Seventh installment of the “things that happen to you while” series.

For those not wise to Texas talk, The Valley refers to the Rio Grande Valley, or more generally, the area around the border. My friend Ricardo is from Edinburg, a smallish town in The Valley with about 50,000 people. I’ve known this guy for almost 10 years and I have yet to visit him in The Valley, so I figured it was about time I made the trip. So I hopped on a plane to McAllen (the closest airport) to spend four days exploring the bosom of the Rio Grande Valley.

I’m hoping you picked up on the bosom reference above. I’ll give you one hint: a coffee can and the pacific ocean.

Large quantities of beer were consumed and some excellent Tex-Mex was had. Note, however, that not all the tex-mex was good. Proximity to Mexico does not automatically result in higher quality levels of tex-mex. There is no correlation. Case in point: the first restaurant we went to served some pretty lame tex-mex. My mom makes better tex-mex, and she’s basically Polish. No matter. The rest of the tex-mex we had was good.

We managed to make a trip to Mexico, or rather the tourist area for buying souvenirs and whatnot called Nuevo Progreso just across the river. I have never seen so much useless shit for sale. I have also never seen such amazing prices on alcohol. Bottles and bottles of liquor at ridiculous prices. Otherwise, it reminded me of my time in Russia: children hawking all kinds of knick-knacks, low air quality, overcrowding, etc. It was not a pleasant sight. Kind of depressing actually. Keep in mind we only saw the shops on the tourist strip. I can’t imagine what it was like off the main road.

After Mexico, we stopped by South Padre Island. It was my first time there. Yeah, I know. What took me so long. I don’t know. I just never made it down there. It was kind of deserted since we were there in the off-season. It was kind of a ghost town. We did have some good seafood though. Or, actually, my fish po-boy was good. Ric’s shrimp platter was not that great. He wasn’t too keen on eating “shrimp poo.” The shrimp were not de-veined. Sorry bud.

To my surprise, minor league hockey is huge in The Valley. We saw the Rio Grande Valley Killer Bees battle the Amarillo Gorillas and beat them in overtime. It was pretty cool. I haven’t seen a hockey game since I was a kid and this game reminded me how much fun hockey is to watch. It’s like football on ice, but the players are allowed to fight until one guy falls down. And the overtime shootouts are awesome.

Ric also has a small radio-controlled helicopter that totally mesmerized us every minute that we were at home. This thing is incredible. I have to get one. You can only use it indoors because it’s made of Styrofoam and any wind will blow it clear across your yard into someone else’s yard, or a tree, or a street, or who knows what.

We also watched a lot of movies, one of which was Nacho Libre with Jack Black. You have to be a Jack Black fan to like this movie. It is absurd and over-the-top in a way only Jack Black can pull off. He plays a Luchador, a Mexican wrestler. I took to calling him Luchador Grande because, well, Jack’s a tubby guy. Ric happens to have a little dog named Chato who liked to bark at me at every opportunity. He was a sprite little guy who could have been a wrestler if he were a person. So I started calling him Chato Grande in honor of his wrestling potential.

And that’s my Valley story. Hope you enjoyed it. Actually, I don’t care. I’m a Luchador and I’ll do an eagle jump off the ropes and take you out.