Too Much to Title or Colten and Calen Ride A Bus.

Its been a long time, so settle in because we have a lot to cover. Maybe grab a drink. Send the kids to the neighbors (demographic studies has shown that my readership is largely composed of suburban middle aged married couples with 2.3 children, "social" drinking habits, and no clue when I make a reference to Arrested Development, even when i point it it out). There's almost too much to cover, so i may need to break this up into two or three installments just so you can digest it all. Most middle aged married people have weakened the lining of their stomachs and intestines as a result of their (excessive) social drinking, thus difficulty digesting.

First and foremost, an issue of conservation. Anyone who owns a TV and uses it as a viable substitute for their brain is very aware that the hottest new trend a human being and a few other members of the primate family can embrace is an attitude of concern for the state of the planet. Naturally, ive embraced such an attitude with a fervor that would make global warming piss its proverbial pants, if it actually existed. But it doesnt, so its on to the next pressing issue:

The notable absence of the Common Bonus Lizard in the Chiapaneco highlands.

For those of you who arent virtuosos di fassion (i dont know what that word means) like yours truly, a Bonus Lizard is a reptilian organism on the order diapsida that exists in a given setting as an amplifier. While this zoologically correct description may seem vague and allude my normal readership, i am willing to provide an example for clarification because after 4 scotches and a box of ding dongs that was supposed to be for school snacks, powers of clarity are probably not in long supply.

Say for instance you are walking down the street wearing orthopedic shoes with posturpedic sole inserts (no, those dont exist to my knowledge) enjoying a Gob or a Bluth Chocolate Banana, your disability claim just got approved, and the your lawyer from Bob Loblaw & Assoc. says you've got a case (thats a twofer, maybe even a threefer depending on how you look at it). Your day couldnt possibly get any better. But just then, on the fence to your right, a lizard scurries up and over the wall making your day exponentially brighter. This was a lizard of the Bonus variety. Another, rarer specimen of Bonus Lizard does exist. Its known in the academic community as lizardinum oneupsmanshipicus This is the Bonus Lizard that lives in the cages of other animals at the zoo. It merits the classification because sometimes youll be watching a zoo animal show you its hindquarters as if in contempt of your very existence, and then bam, a lizard runs across the concrete pond area meant to simulate the conditions of a polar bear in its natural arctic environment, barring the 94 degree ambient temperature. You came for the view of the polar bear's sphincter, but you were blessed with the additional lizard. Bonus. Get it? I realize taxonomy is a heady subject. But scientists work very hard to classify the organisms that make up this great big doomed ball called Planet World. The least you could do is try to understand how the upliftingly surprising appearance of a reptile is grounds for classification. If nothing else, youll sound smarter than all your friends at the next BBQ where everyone pretends to care about the performance of other people's 7 year olds in soccer last Saturday.

So with that little bit of completely concise and relevant background information, we must inform you with much alarm, that we didnt see a single Common Bonus Lizard in San Cristóbal. It seems that the lizard population at elevations exceeding 6500 ft during winter climates is receding dramatically. This is a cause that every person (and some other members of the primate family, even Republicans) can take up. Together we can restore the Bonus Lizard numbers in chilly mountain climates to their once legendary proportions. Its clear that someone must be held responsible for the lizards decline. And while preliminary research yielded no culpable party. The answer it turned out, would come to strike us like a bolt of Belgian lightning.

A Belgian girl, the sister of the one who got scabies from the Virgin Mary told us a story. She said they were hiking the jungles in Guatemala, which are rife with snakes, deadly jungle turkeys, wayward bochos, and jaguars. They were sleeping in a tent and she said she had her "face pressed up against the plasteek like thees, when the jaguar came and sniffed my face and he took with his tail and whipped it in my face." If you're wondering what "like thees" means, imagine if you stuffed your head into a rubber glove. There would be a vague, but recognizable outline of a human face. This is the official sleeping custom of the country that lent America cultural treasures like Jean Claude Van Damme and Stella Artois. She would later go on to describe the attitude of the jaguar towards her and the way he whipped his tail as "arrogant."

Right then we knew that the jaguars had been resposnsible for the decreasing figures in Bonus Lizard concentration, even though the jaguars were in the jungle and we were in the mountains. The logic is sound, but it would be a waste of my time to explain the intricately connected web that is life on Earth because, lets face it, after 4 glasses of scotch, 2 margaritas, and a little taste of Windex just to see if you felt anything, youre just wondering when the next bathroom break in this post is going to arrive. Just trust me on this one, I took part of a zoology class at community college once.

So there you have it. Arrogant Guatemalan Jaguars are decimating the Chiapaneco Highlands Bonus Lizard population. The data clearly shows this to be true. Connect the following dots:

1. Arizona state has one of the largest Bonus Lizard populations on the continent.

B. Jaguars have recently extended their range to include places as far north and west as the Yard House on 93rd ave. and Glendale.

C. The same thing happened with the buffalo because the Native Americans figured out about buffalo meat taco tuesdays and fiesta sauced them nearly to extinction.

14th. In a survey recently conducted by the restaurant conglomerate Brinker international, the emerging dine out market of Married Arrogant Suburban Jaguars with 2.3 Cubs and a "social" drinking habit prefers far and away the idea of Bonus Lizard Viernes to Chicken Fajita Fridays (The mexicans pronounce their v's like b's if that helps to grasp the alliteration).

Being a pair of doers, and not so much talkers, and even less of a couple of thinkers, Calen and i laid out a plan of action to bring this issue to the awareness of the only people who ever get anything accomplished in the world, possibly the universe. We had to get the attention of the inhabitants of a little piece of heaven on earth we like to call Hollywood. We trekked out to the jungle in hot pursuit of a guilty jaguar (they're all guilty) so that we could make a PSA poster announcing the birth of a gooey, slimy new eco-cause from the overworked maw of a vagina that labors to make sure new fashionable causes are born. And geographically, Hollywood, being the anus in this metaphor, is always the first to hear about and righteously adopt the fashionable causes.

The premise was simple, we would find a jaguar, then i would put it in an armbar or a triangle or something else that would finally get me on The Ultimate Fighter, or at the very least on The Real World 47. Calen would snap a tasteful photo. We would probably conveet it to sepia to make it even more tastefullier. And then wed be the toast of the town. And i think somewhere in there we would keep the Chiapneco Highland Bonus Lizard from going the way of the unfortunately named Taco Meat Buffalo.

We found a jaguar, with the expected ease of two men who possess our vast experience of the jungle and nature as a whole. Then i put that lizard eating son of a bitch in a 4 finger taint lock. Calen went to snap a photo. Unfortunately, the memory in his camera happened to be full at that very moment due to the fact that he has on his camera a running narrative of photos chronicling everything that has happened since Christmas of '07. Included in this essential collection are 50 or more photos of Sam holding Molly like a baby, each on a seperate ocassion. So the meaty part of the plan failed to come to fruition. And finding another jaguar and doing more jiu jitsu seemed like a total hassle. So we just went and got a couple falafel sandwiches.

Realizing that if the lizards really wanted to live, they would have written a letter to Oprah or Early September Santa Claus or something, we abandoned our cause. Besides, the falafel was really filling and it was siesta time.

After our naps and a series of other. inconsequential days of waiting, we decided to shuffle off that mortal coil (mortal coil is a Mayan word for Mexico and head into Guatemala for purposes other than wrestling large animals and awareness raising. The bus ride was only three hours, but terrifying as always with a subtle odor of something you know you dont want to be smelling but cant quite pinpoint exactly why.

The mexican/guatemalan border isnt as heavily fortified as the US/Mexican border. Once you arrive its up to you to figure out the system. The street is open and there are nondescript buildings on both sides of the street and both sides of the border. Once a pedestrian notices you and is kind enough to point you in the direction of the place where people are supposed to go when youre not from there, its a rather painless process. A quick conversation with an official, no searches of any kind, body cavity or otherwise, and youre on your way. Hop in a Nissan Sentra taxi with anywhere from 13 to 35 other people and their luggage, take a quick ride up a mountain to a place called la Mesilla and repeat the "find the right building" process to officially enter Guatemala.

When we found the right building it was inhabited by 5 portly gentlemen who were dressed like they worked at the Mexican Joann Fabrics, that is to say, same as anyone. They were watching Keanu Reeves beat the shit out of The Game with a phonebook on the televisor. And they didnt seem to have the least bit of interest in us until that part was over. And once it was they stamped our passports and asked us for some money, which we were short a bit. But it didnt seem to bother them much as im sure it was just used, upon our departure from the building, to buy popcorn for the rest of their movie.

Stepping out of the immigration "office" we entered into a no holds barred, anything goes, pandemonia of buying and selling called la mesilla. We found the chinchilla body armor we had been looking for, as well as officially licensed soccer jerseys for dogs, and a tesla coil that they had been using somehow to impart extra spicyness to their habañero salsa. Leave it to the Guatmalans/Mexicans to combine theoretical physics and salsa production. All that crap was heavy though, so we traded it for 16 street tacos and a wooden necklace of beads with a giant letter "T" on the bottom of it.

Night had descended upon us and our only goal in la Mesilla had been to find the bus office and get on the overnight to a place called Los Encuentros en route to Laguna Atitlan. The street upon which La Mesilla had encysted itself was unequivocally steep and each person we asked about the location of the bus office pointed us in the opposite direction that we were headed. So it was up the hill, down the hill, uphill, downhill, with full packs, 16 street tacos, and that alphabet necklace, for like an hour. In the end we discovered that every person we had asked had been telling the truth. We had been walking up and down the street in front of the bus office because the bus office was essentially a closet with a 1/4 of a desk in it. Upon closer inspection, said desk was manned by a 12 year old boy and the closet also held all the normal things you would find in a closet like coats, brooms, a '53 panhead motor, and a family of gerbils.

Getting the bus ticket was relatively easy. I then asked him if it was safe for us to get off the bus at Los Encuentros at 3 AM and if there were hotels nearby where we would be able to get a room. He actually managed to give me a rhetorical answer. Now im still not totally sure what a rhetorical answer even is, i just knew that i had received one. And it was in the affirmative.

So we hiked it up the ridiculous hill until we came to the obvious place for buses to disembark, a car wash. Theyve implemented a similar diversification technique as the bikefish guy in San Cristóbal and so at the car wash you can get your whip detailed, catch a long haul night bus, pee in a bathroom with a ceiling that rests comfortably at a height of 5 ft. at the apex, or get eaten by a giant spider. And with that we'll leave off until next time so you can go use your luxurious adult human sized bathroom and ease the demand on your bladder. Oh, and the Windex under the sink in the bathroom is the same as the Windex in the kitchen, so leave it alone.