The Reverend Machismo

Across the street and up a few houses from our little rental apartment lives.....The Reverend. The Reverend is in his late 70's and wears glasses and almost always a hat. Often times his hat is red to match his truck. His truck is a little red two door ride that can really make a statement when pushed.

After renting here for 6 months, we've learned The Reverend's morning ritual, yet it still makes us wonder, "what the hey?" He is not called The Reverend because he is a pious man but rather because he is a revvv-er. Each and every morning, without fail, he is up at 5:30 and gets into his little red ride, starts it and then revvs the gas. LOUD. Obnoxiously and ridiculously LOUDLY and for 15 to 20 seconds. Not 15-20 seconds and then he is done, 15-20 seconds per rev. He revs over and over. With the cost of gas being so high, we just don't know how he can afford it. The strange thing is that he only sometimes goes somewhere after all that revving. Other times he just sits inside the red ride, revs and stays right there in front of his casa. Guess he just wants the whole neighborhood to know that he is still very much alive and kicking and...revving. With each break-of-dawn growl of the little truck, you can almost hear his Machismo roar.
Ah Reverend, long may your revv reign supreme.

Mondongo & Boxing Match Box In

In Panama there is a house building tradition in which we recently took part. When the roof on your house goes up, your construction crew erect a bandera roja (red flag) and won't take it down until you throw them a Mondongo party to celebrate the milestone of being under roof. The fiesta gets its name from the meal traditionally served at the party. Mondongo is tripe, ie. cow stomach. Needless to say when the mondongo part of the celebration ended up not materializing, I wasn't exactly crushed.

In addition to the food and beer (they specifically requested Budweiser and Tecate) we gave the guys tickets to the 2nd Annual Panama Regional Boxing tournament that night. Randy used to box back in the day and I had never been to a boxing match live so we decided to splurge and get a Super VIP ringside table for $15/person. Before the bouts began, we got to hear the Panamanian anthem for the first time. Suitable timing as we recently became official card carrying Panamanian residents. YEAH! Though the fights were entertaining, by 10:30ish, I was ready to head home. We thought Rand would run me to the house and return to see a few more fights. But that was not to be. As we neared our vehicle in the parking lot we saw to our dismay that were securely boxed in by another car. Yes, boxed in at a boxing match.
Rand sent me home in a taxi and remained until the evening concluded at 2:30am when the offending boxer-inner came slowly sauntering out of the gym. Obviously, he hadn't heard the several announcements made over the loudspeaker about his license number asking him to move his ride. The very tired Randy was certainly glad to be finally free.