Week 1  Nov 9,'03
A VERY good friend in Minneapolis picked me up at 5 am for a ride to the airport. I'm taking a ton of gear and dread 'check in'.
I had 7 pieces of baggage and Sun Country was unconcerned with their weight or dimensions but felt compelled to charge me for 2 pieces as extra baggage ($80). What nice people.  http://www.suncountry.com/suncountry/app.ui All 'checked' items are thoroughly checked by the Transportation Safety Administration people, first using a giant X-ray machine and then the stuff they find interesting is opened up and respectfully inspected by hand. All my baggage was opened and each contained a notice explaining what was done and why. Everything they opened had a plastic tag sealing them closed again.

When I arrived in Cancun I was reminded that Mexican customs is kind of a lotto deal. You pick up your bags at baggage claim and wait in line to push a button that operates a red/green traffic light. Red gets inspected, green passes through. One of the inspectors came over and nicely started asking about my pile of gear. Then when just the right number of people had pressed the button, she directed me to take my turn. . . .green. I think they just didn't want to dig through all my stuff.
I had a little over 400 lbs of gear. Most of it was loaded on a heavy duty folding luggage cart plus a golf club case on wheels containing my disassembled BikeE recumbent bicycle.

I got all loaded up on a Riviera Maya bus for the $7 ride to Playa.

This concrete road (307) is excellent and has a wonderful paved shoulder all the way from Cancun to just South of PDC that is used by bicycles and mopeds.

A light misting rain had started and after an hour of 'following direction' in Playa I finally arrived at my hostel. It turned out to be just two and a half blocks from the bus depot and on the same street. When you ask for directions in this area it's bad form to say 'I dunno' even when they really don't.
The hostel is positioned on the low point of the block and as the rain increased to a tropical downpour we ended up with 4" of water in the the Hostel. The good news is that almost all my gear was stowed above the floor. The bad news is that my  overlooked laptop computer was stored on the floor behind the registration counter for safe keeping. The guests (me) and staff used brooms to try to sweep the water back out into the street and a couple hours after the rain stopped, succeeded. Even after shaking all the water out of the computer it wouldn't start up.

I hit the bricks looking for an AA meeting using a trash bag as a poncho and found a Spanish language Du-blee Ah Groupo (double AA group). Their meetings really rock. There is an elevated podium and most of the meetings are 'call up'. There is clapping, laughing and some hell raised if the speaker is caught being presumptuous.  There are 5 Spanish meetings a day and a couple at night. I gotta learn Spanish. I was told that there is an English AA and the directions sincere as hell, but I was wary. The
Spanish language clubhouse is a little block building with a thatched roof next door to a low end brothel and also just across the street from a Mortician. They have a lot of fun with the mortician part. The insides are decorated with a 'prize of opportunity' collection of posters, graphics and memorabilia.

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