The Old Surfer

Tonight Norma and I went to Tecoman, a nearby town of about 100,000, about four times the size of Armeria. Norma had a couple of people she wanted to see and I wanted to check out the Consupo. The Consupo is a government run store that supposedly has low prices on some items and I wanted to know where it was located and to check some of their prices. After Norma had visited the people she wanted to see, we stopped at the Fenix Super Mercado. This is not the Consupo store but Norma said it was better than Consupo. Norma bought some items and afterwards I was in the mood for a margarita and some food. I asked Norma if she knew of a good restaurant in Tecoman. The first place we went to was closed for some reason so we went to a hotel that had a dining room. I can’t remember the name of the place.

We ordered margaritas and food. Norma ordered a T Bone and I had Milanesa de Cerdo, a breaded pork cutlet sort of like Wiener schnitzel. I liked my meal but Norma’s T bone was just too thin to her liking.

A couple walked in and sat at the table next to us. The man was a Whetto (white guy) a little younger than me with a Mexican girl friend. He had on a shirt that on the back said “You will sweat. You will get dirty. But you will never forget it. Troncones, Mexico”. I tried to interpret what the shirt said to Norma. The fellow got up and went to El Bano and when he returned, I started to say something like: “Senor…” and the guy responded in English so I asked him if he could tell Norma what his shirt said in Spanish. Which he did. I asked if he was living nearby. He then informed me that he was a surfer from Texas who was returning to the states. I then asked if he was familiar with any of the nearby surfing beaches and he wasn’t except for one near Tecoman.

I guess that being the only gringo in Armeria is getting to me as I wanted an opportunity to speak to someone who spoke English. I made the mistake of saying that I didn’t know there were surfers in Texas. He responded that didn’t I know about all of the coastline that Texas has. Being from California, we don’t consider the mediocre break in the Gulf of Mexico as “surf” and I said something about it. Well this seemed to piss the Texan off and he told me he came in there to have dinner with his girl friend and he wasn’t interested in talking to someone who obviously didn’t know anything about surfing.

So we finished our meal and drinks and left without saying goodbye to the Texan and his girlfriend.