ELEVEN

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Elijah turned eleven today. This kid is such an absolute joy. Smart, funny, sweet. With just the right touch of mischief.

In honor of his birthday, I present the other story of when I almost killed Eli in Mexico.

As you recall, we rented a little golf cart to tool around our little beachside town. I would find any excuse to get behind the wheel and dodge chickens and stray dogs and stoners.

After some mild threatening slash bribing, I got Eli to join me on a cash run. The great part about Sayulita is there is an ATM on every street. The bad news is 9.5 out of 10 of them are non working. And the working ATM tends to move from day to day.

Very quickly after descending from our little house, Eli and I were reminded how important Easter is to Mexico. Overnight, the town’s population had quadrupled. The streets were jammed with people celebrating Christianity with an ice cold Corona.

At one point, the streets were so jammed, that I pulled a grouchy dad move and whipped the cart into a side street and tried to manufacture a shortcut. Almost immediately, we got lost. A very unfriendly motorcycle cop told us to get off the street, as we happened to be going the wrong way down a one way street.

I u-turned and raced down another dirt road. We found a nice, well paved road so I jumped on. Not realizing it was a two lane highway. Oops. I put the pedal to the metal and got the cart up to its maximum speed (4MPH). Thankfully, God thought it was hilarious and decided not to kill us with a Petrol Tanker Truck.

Eli and I took the first dirt road we came across and tried to point our way back towards town. The little dirt road ceased being a road pretty quickly and turned into a driveway and then a backyard. The backyard of a couple dudes who could best be described as “Kidnapy.” The only thing keeping them from murdering us was the complete and shock of seeing two lily white gringos in a golf cart plow through their yard.

I swung the cart down another alley and somehow managed to get us back on the one way road where our adventure started.

We eventually made it back to the little road up to our house and were met face to face with a massive, traditional Easter parade, going the wrong way. We waited while a couple hundred worshipers in white robes strolled past.

When we got home, Diana suggested we all go for a ride into town.