Author Archives: gubabbaboy

The View Past My Knees

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Samuel the agent texts: “deme chansa” (give me a chance; or, better, give me time). What a laugh.

Alfonso our friend the customs agent came to the restaurant, and says he can do it for us if we get the pink slip and money back from Samuel. We can drive to Alfonso’s house in Santa Ana and leave the truck, moeny, and papers there. We would then take the bus to Guanajuato, our destination, then travel back to Los Mochis in a couple of weeks, after Alfonso completes the paper-work, and drive the truck home from there. Does this weaken our resolve? NO!

I realize that many folks would just stop right there and say Ya! Basta! Enough! No more throwing good money after bad, etc. But not us. We are made of different stuff.

We have already gone through so much with this old truck.  It was very hard to get it smogged last fall, and that was an epic story in itself that I won’t inflict on you, but it involved getting in touch with junk yards all over the US, and spending several days waiting at a smog repair place, as Foxy was minus an air filter cannister and lid. We’ve decided that no matter how much people laugh at us, we’re going to get it to our house in Mexico no matter what!


I had chilaquiles again tonight, after eating three pancakes. I made and ate so many pancakes when I lived in the midwest that I am not a fan, but they tasted mighty good today. Chon and I think we’ve each lost a couple of pounds on our special one-meal-per-day-since-we-are-running-out-of-money diet. Chon actually ordered the pancakes, but I confess I was dreaming of carbs myself – I was craving Frosted Flakes! Straight out of the box. This evening was the first time we indulged in lots of carbs during our stay here. (Of course, chilaquiles, made from crispy fried tortillas with salsa, are reasonably high on the carb charts, but they are usually nicely balanced with chicken or eggs – I had mine with machaca, which has sent me on an obsessive online hunt for recipes).

Sorry – bad lighting. The white stuff is nice crumbly cheese and lettuce. Underneath are the chilaquiles, with machaca on top of them.

We save the left-overs for later. We keep telling each other we’ll eat these left-overs On The Road. Tomorrow, because it’s already nearly eight p.m. But we’re still waiting for Samuel. To call. Or come with the papers. Any minute, now.

Limbo

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Our agent Samuel came to see us last night. He tells us that he is just waiting – the permissions arrive from Mexico City. He can get our money back, and we could try with a different agency, but what if the permissions are arriving as we take our next breath? 
We have also checked other options. If I had my FM3, my longterm visa, I could take a car into Mexico with California plates, and keep it there. There’s a consulate right here in Nogales, but it appears that it takes at least a couple of weeks to get the visa.
We also called in bigger guns. Alfonso, the customs agent we used for our move, also works with vehicles – who knew? He was going to stop by last night to give us advice, but he just – didn’t. We called him this morning but he was in a meeting. But he might be able to do this for us – he’s had years of experience.

We give up. We are staring another weekend in the face, drinking thermos coffee the cook gives secretly gives us. There’s nothing to be done. But wait. Limbo.

Thursday Update

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By noon on Thursday we have called the agent twice today. He sent a text to  give him some time, and that he would call us.  We are watching TV (not much to do here). We are sighing from time to time, and our stomachs frequently gurgle in unison. We have been managing with one meal a day, in the afternoon, with leftovers for later in the evening, or the next morning. We are getting hungry, and naturally we are irritable.
We want the agent to freaking return our money, and the title, so we can make some kind of alternative plan. The waiting has become excruciating, and it’s hard to see the humor in the situation any more. We say all kinds of brave things to each other, but still, we are pretty much stuck here. Now the agent says he’ll come here talk over the situation.  But when will he come? Just like every other day, that is the question. When? Cuando? Cuando? Cuando?

The hotel manager called his friend who still works at the agency.  He says that today, January 6, is the first day of something called Amparo, which changes the fees for importation; that yesterday it would have cost about $4,000 to import Foxy (because it is a commercial vehicle? because of its weight? he didn’t make it clear). He says that today the fees will be much lower. We wonder – why didn’t our agent give us this information?

Car Registration – Suspicions

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WILL Chon and Gail get the much-needed permit? WILL the agent turn out to be just an innocent beginner with no juice? IS he an agent at all?  HAVE they been robbed? That’s pretty much what we’ve been thinking about.
We just can’t stay here any longer.
Chon  paid for yet another night here.  He visited with the hotel manager, who, as it turns out, used to be a customs agent. Up until now, the comments have all been soothing, like “Oh, it happens sometimes – we get desperate travelers sitting here in the lobby, just waiting,” and “Boy, you’ve been waiting a long time, but there have been others who have waited this long, too.”
But last night the manager said that this smells fishy – he suspects that the agency has NOT received our money, and the papers are NOT in the queue. I myself have had images of movies where the temptation of so much money was just too much, and the agent/person “borrowed” it.  It was, after all, right before Kings’ Day, when the entire Catholic world gives gifts.  Anyway, we plan to confront the agent, or go to the agency ourselves – we found out which one it is (there are many, possibly hundreds of them in the phone book.)
We really must settle this. We really must leave. This is where we need to be:

Still in Nogales – More Car Registration

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There’s our truck, parked in front of room 107. Chon says he’s going to write Symphony 107.
Tomorrow it will have been a week staying in Hotel Estrella Dorada Internacional. We have spoken with the agent several more times. A few minutes ago he told us that the agency he is using had electrical problems today, and that they had been without electricity all morning. He offered to take us there so we would believe him, and that this is the longest it has ever taken him to get a new registration. He told us to trust him, and that he had worked on it all day. He said this is very bad for his business, as he works through referrals. We probably will never have many opportunities to recommend anyone for this job, but he’s right; we probably would not refer anyone to him.
By now all the employees here know about our plight. We’re practically family! We are friends with the cook, Don David, who confided yesterday that he is in love with Alma, who works the front desk. The manager, Jorge, is acquainted with Samuel, our agent, and says he is known for his alacrity and efficiency(!). Alma has four children from her previous marriage with a car collector who often left them without food because he spent so much money on cars. Rocio also works the front desk. 
Literally everyone here knows about registering cars, as the hotel gets most of its business from people who are registering their cars have other customs business. Everyone knows at least one agent, and now we know that the agents work on their own, usually for one certain customs company. You can do it yourself without an agent. Yes, we could have done without an agent, if we had only known…

Galileo

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Did you think I wouldn’t tell you about the blog name?

Galileo is what we named our group about 24 years ago. Chon the poet thought of the name, and I loved it right away.

In the little town (rancho) that Chon is from, everybody, but everybody has a nickname. When he was a musician in Chicago, he was called Diego (by an enterprising promoter), Leo by fans (pronounced Lay-o by Spanish speakers, Lee-o by English speakers). He even had a couple of different names at his day jobs. Chon is a nickname, as well, for his given name.

Well, my name is Gail, certainly not hispanic-compatible, and at the time we began practicing together in Los Angeles, planning to start a group, I was working with a Spanish speaking woman who pronounced my name Gali (sort of like Golly). We became, then, Galileo.

Our first paying gig, I think, was in a restaurant in Pasadena. I was really new at this kind of performing. I was a “classically trained” pianist, a reader, and suddenly I was playing from “charts” with chords and lyrics – in Spanish! Not much longer after this period, we began playing on Olvera Street, at La Golondrina regularly, and then for their annual posadas.

The group has gone through many changes. At one time Chon trained a bass player, Karina. She was a very pleasant person, easy-going and fun, who often fell asleep on stage. Then he trained another bass player, Cindy, a teacher, who attempted to take over the management of the group.  He trained a drummer, Dinora. Together we trained three little girls, all nearly the same age, to sing and play rhythm. We did several performances with them. They grew up and went their various directions. We trained three older girls, sisters, but that didn’t really work out.

We added Chon’s brother, Jorge, as a bass player. An artist, he much prefers art to practicing. We added a Guatemalan drummer, a sad-faced, excellent baterista whose heart was not really in it. We tried adding other percussionists, and other guitarists.

Then Sara came. She chose her own nickname, Chiquita. She was very small – many years later, still is! In a short while she improved all her native talents. She is a wonderful human being with a beautiful voice and positive attitude. She plays drums and sings! People love her, and they love her singing. When the three of us play there are so many possibilities. Our voices sound great together in any combination, and we are a force to deal with.

Galileo has been called Grupo Galileo, Grupåzo Galileo, Dueto Galileo, Orquesta Galileo, Banda Galileo. But right now Galileo is Chon and me, the way we did our annual holiday performance on Olvera Street, or Chon and Sara and me.

This is where we played on our roof last New Year’s Eve. If we ever get out of Nogales, maybe the three of us will give a concert on the new stage we have built!

Car Registration in Mexico

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NOGALES
It occurred to me that other people might like to hear about registering a car in Mexico.  So this is not so much a personal account as it is more informative. Well, OK, it is my personal account of what happened to us.
When traveling to Mexico in a car, you should register it.  At the same place where you get your six-month visa, you register your car.  It costs about $36 for a six-month permit.  That is, if you use a credit card to pay for it.  The credit card must be in the name of the person the car is registered to. If you don’t have a credit card, you may pay cash – $335 or so. You receive a holographic sticker for your windshield.
The car must be returned within the six-month period.  To the border.  No matter how far away you may be. An official told us that we could just bring the registration papers to the border, but that is evidently not true.  You must return the car to the border to cancel the permission, or to renew the permission. 
Each person may only get a temporary permission for one car.  This created a problem for us.  We brought our  PT Cruiser because we were moving here.  We brought it with us with some equipment in it.  We returned to California, and then we drove here in October in our Mercedes. The result was that we each had a car with a temporary permission. So when after we made our major move to our house in Mexico and returned to our house in California we planned to bring our big old Ford Econoline box van to Mexico as well, loaded with household goods.
When we tried to get a permit for it, we found that we really couldn’t get another temporary permit because we each already had one.
One option was to cancel one permit.  That was not possible because we did not have either car here.  The other option was to register the van permanently as a Mexican vehicle.
*
There are places on the US side of the border to register automobiles for Mexico.  We asked about doing that, and were told that our old van was just too odd – it din’t really fit into any of the regular categories for registration. So we came to the Mexican side to register it, and we arrived on the afternoon of December 31st.  We went to the car registration/visa place, but no one there could do it because of its oddness. 
We went to the visa/registration place but no one there could help us.  They sent us back to the border to register the van. The building there was closed. Chon asked a worker outside the building and he called someone on his radio.                                                                                                                                           
So here’s what happened:
* a youngish man showed up in his pickup and told us that it wouldn’t be possible to register the car that day, because it takes a while to get the paperwork done
* we followed him to a hotel, not too far from the border
* we gave him the registration information and the money required for the Mexican papers, and got a room
* the man gave us his phone number and left, saying that he would try very hard to get the papers by the next day, but since that day was New Year’s Eve, the offices would close at 2 p.m.
* on Friday he came and said that he would surely get the papers on Monday morning
* we waited Saturday
* we waited Sunday
* on Monday he came and said the papers weren’t ready, and paid for one night
* Tuesday he didn’t come, but on the phone he said that he’s 99% sure we will get the papers tomorrow. He also said that the money has been accepted, and there seems to be no obstacle to the registration
Now – you mqy wonder why it would be worth $1000 to register a funky, big, twenty-seven-year old truck in Mexico.
We think the truck is probably worth more in Mexico for its size and commercial possibilities.  Without Mexican papers it is worth very little.  Several people have been interested in buying our Mercedes, but got UNinterested when they found that does not have a Mexican registration. Mexico is no longer like the good/bad old days when you could get just about anything done if you knew the right people and had enough money.
It really does make sense that there could be no instant service for an undertaking like this. I have no idea what it would take in California to register a car from another country, but I’m sure the Motor Vehicle offices would not be open on the weekend. For some reason, I thought that we could get this done at the visa places, where you can get a temporary permit for your vehicle.  but this is another thing altogether that we need. For one thing, we need plates for the state of Guanajuato, and we are in Sonora.
Evidently we will receive a paper, temporary license plate to put in the window of the truck (saw one yesterday in the hotel parking lot).  I assume the permanent plates will come in the mail.