A cool morning in Surprise, Arizona, you can hear paddles striking balls several streets away from the Happy Trails pickle ball courts.
“There are 15,000 pickle ball players in this area,” a woman educates me as she sells new pickle ball paddles and takes names for her E-mail list at her vendor stand by the entrance to the courts.
This morning, while much of the park sleeps, men over 50 warm up, talk strategy, stretch, get their game faces right. Once individual games start there are paddles slammed into the ground, curses, and strained expressions. All the results of the pairings are written down on a bracket board by the scorers table. This is a tournament to crown the Happy Trails Pickle ball Champions in doubles, men over 50, 2015.
Pickle ball goes down on a small court with lots of stretching and reaction, strategy and competition. Even old guys don’t lose their desire to crush other old guys, even if they all have beers after the tournament and talk about good shots whenever and whomever they came from.
Having your name engraved on a silver cup becomes for some, at some point in their life, a great prize. Bragging rights can be some of the best.
After watching the tournament, I still don’t know where the name pickle ball comes from?
Nobody here looks like a cucumber.
Every journey has an end.
The Mazatlan aeropuerto is small. U.S. Airways charges twice as much for a ticket as they should and the fact the airplane is only half full going down and three quarter full returning tells volumes about the state of tourism in Mexico. Years of gang killings, drug wars, and poverty in Mexico have taken a toll on traveler’s psyches. No one, except the most resolute, would venture across America’s southern border into a country that so many people die trying to leave.
A sign in the airport says, “End of the Road.”
Alan, Dave and I are waiting in shorts and T shirts to go back to the United States. Winter is going full blast there.
I can see why ancient tribes followed the Bering Strait into the America’s and kept moving till they found more hospitable places to live. Even then each journey had twists and turns and adventurous souls took chances for better results.
Mexico has become the third international ring on Scotttreks right hand but us travelers sometime have to go home to catch our breath.
Roots won’t keep me from packing my bags again when time, money, and imagination conspire.
We are flying back to Arizona where I drive back to New Mexico, Dave drives back to Colorado and Alan drives back to Texas.
Living far from friends and family isn’t a viable excuse anymore for not doing things together.
On the way to the beach at the Hotel Playa de Mazatlan, there is a mural painted on a hotel wall by some unknown Mazatlan artist.
The characters are easy to recognize.
There are homages to traditional lifestyles when women wore non-revealing clothes and carried baskets on their heads heading homeward after a day of laundry or working in the fields. There are mustached musicians strumming guitars and wearing huge sombreros. There are tourists taking pictures and children playing with turtles. There are bright, bold colors and exaggerated poses.
It is all in good fun, if not questionable taste, and full of contradictions – just like Mexico itself.
There is poverty in Mexico and unbelievable wealth. There is violence and lighthearted fun. Some people work hard and others little. There is pride and lack of pride, crumbling infrastructure and modern architectural wonders. There is sun and surf and family outings and beach vendors selling hats and trinkets for a pittance.
This mural is one of the first things we see when we go to the beach, and one of the last when we leave on our way back to our rooms.
Whether you cry, or laugh, depends on you, the moment, and how much beer you have had.
ThIs mural is a Mazatlan postcard painted on a wall.
All you need is a stamp and a mailbox.
In the hotel lobby, each day, this artist/craftsman unfolds two tables.
He is dipping his brush into color and applying paint as I watch. When done with one color, he cleans his brush in a glass of water, wipes the residue off with a towel, then switches to another color on the bowl he is working on.
These little bowls are finely detailed.
The one I purchase has turtles swimming on the inside. Any of these will look good on a coffee table and put conversation in motion. They make a good place for rubber bands, hard sweet peppermint candies, wandering coins.
An ancient God, playing flute, dances around the inside of another finished bowl.
Whether his muse is Gods, or money, is a question only he can answer?
On the walls of his home he might have spectacular canvases of Incan jungles, ancient costumes, and wild untamed animals, or reproductions of Diego Rivera’s murals, posters of soccer stars, or photos of his wife, children and grandchildren.
Modern urban life can take the spirit right out of you, if you aren’t vigilant.
This is a conundrum.
At first glance these are footprints on the beach. At a second glance you discover the footprints are not pointing the same direction.
At first thought, I wonder how this happened?
Maybe a man with a peg leg twists his right foot, in the opposite direction, and lights a Cuban cigar as his Labrador Retriever plays in the surf? Maybe a couple with a devilish sense of humor indulge passions, before the sun is truly awake? Maybe Big Foot is on vacation in Mazatlan and is showing Little Foot how to confound humans?
On our last day in Mazatlan, this is fit for a call to Sherlock Holmes.
If anyone can figure it out, it will be him.
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