NvEoUlMkAeNrN

Blooms and SAE

Beer: Not so easy to find a good one here so we end up drinking the Pilsener. I think I drank about 11 bottles yesterday - and didn’t really feel it all that much. I guess I’m used to the 3 bottles and you’re moderately sloshed variety. I prefer it.

We went to a Mexican Restaurant for dinner. Super tasty. It was cute. I was teaching the Kiwis spanish. So it goes.

Monday night the bass from the Blooms, the dance club across the way was keeping us all awake so we decided … if you can’t fight ‘em, join ‘em. $6.00 for all you can drink Pilsener or Tequila or whatever and a DJ who was on and off and on. You can’t cut off a Rage Against The Machine song in the middle or follow James Brown with the Four Non-Blondes. wtf? Tony and I had a good time making fun of the pretty British boy who was dancing on the bar. You know the type, wants to be above the crowd. Hands always in the air. Taunt taunt. You’ve got to find something to do while the music is lacking. The occasional Outkast or Arrested Development remix kept me sane.

Getting back to the Magic Bean hostel at 2:30 in the morning the doorman was presumably passed out and we had to climb over the wall in order to knock on the door and wake the guy up. I’m glad he wasn’t passed out the night that I arrived. That would have been a bit of an adventure being locked out with all mny gear.

Today we moved to a cheaper hostel across the street called Crossroad or something like that. We’re hoping the music is quieter. The boys went to Otavalo while I hit up the

South American Explorers clubhouse. Wow. Wow. So much info. So cozy. What a great place to do planning and hook up with fellow travelers for some adventures. Map rooms, book exchanges, a library, volunteer info and volunteer reports, thursday movie night, current newspapers, a kitchen. It’s sweet. I’m happy to be a member and can’t wait to see the Cusco and Lima branches.

Damn campstove, I cannot locate any white gas in for my Whisperlite. I really really should have made [tmo] buy it and purchase a Whisperlite International or something. I’ll keep trying but my hopes are vanishing. There are some reports of white gas being available so I figured I could probably wing it somehow. No luck so far.

I think I’ll head to the hostel and relax for a bit. I’ve been on my feet all day. It’s time to do a bit of reading and consolidate all the info i gathered today. Map out where the spanish schools are so I can stop by a few of them and check it out. I’d like to start that next week. We’ll see. Maybe 2 weeks in quito. Travel a bit and then 2 weeks in Cuenca or Banos. Go with the flow, right Parker?

Mountain Biking at 8am tomorrow - I’m psyched. More on that when I get back. There’ll probably be some worthwile pictures by then as well.

I hate pulling out a huge pocket of change to pick out a dime for the kid that’s washing windows on cars in the street and then hits me up for some monedas. I’d rather reach in my pocket and pull out something small automatically. It’s kind of hard where there are dollar coins and I don’t want to taunt him with $5 worth of change.

I’m not seeing many street musicians, maybe I need to head to Old Town again. That seems to be more of the spot. I gladly give them $$. Even if it was the guy in the park playing the recorder with skills classifiable as mediocre at best.

Gracias, No quiero los dulces.

Here I am at an internet cafe in Quito. A little girl hanging over my arm trying to sell me some candy out of her tray. The establishement eventually told her off.

Thanks to Starroot and Rix for taking me to the airport on that nasty morning. You guys are saints. I hope you got back well.

At the airline counter there was a bit of confusion about visa requirements for Ecuador and the lady behind the counter was unsure whether they should let me fly. I knew most of the stuff before it came up on their screen so they let me go. I didn’t even have to phone the travel agent.

On the flight from Newark to Bogota to Quito I talked to some Ecuadoreans living in NJ, quite nice introduction. Had the Christian born again missionary to shoot the shit about philosophy for about an hour and then talked to this lady that had been to Ecuador 5 times and knew basically no spanish and had the worst worst American accent, can you say Baños. But with an ‘a’ like in cake. yeah. ugh. scary.

Catching a cab from the cab to the Magic Bean was super easy - I got in and crashed hard - tried to at least - with all the music going on at the club across the street. Gotta seek out a quieter location. Maybe I’ll try to Reira Hostel Jeff recommended. I’ll definitely check out the Indian restaurant.

My roomates at the hostel, Tony and Jared (update: make that Jarrad), NZ, arrived the day before. They’re on a nice trip around the world. Good Stuff. We ended up catching a bus into the Old Town. Nice bus with organized terminals. At one stop this lady with a young child got on the bus. She was breastfeeding. She stood next to me for a while… Here I am all paranoid about pickpocketing, got my hand over my wallet pocked and money belt tucked down below the waist line. It felt like i was being patted down a bit on my cargo pocket and when I felt a hand go into my dirty hankie pocket I had to switch hands in pockets. At this point she moved and sat down for a bit - to get up next to Tony a few minutes later. The kid had his hand on Tony’s chest and she was pretty close… He said he felt something but wasn’t quite certain — so he checked himself after we got off the train and it turns out this woman had cut a hole into his shirt where his money belt strap was. She didn’t get as far as cutting the strap - but wow - watch out for nursing babies and their moms.

Now the big question is - how do you live with that. As a tourist and guest you don’t want to insult the locals by refusing to stand next to them on the bus. You don’t want to falsely accuse anyone. I guess you just have to keep your stuff properly hidden.

It seems unless you end up in the wrong neighborhood at night things like this are not very overt - but it’s quite nice to see it on the first day. Just yesterday Tony and Jared witnessed a Dutch guy getting his wallet pickpocketed.

We took a cab up to Panicillo (sp?) for a great view of the City - nice and touristy. Ya gotta do it sometime. Wish it was safe to hike up there but all the guidebooks reccomed against it. I imagine the cabbies get together and mug a token tourist every few days in order to keep the area ‘dangerous’ and business alive. Maybe I’m still too much of a skeptic.

Mystery meat stew for lunch. Mhhh, gagged a bit trying to chew up the fatty parts. The chicken was undercooked so we didn’t brave it a shame. And the juice went to waste ‘cause it was watered down with tap water. Shame. Maybe if I drink the water for a year I’ll amost die but eventually build up a resistance. Maybe safer not to try right now.

Tomorrow I hope to his the South American Explorers Clubhouse and start looking into some spanish schools. I’m leaning towards maybe staying in Quito for two weeks and then moving on for a while and continue spanish classes somewhere else… probably Cuenca. Quito is nice but I think I’d be happier in a more laid back environment.

Silly me, dropping cash already. I signed up for a two day guided Mtn. Biking trip around Chimborazo and Cotopaxi. Going with the Kiwis. The sights will be amazing. I hope the weather holds. It’s been a beuatiful sunny day.

Highlights: pickpocket lady, school girl taking a piss into the street off the curb

Packed

Well, I’ve got most of my stuff all packed up. Ready to go. Throw the laptop in storage and that’s it. Hopefully the weather cooperates tomorrow. It’s looking pretty nasty. We might not even get anywhere near the airport if the roads are too nasty.

I’ve got two nights squared away at the Magic Bean reccomened independently by two people for the good food and a good launchpad into getting accustomes to Quito.

I figure I’ll spend a day or two wandering arounf checking out Spansh Schools and checking in with the South American Explorers.

Let’s hope the flight goes and that I’m on it.

Screw (and the bigger lesson)

Fuck. Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, Fuck. So things were going relatively well, I shoot some disc golf, eat dinner at Boudeaux’s and have a few beers at the Cellar.

I get back here, continue some packing, all giddy abuot the tights that I bought at Blue Ridge Outdoors. Tights are a prmium thing to get giddy about. Just don’t do it in public while attending a straight-guy-rally. I sit down to check my email, get up and i’m standing on the snapped buckle of my Buttpack. Aaargh.

I thought I was cursed when I was trying to put the new battery into my pocketwatch/keychainwatch and dropped one of the screws putting back together. 10 minutes of searching ensues. Out comes the minimag. Out comes the manget-on-a-stick. No luck. F that. I finally sit down having given up and take one more look down to find the screw right where it should have dropped, grinning at me. As always, the moral is - don’t stress it, pretend like you don’t care and the bully gods will just let you proceed on course. If you get pissed you’re liable to break some more stuff.

Well, the real moral (and hmm, shall we say reson #1 to always carry a frisbee) is: A Frisbee is great for working with small parts.

My High School Chemistry teacher Gary Bobbitt told the class a story one day about his experience caving where he was exploring a little shaft the got tighter and tighter and eventually curled up around a bend and dead-ended. Try as hard as he might he could not back his way out. There was nothing to grab. No way to gain purchase. His arms stuck in an awkward position. His legs probably treading mud. Eventually panic set in - thrashing, high heart rate, hysteria and all the fun that comes with a bit of an adrenaline rush. After he settled down he gave up, regretted having to die in a cave, and sobbed some tears of sorrow. Next thing he know’s he opens his eyes in he’s back in the main chamber where he started. All he needed to do to get out was relax and not stress it and his body was able to slide right out.

That story’s stuck with me for a long time. I’ve seen this work out so many times. If your shit is just stuck in a jam and you see no way out, have a good cry and give in to the pressures and you’ll slide right through to the light on the other side.

Well, at least it’s a philosophy I like to live by. Works sometimes. It doens’t always solve the problem but it does put you in a more serene mindstate where you can act a lot more productively, if nothing else.

All is not lost, I think the buckle on the topsack of my big backpack will fit the Mountainsmith Buttpack. Let’s try it…. Werd! It fits!

insectal

it’s amazing what you find in the kitchen sometimes.

Blog Spam WTF?

Got this email notification today, ruthless what these fucktards are doing.
DDOS anyone?
For now I’ll just delete the damn comment.
I hope this doesn’t become the norm.
yuk. comment spam
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Packing

Wow, packing for a multi-month trip that will include backpacking/trecking, beach-lounging, going to spanish school, visiting people in cities, hosteling and hoteling is quite a daunting task. It’s pretty nice to have the internet for some basic guidelines. One Bag is awesome. The Universal Packing List is also quite useful.

One of my dillemas right now is my hiking boots. I love my boots but the bastards weigh about 5 lbs. They’ll be overkill for a lot of things I’m doing and an outright burden by the time I get to Brazil. I do think that if I am going to be carrying a backpack for a multi-day backpacking excursion I’ll need more ankle protection that some hiking approach/trail runner shoes will offer.

The other dillema is caused by my campstove, a trusty old MSR Whisperlite. Noe I really wish I had dropped the extra $15 for the heavier international multi-fuel model. Seems that it can be a bit of a hassle to get white gas in out of the way places in South America. Luckily all the major hiking meccas seem to have well equiped outfitters that can hook it up. I’m gonna bring the Whisperlite and my 24oz fuel canister - that way I can even stock up in hiking meccas and carry fuel for a long ways. It’s not that heavy and I don’t intend on doing a lot of hiking with ALL my belongings. I hope to do more of a stash-at-a-hostel-or-outfitter and go on a trip with the necessities. We’ll see.

So I’ve been reading about shaving oil but I’m having a hard time locating any in the local stores. The internet has plenty to offer but with 6 days left - not so good. I kinda don’t like the idea of shaving with Dr. Bronners. It would hurt. I could not shave at all but it sure is nice for sucking up to be respectable looking for the authority types at border crossings. Hmm, right now I’ve got a mini shaving gel can, we’ll see how far that makes it through the triage.

Triage — In the process of getting ready for the mock-packing and triage of what I really need I discovered that I had 2 left Chaco sandals. One small, one not. That’s what happens when my sister buys some with the same pattern and then I hurriedly throw all “my” shoes in my bag as I head out of Boston. Luckily there’s still time to mail them to Virginia.

I sure miss the selection of outfitters in Boston; It’s awesome to start a day at EMS and Bob Smith’s Wilderness House and swing by the new REI on the way to Hilton’s Tent City, all on bike of course. The only way to go.

If there’s one thing I’ve got ready that I don’t need to worry about it’s my mp3 CD’s. I think I have somewhere in around 20 dozen albums that I can listen to on the road. Some of that is also about sharing the music with people. It’s such a large part of my existence.

Kudos go out to Adam who gave me his 128MB compact flash card. I mail ordered him a new one. In the clutch situation of one week left I decided that one 128MB card and one flaky 128MB card and one 128MB USB dongle were just not enough to travel with. Good god, I’ll be traveling with 512MB of flash media. 17GB of mp3s. And a CDR with various windows programs and utilities in case I can make my unprofessional but somewhat functional computer troubleshooting skills useful to anyone. Oh yeah, and KNOPPIX linux in case I have to grep or sed something while I’m on the road.

Geek. 20Gigs of data and a 5 lb set of boots. And today I went to Barnes and Noble and pickued up a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, The Art of War, and The Teachings of Buddah. Interesting mindstate I’m in. The latter two were in these great mini-size formats that were impossible to resist.

Craig's List All Stars

Definitely worth a browse. A selection of some of the better posts on craigslist

Sinfest

Damn, it just never disappoints. Right up there with homestarrunner IMHO, well, close.

This (the cat) is me these days. let’s just call it the calm before the storm.

Must stop reading

LiveLive

I want. I want. LiveLive.org.

Wax on

Last night I though I couldn’t hear too good. Today I was driving and ran my fingertip by my ear to clear it out a little bit and this monstrosity hitched for a ride on my finger. I damn well had to stop and take a picture.

Hmm, I’m putting this blog space to real good use. I feel confident of that today. At least I’m not inviting people to my party.

77777.7

actually that’s 177,777.7
go purple truck

A Flight

I called the travel agency today to hook up a flight to Ecuador. Leaving on Jan. 26 and booked a return from Sao Paulo, Brazil on Jun 23. That should give me plenty of time to spend my money and become nice and homesick and learn some spanish in the process

massrmvwait.com (part3)

Well, it’s up and running as far as I can well.

RealVNC

Sure RealVNC won’t let you connect to your own machine. It will let you create a loop with 2 computers though. It’s kind of weird viewing a remote computer that is viewing your local computer remotely. It’s hurting my head. I’m inspired to do a loop with 3 computers now.

Kinda like pointing a video camera at the screen that is showing the output of the video camera, I used to kill much time playing with this feedback effect at goold old Circuit City.

massrmvwait.com (part 2)

http://lookthatshitup.com/rmvtest/index.php is my develompent site for this junk i’m working on. I guess it’s somewhat useful but I’m already feature bloating. Time to draw the line. Tonight I added some text content, I still need to work out some graph caching stuff, adding legends,… and then I should be good to post an announcement to craigslist and tell the Boston Globe or something. Uhm, yeah.

Dj1E

Dj1E is about to release a music mix or two. He’s been busy putting off procrastination in favor of burning lots of cd mixes. One is a Reggae compilation that’s been about 2 years in the making, well, has sat around for about 2 years waiting for me to have access to a printer. The other one’s a recent “GreatSongsTooLongToFitOnRegularMixes.” Well, it’s just me, the printer, and the paper cutter for another night.

Maybe I’m procrastinating from working on MassRmvWait.com which is procrastination from working on Starroot.com which is procrastination from getting a flight to South America which is procrastination from life.

Oy. I called a tavel agent today and they were all confused so it’s back to the travel agent that the South American Explorers Club reccomends. Those folks seemed pretty knowledgeable on the phone when I called a few weeks ago.

Airtreks.com is pretty inspiring.

massrmvwait.com

php. sql. html. javascript. png. jpg. css. cron. perl.
in the thick of things again.
massrmvwait.com
coming soon.
why do I do this?
i could be reading a book or something.
hanging out with some friends -
i guess in a way i am

g.b.a.

I mean, Schwarzenegger, Bush,...

Rock Castle Gorge

Blisters on my heels. Ugh. Still breaking in my boots - or still breaking in my feet. I guess both.

Yesterday I did a great 10.8 mile loop hike (Rock Castle Gorge) off the Blue Ridge Parkway near Floyd, VA. It took me about 4 hours with a 20 minute lunch break at the top. Incredible sunny day hitting the upper 60’s. Something climatically is definitely way out of whack. May as well use it.

I’d never hiked to music before. Having an mp3 CD player is sweet like that. I just stick in the Anthology of American Folk Music disc, hit shuffle and I cruise and cruise. I haven’t found a good time to sit down and listen to this collection of great songs - hiking was perfect. I don’t feel lazy for sitting around the couch for hours and hours - I’m getting wholesome exercise while taking in some new tunes.

Funny that just last week I was scoffing at some kids that were hiking with headphones on. Savor my hypocrisy. Granted I was on a solo hike and they were out with their family - I still regret the feelings I was harboring last week.

I did tune into the environment from time to time. Take off the headphone, listen to the the rustling of the leaves, the churning of the brook, the beating of my heart.

Another great addition to my hiking style is the pan flute. I got my pan flute waaaay back when I was maybe six of seven years old, an old boyfriend of my mom’s used to go play around the cavernous churches around Augsburg, Germany and he gave me a pan flute and invited me to come play a few times. I’ve kept the flute in my car for about a year now hoping to play while on road trips but I always get so light headed and it really distracts me.

Hiking was great for playing it. As long as I was not out of breath doing a steep climb It was a great pleasure to play around on the flute. I’m an amateur by all means but I had a great time and got lots of big smiles from fellow hikers. It projects a great token of positivity, exactly like the legendary I AM HAPPY (hey, I know that fucking guy) sign, except different.

Keeping the music up with the rhythm of the strides was so natural. I’ve got a lot of learning to do. Hmmm, I wonder if they have pan flutes in the Andes? ;)

I had to stop playing when my bottom lip hurt too much from all the abrasion it wa getting from the constant friction it was getting with the flute sliding left-right-left-right, etc etc ad nauseum.

Got off the trail early and proceeded to shoot some disc golf with the remaining light - I had shot six above par on the course the last two times I played - this time I shot even. I guess I’m getting to know the course and getting back into knowing my discs. It’s been a while.

Helluva good day :)

I Love the Unix Command-Line

ls -lR | grep .ogg | cut -c 32- | sort | tac | less

   43370373 Oct 26 19:26 01-charlie_mingus-goodbye_pork_pie_hat.ogg
   41869831 Oct 24 07:18 02-jonas_hellborg-2nd_movement.ogg
   41629313 Oct 30 04:31 03-miles_davis-inamorata_and_narration.ogg
   41433165 Nov  1 19:27 01-raga_bhimpalasi.ogg
   40439808 Sep  3 06:45 02-phish-tweezer.ogg
   40317809 Oct 24 06:50 02-herbie_hancock-sleeping_giant_(parts_15).ogg
   39556077 Oct 26 19:26 02-charlie_mingus-parkeriana.ogg
   39508745 Aug 21 03:54 04-miles_davis-helen_buttemr_freedom_x.ogg
   38922480 Sep  3 06:41 03-godspeed_you_black_emperor-providence.ogg
   38290856 Sep 19 19:06 04-kusuma_sari_sading-gending_bendu_semara.ogg