Puerto Pe�asco is so much more than a friendly beach town for rest and relaxation. Once again, our residents have proven how quickly they can come to the aid of visitors in those rare situations when something does go wrong.

In the case of Sonoran Sea Resort owners, Pam Ross-Fogel and husband Bob, they were recipients of a full and impressive dose of the kind of caring action that our residents are capable of pouring forth when the going gets tough.

The Fogels were in town in June when Pam decided to go snorkeling, one of her favorite hobbies. She naturally stopped by the Dive Center in the Sonoran Sea lobby to get equipment from her friends Erika Reyna and Daniel Guemes. Pam and Erika had become friends down here from one of Pam's first trips after purchasing their condominium at the Sea when Pam, from Tulsa, Oklahoma discovered that Erika had lived in Tulsa as a nurse.

Erika decided to leave the shop in Daniel's good hands and go snorkeling with her friend. After a quick stop at their boat to pick up the snorkel gear and leave Erika's purse on board, the two ladies headed to the Mirador in Pam's Black Mustang, and by 3:00 o'clock the two had parked Pam's car near the Granada Hotel and walked the access road to the beach.

After a brief discussion about whether to leave Pam's swimsuit cover-up with her keys and Erika's iPhone on the beach, since Erika had done the same many times on that beach and Pam had done so on the beaches of St. Kitts where she lived for three years, it wasn't a major decision, and off into the sea they went.

Upon their return to the beach after nearly an hour in the water was when they discovered the cover-up was missing, along with the car keys and iPhone. Then they discovered the car was gone as well. They ran to the Granada Hotel and the front office clerk called the police and reported what they had told him. The police said they would begin monitoring all cameras on the roads out of town to make sure the car didn't leave the area.

Within 10 minutes two police officers arrived at the hotel parking lot and one immediately began going from establishment to establishment along the beach trying to locate witnesses. Afterward the officers gave Pam and Erika a ride to the police station to file a report. Pam was further impressed by how seriously the police took this incident when, on the way to the station, the officers spotted a car matching the description of the Mustang, made a quick U-turn and confirmed that it was not the stolen vehicle. The officers continued looking carefully at all cars on the way to the police station. At the station a police woman took their report with Erika translating  and recounting the incident.  Afterward, they were told that the D.A. would be the one to help them further.

Daniel picked up Pam and Erika at the police station and took them back to the condo get the car title and insurance papers as well as Pam's husband, Bob. While at the condo Pam called Rosie Glover who sold them their insurance policy through her company, ProAlliance Insurance and Rosie offered to come to the police station with them. Even though Pam told her that Erika and Daniel would be with them to talk to the D.A., Rosie still showed up at the station, and had called her adjustor, Jesus, who arrived and also stayed with them until they finished the report. At this point there were four residents who had dropped everything to help, not forgetting that Erika and Daniel have two small children plus their business.

Their efforts didn't stop there; even though it was now well into the evening of Wednesday.

In Pam's own words, "We then put the theft of the car on every website we could think of, Erika and Daniel put it on their Facebook in Spanish. I put it on their Facebook in English and my Facebook in English. I put it on the Rocky Point Talk website. People on the Rocky Point Talk were extremely helpful and offered to spread the word. A man who has a contact in the media world in Caborca asked me to send him a picture of the car so he could spread the word there and in Hermosillo.

"Strangers on Facebook and on the Rocky Point Talk website put the theft on their own pages and spread the word. Sandra O'Hare let people know on her 'network' of friends in [Puerto Pe�asco]. The security guards at Sonoran Sea and the people in the HOA office offered to keep an eye out for the car when they were in town. Everyone was so kind to us and genuinely concerned."

Keep in mind that all this activity has taken place and it's still Wednesday, only a few hours since the time the theft took place.

With all the bases covered, surely it wouldn't be long before some kind of lead came up, right? Right! Thursday morning, Daniel's Facebook page drew a phone call from an individual...

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When conducting research for the blog on Barb's great Rubber Ducky Race in July,  the rather creative term for a group of ducks, "a paddling" (along with several others as in the headline above), got us wondering how much fun it would be to see  what words our imaginative ancestors came up with to describe groups of other animals. And sure enough, it was certainly an interesting delve into history, conflict and clever interpretation dating, in some cases, back to the 16th century.

In an effort to bring you the most popularly accepted names for the different groups of animals we researched several volumes of respected sources, weaving through increasing idiomatic complexities, so we combined many of  the more obviously suited descriptions from four main resources: Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Dictionary of the English Language, Free Online Dictionary (which apparently uses a lot of information from Merriam-Webster) and the U.S.  Geological Survey Study of collective animal groups.

Even though you will notice some very appropriate names for some of the groups (i.e. a "parade" of elephants, conjuring up the circus coming to town), it was indeed a restraint of painful proportions to keep from adding to this list new groups and new titles, but, alas, another day perhaps. We hope you enjoy the collection below!

1,200 miles by bus through Mexico? Bring your laptop.

I have done my share of traveling around Mexico by bus. Some buses were nice and in some of the more remote areas, not so much. But, it is a very popular and inexpensive way to get around and can be very comfortable. I ran across this story and wanted to share... 

 

North of the border Mexico's infrastructure has a reputation as dilapidated and dangerous. But the country's efficient and comfortable bus system tells a different story, as Lourdes Medrano explains.

By Lourdes Medrano, Correspondent / July 14, 2013  

The image of old, rickety Mexican buses chugging two-lane roads in Hollywood films might have rung true in another era. But in modern Mexico, the bus system is an efficient, comfortable and inexpensive way of getting around  the country.

I first traveled long distance on Mexican buses more than 10 years ago, when my husband and I flew from Phoenix to Mexico City and, after spending some time in the capital, hopped on a bus to Quer�taro and Guanajuato in the central region. On each leg of our trip, we encountered a luxurious bus with comfortable reclining seats, air conditioning, several screens to watch movies and ample overhead space. We gave kudos to our travel agent.

The country's bus system is even better now, though safety concerns linked to organized crime are now part of the traveling equation. But Mexico is a big country, something the State Department now acknowledges in travel warnings that point to specific trouble spots.

With that in mind, in early July I boarded a bus with my 12-year-old son bound for the Guanajuato state capital, which I fell in love with all those years ago. We were the only members of our family with the time and inclination to go on a long bus ride from the border town of Nogales, Sonora to colonial Mexico. We usually travel south of the border by car or plane, so this would be an adventure.

My son, who had been exposed to the more basic US bus travel at least once before, was impressed to discover Wi-Fi and a screen right in front of him when we got on a bus headed for Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora state. Much to his delight the familiar "Iron Man 2" was the featured movie.

As Robert Downey Jr., rambled on in Spanish, my thoughts wandered to the story about the Arizona woman who spent several days in jail after being accused of smuggling marijuana under the seat of a Sonora bus headed for the border. Although we were going in the opposite direction, I instinctively checked under our seats. All clear.

Three hours of riding and a couple hours' waiting at the central de autobuses in Hermosillo later, we transferred to another bus that would take us to Guadalajara, Jalisco. This was the longest part of the trip, about 850 miles.

I started to wonder if traveling through Sinaloa at night would be a good idea. The state is, after all, home to Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzm�n's powerful drug-trafficking organization. Even before leaving Arizona I had mulled over the idea of staying overnight in Guadalajara, Mexico's second largest city. I decided against it. After all, incidents involving Mexican buses in recent years had happened in the northeastern region, not on the west coast.

My son and I slept through most of Sinaloa as the bus rolled through toll roads, considered safer both for buses and cars. Sinaloa's cornfields gave way to Nayarit's majestic mountains and about 22 hours later, the vibrant sights and sounds of Guadalajara came into view. Buses leave so frequently in this major hub that we quickly found a connection to Guanajuato, about 180 miles away.

This, according to my son, was the "best bus ever." Here, passengers not only got lunch but also had access to the Internet and individual screens where each could watch various movies or listen to music in English or Spanish. Oh, and you could play video games, which explained my son's pleasant mood after so many hours on the road - and a few more at bus terminals.

Some 1,200 miles and 30 hours after leaving Nogales, we arrived safely in Guanajuato and handed a bus attendant the ticket we'd been issued for our luggage.Though I'd heard the infrastructure is dismal in some parts of Mexico, the roads we traveled were robust. Bus drivers were courteous and professional.

In all, the fare for both of us totaled about $220, with my son getting the usual 50 percent discount for minors. Our Guanajuato host picked us up, but bus terminals throughout the country are centrally located and finding a cab nearby is easy. 

So, you think that this weekend is all about Labor Day and everyone is celebrating (as Wikipedia puts it) "the economic and social contributions of 

workers", right? Are you sure that they aren't celebrating something else? Something like.... International Bacon Day?   

Yes, Saturday, August 31, 2103 was International Bacon Day. There is even an unofficial Wikipedia website celebrating the special day for you really curious (or bored) types. Here it is if you are interested:  

http://bacon.wikia.com/wiki/International_Bacon_Day. 

In the spirit of Labor Day and Bacon Day, the ideal recipe would have been the bacon wrapped Sonoran Dog. But, since I didn't think of it at the time (and was totally unaware of the renowned  International Bacon Day), I have already used that recipe. So, this one will have to do.  

It does look good though...  

Have you ever wondered some of these things but just aren't crazy (which is a requirement for people to look up stuff like  this) enough yet to go look them up? Well, give your brain a break and your conscience some relief because we hit a milestone in the crazy department and looked up the answers to some of the questions you never thought you'd get answers to. For example:  How many words in the English language?  

The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use and another 47,156 obsolete words.  For comparison, the most popular Spanish dictionary contains 100,000 words.

If you count inflections, derivatives, distinct senses, words from technical and regional vocabulary and words yet to be published, the number of words in the English language can still only be estimated.  That estimation is approximately three quarters of a million words.

Does English have the most words of any language?

Although this is impossible to answer definitively due to historical reasons, according to Oxford Dictionary resources (apparently the only lexicologists brave enough to tackle this question) it is probable that English does have the most words of at least any of the comparable world languages.

Historically, the English vocabulary has grown steadily through the influence of several major world languages. It was originally a Germanic language deriving a lot of grammar and basic vocabulary from Dutch and German.  English was also hugely influenced by Norman French when it became the language of the ruling classes after the Norman Conquest of 1066.

Always receptive to new forms of linguistic expression and definition, English was also heavily influenced by Latin as it became the language of scholars and of the Church; and Greek as it gained world status as the language of mathematics and the sciences.  Consequently the English vocabulary grew exponentially with the sum of the individual influences from Norman French, Latin, Greek added to its Germanic origin.

The only linguistic "monkey wrench" to a sure bet that English probably has the most words is that to even assume this we must ignore the handful of agglutinative languages such as Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish, Korean and Swahili that allow words to be stuck together ad infinitum for definitive description or expression purposes, which therefore can create an infinite number of words.

With all the above information under our belt, it's amazing to note that out of some 750,000 words these following strange lexicon phenomena would exist:

Dreamt is the only English word ending in -mt.Unless you count undreamt, as in technological development is at a pace undreamt of just a decade ago. (sic.2nd EOED).

Angry and hungry are the only two words in current English that end in -gry..

There is only one eight letter word in the English language that contains five consecutive vowels: Queueing.  

Underground and underfund are the only words in the English language that begin and end with the letters "und."

There are only four words in the English language which end in "dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

Other fun facts about English:

There are more English words beginning with the letter "s" than with any other letter. (This is mainly because clusters such as 'sc', 'sh', 'sp', and 'st' act almost like independent letters.)

The most common consonant in English is "r", followed by "t".

The most common vowel in English is "e", followed by "a".

The overall most common letter in English is "e".

The most frequently used word in the English language is "the" (it was used three times in this sentence alone). Note: The most commonly used word in conversation is "I".

Considering the last three facts, imagine this challenge:

The book Gadsby (not to be confused with "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald), written by Ernest Vincent Wright, has 50,110 words, none of which contain the letter "e"! Called a lipogram, the book was published in 1939. When typing the final manuscript, Wright actually tied the "e" key bar back to avoid inadvertently slipping the letter in. It was appreciated mostly by other writers who knew how difficult the undertaking was.  However, according to a Bookride blog of February 2007, the book's scarcity and oddness has seen original copies priced at $4,000 by dealers.

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