Now that the rain is gone

Today was a bit of a slow day in that the Blue Beast (aka our means of transport) was taken for a spa treatment with the friendly folks at Boardwalk VW in Dallas. Wendy, the agent in charge of our beloved steed, was always helpful and even sent the shuttle to pick us up. Now, that is a remarkable difference with the horrible service we received at the Big Apple VW dealership in the Bronx (you guys have some serious problems there). In any case, about 2 nights ago I noticed that the not-so-friendly people at the Bronx VW, who had only spent a total of 10 minutes checking up my car, had spent far more time and effort in changing my license plate holder frames so my car could serve as an unwilling advertising mechanism to disseminate their poor service throughout the Latin world! Therefore, as of today, I am proud to inform you that they have been completely removed..

Something that I had missed to share in my previous blog entry was the fact that our friend Jessica made special cookies for our trip from Nashville to Dallas.. Now, she must have woken up at like 7:00AM to make these cookies with a century-old family recipe (actually taken out of a book the previous night). They tasted like heaven!!! So thank you Jess.. (perhaps you can post a comment with the recipe?) She assures me that they are very easy to make.

But I digress, today aside from checking up on the health of our Beast, we all went to Walmart! Yeahhhh, field trip! I bought a few things for personal use while Todd and Greg made sure we carried all the basic (and other non-basic) car-related tools and devices needed for the long trip. I must confess that I was not happy with the decision to buy so much stuff for the trip because there is not much space in the car and because if something like a flat tire happens, I feel that looking for the closest repair shop as well as asking passers-by for help is part of the experience. Besides, the fumes of a 2 Gallon plastic gas tank inside the car would make me nauseous.. However, I do see their point of being safe and cautious so I did not oppose it.. too much.

So later on in the day, after getting everything including replacing the backdoor latch but except fixing the cruise control (they need more time to diagnose it), we decided to drive towards the Mexican border. At least we wanted to get some miles behind us to make it easier tomorrow since we are planning to cross into Mexico before noon. The stay in Monterrey is unknown at this point but i'm sure we'll find a hotel or other place to sleep by tomorrow (we better!). For now, my cousin Carlos, his wife Julie and their dog Sophie, were kind enough to let us stay in their apartment outside of Austin for the night. So here we're, waiting for the morning to come to start our exploration of the Mexican territory. Hopefully we wake up early this time...