Juan of Words

Houston, The Chorizo… and Sweet Bread Have Landed!!

Had we never taken those trips in the summer to Mexico, had we not traveled to Houston from the Rio Grande Valley with everything including our rooster, had we not been the family with the pig and chickens in the back yard, I might have been a little surprised or embarrassed to make our road trip, this year, all the way from Texas to DC carrying a box full of sweet bread and a cooler stuffed full of chorizo.  But we were, and traveling with all sorts of miscellaneous items is sort of a rite of passage in our family, and so chorizo and sweet bread seemed perfectly normal as traveling companions.

And well the story is they don’t sale this particular brand of chorizo round these parts and when I asked my mother to send whatever she wanted with me to give to my sister in the DC area, she showed up at my house, before we left Texas, with one iced down cooler full of chorizo and a jumbo-sized box full of sweet bread, conchas mainly.  I sort of giggled at first at the amount of chorizo she was sending, but then immediately began wondering where we were going to fit all of this extra food.

We had to unload and repack our entire luggage to make room for these two items.

The car we rented is a full size sedan and even at that we had already packed every single crevice in the vehicle with as much stuff as we could fit.  In order to fit the cooler, we stuffed it between the passenger’s front seat and back seat on the floor, which then meant my two nephews and Edgar had to take turns sitting with their legs on top of the cooler during the entire cross country road trip, and Anjelica had to sit pretty far up with her seat reclining almost nothing at all.  My youngest nephew and Edgar got the short end of the stick here literally because their legs were shorter than the rest of us and they were the ones mostly sharing this uncomfortable position.  The sweet bread we just stuffed on top of the dashboard between the back seat and the rear window.  It was a little less obtrusive.

Off we went, y en cada parada, anytime we got off the vehicle to stay at a hotel we’d carry our iced-down-chorizo-cooler inside with us.  At the hotel in downtown New Orleans, which was the fanciest by far, we did kind of hesitate a little bit about bringing the cooler inside because there were so many people and we were right in front of the entrance of the hotel where everyone could see us lugging it around… still we persisted despite the adversities and honorably carried our special chorizo delivery inside where it could be cooler than outside.  By this point we had already made a special stop in Louisiana to pick up dry ice for the chorizo. We weren’t about to give up now.

So in Nashville and everywhere else we stopped the chorizo was top priority, and I’m happy to report it made it all the way here safely and still-edible with us.  We’ve been eating a little for breakfast everyday.  Totally worth the effort!

Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, and DC

Hey guys, so far the trip has been excellent.  We’ve been to so many places, experienced so many new things, and have managed to make it all the way to our final destination in the DC area.  A few things you’ve probably noticed if you’ve been keeping up with our “Juan of Words y Familia Road Trip”: two of my nephews are traveling with us (this was a last minute addition to our road trip crew that has proven to be quite the perk, especially for Edgar who loves having them around for company, and a little mischief), we’ve already stopped in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Birmingham, Nashville, Virginia and DC, and are planning to head out to New York City sometime this week, if time permits.

Now when you’re traveling like this you never really have enough time to truly enjoy every single stop, but we sure as hell have been trying to make the most of every stop.  I’ll blog about this in more detail later this week, but for now I just wanted to share a few of the things and places we’ve already experienced in the last few days.

It was so hot and humid in Baton Rouge, but the bridges and waterfront made it all worth it, as well as Louisiana’s Old State Capitol Building, which we got to tour briefly before we were politely told it was already time for closing.

The food in the Big Easy, delicious!  But most of you probably already knew that.  I tried this dish called the Taste of New Orleans at the French Quarter and loved it so much I was literally scooping out all of the remains fast an furious.

I snapped this one at a store called “So Good” in New Orleans that was pink all around with this zebra carpet.  Me and the boys were patiently waiting for Anjelica to have her chance at looking around at all the pinkness.

The view from our hotel room on the 26^th floor, right across the street from the French Quarter, had the boys in awe for a very long while when they woke up in the morning and could actually see all the way down.  I’m not going to lie, even I was peeking down for about half and hour looking at the people on the street level walk by.

Here we are in the hotel room getting ready to leave New Orleans.

At the Mississippi Visitor’s Center the kids were just happy to stretch their legs for a while after sitting in the car for so long.

By the time we got to Alabama, we were actually starting to feel tired.

Birmingham was a nice place.  It felt so important everywhere we went.

We decided to go up The Vulcan, the world’s largest cast iron statue in Birmingham and this is what happened.  It was so windy that we literally thought we were about to fly off the viewing deck… though we still managed to take a few pictures while we were up there.

I fell in love with Nashville.  Love it!  Guess I am just a country boy at heart.

Last night we drove around DC pretty late and ended up here… lying down, resting at the Washington Monument.

That’s our trip so far.  I’ll post more as soon as I get a chance.  Thanks for all the comments and tweets

Almost Ready To Hit The Road… in our Malibu, But Not Quite Yet

And the adventure begins!  In true mexicano style, while you’re asleep we’re still packing and getting ready to hit the road.  After a really hectic day where we did more en un sólo día than we typically do in an entire week, I’m sitting at the computer writing this post while Anjelica sweeps the house and writes her own list of what not to forget in the morning.  The only one that seems to be getting rest for our trip is Edgar, who at this very moment is likely dreaming about all the new adventures that await him on our journey from Texas to DC and beyond.

The day started out in typical Alanis-Cazares fashion, with us waking up late and yelling “oh crap!” as we realized we’d stayed up way past what we should have the night before.  I had a story to write and turn in before we left and Anjelica had tons of errands and preparations of her own to make.  Typing my big dedotes away I wrote half my story before we had to run out to pick up the rental car we are using for the trip.  Thrifty was supposed to give us a midsize car, but since they had none in stock we were upgraded to a standard size sedan… a Chevy Malibu no less, which is very nice and all but immediately brings to my mind Malibu Barbie for me, not a good thing at all!  Needless to say I feel kind of funny saying that I’m driving a Malibu around, complete with sunroof and all.

I won’t bore you with every single detail of our day of preparation – I’m so glad Anjelica suggested I take an extra day off before we left to get ready, otherwise we’d have to postpone the trip a whole other day – but here are a few of the crazy things we ended up doing today: I had to mow the lawn before I left because there was no way I was coming back to a damn monte to cut, my lawnmower ain’t  that good and it will still be burning hot when we get back; Anjelica’s phone wasn’t working right so we had to race to T-Mobile before they closed to try and get it replaced only to end up leaving feeling like we’d been jipped by the rude staff at the local company store front – a big thumbs down for that one T-Mobile; when we got home Anjelica realized she left her purse at the mall where we had tried to get her phone replaced – karma maybe for getting in a fight with the staff there – and she had to drive all the way back with her sister to see if she could find her purse at the mall, which was already closed… I couldn’t go because my parents had just got here and had come to wish us a good trip (they are the best!); then we had to print all kinds of papers and finally come back and pack all of our things into what now seems like a tiny trunk.  Maybe we did pack a little bit too much stuff.  Oh well, I’m not repacking all over again.

So now we’re just about ready to go.  We’re going to catch a few zzzz’s and head out early in the morning to try to beat out at least some of this Texas heat. 

Deseenos buenas suerte and stay tuned on Facebook (or This One) and Twitter for our “Juan of Words y Familia Road Trip.”