Are we there yet?

Camping in California Part I

2010-08-16T11:05:00.000-07:00

Don't ever go to Yosemite. This is at least as much for Yosemite's sake as it is for yours. That's really all I'm going to say about it.

Our first stop of this trip was Lava Beds National Volcanic Monument, which is just south of the Oregon border in California. This was the site of both a huge shield volcano and lake Modoc, home of the native Americans of the same name. Of course the Euro-American settlers killed the Indians and drained the lake to sustain the farms that the settlers came to claim. Along with the fields of lava, there is a battlefield where the American cavalry was held off by a handful of outnumbered Modoc, petroglyphs from the Modoc, and amazing lava tube caves, many of which are hikable. So there's a great combination of historical/cultural and natural. We also saw a buck mule deer walk right next to our campsite early one morning, as well as many pretty birds that we don't see at home.

The most amazing thing we did there was take a trip down an ice cave. Most of the lava tubes were meandering and large, but not very deep. This particular cave, called Skull Cave, was straight down on a twisting, narrow metal staircase. With each step the air got cooler and the metal handrail was soon so cold my hand, which was gripping it for dear life was numb. At the end of the terrifying stairwell there was a metal gate to prevent anyone from going further. We were about to be really disappointed when we noticed that the floor was not actually the floor. Right in front of us the ice was so clear that it was several feet deep, which is why we didn't notice it at first. On the left side of this ice block were a bunch of teeth from something about the size of a dog. Apparently, in drought years both animals and people would come down here to get water. How on earth animals or people made it down without a stairwell is beyond me, but the evidence shows that a lot of the animals at least didn't make it back up. On our way out we noticed that in the sunny entrance there was a carving. Howard, one of the original Euro-American explorers signed his name and date in the rock: 1920!

Campsite, parents and sis in the orange tent, me and the dog in the blue. Notice the brooding clouds in the background.

My messy tent getting aired out.

Harper looks nonplussed as he and I wait for the rest of the family to come back from a hike. I didn't feel well and spent a few hours in camp hydrating and hanging out with the dog.

Ahh, lava rock and sage brush, the landscape east of the Cascades.

The cliff walls that the petroglyphs were carved into. The weren't as high back when the carvings took place, as the lake, now miles away, was a least a few feet deep here.

Some petroglyphs. I took a bunch of photos here, but decided to only post one. It was pretty neat and not something we generally see on our camping trips.

Fields of lava! This place is called Devil's Homestead, which everyone thought was pretty amusing.

Ceiling of Skull Cave.

Dad and youngest sister in the opening of Skull Cave. Couldn't get any shots inside the cave due to the darkness, but I thought this one was pretty neat.

Camping in California Part II

2010-08-16T10:51:00.000-07:00

Next stop was down towards Yosemite. The plan was to camp about an hour from the park for a couple nights, then snag a campsite in the park for a few more nights. We got to a beautiful campground in the evening after a long drive through California and Nevada. Our one amusing stop for the day was in Nevada where one can apparently buy liquor in a pharmacy, which we did as the taxes are less than in Oregon. Also in the pharmacy, although we didn't participate, was a "game room" where you can play a slot machine, just in case you can't make it through your pharmacy trip without gambling. Oh, Nevada.

While most of us thought the campground was gorgeous, Dad was not impressed as the strong wind made setting up difficult and a fire impossible. He cheered up immensely as the newly purchased bottle of Jameson was opened and moments later he provided us one of the side-splittingly funny moments of the trip. After convincing Mom to have some whiskey, which she didn't really want he spied a mosquito buzzing around her. "Mosquito!" he shouted and swatted, supposedly, at the bug. Instead he connected squarely with the cup of Jameson, spraying it all over my bewildered mother. Dad was embarrassed and Mom was furious at the prospect of smelling like booze for the rest of the trip, so restraining laughter I found my sister who was brooding just outside the campsite to relay the story. It probably took me five attempts to get all the words out without doubling up with laughter. That night, the world's most tame and stupid deer walked right into our campsite while we were eating dinner and, four feet away from us, proceeded to chew on a piece of asphalt. Strange, to say the least.

The next day we drove to Yosemite to check out the park and to see how the campgrounds were filling up. The drive there was gorgeous, but as we got near the park we slowed to a halt to wait in a line of cars for admission. Once inside, it was pretty, but crowded and we weren't allowed to take the dog anywhere. One by one the campgrounds we investigated were ruled out and a huge fight broke out over whether we were to see another camp which was out of the way. I won and we drove an hour down a terrible road to discover that the campground sucked. I was relieved that we'd gone down there, otherwise we'd have camped there the next night. So the next day we went to Yosemite again and raced to a different campground only to have that filled. With no place to stay that night, we had another argument and finally settled on seeing the park quickly, then taking off for somewhere else as camping was not going to be an option nearby. Our tour was underwhelming to say the least. Again, don't go there, for the sake of the park.

Not sure exactly which mountains these are, but behind them is Yosemite. Behind me is the campsite. Quite the view with a short walk up the hill. The elevation - 7,000 ft - made it so I was winded just walking up here.

View of our camp.

I love the high desert. So beautiful.

Camping in California Part III

2010-08-16T09:57:00.001-07:00

After fleeing Yosemite, we drove and drove and drove and finally got a hotel room far north, having changed our plans to Lassen Volcanic National Park. The rest of my family had been there years ago while I was in the army, so I was looking forward to getting to see it too.

It turned out to be a wonderful place, full of great views, interesting things like boiling mud pots and steaming fumeroles. We went on several beautiful hikes and while I hated our campsite - it was in the middle of the campground and I felt like we were in a fishbowl - the park itself was far better than Yosemite. My favorite part was getting my mom to go with my sister and I on an actual hike. She's diabetic and out of shape, afraid of heights and totally lacking in confidence in her abilities. The hike we went on was intimidatingly called Bumpass Hell. It lead to a thin part of the volcano where steaming holes of boiling water, acid and sulphur are visible. It was named after a guide who lost his leg when he stepped through the surface into a pit of boiling water. Mom was in full freakout mode when we had to cross patches of slippery snow, having just seen a bunch of signs warning, essentially, "Boiling water! Acid! Boiling acid! Do not leave the trail!!!!!" She did fine and I think she may have even enjoyed herself a bit. The end of the trail was totally worth it for me, being right next to all that crazy volcanic stuff.

I took a million pictures, but I'll spare you and only post a few.

Mt. Lassen, as seen from the Devastated Area. As the name implies, when the volcano exploded in 1915, this area took the brunt of it.

A moderately sized rock. How'd you like to see this thing flying in the air!

I forget the type of fracture this is called, but you can clearly see that the rock pieces fit together. Apparently volcanoes are hot.

Beautiful lake, Helen I think the name is. While we were on the Bumpass Hell hike, dad took the dog for a swim. Illegally, as it turned out since dogs were banned from swimming anywhere in the park. Whatever, it was too hot for a dog to hang out in the parking lot.

Boiling mudpot next to the main road through the park. There were a bunch of kids here and one of them said, "Ewww! It smells like Grandpa's farts!"

The view at the beginning of the Bumpass Hell trail. Beautiful meadow with a meandering stream.

Bumpass Hell! The next couple of photos are from there too.

This pond was at the very end of the boardwalk of Bumpass Hell. The pretty color is misleading, as I'm pretty sure it's some sort of horrible acid.

Red Moon

2009-09-23T23:47:00.000-07:00

My sister frowned at the sky and then turned to me, "Ummm, doesn't a red moon mean something bad?"

"I thought that was something to do with sailing and a red moon in the morning. Dunno if it means anything at night. 'Sides, there's not a cloud in the sky. It's a beautiful night."

A few hours later we were in the tent, nearly alone and definitely out of sight of any other campers out on the Montana prairie and the wind started blowing. Hard. Then there was some lightning in the distance, thunder and a bit of rain. The wind picked up, the lightning increased. I laid (lied? I hate English.) awake, suddenly concerned about tornadoes. I mean, this is the prairie. As soon as I mentioned it to the Youngest Sis we immediately set about trying to find a cell signal so as to get the weather report from those internet connected individuals at home (our parents). Dad responded with a "get in the car!" We were there. Ten minutes later Mom gives us the weather report for some area 200 miles away. Yes, it's in Montana, but no, the weather isn't nearly the same everywhere in that giant state!

The wind started to really get alarming and I remembered I'd left the poor needy dog in the tent. While YS (Youngest Sis) stood on the passenger seat with her cell phone above the roof to try and pick up a signal, I opened the tent for Harper who came shooting out in a tired and confused panic. He joined us in the car, completely bewildered after five days of traveling away from his normal family, house and car. What insane creatures he must have thought us. Word came back from Mom that there were indeed no tornado watches or warnings in our area, just scattered thunderstorms. We waited for confirmation before heading back to the tent.

After gathering up some things we didn't want to get soaked and throwing them in the car, I climbed back into bed. Harper stumbled around and tried to crawl in my sleeping bag before collapsing in a huff on his own pad. YS, still not entirely convinced that there wasn't going to be a tornado later on, attempted to tie her cell phone to the inner roof of the tent, in the hopes that if something did come along and Mom heard about it and texted we might get a signal.

"Just tie a slipknot," I suggested after she had spent five minutes fiddling with the thing. The it fell and clonked Harper on the head. He just sighed.

"What the fuck is a slipknot?" she hissed at me. "I don't have time for all your fancy knots it's the middle of the night!"

So that's how we spent the rest of the night. The wind howled and battered the tent, with YS's cellphone swinging wildly from the roof and Harper sitting up every half hour having been awoken by the tent flapping. Just know that a red moon in the evening may not mean tornadoes, and in fact may not mean anything at all, but it doesn't rule out crappy weather either.

Planning the Cross-Country Trip

2009-07-17T00:01:00.001-07:00

Even though I'm quite comfortable with computers and other gadgets and even though I recognize their incredible usefulness, when it comes to planning trips, hikes or even day itineraries, I'm much happier with a map, paper and pen. In a couple weeks I'm headed out on a cross-country road trip; my dog and sister will accompany me on the way out and it'll be just me and dog on the way back. My dad's side of the family is gathering for my cousin's wedding. I'm totally not a wedding girl, not least of all because I have to shop for and wear a dress, but I'm actually really excited about the trip.

First off, there's the prospect of actually driving across the country again. I've done it one way twice - if that doesn't make sense at first, I bought a car in Oregon and drove it to the army post I was stationed at in New York and then a year later I returned to Oregon (for good!) - and when I was a kid I went on two roundtrips and two one-way moves. I'm a roadtrippin' girl. I actually LIKE to stare out the window for hours on end with nothing and everything to think about. I love watching the scenery slowly change - from the geology to the plants to the wildlife to the farming to the architecture.

It's three and a half to four days of pretty solid driving, but since we're not in a hurry, we're going to see some national parks and camp along the way. There are lots of places that my sister, being eight years younger, hasn't seen and a few that I've never been to, so we're taking the opportunity to hit some new places.

So far the rough plan is to head towards I-90, make a stop at Glacier National Park, then over to Theodore Roosevelt NP - a place I've never been - then down to the Badlands for a hike. After that we'll be on 90 again for a ways, and at some point we're going to turn north and through the great lakes. Specifically, we're passing through a narrow (perhaps only a bridge, I'm not sure) point between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Even just on the atlas this part looks gorgeous.

Then there's the Pittsburgh part of the trip. Pittsburgh, like most eastern cities, is staggeringly different from most west coast cities. There are two-hundred-year-old houses, surrounded by even old trees, that would take up two city blocks if they were in the west; some of them even have servants quarters detached on the property, now used as huge single family homes. The road system is not on a grid and kind of exasperating for an out of towner. The city is divided into neighborhoods that are often based on ethnicity - there's the Jewish neighborhood, the Irish neighborhood, etc. Sure, we have Chinatowns in the west, but that's really all, and even those are just not the same thing. There are also a lot of great parks in the city (not that Portland doesn't have a ton) as well as museums, universities and ridiculously good-looking sports facilities. As far as Pacific northwest sports fans go.... well, the Timbers Army is the exception that proves the rule. Never will you find such don't-care-unless-we're-winning gloryhunters than in the northwest. Pittsburgh is where you will find what it means to live and breathe your team and city. I may even go to a baseball game while I'm there and I HATE baseball.

I've even found a pub to watch the USA World Cup Qualifier against Mexico! Of course that would be one of the first things I planned.

No easing back into America

2009-05-27T20:51:00.000-07:00

No one stamped my passport when I landed in Atlanta. Looking at it, there's no proof that I ever left the UK and I can't help but picture the really mean woman from the Manchester airport's border patrol team thinking something similar when I go back again. The reason they forgot to stamp my passport is because they were caught up in sending me over to the "random" search center so all of my (one) bags could be picked through by a man wearing latex gloves. Initially skeptical that I'd spent nearly two months abroad with only one bag, they let me go and I scurried over to my next flight.

Everyone's accents sound strange and grating, Dick Cheney is all over the television for reasons I still don't fully understand and then there were the people on the train... That's right, I took a train in America! The ticket was cheap, the scheduled time was short and I needed to get down to my parents' where my car was parked anyway, so I thought I'd give the Amtrak a shot. The first major difference from European trains is that I was given what seemed like ten feet of legroom. I can't imagine how tall someone would have to be to take advantage of all that space. Later in the journey, a 12-year-old girl sat next to me - blocking my path to the aisle right before my stop - and pulled a lever on the chair that sent out a footrest like in a reclining armchair. I was amazed.

The second major difference is that the rail lines are for the most part single track. That means that if there are two trains going in opposite directions, someone's got to wait for the other to pass. That someone will inevitably be you. In Germany, one train was going to be a whole four minutes late and it was such a big deal that they made a announcement in four languages explaining so. Here, we were forty-five minutes late and not once were advised when we'd be arriving anywhere.

But I could live with all that. I was just settling a pleasant routine of reading a few paragraphs and then watching the scenery for a few minutes when the conversation of the old people behind me jarred me out of it. Earlier they'd been talking about where they'd grown up and easy chatty things like that, so for the life of me I don't know how the conversation so suddenly became this:

"...but then you got those greenies who won't let you hurt a stalk of alfalfa."

"Oh yeah, but killing babies is fine."

"I know! And.."

Hold on. KILLING BABIES!?!???!? America, sweetie, I can't handle so much all at once. Take it easy on me! I frantically reached for my ipod, only to realize to my absolute horror that it was still in my bag above me. I, literally, jumped up, grabbed my bag and threw it on my seat, jerking my ipod out of the zippered flap. The big to do though caused only a momentary pause in their condemnation of everything that isn't right wing Christian.

"And they're taking God out of everything!"

"The schools!"

"This country was founded by..."

STUPID HOLD BUTTON! Then I was frozen as to what I actually wanted to listen to. Sara! ANYTHING IS BETTER THAN THIS! So I pressed "OK" until music started playing (it turned out to be Alabama 3, who are not in fact from Alabama, and from the sound of it are more than three. Far better than loooooney-tics), but not before I got to hear the woman explain some scheme her niece does to get her private, religious charter school funded entirely by the government. I'm glad we're paying to foster extremism in children. Just tickles me.

My sister was waiting for me in the parking lot of the station. She'd found the place, but no one was there except for a lurching man who bore a striking resemblance to a zombie. When I texted her that I'd be late, she thought she'd explore the nearby park. What she found was some unused kids' play equipment and some grass, all virtually unused except for a group of people who also bore a resemblance to zombies. So she retreated back to the car to wait another forty minutes. I think an invasion has started.

Over the river and through the woods (updated)

2009-05-18T13:01:00.000-07:00

Friday morning I was on a cable car at 4500ft in the Swiss Alps and by Saturday morning I was on a sailboat off the coast of Scotland. Who can say with a straight face that that isn't completely awesome? No one.

.....and wow, I just hit a wall of tired. To Be Continued, I suppose. Tomorrow I'm up bright and early to rid my bag of liquids and try to smush it into carry-on size, eat breakfast and walk across the car parks (British term) and roundabouts (another British concept!) to the airport terminal to embark on 17 hours (starting with takeoff from Manchester) of air travel joy. Yippee!

*** CONTINUED!

So yes, Friday morning I left the mountain hostel at 8:45 in the morning and climbed into a cable car bound for the Lautenbrunnen valley. The whole area had become inundated with fog and Americans overnight and I was glad that I'd been there while it'd been relatively dry and people free. Some of those Americans were on the cable car and couldn't stop telling me about how they want to move to Portland and do "something creative". I was very proud of myself in not rolling my eyes at them, and explained in a reasonable tone that Portland is kind of full of those types and they're now moving away because there aren't any jobs, creative or otherwise. ("Oregon is full. Please try our nearby locations in Idaho." That's the sign I think we ought to have on the border.)

Once at the cable car station down the mountain, I caught a bus to Lautenbrunnen itself and then a train to Interlaken. Interlaken reminds me a lot of the area near Flathead lake in Montana with gorgeous gorgeous (I can't emphasize this enough) turquoise lakes up against the spectacular mountains. From Interlaken it was a four hour train ride to Mannheim, Germany.

Because I didn't have reservations on any of these trains, if the seats were full, I had to make do without one. This wasn't an issue until I switched trains at Mannheim. The train stopped at the Frankfurt airport and was therefore full of travelers both getting off and getting there. I ended up crammed into the between-cars area along with some Germany soldiers on their way (presumably) to drill. Not one of them looked to be over 15 years old, but they were quiet, polite and friendly in a way that 15-year-olds are not physically capable of being, indicating that they actually were old enough to be in the military.

There was one more train change after that in Cologne, and then came the worst train of them all - a local route to the nowhere ville of Weeze. The train was completely packed with commuters. A group of construction workers with prematurely wrinkled skin and tattoos on their necks and each with a few teeth missing hollered at each other and opened bottles of beer using the seats. The rest of the car ran the gambit from teenagers to well-to-do types on their way home to their posh suburbs. At one point I was standing on one foot, my head stuck right below the armpit of a giant man who was talking with his friend, also smushed against me, about football. I know this because it was "blah blah blah Cottbus. blah blah blah UEFA." etc.

When I finally got to Weeze I had to miss the bus connection to the airport because the only Euros I had at that point was a fifty and I know bus drivers of all nationalities well enough to know that that would not fly. So I wandered throughout this entire suburb in search of an ATM and never found one. Instead, I bought a bunch of chocolate and some shampoo at the "Euro store" (like our dollar stores) and had them break the 50.

A few hours after that and I was in Edinburgh, once again standing in line for a bus. The first one filled up and left, the second one stopped taking anything that wasn't exact change and also left while I went to get said change, and I ended up not getting to the hostel until after midnight. As it turns out, I was only a few minutes behind a huge group of Spaniards who were at the checkout desk with an elaborate request - 6 people wanted to stay 3 nights, 4 people 2 nights and they all wanted to be in the same rooms. Being Spaniards, they are completely unfamiliar with the concepts of a line and personal space and I kept having visions like Jason Statham's character in Mean Machine where he goes on kung-fu rampages and breaks everyone's arms. Finally, I got my room assignment and after climbing four flights of stairs was pleased to discover that there was no one else in my room. The charm quickly wore off though when it became apparent that the English girls next door were going to be obnoxious. It was someone's birthday and instead of celebrating in the pub down the hall which was open until 5, they took turns slamming the door, screaming at each other in the hall, then pounding on the door demanding to be let back in. This continued until it was light out (which at that latitude happens at about 4:30) when it went mysteriously silent. I can only hope they went outside for a smoke and got arrested. Karma has to come through sometimes, right?

Edinburgh looks a bit different that the last time I left there early in the morning. The length of Princess street (the road that runs opposite the gigantic castle and is full of shops and bagpipers, ordinarily) is closed and in pieces due to the construction of a tram line. I'm not sure the road, or the city for that matter, is big enough to warrant a tram, but whatever. Hopefully they'll ban cars from there and it'll be slightly less stressful dodging kilted drunkards in the future.

A short train ride through the fog later I was standing on the edge of George Square in Glasgow. I could hear what sounded like a parade in the distance, but as it didn't seem to be getting any closer I couldn't tell what it was. Apparently, it was a parade, but they were marching in place for ten minutes just to hold up my friends who were on the way to pick me up. Not so long after that, and a trip on a row boat, I was on an honest-to-god sailboat!

I'd never been sailing before, so I was pretty pumped. It's a lot less scary than a highspeed ski boat, since it seems to move in slow motion in comparison. But scenery is way better than what you see when you're clinging onto the seat trying not to fly out onto the water skier behind you. In fact, although there's a little more work involved with making it go in the direction you want it to go (not that I had anything to do with that. I just sat there and tried not to get in the way), it's actually pretty relaxing. The weather, being Scotland, was rainy and then sunny and then windy and then still and then sunnyrainywindy all at once. I didn't take any pictures because I was wearing four layers and my camera was somewhere in layer two. For my sake that was a good thing, since I didn't get cold until the very end, but holy crap was I chilly once it did hit.

So there ya have it. The European tale of how one gets from the Alps to sea level in 24 hours. I suppose I could do that at home. But I haven't and can't imagine how I would do it using nearly entirely public transportation.

Squatter Go Home*

2009-05-18T09:20:00.000-07:00

I think I’m permanently tired. Despite having gotten a good night’s sleep finally on Saturday, I was still a little groggy Sunday morning. But there was some sunshine and we walked through a park with trees and people attempting to play soccer and rugby. It was all very nice, but something was bugging me. Later on in the afternoon there was a sudden downpour and along with it came a wave of melancholy.

What the hell am I going to do when I get home? I was definitely ready to leave Europe and I have no regrets about changing my schedule to do so. It’s the actual being back that I’m not as ready for. I have no job and Craigslist employment listings are nearly entirely spam thanks to the economy; school doesn’t start until June 20-something; the house bands have broken up and the only live music going on in the basement is a band composed mainly of outsiders and their girlfriends who come over to practice a couple times a week, drink all our beer and don’t talk to anyone else; the roommates upstairs work all the time and therefore can’t go out; the roommate downstairs is unemployed and therefore can’t go out; my car is 80 miles south at my parent’s house and I can’t drive it anyway due to my license expiring while I was away; and my soccer team is overflowing with girls and I think I’ve lost my place. All these things are circling around one fixed image in my head: my bed as I left it two months ago, stripped to the mattress cover, strewn with papers and gadgets that I didn’t want to bring, clean clothes that didn’t get put away, and most importantly, a lump of dirty sheets that didn’t make it into the washer back in March. So instead of plopping into bed after 20 hours of traveling, I get to either do laundry or walk to the store and buy a new set of linens.

The first few days back are always like traveling anyway. There’s a new currency to deal with and I have to remember to either break my twenty (cuz ATMs don’t spit out anything smaller) inside the airport or be prepared to catch $16 from the MAX ticket machine in dollar-coins that hardly anyone even knows exist and therefore are difficult to spend. Then there’s walking from the station back to the house with all my stuff (and possibly sixteen dollars in coins), figuring out the bus schedule on Wednesday in order to go to the DMV and renew my license and making sure I have the right change to even get on the bus, possibly taking the dreaded Greyhound down to the parents’ or having to clean the house in order for them to come up to Portland.

What a complainer! I may post some more later, but I've got to get something to eat before I pass out.

*Anti-Flag song that came up on itunes this morning and has been stuck in my head ever since.

Argh, my legs!

2009-05-14T09:41:00.000-07:00

For having finished hiking by noon, I am absurdly sore. Granted, the trail was straight up, straight down and covered with snow in areas, but still.

The scenery here in the Alps is a lot like what you'd see in the Rockies and in parts of the Cascades. The difference is that after seeing a waterfall, hiking though the woods and scurrying up rock slopes, you can stop for lunch at a restaurant and have a hot meal with a cold beer. Civilization is always right around the corner, which is weird for a girl from the Pacific Northwest. Getting out to places like this at home require driving for hours and probably hiking for awhile too. Hope you brought your own beer and hotdogs too, because there isn't a store for miles.

Speaking of which, I just bought a huge tub of yogurt and I may have to rescue it from the hosteler horde that just showed up.

Ahhhh.

2009-05-14T00:21:00.000-07:00

Paris!

2009-05-13T09:17:00.000-07:00

For whatever reason I wasn't as excited about Paris as everyone else seemed to expect me to be. "Ohhhhh, you're going to Paris? That's amazing! I'm jealous!" I don't know if it was the rumors of rudeness or my lack of French language skills, but I just wasn't enthused.

But as it turned out, I loved the place. Once I figured out the Metro (subway), checked into my hotel without any problems, I relaxed a bit. My first full day was a Sunday and I got up early to catch breakfast, which consisted of a croissant, a piece of bread (a good piece of bread though) and a cup of coffee. I planned to see as many sights as I could until I got tired. Knowing my endurance levels, that would mean I'd be done after about two sights. But it being Sunday, there were no crowds, so my tolerance held out long enough to take to nearly every Parisian attraction that isn't a museum and one actual museum. I was done by about two. Lunch consisted of a loaf of bread and a box of strawberries which I ate at the botanical gardens. Yes, it was wonderful. Even the birds wanted in on it.

The next day I went the Louvre and spent hours looking at the Middle Eastern stuff, breezed through the Italian painters, saw the line for the Mona Lisa and refused. I'm *still* not sold on that. On the way back to the hotel I decided to forgo my usual grocery store cold lunch and eat at a cafe. I ate pasta that was so good I actually thought I was going to die. If Americans have anything to be ashamed of it's what we've done to the pepperoni. After a nap, I finished off the evening at the Gardens of Luxembourg which was really big park with an even bigger building with cool oddly dressed security guys patrolling it.

And then it was time to go. I could go there again. I could spend time in the rest of France too and it surprises me to say that.

Well folks, that's it

2009-05-10T14:11:00.000-07:00

I'm tired. I had fun, but it's time to go home. Well, it's almost time. I'm flying outta the UK again (I think the reason their flights to the US are so cheap is because no one wants to deal with their immigration authorities. I'm already dreading it) and I'll be home on the 19th.

I'll check in here again when I'm feeling more awake. I just spent three hours booking flights/hostels and making sure there were train connections that could get me where I needed to be on time. Still need to get reservations for a few trains that require them.

Real Time Update

2009-05-09T13:45:00.000-07:00

I'm terrible, aren't I? A week of blogging past due and here I am adding more stupid stuff.

The problem, ya see, with "space brownies" is that I sit down to do something (write this blog) then forget what I'm doing (presumably something to do with this blog since the tab is open) and say "oh shit, what was I doing?" Pretty soon hours have gone by, except that it's only been fifteen minutes.

It's been a pretty chill day here nearish Amsterdam. It's my birthday too. I didn't do much, but it was nice in and of itself. Took a walk through a huge, gorgeous park nearby on my way to the city to pick up aforementioned brownies. Not only did the park look exactly like the countryside in Pennsylvania, it even smelled and sounded like PA! Everything is lush and in bloom and the temperature is just mild enough that everyone's out and about, walking, riding bikes, being tourists in their own country.

I came back to eat my treat and do some laundry, but I ended up talking to the Latvian who works at reception on the weekends. He speaks more English than Dutch, so he was happy to chat while instructing me how to use the washer (they do work differently over here and it can be tricky). I came out of my room a few hours later to find him folding my underwear. I had earlier changed a load of sheets out for him to move along the queue and he was just returning the favor. Still, we were both amused and a little embarrassed. I like encounters like this while traveling. It doesn't have to be a native of the country you're visiting to be a worthy conversation.

The rest of the day I guess has been spent trying to remember what I was doing before I sat down to.... oh what the hell. I've watched some soccer and I've shopped around a bit for plane ticket prices home. Yes folks, I am contemplating heading home early. I've had a wonderful trip so far and I'd like it to stay at that state. But I'm tired, the little things are starting to add up (physically, and I guess monetarily, too) and I'm worried that I may start to dislike the trip and forget all the good parts. I've been gone five weeks already. That's a decent trip in and of itself! After the Swiss portion it will have been eight countries in six weeks.

I'm going to sleep on it and think about it on the train tomorrow and I'll report back then.

Oh Crap: An Apology

2009-05-06T10:16:00.000-07:00

As you might imagine, I've met a lot of cool people so far on this trip. And at every "goodbye" or "see you later" I hand someone my email address and cheerfully say, "Look me up on Facebook!"

Only I've just realized, while riding the train and totally not even on the internet, that my regular email address isn't connected with my Facebook account. Whooooooops!

I feel like those girls in high school that would give out fake phone numbers to the guys they'd meet while playing basketball away games. I was never one of those girls, by the way. Well, I was a basketball player, just not one of the fake-phone-number-giver-outers. In fact was often the one whose phone number was handed over as a joke, so I'd end up getting crank calls once the boys found out they'd been had. Man do girls suck.

Anyway, to the people who aren't reading this blog because they don't know how to find me on the internet, SORRY!!! I didn't mean to mislead you!

** UPDATE - my regular email address is now attach to my profile. Probably too little too late, but whatever.

Good moment in the chunnel, er, after the chunnel

2009-05-06T09:46:00.000-07:00

The Eurostar train between London and Paris is strange. Since London is right on the water, I sort of imagined the majority of the trip would be through a tunnel, but the actual under-the-sea portion was very short and wasn't announced, so I wasn't even aware it was happening until we came out into sunshine and my phone buzzed welcoming me to France and to say that it will cost approximately one million Euros to use my phone.

Speaking of fortunes forked over, 2nd class was sold out, so I was forced to purchase a ticket in 1st class. Since I've been forced into first class a few times this trip, I'm starting to get over my modesty about it. Yes, the champagne really is free. So is the food. Really, you can eat it and even get refills! And for the wooziness-inducing price tag, you better drink all the champagne you can stomach.

And the servers in this particular car were absolutely gorgeous. As they kept filling my glass with champagne and wine I got more and more smiley. One of them who was working the other side of the car was particularly model-worthy and he kept stopping by my seat to say something in French and wink. Near the end of the trip he asked if I was doing OK and I replied with a "Mm hmm." In a friendly mocking way he responded in the most French sounding grunt I've heard outside of Beauty and the Beast, "Mmuh-huh!" I couldn't help it. I stuck my head into the window, which looked out to rolling green fields and cute houses, and straight up giggled for an entire two minutes. A good entrance to Paris, I'd say.

Real Time Update Before the Backtracks

2009-05-05T15:18:00.000-07:00

I'm in Brugges. I am drunk. I just watched a shitty football match in which one team didn't play and my favorite player on the other team was sent off in a ridiculous decision and therefore denied the opportunity to play in the final even if the powers that be recognize that it was a ridiculous decision. Couldn't he have sent off Ronaldo or something? Bah.

Aaaaanyway. I ate a whole ton of spaghetti this evening for the low, low price of 3 Euro. No shit. I tried to order the large, but the guy (owner/server/bartender) pointed to this bucket a guy at the next table was eating out of and said, "that's a small. You sure you want a large?" Thank god too, I'm still full and that was hours ago. Best deal in all of Europe, I think.

The train station in Brugges is about ten minutes south of town, walking. En route, there are canals and trees and flowers. In the distance you can see old Gothic churches and things. But there's a carnival in town and as you get closer a few rides start appearing. The first section of the carnival was done up in the typical carnival way - lots of pink and flashing lights and things - and each ride had it own awful techno song blasting out of it. This one particular ride had a song with a chorus of "put your hands up! put your hands up! put your hands up IN THE AIR!!! *whum whum whum*" The ride was full of middle-aged Belgian men (all of whom sort of looked like a chubbier version of the Swiss banker in Casino Royale) with gaping grins, pumping their hands in the air to the tune of the song. It was one of those situations where no one else thought it was unusual or funny, so I couldn't laugh lest I look like the insane woman, which of course just made it even funnier. I've been giggling about it all day.

I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow. I'm currently standing in the kitchen adjacent to the bar in order to utilize the outlet to charge my laptop. My room is full of more drunk Australians than there are beds who are lamenting having been just robbed. And while being robbed is surely terrible while in a foreign country, their biggest complaint is that they had just gotten drugs. One girl even complained that it was her dad's credit card that had been stolen. Oh boo hoo, "Daddy can't pay for anything for a whole two days or something!" Wahhhhh!

More on annoying tourists and the really wealthy (and the really wealthy who don't realize it) later.

Sorrento day two

2009-05-05T06:42:00.000-07:00

I only had a half day in Sorrento before my weird one night side trip to London, so I decided to kill the few hours I had there by doing what I always do - walking around and taking pictures of pretty things.

I found a nice viewpoint that wasn't monopolized by some posh hotel and sat for a bit, watching boats leave and return and snapped some pics. Then I walked through some gardens, past a small soccer stadium and lamented that I hadn't rented a motorbike of some sort. As I rounded the corner, a guy on a scooter made a U-turn, stopped and said, "Excuse me, are you from the United States?"

"Yes."

"Would you like to get a coffee?"

"Sure."

"Bravo! Hop on my scooter."

So off we went. It sure is tough being an American girl in Europe. I got a ride on a scooter, a coffee, and a kiss from a cute Italian all by 11:30 in the morning. Now that's how to spend a day in Italia.

Naples/Sorrento

2009-05-05T06:26:00.000-07:00

I got on this local train without looking at the arrival time from Rome to Naples. This left me wondering all two hours of it just when exactly I was going to get there. We stopped at every conceivable stopping point and a few that I didn't even consider conceivable. Despite that, it was a beautiful ride along the coastline with mountains and vineyards on the other side and it we did roll into Naples at a reasonable hour.

I'd heard stories about the area surrounding the Naples train station as being the most dangerous in Western Europe, so I was on the lookout as I tried to figure out the really local train service. As it turned out, everyone who works for the trains down that way speaks perfect English and is super nice to boot. In southern Europe, who knew? Anyway, about a half hour later I rolled into Pompeii.

Dude, POMPEII! Actually seeing a the few mummified bodies they have left there - still in the positions they died in, covering their mouths or heads - was a little gruesome and made me a slightly more somber tourist as I clicked away photos of the former Roman town. When I was tired of that, I left, went to Sorrento and found my hostel. Simple as that. I'm beginning to realize that I don't need to do things ALL DAY LONG to have a successful Europe trip.

Rome

2009-05-05T06:15:00.000-07:00

I already blogged about the first two days (see the post about the nuns), so here's my third, which is a good example of my ideal day on vacation in Europe:

Morning - chatted with Canadian boy; went to museum about Roman archaeology that was a four minute walk away from my hotel.

Afternoon - chatted with Canadian; drank coffee and chatted with Canadian; checked email, booked hostel beds through the 15th; drank some beer and chatted with Canadian; went to grocery store.

Evening - ate dinner and chatted with Canadian and some French women; met American boy and along with the Canadian went to an Irish bar to watch the Man Utd - Arsenal match; got very drunk; argued with American about religion; met more Americans; staggered to our hotel through a sketchy shortcut; got home at 3am.

Florence 26th

2009-05-05T06:10:00.000-07:00

Ate breakfast for the first time in I'm not sure how long then trotted down to the Uffizi where I waited in line for three and a half hours. In the gallery I saw some stuff. What I saw I don't know because all I remember is standing in line.

The next day I checked out, left my luggage for a few minutes while I went down to the Duomo to take pictures of it. It was a neat building, but the line outside to see whatever's inside made me queasy.

I can't do it

2009-05-04T08:46:00.001-07:00

I know i've been promising a blog for awhile now but I simply can't do it with this French keyboard. Tomorrow (you've heard that before) I have wifi and will therefore be able to type without anger and maybe even upload some pictures.

It's a Conspiracy

2009-05-02T06:32:00.000-07:00

The citizens of London have been keeping a centuries old secret about the weather there. They've employed artists and especially musicians to perpetuate the myth that London is cold, rainy and foggy all the time. The truth is that it's perfectly pleasant weather nearly always and sometimes actually hot. There's probably a white sand beach accessible by the Tube as well.

My brief time in the UK has been perfectly pleasant, if a bit pricey. Everyone I've met seems to be in a good mood, smiles at my accent when I talk and offers directions and advice without me even asking. Maybe I'm just used to the pushy and impatient Spaniards and Italians. Last night I drank a Guinness and ate a burger (let's not talk about how much that cost), had a BATH (I nearly drowned it was so nice) and this morning I got a big breakfast. The Underground experience was only slightly confusing and that was due mostly to the ticket machines not accepting bills/cards/coins/whatever and the huge lines that went behind them. There were crowds of football fans headed to their various games, singing different songs which echoed throughout the tunnels.

Stansted airport, by the way, is in the middle of nowhere. Don't let them tell you it's the London-Stansted airport. It's a 55 minute train ride through green fields and forests before you get to London. You can't even see the city from the airplane on the way in. It is however probably the least stressful airport in London if not the UK.

More about Italy later.

ok ok OK!

2009-05-02T03:16:00.000-07:00

The posts are coming. Give me a bit. Traveling without wifi is annoying at best.

I will be in Paris this evening but in the meantime I'm somewhere nearish London and I have to pack, check out, get into the city and find the Eurostar terminal (St. Pancras, I think). Hopefully during that time I can also find a place to top up my phone so I can actually, ya know, use it again.

Tomorrow

2009-04-30T09:45:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow hopefully I'll have wifi and then you'll get a post. For now, hello from Sorrento!

Pre and Post Lunch Thoughts

2009-04-28T08:15:00.000-07:00

Pre lunch:

Fucking nuns. They're everywhere! I understand that this is the Vatican and all and that there are necessarily a lot of nuns around, but you'd think if they were important enough to get selected to live at church central that they'd have work to do or something.Don't you nuns have some place to be or is it just your new duty in life to walk extremely slowly in front of me with your goddamn umbrella threatening to poke me in the eye? Move it, Sister!

Fucking umbrellas. I hate them anyway and everyone has them here. And if for some reason you don't well there are about a million dudes trying to sell you one. What really gets me is when a family of four is carrying four and trying to walk abreast on the narrow sidewalk. Do NOT make me walk into moped traffic just to avoid your stupid umbrella parade. It's not even raining anymore!

Post lunch:

I like wine.

I found a pub/restaurant run by some Irish people for lunch. The special was a pretty good deal and as I sat there waiting for the bill (which took FOREVER. I'm beginning to think there's some special signal in Ireland for getting the check that I am unaware of. It was like this in Ireland, too.) I messed around on my phone calendar and realized that I've been gone exactly four weeks. Wow, cool! That only leaves..... SEVEN MORE WEEKS TO GO????? Why didn't anyone tell me I was going to be gone so long?

The Colosseum yesterday was rad. I knew it was near the Metro stop, but I wasn't prepared for it being RIGHT AT THE OPENING. Bang! There's the motherfucking Colosseum! I spent all afternoon walking around that and the Forum and the Pantheon, all of which were really fucking cool. Why were all those people waiting to see the stupid Vatican in the rain? Man, fuck the Sistine Chapel.

I've found a place to watch the Champions League games tonight and tomorrow. I have a TV in my room, but of course there's no important soccer matches on it. "It's all about the money," explained the woman at reception. Indeed.

I forgot to book a room in Amsterdam for my birthday and it's already filling up. Dammit!

Pfff, whatever

2009-04-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

I'm already forgetting about the unpleasantness of last night. We'll just leave it at that I had to spend the night on a cot in the hostel's basement where they store linen, cleaning supplies and occasionally staff. It was weird and it wasn't even the weirdest part of it all, but enough about that.

Venice can wipe away all your worries. It may be hot and crowded, you will most certainly be lost and everything's expensive, but there's no automobile traffic, the canals cool the breeze and.. well, it's friggin' VENICE. There really are funnily dressed men oaring boats through narrow canals and waterborne cabs deliver passengers in both the busy canals and in the quieter areas. I didn't take many pictures because you've seen Venice. There are countless photos and movies done by much better photographers than I, who have the option of clearing the streets/viewpoints when necessary.

The mandatory train reservations in Italy are a joke. I was the only one on my 92-person car for the first three stops. At its peak, it held about seven people. Why did I have to plop down fifteen Euro to secure a place instead of just hopping onboard with my railpass? Ok ok, more money, I can answer that. Still, grr.

The hostel here in Florence is a fortress in a warzone-like city. No one comes here to look at the city itself, just a couple of sites. Heat, lawless traffic and pickpockets encourage you to move quickly from site to site, which means it's really nice that the hostel has a both a bar and a restaurant with decently priced, good food. I don't have to venture out into food-poisoning land (hello Youngest Sis) AND they serve BREAKFAST!!! Full English all-you-can-eat BREAKFAST! I'm so excited I don't know what to do.

The Uffizi gallery is free tomorrow, so after BREAKFAST! I'm going to hustle down there and wait in line. Hooray art!

And Now for a WTF Moment

2009-04-25T00:24:00.000-07:00

And I'm gonna leave you on that cliffhanger, because I don't really feel like talking about it right now. What a fucking weird night, though.

Oh yeah, and I'm in Venice. Woot?

Ok, so TODAY is the last full day in Spain this time

2009-04-23T10:38:00.000-07:00

I thought yesterday was my last day. That's what I get for thinking in this country. I've liked Barcelona so far, but it's a little high-strung, hot and insanely crowded. The problem was the I wanted to catch a night train to Milan this evening, but since this particular train only runs a couple times a week it was already sold out. So the best I could do was book another night in Barcelona and get a Ryanair flight over to Venice to keep all the reservations in Italy I just made. More problems followed in that the hostel I was at in Barcelona was full, so I had to move across town, and the airport I'm flying out of is something like 125km from Barcelona (Girona). Also it's some stupid holiday (again) that involves parades (again) with whistles and men giving roses to women. The sidewalks are shoulder to shoulder people and it's impossible to figure out where you are when you're a midget.

I was so stressed out by the time I got here (and moved rooms/beds/floors due to a mix-up) that I thought I was going to pass out from dehydration. Fortunately, there was a friendly Canadian girl in the bunk below mine and we conspired to charge our computers and do laundry up on the 7th floor terrace bar. Naturally this involved drinking large amounts of sangria, some of which was free by way of apology of the guy at reception. Sure there are famous buildings and churches and museums, but all I wanted to do was chill out for an afternoon. We did manage to make our way to the beach where I solidified the sunburn I had brewing from the roof and watched some shirtless boys play soccer.

And of course, this being Spain, the day is practically beginning. I've just been informed that the hostel bar is open until 4am, so after acquiring some patatas bravas and maybe a sandwich I think I'll retire here and drink myself to sleep. Should take about two drinks.

Last Full Day in Logrono

2009-04-21T06:35:00.000-07:00

It's time to move on so I don't end up actually moving in here. I'm getting too used to staying up 'til three, sleeping 'til noon and taking a siesta every afternoon. I'm never going to leave if I don't run away and soon. So tomorrow I'm off to Barcelona for a day, then an overnight train (hopefully) to Milan and then Venice. Yeah, Venice! There was an Indiana Jones AND a Bond movie filmed there! Oh and of course there's other stuff too. I'm sure it's all important.

Afterward, I'll be a couple days in Florence and then three days in Rome. I'd also like to see Pompeii, but Naples and the surrounding area sounds like a huge pain in the ass, so we'll see. I'm personally really excited about heading up north again to the land of sensible people that understand the concept of breakfast.

Last night we went out for a couple of drinks and ended up being mobbed by a group of Catalans who had spent the day touring bodegas (wineries) and were consequently nearly destroyed by the time midnight rolled around. For anyone in such a state, shots are probably not the wisest idea, but always seem to sound that way, so the kids put back some more and pretty soon they were practically puddles, groping, slurring and dropping their drinks. Honestly though, it was a fun night. They were at the bar solely to have a good time and get laid and I absolutely can't fault them for that. It was also one of those times that being a foreigner is fuggin' AWESOME. Despite the fact that there were much cuter girls in the bar and that the language barrier was definitely huge, I had my pick of adorable Barcelonians (er, whatever they're called).

Unfortunately, during the melee my cousin attempted to take embarrassing pictures of me and when she tried to get the flash to work, accidentally erased all of my pictures and videos. I'm currently trying to recover those, but it's taking forever. Meantime, I'll post some pics of those I have.

Some Funny Stuff

2009-04-20T10:05:00.000-07:00

Spain is strange, of course. It's a foreign country; it's supposed to be strange. If I didn't like strange, I wouldn't travel, right? So here's a list of things that have struck me as particularly funny or odd.

- In case you simply can't make it through a trip to the grocery store without a beer, there is a bar in the front of Simply market.

- As we walked out the door to head to the soccer game on Sunday "morning" (that's about 2pm) we accidentally caught sight of a young man, probably in his mid to late twenties, bent over to tie his shoe, exposing his entire underside. He was wearing a thong. A hot pink thong.

- There is an underwear store in Logrono whose display case is lit up at night and features rotating torsos to model the underwear. I have a video and if I have enough bandwidth later today I may post it. There are no thongs.

- There is a rad bar here called Jake. It's dark and grungy, usually uncrowded (and therefore unsmokey) and has good music and an arcade with tons of great old games. The thing is, "Jake" is not how you and I would say it. It's pronounced "haw-kgay".

- On the way back from Vitoria, we had to change trains at Miranda de Ebro. MDE is apparently THE hub for this part of Spain and as far as I know the train station is the entire town. We couldn't see our next platform so we followed and elaborate set of signs, down and up stairs, and through a tunnel only to come out about twenty feet from where we started with a clear path back to the original platform. How much money and effort went into creating tunnel access to platform 4?

- They have these cheap stores here that sell crap like notebooks and flip flops and all sorts of knickknacks. They're called Chinos. Really. Anyway, I needed a new towel, so we went to one when I first got here. We then found, across the aisle from the school supplies, a collection of figurines featuring women sitting on giant (proportional to the women) penises, plain ol' penises, and funny-looking penises. Why? Why why WHY why why?

- Possibly to be continued...

A much more cheerful story than the last post

2009-04-19T16:35:00.000-07:00

I'm still in Spain, being lazy and not planning the rest of my trip, mainly. We did however manage to see a soccer game live, which is quite an achievement considering the logistics, timing, locations and language barriers involved in doing such things. We made our way up into Basque country (yes, impeccable timing, I know, given the recent ETA arrests) to the city of Vitoria to watch Deportivo Alaves take on the unpronounceable Xerez.

The bus ride up there was kind of absurd in that we stopped in every podunk pueblo in the 80km between the Logrono and Vitoria. The bus - a full sized coach carrying about ten people at a time - would actually drive up a mountain on a road about four feet wide and lined with stone cathedrals and apartments. Oncoming traffic had to pull onto the sidewalk, if there was one, or backup until they reached a pulloff. Two and a half hours later we finally pulled into Vitoria and embarked on an hour long and futile effort to find something to eat that was more substantial that a slab of ham on a half of baguette. Sundays area big deal here, I guess. No restaurant, bar or cafe has their kitchen running and not a single store - department, convenience or otherwise - is open either.

Getting to the game from there was easier than we anticipated because everyone else in town seemed to be walking that direction, too. By squinting at the rendering of the stadium seating layout, we guessed at the cheapest seats and were sent behind the goal. Sadly, we were on the opposite end from the supporters' group. Oh well. We had a marching band on our side, does that make up for it? The stadium holds just under 19,000 and I'd say it was a little over half full.

Deportivo aren't great this year and currently sit one place out of the drop zone, and Xerez are nearly a lock to get promoted. So it was therefore rather surprising when Deportivo dominated possession early on and even had a few chances. Here's a pic of one of them that forced the goalkeeper into making a save.

But that early dominance was mostly a result of Xerez not playing well, coupled with a lot of long balls and fast guys to chase them down. Once fast guys start to tire and opposition's central midfield remembers to possess the ball and run the game a little, things start to get difficult for the underdogs. Xerez had started to come back into the game and I was certain they were about to score when, really against the run of play, Deportivo scored. It looked offsides from our angle and there was a moment of quiet while everyone looked at the linesman and the ref to see what the signal was. Xerez surrounded the linesman, but the goal stood and the crowd came to life.

However, it was extremely short-lived as Xerez equalized less than two minutes from play restarting. Deportivo's defense then seemed to crumple and they were lucky not to give up several more goals in the next short span of time. Inevitably, Xerez took the lead and then spent the remaining twenty minutes or so of the game feigning injuries, kicking the ball high into the stands, and substituting in slow-motion. At the announcement of four minutes extra time the majority of fans in my section began to file out. There was almost karmic justice dispensed to them, as in the final seconds of the match, Deportivo forced the goalkeeper into a save and also hit the crossbar. At least the half dozen traveling fans were going nuts.

No Shit

2009-04-19T15:52:00.000-07:00

We found a mummy.

We visited another pueblo yesterday, this one much smaller and closer. After surveying most of it - it took about 20 minutes of strolling - we found a cemetery and decided to go in. The gate required unlocking with a key that was about ten inches long and weighed must have weighed four pounds, which was cool just for novelty's sake. Inside there were flowers all over the wall graves since it was just Easter, a small chapel with a bizarre and elaborate crucifix, and another small building just to the left of the chapel. This little building piqued my curiosity as the door was only opened a wedge and it seemed more run down than the rest of the place. Inside was what looked like a raised well, with some pieces of wood covering most of the opening. On the floor were a couple pairs of shoes, oddly. I couldn't see much of anything inside the structure, but something inside the well-hole looked a whole lot like a femur. I tried to take a picture to get a glimpse of what lie inside, but my flash wouldn't turn on and so my cousin cheerfully volunteered to use her own camera. As soon as she takes a couple snaps she let out this whisper/scream, "ahhhhhhhhh eeeeeeeeeeeeeee! it's a FOOT! There's a FOOT EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" and we quickly walked out the gates.

And then, dear god, I just scared the crap out of myself. This next picture shows that it's not just a foot, there's a torso and a head. Criminy, incinerate or bury, don't half-ass either!

I guess I should edit the first sentence of this post. We found a mummy AND a rotting corpse and a pile of bones. Whoa.

Just some pics

2009-04-17T07:40:00.000-07:00

I'm just going to post a few pictures today because I haven't updated in awhile and I'm really too hungover to write anything. Also, when I'm drunk - and boy howdy was I ever last night - I talk a lot. Like, I can't fucking shut up. I cornered some poor guy who made the mistake of telling me he'd played soccer for a university in America, indicating his English was pretty good, and he actually had to have his dad come and rescue him before I bored him into a coma. So I'm a little talked out.

Logrono:

No, I don't know why Death is painted on the sidewalk. In fact, I don't even know if it is a sidewalk or a road. Either seem to be acceptable for driving.

I also don't know why the Spanish insist on putting gigantic testicles on all of their horse statues or why this particular one is treading on severed heads. This whole country is a bit of a mystery to me.

Dive bar. There are exactly two seats inside of this place, so you take your beer and drink it out on the street. It's very, very odd.

Drinking in public.

This is supposed to show how small the "pints" are here, but my stupid tiny hands make the glass look normal sized.

Anti-Zombie Apocalypse... Always.

2009-04-14T09:52:00.000-07:00

After a stressful train trip - we left Madrid a half hour late, and then the conductor came on board our car and said, "blah blah blah MINUTOS! blah blah blah MINUTOS! blah blah blah" and no one could translate for me, leaving me concerned that I was never actually going to get to there at all, let alone on time - I finally got in to Logrono. My cousin and her boyfriend met me at the train station. We dropped my stuff off at her apartment, chugged some Jack Daniels then went out to the show she had been telling me about. Logrono is not a big place at all and the streets seemed nearly deserted, but we opened the door to a club full of smoke - most of it not tobacco - people and a band on stage. The music was cheesy rock n roll with a band that didn't take itself too seriously. It was hard not to dance a little while sucking down the pisswater beer they serve in Spain (seriously, the beer is terrible here!). Unfortunately, we missed the opening bands and only got to see a few songs before the show ended and I was subjected to endless introductions in mostly Spanish in which I was kissed in that Euro way by about two dozen people.

My cousin's boyfriend, Miguel, is an anarchist. Anarchists are the same the world over and their views can be summarized as follows: You are wrong. Everything they do or say about anything is absolutely right, always. Siempre. Hypocrisy is not a state that is ever applicable to themselves. They will never let you hear the end of it if they find you that one time you ate at a McDonald's, but think nothing of chain smoking their Phillip Morris cigarettes.

Miguel knew that I had been in the army and Afghanistan and was eager to tell me exactly what he thought of that. I just laughed. He tells me he could never obey orders and that fighting for one's country is stupid. When I told him that it's not about "your country" it's about your buddies and doing your job and not giving a shit, he of course balked. Ya see, another thing about anarchists, especially young ones, is that everything one does has to have a great purpose. He gets in fights himself as part of the the antifa (antifascists) gang who fight the fascist gangs, and that's perfectly justifiable because then he's fighting, well, fucking fascists. There's a good, moral purpose to it. Killing Taliban though is not because those guys are just fighting the invaders and they'd be ordinary peace-lovin' folk if the U.S. hadn't invaded their country and killed their families.

It's not like I haven't thought about this stuff. I've thought about it, I've struggled with it and I've come to the conclusion that I just don't care. 22-year-old anarchists from Spain who still live in the same house they were born in and don't have a clue how life works on a planet earth are not going to tell me how to live and expect me to take them seriously. Fortunately, I can find it amusing rather than being offended.

On the title of the post. The anarcho-punks here are fond of wearing t-shirts that say "anti-fascista... siempre." Now, as an American the term anti-fascist is always amusing, since no matter how close to actual fascism our country gets, the term is always derogatory. Even the swastika-tattooed actual neo-Nazis in America are offended at the term. Saying you're anti-fascist is sort of like saying you're anti-zombie apocalypse. I mean, duh. I'd also be against the idea of a Death Star exploding the planet with laser beams, too; I'm not going to make a t-shirt out of it. It's an obvious statement to begin with, but adding "siempre" to it just takes the cake. I'm anti-zombie apocalypse always. My cousin would now like to design a t-shirt that says "anti-fascista... a veces." But of course that's only funny to Americans who live here, because as it turns out, there ARE sometimes-fascists. They're the skins and punks who just like to fight, and will do anything to fit in with their friends, who may not be as idealistic as young Miguel here.

OK, this post is longer than I intended. I'm just pleased that I can still write in English, as my brain has had to function in half-languages for the past two or three days. Off to read a bit then watch some football and drink shitty beer.

Yesterday

2009-04-14T09:34:00.000-07:00

Am I understanding this correctly? If you join the ~~corpse~~corps of the national police of Spain you get a flying car??? Totally unfair! I joined the “greatest army in the world” and all I got was stupid college money. Funny thing though, I’d always imagined flying cars when they finally came to being would be, I dunno, sexier?

Oh oh oh, you’re saying that’s not a flying car? It’s just a poorly done photo collage and that the new recruits are supposed to go on high speed chases in what appears to be a Geo Metro with approximately 1.5” of clearance? Lame. Next you’re going to tell me those aren’t flying horses in the top left either. Pft.

Speaking of Geos, long ago my friends managed to squish six of us into one and drive up to San Fransisco from Monterey. I can’t remember what we were doing up there specifically, but I do know that we were too young to drink so it wasn’t anything nefarious (for once). San Fransisco, as you probably know, is Dr. Seuss-like improbably steep. There are buildings on top of what look like roller coaster roads and it would seem precarious even if you didn’t have in the back of your mind that it was also on top of a huge and active fault line. We were climbing one of these absurd streets near China Town when the little Geo couldn’t take it anymore. It slowed, the driver shifted downward, it continued to slow, then stop, then drift backwards. She had it floored, but there we went and those of us in the back seat turned around to navigate only to realize to everyone’s horror, that we were on a one-way street and traffic was coming on all four lanes. All six of us then screamed, “NEEE AAAH AHHHHHAHHH! …..LEFT, er, RIGHT! NO THE OTHER WAY IN REVERSE!” as we somehow swung into a tiny dark alley that was lined with dumpsters and smelled like fish. The question was then what to do from there. The alley was a deadend and it was one-way uphill on the street . So we....

...I CAN’T REMEMBER!

ha ha.

As you can see, I have nothing to write about today in regards to my trip. My day is roughly divided into three three-and-a-half hour chunks: train to Madrid; Madrid; train to Logrono. I’ve spent the better part of an hour staring at this stupid police recruitment poster and I’m about to lose it with boredom.

A Lost Post from Manchester

2009-04-12T12:13:00.000-07:00

Found this in a rambling Word document.

5 April - Trains and Football

The trip from Glasgow to Manchester wasn’t what you’d call smooth. My first train was cancelled and replaced by a bus in which I was sat next to the largest man in the north of England and in front of a shrieking baby. Large man was really upset about something to do with football and his girlfriend and his ex and his kid and his job, and he when he wasn’t swearing at people over the phone about it, he was ordering people to move things out of the way of his giant feet. At Carlisle I transferred to a perfect train – nearly empty with friendly people and comfy seats – but we were only on it for about five minutes before we were in Preston and I had to change trains again. I’m sorry to report, Sister Who May Read This, I didn’t get a good look at the town of our surname even supposing the train went near there (Preston is close by, that’s the only reason I may have had a chance to see it), mainly because the last train I was on was so full that even though I had a supposedly reserved seat, I had to stand with a group of people, smashed between the luggage rack and toilet and couldn’t see a thing.

I still had the shakes from that bitch of a hangover I was nursing and I wasn’t about to go out even if it was Saturday night in the middle of the city, so I crawled into bed at about nine and mostly slept over the racket of the clubbers in the street below. The poor guy in the bunk below me was in bed at least an hour before me and if this morning was anythign to go by, had to sleep in until about eleven. He seemed really disturbed by the loud people outside. I may be a light sleeper, but I’m glad I’m still able to get up and do things even if fatigued or traveling wouldn’t be any fun at all.

I made a daytrip Sunday to York to walk through York Minster – a giant church that was built on top of an old Roman building. I went there a few years ago with my army buddy and his wife and newborn kid and thought it was the coolest. Of course, I was about two days out of the army and everything was just fabulous to me. One of my favorite memories of all time is floating down the Ouse (pronounced “ooze”. Isn’t that the coolest name for a river ever?) while drinking some foamy beer (Tetley’s I believe) and giggling every fifteen seconds, “I’m not in the army anymore!” This trip was also beautiful and sunny and while I enjoyed the church and walking through the cobblestone streets and along the old walls of the city, it kind of made me miss my friends a whole lot. It’s been a couple years since I’ve seen them and they’re not big on writing.

I made it back to Manchester theoretically in time to catch the Manchester United vs Aston Villa match, but I couldn’t find a bar that was showing it for the life of me. I returned to the hostel after a half hour of searching and got directions towards a couple different places halfway across town. I made it to one of them at half time to find the score at 1-1. There were a couple of young guys with Villa shirts on, but the bar seemed mostly United fans. When Villa scored to make it 2-1, there didn’t seem to be much of a reaction and I suddenly worried that maybe the people there just weren’t into the game and were only putting up with it on their afternoon out. But then Ronaldo evened the score with an unthreatening-looking ground ball that snuck into the corner of the net and there was a bit of cheering. The game then got really exciting with some back and forth play and some great cutting passes from United. The moment began to build for them and when five minutes of stoppage time was announced a cheer went around – that may be enough! Earlier in the half, Nani – definitely my least favorite player for United – was replaced by some 17-year-old I’d never heard of who had apparently never played for the first team. At about three minutes into stoppage time the ball was pinging around the edge of the box and then in to the 17-year-old who made this crazy stop and turn and curved an absolutely perfect shot into the top right corner. You couldn’t have choreographed a better shot, play or ending to a game. The entire bar erupted (well, except the Villa fans, of course), chairs fell over as people jumped up and down, hugging each other and shouting. The kid who scored the goal reacted just as you’d expect a teenager who’s just scored on his debut for the biggest club in the world in front of the home fans, running circles, shrieking while his teammates mobbed him. In the stands, the cameras picked up on a grown man, crying with relief. If United win the league title this year, and it looks unlikely they’ll lose it now, this game will go down as a key point in the season and I am very glad I got to be present for it.

Photos?

2009-04-12T11:49:00.000-07:00

I am reasonably sure that this link will work even if you're not a facebook member. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2049323&id=42004799&ref=share

Facebook lets me put a bunch more photos online than Flickr so I'm gonna go with them. It's fast too.

Happy Easter, everyone

2009-04-12T04:53:00.000-07:00

I'm stuck in Valencia another night because, as I feared, all the trains out to Logrono are full. Pooh. Tomorrow I roll into my cousin's town at 10 o'clock at night, which is kinda crap as well. Three hour layover in Madrid! Again! At least I'm riding first class on the way from Madrid to Logrono.

Nearly everything is closed today for Easter, so I'm hanging out in the bar/dayroom area surfing the net and not much else. Hopefully there will be some footy on tonight so I can have something to occupy my time.

Anyway, have some ham and potato salad for me, alright?

This dude is cool

2009-04-11T14:18:00.000-07:00

Here's a dude. I'm not sure what he's gesticulating at, but it sort of looks like he's about to perform a magic trick, "Abracadabra!" or something. There's also another dude in the picture. He's sleeping under a canvas sack on the bottom right. I didn't notice him until after I'd snapped it. Sorry sleeping dude! Hope I didn't wake you.

Valencia-ah-ah

2009-04-11T12:48:00.000-07:00

I have had that Decemberists song in my head ever since I left my room in Madrid. My original plan was to buy a train ticket for the evening, store my luggage somewhere (I thought I'd seen a rack of lockers when I arrived) then see the Prado for a couple hours before catching my train. But as I walked past the Prado and past the blocks and blocks of people waiting to get in, I began to think that maybe it just wasn't going to be possible today. Then I got to the train station to find out that nearly everything was sold out except at the inconveniently timed 3:20 departure - not enough time to go anywhere, way too much to spend at Puerta de Atocha.

Oh, I didn't mention yesterday that due to the stupid stupid non-holiday of Good Friday, the Prado was closed. Arrrrrrgh. That's all I wanted to do in Madrid. Ohhhh well, I guess I'll have to come back.

I'm in Valencia at the moment which seems like the place I probably should have started in. It's small, yet has things to do, and the hostel is about perfect. It's modern, clean, has a bar and wireless, and there's footy on the big screen. We'll see if my tune changes if there are people shouting outside my window all night like in every other hostel I've stayed in so far (excepting Malaga, but that was only because my room didn't have a window. There was a lot of shouting anyway.). Here are a couple of pics of the place. Ok ok, it's really just two different zooms of the same thing, ya got me.

Weird Sandwich Alert

2009-04-11T12:38:00.000-07:00

I'm currently eating a tuna and egg sandwich. It has on it tomatoes and.... carrots? It's pretty yummy, I guess but... tuna and egg? tuna and carrots? EGG and carrots? What the hell.

One more thing. Why is tuna "atun" in Spanish? Who misplaced the A, us or them? Or is "tun" a place and the "a" is the from, as in "from tun"? The things I think about.

Whoa, vertigo daffodils!

2009-04-09T12:55:00.001-07:00

From Europe 2009

I promise I didn't then fall off the wall. This is in York, by the way. So are the rest of the pics in this post.

From Europe 2009

I've had to do some genealogy in the past and as it turns out, this guy is one of my ancestors, King Edward I, otherwise known as Longshanks. It seems we've always been grumpy bastards with stupid hair.

From Europe 2009

But as far as I'm aware, I'm not related to either of the mouthbreathers. It looks like they were caught by the camera.... except it was by a chiseler. He must've been fast.

From Europe 2009

York Minster. So huge it can't even fit in the camera frame. Pretty impressive, isn't it?

It's What's for Dinner

2009-04-09T12:15:00.000-07:00

Ugh, I feel wretched. Obviously cookies are the cure.

Here's the Thing

2009-04-09T09:18:00.000-07:00

Everything is supremely difficult in Spain. The simplest of tasks - turning on a light, crossing the street, opening a freaking door - strains my brain and patience to an uncomfortable level. The more advanced things like validating a rail pass and getting the proper train ticket when no one speaks English, or finding an unadvertised hostel in the middle of a city have me frustrated to the point where I've seriously considered throwing my things and jumping up and down, screaming obscenities. I was thisclose to kicking a stone wall while wailing, "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" while trying to find my hostel today, when a man with perfect English shouted to me from across the street if I was looking for the place he worked at. And just like that I was up in my own room.

Did I mention I'm in Madrid now? Well, I am. I rode on the best train I've ever been on. It was so comfortable I was sad when we arrived. 26 is the magical age in Europe when one becomes old and no longer eligible for student rates or 2nd class tickets, so I've been permanently bumped up to first class, at least on the long distance trains.

The scenery on the way up was dry and mountainous with patches of vibrant green farmland, as well as strange shaped pine trees and some sort of crop that looked like refined sagebrush, planted in rows. I listened to my ipod until it ran out of batteries, wrote in my journal and used up precious mobile credits from my UK number in order to check my email repeatedly. It's a habit and I can't break it.

My room here in Madrid is painted the color I sort of imagined every building in Spain to be - pinkish orange - and it's almost narrow enough for me to touch both walls if I hold my arms out. It's adorable though and seeing as I feel like I'm coming down with a cold, I don't think I'll be leaving it much this evening. I'm going to upload some pictures, go find a bite to eat, then head to bed early.

Shot O´Clock

2009-04-08T07:02:00.000-07:00

I´m apparently staying in a hostel made for frat boys/sorority girls on spring break. I apply the frat boy/etc term internationally, by the way. This morning at about ten our hostel front desk dude yelled, "SHOT O´CLOCK! TIME FOR SHOTS! GET UP!" And so right before laundry I ended up taking a tequila shot and retrieving the lemon slice from the bartender´s mouth. I´m wayyyyyyyy too old for this. Not that I´m complaining too much.

After shots and laundry I played cards wtih some girls from Amsterdam and Germany, then headed to the beach. The Amsterdam girl and I ordered some fried squid and paella, of which I could only eat a little. The stuff is rich! And the only thing I ate yesterday was a hamburger, so my stomach wasn´t used to too much food. I put my feet in the water for a bit, but it was way cold and we just found a place with some grass and palm trees to lay in the sun a bit. Of course, I think I was already burnt at that point, so I´ll probably be miserable tonight when the radiation sets in.

Last night I tried to catch some Champions League football and the bartender at the place I was recommended was really perplexed as to why an American girl would have any interest in football at all, let alone European football. A few English guys joined us and we flipped between the games, which meant that in a total of six goals scored that evening, we saw exactly one. Since Barcelona is playing tonight, I bet there will be more people in to watch the game.

Glasgow! Day Three

2009-04-07T10:08:00.000-07:00

I was pretty stoked for Friday because The Boy (as they kept calling him) was going to take me out for some music and I was going to drink a lot of adult beverages. And that wasn´t until the evening and in the mean time I was in Glasgow with all its cool buildings and tons of people walking. So I tootled around town in the morning, taking pictures of things and generally looking like a tourist. Then I met up with everyone except The Boy and drank some Guinness and ate some great Indian food at a place called the Wee Curry Shop. NOM NOM NOM, god I love food. Why does everyone (guide books, etc) say the UK has such crappy cuisine? I guess the traditional food isn´t all that great (tongue salad, anyone?) but that doesn´t mean they haven´t imported everything delicious from the rest of the world.

Late evening finally rolled around, The Boy came over and we walked to the other side of town to some bar full of young people. Bars here are hilarious. Because of the lower drinking age there are groups of kids that look like they´re still in high school (in fact, they probably are), all of them have drinks in their hands and are acting like it´s totally normal. It´s kind of surreal and yet pleasant. It´s really nice to be around younger people and it adds a lot of energy to places.

Unfortunately, bars and pubs close at like 11 or 12 or something ridiculous like that and if ya wanna stay out you have to find a club. The Boy´s friend was DJing that night at such a place, so we headed there after last call at the pub. The midget bouncer (alright, alright. he was taller than me) nearly didn´t let me in, accused me of being too drunk and only relented after giving me a warning about not getting "too steamy" or something. I was way more miffed about this than I should have been. I only had two beers - TWO! I was in no way drunk. But I got even more pissed off when we walked in and the first thing we see is some girl with no underwear and her pants hanging halfway down her ass tumble over to the ground, pants falling further, after trying to complete a fairly simple dance move (The Upright Walk, I think it´s called). The Boy winced and said, "That´s about the most undignified thing I´ve ever seen." How the fuck did she get in there? Grrr.

But the music was good, the drinks were drinky and the dance floor filled with people to laugh at. I´m not much of a dancer myself, so The Boy and I chatted and drank on the sidelines instead. I don´t know what time it was when we left there, but outside it was suddenly drizzling and the streets were filled with squeaking, bleached blonde girls staggering around in packs and grunting, hollering boys also staggering around in packs. Some police vans and taxi cabs mingled among the human traffic adn the general noise of the place was "RARRARRARRARR". It was a happy madness though and a few blocks away it was comparatively silent.

Useless, I am

2009-04-07T04:56:00.000-07:00

Still don´t have an adaptor yet, despite walking around for about two hours this morning. My laptop is very forlorn with it´s blinking "I´m dead" light. There are two blog posts pleading to be let out of it.

In the meantime I´ll have to forget about my electronic concerns, get some food, then plop myself on the beach. It´s GORGEOUS here!

a little out of order.

2009-04-06T14:32:00.000-07:00

Before Glasgow Day Three, I need to vent a bit, and in any case the blog I have all typed up for that is stuck on my laptop whose battery has died and I don´t yet have an adaptor for Spain. This is an ancient, ancient computer I´m typing on, the buttons are different and the S and W keys aren´t orking very well. Bear ith me.

Yes, Spain is where I am. I´m still calming down from the overwhelming entrance to the country. First I couldn´t figure out the train. It took me a lot of looking dumb and lost before I read the one sign that explained that there was construction on the rails and my stop was closed. When I got to my alternate stop I looked at my map and thought, "It´s a nice evening. I´ll just walk across town, get a feel for the place." Well it turn out there´s this holiday called "Easter". Some dude died. Now every year around this time Spain has these crazy parades with four tiered crucifixes and giant float made of candels. This would be a neat spectacle if I was a) expecting it and b) it wasn´t blocking every conceivable route to my hostel. And I walked right into it and didn´t know what was happening until I was smashed on a sidewalk, feet off the ground, with a marching band playing and candlelit Jesus above me. I´m not sure I´ve been in a stranger situation.

On the bright side, I got to see, literally, the entire town, even the rougher areas that some of the locals with their children were seeing for the first time too. Becaue there were so many people out, dark creepy areas became somewhat friendly. The scenery would go from hard scrabble, crumbling clay building with graffiti everywhere to a castle, surrounded by tall skinny palm trees that leaned across the moon.

The map got me there, even if I had to take the longest route imaginable. The direction that the hostel provided said to not climb the hill. Apparently that meant, "climb most of the way up the hill, then turn left up the dark, steep stairs climb the rest of it." The hostel does not have wifi like it claimed, the showers are down the scariest hallway I´ve seen since my late grandpa´s wine cellar he called the Dungeon. There´s a very loud and drunk girl from Chicago in the bar that´s right next to my room who is trying desperately to screw any and every boy with a funny foreign name. The boys for their part are drinking straight out of a bottle and smoking a four-foot high hookah. It´s enough to make a girl not want to stay in a hostel ever again. (When I win the lottery) I could just hop in a cab and say, "take me to [respectable hotel]" where upon arriving at my room I could then fire up the laptop and write a blog about what a chore it is to fly.

Tomorrow I will hopefully be more with it.

Glasgow! Day Two

2009-04-06T02:06:00.000-07:00

The sun came out the second day and we drove up to Loch Lomond and Loch Long. Oddly enough, the area reminded me of the Columbia Gorge, minus the wind and a little less steep. I was surprised at the amount of trees. During my last trip to Scotland I took a backpackers' tour through the highlands and I'm not sure I saw a single tree. Ok, that's probably exaggerating, but I maintain that there are far more trees in the Loch Lomond/Long area than further north. We drank some coffee (good! they do coffee in Scotland far better than the Irish), ate some food, visited their boat, and went on a hike during which the spaniel went on a rampage through every mud puddle she came across.

The American that lives there took me out to dinner that night to a Mexican restaurant. After my experiences at Puffins: A Northwest Canadian Bistro in Korea that served "Pah-jee-tahs" and put raisins in nearly everything, I was morbidly curious as to what the Scots would do with Mexican food. Turns out, they probably do it better than in Mexico! I got something covered in chocolate sauce. Spicy chocolate sauce! Holy mother of god was it good. Why had I never considered chocolate with Mexican food?

After eating I plopped down on a bench in George Square to digest some of the giant meal and had a staring contest with a pigeon. It got chased off by a seagull. I'm sure it then pooped on someone's head.

Glasgow! Day One or How Meeting People on the Internet Isn't a Bad Thing

2009-04-06T01:14:00.000-07:00

The bus ride up to Glasgow was uneventful if late and a little boring. I have to admit to being a tad nervous about meeting the people in Glasgow. Sure, I've "known" them for a long time, but have you ever tried to explain the concept of blogging to someone who isn't too familiar with the internet? It's impossible to not sound ridiculous. After trying to find a dignified way of explaining to the customs/immigration agent how I knew people in the UK I finally just sighed and said, "I met them on the internet." That terminator of a woman just stared at me, letting the ridiculousness of the statement sink in while I looked down at my shoes sheepishly. Then she stamped my passport, slid it back and forgot about me. Some people are just born into their jobs.

Anyway, obviously I'm alive and blogging, so they didn't turn out to be serial killers or anything. In fact, they're about the nicest people in the world. Even their underbite-plagued spaniel was charming.

Glasgow itself was really, really nice. I don’t know where I’d gotten the impression (ok, I do know – the news and that book about hooligans “How Soccer Explains the World”) that Glasgow was a seedy, dangerous place. Sure I’d seen pretty pictures of statues and historic buildings and things, but I’d always assumed that just outside the frame of the shot someone was being stabbed. But it really is nice, mostly clean, and I felt totally safe the whole time. In fact, I felt safer there than in most cities in Ameica. I wonder how those news reporters who write up those stories on violent Glasgow would react to a place like LA. Hell, North Portland might be too much for them. There were seemingly endless amounts of old stone buildings with either domes, ornate carvings or statues on top of them, wide pedestrian only streets and packs of people. I’m not sure I’ve seen a place with more walkers (er, that’s people walking, not those things pushed by the geriatric).

After unsuccessfully trying to watch a soccer match, I got back to the apartment I was staying at and tried in vain to stay up late enough to watch the US men's qualifier against Costa Rica. Though I fell asleep before it started, I got a hold of my mom via text message and talked on the phone to my cousin that I'll be staying with in Spain.

Bad Blogger

2009-04-06T01:03:00.000-07:00

Really, Sara? It's been a week since I left and I've only made one post on here. Crap, I haven't even written in my journal, which is really weird. In any case, here's a round up that may be out of order and confusing, but ya know what? You'll live.

The first day in Manchester (March 31st)

2009-04-02T09:09:00.000-07:00

One thing I was really looking forward to doing once I hit Manchester was to eat kebabs. For whatever reason, Manchester and that whole area are covered with kebab shops that serve big mounds of cheap, delicious meat. I'm hungry just thinking about it now. Unfortunately, after 21 million hours of flying and waiting in airports and flying some more my stomach was really, really unhappy. It was totally unfair then that my hostel was in the part of town occupied by a lot of Middle Easterners (there was a bank next door called "Habib Bank" -- the love bank?) and all of their great food that I couldn't eat.

So... after being temporarily kicked out of the hostel I decided to wander around the city and make my way towards Old Trafford. I sat and people-watched at some square (Piccadilly Gardens, I think it was) for awhile. There was a guy playing some sort of homemade harp-like thing attached to a speaker. The music coming from it was beautiful, but I couldn't begin to tell you what sort of music it was, other than from somewhere in Asia. It really reminded me of Pioneer Square in that well-dressed professionals ate their lunch or stalked by along with students and homeless people and teenagers in tracksuits.

A couple things I learned from the people-watching: pigeon-chasing is Very Serious Business for the children of Manchester. They will hunt down every last one that dares land on the ground, completely oblivious to incoming trams, cars, etc. The girls and women were all very fancily dressed, hair done just so, and covered in makeup. Made me feel like even more of a slob.

After that, I hopped on the tram to get to the stadium. The Metrolink, as they called it, is like an older version of Portland's MAX light rail. The inside was steel gray with bright orange paint that had seriously flaked off. It reminded me of movies about life in prison. The Metrolink seemed to serve primarily very old people, and Japanese tourists who wanted to see Old Trafford. I really don't think there was a person under the age of 80 on that tram that didn't get off at the stadium.

You (whoever you are) are probably not very interested in the stadium itself. If you (again, whoever you are) are unaware of Old Trafford, it's where Manchester United play soccer. The tour was pretty neat though for someone who's watched a whole lot of English soccer but has never seen these places in person. OT hold just under 77,000, which means it has ten thousand more seats than the next biggest stadium I've ever been to - Qwest field in awful Seattle - but seemed smaller than the place. No matter where we walked in the stadium the view of the pitch was perfect and everything seemed close, as opposed to Qwest which seems like a cavern (probably this is because last time I was there those snobby fans up who wouldn't support a lower division team only had 1,500 people in the stadium and the only ones making noise were those of us in the visitors' section) and it's nearly impossible to see the goal on the far side. The tour group went through the locker room and the players' lounge as well as the players' tunnel. I have to admit, the last part was pretty cool, walking out towards the pitch and imagining the home crowd RIGHT THERE. I was however, unimpressed with ticket prices. No wonder Man Utd fans get called the Prawn Sandwich Brigade. Actual humans couldn't ever afford to go there and I suspect that tour is as close to attending a game as I'll ever get. Oh well, there's always cable TV.

That evening I spent a great deal of time walking in circles through the streets because I evidently left my sense of direction in Portland (or maybe Atlanta). At the end of it, I did manage to pick up a cell phone and a sandwich, so that was something at least. I barely made it to a reasonable bed time before passing out at eight.... and waking up again at midnight (roommates back from the club), one (more roommates), two, two-thirty... and so on until it was finally six or so. Then it was on to Glasgow!

what the hell time is it anyway

2009-03-31T03:59:00.000-07:00

Oooofff. I'm at that stage of tiredness that I'm nauseous and shaky, hungry and confused all at once. After wandering around Manchester looking for my hostel, I checked in, washed up and - finally! - laid down (smacking my head on the ceiling in the process. Damn bunk beds.) for a bit. But only for a bit, because the hostel staff burst in and declared that I was lying on a dirty bed and that I had to move. Then they took off all the sheets and disappeared. Hmmmph. I should probably go out and do something anyway. Maybe I'll take the tram over to Old Trafford and see if I can get on a tour.

Oh yes, I peaked out the window of my room to find: a kebab/pizza/burger joint attached to a XXX adult store attached to what appears to be a club - based on the DJ equipment visible in the window - that has two doors without handles or knobs. How does one get in? Then I watched a bus driver read the paper over the steering wheel while breezing through the intersection.

I guess the point of this post is to say that I'm officially in Manchester, but too tired to make much sense.

It's not over yet

2008-03-31T14:14:00.001-07:00

I'm getting home this evening, but the trip isn't over yet. Late season snow storms shut down the interstate in Wyoming yesterday afternoon and it didn't open until 8:30am. It's about 15 hours at full speed to get to Portland from Laramie, and there was no way I was going to drive 75 on fresh snow and ice. So I booked a flight home from Denver. I have Fridays and Mondays off, so I have a return flight Thursday evening. Four days is plenty of time to drive from Denver. Maybe I'll even have time to catch a show!

As for now, I'm killing time, drinking beer at the airport. If you're lucky, in the next few hours I may load some pictures and posts from the past week and a half [she says to the one person that reads this].

My hair is ridiculous

2008-03-28T09:02:00.000-07:00

After a couple days on the beach, a boat ride, several long drives and a nervy encounter with a Sheriff's deputy, my hair - unruly at the best of times - is now absolutely ridiculous. The masses of individual curls have formed a number of collectives to give the whole a more chunky, yet unified, hair society. I'm not sure whether to label it a syndicalist movement or anarcho-collectivism or what, but watching the revolution unfold has been fascinating nonetheless. There's blonde now, too! My hair has been on a darkening trajectory for years now, and while I was kind of hoping it would hit black before it all went gray, so as to have given me the full range of colors (I was born a redhead, it turned blonde, etc), I'll take random bits of blonde, too I guess. Multicultural societies are so much more interesting, aren't they?

Anyway, the boat ride was all kinds of fun. I guess. I like boats and I like birds and so a bird watching boat tour sounded just about perfect, right? The thing is, both bird watching and boat riding aren't things that lend themselves to a ton of words. I mean, what do you do on a boat? Ya stand there and look at things. It's windy. Everything smells fantastic, but really? You're still just standing there looking at things. I also realize that I can't maturely discuss birds, either. So let's just surmise the tour this way: We got on a boat! And there were waves! And there was a lot of wind and I got a little sunburned and we saw Whooping Cranes and a Peregrine Falcon and Egrets and Herons! And then we saw dolphins!!!!!!!!

Ok. Here's a warning to you: when entering the tiny Texas 'ville of Skidmore, you will notice the speed limit decreases to 45. This is cool, you'll probably slow down anyway. The problem is that shortly thereafter you'll notice the presence of a Dairy Queen and your brain will cease nearly all functions that don't directly pertain to getting ice cream into your mouth. Unfortunately, this meltdown coincides with the passing of a giant blinking sign that says, "SCHOOL ZONE: SLOW THE FUCK DOWN, ASSHOLE. WHAT, YOU WANNA MURDER CHILDREN?" At least, that's what I think it says. I didn't see it, obviously. I did, however, see the cop sitting alongside the road, and checked my speedometer to find I was traveling at 42. "Heyyy, that's under the speed limit! I'm practically Texan!" So when said cop pulled out a moment later with his lights flashing I knew it wasn't for me, so I kept on going for the Dairy Queen, found myself a parking spot and was about to step out of the car when I realized that I'd been blocked in. Shit.

After a somewhat confusing exchange - "I was going 42." "Actually, I clocked you a 38." ".....Wait, what?" - the whole school zone (30mph) thing was explained. Then the deputy proceeded to scare the shit out of me by having me get out of the car and ask me about 800 questions. When I told him I was in Texas visiting an army buddy, he brightened, but then seemed extra suspicious. "You look..... really young to have been in the army." So that led to 800 more questions. My life story later and dispatch finally confirming - over a loudspeaker that the entire town could hear, I'd like to add - that my car was really mine, I wasn't a serial killer, and it was pretty unlikely I'd smuggled a few kilos of coke or a guy named Jorge in my cooler, he let me go with a warning. Then he gave me directions to Austin that avoided the "clusterfuck" that is San Antonio traffic. Awwww, whataniceguy. (Really, he was pretty cool. I dunno why I get all nervous around the police when drill sergeants don't even bother me.)

The rest of the drive to Austin, though, sucked and we didn't get a hotel room until around 10pm. Too tired and frustrated to deal with heading into downtown, we went to the neighboring hotel bar and I sucked down whiskey sours while eavesdropping on the pilots and flight crew members who were also there drinking. Today, Tony is coming down for a doctor's appointment, and afterwards I hope to buy him things and get him to drive us around. Tonight is the New Model Army show, which I'm pretty damn excited about. In the meantime I'm sitting in my hotel room watching the humidity/smog grow into what I can only hope will be a ferocious thunderstorm.

Some thoughts on Texas

2008-03-26T07:37:00.000-07:00

- Texans require television with their meals like the rest of us require silverware. Sure, there aren't any TVs at Taco Bell, but then there isn't any silverware either.

- Texans drive sloooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwww. Like, under-the-speed-limit slow. The only people that have blown past me when I've had the cruise control set at a mere five mph over the limit have had out of state plates.

- Related to above, it's actually faster on highways than the interstates, because you can drive 110mph down the flat stretches. There aren't any overpasses for the cops to hide under and hardly any other cars to negotiate with.

- We saw a huge brush fire late at night en route to Killeen. At least, I hope it was just a brush fire, because I'd feel bad if I was oooing at someone's house burning down.

- There is a deer goddamn infestation in central Texas. There is just no way that there is enough edible plant life to sustain that large of a population. I pretty much drove down the centerline the whole way, only moving over for the firetrucks headed towards the above mentioned brush fire.

- A Killeen in Ireland is an unconsecrated graveyard or a children's cemetery. I find it morbidly fitting that Killeen, TX is the home of the U.S. Army's largest post.

- Holy suburban strip mall chain stores! Blech!

- Shiner Bock, the official beer of Texas, is kinda meh.

- We saw a flamingo!

More later...

All I Wanted in the End was World Domination and a Whole Lot of Money to Spend

2008-03-11T11:19:00.001-07:00

It's been awhile since I've posted anything in my main blog. Just haven't felt like it. It may be awhile yet. But at the end of March I'm heading on a roadtrip to Texas and back, and I plan on writing about it on the travel blog.

In a way, roadtrips actually require more work than an overseas journey with a multiple layovers. Despite all my daydreaming, it's difficult to just jump in the car and go. My tires are getting old and bulgey, the 60,000 mile tune up was due 14,000 miles ago, the oil definitely needs to be changed, and the back windshield wiper is going to drive me absolutely nuts if it isn't replaced with something that doesn't make a giant fart noise everytime it's deployed. It was probably two years ago that the Jiffy Lube guys insisted that I needed a new battery, I'm sure that the air filter needs replacing by now (and getting a fancy one actually makes a noticable difference) and I wouldn't be surprised if there's an issue with the radiator cap again. I make it sound like I'm driving a disaster on wheels; in reality my car has not once given me a problem over two cross-country trips, a winter in northern New York, and a lot of time sitting dormant on the curb. It's time though that I returned the love and get the little things taken care of.

Other preparations have been taking off, though. I've acquired a partner for the trip, Suzanna, a girl who plays on both of my soccer teams and who will no doubt hate me by the end of the journey. The play-your-ipod-through-the-radio device has been a total flop, so I've instead bought a giant stack of blank CDs and will have my laptop handy to burn onto disc anything that I have a sudden hankering to listen to. I even bought a pack of mini-Sharpies to label them with! Although we're missing SXSW (a big music convention with seemingly hundreds of bands playing in many venues in Austin) by a couple weeks, there are a few shows while we're around, including the one that caught my eye – New Model Army. Sure sure, they're probably older than my parents, but they're pretty fucking cool, and they don't tour the U.S. very often (something to do with visas being denied. They're political or something, heh), so I was excited to see them scheduled when I'm going to be in town. The online ticket buying process seemed a little fishy, though, so I sent Tony into Austin and he procured us some tickets.

It so better be warm at the beach. I've been having drool-worthy dreams about warm sandy beaches, cheap Mexican food, and affordable surf/beach attire. I've been throwing out the clothes I can't stand anymore and the result is I don't have much to wear and very little desire to pay a bunch of money to change that. What I would give to be sitting in a depression in the sand, clad in loose fitting shorts and a tank top, with a beer in my hand.

And to not short change any credit here, I am also looking forward to seeing those snow packed mountains in Utah. The few times Mt. Hood has poked out here, it's been gaspingly gorgeous. The Rockies I'm sure are even more impressive. Be prepared for a lot of through-the-windshield photographs posted.

Tralee

2007-10-14T15:20:00.000-07:00

I already blogged about Tralee, so here's just a picture or two.

Pretty sunset!

I actually two about twenty shots of this, playing with the light settings on my camera. I like how they have flowers in the middle of the roundabouts. There may not be many trees in Ireland, but at least in some areas there are other pretty things growing.

Killarney, again

2007-10-14T15:04:00.001-07:00

From Liverpool, I flew back into Cork. The traffic was so bad that the bus driver let us off in the middle of the road so that we could walk to wherever we were going, as it was going to take longer to actually drive there. I wandered around a bit, looking for a decent tshirt before my bus left in an hour, but couldn't find the tourist info center that had the one I wanted. So instead, I grabbed dinner – sandwich and crisps from a convenience store (do they call them something else?) – and made my way back to the bus station.

There were so many people that wanted on my bus that they called up two more buses and made them direct trips to different cities. One to Tralee, one to Killarney, and one to somewhere else that was just before Killarney. See, it's always so easy to get out west and then once you're there THERE'S NO GETTING BACK! Seriously, a hundred buses arrive on the west coast every day and maybe three leave. In any case, this meant that I actually got to Killarney while it was still light out. The town seemed much the same as it had before, save the addition of massive decorations for the Gaelic football final that was scheduled a few days from then. I even remembered how to get to the hostel, and the clerk actually remembered me from two years ago! I was too flattered at the time to have been creeped out by that.

It had been one loooong day of traveling (see the train ride through Manchester, etc. that was all on this same day), and the Timbers would be playing at approximately two a.m., and since there was WiFi I planned on watching them. So, it wasn't much of a surprise then that I slept through the meeting time the next day for the tours of the Dingle peninsula which I kinda wanted to go on, since I didn't have a car and that seemed to be the only way to get over there. Instead, I grabbed a German girl that was moping around in my room looking lonely and we walked around the Killarney National Park and I took a zillion pictures.

Once again, though, I booked too many nights in Killarney, because after the park, there really just wasn't anything to do. There are more Americans in Killarney than any other group of people, especially the Irish, so between the tourist attitude and the local attitude towards tourists, the atmosphere of the town isn't all that great in the evening. I hurredly booked a room in Tralee for the following night so that I could get to Doolin, where there was hiking, as early as possible.

I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to catch up on soccer scores (Sky Sports is fucking evil and stupid. More on that later, I think.), and I called home for the first time to let my parents know that I was alive and well, if a little bored. I left fairly early the next day, hoping to get some breakfast at the wonderful place next to the hostel, but as it was Sunday there wasn't a thing open or a soul about. At the bus station, an elderly couple was fuming mad that the bus to Dingle had been canceled because of 'The Football.' I loved how no one called it just 'football' but always had to add that article 'THE Football,' which to me made it into a proper noun. This applied, I think, to both soccer-football and Gaelic football, although in this case they were talking about the Gaelic version, in which Kerry, the county we were in, was to be playing the final against their rivals and neighbors, Cork. Anyway, The Football was kind of a big deal, I guess, what with bus drivers refusing to run their routes during the match, and the decorations everywhere (houses, businesses, cars, lawns, children).

From the park:

Cork!

2007-10-14T14:56:00.001-07:00

Boy did I love Cork. It had me with the coffee, really, at the hostel. Fresh roasted in Cork! €2! Ummm, mmm, mmm, coffee. It came in your very own (rented, anyway) mini-French press. I always love ordering tea in this part of the world because they give you your very own pot and it makes me feel special. I know that sounds silly, but it's just one of those things about traveling that just tickles me. The hostel's lobby also had free WiFi which also made me very happy after being in the techno-wasteland of Achill. (I love Achill for that, and I hope that relaxed, get-away-from-it-all atmosphere doesn't change too much, but when ya need something done, it's awfully frustrating.) I got directions via public transit to Turner's Cross, the soccer park where I was going to see Cork City FC play that night.

But what really cemented my liking of the city was the market downtown, which I ran across the next day while exploring the city. Much like Pike Place in Seattle (one of the only cool things left in that city), it was semi-underground with wooden ceilings and walls. Full of fresh fish, meat and veggies, it smelled like it, too. I've always loved Pike Place, so I was excited to explore every little corner of the place. This was when I ran across the shark.

Wow, I can't say I've ever seen a dead shark before. I almost felt sorry for the thing. Ok, not almost. I really did feel sorry for it. And that's speaking as someone who both hunts and fishes. But even I have to admit that it was pretty neat to be this close to a real shark. So the camera finally came out and I became a full-fledged tourist, taking pictures of sharks and streets and buildings.

A lot of things about Cork reminded me of Portland, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. First of all, there's a big river that runs through the middle of downtown. This means that there are a lot of bridges, like Portland, and also like Portland, this means there is a ton of traffic. Fortunately, the downtown is small enough that one is able to walk everywhere anyway, so it wasn't too much of a problem for people that don't need to commute long distances everyday. Then, there's the nickname "People's Republic of Cork" which, adjusted for the name of course, is also one of Portland's nicknames (along with beertown, bridgetown, soccer city usa, stumptown). Plus, Cork has several breweries including Beamish, Murphy's and… and one other I can't remember. I never figured out if they had any smaller breweries, though. I figure they will soon enough since even Dublin has gotten into the organic microbrews scene.

The night after the soccer game, I went to the pub that gave discounts for the hostel I was staying in. The rugby World Cup was on, and I was mildly interested in watching it, since having learned some of the rules, I was starting to find kind of exciting. Ireland wasn't even playing, but two teams in there group were, so there was enough interest that more than a handful of people turned out to watch, too. I ended up talking with a couple people until closing which was nice, since when traveling alone I can go for long stretches without saying more than "thank you" and "pint of ___, please."

Next morning, nicely hungover, I checked out, found some food at a diner right in front of the Airlink bus stop, and began the whirlwind trip to England, which I'm sure I've blogged about somewhere. Yep, there it is! More pictures of Cork:

Aaargh!

2007-09-21T08:41:00.001-07:00

I guess I'm not going to post any pictures until I get home. This wireless connection won't let me upload anything, pictures or otherwise. Poo.
But anyway, here are a few earlier posts.

Yeah, I give homeless people change, too

2007-09-21T08:40:00.001-07:00

Doolin, 17th

I'm such a bleeding heart. As I was out walking yesterday a man waved me over from his car. An old Irish farmer, he was obviously lonely and wanted to chat a bit. So I did, and he offered to give me a lift over to the cliffs, which sounded alright. I don't normally get in cars with strangers, but he seemed harmless enough, but by the end of the journey, if he'd asked me to marry him, I'm certain he wouldn't have been joking; he just got a little too friendly, and all those creep alarm bells began to go off. He tried to get me to agree to let him drive me to the neighboring town for the festival they're having that evening, but I only agreed that I might run into him at the nearby pub.

Thankfully, I met some Americans at the hostel that were headed to the same pub (there was supposedly a good group of musicians in town, set to play there) and told them about the guy, and we all figured their presence would be a deterrent. Well, it was. He said hello, but wouldn't talk to me with everyone there. Now, I'm pretty sure – and the Americans would agree with this – that he has slightly dubious intentions. What they are, I don't know, which is even more alarming, but if he just wanted company he wouldn't have shied from chatting with my companions. But despite this knowledge, at the end of the night when he approached me and asked forlornly, "so do you still want to go to Lisdoon?" I really felt bad. It was already midnight, so he knew it was probably not going to happen.

"No, not tonight, it's already late, and I'm kind of tired," I answered, apologetically.

"Oh. Ok," he said, clearly disappointed. "Tomorrow, I can pick you up at one o'clock and we'll drive around the coastline, ok?" Why do these people have to be so goddamn nice?

"Well, I'll probably be out hiking then. I kinda wanted to hike all day, that's why I came out here."

"Oh," more disappointment. "Well, you'll be around then?"

"Yeah, I'll be around tomorrow."

"Ok, well perhaps I'll see you then?" his voice cracking.

"Perhaps, Tommy. I'll be around." And then he hugged me and tottered towards the door, leaning heavily on his cane.

I'm a terrible human being. I've made some sweet, lonely old man very sad.

Sandwiches, Tralee, and the Best Bus Driver Ever

2007-09-21T08:39:00.001-07:00

Tralee, and Limerick, enroute to Doolin

The following combinations of sandwich fillings were available in Limerick Monday morning. They are, unfortunately for the hungry American, common.

Ham and potato salad
Turkey and stuffing
Turkey and cranberry sauce
Ham and onion
Tuna and sweetcorn

On a sandwich? How do they even THINK of these things? The selections in England are even more bewildering. I'd have taken a picture of the ones at the York train station, but I was too tired and hungry to be amused by what appeared to be either terribly ill-conceived experiments conducted by aliens on what humans eat, or a joke conspired by sandwich makers and the operators of CCTV cameras in stores. On these sort of occasions, I usually settle on "Chicken BLT on thick, chunky bread." Sometimes it's funny later.

Yesterday, Kerry won the football final. As I was in Tralee, the capital of Kerry, things were expectedly crazy. Every car that came through the main drag laid on the horn, and any passengers waved air horns out the window at passerby who returned fire, so to speak. By 7pm, there wasn't a sober person on the street, save for me, who was trying to take pictures of pretty things, but I then decided that I was more likely to get a can of Bulmers thrown on my camera than a decent shot of anything. Instead, I walked out of town a bit and took roughly a million pictures of a sunset. On the way back to the hostel I was accosted by at least three extremely drunk men, one of whom was probably 80 years old. The pub I'd watched the game at said that they'd have a band in, so I stopped in the doorway to listen but heard a cover song and decided I didn't want to put up with bad covers AND drunk slobs, so I tried to find a shop open on a Sunday night for a sandwich. Besides, I was sick of every male I walked past slurring, "Heyyy-eyyyyy," at me. (And no I don't even know how you can slur a nonword like "hey", but they managed.) The only thing open was a fastfood joint named "Supermacs". The counter was staffed by the only cute - and coincidentally, the only sober – boy in town. It didn't hurt that he kept smiling at me. While that was probably due to my funny accent, I'll take what I can get.

I had to get up at 5:30 in order to catch the 6:15 bus out of town, which was my only chance in getting to Doolin before 8pm. I didn't sleep well either, due to the text messaging from my youngest sis (YstSis, until I find a better acronym) and Tim (who doesn't get an acronym), who wanted to talk about the Timbers game. Any other night, guys. Poor Tim is IN Portland, but can't follow the games due to work. So YstSis texts me the latest halfway 'round the world, then I text Tim. Communication these days is strange, isn't it? (btw, Timbers 3-0! 3-1 on aggregate! Bring on the next round!)

Irish towns are hard to identify. I mean, I know when I'm in one, I just don't know the name of it. This is a problem when riding the bus, as the driver sure as hell doesn't inform anyone of where we are. In small American towns, everything is named for the place. You'll have the Newport Bank, the Newport Insurers, the Newport Police Station. Here, everything is Paddy's Pub, Diarmuid's Shoes, and O'Shea's Groceries. In every town! This meant that on the ride to Doolin from Limerick, I couldn't sleep for fear of missing my stop and ending up in Bogville in front of Murphy's Pub where there's no ATM, no place to stay and noooo bus on Sundays. So when the old lady at the front of the bus who had been shouting into her cellphone for the whole journey began to have technical difficulties, I was the one she approached.

"Do you speak English?"

Sigh. "Yes."

"Of course you do. Now, could you tell me why my phone isn't ringing? It's only vibrating and I CANNOT afford to miss calls today, it's urgent."

So I gave it my best shot, but for the life of me, I don't know why it wasn't ringing. It really should have been ringing. But after fifteen minutes or so she gave up and tried the boy across the aisle who merely looked at the thing, with visible disgust I might add, and it rang. This is why I never got into fixing cars.

BUT the trip got immensely better when we hit a traffic jam in some tiny town called Lisdoonvarna (we got stuck in front of the sign labeling it as such, that's the only reason I know the name). A delivery truck parked on the wrong side of the road couldn't pass us, and after consultation between our driver and the other, it was decided that the bus would back up. Meanwhile, traffic was piling in from both directions. The bus driver (known from now on as Best Bus Driver Ever, or BBDE) was already getting excited. "Making ME back up? He could've. He should've. He's the one going the wrong way! He got scared though. He had room, he just got scared." After the truck was past, it was a matter of dealing with all the cars that were following the truck, all of which had decided to follow the truck's lead by driving on the wrong side of the road. So we hiccuped through town, jamming on the brakes so hard every few seconds that people's faces kept bouncing off the seats in front of them, and BBDE less and less successfully stifling his shouts at the other drivers. Finally, in a tirade I could hear all the way near the back of the bus:

"OCH, fuck.. fff… *mumbles* AGGGHHHHGGGH! DIS IS WHY I DON'T HAVE ANY HAIR ON ME HEAD!" (btw, I think I came to Ireland just to hear someone shout that)

"THERE ARE PEOPLE HERE WITH LICENSES! I WOULDN'T LET THEM DRIVE A PRAM!" He was a short man, with a high-pitched voice which made it all the sweeter. Even people in the restaurant next to us were laughing.

About an hour and 8km later he saved me a walk to my hostel by dropping me off right in front of it, but not before I'd nearly gotten off the bus earlier. Told that he'd get me closer to where I was going, I hopped into the front seat, with full view of the road ahead. Big mistake. Sure, we only went like a hundred feet, but it was a hundred feet of terror. There is no way that vehicles that large should be on roads that small, especially when there are other cars and pedestrians. But for entertainment alone this guy won the close race for the highly coveted best bus driver title.

Wireless, tomorrow!

2007-09-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

Back to Galway AGAIN tomorrow, and maybe I'll get to post some pictures, finally. The last time I had wireless and was therefore able to use my laptop, the wireless network had blocked all the picture uploading sites. Anyway, I'll be home Sunday night, Monday morning in my current timezone.
Currently in Clifden, which is really scenic. Went on a 9-mile hike today and saw lots of pretty things. Unfortunately, I'm a bit far from the Twelve Bens and Connemara National Park, part of which the bus went through yesterday, so I can't hike it, but can only look at it forlornly on the map. Someday I'll have the courage to deal with the left-handed manuals and drive through this damn country.
The only real news other than the hike is that it finally occurred to me to buy my very own mini-French press so as to make myself real coffee. Most hostels have water boilers and things, but not coffeemakers. This takes care of that nasty instant problem, and the overpriced and sporadic coffee shops.
Pooh, the cute guy working here when I came in just left. :( Oh well, I've got some errands to run. Until tomorrow!

Not much internet out this way

2007-09-19T06:14:00.000-07:00

Oh, it exists, it's just scarce and you really only have enough time to explore bus schedules and maybe book a bed before you have to get offline. I assure you I've been keeping track of things and possibly soon I'll have some posts. The last post was from Killarney, I think, and since then I've been to Tralee, Doolin and now Clifden. I came out here to go hiking around Connemara, but as the weather is nasty, I may just hang out in a pub. Worst comes to it, I'll hang out in a pub in Galway or something.

The England Trip

2007-09-14T20:01:00.000-07:00

It's 4am in Ireland, and 8pm on the west coast of Canada, where the Timbers are playing Vancouver in the first round of the players. The first half is over, no one has scored, and my video feed has worked for all of about 7 minutes. And I'm tired.

Anyway, Wednesday I flew from Cork to Liverpool and then took trains all the way over to Harrogate to visit an old army buddy. He met me at the train station and walked me to the pub, which was fine with me. It was the perfect place: hideous, dingy carpet; frightening bathrooms, and loads of great handpulled ales. Mmmmhmm! Some drunk 17-year-olds latched on to us outside the pub and bummed cigarettes and tried to talk shit, which ended up being hilarious. And no, they weren't 'taking the piss' - they weren't smart enough for that - they truly were being serious.

Drunk Teens (DT): "Coors is a really good beer, I really like it."
Us: "Coors? ....Are you sure? I mean, yeah. Great beer" *rolls eyes*

DT: "Why do you call is 'soccer'?"
Us: "Cuz you invented the word. Thanks."
DT: "No we didn't!"
Us: "Yep. Ya did. Again, thanks from us, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and any other country I'm forgetting that calls it soccer as well."
DT: "Oh."

DT: "Is Olde English any good?"
Us: *snickers wildly* "Yeah man, it's great."
[OE, in case you're unfamiliar with the stuff, is a beer that comes in a 40oz bottle (two Imperial pints) and it's, at most, $2. Homeless people drink it, usually from a paper bag.]

Anyway, dumb kids aside, the night was good. I chatted with the bartender for quite awhile, which was nice after a few days without talking with a lot of people (happens when traveling alone, sometimes). Plus, while up there I got to try some different beers, including Deuchars pale ale, which was really fruity and not really my thing, but nice for in between normal stuff. Then I had some Roosters, which I vaguely remember being good, but I was getting really tired by that point.

Thursday, my friend's coworker was having a 'pub lunch' going away party at this pub in the middle of nowhere. (Ok, looking at a map now, it's just outside of Harrogate, but it really seemed farther.) His friend drives like the original British Land Rover. It's like something out of National Geographic. It's basically a giant metal box with gears that go down into the negatives, and the behind the back seat is a fuel tank you could power a small neighborhood with. The pub had the same hideous carpet as the one the night before, except cleaned so you could see the bizarre patterns and color combinations clearly, PLUS there were matching curtains! Thankfully, too, cuz the rustic, country decor was a little too cutesy without it. More beer! Something called One Leg Up, which was so delicious that I didn't even look to see what other beers they had.

Most of the rest of Thursday was spent trying to nap away the gianormous steak and ale pie from lunch, flipping channels, and playing with my friends two adorable kids. Later on it was back to the pub to hear a band, catch up on the past two years of crap, and drink more beer! This time it was the local stuff Black Sheep (which I'm pretty sure is at my grocery store at home), and some nasty Hoegaarden, which thoroughly kicked my ass.

Next day was back to Cork, so I was up early and got dropped off at the train station with enough time to spare to eat breakfast, which was amazingly, considering the wealth of Harrogate, the cheapest meal I've had all trip. The train ride itself was going swimmingly - I'd made my connection in Leeds without being stabbed (there's something about the name Leeds that just sounds nasty, and I always think of grime and hooligans) and gotten a mocha - until some idiot ran his car into a rail bridge outside of Manchester, causing all trains to Liverpool to be delayed by an hour. I was so furious by the time the trains finally left that craphole station we were trapped in that I hardly even got excited when we went past Old Trafford. I got to the airport check-in counter with only eight minutes to spare and was in no mood to deal with the ditz who insisted that I needed a visa to get back into Ireland. Seriously, if she'd just read my passport, she'd have seen this was my FOURTH TIME entering that country, all other trips without a visa. Thankfully, the woman next to her gave her an your-an-idiot look and handed my passport back to me (it's not MY fault no one even looked at the thing when I came into the UK) and I even made it through security with enough time to pee before boarding.

England surmised: Lots of beer, some fast driving on narrow roads through sheep fields, more beer and strange decor. Good trip!

[bah, Vancouver 1-0 Portland. Video never worked again]

Engerland!

2007-09-13T10:05:00.000-07:00

Quick post from the Middle of Nowhere, England, where I'm having about as fabulous of a time that one can have in such a place. I'm back to Cork tomorrow afternoon, which means I have to leave here ridiculously early in order to make my flight from Liverpool, which somehow takes FOREVER to get to, even though it's not really that far away. Tomorrow night I'll be in Killarney at a nice hostel I stayed in a few years ago, which has free WiFi and stuff so I'll have time to post a real blog then. Plus, the Timbers are playing, so I'll be up all night trying to follow that from 4,500 miles away.

The Rebel Army!

2007-09-12T01:26:00.001-07:00

Ok, this post isn't as exciting as the title implies. Monday I went and saw Cork City FC take on University College Dublin. City's nickname is the Rebel Army, so of course they sang that a lot. Well, a bit. Ya see, Ireland really isn't a soccer country - they're into the Gaelic football and hurling, so even though there are tons of people walking around in ManUtd and Celtic jerseys, the turnout for live soccer is pretty small. And yes, they call it 'soccer', not football; it's not just North America. The stadium only holds about 8,000 and it was about half full, maybe a tad more. The supporters section was a lot like the Timbers Army, in that they hang out behind the goal and wear green and white, but they were a lot younger. It seemed to be made up mostly of teenagers and the only ones older were parents of five-year-olds. I'd say the average age was 14. A lot of the chants were the same (as I'm sure is the case the world over), but with a slightly different tune, and of course, different words. In the first half they sang maybe four chants intermittently, which was kind of disappointing, but it picked up a lot in the second half and most people in the Shed were singing and there was even some pogoing! (Firefox doesn't think 'pogoing' is a word. Shame on it!) I bought a couple overpriced scarves (what isn't overpriced in this country?), but refused to buy a jersey for my friend who wanted one, as the prices were really outrageous.
In the end, City won 4-1, even with the ref really taking it easy on the Dubs. Refereeing aside, just the blindingly obvious shots Cork missed meant the score could have been much, much higher. In any case, the Timbers could easily have taken on UCD, and I think CCFC v PTFC would make a great preseason friendly. That way we'd have the Rebel Army v the Timbers Army and the People's Republic of Cork v the People's Republic of Portland! And yeah, I am going to get one of those cheesy PRC tshirts; it'd go nicely with my PRP scarf.
Oh, and there's no alcohol sold in the stadium(!!!). That, and the age of the crowd were the biggest differences from a Timbers match. A good night out, all in all.

Achill Debacle

2007-09-11T03:21:00.001-07:00

So I was on Achill for awhile. Some people call their hometowns a vortex, but they're just exaggerating. Unless they're from Achill. It's an island off an island and even though I spent six weeks trapped there last year, I came crawling back again. Of course there's no internet, the buses run intermittently, and I wouldn't even be surprised if the newspapers reach there a day late. It's a great place if you want a break from the real world – and I really appreciate it for that – but, man, do you need to plan everything before you end up out there. The dates are from the 6^th through the 9^th.

***

*Old Friend, New Friends*

Getting a bus out to Achill is easy as pie, especially if you've done it a few times before. The only problem was that the only public toilet in Westport was closed, so I was in a pretty bad way before I even got on the final bus. The weather that morning in Galway was chilly and drizzling and I expected much the same up north, but Westport was like a blue hole. It was hot. It's always raining in Westport! So I buried my jacket in my backpack and wandered around taking pictures and looking for a bathroom before getting on the next bus.

The driver winked at me. I sighed because I already recognized him. He was the one that nearly left without us last year when my friend read the schedule wrong and we were at the pub. The whole town thought that was pretty funny. I recognized people on the bus. I already felt like I was entering a hole.

On the far end of Westport, an elderly lady flagged down the bus. "Sorry! I had to go to confessions!" she explained. "I had to go to confessions and they kept me there for an HOUR!" And then, as she walked through the aisles, possibly to no one in particular, "Them priests don't know what the hell they're talkin about!" I was suddenly glad I'd forgotten my headphones in my luggage. Ahhh, western Ireland.

The weather stayed nice and everything was peachy until we stopped at a schoolhouse and every kid on the island got on the bus. It was three to a seat in the back and standing room only everywhere else. They were nice enough kids, but in the way that all teenagers do, they had to shout at each other to communicate. I'm pretty sure people could hear that bus coming better than they'd hear a brigade of tanks.

I walked down to the fieldschool to meet Kate, my Canadian roommate from the fieldschool last year. She'd spent the summer working there this year and was about to move on to a different job somewhere in the Midlands. I met the rest of the new staff, including Ross the housemate of Kate and the field director at the school who I was staying with, and then we all went out to prepare for a beach barbecue. Yay beach party! Apparently, the weather had been crap all summer and it just cleared up right before I drove up. People were coming out of their houses to admire the view and breathe the air. It's nice that people can appreciate such little things.

The beach party was excellent, of course. We salvaged some washed up wood and turf for the fire and had kebabs and burgers and sausage and of course a lot of Guinness. Oh how I missed the ocean and drinking beer over conversations about archaeology.

*Happy Times*

The next day I hiked the long way around to the Deserted Village, where the dig is, to see what they'd done to my unit. The whole walk was gorgeous, and hot, and I took a bunch of pictures that now kind of all look alike. The house I'd been working on looks completely different, with the exception of a few stones that I'm intimately familiar with, after spending days measuring the corners and sketching. The fire pit I'd been working on is actually one of two fireplaces in the house, and a piece of stone with metal bits had been found toppled over, indicating it may have been a mantelpiece. Isn't that NEAT? I thought so.

Continuing the same direction, I took the back road to Dooagh which provided some gorgeous vistas that if I wasn't nearly about to pass out from hunger, I'd have lingered at the whole afternoon. Gielty's, the pub I practically lived at last year, was my goal for the afternoon, and I got there just in time to grab lunch and some (instant! When did they start that crap?) coffee and chat with Alan before meeting Ross to get a lift back. It turned out though, that we were going to have a few pints with a newish local at The Pub pub (Yeah, it's really just called 'The Pub') first. Did you know that the Irish government will fund film clubs? Ross is trying to get one going there. He'll get sent a few films a month and will show them at the fieldschool and people are going to arrange for a shuttle from other parts of the island. Does the American government do this? The way they were talking about it, it seemed common knowledge that one could get the government to send movies to watch with the town.

That night it was back to Gielty's to meet (for me) and re-meet (for everyone else) a professor from Cork and his archaeologist wife. They of course were friendly and incredibly knowledgeable, as all archaeologists seem to be. Plus, again like all archaeologists, they liked beer and bought everyone pints. That's how archaeology works in Ireland (and to some extent in the US, as well): you make connections and learn about other digs by meeting archaeologists at pubs and drinking many rounds.

That night I decided that since I need to use the internet, I'd combine the trip with the opportunity to meet with Jenn, another Canadian fieldschool survivor that now lives in Castlebar. I needed to book a room in Cork, figure out how to get down there, and maybe even work out a plane ticket to England. Besides, I'd only been through Castlebar on the bus; it'd be neat to see a new town. Kate was leaving the next day and Ross was driving her, but they were letting me stay an extra night so I could sort things out.

*May I Waste your Time, Too?*

What a colossal waste of time. I got out of bed and sneaked out of the house before Kate and Ross got up, so I didn't get to say goodbye to either of them, which was very disappointing. I needed to use the internet and I wanted to see my friend Jenn who lives in Castlebar, so I had to catch the 8:20 or 10:00 bus. I opted for the latter, as I figured Jenn wouldn't be awake either and that we would make an afternoon of it and I wouldn't need to get back to Achill until the evening. Well, I booked my room in Cork and wrote down the bus schedule for Sunday (8:35 from Achill, 10:15 Westport to Athlone, 1430 to Cork) in about twenty minutes. At that point, I could have caught the next bus to Achill and have been back in time to go for a hike, sit on the beach and then wander over to Gielty's to watch the soccer and have a few pints. But I waited for Jenn to get back to me, which she did… at three-thirty. Two hours after that bus had left. And she said she couldn't make it into town. Well, hell. So then I had to waste an afternoon wandering around Castlebar – the highlights include a Dunne's and a Tesco – and didn't get on the bus until 5:30. A small relief though, the bus driver didn't normally do that route and seemingly forgot to do the rest of the island, which was great for those of us heading all the way to Dooagh, since it cut an hour off of the journey time; hope no one was waiting to catch the bus in Dugort, though!

So a twenty-minute errand took over ten hours. That's life in Achill for ya. I got to Gielty's just in time for the Ireland-Slovakia game, but the place was really quiet. I chatted a bit with one of the servers who had worked there last year (the look on her face when I walked in was hilarious – so confused!), but otherwise I sat drinking my Guinness and watching the game. I tried to text Tim back home, but the message wouldn't send and then I somehow managed to lock the phone, rendering it useless until I got the pin # from my room. No one talked to me, which was ok until the soccer turned to shit and Slovakia kept getting shots on goal. Then Slovakia came back and tied it in stoppage time and I was furious. Can't anything go right? I nursed my drink until I decided that it was late enough that the field school students probably weren't going to show up, so I shook Alan's hand and started the three mile trek in the dark. By the time I got back to the empty house I was thoroughly depressed. No one to talk to! My phone wasn't working, I was on an island in the middle of nowhere, there's no internet access, I didn't have enough minutes to call home, blahblahblah. I went to bed early so that I could get up in time to walk back to Keel (two miles or so) to catch the 8:30 bus.

*Why We Call it "Achilltraz"*

There's no Sunday morning bus off Achill. There really is no escape! It seems that everyone except the bus company knows that there's no bus on Sunday mornings. An old man dressed in the standard attire of jacket-over-sweater, with wool cap pulled down informed me of this after I stood around the area in front of the store that serves as a bus stop.

"Good marning!" he says, after I greeted him. "You're not waitin fer de bus, are ye?"

"Yeah, I am, it's supposed to be—"

"No! Dare's nooooo bus on Sunday! Dare's one at four o'clock. It goes ta Galway. Dare'll be people wanderin inta da store here soon - you should enquire wit dem." (Funny, written down, the Mayo accent looks like a Jamaican one.)

Devastation! What do I do now? If the only bus leaves at four, there's no WAY I'll make it to Cork tonight. I'll have to find a place in Westport or Galway, but they seemed to fill up really quickly last week. I guess I could stay another night here, but I feel I've already overstayed my welcome and Ross is coming back tonight anyway and I don't think he wants to find some bum still in his house. Staying here is definitely a last resort option.

It being Sunday, the store was still closed at nine, so I wandered down to the beach to sit and calm down and look up phone numbers from my travel book. No internet access meant that I had to actually call and talk to people. Unfortunately, I then discovered that my phone had only 80 cents on it. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh. I shouldn't have been surprised, really, what with how the past two days had been going. I formulated a few plans of attack, and pushed sand around into little smooth piles until ten when I went back to the store. I bought some frozen spaghetti and "Club Orange" fizzy drink, and a phone top-up. What a stupid day so far. It's only 1015!

*Is My Luck Changing?*

I glumly trudged back towards the house, four miles in a useless roundtrip, topping off my phone along the way. As I walked, thinking frantically how I was going to work the next few hours, a car pulled over and the reversed back towards me. The couple from UCC! "Would you like a lift?" she asked. "I would love a lift!" I chirped, and then hopped into the back seat. They said they would have taken me all the way to Cork, but they're stopping in Westport and Galway and wouldn't be arriving for a day or two. This is where I should have asked for a lift to Westport or Galway, so I could catch the train or bus down to Cork and everything would have worked itself out, but I'm an idiot, so I didn't. I was grateful enough for the lift to the house as it was, and they certainly empathized with the bus schedule snafu.

As I cooked my frozen spaghetti meal I called a hostel in Westport, fully expecting to be turned down, or at the very least, offered a four-bed private room which I could never afford. "Och, we have loads of beds!" Well, that took care of that. Then I rang the hostel in Cork to let them know that I wouldn't be coming tonight. "Ok, no problem. See you tomorrow!" What the hell, this is becoming easy! I may even get in a hike today, since that's really all I've wanted to do these past few days as it is.

The day turned out alright, though. The weather cleared up again, so I walked down to the far end of Keel beach that I hadn't been to. I deliberately left my camera behind. I wanted to experience the walk and the beach for myself, not for my digital film. Besides, while my camera could have shown you the gorgeous green-blue of the water, and the bright green terraced hills that rose straight up from the beach with sheep clinging impossibly on them, it wouldn't have been able to capture just how frigid the water was or how nice the breeze smelled. There was hardly anyone there, either, save for an old man in a tweed suit who was riding an old bicycle. There were lots of these kinds of men along the way and they all greeted me with "hawaya" which I've figured out is "how are you" which really means "hello." On the way back I realized a tractor had pulled up to where the road turns into rocks and hits the cliff walls. In front of the tractor a man with a wild, dark beard and hair stood, wearing a sweater that matched his tractor. He was just breathing in the view, himself, a man who lives here presumably full time. Again, it's good to see the local appreciate what they have. Hawaya, he said as I passed.

The four o'clock bus arrived when it was supposed to, just as the weather changed for the worst. There were ominous dark clouds suddenly in every direction and the wind caused me to put both jackets on. The driver had the radio tuned to an inter-county hurling match. Those Irish announcers could make golf exciting! Transcribed, the announcer's words wouldn't have any spaces between them, and everything would be capitalized. I wondered how he was even getting breaths in.

Westport was pretty boring, since I got there so late. I like the town and all, but I was tired and just wanted a burger from Cozy Joe's (is it sad that I have to travel halfway round the world to get a decent burger?) but they were out. Pooh. So I ate the curry and watched the first half of Ireland slaughtering Namibia in rugby.

*Last Tricks from the Vortex*

The bus to Cork wasn't labeled until I asked about it. The bus driver couldn't understand my accent. We stopped in Galway and he then turned the bus off. Why, if the bus isn't really going to Cork, would the bus say it was going to Cork? The driver said another bus would be leaving at half eleven. This would have given me enough time to get food, but I hung around for a few minutes and sure enough, the bus left at five after instead. The bus was completely crammed and the driver started telling people getting on, "Shannon ONLY!" and I figured I'd be stranded at the airport after yet another change of plans. Miraculously, we got into Cork at three-thirty or so, which added up to about seven hours of bus time for me.

Cork

2007-09-10T08:11:00.000-07:00

Oh my god, WiFi and real coffee!!!!! I'm in heaven, I think. I'm coalescing (is that the right word? I can't even think straight) posts from the past few days and I should have them up soon. Right now I'm bathing in the glow of global connections and information at my fingertips. It's awing, really.

Back to Galway

2007-09-05T11:47:00.000-07:00

I really like Galway, so I'm partly excited to be here, but then again, I have trouble with the accents and I had to spend several hours shopping for pants (few things worse) and where I ended up eating dinner had a really weird vibe and I think the bartender thought I was retarded. Plus, my friend who said I could stay with her on Achill is suddenly having to "run it by" other people, leaving me in limbo as to what I'm supposed to do tomorrow. Beds are filling up rapidly here in the west. Also, my internet time is running out.

Somebody leave a comment, I'm sad.

Dublin: The Next PDX

2007-09-04T10:08:00.000-07:00

So I've been in Dublin for just over 24 hours and I've already been hit by a car three times. Same car, too! Ok, I'm kidding. But it could easily have happened. I'm still a bit jet lagged and still lacking a few necessities (adapter for laptop/camera, an extra pair of pants, blah blah boring stuff), but fairly well settled. I even got myself a "mo' bile" so as to fit in better.

Dublin is turning into Portland. Last time I spent a significant amount of time here, I was disgusted with the way people treated their city. On several different occasions I saw people just toss half eaten food, drinks on the ground, then throw their cigarette butt in the other direction. Feet in front of them was a trash bin, but that would have been too much effort. The sidewalks were heaped with crap like that. This time around while I was trying to talk on a payphone a loud sidewalk sweeper truck drove past. Two minutes later a man carting a pressure washer came around and sprayed down the area around the garbage cans. Then the sweeper came back again. Along with traffic, I've been dodging these contraptions ever since. It's like the city tourist board reads minds! Then there's the bike issue. Dublin seems like the last place on earth one would want to ride a bicycle, what with the 24/7 rush hour traffic, the narrow streets and the bathshit crazy bus drivers in charge of carriages thirty feet tall. I'm fairly certain that the last time I was here a bicyclist would have been laughed and pointed at. This time? They're everywhere. You can see them winding their way between buses and trucks, and there are parking areas with dozens of bikes stacked up. Next thing ya know, Dublin will be serving Stumptown coffee.

Finally made it to the National Museum with all the neat archaeological finds, including the bog bodies. Third time in Dublin and it's the first time I've seen the place. To be fair, my second trip here was just going to and from the airport. I'm much more familiar with the street layout, so I only get lost 1/3 of the time now, instead of once every block.

Kevin, my buddy from the field school last here who spent the entire summer over there again, dragged me to the Jameson distillery and made me be a volunteer, which required drinking several shots of whiskey. Dublin is much easier to navigate in such a state.

Tomorrow I think I'm heading off to Westport and then to Achill to see my friend who will only be there a few more days. Other than that and the soccer match in Cork on the 10th, I don't have any solid plans. My army buddy in England hasn't gotten back to me, and I'm beginning to wonder if he's been deployed or something nasty like that. I'd sure like to see him.

The Purple Man

2007-09-02T10:59:00.001-07:00

I'm glad my name isn't Chad Thad, or Dab Bad, or whoever it is with headphones on that airport personnel keep paging over the intercom. Yep, I'm here in happy-dappy Portland Int'l Airport, and so far things are going smoothly. Although I packed expecting to have to take my bag as a carry-on, they allowed me to check it all the way through to Dublin, so I turned over my tiny pack and was nearly completely unburdened until I ran into the Powell's store. Whoever decided to put a branch of the greatest bookstore ever at the airport is criminally brilliant. Powell's isn't the kind of place you typically find in airports that sells cheesy mystery and romance novels for $14 and offers a dizzying display of crappy magazines. Somehow I managed to limit myself to one Bill Bryson book that was on sale. Quite proud of my restraint, I walked across the hall to the Rose City Wine Bar, which isn't as fancy as it sounds. The TV at the bar was showing a college football game between two schools I've never heard of called "DeMath" and "St. Xav." The hometeam is obviously based on the East coast as it was not even 10am out here. I guess an EPL match would have been too much to ask for, even in Soccer City, USA at an international airport.

Security was a breeze, and the experience was enhanced by some sort of incident triggered by a man wearing purple. The TSA man on the near end shouted, "Hey! The Purple Man!" and then the man next to him shouted, "The Purple Man!" and on down the line as they jogged towards the gate area and the suspicious man. "The Purple Man! The Purple Man! The Purple Man!" It was very dramatic, and topped off with a loud "ALL CLEAR!!!!" from the other end of the airport.

First Post! Location: home. Activity: dreaming.

2007-07-07T23:41:00.001-07:00

I had a dream last night about my trip. Mostly it consisted of missing my flight, losing tickets, lines, confusion surrounding baggage - all the unpleasant bits of travel. I was actually happy to wake up and resume my life of doing nothing. For instance, I stared at the formation of my new Fantasy Premier League team. Very useful. I did get an assignment for my online class done and downloaded the instructions for the essay due next week. I hope tonight to get started on some other assignments due later on, but I shouldn't get ahead of myself, as there are some things I need to do for class in the more immediate term. For example, there is the capstone assignment of printing out abstracts on … something that I can't even remember. I should look into that. Also, I really need to pick out a topic for my 15-pg research paper. Obviously, I'd like it to focus on Ireland, as that's where I'd like to work/study archaeology and I simply don't know enough yet.