greetings all my friends and neighbors. well, i am back in the united states again, back in lisle in fact. amtrak delivered me safely to union station and even almost on time. unfortunately, i have returned to find my country in shambles. george bush cant seem to find enough places to drill for oil, china has captured one of our state of the art aircraft, and, most disturbing of all, Triple H, Stone Cold, and Vince McMahon have apparently joined in some sort of evil axis to destroy the People's Champion. It is enough to make a fellow want to turn around and head back to Mexico.

Last you heard from me, I was on my way Copper Canyon. The trip there from guadalajara was supposed to be a marathon 14 hour overnight bus ride that would get me there around 3 am, in time to catch a 7 am train. i planned to get there a few hours early, knowing the ins and outs of mexican bus travel as i now do.

anyways, my bus was supposed to leave at 2 pm, which turned into 3 pm, when the mexicans decided to combine the 2 and 3 pm buses due to lack of customers. they didn't bother to tell us 2 pmers this until 3pm though, after we sat on the bus for an hour. Mexicans, used to being treated like shit, don't bother to question why the 2pm bus hasn't left at 2:45 pm. I have found that in mexico, the customer is an inconvenience that is unfortunately attached to the customers wallet. so the bus ride turned out to be 17 hours and i arrived just in time to buy a ticket and get right on the train.

the train ride was delightful though. you can stand in the vestibule, where the windows open, and stick your head out and come dangerously close to being decapitated when you go through tunnels. i stayed 3 nights in the town of Creel, where i hiked on some communally owned indian land. it was very nice. it was sort of like yosemite park without all the people. There are balancing rocks and a quiet mountain lake and no other people for miles around. The Tahulpa Indians there often live in caves and are very shy as most of their encounters have with outsiders have been unpleasant, first the Spanish and then the drug dealers who found that the very inaccesible parts of copper canyon where Tahulpa make their homes are also very could places to grow drug plants.

after that, it was my triumphant return to the united states. which was almost delayed when my bus from juarez to el paso, a short 1 hr trip, clipped the side mirror of a juarez city bus and we pulled over so the drivers could settle whose fault it was with their fists. when we first pulled over, my driver got out to yell at the other guy, and i sat there thinking i was only 30 minutes from us soil and i wanted out of this damn country. then the mexicans on the bus started yelling, and i looked out the window to see the two drivers wrestling around. finally, some friends of the city drivers pulled him off my driver, and my driver started to walk away, when the city guy picked up a piece of broken concrete to throw at my drivers head from about 5 feet away. fortunately he missed, and while he bent to pick up another rock, my driver pounced on him, though the other guy proved to be a slippery fellow and got an arm free and was just about to split open the head of my driver when a police officer tackled him. needless to say, bothe men were arrested, and lucky for me, another bus going to el paso stopped by and took us across the border.

new mexico was really nice, but its cities are kind of boring. Or it may just have been I was at the point in the trip where I was tired and sort of looking forward to being home. its a hard place to explore without a motorized vehicle, and i was too out of money to rent one.

santa fe is supposed to be a hip art community, but i found it to be mostly full of yuppies looking to buy uninspired but competently painted landscapes from one of the 300 or so art galleries there. and on sunday, everybody gets in there suv or bmw or refurbished classic car and drives around the main plaza, cruising. i walked passed a restaurant there, and was about to go in when i saw that it appeared as if everyone who had ever been in a gap commercial was eating there, and me in my dirty jeans, flopping hat, and undershirt i had been wearing for 5 straight days didn't really fit in.

Taos was nice. well, the city was again very dull, but there are some nice places to hike around there, and instead of everyone there looking like a gap commercial, they look straight out of a mountain dew commercial.

all in all, it was a very nice trip, tho i have to say i have a great deal of admiration for mac and all those others in the peace core, because i don't know how you put up with some of those people for 2.5 years, where they were driving me nuts after 2.5 months. they are all wonderfully friendly, especially the mexicans, and they are also very humurous if you have the right attitude, but sometimes, man, they can just make you smack your head in dumbfoundment.

well, i should be in contact with you all sometime soon, and if you wish to contact me, i am at my parents abode till i find a place downtown again, which i hope to do very very soon. adios amigos.