and ask about the route you took-- did you head up the Gorge, and go through Goldendale and Yakima, or did you keep going through the Tri-Cities area? I've been on that route many times (lived in Ellensburg for 14 years), but don't know much about the routes in the southeast region. If you took a motorcycle through Satus Pass this time of year, you've got a lot of guts, at least from what I've noted in passing on the Weather Channel. Safer than Snoqualmie, to be sure, but still, not what I think of as motorcycle country in March.
    The Washington side of the Gorge must be a great motorcycle trip, at least if the traffic isn't too bad. Are the roads well maintained out by Spokane and the border? There's pretty rough weather out there, and I could see it being a bit dicey at times.

    Yeah, I'm a little homesick. Sue me :)
     

Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras

I mean both that they were higher than I remembered them and also that they were the same as if I had still been in Los Angeles. Prices that had been $4 or 40 pesos were now $8 or 80 pesos. I suppose some of that could have been due to the depreciating dollar but you could tell a lot of it was also from the much larger number of Americans coming in the past several years as opposed to previously.

When I was there (same time of year) 4 years ago, you had two types of Americans--middle aged expats into fishing and west coast college crowd. This time, there were Los Angeles style bars full of new money Mexicans and a shitloads of Texans. They also had massive new development on the marina that made it look like it was a mall in Orange County.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

Of course you did. Don't you remember dropping your wallet at Heavy Hildegard's Truckstop in Medford, Oregon and making it almost to Redding, CA then realizing you had to turn around to reclaim your property? After which, of course, you continued the rest of the way.