Coaching for Pizza: A Morning Walk in Texcoco and Another Visit to the Aztec Pyramids at Teotihuacan

Sunday, December 10, 2017:

With the rigors and tight schedule of game week behind us, Sunday was a time of good-byes as some players and coaches departed for their homes all over the globe.

For some of those staying in Mexico, flying home on Monday, a trip to the nearby Aztec pyramids at Teotihuacan was a must see event.

The bus to the pyramids would leave at 10:00 a.m. giving me just enough time for one more early morning walk through Texcoco.

Cool park bench crest

in Texaco's Central Park

VIVA ZAPATA!

Mexico's most beloved and revered leader

Silverio Pérez

One of Mexico's greatest bull fighters

Butchers getting meat to market,

no refrigeration trucks needed

One of Texcoco's many churches

It was the first of three that I would visit on my stroll.

Mass had already started

Texcoco's Arcade was quiet

early in the morning

'Tis the season . . .

First Communion is a HUGE

event in Catholic countries

I love some good sausage at breakfast

Churros?

This place merited crossing the street

Four churros for 10 pesos?

DONE DEAL!

Ten pesos is only about 50 cents USD.

Fresh, warm churros are a such fantastic source of energy for us power walkers as you may know.

" . . . and oh so good for you too!"

A priest behind bars?

Santa Clauses atop a colorful wall

Texcoco's Cathedral

Mass was scheduled to

start in five minutes

Need a religious statue, rosary, etc.

then this is THE place for you

"¿Donde esta la biblioteca?"

Colorful mural

And yet another church

Simple and quiet inside

Many walls in Texcoco are rented

out as billboards

Some advertise stores and products

but many, like these, are politically oriented

Simple but fun

We might need to repaint this

one in the next few decades

Early morning street sweeping

as always done by hand

Texcoco could probably use a bit of sidewalk cement work too, in the years ahead.

THE COUNT!

YumKaax

"God of the Corn"

I love a good artisan cheese

in the morning

Closed on Sunday.

I really need to get back

home to Laurie soon

And to our three grandchildren, too.

My morning constitutional over, it was time to board the bus and head to Teotihuacan.

We also visited this tremendous archaeological park last August on the day after out Europe Warriors Senior team played against the UNAM Pumas who would eventually become the 2017 ONEFA Collegiate League Champions.

Last August I did not have enough

time to visit site's Museum

Mauricio Diaz-Jaworski

"The Polish Rifle II"

Today I made it a point to enter the Museum first and was joined by noted Mexican History expert Mauricio Diaz-Jaworski who gave me all sorts of insights.

What a GREAT guy. He is full of life and mischief too. Mauricio is just a fun, high energy man to have as a friend and fellow coach.

He will soon be going to Madrid to join his longtime friend Jesús Sánchez on the coaching staff of the Osos Rivas.

Por favor, do a tapas crawl for me Mauricio!

A score marker for the ancient

Aztec ball game

Mauricio reminded me that the captain of the winning team in these most important of traditional Aztec games was deemed the proper person to sacrifice to the gods after the game.

Can you say point shaving?

The Aztecs made arrow heads and

spear points from obsidian

This area in and around Mexico City is ringed with volcanoes.

Obsidian is a natural occurring volcanic glass, so using it to make these weapons was common sense approach to their hunting and defense issues.

A god?

Is that a human sacrifice

toy statue?

That reminds me, I need to start

dieting and exercising

The Aztec god of Solitude?

Aztec Jewelry

The MASSIVE Pyramid of the Sun

Aztec Burial Site

Interesting . . .

Quetzalcoatl

"The Feathered Serpent"

Aztec god of Wind and Learning

An Aztec Schmo?

With Mauricio in front of

the Pyramid of the Sun

Looking along the Avenue of the Dead

with the smaller Pyramid of the Moon

in the distance

Mauricio and I both bought

some fun little pieces of art

from this man

With Mike Wood, Alex Gudding

and Mauricio Diaz-Jaworski

Mike is our Defensive Coordinator. For the second straight Warriors' visit to Teotihuacan, Mike joined some of our players in climbing to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun.

Now that's amazing to me, good job Coach Mike!

Alex was a LB for us who hails from Sweden and plays for the powerhouse Carlstad Crusaders. He joined Coach Mike for the climb up the face of the Pyramid of the Sun.

Mauricio is our Running Backs coach and is in charge of Strength and Conditioning as well.

Mauricio and I cheered our mates on from terra firma as they ascended the Pyramid of the Sun.

After two hours at Teotihuacan, we started to head back to Texcoco but we opted to eat lunch first just outside of the archeological parks fence at a good restaurant that we had first visited last August.

The 19 of us after a good meal

We needed two tables for our

dining needs

As is typical of these type of restaurants near touristy areas, we had full on Aztec dancers and Mariachi bands playing to entertain us during our meal.

For a price of course.

When the Mariachis came around asking for donations after playing the room, one of our players asked if they knew a certain tune, Cancion del Mariachi?

Claro!

While we all thought that he was asking them to sing this song that I knew only from the Antonio Banderas movie Desperado, perhaps the BEST movie of all-time, our young CB Tobias Witaliz from Poland was actually asking them to play it so the he could sing it for us!

Hell, we'll all donated money for that!

ENJOY!

Toby went on for over two minutes but I had to trim the video in half so that it would upload to the blog.

He was AWESOME!

In addition to his singing and dancing skills, Toby was considered by the coaching staff to be our team MVP of the game yesterday. He made a ton of good plays during our 60 minute battle.