I do not recommend watching this video of a live news report from the OSU/UM game over and over as I did. I cannot stop laughing. I'm getting strange looks from co-workers.

So I got to bribe the Mexican police…

I’ve been down to Mexico for different reasons about 8 or 10 times. The biggest issue I’ve ever had was the long wait at the border. Never been pulled over or hassled. I can no longer make this claim. With Tracey back in Cinci for Thanksgiving, I put together a mini surf trip down to Baja for the weekend. I got Andy Stevens, his brother Ben, who’s a big time surfer (as opposed to my feeble attempts, even though I’ve been trying for 4 years and still suck) and Ben’s friend Vincent. We rolled in Andy’s 94 Bonneville with no AC but a nice surf rack and plenty of trunk space. We left Saturday morning and made the easy cross over the border. We checked one spot about 58km down and the low tide conditions were not ideal. We decided to try to check into our hotel early. Las Rocas is highly recommended by the way. They were cool about us checking early and we found a great break about a ten minute walk from the hotel. We had a great session and surfed until sunset. After getting cleaned up we rolled down to Puerto Nuevo for a huge lobster dinner. After that back to the hotel bar for some hilarious karaoke watching. When we got up Sunday it was super foggy. We tried to wait out the fog, but by noon it was still thick and we could not really see the water, so we decided to pack up and head back to SD to catch more surf near my place. When we got close to the border line, a Mexican police car pulled up next to us, eyeballed us, then threw the lights on for us to pull over. One of Andy’s back seat seatbelts is broken. This is the reason they pulled us over, at least it was their “legitimate” reason. They told us we would have to follow them to the police station and pay a $50 fine. After some discussion back and forth, I finally asked them what they wanted to hear, “Can we pay the fine now?”. We haggled a bit and told them we only had $30 left from our weekend. They handed Andy’s license back to him with a folded up piece of paper and told us to put the cash in the paper and hand it back. After that they said have a nice day and sent us on our way. After the ordeal, we ended up with a four hour wait to cross the border. The border guard was a jerk but let us through quickly. FYI, the hotel had cable, including ABC and the OSU game, so I was able to maintain my Buckeye membership.

The weekend before Tracey and I were up in Napa and had an amazing time. When I get a chance I’m going to post some pics from Napa and from Halloween.