Mexico to the Rockies Travel

Bradly Scott Williams rips me off in my travel business

Brad Williams the superstud of Scottsdale Community College rips me off

Nogales y Tijuana son la misma de Scottsdale!

Scottsdale is a tourist trap. All these snow birds from cold weather places come here. We sell them lots of useless junk at outrageous prices and oddly they go back home thinking they got a good deal.

Border towns in Mexico are the same way. Gringos go there, buy lots of overpriced junk at outrageous prices and then go back home thinking they got a great deal.

Glen Boyer and me take the train to Mazatlan - Or I get to go to the interior of Mexico

We got somebody to give us a ride from Phoenix to Nogales, Arizona. From there we walked to Nogales, Sonora, Mexico and took the train down to Mazatlan.

The train trip sucks. It is 16 hours of total boredom! But it is damn cheep! I forget the price it was either $19 or $27 for a round trip ticket from Nogales to Mazatlan and back. (I don’t think the train takes passengers anymore so this great deal no longer exists)

But it was interesting. I was pretty stupid and didn’t think it snowed in Mexico and though the snow on top of the mountains was old newspapers they threw away. And as we went from the deserts in the north to the jungles in the south it was interesting looking at the jungle. I saw an iguana or two at that.

And the ride from the train station to downtown Mazatlan opened a whole new world for me. This foreign country was really neat.

We stayed at some cheep dump hotel in downtown Mazatlan which was less then a block from the beach. It was certainly cheep enough that even us poor starving college students could afford it.

The only thing that I hated in Mexico was that I couldn’t speak a damn word of Spanish and it made life hell. Glen couldn’t speak Spanish either but he sure was a fast learner. He could actually communicate with those people. Despite the Spanish thing I loved Mexico and knew I would be back.

It was interesting because we met an American college student who spoke French. She could talk to the Mexican kids in French and understand what they said in Spanish. I would later discover I could do the same thing in Portuguese. I was watching a TV show that had a bunch of Portuguese sailors in it and even though I didn’t understand the Portuguese words, I understood what they were saying.

I was sad to leave Mexico, but at the train station in Mazatlan it as amazing how honest the children were. You would give them a buck to go buy you some cigarettes and they would bring you back the exact amount of change down to the centavo, even though a centavo was probably worth a tenth of a cent or less in American money.

The train from Mazatlan to Nogales sucked more then the train ride to Mazatlan. Trains suck! 16 hours of nothing to do. I even drank a bottle of Tequila, even though I never drink hard liquor.

When we got to Nogales we had planned on hitchhiking back to Phoenix. Glen Boyer was too tired and decided to take the bus.

I had hitchhiked around the west coast and looked at it as another adventure. I froze my ass off, because even though Nogales is about 160 miles south of Phoenix it is higher in altitude and much colder. As I was standing on the freeway entrance one of the highway patrol officers on patrol for revenue decided to make things nicer for me and turned on his loud speaker and played some goat roping cowboy music for me.

I ended up getting a ride that took me to Tucson. The guys who gave me the ride moved to Tucson because they thought it would be warmer then Phoenix. Again I explained to them that in Arizona weather is all about altitude. Tucson even though it is about 100 miles south of Phoenix i s about 10 degrees F colder then Phoenix because it is at 2,600 feet while Phoenix is at a warmer 1,000 foot altitude. No big deal. They were from Minnesota or one of those cold places. If they would have come to Phoenix they would have freaked at our 115F summers.

I found Greg Reifschneider's house and crashed there for the night. In Scottsdale, Reifi as we called him lived at 7844 E Culver. We called him Rife, Reifi or something like that. I went to school with him in Scottsdale. He had joined the military and was stationed at the air force base in Tucson.

The next day I hitchhiked from Tucson back to Phoenix.

Glen Boyer beats me up

But I do remember one night Glen Boyer beat me up pretty badly. I think it was at his mom’s apartment. What he did was he punched me real hard on the side of the head near my ear. The whole side of my head swelled up.

I know I showed people at Scottsdale Community College my injury. I was very angry and stopped talking to him. The next semester I even dropped out of Scottsdale College and attended Mesa Community College for one semester because I didn’t want to see Glen Boyer every day.

I am not accusing Glen Boyer of being a homicidal maniac. He was probably just drunk and would have not beaten me up if he was straight. But still I was angry. He should not have done it at all. And I have not talked to him since the incident occurred.

I learn Spanish

My language skills suck! I can take science or engineering classes and get straight A in them with out any effort. But I study my ass off and only get C’s in Spanish!

Vamos a Mazatlan in a VW van

The Williams family had a VW van and we took that to Mexico. Since we were rebuilding that engine we yanked the engine out of my VW van and used it to power our trip down to Mazatlan.

Back then before the current police Patriot Act it was easy and simple going to Mexico. You had to get a visa from the Mexican Embasy. But nobody ever looked at that. And because in Mexico if you get into a car accident, your considered guilty of a crime unless you have car insurance it is wise to always buy valid Mexican car insurance, which we did.

Since neither Brad Williams nor Gary Whitting spoke a word of Spanish I got to be the translator for the whole trip. That job sucks! Not because it sucks, but because it is very hard on you physically. Well I should say it is very hard on you when you are not fluent in Spanish. It is a whole lot of work. You make tons of mistakes and get frustrate. The good side is in a week in Mexico you learn as much Spanish as you do in a year of college in the USA.

We left Phoenix maybe at 6 in the afternoon and drove all night and got to Mazatlan in the early morning and we slept in our VW van.

In the morning I was clueless on how to find the downtown area but did it simply by following the signs. “Al centro” is Spanish for “to downtown”, so I just followed those signs. Also “a la playa” also means “to the beach”. Pretty easy for me despite my limited knowledge of Spanish.

I found the hotel that me and Glen Boyer but we found a better place to stay which was almost around the corner. In this hotel they rolled up all the gates at night time. But somebody slept there all night and after a late night of partying you just pounded on the gate and they rolled it up and let you in.

By accident we discovered the Stapely mansion. The Stapleys are a historical family in the Mesa part of the Phoenix area. They have a mansion in Mazatlan. We met one of their daughters who was a collage age kid like us and she let us stay there the rest of our trip.

The place was pretty cool. It was a walled compound, with a court yard in the middle. They put broken glass bottles on the roof, as a cheep form of barbed wire to keep out burglars and other evil people. It was also less then a block from the beach in downtown Mazatlan.

And I will never forget “Bobo”, he was one of Miss Stapley’s Mexican friends. “Bobo” decided to show us how tough Mexicans were and he drank a half of bottle of hot chilli sauce. It took him a long time to get sick and it didn’t effect him till he got to the disco.

Back then I would almost die when I ate the Mexican taco flavored Doritos chips which set my American taste buds on fired compared to the bland and mild American taco flavored Doritos chips.

But things have changed and now I think real Mexican food is bland and mild. I think nothing of dumping an ounce or two of Tabasco or Cholula into a bowl of chili I eat.

Down that we could cook we made use of the “mercado” go buy all our food. Well except for beer. We discovered the government run beer factory and liquor wholesale place. So it was off to that place to get our brew. Oddly one of the trips we made there we saw a car with U.S. government plates there. Hmm… Our tax dollars being spent at the beer factory in Mazatlan.

The “mercado” is just a large area kind of like a swap meet in the U.S. where Mexicans do a lot of their shopping. They also have “supermercados” which are pretty much the same as U.S. supermarkets. But I only saw supermercados in the northern cities of Nogales and Tijuana.

For some reason other gringos were in awe of our VW van and we got all kinds of comments from Americans who were amazed to see a VW van with a KDKB bumper sticker in Mazatlan Mexico. The whole time there I never saw any other college kids with a car.

On this trip we planned to go to Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara. I wanted to go to Guadalajara because it is the second largest city in Mexico, but we really didn’t have time.

On the way to Puerto Vallarta we ate lunch in Tepic where I got my cockroach pancakes. Yuk! Pancakes with a cockroach in them. But the food that I ordered for Brad and Gary looked damn good. I don’t remember what it was but I think one of them ordered fish.

Some where Brad Williams asked we to order him a grilled cheese sandwich with out any hot sauce on it. I ended up ordering him a cold grilled cheese sandwich laced with hot sauce. That was when he got sick.

When Brad got sick, he got some illness that required anti-biotic’s. That was pretty simple to fix. We just went to the farmacia, looked thru the Merck drug manual and found a penicillin type drug. Then since at the time you didn’t need a prescription in Mexico to order drugs we just bought the drugs over the counter. Real simple compared with the police state of the USA.

And back in those days you could get almost any drug you wanted with out a prescription, amphetamines, sleeping pills, pain pills. Again much nicer then the police state USA, where you now need a government issued photo ID to buy cold medicine in Arizona.

We did drive to Puerto Vallarta which is a really cool place. It is a very rich city, kind of like Beverly Hills.

We stayed on the beach in Puerto Vallarta.

The old thing was I discovered many people in Mexico don’t speak Spanish. I tried to talk to a family that lived near the beach in English. They didn’t understand a word. Then I switched to Spanish. They didn’t understand a word of that either. And I couldn’t understand whatever Indian language they were speaking.

We never had much respect for speed limits, but that cobblestone road with the 5 km speed limit was so bumpy were forced to obey the speed limit. 5 km! That’s 2 and one half miles per hour in the American system. And the road was so damn bumpy you were forced to obey the speed limit.

One thing I did like about roads in Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta were the traffic circles. They are a good low tech way to have traffic lights. But often they work much better then traffic lights, because if there is no other traffic or not much traffic they don’t slow you down as much as traffic lights do.

The only major screw up was Brad Williams screwed up our budget. He was always buying apples and apples are very expensive in Mexico because they are all imported from the USA.

All of us take drugs, or I should say all of us smoke marijuana. But we never take drugs in Mexico. At the hotels in Mazatlan we would be offered what seemed like a half kilo of pot for $10. We would always refuse the stuff. Not because we suddenly supported the war on drugs but because it is a scheme the Mexican cops use to shake down Americans for money.

The guard in the hotel in Mazatlan used to be a cop and he told us how the Mexican police make there money by taking bribes from people who commit crimes.

While the Mexican police are corrupt, and the Mexican people understand that the Mexican police are corrupt I think you are much safer in Mexico from corrupt police then in the USA from corrupt police.

Here in the USA most Americans live in a dream world where they think that the police are not corrupt. As I write this America has held the title of the world’s biggest and best police state for a number of years. In American we have more people in jails and prisons then any other country in the world. In America we have a higher percent of our population incarcerated then any other country in the world. Yes American is the world’s biggest and best police state! Good by Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Red China, America is number one!

Red Cross Thugs

We would always throw in one centavo, which in American money was maybe 1/100 of a cent. But the federal guards didn’t seem to mind and always let us continue with our dirt cheep donation.

The only time we ever found them was going south into Mexico. We never found any going north.

Vamos a Mazatlan con Steve

Last but not least Steve, or maybe Steve’s dad was from North Dakota and he had all kinds of interesting relatives that would come down to Phoenix and hang out with out in the winter. They were a bunch of party animals that really made life fun.

Steve also was a great help when it came to translating English to Spanish or vise versa. He didn’t seem to speak Spanish as good as I did, probably because he took it in high school, while I was currently studying Spanish in college. But Steve did have a head full of Spanish nouns, and where ever I need a noun I could often get Steve to tell me the now. Steve como se dice “frog”? and Steve would tell me “rana”.

I don’t know if it was on this trip that we realized that Culiacan is a large drug producing area of Mexico. They grow lots of marijuana there. The trip starts in Nogales, goes thru a little town of Santa Anna, then you hit the big city of Hermosillo, which lives up to it name of “Little Beautiful” in English. Then at Guaymus you hit the Pacific Ocean and follow it down thru Cuidad Obregon, Los Mochis and the thru Culiacan and finally Mazatlan. Some people told us we were lucky that drug farmers didn’t steal our VW van because it would make a excellent tool to haul the freshly harvested marijuana with.

On this trip to Mazatlan I think we stayed in the same hotel as we did last time. We could find the Staple lady to let us stay at her home.

Because we didn’t take any side trips to Puerto Vallarta we bought all our food at the mercado and cooked it in our hotel. We also got all our beer at the “beer factory” which really seemed to be a place that wholesaled liquor, although anybody could come off the street and buy booze there.

This was the trip we say a car with U.S. government license plates stopping at the “beer factory” and filling up its trunk with booze! For some reason I don’t see why we should be paying for the liquor of federal workers with our tax dollars. On the other hand if we supplied the same federal workers with enough booze and drugs to keep them stoned 24 hours a day they sure would micro-manage our lives a lot less.

In the daytime we would all do our own thing. At night Steve and me pretty much went up to the north part of town and partied with the other American that came down to Mazatlan for spring break. We would all drink, and there is no drinking age in Mexico, or if there is it was too low to effect us. But we would always avoid drugs. The story on the street was if you got busted with drugs they would hold you in jail and ransom you off to you family.

On the other hand the Mexican kids we associated often smoked marijuana. And would offer to sell it to us. I remember being offered what looked like a half kilo of pot or slightly more then a pound for the dirt cheap price of $10. Compare that to the price of pot back in the USA for $10 for a one ounce bag.

American kids drank beer in Mexico, probably because beer is cheap in the USA and they drink beer in the USA. But beer is not cheap in Mexico. Other forms of liquor are much cheaper the Mexican kids seemed to drink tequila, which is cheap compared to beer. In fact I think beer was slightly more expensive in Mexico then it was in the USA. We mostly drank the brands Pacifica, Corona, Modelo and XXX or tres equis, which means three X’s in Spanish.

“Super Stud” Brad Williams didn’t party with the American and instead hung out at the discos and night clubs trying to pick up a Mexican woman. And it was annoying because we had to make several trips back to the disco to see if he needed the car to hustle a woman he picked up. But hey it was his car, so I guess he was entitled to it.

He eventfully ended up picking up a Mexican babe. She was Alma Hernandez Haro. And she hung out with another woman called Sandra, whom I can’t remember her last name. They were both hairdressers or beauticians who worked in Mazatlan.

In Spanish speaking countries people have two last names compared to the one last name us folks in American gets. So for “Alma Hernandez Haro”, the “Hernandez” part is the last name her father had, and the “Haro” last name her mother had.

Sandra could speak very good English, although I don’t think she was fluent in it. Alma couldn’t speak a word of English. And Brad couldn’t speak a world of Spanish. We went a number of places with them and this helped me learn Spanish real good because of all the translation I would have to do.

It was interesting to see how we could all start out speaking in English, switch to English and Spanish, or switch to just Spanish, and then constant flip flop between one language or the other and sometimes talk in both languages. It was very interesting.

They took us on a date to this island called “Isla de la Piedra” or “Rock Island” in English. Of course they sent an older sister as a chaperone to watch us on the data. Brad with Alma, Steve went with Sandra, and they set me up with a babe who was a goddess but I don’t remember her name, although it may have been Persilla.

The island was pretty cool. It had black beaches. And they sold a lot of interesting Mexican food. It looked like they had cooked iguana roasted on a stick, which tasted pretty good. We took a boat to get to the island. This was a date in the “Mexican” sense so of course we were not allowed to drink beer like we would in the USA.

Eventually Brad would con Alma Hernandez Haro into coming to Phoenix, Arizona to visit him. He wrote her a number of letters which Sandra translated from English to Spanish. And Alma wrote Brad a number of letters which I translated from Spanish to English. That was pretty cool, but I won’t write about it here, except for the marijuana part. I told Alma that marijuana costs $100 a kilo in Arizona. She freaked out and started naming all these ranches in Mazatlan where the they grew the stuff.

I found it rather annoying in the end because after Alma came to Phoenix, Brad just dumped her and didn’t even tell her why.

I figured it was some game Brad Williams played to prove he was a super stud by getting Alma to come to the USA, even though in the end Brad Williams didn’t seem to have any interest in the woman. I would say for that it shows Brad Williams is a total *sshole!

On this trip we had a number of check points coming back where they asked us questions about our drug use or searched our VW van.

At a check point near Mazatlan they asked us in Spanish if we smoked pot – “Fuman marijuana?” I answered “No fumamos marijuana”, or “no we don’t smoke marijuana. They let us thru with out searching us.

At a later check point down south they searched our van. The only thing they found was a carton of my American Marlboro cigarettes, which they stole. Not because they are contraband but because American cigarettes taste damn good and are real expensive. I was pissed I would have to smoke Mexican Marlboros for the rest of the trip and Mexican Marlboros taste like krap! Other then a traffic ticket this is the only time I was robbed by the Mexican police.

That is another game Mexicans will play with you to try and bum a good high quality American cigarette from you. They will talk to you and then ask for one of your American smokes. No problem if you have lots of cigarettes.

The last stop the shook us down for drugs was in Guaymus. I thought it was pretty cool because the machine gun toting Mexican military guy asked me in English “How many kilos you got in the van?” Scared the krap out of me and I said none. They let us thru with out searching us.

Done with Scottsdale Community College

The first semester at ASU I rented an apartment with Gary Witting and Jimmy Melikian in the Parkway Apartments east of Hardy Drive and north of 7th Street in Tempe. In the second semester Gary moved out and Jimmy’s brother Robert Melikian moved in.

Both the Melikians are pretty laid back and I got along with them. Their parents own the San Carlos Hotel in Phoenix. The only really problem we had is every once in a while Brad Williams would come by and eat up half of the food in our refrigerator.

I think Jimmy Melikian was a major in religion or maybe history. I know he liked religion a lot. I think Robby Melikian majored in some type of business area, which was like me. I majored in accounting and computer science.

At the time Gary was an agnostic. I think agnostics are people who don’t like to admit they are atheists. At the time I was a Christian who paid lip service, but little more to my religion. I have since evolved into an atheist. It would really be interesting to have a talk now with Jimmy and find out his views about religion over the years.

Year II at ASU – Brad Williams rips me off

I was also beaten up a lot mentally. I was constantly yelled at and told I was a worthless piece of sh*t, that I never would amount to anything, that anything and everything I did was wrong. The bad thing is if you are told this from the time you’re a very small child up until the time you grow up into an adult you believe it. I always considered my self a “black sheep”, a “f*ck up”, an outcast sort of like the hunchback. I probably am not, but I was constantly told that as I grew up so I tend to believe it.

The odd thing is that despite me being a “worthless piece of sh*t”, I am pretty damn smart. I amazed my accounting teacher because I got straight A’s in her class, despite the fact that I was a long haired hippy. She even asked me if this was the second time I took the class. I told her no.

I amazed all the chemistry teachers at SCC, because despite the fact that I was a long haired hippy I got straight A’s in their classes. In fact I always got the HIGHEST grade of the class I was in. In fact some people complained that my test scores should not be used because they were too high and would screw up the bell curve.

And of course I did the same thing in all the computer science courses I take. I get straight A’s in all of them with out really trying.

Now the reason I asked Brad Williams to be part of my business venture was because I could use his people skills to help sell the package. I never expected that after I build up the business that Brad Williams would walk out the door and steal everything I built and use it for his own benefit. But Brad Williams did exactly that.

The Summer semester – the business is built up

In the summer before I gave the trips I did all the prep work. First I had to like up a bus company to transport everybody from Tempe to Nogales, Mexico and repeat the same trip back from Nogales, Arizona. That was easy because I could do everything by mail or phone.

Second I had to get a company to allow us to buy hotel rooms in Mazatlan, but not force us to buy them if we didn’t sell all of them. On this side I found a guy in Tucson called Bennie Quintana who ran some sort of travel company. Bennie set us up with a deal were we could get rooms at either the Las Brisas or the Pasada de Don Pelalo hotels in Mazatlan. We had a cut off date in which we had to say we want X rooms and hand over the cash for X rooms. In the end this worked rather well.

I didn’t plan on transporting the people from the train station in Mazatlan to the hotel. We figured they could take a taxi or something. This was omitted because I could not find a simple way to do it. I didn’t speak good enough Spanish or have enough contacts in Mexico to arrange a local Mazatlan bus company to do the job.

Last arranging the train trip was a no brainer. You just go to the train ticket office and give them cash for all the people. No reservations required or even accepted. And they don’t sell out. Well the more people they sell, the more crowded the train is.

I did all of this on my own. The only help I got was Brad Williams helped me talk to Bennie Quintana when we went down to Tucson.

So prior to the start of the fall semester I was ready to give the trip. I had the bus company lined up and the hotel rooms liked up and I was ready to sell trips to Mazatlan.

The last thing we needed to do was have a place to run the business out of. For that I had Brad Williams rent a house at 6?? E Howe in Tempe, near ASU. I would live there and attend ASU, and on the side we would sell trips to Mazatlan.

This was another mistake I made. Brad would use the fact that he rented the house in his name and got the phone in his name as an easy way to steal the business phone number.

But I had a valid reason to do this. Brad Williams had a tendency to let money burn a hole in his pocket. And he also spends the money of other people, and takes the property of other people. I figured I put the phone bill in my name I would quickly have a phone bill for thousands of dollars run up by Brad Williams. And of course the phone company would not take my excuse that Brad Williams made the long distance phone calls as a reason for me to not pay off the debt.

Part I of Fall semester – The business is successful.

First I called our company “Mexico to the Rockies Ski and Tequila Travel Company”. That name was simply too long. I quickly changed it to “Mexico to the Rockies”.

The part about the Rockies and Skiing was because Brad Williams wanted to also give ski trips. So I added that in for him. For me I have never seen snow, nor do I want to see snow. Although if Brad had not ripped me off I would have been perfectly willing to sell college students ski trips.

The second mistake I made was my prices were too low even though we would make money on the trip. We could have made much more money if we charged more. Last some people thought we were rip off artists because of the low prices. I think my lowest price was $50 for 4 people staying in one hotel room and the highest price was $80 for two people sharing a hotel room.

I probably could have raised the prices by $30 to $50 and still got lots of customers.

This wasn’t really a mistake but I initially though that a bunch of party animals be our customers. This was not true at all. Many of my customers were ASU facility or staff who wanted to take a vacation to Mexico. Also many of our customers where Americans of Mexican origin who wanted to check out their homeland. It was interesting because many of them could speak much better Spanish then I could. But because they learned Spanish in their home they could not read it like I could. We did get a few frat rat party animals on the trip but not many. Brad moves out and Rusty moves in! Brad tries to kill me by putting paint thinner in the toilet

Part II of Fall semester – Brad Williams steals the business

Brad goes bankrupt!!!!

Get the straight dope on those Melikians and put it here

A stay in San Carlos Mexico

I believe this was after Brad Williams had ripped me off, but before I graduated from college. Instead of Brad I think two of Steve party animal relatives from North Dakota went down to San Carlos with us.

Guaymas is pretty much straight south of Nogalas and is the first city on the ocean. You go thru Mexican highway 15 thru Hermosillo and then Guaymas is where highway 15 hits the Pacific Ocean. San Carlos is sort of a suburb of Guaymas. We would do all our shopping at the mercado and beer factory in Guaymas and take our stuff back to San Carlos to live and party there.

Some or perhaps the entire movie “Catch 22” was filmed in San Carlos. I never saw the movie but a bar in Tempe called “Minderbinders” was named after a crazy guy in the movie called “Captain Minderbinder” or something like that.

The Americans and Mexican kids would party at one of the beach locations the movie was made at. I think it may have been the air strip.

Again, smart Americans would stick to drinking just beer. While the Mexican kids preferred the stronger and cheaper tequila and they also smoked marijuana, because the Mexican cops wouldn't arrest them, like they would arrest the American kids.

Guaymas and San Carlos are nice, and much closer to Phoenix then Mazatlan. But I prefer the warmer Mazatlan. Also Guaymas and San Carlos are both pretty much like Arizona. It is in the Sonoran Desert which covers a lot of central and southern Arizona along with also covering a lot of the Mexican state Sonora, which Guaymas and San Carlos are in.

Long after visiting this place I talked to a guy that lived in Hermosillo, which is a hot desert city like Phoenix. He told me that it often gets to 110F in Hermosillo, like it does in Phoenix and they all take off to San Carlos to beat the heat, like us gringos in Arizona go to Rocky Point, Mexico.

Some other incidents where crooked Phoenix police officers have violated my civil rights:

• Illegally stopped for a training program
• Illegal stopped while on my bike
• Probable cause, reasonable suspision
• Jim Forsberg crooked Phoenix Police Officer
• Framed by the Arizona DPS
• they broke into my home
• lake pleasent
• false arrest at motorola
• Brad Williams rips me off
• The Williams Family
• Tempe cops tell bank I'm a criminal & get account closed
• false arrest by tempe cops near wendys on broadway
• head hunter job