HOT WEATHER AND SPRING BREAK CROWDS

March 17, 2007, Catalina Meders, Title Company Bookstore, San Felipe, Baja California, Mexico:

Hola everyone from San Felipe where we are setting new records, and I'm not kidding. Yesterday at 1:30 p.m. it was 105 degrees on the bookstore balcony, on March 16th. And right now it is 9:30 a.m. and it's 86 degrees with the humidity at 26 percent.

I woke up this morning to a cloudy sky and it felt really damp, but now the sky is clearing and it's less humid. But here comes one of our fleetingly fast "Spring Times." It's too bad that it's so fast since there are not too many sights more beautiful than the Baja California desert in the spring.

We have lots of people vacationing at San Felipe this weekend. We have Spring Breakers (the streets are alive with young, hard bodies wearing as little as legally possible) as well as other visitors. I guess the word is out that San Felipe is perfect now for beaching and oceaning in all the many ways to do that.

Incidentally, one of the local San Felipe schools has a large sculling class which practices every afternoon. It's really pleasant, almost meditative, to sit on the beach and watch them smoothly cross and re-cross the bay.

The big news in our small literary world here, after all, this is a book store, is that Alec Wilkinson's long awaited book about Poppa Neutrino was released this week and so far it is getting smash reviews. As everyone around our little burg knows, Poppa Neutrino, AKA David Pearlman, was the first, and so far only, man to build a raft entirely out of junk he found on the streets of New York City and actually sail it to Ireland. It took about 60 days and was the adventure of a lifetime. Wilkinson met the Neutrino a few years ago and decided to write about him and his unique life-style. Whatever you think of Poppa Himself, who, as all truly interesting people must be, is a controversial figure who inspires much myth and comment, it must be admitted that his story is fascinating. The title of the book is "The Happiest Man In The World," and it will be available at the bookstore after next week.

Got to go and fan the cat. He's exhausted from being forced out of his favorite sleeping place, which happens to be in the middle of the front doorway.

Until next time, vaya con Dios from the San Felipe bookstore by the bay.