"Lo que quieren es perder tiempo." Sunnyside, Washington

After our run up to view Mt. Rainier, we took a spin through the appropriately named Sunnyside, Washington in search of a taco truck. I just knew that in this part of this very agricultural part of the world, we could find some tacos. After taking a few spins through town, we found Super Tacos, a truck by a liquor store and a little bit of shade from the hot sun beating down on our poor skin made so white by living in Bellingham. We sat down and I ordered a torta de adobada, one of my standards for this sort of an affair. As we were eating, an enormous pick-up pulled up and two Mexicans, who looked like they had been working all day, sauntered out in their alligator skin cowboy boots. The driver looked at what I was eating and said to the lady taking orders that he wanted what I was eating because it was making his mouth water. Not realizing that I understand Spanish, he looked surprised when I laughed at his cavalier order. They sat down with us and we started talking about we did for a living and how we could understand Spanish. He began telling his life story of how some 15 years ago, he left his native Veracruz, a state on the Caribbean, more tropical part of Mexico to go work on a salmon and crab boat in Alaska. When the season ended, he found work with a Russian fishing fleet and did his time on the boats as a self-taught electrician. He did this for a number of years claimed also to have worked on the electronics on Microsoft henchman Paul Allen’s yacht. In Sunnyside, he and his compadre were taking care of cattle and both were complaining about how the calves don’t take holidays, that the calves need their attention even on Sundays. Then one of them asks what we were doing in Sunnyside and we say that we were going to Texas and then Kansas. We explained that we don’t usually take the Interstate, that we were going to make it to Texas without being on the Interstate for more than 50 miles. The first Mexican cowboy says to the other, “Isn’t that just a waste of time? Doesn’t it take longer to go on the smaller roads?” And the other Mexican cowboy looks at the first as if the first didn’t understand us and says, “Pero no entiendes. Lo que quieren es perder tiempo.” And the second cowboy understood us, because that was precisely our goal. To waste time. Or to make good time, which for us, is measured with emphasis on ‘good’ rather than ‘time,’ and this indeed changes our whole approach to things.