Flame (with Mexico story)

We were at a friend's house having a Christmas party back in 2003, and there was a fire pit in his back yard. I took six or seven pictures with the 3800, and this one had the best "pattern", in my opinion.

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It was recommended that I tell this story while it is still fresh, so here it is. I don't have much time to write these days, so will use this as a sort of placeholder and keep it in draft form here. It will be updated and expanded once in a while as time permits.

I lived in Mexico back in 1980, so at church it fell upon me to head up a mission opportunity there. As part of that effort we organize a couple of trips per year to keep up, and be encouraged by, those that we support.

This past November 7th six of us from the congregation left early in the morning, reaching our crossing point at Progreso/Nuevo Progreso just after lunch. We normally cross at that location because of its relative solitude and distance from Nuevo Laredo, which for a time got some pretty bad press due to cartel activity. The crossing went smoothly, and from there we headed west on Highway 2 to catch Hwy 40 on to Monterrey.

From Nuevo Progreso Highway 2 passes to the south of Reynosa. Traffic was just starting to get congested when we noticed a truck blocking the road ahead. Highway 2 has two lanes going west and two lanes going east, with a wide median in the middle. We saw that both of our lanes were blocked by the truck...one of those box-type delivery trucks. I shared with the others that this was not unusual - all we had to do was either stop or figure out a way to go around. I was in the front passenger seat and one of the elders of the church was driving.

Upon approaching the scene we observed that cars were forming a single file line and going down an embankment to the right in order to get around the truck. We decided to follow suit (not that there was much choice) and took a chance that the van would not tip as it leaned over onto the embankment. As we did so the rest of the scene came into view; there was an 18-wheeler tanker truck that was facing the wrong way on our two lanes, and there was another truck at the other end of the 18-wheeler that was identical to the one we initially saw. Both trucks crossed both lanes and were parked very close to the larger truck so that movement in either direction was impossible for the 18-wheeler.

The gravity of the situation still had not dawned on any of us, so on the other side of the scene (after passing the second truck that was blocking the 18-wheeler) we eased back onto the road and went on our way westbound, thinking this was just another traffic hassle.

Not fifteen seconds later I was looking down at the GPS unit as my friend drove and heard something that sounded like a loud "rat-tat-tat-tat-tat". I thought, "Gee, that sounded like a gunfire...could it be?" I looked up just in time to see a Mexican military Hummer traveling the other direction in the opposite lanes; as it came exactly adjacent to us I heard it again, this time seeing the muzzle flash as each round went off. Oddly, the first thought I had was, "Could those be real bullets coming out of that thing?"

Of course they were, a fact that was underscored when we began hearing the answer of machine gun fire from the bad guys at the truck that we just passed. At that point I had only two thoughts: 1) if we get hit (because the bad guys were firing in our general direction back at the military Hummer that just passed us) it had better be below window level; there was enough stuff packed in the back to absorb the impact before reaching the cabin where we were sitting; and 2) we've got to get out of here! There were civilians running from the scene by now parallel to our direction of travel, away from the battle.

The back-and-forth of the gunfire had reached such a pitch that one of the ladies sitting in the back of the van was telling her son to duck, to get below window level. The driver looked at me and asked what we should do. I said, "We've got to get out of here - step on it!"

Well, he did - everything on the dash flew off as we accelerated, and we headed out of there!

For about ten seconds.

Trouble was, everyone else had the same idea, which caused a number of crashes in the stretch ahead of us. The gunfire did subside, but it took us more than an hour to navigate around at least two wrecks caused in the scramble out of there. Finally we cleared the Reynosa area and enjoyed smooth sailing all the way to Monterrey, our first stop on the mission trip.

So that is how we witnessed a battle between the Mexican military and the drug cartels, and missed being in the epicenter by less than 20 seconds.