A quick run to Cancun for some beach time before heading to Utah

After getting back from Idaho there wasn't much layover in Lubbock—exactly five days, enough time to go to the grocery store for half-a-gallon of milk, seasonal fruit, and some fresh salad ingredients. Add a few bike rides and the usual unpacking/re-packing routine, and five days had evaporated.

Several months ago I had received an offer for a four-night, five-day stay at the Westin Laguna Mar in Cancun, as part of a timeshare preview for Marriott properties. Sandy had been able to tweak her work schedule and so we flew out on a Sunday morning. Despite some weather issues we were able to make our tight connection in Dallas, and by 2 p.m. we were checked into a nice ocean-view room smack-dab in the middle of Cancun's Zona Hotelera. It continues to boggle my mind how fast one can be in a totally different world, seemingly a million miles away from everyday issues and worries.

Nope, not a cemetario—it's a sea turtle hatchling sanctuary right on the house beach

It had been quite a few years since my last visit to Cancun, as the H-10 properties that I frequented were farther down the coast, near Puerto Morelos as well as Playa del Carmen. A few times I had ridden my bike from down there up to Cancun, a roundtrip distance of between 50 to 60 miles, but with increased traffic and my gradual decline in fitness it probably had been in the pre-pandemic days that I had last visited Cancun proper.

Fancy malls, a new bridge across the lagoon, and even a Ferris wheel

The coastal building boom continues in unabated fashion, with several new hotels having been added to the long strip of land of Yucatan's north-east corner. The last time I actually stayed in Cancun had been about 20 years ago when Judy and I stayed in one of the Riu properties. Back then, the white beach had been pristine, but now the coastline has the same seaweed problems that the beaches farther south have been experiencing for years. One of the locals told me that the sargasso phenomenon sprang up about 15 years ago, and it is getting only worse. Oh yeah, that's right: Climate change is just a hoax, and the fake weeds don't actually exist. What a simpleton I am!

During our stay we had ample of sunshine but also a lot of wind; as a matter of fact, it was so windy that we never ventured any farther into the Caribbean than up to our knees as the wave action was more than I have ever seen down there (except during a hurricane). On two days, even more adventurous (and younger) tourists than we shied away from the broiling sea. We spent time in the two infinity pools of the resort to cool off and lounged under a palapa on the beach, listening to the crashing waves and just taking it easy. The Laguna Mar is not an all-inclusive resort, which was just fine with us as it cut down on some of the extra calories from sugary foo-foo drinks—we had thought ahead of time and brought Crystal Light packages to prepare our own cocktails with locally bought rum.

If you have been to Cancun you know that a local bus runs the entire length of the hotel strip, all the way to the original downtown area. The bus fare of about $0.70 takes you anywhere, maybe not quite as comfortably as an Uber but at a fraction of the cost. One night we had dinner in the downtown area, and the other two nights when we went out we stayed in our part of the zona and simply walked to two excellent fish restaurants. For breakfast and lunches we had bought some supplies in a nearby supermarket when we went on our rum & cerveza shopping spree. We were perfectly happy.

The days when Mexico was cheap and a dollar stretched all the way to the horizon are long gone, at least in Cancun. The prices in both the supermarket as well as the restaurants were either equal to what we pay in Lubbock, or higher. Of course, it is a tourist mecca, and that's the end of the story.

We shared this fabulous dish!

As mentioned earlier, this short getaway package involved a timeshare presentation. I had not really expected to buy into a scheme, but the structure and modalities of the Marriott Vacation Club ownership are quite different from other programs. Make a long story short, I think there will be quite a few trips in the future to way more destinations than what H-10 ever had to offer, and I will no longer have any reason to bitch and moan about RCI and its system, which never worked for me the way it had been presented. So, stay tuned in the months to come and see how all this will shake out. Let's put it this way: The investment was small enough to make any buyer's remorse rather insignificant should reality not follow expectations.

On Thursday it was time to pack our stuff and shuttle back out to the airport. Our flights were more or less on time, and in Dallas Sandy was able to go through her Global Entry interview, the process for which she had set in motion a month or two ago. In the future it will be nice to be able to use the same TSA pre-check line and not have to split up when returning from abroad. Just this afternoon she received the email from the CBP that she has been approved and is now a card-carrying Globalist.

Sandy just totally loves being glued to the window and seeing all those colors

We got home late Thursday night, and then it was back to our respective routines, the Vision Center for her, the getting ready for the next trip for me. With Lubbock's temperatures as high as 105°F two days ago and another 100-degree broiler today, I am looking forward to this weekend's race in Utah, even if we may have some air quality issues thanks to wildfires. Let's see how it will all pan out.

Jürgen

From San Marcos to Kellogg: My life is diverse, for sure

Sometimes, keeping up with the blog is more chore than genuinely felt pleasure. I know, that sounds a bit disenchanted, a little jaded, a bit tired. Let me put it into terms that some of you married, or formerly married, folks can relate to: We know our roles, and we're happy to live the life that allows us to excel in whatever it is we've signed up for, and then there are those sudden flat moments. And that's putting it nicely (the formerly folks will know, for sure). We love it, but we also drag. Right now, I'm dragging.

Here I sit with fewer than 13 hours until Sandy and I are leaving for Cancun, and I want to meet my "marital" duty to the blog (which, let's not forget, contains the word Chronicles), because it's the right thing to do. You know, the marriage thing. This is not about Sandy and me, mind you, this is about my feeling an obligation to chronicle these past three weeks since my last blog post.

These past two paragraphs took a long time to write, and suddenly, whew, things started to click. From here it's going to be easy rolling, once again. Like in marriage. 😉

Barely a week after coming home from Englewood and that fulfilling time with the Agnew family, it was time for more family time, this one down in San Marcos. Sandy has four grandchildren, two of whom live with her elder son, Roy, and his wife, Melanie, in SM. On occasion I have mentioned them and especially Zane, Sandy's cherished grandson, who had been part of our NICA community for the past two years. Long story short: Zane graduated from San Marcos High, and there was the usual graduation family get-together that involved more folks than I can remember. Sandy had rented an Airbnb for the clan, the huge graduation ceremony (by my count, 510 students received their diplomas) came off without a hitch, and the extended family loved whatever food and drink was served. Done!

Two weeks later, I was on a plane to Spokane, WA, airport code GEG. Go figure. Traveling once again involved a flight delay, as seems to be standard nowadays, meaning that what should have been a five-hour routine quickie became a full-day ordeal. The reason for my flying to GEG, via hotter'n'hell Phoenix, was my appointment as Chief Commissaire (as USA Cycling now likes to call us referees) for the 2026 USA Cycling National Enduro Championships in close-by Kellogg, ID. Memory-sharp blognoscenti will remember that I had the same assignment last year (albeit two weeks later in the year). The organizing crew was the same, with Tony and Melina as the organizers, Josh and Sean as the "officials" who are Tony's amazing go-to-guys, Cam and Andrew in reg and timing, and the indefatigable Sarah as the volunteer coordinator. And let's not forget the dog....

Tony regaling the participants with the event's dos and don'ts

Melania with hubby Josh contemplating something important

Cam trying to sound intelligent whilst explaining chip placement and activation

USA Cycling had decided that no other officials were needed for this race, especially with my young/old friend Justin serving as the USAC backstop in the form of an independent contractor. Quite frankly, our actual contributions to the race were rather minuscule as Tony and Melina and their minions know what they are doing. My greatest contribution was spotting with just minutes before the start the two current ME and WE 2025 national champions wearing their Stars & Stripes insignia (a big no-no at any championship event that will select the next year's champ) and having to call them out. Thanks to their incredibly laid-back attitude we started the race without a major rule violation—a violation that, quite likely, I was the only one to be aware of but that would have called for a disqualification.

You know it's an easy race when that's your biggest call as the Chief. Oh man. Please don't get me wrong: I absolutely love coming out to this event, because it is so amazingly pure in how the contestants approach it, reminding me of the early days of my mountain bike career as a racer. Still, I feel a bit like an impostor, getting paid for something that I'm not really doing, kinda. Yes, I am there to enforce the few rules that govern Enduro as a discipline (from a USAC standpoint), and I am also on-site to give USAC a presence—an approachable, friendly face, who is not the rule-Nazi starring in all those stories that the gravity crowd has collected over the years.

And so we had a good time. New National Champions were crowned, with medals that Justin and I had assembled the night before over beer, pizza, and the second NHL finals meeting between Justin's beloved Hurricanes (he hails from Asheville, NC) and whatever that other team was. He and I shared a few deep moments in various brewpubs, only fitting given our long friendship and my knowing his family. Speaking of friendships: I was totally tickled to get to see, hug, and speak to my longtime friends Ginger and Danny who used to live in Lubbock but then moved to Utah and now are rooted in Idaho. They volunteered as timing assistants, and we got a chance to talk for a while.

Ginger and Danny receiving instructions from Cam

Cooks is being rebranded

The weather was what Idaho seems to produce for this race, year after year: despite the occasional morning and evening spells of sunshine, it was crappy to shitty to worse. Enduro weather, I suppose. On our second race day, Sunday, Melina received this pic from the top:

Still, about 500 racers were happy and nobody had any ill words. That's pretty big, and it speaks for the organizers' approach to the race. I am really glad that USAC gave me the opportunity to once again be part of this National Championship, and with a hot-off-the-press contract tying Tony and Melina to USAC for another two years, I have big hopes to score a three-peat.

Earlier this week, Monday around midnight, I got back to Lubbock. Five days later I have unpacked, laundered, worked on my Ritchey for my upcoming trip to Missouri (not until after I return from Utah, after Cancun), assembled and used my new mega-shop vac and the new battery-operated 14" mower, ridden 71 miles in the current high-humidity environment thanks to mosquito-producing T-storms, and had dinner with Ms. Sandy twice.

Tomorrow at 6:30 am we will get up to catch an Uber to the airport for a four-night getaway. Getting this post online had an obligatory whiff about it, but going to Cancun is pure and simple fun!

Jürgen