The Required Amount at the Prescribed Rate (Handcrafted From the Finest Corinthian Leather)
The Big Apple Ain't What It Used to Be
Hail Fellow Well Met?
Hail Fellow Well Met?
Journey to the Center of the Suburbs
Journey to the Center of the Suburbs
Street Smarts
Street Smarts
Two Ways of Looking at Dave Looking at a Bird
It's rare you get two viewpoints of stupidity, but Friday afternoon days at the park, Catherine and I spotted some kind of large raptor and it was behaving oddly: perching on low branches, walking around on the grass, acting dumbfounded and perplexed . . . it was weird; we couldn't tell if it was an eagle or an osprey (and now we think it was a Cooper's hawk) so I approached it and got very very close, and then it seemed as if it was going to fly right at me-- perhaps to tear my face off-- but it wasn't interested in me (or my face) and it turned out the bird was stalking a snake in the grass, which it finally grabbed with both claws and then flew off . . . perhaps it was a juvenile hawk and not sure if a snake was good eating; anyway, I got a good shot of the bird up close, and my wife-- from a safe distance-- got a good shot of me approaching the bird so here are both videos (as a side note, later that afternoon, when we were walking in New Brunswick, we saw a very tall young lady, her legs were just endless, wearing short shorts riding an adult sized electric powered kick-scooter . . . quite an afternoon, but we didn't get a video of that . . . or of the fat guy ambling down the street sporting a "Busy Doing Nothing" t-shirt).
Two Ways of Looking at Dave Looking at a Bird
You Can't Call an Ambulance for Your Dog
You Can't Call an Ambulance for Your Dog
If You're Gonna Get Shot, Get Shot in the Shoulder
If You're Gonna Get Shot, Get Shot in the Shoulder
Anand Giridharadas is Hard to Say
When You Get Old, Go Out into the Universe and Kill Stuff
More (Capricious) News in the World of Tennis
Blinded with Science
"sulfoxaflor, manufactured by DowDupont’s Corteva agricultural division, can now be used on a wide range of crops, including corn, soybeans, strawberries, citrus, pumpkins and pineapples, the EPA said . . . sulfoxaflor has been found to be “highly toxic to honey bees at all life stages,” according to the EPA’s own studies — and harms wild pollinators like bumblebees even at low doses; yet Alexandra Dunn, head of the EPA office that oversees pesticides, said the agency was 'thrilled' to approve new uses and lift past restrictions on sulfoxaflor, which she called “highly effective . . . Dow contributed $1 million to President Donald Trump’s inauguration committee"
and this taps into the larger (and very weird) culture war that's happening . . . if you're pro-Trump, you may very well be anti-science . . . because scientists are now pointy-headed liberals who want to tell you what to do and how to live . . . so if you love Trump (and hate science) you might purchase Trump brand plastic straws to show the hippie environmentalists just what they can do with their assault on plastic-- it's right out of The Graduate; this stuff all fits into the new conservative brand-- global warming is a Chinese hoax, etc. -- and while at least Trump has shifted his stance on vaccines (his old take, from 2015, is that vaccines are meant for horses and cause autism) because of various measles outbreaks, I think that shift was pragmatic-- he didn't want to preside over a plague-infested country-- but I still find it a shocker that this is the Trump-brand: the scientific-method is fake news, a plot cooked up by the liberals to restrict your rights.
Blinded with Science
"sulfoxaflor, manufactured by DowDupont’s Corteva agricultural division, can now be used on a wide range of crops, including corn, soybeans, strawberries, citrus, pumpkins and pineapples, the EPA said . . . sulfoxaflor has been found to be “highly toxic to honey bees at all life stages,” according to the EPA’s own studies — and harms wild pollinators like bumblebees even at low doses; yet Alexandra Dunn, head of the EPA office that oversees pesticides, said the agency was 'thrilled' to approve new uses and lift past restrictions on sulfoxaflor, which she called “highly effective . . . Dow contributed $1 million to President Donald Trump’s inauguration committee"
and this taps into the larger (and very weird) culture war that's happening . . . if you're pro-Trump, you may very well be anti-science . . . because scientists are now pointy-headed liberals who want to tell you what to do and how to live . . . so if you love Trump (and hate science) you might purchase Trump brand plastic straws to show the hippie environmentalists just what they can do with their assault on plastic-- it's right out of The Graduate; this stuff all fits into the new conservative brand-- global warming is a Chinese hoax, etc. -- and while at least Trump has shifted his stance on vaccines (his old take, from 2015, is that vaccines are meant for horses and cause autism) because of various measles outbreaks, I think that shift was pragmatic-- he didn't want to preside over a plague-infested country-- but I still find it a shocker that this is the Trump-brand: the scientific-method is fake news, a plot cooked up by the liberals to restrict your rights.
Four Funerals and a Divorce
Four Funerals and a Divorce
Breaking News in the World of Tennis
Breaking News in the World of Tennis
Sentence Canceled (Due to Extenuating Pub Night)
Sentence Canceled (Due to Extenuating Pub Night)
Craig Johnson vs. C.J. Box: Wyoming (Zone of) Death Match
1) there actually is a "Zone of Death" within Yellowstone National Park, where an enterprising criminal could commit the perfect crime . . . although it hasn't happened yet;
2) Yellowstone's heat resistant microbes are valuable resources being used (exploited? contracted?) by international companies, and there is a debate as to whether this is "bio-mining" or "bio-piracy" and as to who should get the profits;
3) bio-stimulation in coal seams might produce natural gas or liquified fuel . . .
anyway, as far as the Wyoming detective novel shoot-out goes, Joe Pickett and Walt Longmire are different animals . . . so if you're looking for something more evocative and slower-paced, with a lot of charm, then go for the Craig Johnson mystery, but if you want fast-paced action with politics, conspiracy, and wild plot-lines, then C.J. Box is for you . . . FreeFire even has a gun moll from Jersey and the book gets into this kind of stuff:
"There are so many factions . . . Zephyr versus the Park Service . . . environmentalists against resource users . . . hunters outside the park versus park policy . . . the three states fighting with the Feds . . . even in the park service, it's law enforcement versus interpretation, and seasonal rangers against full-timers . . . it's bureaucracy run amok."
Johnson vs. Box: Wyoming (Zone of) Death Match
1) apparently, there actually is a "Zone of Death" within Yellowstone National Park, where an enterprising criminal could commit the perfect crime . . . although it hasn't happened yet;
2) Yellowstone's heat resistant microbes are valuable resources being used (exploited? contracted?) by international companies, and there is a debate as to whether this is "bio-mining" or "bio-piracy" and as to who should get the profits;
3) bio-stimulation in coal seams might produce natural gas or liquified fuel . . .
anyway, as far as the Wyoming detective novel shoot-out goes, Joe Pickett and Walt Longmire are different animals . . . so if you're looking for something more evocative and slower-paced, with a lot of charm, then go for the Craig Johnson mystery, but if you want fast-paced action with politics, conspiracy, and wild plot-lines, then C.J. Box is for you . . . FreeFire even has a gun moll from Jersey and the book gets into this kind of stuff:
"There are so many factions . . . Zephyr versus the Park Service . . . environmentalists against resource users . . . hunters outside the park versus park policy . . . the three states fighting with the Feds . . . even in the park service, it's law enforcement versus interpretation, and seasonal rangers against full-timers . . . it's bureaucracy run amok."
No Graceful Exit to This Situation
No Graceful Exit to This Situation
Dave Naps While His Children Labor
Dave Naps While His Children Labor
Dave Stays in Wyoming (Because Jersey Sucks Right Now)
Dave Stays in Wyoming (Because Jersey Sucks Right Now)
A Good Way to Visit Wyoming
A Good Way to Visit Wyoming
Money Talks and Bullshit Walks (Toward Nassim Taleb?)
1) Taleb prefers the Silver Rule to the Golden Rule . . . the Silver Rule is sort of the Negative Golden Rule: "Do not treat others the way you would not like them to treat you," and Taleb prefers it because it is more Libertarian and less restrictive-- the Silver Rule encourages you to mind your own business-- you're not doing things unto others and guessing what they would like . . . it lines up nicely with our First Amendment rights;
2) Taleb really hates Steven Pinker and all the non-mathematical non-stock-trading intellectuals associated with him, and while Taleb claims there are major statistical problems with Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature, this claim doesn't seem logical and more of a sour grapes character assassination attempt and Pinker has a reasoned and rational rebuttal to Taleb's jealous and rather weird claims . . . Taleb wants to apply his "Black Swan" reasoning to Pinker's thesis but Pinker has already anticipated this in his book . . . it's a fairly strange obsession and I don't really get his hatred of intellectuals, aside from the fact that he considers them the ultimate evil because they make pronouncements without having "skin in the game" and contribute to the "monoculture" of thought;
3) Taleb thinks we should take a more statistical, skin-in-the-game look at politics offers a great reminder of how important scale is in determining our values and morals:
"A saying by the brothers Geoff and Vince Graham summarizes the ludicrousness of scale-free political universalism . . .
I am, at the Fed level, a libertarian:
at the state level, Republican;
at the local level, Democrat;
and at the family and friends level, a socialist . . ."
4) Taleb likes to throw around the fact that he's Lebanese and grew up in Lebanon, and he frequently mention the many religious groups and sects that live there and in Syria-- I find this interesting because I lived there-- but I can see how the explanation of the dynamics of the Druze and the Shi'ites might grow tiresome to some audiences . . . I think he likes these examples because he's a big fan of the "the Lindy effect," he likes rules and institutions and foods and objects that have survived a long time-- the Lindy effect is the "theory that the future life expectancy of some non-perishable things like a technology or an idea is proportional to their current age, so that every additional period of survival implies a longer remaining life expectancy" . . . so things like the cup and the Ten Commandments are going to be around a long time because they've been around a long time . . . these are the kinds of rules and books and thoughts that Taleb trusts-- including advice from your grandmother and superstitions-- because they have weathered the test of time . . . he's not a progressive and he loves the fact that Trump got elected, confounding all the liberal, pseudo-intellectual types;
5) Taleb is at his best when he's talking about probability . . . he explains (hypothetically) that while terrorism and people falling down in the bathtub may take the same number of lives in any given year, why we have to treat terrorism so much more seriously . . . because it would take an incredible statistical anomaly to double bathtub deaths, but it only takes a major event or two to exponentially increase the deaths from terrorism . . . terrorism has the potential to reveal "unknown unknowns" or "black swans" or whatever you want to call them, but things can happen on the long tail that take many many lives . . . so he gets into the idea of how much tolerance we should show the intolerant, and when it comes to Salafi Islam, he believes we should be showing them no tolerance, because they have the potential of creating those kind of black swan events that pseudo-intellectuals-- who are too liberal-- don't assess with the correct amount of risk . . . it's something we all have to think deeply about, and it's the most important part of his reasoning;
6) on a more positive statistical note, he argues against Thomas Piketty's extreme take on economic inequality, and uses an idea called "ergodicity" to show that people move all over the map as far as where they lie in the income ladder over the course of time . . . so any one person might be in the top ten percent in one part of their life, then in the middle, then maybe at the bottom; I'm not sure I understand all the math, but it's an interesting take . . . although it seems that salary isn't the real culprit in income inequality, it's acquired wealth-- which is why I like Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax . . . I would never want to put words in Taleb's mouth, because he's so unpredictable and irascible, and I doubt he would like a wealth tax, but it does fit more into his worldview that acquired wealth doesn't have any risk to it, so it might as well be taxed and used for infrastructure or schools or clean energy or something interesting;
7) in the end, I wish there was more math and less railing against some imagined intellectual class with no skin-in-the-game . . . Taleb really believes that entrepreneurs should be venerated and I agree with him . . . it's much easier to be a salary-slave and the longer you do it, the more skin-in-the-game you have to protect your job and your reputation, but that doesn't mean you can't do good work; it's worth reading Taleb's books, but you just have to take everything with a grain of thought and take your time with each page and idea and think about what he's saying and if it really holds water.
Late Night Learnin'
1) there is an app called TouchTunes which allows you to control the pub jukebox from your phone;
2) "Love Potion Number 9" is one of the worst songs on that jukebox;
3) The Park Pub has a drink special, which is only advertised on the TouchTunes app . . . the special is "Buy Two / Drink Two . . . All week";
4) eating a White Rose burger after the pub wreaks havoc on my digestive system . . . I've already learned this lesson, but every three years or so, I have to relearn it;
5) I also learned a bunch of little things which are too numerous to list, but here a re a few: Paul can make a little Mexican pizza in five minutes; back in the day, Linda Carter was really hot; everybody loves to sing "Suspicious Minds"; and you should watch Barry season 2 episode 5, even if you haven't seen the show.
Late Night Learnin'
1) there is an app called TouchTunes which allows you to control the pub jukebox from your phone;
2) "Love Potion Number 9" is one of the worst songs on that jukebox;
3) The Park Pub has a drink special, which is only advertised on the TouchTunes app . . . the special is "Buy Two / Drink Two . . . All week";
4) eating a White Rose burger after the pub wreaks havoc on my digestive system . . . I've already learned this lesson, but every three years or so, I have to relearn it;
5) I also learned a bunch of little things which are too numerous to list, but here a re a few: Paul can make a little Mexican pizza in five minutes; back in the day, Linda Carter was really hot; everybody loves to sing "Suspicious Minds"; and you should watch Barry season 2 episode 5, even if you haven't seen the show.
Fumble! At 45 mph
Fumble! At 45 mph
The Wildest West
how much tolerance do you afford the intolerant?
she also hears from rational people who believe that the government does have too much power, that after 9/11 the fear of terrorism allowed federal and local law enforcement to ramp up violence and surveillance on suspects and that this is a cycle that will only be met with more violence-- Sottile and I both think the answer may be sunlight, we have to just keep shining a bright logical light on all these fringe-apocalypse-fundamentalist-religious-conspiratorial extremists and their words and logic until they shrivel and decay, we've got to talk it out and keep talking, the government needs to be up front about what it's doing and what is happening, and we have to understand that there's going to be some explosions along the way and some radical extremism, which is part of the cost of having a country with a strong First Amendment, checks and balances in the government, and a sometimes too-powerful federal presence . . . that presence can drive people, especially people ready to be radicalized, out to the fringe-- events like Waco, and the shooting of LaVoy Finnicum and the Ruby Ridge siege; for me, it was absolutely shocking to hear folks proposing an all-white, all-Christian 51st state where the chosen could live out their days training and praying, waiting for the end-of-times . . . but maybe I'm too sheltered, living here in a tame, intellectual, multi-cultural town in central New Jersey, and I need a dose of the real American West, which is wilder than ever; Sottile brings up the fact that, of late, right-wing extremists have accounted for the bulk of the terrorism in the United States, and The Atlantic breaks it down:
"From 2009 through 2018, right-wing extremists accounted for 73 percent of such killings, according to the ADL, compared with 23 percent for Islamists and 3 percent for left-wing extremists . . . in other words, most terrorist attacks in the United States, and most deaths from terrorist attacks, are caused by white extremists . . . but they do not cause the sort of nationwide panic that helped Trump win the 2016 election and helped the GOP expand its Senate majority in the midterms."
META-Meta-meta
META-Meta-meta
No Where to Go But Up (Down?)
Go East Young Man
Go East Young Man
The Mountains of Kentucky?
The Mountains of Kentucky?
Trust My Kids: Head into the Spider-Verse
Trust My Kids: Head into the Spider-Verse
Running: Yuck
Running: Yuck
Cat-egorical Imperatives
1) never do my wife's laundry;
2) never give my wife advice on how to toss a corn-hole beanbag.
Cat-egorical Imperatives
1) never do my wife's laundry;
2) never give my wife advice on how to toss a corn-hole beanbag.
Bonus Features!
Bonus Features!
I just noticed today that my backpack has a secret waterproof string bag-- attached to the inside of the pack with a string!-- and then my brother's girlfriend pointed out that our new beach cart has a secret side pouch and velcro tie that srves as an umbrella holster; I will utilize both these bonus features tomorrow.
The Wrong Ratio
The Wrong Ratio
From the Pacific to the Atlantic (which seems pretty pacific)
From the Pacific to the Atlantic (which seems pretty pacific)
Read Educated and Get Educated
Read Educated and Get Educated
We Are Home (and the Natives are Back to Their Usual Antics)
We Are Home (and the Natives are Back to Their Usual Antics)
Nosara: Keep Your Eyes on the Road, Your hands Upon the Wheel (if you can)
Nosara: Keep Your Eyes on the Road, Your hands Upon the Wheel (if you can)
There is so much to see in Nosara, but if you are driving, it's hard to look up from the pothole strewn gravel and rock roads; the drive from Samara is an hour of bumpy winding coastal back roads and then you hit the rough stuff, but it's well worth it; I'm not sure which is better, the wildlife or the people watching-- my son Alex would say it's the surfing, and the surfing is great, especially on Playa Guiones, the giant scenic beach with endless breaks; I rented a board and rode a few waves along with my son, until my sternum got sore, then I just enjoyed the scenery: super-toned expat yoga/surfer women . . . I've never seen more perfect bodies in my life; perhaps these folks-- like Lady Gaga-- fly in to Nosara, as there is a tiny airstrip; it's quite a collection of people, we went to a outdoor charity lunch bonanza for the firemen of Nosara, because the French lady who owned Villa Mango, the bed and breakfast we stayed at, was married to a Costa Rican fireman, and so we really saw the local crowd; Costa Rican couples and entrepeneurs; expat retirees, surfers, business people; and wealthy folks just enjoying the situation (there was an especially entertaining group of four hot middle-aged women getting drunk and acting like they were in Eat Pray Love) and the Villa Mango is highly recommended: you can walk to Playa Pelada, the teak and guanacaste tree deck is beautiful, and we saw loads of monkeys from the porch and the pool; there is also a semi-tame coati who has been hanging out for a few months, you can hand feed him and he naps on the couch; the dog doesn't even bother him; while Alex and I were surfing, Catherine and Ian went kayaking up the Nosara river into the mangroves, and they saw black iguanas, Halloween crabs, lots of rare birds and Catherine even got a quick glimpse of a saltwater croc; the food was excellent, especially at El Chivo and Al Chile, where we got a close up view of a hummingbird ( Alex took a pic with his phone that rivals my owl) so despite the bad roads, a great place.
They Live in Pairs? Excellent . . .
They Live in Pairs? Excellent . . .
I woke up early this morning, tip-toed into the bathroom-- as we are all sleeping in one room at the Villa Mango-- and was confronted by a Costa Rican scorpion . . . so I flattened it with my sandal; it happened to be on the bath mat when I did the flattening, so I dragged it out of the way but left it out so my wife and kids can see it when they wake up; I just looked up the species and apparently the sting is painful but not deadly, the only disconcerting thing is that, according to this site, they live in pairs, so if you see one then the other one is probably nearby . . . I am up on the veranda listening to the birds and monkeys as I write this, perhaps soon I will hear a scream from our room below (either when my family sees the dead scorpion or when they encounter the irate partner).
No Crocs But A Plethora of Sea Slugs
No Crocs But A Plethora of Sea Slugs
Our last day in Samara we went in search of megafauna and drove down a dirt road to Playa Buena Vista-- a primitive driftwood covered beach across an estuary reputed to contain saltwater crocs; I watched a local net fisherman wade across and followed him and I was not eaten by a croc, but my wife and kids were having none of it and occupied themselves on the rocks while I investigated the beach and river mouth; no crocs to speak of so we headed back to the tidepools of Samara and found colorful dories, triggerfish, loaches, eels and sea slugs-- intriguing but minifauna, not megafauna . . . however, on the way home from dinner we encountered Costa Rica's largest amphibian: the giant marine toad (also known as the cane toad).
Can I Look At It? No . . .
Can I Look At It? No . . .
A few days ago I thought Samara beach was the most beautiful and idyllic spot in the entire world: warm water, a fantastic view, soft sand, a two mile horseshoe shaped black sand beach protected by a coral reef so the waves are groovy for both surfing and swimming . . . but then everyone said we had to drive 7 kilometers south to Playa Carillo because THAT was the most amazing, uncrowded and picturesque beach in Costa Rica-- and they were right; Playa Carrillo is an undeveloped four mile horseshoe with even softer sand, even more palm trees for shade, even nicer water for swimming and barely any people BUT a local guy told us about a super secret beach called Playa Ezquerda, you have to drive a dirt road, hike through the jungle and then descend some dilapidated and dangerous cocrete steps down a cliff-- long ago someone planned on building something here but stopped after making the steps; so we followed the instructions-- Alex almost got run over by a stray horse-- and we made it to the most superb beach and there were only two lovely young locals there, sunbathing in bikinis, and the cliff shaded the beach and the tidepools were full of tropical fish, weird sea stars, sea slugs, and lots of other creatures . . . but I'm not sure where this ends-- perhaps a beach in the spirit of Nigel Tufnel's special guitar that he has never played and won't even let Marti DeBergi look at, a beach so wonderful that you can't even go to it; on this same theme, we've seen some monkeys on this trip, but this morning in the tree across from our window we saw a baby monkey . . . the only thing better than that is two baby monkeys.
Moonball Fire Ant Justice League
Moonball Fire Ant Justice League
Despite us urging him not to do it, Alex tried to bounce Ian's moonball off the thick palm tree next to the infinity pool, the plan being to bounce it back into the pool, but the shot was near impossible and the ball ricocheted off the big tree and then caromed off a little tree and shot into the jungle; Alex tried to retrieve the ball, but was karmically stung by a horde of fire ants, a deserved and entertaining punishment for his impulsiveness; we also took a lovely boat ride and saw Ridley turtles mating, caught a small, brightly colored dorado fish, and rode next to countless tropical spotted dolphins, most at close range and many breaching . . . but who wants to hear about that stuff?
Glasshouse
Glasshouse
If I were a free person in the 27th century cosmic war crime prison of Glasshouse, the Charles Stross sci-fi mindbender I just finished, I'd probably use a T Gate assembler to back myself up, then create a duplicate version of myself, have my duplicate write this sentence while my other self took a stroll on the beach, then merge the two neural nets into one version of me that contained both sets of memories . . . but before any of that, you have to solve Curious Yellow and the polity; a good fast read, as long as you don't get bogged down in the technical jargon; an exponentially advanced and precocious baby of The Matrix and Inception.
Samara
Samara
We made good time on the long and winding road to Samara-- no student protests, luckily, as there were major delays in San Jose and at the airport; the drive around Lake Arenal was beautiful, the road snaked up and down through small villages, including one with a German bakery with delicious stuff full of coconut and honey, and there were windy heights with views of the lake and the surrounding windmills and lots of one way bridges; Alex assumed shotgun/navigator for the second half of the ride and heroically hooked up the AUX cable to my phone so we could listen to music but soon after he directed me onto a back road which led directly into a river and a failed river crossing voids the car insurance-- so though we rented a 4wD Daihatsu Rush, an amazing light stripped down SUV-- I turned it around and took the paved route; a few hours later we made it to paradise . . . our Airbnb condo has an absurd view of the horseshoe shaped Samara beach, the water is warm, the kids took a surf lesson and caught countless waves, we hiked to the tidepools, ate fish and drank beers at the restaurants on the sand, found a Mexican joint that makes incredible beer, etc etc . . . once you get to Samara there's not much to say, it's a safe relatively undeveloped tropical beach town at the edge of the jungle, sheltered by a reef, and the beer is cheap and the surf instructors are excellent . . . my wife says it's the Highland Park of Costa Rica, it's small and very chill and you can walk everwhere but I think it's a little better because the 84 degree ocean water is nicer than the Raritan.
Monkey Beats Ant
Monkey Beats Ant
Yesterday we finally saw a monkey, while we were hiking at Mirador el Silencio-- a private nature reserve which I highly recommend because the admission is supercheap and because we saw a spider monkey swinging through the dense jungle, doing all kinds of monkey antics, and then the trail ascends out of the jungle into the cloud forest and finally ends at the 1968 lava field, where it is cold and cloudy-- a real winner of a place and we were the only people there so we had all the trails to ourselves for the three plus hours it took to navigate them; we then got snacks, plantain and yucca chips, and then descended the 500 steps the the La Fortuna Waterfall, an epic tumbling cascade of cold water that plunges straight out of the jungle; we swam in the river below the main falls, in a plethora of pacu, then we ate lunch and headed back to Los Lagos to enjoy the pools; we ran into the supernice one upper again and talked sports, we learned he was Tracy McGrady's point guard in high school and has his contact in his cell phone and then after a bit more one upping he left and we talked to some professional sporting parents from California who were so successful at raising up their giant atletic progeny that they didn't need to one up-- they talked strategy and made us feel like amateurs: their oldest son just got a full golf scholarship to Illinois and got endorsed by Foot Joy and Titleist and they retained their younger son once and were planning on doing it again so he could excel at football; both kids did not attend public school, instead they did sport specific schooling and these parents pursued all sorts of scholarships and funding, pretty wild and way out of our league; then as we were walking back to our cabana, the one upper drove by and yelled some amazing one upmanship info out the window: "I heard Soda La Hormiga, The Ant, has the best food around! Eight dollars a plate! A local guy told me . . ." and he drove off and we actually considered going there but first we needed gas and the station in town ran out so we had to wait in a line out of town and then La Hormiga was closing so we went to another place and it's a good thing because we saw the one upper's wife at breakfast and she said her son got sick from the food and it was lucky we didn't follow her husband's advice and then we sat next to them while we ate and the one upper mapped our route to Samara on his phone for us.