Takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'

The next day, after the Uneventful Event (yesterday’s post), we planned a trip to Tijuana.

We all drove to the border, walked across, and took a cab to what we hoped was a good restaurant. We asked the driver to take us to the best place in town for food (this was a suggested way of doing it). This restaurant had a large, prominent government seal on the door. Not a closed for business seal, but a seal of approval. It also looked pretty nice and the food was good.

All this happened in 1987, so I have lots of hindsight going for me. I remember I had something that required a brazier being brought to the table; I think it was a mixed grill. We stuck with beer in bottles and stayed away from water as was suggested by many seasoned visitors.

I ended up going to the bathroom and dragging all my friends back to see it. The beautiful marble bathroom had large marble wall urinals in it and had mounds of limes in them, (from used Margaritas), in order to keep down the smell of urine. (It worked!)

Later on we went shopping. My friends had recently been to the Orient and had some bad experiences with customs in trying to bring back “fake” goods and were prepared to kill all my chances of shopping success. I went looking for a great “fake” Rolex, and after a while, many stores later, bought a nice gold one (I skipped the diamonds) for $26. I bought a medium sized leather bag for another $25.

My friend assured me that it would be confiscated at the border, and if not, it wouldn’t last six months.

Later that evening I crossed back to the US with my leather bag in hand (I still use it when traveling) and my watch in my pocket.

To my friend’s credit, the date mechanism in the watch did start to give me trouble, about a year ago!

The watch itself still keeps on ticking! (23 years later)