Calexico West Port of Entry. After camping in Guadalupe Canyon.
After camping in Guadalupe Canyon, I made my way back through Mexicali on Sunday mid-day.
Got stopped near the border by a cop for running a stop sign that wasn’t there. The usual drill: follow me to the station, can we deal with it here, twenty dollars mordida.
Pulled into the border line, then waited there for three hours.
Right as I pulled up to the customs agent, I ran out of gas.
They glanced at my dirty truck and our passports, then let me push the vehicle on to the American side. There’s a gas station half a block away. The usual twenty-dollar disposable plastic container.
Zero stars for the pointless wait, the heat, the beggars, the greedy cops, the stench of burning garbage.
Three stars for letting me push on through.
Two stars total. I’ll take it.
The crossing at Calexico and Mexicali has been a feature of my entire life. Growing up in El Centro, Mexicali was twenty minutes away and the trip was routine: Chinese food, cheap dentistry, Herradura tequila, tourist junk, wait in a long line to get back. The wait is always part of it. The two-dollar mordida is usually part of it. Running out of gas at the window is not usually part of it, but it happened the once, and now it’s part of the story.