home!

No expat ever returns from a Stateside visit without some extra luggage. And yes, we still rock the plastic bins for luggage (drill a few holes around the edge and secure with zip ties). This must be our oldest travel hack. One-tenth the price of a piece of luggage, and can actually serve another use when you’re done. If you don’t need it, just set it on the curb and it’s gone in five minutes. You get some dirty looks from airline gate agents, but it’s well worth it.

The kids came bearing gifts for Za. Not me.

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Not a kangaroo or koala bear in sight for the kids’ Australian friend.

After a couple of days without the rest of the family around, Za basically attached herself to my feet.

Pinning me down to make sure I didn’t try and disappear, too.

My latest package of glass panes. There’s just no escape from Trump news.

Oh my god, heaven on a plastic plate. Alambre al pastor.

Lowe is cleaning up on this birthday.

‘Merican s’mores are the best s’mores.

Time for a new sink.

The sink wouldn’t quite fit because it was hitting this piece of wood. I was standing there with the hacksaw thinking, “This would be so much easier if I could turn the blade sideways.” Then I looked down at the saw and noticed that the saw was in fact designed to be able to do just that. And now I’m left wondering if this has been possible my entire life with every hacksaw I’ve ever used.

Not exactly a major home improvement, but an improvement nonetheless.

I took off for the afternoon just to see what I could find.

All alone I set up the camera to capture this shot as if I am a great explorer forging new paths aboard my trusty 125cc steed.

Beautiful day, fun ride, and lots of vegetation encroaching on the roads.

A minute later I came around the corner to this. Everyone was out of the cars and moving around, luckily, but if I had to guess I’d say that at least one person was staring at a phone and crossed the line to cause that head-on collision (the white car and black SUV hit driver corner to driver corner).

A long unfinished home with a beautiful country view only about 15 minutes out of San Miguel.

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Ali and the kids got to Minnesota just in time to catch the last day of the Washington County Fair. Classic good times.

Little disappointed that they chose to go with a car balancing competition this year, rather than the burnout competition of the past. It was kind of fun watching people do thousands of dollars in damage to their cars for nothing more than a small plastic participation trophy. Nobody damaged their cars at all in the balancing act.

Meanwhile, back in Mexico I started the laborious process of resealing windows. This was the first pane I tried popping out. Fortunately, in our town you are within five minutes of just about anything you can think of. The glass place cut me a new 6mm thick piece to replace this old 4mm piece for $6. At that price I couldn’t help but just replace every single pane. Twenty-four of them on this front window.

I zipped down the road a little ways to Atontonilco, a town I hadn’t visited in probably ten years. I was on the hunt for a gordita stand that I remembered. When I got there I realized it was market day, and also that the town hadn’t changed one bit.

Happy to find what I had come for.

Bistek con Papas quesadilla, and a Pollo en mole gordita for a first course. Bury them in fresh made salsa, wash it all down with horchata, and start to realize how much of this absolute perfection you’ve missed in your life. Then order more.

Next time maybe I’ll try the neighbor’s stand.

Riding home in a delirious food haze.

Back in Minnesota, day two, Lowe’s good friend Charlie, the Australian, arrived from Canada, after having last seen each other in Bora Bora a couple years after first meeting in Mexico. So it goes with boat kids.

A beautiful Minnesota summer day, with all the kids out on the pontoon.

You can’t very well go to Stillwater and not visit Nelson’s. Order the kids size and this is what you get there.

Seeing as I could only replace a couple panes at a time, and I was transporting the glass on the back of a motorcycle, I became a glass shop regular pretty quickly.

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Fourteen. Ali and the kids are making a Minnesota run for jury duty and to visit family, while I hold down the fort here. So Lowe’s birthday festivities kicked off a little early this year. I won’t embarrass him by gushing about him here, but I will say that every time I hear people complain about their teenage boy I am reminded of how lucky I am to have such an awesome kid. I can’t think of a single negative thing I could ever say about him. He’s just an all-around great guy and we’re all fortunate to have him around. Happy Birthday, Lowe.

Being on my own for dinner seemed like a great time to get to know Los Chemas and their parrillada.

Off on a little motorcycle loop outside of town and back in again from the other side.

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It occurred to me that I never mentioned that we sold the boat. Ended up selling it to the first people that looked at it, though it still managed to be about a four-month process. Initial offer was ridiculous. A month passed, another offer came along. The haggling I was fine with, but what we were haggling over made me absolutely insane. The buyer’s number one problem, and apparently something that they felt should make the boat worth like $40,000 less, was that the air-conditioning on the boat wouldn’t work at their dock in Singapore because of the differing power sources. 220v versus our 110v. I offered up like three solutions for the soon to be dock queen, all of which would give them an ice cold boat for a max of a couple thousand bucks, and a minimum of a couple hundred. Just wasting time to discuss air-conditioning drove me absolutely bonkers. I was determined not to sell the boat to them just because I found it so “un-sailorly.”

Yes, I’ve become the old, curmudgeonly, gray-beard of the high seas. I had no patience whatsoever for these newbies and their infatuation with air-conditioning. They had zero questions about the sails or the rigging, both of which were about due a replacement that would cost tens of thousands of dollars more than a 220v air-conditioner ever would.

Eventually a third offer came along, we settled on a price and they arranged the survey. The surveyor, as they always do, pointed out the most ridiculous things, and seemingly ignored all of the big ticket items. There was nothing wrong with the sails and rigging, but when a boat is exactly ten years old, you can bet that those are going to be things that need addressing very soon based on age alone. Now, maybe their surveyor warned them about this, maybe not, but it didn’t come up in survey (they shared that with us). I’m sure their insurance company will fill them in soon enough, assuming they aren’t “self-insurers” like us. Regardless, the surveyor determined that a bunch of nonsensical things needed to be replaced/repaired, they came up with a cost of a couple thousand bucks, and I didn’t even bother splitting it. Done. Where do I sign?

Somehow, getting paid took another three weeks, and over half a dozen wire transfers. At the same time we were receiving a wire from Mexico that had gone awry. Just a few hundred bucks refund on the house escrow, but I can’t imagine what our bank was thinking. In the space of a few weeks we’d had wires going to and fro with Mexico, Singapore, Malaysia, and the UK. If the US ever funded them, I would totally expect the IRS to call me around the end of April next year.

Hopefully I don’t sound too harsh here. I wish the new owners all the best. I’m sure if I’d spent the last ten or fifteen years watching sailing youtube I’d probably be convinced that air-conditioning was the most important item on a boat, too. I should be happy, after all, those same videos are probably what convinced them they needed a large catamaran in the first place.

Anyway, that’s done. Which is nice. One less thing.

Ali just reminded me I never mentioned a Cruising World article from a while back, either. Cruising World: Back to the Future

The only VW I’ve ever owned was our ’58 bus, but I love wandering the streets of San Miguel and finding the “vochos” sitting all over the place. Like little working art installations.

Really, though, any walk around San Miguel feels like an art walk.

I thought maybe there is a reason this body of water is named the Gulf of Mexico, I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

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Back at Grammy’s one day Ouest surprised her with a song. Grammy has always talked about how she had wanted so badly to play the piano, but when she was a kid they were far too poor to even consider such a thing. So she was over the moon when I told her that Ouest had asked us if she could take lessons. Then, a few weeks back Ouest’s piano teacher asked her to pick a song she’d like to practice. We thought about it, and the idea of learning, How Much is that Doggie in the Window, immediately came to mind. It’s sort of an inside family joke that Grammy somehow always ends up singing/humming that song. So anyway, Ouest practiced and learned the song. I won’t post the video here, but I had to pull some stills from it.

Grammy’s reaction when Ouest hit the final note.

It meant the world to her. You could almost see the memories of her childhood racing through her mind. She was so happy and proud of Ouest, and so was I.

Got the Porsche back, this time with brakes. That makes it even more fun to drive.

There’s always something fun to find in the garage.

One last dinner at Aunt Beth’s house to say goodbye to Annie.

And then home again. Queretaro International. That’s about the entire place right there. About the only thing we don’t like about San Miguel is living ninety minutes from the airport. It’s a pain. On the other hand, it’s remarkable how quiet it is living in a place where there is never anything in the sky. If there is a plane or helicopter flying over San Miguel it is such a surprise that it actually makes the local news. It’s quite funny, actually.

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Ouest and I hopped the border and headed off to Oregon for a visit with Grammy and a swim camp at Oregon State University. Bridget was very very happy to see Ouest.

We went over to Aunt Beth’s, the quintessential NE Portland home  with a lovely backyard teeming with flowers that Beth works hard on.

We had a few hours to get down to swim camp, so we swung through downtown Portland to hit up an institution there. Admittedly, not one I’m even sure I’ve ever bothered with in the past, but one I thought would be fun for us on a quiet Sunday morning.

Voodoo Doughnut.

It’d be a real stretch to call this breakfast. You gotta give them credit for their imagination, though. I’d say they tasted like cake with way too much frosting.

Weatherford Hall. We had an absolutely beautiful day to wander around campus. There was a Special Olympics event going on so we watched some softball and then made our way over to The Downward Dog for lunch.

At the restaurant I overheard a kid, there with his mom, ordering his burger when the bartender asked, “Do you want fries or tots with that?” The kid replied, “Are tots good? I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never had them.” I don’t know why this struck me as funny as it did. As a kid raised in Minnesota in the 70s and 80s, I sometimes feel like every third or fourth meal contained tater tots in one way or another. Sure you can just toss them in the deep fryer, but how about with a can of cream of mushroom soup and a pound of hamburger? You haven’t lived until you’ve had tater tot hotdish with a bottle of Heinz ketchup as a chaser.

Passing through Oregon City on the way back to Portland.

Firing up the Porsche. She had a date across town for some brake work the next day.

I’ve been to Costco once in my life and it was twenty years ago with these same ladies. I absolutely despise this sort of place and my aunts knows it, but they also know that I love them and if they need a ride I’ll be happy to take them. I truly do not understand the appeal of Costco, though. It’s just awful. I’m sorry, but you’re all the weirdos, not me. After circling the store once I’d had my fill and decided to wait in the “food” court and order this famous hot dog and soda combo I’ve heard so much about over the years. “Only $1.50! How great is that? Hank and I get a dozen of them to go and keep them in the freezer to eat all week until we come back again next Sunday.” I made up that quote. Honestly, what could be more mediocre than a lukewarm hotdog and fountain soda? I can get that at 7-11 and not need to buy 120 rolls of toilet paper first. Ugh, I’ve already gone too far with this story, haven’t I? Have I gotten my point across, though? Because I can go on if you’d like…

I texted my cousins afterwards to let them know they could expect to inherit a sizable amount of paper plates someday.

Back in Mexico the weather wasn’t quite as nice, and surprisingly our leaks hadn’t fixed themselves. Weird. This one actually I wouldn’t qualify as a leak so much as a design flaw.

I ordered Chinese for a picnic with Grammy. Apparently they don’t serve Chinese food at the Assisted Living facility. I was shocked by the $82 price tag of our takeout order, until I realized I’d probably gotten enough food to feed the entire floor.

Ahhhh, sunset by the airport. Take ’em where you can get ’em, I guess.

And just like that, camp was done and I had my Ouest back. We still had a couple more days ahead of us in Portland, too.

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