Happy Day, George Wachintong

If I had to sum up this weekend's trip to Mexico, I would do it with the following: When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade; when Mexico hands you a potential catastrophe, you make catastrophe pie. Read on for my lengthy and possibly uninteresting explanation.

After a heavy dose of unfeathered hurly burly on Friday night in Austin, five of us made our way to Old Mexico on Saturday afternoon for George Washington's birthday, a major event in Nuevo Laredo. Our heads hurt and our bodies ached, but spirits were high, because we knew were about to do the Father of Our Country proud. Our international exploration started off in the usual fashion, with a gaggle of budding international entrepreneurs offering me chiclets, and when that failed, 4 foot tall prostitutes. After fending off these scamps with a barrage of purple nurples and indian rope burns, we entered our first bar and in doing so, encountered disaster.

Seated at the bar were three American girls, a little younger than us. My heart was buoyed at the sight of these intrepid explorers, as Nuevo Laredo isn't typically considered the single American woman's paradise. After a moment's consideration, I decided against giving them all celebratory wet willies, and sat down with my friends at a table to enjoy some spirits. A short time later, one of these girls came over to talk with us. To me, this is not a major occurrence, as I am universally considered an urbane and delightful young man. To some elements of the party though, these women represented something that had to be held on to, like the Rosetta Stone, and they decided unilaterally that only the cold grip of death could pry these women away.

In the course of the ensuing discussion with these ladies, two facts came to light. Fact the first: they were going back to Corpus Christi (3 hours away and very far from our respective domiciles) in a few hours. Fact the second: these girls were 18-19 years old, and could quite possibly be considered skankdified. To me, this was a clearly posted Stop sign. Not only do I have a ladyfriend of sorts in Austin, but I am opposed to both sexually transmitted diseases and driving 3 hours away to procure these sexually transmitted diseases from girls who just got out of high school. And let's not forget that I've looked forward to this day for the past 52 weeks and couldn't be coerced out of that city even if one were to offer a pony ride with Carlos Jacott.

Looking around the table, I hoped to make these thoughts known to my comrades. Two of them were clearly in agreement with me, while I couldn't quite size up the other two. It was approximately 3 seconds into my giving of the stink eye to these undecideds that they both yelled out, "We're going to Corpus!" Perhaps now it would be salient to point out that we had taken only one car down there, and the owner of this one car was the most vocal about the trip to Corpus. I did not take that news well. Even worse was the realization that maybe my charming demeanor was both a blessing and a burden. I cursed my luck and began to brainstorm ways so that three of us could stay in Mexico and return to Texas in a timely and undamaged fashion, while the others pursued their certain doom.

Tomorrow: Part 2 of Happy Day George Wachintong, where the three of us finagle our way into staying in Mexico that night and then arrange for a bewildering rendezvous with the others, who had left for Corpus.