Problemas (Premium)

As J.R.R. Tolkien observed of writing The Lord of the Rings, “this tale grew in the telling.” And so it went with this rundown of some of our many problems in Mexico. Originally, I had intended to discuss these topics in a section in a “What I Use: Mexico 2021” article that I’ll still post in a few days. But this description of our problems, some technical in nature, some not, is large enough to warrant an article of its own. So here we are.

To be clear, this has been an incredible trip. But it’s also incredible how many issues we’ve had. It’s made the trip feel much longer than it is as we see-saw between stress and exhaustion. Oddly, none of this has ruined anything, and we’ve still had a great time. But let me step through a partial list of a rather incredible list of problems, mostly small, but all annoying in their own way.

Bag issues

It started innocuously enough right after our arrival at the Mexico City airport when one of the shoulder straps on my laptop bag—a Rick Steves Velocé Shoulder Bag—separated from the bag when I picked it up off the floor to mount it on the expandable handle of my rolling luggage, a Rick Steves Ravenna Rolling Case. At the time, I thought I had ripped the strap off and would need to replace the bag. But later, I discovered that I had simply overloaded the bag and popped a plastic connector piece on the bottom of a strap, probably because I had stuffed it too full with the two laptops and other gear. All I had to do was pop the connector piece back in and all was well.

That particular problem was self-inflicted and avoidable: I already own two larger laptop bags that are specifically designed for handling two laptops and much more gear, an eBags Pro Slim Laptop Backpack and an HP Renew Backpack that I purchased on sale in December 2020 and forgot to write about in an article about my then-anticipatory 2021 travel plans. (I did manage to upload a photo of it, however.) This is personally frustrating as I was trying to save space with the smaller bag, and it wasn’t necessary. I own those bigger bags for this very reason (and only need one of them, obviously; the eBags one will be decluttered soon). And either of the larger bags would have fit under the seat of the plane just fine. Ah well.

Water issues

(I will describe the trip/schedule in the What I Use article, but the short version is that we visited San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato in the five days of this trip and then Mexico City for the remainder of the two week trip.) After we had driven to San Miguel de Allende and parked the car, we got settled at the Airbnb. The main bedroom had a king bed, a couple of nightstands, a wardrobe, and the type of wall-mounted, ductless air conditioner I only know about from watching House Hunters International. The AC was up high on the wall next to my side of the bed, and I placed my laptop bag on the floor under it and turned on the AC as we unpacked.

A little while later, I was working while laying down on the bed—always so comfortable, but the one thing this Airbnb lacked was a proper table—and the AC unit started making water dripping sounds. I moved the laptop bag and tried to figure out what was happening. It sort of sounded like the water was dripping in the wall, so I looked outside (there was a terrace) and could see some wetness, but not being familiar with this kind of AC, I figured it was normal and forgot about it. At some point, I put the bag back on the floor unthinkingly, and we went out to explore the town. When we returned, I walked over to my side of the bed to put my wallet and other items on the nightstand and stepped in water: There was a puddle on the floor. And my laptop bag was right in the middle of it.

It was sopping wet through and through. And inside were the two laptops (an HP ZBook Firefly 14 and an HP Elite Dragonfly Max), a spare smartphone, my Bose noise-cancelling earbuds, our passports, my paper COVID-19 vaccination card, my Global Entry card (in its protective sheath), and more. So I hurriedly emptied the bag and was horrified to see that the two laptops, and most everything else, was covered in water. (Oddly, the vaccination card was mostly not wet, and none of the writing was smeared, thankfully.) So I dried everything off and pulled the laptop bag inside out and put it out on the terrace to dry. (Which it did, very quickly, in the Mexican sun.)

The Firefly laptop booted right up and worked normally, and it has continued working normally for the remainder of the trip. The Dragonfly Max, not so much. Initially, I was hopeful: The water that had soaked it was clean, and I figured if it just dried out, it would probably boot up and work just fine. So I put it outside, not in the direct sun, and reoriented it over time to hopefully help drain whatever water was inside out of there or at least away from the circuit boards.

Over the first 24 hours, all I got out of it was a blinking orange light on the side—or, sometimes, a blinking light that alternated between orange and white—and that triggered some nervousness and a bit of research. My understanding is that you can remove the back panel of the laptop with a Torx screwdriver, remove the battery, plug-in power, power up the laptop, and then power it down and reattach the battery, and that should bring it back. I don’t have a Torx screwdriver with me, of course, and so I figured I would just make do with the one laptop for the duration of the trip if necessary.

Here’s the thing. I brought the Dragonfly Max for some good reasons. Key among them, it’s running Windows 11, and I knew I would be writing about this system, and updating to new preview builds over the two weeks we’re away. And I had even written a Windows 11 article—Windows 11 Feature Focus: Start—on the plane ride to Mexico, but I hadn’t yet taken the screenshots. Uh-oh.

Then, something interesting happened. Over a day after I discovered my soaking wet bag, I performed another ritual power-on attempt and was surprised and excited when the keyboard backlighting came on, as it does normally when you power on. It didn’t boot up fully, however, and the power light on the side went back to blinking. But it was step in the right direction, so I kept trying. Eventually, the HP logo appeared on the screen. And then it actually booted up. Success!

I used this opportunity to take the screenshots and publish that article, and I left the Dragonfly Max plugged in so that it could charge. Then, we traveled to Guanajuato, another semi-nearby town, and had another issue, described below, but I only brought the Firefly laptop. After we got back from that trip, I noticed that the Dragonfly Max didn’t charge fully despite being plugged in overnight. And then I noticed it was getting flaky, and wouldn’t turn on properly again. The blinking light returned. And it was dead. Again.

As I write these words, it’s several days later, we’re back in Mexico City, and our kids have flown here. I charged the Dragonfly Max a bit more, and then noted the normal orange “charging” color on the power light on the side. And when I pressed the power button, the keyboard backlighting came on, the HP logo appeared onscreen, and … pfffttt. It’s dead again, and that light blinked orange and white a bit before switching back to the normal orange “charging” color. My guess is that I’ll have to go through the restore process described above. And yeah, I may wait until I get home to try and fix it. But I’m just compulsive enough to find a Torx screwdriver here and give it a shot before then.

If I can’t/don’t do that, I may upgrade the Firefly to Windows 11. If not, maybe I’ll just do a virtual machine install in Hyper-V. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Since writing the above, I have installed Windows in Hyper-V on the Firefly and attempted to fix the Dragonfly Max, but I bought an Allen/Hex key set, not a Torx set. But even the smallest Allen wrench was too big for the tiny screws on the HP. If I can, I will try again, but it appears more likely that this will need to wait until we get home.

Scratches can mar magnesium PCs

Around the time of the water issue noted above, I noticed two light scratches marring the exterior of the Elite Dragonfly Max’s laptop lid. At first, I figured they could be wiped off with a cloth or towel, but upon closer examination, I found that they were literal scratches into the black paint on the PC. (On aluminum-based laptops, we use the “anodized” to describe the painting/colorization process, but I’m not sure if that term is correct for magnesium.) And they appear to be permanent scars.

Users of the original Surface Pro, Surface RT, and Surface Pro 2 are familiar with this problem, as those PCs were particularly problematic when it came to getting light-colored scratches on the black exterior paint. Basically what you’re seeing is the native light gray color of magnesium being exposed by the scratches in the paint. And that’s what happened here. Ugh.

I have no idea how this could have happened, as I treat all of my electronics with great care. (Oddly, I had a nightmare last night that involved a leather iPhone cover ripping and causing an unrealistic amount of damage to the body of the phone; things that happen in dreams are often exaggerated forms of reality that seem to make sense in the moment.) And this bothers me deeply. But there it is.

Flat tire

Driving in Mexico is … interesting. Mexico City, the second-largest city in the western hemisphere (after Sao Paulo, Brazil), is chaotic and a little too much like a videogame. Put simply, no one who visits this city should ever rent a car. But driving in Mexico, otherwise, is wonderful. The drivers are consistently good—and I mean almost 100 percent consistently good—and literally every car we encountered in the left lane during the 3.5-hour drive from Mexico City to San Miguel de Allende yielded to faster traffic behind them. For this frustrated driver from Pennsylvania, this was a dream come true, and I’ve never seen anything like it.

Anyway, driving in San Miguel was treacherous, but for completely different reasons than in Mexico City: The streets of this ancient pueblo were laid out hundreds of years before cars even existed, and they are all tiny, cramped, cobblestoned (often poorly, with potholes and other issues), and hard to navigate; most are one-way streets because of their size, but even that is a stretch, especially when parking is allowed. Two-way streets are a nightmare, with about enough room for 1.5 cars side-to-side on most.

Given that, we were happy to ditch the car when we arrived. The Airbnb didn’t have on-premises parking (as promised in the listing, there’s one ding to its eventual rating), but the owner has an agreement with a (semi) local parking lot that’s manned from 7 am to midnight every day and is protected from the street by high walls and a massive gate otherwise, so it’s secure (and, to us, free). The only problem is that it is 20 to 25 minutes away from the Airbnb by foot, and San Miguel is a hilly town; the parking was mostly uphill, and with the altitude, it was a bit of a hike each time.

And there were more trips between the Airbnb and the parking lot than we had initially expected.

Or original schedule had us arriving in San Miguel on Thursday. We spent Friday exploring that town, and then on Saturday, we planned to get up, get to the car early, and drive to Guanajuato, where we’d spend one night; the idea was to spend most of Saturday in Guanajuato and then come back to San Miguel early Sunday.

That was the idea.

Instead, when we arrived at the parking lot, we discovered that the car had a flat tire. The guys at the lot offered to replace it with the spare, and they jacked up the car, took off the tire, and went to put on the spare—a tiny donut only suitable for temporary use—when we discovered an unexpected problem.

The donut spare only had four lugnut holes, while the original tire had five; the spare wasn’t for this car and would not fit. Huh.

While this was happening, one of the guys had driven off with our original tire to get it repaired. So I called the rental car company, explained what happened, and was told that a representative would arrive with a new car, as we had opted (wisely, as it turned out) for the maximum insurance. The problem? He was 2.5 hours away in a city called Leon.

After mulling over our options, we figured we could just drive to Guanajuato later, and so we stayed in San Miguel, got some work done, and waited for the time to elapse. And in the meantime, the good people at the parking lot had put the repaired tire back on the car. So when 2.5 hours had elapsed, we started inquiring about the guy coming to replace the car via WhatsApp, which is heavily used in Mexico. Had he left yet? When would he arrive? The car rental company never replied. So eventually, I started calling them again, and I eventually learned that he was almost in San Miguel. By the time he did arrive, four hours had elapsed.

He had brought a new full-sized tire that fit our car, and since the replacement car wasn’t as nice as the original, we decided to stick with that and use the new tire as the spare. But the rental car company guy felt very strongly that we needed to use the new tire and keep the original (repaired) tire as a space. So he replaced the tire for a second time.

By the time it was all done, we had lost several hours, but we still drove to Guanajuato, and we did most of our sightseeing the next day. It worked out fine.

And we were able to drive the car back to Mexico City last Tuesday without any issues. Well, without any tire issues.

Gas problems

When we left San Miguel de Allende on Tuesday morning to drive back to Mexico City, we had about a quarter of a tank of gas, and so we knew we’d need to stop and get gas. I literally spent time calculating how much gas to get, based on the size of the gas tank, our rough gas mileage, and the distance, since we had prepaid for gas and could bring it back as empty as possible. My wife found the nearest gas station using Google Maps and we left.

Hilarity ensued.

That first gas station was closed. (Actually, it was non-existent, but whatever.) So we mapped to the next one. But as we had experienced a few nights earlier in San Miguel while using Google Maps to find an open restaurant with a reasonably high rating, that gas station wasn’t just closed, it had clearly not been open for some time. Was, in fact, surrounded by a high fence with razor wire on top.

As we made our way from the outskirts of San Miguel to the barren area beyond, each gas station, in turn, was also closed, and most were likewise surrounded by that high fence and razor wire getup. Within the hour, it became obvious that what we should have done is turn around and not leave the town until we found gas. What we did instead, blind slaves to the technology in our phones, was push forward. But again and again, there were no open gas stations to be found. Doesn’t anyone in Mexico need gas?

Eventually, the tank hit 1/8th of a tank and was pushing towards the red area at the bottom of the dial. By this point, we were on the outskirts of a city called Queretaro, which we had originally intended to visit on this trip but found little of interest while researching it. And that’s where we made our final, stupid mistake. At a huge highway interchange in which we could have continued straight towards Mexico City (and, for the three hours before that, an entirely empty stretch of open land) or right towards Queretaro. And we chose poorly.

I don’t intend to throw my wife under the bus here, but she was navigating and insisted we head straight while I knew that right was the better choice; better to be stuck in or around a city than out in the literal middle of nowhere. But I also deserve part of the blame because I doubt myself too easily, and in the face of her insistence, I trusted her. And I went straight.

This was a huge mistake. After the highway interchange, the road became divided with no way to turn around and no exits. There was heavy truck traffic. And as she scrambled to find the next gas station, my wife suddenly realized the error. And reported that the next exit with a potential gas station was over 15 minutes away. We were stuck.

White-knuckling it and silently calculating our odds based on the car’s expected range, I started coasting down hills in neutral. And by the time we did hit that first exit after the interchange, the needle was right on the edge of red. There was supposedly a gas station to the north, away from Queretaro, but a few minutes down that stretch of barrenness, we came across a familiar sight: A long-ago closed gas station surrounded by a fence and razor wire. So we U-turned, crossed over the highway, and headed in the opposite direction. Uphill.

Fortunately, the area quickly evolved into something resembling civilization, and we drove by a penitentiary of some kind, and then found an open gas station. An attendant came over to pump the gas and asked how much we wanted. Freaked out, I told him to just fill it up. And then I spent the next hour trying to come down from the stress/adrenaline/whatever of that little drive.

Internet and podcast problems

One of the unique problems I have is that I record podcasts, and not just every week, with Windows Weekly, but every morning, with First Ring Daily. The latter is a more casual affair, and on a trip like this, I could easily take days off if needed. But I try to do the show as often as I can, and have done so most days so far on this trip. The quality has varied based on the Internet connection and, as it turns out, on the quality of my AV gear.

Windows Weekly is far more important. I actually get paid for Windows Weekly, for starters, and I’ve been doing this show for a decade and a half, and I take it very seriously. In fact, I often schedule trips around Windows Weekly. When we visited Mexico City in June, we traveled from Thursday (the day after Windows Weekly) through Tuesday (the day before Windows Weekly) for that very reason.

With this trip, of course, we’d be gone two weeks, and so I would need to record at least one episode of the show from Mexico. But complicating matters, our kids would be coming to Mexico for the second of the two weeks, and they have their own scheduling needs. And so we booked this trip for a two-week period extending from Thursday, August 5 until Thursday, August 19, with our kids arriving right in the middle, on Thursday, August 12. Our original plan was to spend the first week, roughly, visiting three places in the center of Mexico—San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, and Queretaro—and then the second week with the kids in Mexico City and the surrounding area.

But over the course of that first week, I became increasingly nervous about our schedule, in which we would drive from San Miguel back to Mexico City on Wednesday, the same day that we record Windows Weekly. How could this possibly make sense? Windows Weekly starts at 2 pm ET, which is 1 pm local time here. The drive from San Miguel takes 3.5 to 4 hours, but we’d have to handle the rental car return and then cab or Uber to the Airbnb. But we couldn’t even check-in to the Airbnb until 3 pm, which is when Windows Weekly is scheduled to end.

My initial answer was to message the Airbnb host to see if we could book an extra day and get in early, but the room was booked through the night before. But he could accommodate me, he said, if the room wasn’t cleaned and ready, so that seemed OK. But our drive from Mexico City, during which we saw lots of traffic heading in the opposite direction, combined with the sheer amount of time everything would take, was making me nervous.

Added to this, in researching Queretaro, we decided to skip that city, as it didn’t seem very interesting despite all the proclamations about its greatness from various YouTubers. And so we were kind of stuck in San Miguel, where we were quickly running out of things to do: It’s a beautiful place, but you can see all of its top sites in just a few days.

So we were eating lunch one day when my wife announced that she had an idea: We could leave San Miguel and return to Mexico City, earlier than planned, get a hotel for two nights in Mexico City ahead o the podcast, and I could do Windows Weekly from there. Assuming the hotel was inexpensive enough, this seemed like a genius idea to me, and I told her so. And we pulled up the Hilton app and found that there was a Hampton Inn & Suites just one block from the Airbnb in Mexico City, making it super-easy to move from one to the other. And it was only $50 per night! We immediately booked it and a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders. This was a great idea.

I thought. We drove to Mexico City on Tuesday and experienced the gas issues noted above. We arrived at the rental place and were eagerly expected because of our flat tire problems; they proactively credited us for two of the days of the rental and then took more money off for our inconvenience, a fight I’d expected to make over the phone once we got home. And then we took a cab to the Hampton Inn & Suites.

Which turned out to be a hell hole. I won’t beat this one to death: The temperature in the room was 73 degrees when we arrived and never moved down despite our attempts to crank the AC, which emitted no sound or air push. And the Internet speeds were 5 Mbps over 5 Mbps. A podcast would be impossible.

After complaining at the front desk and being shown a second room with exactly the same problems, we simply checked out and we refunded. It was an old building, we were told. And we booked the two nights at the hotel we had stayed in on our previous trip, the Hilton Reforma. Which cost $150 per night. Ugh. (It was less than $100 on the previous trip.)

The Hilton Reforma is an excellent hotel, with fast and effective AC, and it has Wi-Fi speeds of 50/50 Mbps, which I figured would be excellent for the podcast. It wasn’t, as you can see—or, more aptly, hear—by watching the episode.

Here’s the thing. In the days leading up to this trip, I knew I would need to find some kind of microphone that was both portable and offered good (if not great) audio quality. So on Leo’s advice, I purchased an Audio-Technica ATR2100x USB microphone from Amazon at a cost of $100. This mic comes with a handy stand and USB-A and USB-C cables, and it can even connect to the XLR microphone connector I use at home. It seemed ideal, and when it arrived, I tested it at home with Brad on an episode of First Ring Daily. It was perfect, even better than I had hoped. So I brought it to Mexico.

I should also point out that one of the other reasons I had brought along the HP Elite Dragonfly Max—you know, the PC that was doused with water, scratched, and made unusable—was that it has a very high-quality 5 MP webcam that would be excellent for podcasting. I figured between the mic and that laptop that I was all set.

But the day before last week’s Windows Weekly episode, I did an audio test with the good folks from TWiT—seriously, Leo seems to attract some of the nicest and most competent people I’ve ever worked with—and I was devastated when that the ATR2100x was unworkable. I don’t know why, but we tested a variety of microphones, including the one in my cheap Google USB-C earbuds. But they all sucked, and we settled on the built-in mic in the HP ZBook Firefly as the best of a set of terrible choices. The results are available forever in that episode. It sounds terrible.

I have one more Windows Weekly to record before we leave, and that will occur from the Mexico City-based Airbnb from which I’m now writing these words. When we arrived on Thursday morning with our bags, I immediately tested the Wi-Fi and discovered that it was about 60/60 Mbps on the HP. This would normally delight me, but given the issues at the Hilton, not so much. Fortunately, I can wire into the router here, and I was able to get much higher speeds—I believe it was 600 Mbps down over 60 up, but my son is sleeping in that room right now; it was over 300 Mbps, for sure—and so maybe that will work out. Given my prior experiences, however, I’m not so sure. I’ll do more audio tests with TWiT before the show to find out.

Lessons learned?

Travel can often feel like life sped up. And I’ve been reflecting on the problems we experienced, some of which are blameless and random, and some of which were self-inflicted, and trying to figure out what we can take away from it all. I travel a lot, I’m compulsive enough to bring multiple computers on long trips like this, and I’m professional enough to try to ensure that I can get work done, and record podcasts, while away, and yet all of this preparedness didn’t prevent problems. And there were other minor issues I didn’t mention or glossed over. All you can do is roll with the punches.

I will tell you—and my wife will confirm—that for all of the problems we did experience, the only time I actually lost it on this trip was during that night I alluded to when Google couldn’t find an open restaurant in San Miguel de Allende. I literally lost it, and in the middling restaurant we finally did end up, I just sat there simmering for almost half an hour, waiting to calm down while our poor, young waiter looked on nervously, wondering what was wrong, afraid to interrupt me.

I can’t explain this, can’t explain why I just accepted the flat tire nonsense and the laptop that was destroyed by water, and then silently contemplated dying in the desert after my wife insisted we drive the wrong way. But there was something about Google f’ing up over and over and over again that just put me over the edge. It didn’t make any sense.

Anyway, I eventually came out of my funk. And that young waiter was delighted when I expressed my appreciation for an OK wine he had recommended. And hopefully even more delighted when I over-tipped. I know that means a lot here.

But the broader issue, of course, is that experience cast a bit of a pall over our ideas for the future: As you may know, we’re planning to sell our house in early 2022 and try to be a bit more mobile, perhaps split our time between two different places. But we had so much bad luck in just two weeks, and I keep thinking about how there are 52 weeks in a year, and how on earth can I handle this kind of thing over and over again.

I’ll get by this. Just being back in Mexico City has helped a bit. Despite the chaotic nature of this place, it makes sense to me.

And maybe I’ll go find a Torx key set and try again. I could use a victory.