Don't marsh my mallow...er mellow

 

I can't believe I've been on this National blah, blah, day for more than a year now and already have designs to post for the ones that are coming up again.  Like National Toasted Marshmallow Day.  We need s'more designs like that.

It's also National Beach Day. So I dug up this design featuring me on the beach in Isla Mujeres off the coast of Mexico across from Cancun. It was many, many years ago. I had been at a conference in Atlanta and used it as an opportunity to meet some friends who were staying at Isla Mujeres. The island is about five miles long and less than half a mile wide. I flew into Cancun and took a ferry across to Isla Mujeres. I stayed in a hotel above a place called Pizza Rolando which proclaimed that you had televisions in your room. And indeed there was, it was a portable black and white television that was on a shelf in the closet and had no reception if you plugged it in.

It was an interesting trip. My friends were an older couple -- Jerry and Flora (I won't use their real names). Jerry had been in Vietnam and freaked out a bit when we rented a jeep in Cancun and drove to Coba, an ancient Maya site located in dense tropical forests. He was having flashbacks to Vietnam. Jerry and Flora smoked a lot of pot and had brought some into Mexico (which freaked me out). Years later Jerry told me he used the trip to Coba to make a drug deal that helped finance his early retirement. I was freaked out about that too because if it had gone sideways I could have ended up in a Mexican jail without my black and white television. Jerry and Flora have long since vanished from my life.

Oh well, I got a t-shirt design and memories out of the whole experience. Maybe I'll toast a marshmallow to Jerry and Flora and wish them well.