Down the coast, J-body style

Made it to Phoenix and have already downed two huge Iced Teas and as much of my wife's Pina Colada as I dare. That was a long, dusty, hot drive but our hooptie made it with only one semi-incident. Basically I made the mistake of shutting it off while my passengers availed themselves of facilities at the Cochella Arco station. Do you know what a freak show Cochella is this weekend? The heat soak after shutdown plus the undersized motorcycle/lawn mower battery (paint-pen labeled "?") that was provided with the Mirada was showing some weakness in CA. By this afternoon, it was kaput for cranking a hot engine. My plan was basically no better than "let's sit in this hot car and watch stoned teenagers w/o underware dance to the imaginary music in their heads and wait for the engine to cool". However, some guy who pulled in next to us heard our battery in distress and offered up a jump box!?!? I'd sooner expected an offer of X or an ounce of weed. But unlike the useless bratty rich white kids surrounding us, this dude was a Mexican with actual tools. When his jump box didn't cut it (I suspect it was suspect), he just started pulling the battery out of his own car, barrio-style. With this the mighty-Mirada fired up and we swapped our batteries. I shoved a fitty in his shirt pocket as he was leaned over replacing his battery.

Thank you for posting that incident. Your experience matches what I continually see out here in terms of Mexicans who go out of their way to be responsible, capable and decent individuals while many of the white guys are useless and couldn't care less. That is why I really find all this trash talk of Mexians in general disgusting and just plain wrong. Maybe things in other states such as Florida are different, but I don't see it out here much. I am fine with responsible immigration laws that are enforced as they should be, but to trash talk Mexicans in general doesn't help and just stirs up unnecessary hatred and anger and tears us apart.

I recently had a lot of tree work done on my 2 houses next to each other out here and the workers involved turned out to be Mexicans, and I was astonished at how hard they worked and how much they enjoyed doing a really nice job. One guy was working on the 80+ foot high palm tree in front of the house I live in and I couldn't believe the guts/courage and expert capability of watching him scale the tree with some boots with spikes and a safety chain and work at trimming the branches at the top (I thought they were going to bring in one of those trucks with an extended bucket lift instead). He was up there for over an hour and had the stamina of a workhorse, and when he came down I told him how impressed I was with the great job he had done. He was a little embarrassed at my compliment and all of these workers were humble and hard working as a real team. I enjoyed shaking all their hands and gave them a big tip well above the asking price of the job. Their appreciation was refreshing and sincere.
 
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Yet there is a flip side to those that are hard working. Someone I know has 100 acres of vineyard, out Sacramento way, and he was telling me how hard it was to get the necessary workers to prune/trim the vines for the spring growing season. Workers hard to come by. Some come down yet only work half day as they say they made enough with the higher prevailing wage for them at the moment. Some not very good and being good is important. I was actually stunned by those who felt they didn't need to work his field and the others who felt half day was good enough. What was it a two day job took two weeks and he had no recourse but to deal with it.
 
Yet there is a flip side to those that are hard working. Someone I know has 100 acres of vineyard, out Sacramento way, and he was telling me how hard it was to get the necessary workers to prune/trim the vines for the spring growing season. Workers hard to come by. Some come down yet only work half day as they say they made enough with the higher prevailing wage for them at the moment. Some not very good and being good is important. I was actually stunned by those who felt they didn't need to work his field and the others who felt half day was good enough. What was it a two day job took two weeks and he had no recourse but to deal with it.

I used an established company with a good reputation and a supervisor. Clearly they had been working together for some time.
This in contrast to migrant workers who come across the border with the intent of being independent field laborers.
 
Steve (all)...

I was hoping to keep this thread from going too far off the rails, as per usual FCBO norms. Would you mind using this one I just started?

immigration and naturalization thread...
That's a really good idea to help with our focus problem...

I think the thread wandered once the pictures stopped. :rolleyes: No Mexican roadside assistance pics... no unwashed white kids without underwear... just a fugly MB :poke:
 
That's a really good idea to help with our focus problem...

I think the thread wandered once the pictures stopped. :rolleyes: No Mexican roadside assistance pics... no unwashed white kids without underwear... just a fugly MB :poke:

Elephant Seals at San Simmian. That's what this thread needs.

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You obviously went past the Coachella Valley Arts and Music Festival. There are lots of those festivals all over California. While you may have seen some ratty looking people if inside you would have seen far more eye candy when it came to dress or lack thereof.

I highly recommend the Castro Street Festival. LOL. Actually don't laugh as you would be surprised how many tourists show up at that just so they can be offended and tell everybody back home how shocked they were.
 
Well we all made it home. Last night we ate dinner with some friends at a German restaurant in old Glendale. (Go figure, lol.) Much snitchzel was enjoyed by all. Then we dropped off the car at their place and hitched a ride to the airport. Spent the hours from 1 AM until 9 AM on various flights and layovers. Came home, slept, got the cars ready for everybody to go to work tomorrow...ugh. Basically from this-to-this:

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