More and more, it seems clear that 99% of what we hear is driven by forces that benefit from us either being at home frozen in front of our TVs, or in our cars en route to producing/consuming facilities. To my great fortune, in the last few years I’ve been permitted to greatly reduce my time with television, cars, cubicles, and stores.

That kind of freedom to experience life is a joyous gift for which I am grateful. It also really calls attention to the disconnect between the things that everyone knows and the world which one can experience.

In this instance, I’m thinking specifically of visiting Mexico, which continues to be an incredible perk of living in San Diego, in spite of the fact that everyone I talk to seems to think it is somehow particularly risky.

I am aware that as humans we have a very difficult time assessing probability — we overestimate the odds of anything that has specific details. Thus the success of the nightly news in scaring us, and of the lottery in redistributing our money.

Still, it’s obvious that if Baja were as dangerous as people think it is, it would have a population of zero by now. Instead, there is a huge city a short walk to San Diego, a vibrant port and college town a couple hours away, and a deep and beautiful wine country in between.

This weekend, we took a tip from Masa Assassin and checked out Erizo Cebicheria in Tijuana, it was delightful. Michael recently went down to Laja and Manzanilla, something I got to do last month and can’t wait to do again.

As much as I enjoy the lack of crowds at some of these places since the Americans stopped coming, I know that by deserting these businesses en masse, we’re starving ourselves as well as them. San Diego is a nice place to live, but San Diego/Tijuana/Ensenada is a compelling, rich, rewarding world. I love that we all get to participate in it.