When it all went wrong, it was mind-boggling that someone could get away with something this wrong, something so totally unethical. But there they were, trucks and bulldozers, filling in our oceanfront with land fill. The bastards knew just what they were doing, too. It was all part of a massive effort to callously transform several hundred yards of Mexico coastline and make themselves millions of extra dollars in profit. For months and months trucks loaded with boulders rumbled by the front door while barges with huge dredging pumps created massive sand bars to fill in [...]

Six months in Mexico wasn’t all just carefree fun, though the bodysurfing and inviting friends to come visit for a week sure helped. I was in charge of building a second beach house on the vacant parcel that my dad just bought next to our first house, so there were building chores to occupy me on a regular basis. Meanwhile, Melody passed the time creating several stained glass windows for the new house and baking bread. It was 1988, and my dad and I were at the height of our developer thinking ways, so our plan was to build this [...]

Sometimes I think I could become a guy who spends his days building houses by the beach in Mexico. It’s not that life in Benicia isn’t working. I’m just fantasizing about a parallel universe where I took a different path.  (Like you don’t do this sort of thing?) It’s actually pretty easy for me to entertain this idea, because twenty years ago I actually was that guy. For six months (until my tourist card ran out) in my pre-kids, pre-house payments phase. It came about when my parents became deeply enamored of Mexico and bought some beach property in La [...]