Tvindy

Some Updates

I really don't know what the future hold for this blog. I certainly don't find myself posting to it very frequently, but I definitely won't be taking it down any time soon. (I get a lot of hits on some of the older entries.) Certainly, updates are owed to my readers, so here goes.

• As listeners to the podcast already know, I'll be getting married in September and moving to Brazil. Probably, we'll be living in an apartment in this building (in case you want to check out the floor plan).
• Before leaving the country, I'll be attending both Inconjunction and DragonCon. If you happen to be going as well, let me know, and we can meet in person.
• I've been honored at the Podcast Pickle with the task of selecting the Featured Podcast of the day every day for four months. (That's 120 casts I have to find and write about!) You can see my selections on the main page.
• I'm gradually putting up thousands of photos (mostly old ones) on Flickr.
• You can also find me on twitter.
• My podcasts can be found here and here.
• Blog posts, podcast episodes, Flickr photos, and twitter entries all theoretically show up on my Jaiku page, your one-stop site for all things tvindy.

Cork Harvest

 

Manifold Super Funny

Four Men and a Tram

Time to Mow the Roof!

I pity the residents of this apartment building who still have to contend with mowing the lawn, which seems to exist without a purpose.

Hellmouth

This place is referred to as the "Boca do Inferno", which translates as Hellmouth. (I understand there's one in Sunnydale, too.)

Good Desserts

Fruity Goodness

Danger!

I came across this curious paper taped to a wall in the historic part of Lisbon. I've translated it below, leaving out the name and passport number:

Do You Know This Man?

If you don't, consider yourself lucky. If you do, then it's best to exercise caution. His name is *****, he's German, and his passport number is *****. He mostly hangs out in the areas of Príncipe Real, Bairro Alto, Castelo and Graça, and he's one of the biggest conmen to ever come to Portugal.

Never put money into his hand! You'll never see it again. . .

He came from Germany to escape from the debts he had there. He says he's a student, a teacher, a translator, a painter, but he's a salesman (The problem is that he sells contraband). . . Be very careful!

He never liked to work and has always depended on women to support him. He has betrayed friends and conned customers at a business that he created and then abandoned.

He specializes in biting the hand that feeds him. Furthermore he's homophobic and incapable of respecting anyone's privacy!

Be alert! Never trust him!

Wax Offerings

At Fátima religious pilgrims may purchase and burn wax representations of the things they want to pray for.

Anatomically Correct Horse Statue

Ancient Tile Panel

The Portuguese are renowned for their tile work. This is a sixteenth century panel depicting a maritime theme.

Unripe Olives

This is what an olive tree looks like. Below, you can see unripe black olives clinging to a branch.

And here are some olives I picked. Eating unripe olives is ill-advised.

Butter Bird

It's not often that you come across a bird made entirely out of butter. This was on the buffet table at the hotel restaurant. The funny thing is that I was looking for butter for my roll, and this was the only butter I could find. Strangely, there was no knife nearby, and I didn't want to be the first person to assault the bird, so I had to make do without.

Portuguese Blue's Clues

Lisbian Tiled Conical Fountains

Scooter and Tiles

Chicken Mythic

McDonald's was launching a huge ad campaign in Portugal for their new Chicken Mythic sandwich. I wonder if it will ever get to the US.

Gil

This is Gil. He's the mascot for the Parque das Nações located along the Lisbon coast and built to host EXPO '98. Note the pair of skyscrapersbuilt to mirror the shape of Gil's head and the conical red tiled fountain in the background.

Smoking Kills!

Cigarette warnings are much more emphatic in Portugal than here in the US. This translates as "Smoking kills".

And here is one that says "Smoking may cause a slow and painful death":

The duty free shop in the airport carries cigarette packs with translated warnings:

Extreme Bovine Productivity

Someone, please milk this cow!!!

Monkfish

I tried monkfish stew before I had an opportunity to see what the fish actually looks like.

Here's the stew:

Religious Ecstasy

It's almost as if the mannequin were custom-made for the shirt.

Here's another one:

Portugal

I can't believe how long it's been since I've blogged! Those of you who follow my podcast (which has also suffered neglect) know that I've recently returned from a three-week stint in Portugal. I've decided to post a picture a day from my trip every day for at least a month. Above is a photo of Lisbon at night.

Cliff Notes for My Trip

I should say something about my recent car trip to Oregon and back. I'm thinking I'll podcast some of the more interesting bits, but here is a brief overview.

• I drove from Indiana to Oregon to pick up the stuff I had left there in storage over the summer.
• As usual, I e-mailed Snowball to see if I could stop by her place for a visit. Unfortunately, she never wrote back or called my cell, so I had to just keep going.
• I made it from Muncie, IN to Eugene, OR in just 35 hours, 57 minutes, and 35 seconds of driving time. This doesn't include 24 hours of motel time.
• I got a speeding ticket in Utah.
• It cost me more than $1100 to fix an oil leak in Oregon.
• After leaving Eugene, I headed south along the coast and hung a left at San Francisco.
• Total mileage for the trip was 5572 miles. I filled up the gas tank 18 times.

Roadtrip Pics

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! This year was much better than last year.

To celebrate, I've put up an album of some of the better pictures I took on my roadtrip.

I'm Back!

I made it back to Muncie this evening. That's all I have time to post today, since I'm a bit tired. More to come soon.

Almost Ready

I'm nearly ready to set off for Oregon to attend the Eugene Blogger Get-Together. My car is fueled up. I've got air in the tires and oil in the engine. I've got maps in the glove compartment and two new audiobooks in my iPod. Now I just need a bit of sleep, and off I go. I'm really excited about this trip, since my odometer is about to turn over at 100,000 miles, which should invalidate all those pesky warranties.

Invasion of the Windmills

Back Again

I'm back in Indiana. Sorry I've been away so long. Finals were rough. Actually, they were all papers and a take-home test. The problem with being a language major is that I couldn't do any of the work in English. Also, I had to completely move out of my dorm room for the summer even though I'll be in the same room next year. That was nearly as stressful as finals, especially since the rule is you have to move out within 24 hours of your last final. Then, of course, I had to drive back to Indiana, which is always tiring. Along the way, I tried to visit Snowball, but the two of us managed to fail at meeting. We'll try again when I go back in the fall. I did spend a bit of time in a town near where she lives having adventures. The town of E is a truly bizarre place. Now I have to catch up on reading everyone on my blogroll -- a truly daunting task.

Aquarium -- The Movie

Lately I've been experimenting more and more with my digital camera's video feature, especially since I recently found out here that Windows Service Pack 2 comes with its own free basic video editing software. I shot a few short clips at my last two visits to the aquarium and managed to put them together into a short film that's sure to win an award someday. With no further ado, here it is.

At the Aquarium

Back to the Aquarium

Today I was approached by a puffin.

Crater Lake

Originally I had planned to use a couple days of spring break to drive down to Crater Lake. I've never been, but my parents have. They both assure me that it's a must-see. This early in the year the weather there can be a bit iffy, but, when I woke up this afternoon and looked out the window, the weather here was beautiful:

I immediately went online and checked out the CraterCam to see how things looked there:

Keep in mind that both photos were generated within minutes of one another, and Crater Lake is just a few hours away. I really wouldn't mind the snow and cold weather, but the fact that the lake is barely visible would kind of detract from the experience. Half an hour later it looked like this:

Hmmm.

The Octopus

I went to the aquarium today and took a lot of pictures. I'll put them up in the next couple of days when I have a bit more time. In the meantime, click on the photo above to see the video I shot of a real live octopus.

Toilet

Okay, here's the story I promised. Back in 1998 I was in Joburg, South Africa. I really wanted to see Soweto when I was there, so I signed up for a township tour. These tours are widely varied. At the top, you've got professional tour guides who take large groups of people in on a bus, and they basically go on safari. The guide stands up and points out the sites to the passengers while driving around for about an hour and then departs without anyone having set foot outside the "safety" of the bus.

I opted for the other extreme. Through the hostel where I was staying, I found out about a local fellow who had lived his entire life in the Soweto and who took people in on informal overnight tours. This was a much smaller operation. He had a friend drive us in in his van, and then we traveled around on foot and stayed with his family.

I should emphasize that the people in Soweto did not resent these tours and were always very welcoming. Under apartheid, their community had been completely isolated from the rest of the world. The only outsiders who went in were the South African police, and news of the happenings there (as well as in the other townships) was suppressed. As a result, they were delighted when things finally opened up and people from all over the world started coming in and taking an interest in Soweto. If this hadn't been the case, I wouldn't have gone.

I got to meet many people and see lots of amazing things, including Nelson and Winnie Mandela's old home. This was where they were living when Nelson was first imprisoned in the early sixties. Winnie was forced to remain there under house arrest. She was guarded 24 hours a day by police officers stationed on an overlooking hill. She could only leave to use the outhouse in the backyard, and the police would often take pot shots at here when she had to use it after dark. She applied for permission to have an indoor bathroom put in, which was, of course, denied.

Once the political situation changed, and Nelson was released, she had an indoor bathroom installed in time for Nelson's return home. Soon after that, Nelson moved to Pretoria to be President, and Winnie moved to a much bigger house several blocks away. Her new house (which I got to see) had cameras mounted all over the exterior and no windows, or perhaps very small windows. I certainly don't blame her.

The Mandela's old house was turned into a museum full of pictures and awards that Mandela had received. The furniture was still there. Even Winnie's fruit-shaped fridge magnets remained on the refrigerator door. I found it amazing that they hadn't been stolen, especially given the nearly complete lack of supervision of people in the house. (I absolutely never steal, but that was one of the very few times in my life when I was seriously tempted.)

One of the people on the tour with me, a Peace Corps worker returning from Madagascar, asked the house caretaker if there was a bathroom she could use. I thought this was an extremely tacky request. We were in a very small house, and the only bathroom there was Nelson and Winnie's. It was, in fact, part of the exhibit. Amazingly, she was directed to use that very bathroom! Once she came out, I obviously had to go too, and I did. The following day, I went back to the museum so I could do it again. (You can see pictures of the house here.)

Belize

[TypePad was down for maintenance yesterday, so I had to wait until today to post this.]

I wasn't in Belize for nearly as long as I was in Mexico. Things turned out to be so expensive that I realized I just couldn't afford to stay. As a result of my short time there, nothing truly spectacular happened to me in that country.

I had just crossed over from Mexico on the Batty Brothers Bus service. Instead of going all the way to to Belize City, I decided spend the first day in Corozal, which is right over the border. (This meant that I only got to see the first half hour of Jumanji, which was what was playing on that particular bus ride.)

The contrast between Belize and Mexico was quite striking. It was hard to get used to people, especially those with Mexican features, speaking fluent Caribbean English and saying things like "Hey, Mon!" all the time.

Also, the dogs were very different. In Mexico, all the dogs are scrawny little things that seem to be part Chihuahua and usually limp rather than walk (from being kicked all the time). Sometimes they would yip at me if I got too close, but only because they were afraid. In Belize, the dogs looked a lot healthier and very well fed. Whenever I approached the yard of a house with a dog, it would run to the edge of the property and stop, barking furiously. These were dogs who had specific homes and none of the self-esteem issues of Mexican dogs. It really was interesting to observe how dog culture could differ so much from one country to another.

Anyway, it was my first day in the country, and this fellow sitting on some steps called to me saying, "How's my boy today?" I often meet people like this in my travels. Basically he was another one of those gringo groupies who hang around hoping to befriend American and European tourists and possibly get a bit of money or a present or two out of them. He seemed harmless enough. (He was wearing an American flag bandanna.) And since I had nothing better to do with my time, I didn't try to brush him off, and he talked to me for a few minutes and invited me to meet him again that evening, and he would take me out.

Because of my prosopagnosia, I'm normally a bit leery of meeting people I've just met, since there's a good chance I won't recognize them. But when he told me that he never took off that bandanna, I knew I'd have no trouble spotting him. And I didn't.

He took me to a bar and then through the darkly lit bar to an unmarked rear door at the very back. That was a bit scary. But on the other side of that door was a large room (several times larger than the bar), brightly lit and full of people (all locals). They were seated at several long tables, merrily eating and drinking. The whole setup reminded me of the dining hall where I went to summer camp, with one crucial difference -- there were TVs on the wall at the end of every table playing a movie!

Considering that the only entrance to this place was through the back door of a small bar, the whole thing struck me as very surreal. The only conclusion I could draw was that the hidden entrance served as a way to keep out the riffraff (foreign tourists).

We sat at a table and my friend ordered us drinks. He really wanted me to get a beer, but I wanted a fanta. He ordered us two fantas. (Of course, I was the one who got to pay the check in the end, so that's why he wanted me to get a beer.) We sat there for awhile, and he told me all about Belize and its history. Most of what he said I already knew from reading it in my Lonely Planet, but there were a few tidbits I hadn't heard before. Still, I was more interested in the movie and wished I could have been there by myself to watch it in peace. I still hadn't quite gotten over missing the rest of Jumanji.

I didn't know the title of the film, but it had to do with Meg Ryan in France. Inspired by the writing of this entry, I've tracked it down on Netflix and added it to my queue. It's called French Kiss and looks truly awful.

Mexico

Has anyone noticed lately how the quality of my posts has deteriorated? It's not so much that my entries are bad as that they just aren't all that interesting. I think that sort of reflects the current state of my life, so I'm going to try something different and start writing about incidents that happened during some of the more exciting chapters of my life.

Several years ago, I went on an overland trip from Muncie, IN to Belo Horizonte, Brazil. I just loaded up my backpack, hopped into a Trailways bus and kept going until I reached my destination. A lot of cool and hair-raising stuff happened along the way, as is often the case when traveling alone in the third world, and I got to visit ten Spanish-speaking countries. The whole trip took 97 days to complete. Instead of covering the whole journey, I've decided to tell one exciting or interesting story from each country. Tonight I'll start with Mexico:

It was around my third day in Mexico City, and I was heading out to grab some lunch at the local vegetarian restaurant and then to explore. After just a few blocks, I passed a policeman in riot gear complete with shield, bludgeoning stick, and helmet with a Plexiglas visor. He was just standing there all alone with his back against a building. It was all I could do to keep from bursting out laughing until I had passed him. I kept on going and quickly forgot about him and then spent the next several hours in another part of the city doing something interesting (probably visiting the National Anthropology Museum or the indoor crafts market).

On the way back, just a few blocks from my hotel, I was walking across the Zócalo when a riot broke out. It was all around me. Don't think that I was just not paying attention and walked into something without realizing it. This really did come out of nowhere. One second there was nothing, and the next, about a hundred people, caught completely by surprise, took off running in terror. There was a lot of screaming. And there I was in the middle of it all standing there with a silly grin on my face, because this was just so cool!

The riot went like this. There were people who looked poor, and they were throwing rocks. The police arrived almost instantly (perhaps some had been there from the start) in full riot gear and gradually made their way toward the rioters. Everything quickly coalesced into rioters with rocks on one side of me and police on the other.

I figured I was safe. After all, the police were the ones being attacked by rocks, not me. And I clearly was not a rioter. Certainly the police could figure that out from my clothes. I had on a large pair of purple plaid bermuda shorts, tube socks that went up practically to my knees, and a school backpack. Having never been to a riot before, I resolved to enjoy it from the relative safety of the epicenter of the conflict.

Then a rock came a little too close for comfort. It wasn't a near miss or anything; I'd estimate it cleared me by about ten feet. But I was a bit disturbed that I hadn't seen it coming and also that there didn't seem to be any other intended target nearby. So it was plausible that it had been meant for me. I was also beginning to intuit danger, and since I have a good sense for such things, I decided to exit the riot.

By this point, things had started spilling out into nearby streets, so I decided to go into a building and wait it out. I ducked into a department store in which I found a small crowd of people who were also a bit trepidacious about being out in the open. Amazingly, people outside were still being caught by surprise. Every couple of minutes they would run to the door (which had been locked shortly after my arrival) and knock frantically on the door to be let in, which the manager was fortunately willing to do.

There was a man in front of my with a large gash on the side of his head and a lot of blood coming out. I was quite impressed that neither he nor the other people in the store were freaked out about it. The fellow was very calm and seemed to view it as a minor annoyance. The manager got him some paper towels to help keep the blood in his head. (If this had happened in the US, he would have been rushed to the emergency room.)

It took a little over fifteen minutes (I was keeping track), but things quieted down and the door was unlocked so we could leave. People out in the street were still a bit jumpy, though. A couple hours later, I saw a couple of women go around a corner and suddenly come sprinting back in the other direction screaming like banshees. I walked over to have a look. There was just some guy playing with a stick doing a few martial arts moves with it for practice or just to amuse himself. Some other people saw him and ran away screaming.

That was Mexico.

Michael Jordan Trucks

Trip Details

For those of you who want to know the details of my record-breaking cross-country trek, here they are:

I left Muncie, Indiana on January 1st at 11:24 pm eastern time and pulled up to my dorm in Eugene, Oregon on January 3rd at 11:52 am pacific time (2:52 pm Muncie time). Total travel time was 39 hours 28 minutes. Total driving time (includes stopping for gas and being pulled over for speeding but not in-car naps) was 35 hours, 54 minutes, and 1 second. Upon reaching 24 hours, I looked up from my watch to see where I was, and it was Idaho. (So if I ever need to meet someone in Idaho, I can promise them that I'll be there within a day.) Total distance was 2426 miles/3904.2 kilometers as determined by AAA, which also determined the estimated driving time to be 35 hours, 29 minutes (proving that they don't see speed limits as a factor).

My first class started at 12 pm. Even though I arrived at my dorm with eight minutes to spare, that was still not enough time to unload my car, park it in the distant student parking lot, and walk to class. So I failed. If only I had arrived an hour earlier. But I doubt I could have done that and still been alive when I got to my dorm.

Caffeine is a life-saving drug.

I Made it

I'm here in Oregon. Must sleep now. Will post more tomorrow.

shit shit shit shit shit shit (oh, and did I mention shit?)

Today I discovered something interesting. I misread the U of O's academic calendar. Somehow I was looking at it as if it was a calendar year rather than an academic year. We are not in the 2005-06 year. Rather, this is 2004-05. What this means is that classes start on Monday rather than a week from Monday. Lovely. This has some interesting ramifications:

• I obviously cannot get there in time for the first day of classes. Even if I do make it in time, I will be in no shape to attend them and will have to sleep immediately upon arrival at my dorm. Missing the first day is not crucial, but it certainly doesn't make for a good first impression. I like to begin a term with everything under control. Loss of control shouldn't begin until at least halfway through the quarter. What if everything starts out out of control and then becomes progressively worse?
• Now I can't meet Snowball along the way, and that sucks, especially since I promised her I would. Snowball, I'm so sorry! I'll definitely come see you when I pass through your domain again this summer.
• All my readers are going, "Egad, what a dumbass! It's bad enough that he made such an idiotic mistake, but now he's blogging about it?! So sad."
• The guest bloggers that were waiting to come springing into action are now caught off guard completely unprepared. Perhaps they will write nothing, which is their right. (Guest blogging is a privilege, not an obligation.) I don't have a set resume date, since I know things are going to be quite hectic over the next few days. I'll be offline for about a week probably, but the book project will still reach culmination sometime in January.

The Post you've All Been Waiting for

Remember back when Snowball posted about renewing her license on her birthday, and I left a comment saying that my license would also soon expire and that the expiration date was on my birthday and that I would make a point of blogging about my experiences at the Oregon DMV? I know that you've all been on pins and needles since then waiting for my entry, so here it is. (I think I've outdone Snowball.)

So, did I go to the DMV on my birthday? No, of course not. I waited until the day before I was to leave Oregon to do that. I drove over with my expired Indiana license and had all sorts of problems establishing my residence in Oregon. In the end, I had to drive back to my dorm and track down the original letter from student housing telling me the room to which I was assigned. Then I took the test for which I had prepared online with two practice tests. I laughed out loud when I saw that the official test actually included the silly horse question that had thrown me for such a loop when I first saw it online:

You are driving on a rural two-way road.  A horseback rider on the side of the road raises her hand.  This means:

a) The handler has the animal under control; you should proceed.

b) The horse is scared; you should slow down and stop if necessary.

c) There is a herd of cattle ahead; be aware.

d) There are other riders further along the road; be aware.

I got 90% correct (80% is the minimum to pass), and passed the vision test. Then to my horror, it was revealed the my license had been suspended! And it was because of this. I'd probably been driving around with a suspended license for months! Once again, this was for a speeding ticket (the only one I've ever received) issued in Massachusetts in 1997. I'm thinking I did pay it, but I have no way of proving that. In any case, I had no trouble renewing my license in 2000, so why is it suddenly an issue in 2004? The DMV could not issue me a new license and would not even give me a piece of paper saying that I had attempted to renew it and passed the written test on such-and-such a date, so I could show it to the police if I was stopped. All they would do was look up the phone number for the Massachusetts police department, and even that was hard for them to accomplish.

I had no choice but to drive back to Indiana with an expired and suspended driver's license. This gave me the added stress of worrying about the police all the way home. It wasn't so much a fear for my driving record or having to pay some exorbitant fee. What had me scared was what would happen after I was stopped. What if I got pulled over in the middle of nowhere (That would be Nebraska.), and they refused to let me continue on? How would I get the rest of the way home? What about my car and my possessions? I made a point of driving very fast, so the police wouldn't have time to notice me. Thank God they weren't around when I spun the car all the way around at 70 MPH on an icy highway in Wyoming.

I made it back without meeting up with the fuzz. Once in Muncie, I called the MA police and explained my complex situation to some cop who wanted to make sure I was who I said I was before he was willing to help me. Besides asking me for basic information such as my license number, social security number, and current address, he wanted to know where I had been living in Massachusetts (despite the fact that I never had a MA license). I told him Williamstown. Then he wanted to know where Williamstown was located in the state. And then, despite the fact that he had never heard of Williamstown and had no idea where it was, he wanted to know the name of the street where I had resided in Williamstown. He also asked for my date of birth -- a legitimate question. Then he asked for my age -- a bit redundant. I told him I was about ** [age withheld to prevent people from knowing how horrendously old I truly am] years old. Using the word "about" was a big mistake. He really tore into me at that point. After several more questions, he finally believed me and gave me another number to call. (Oh how I hate the police!)

I was on hold (long distance of course) for over twenty minutes, but it turned out that this was the number to call about ticketing issues. I have no idea why Officer Fucktard had to take all that time rudely questioning me, only to refer me to the correct department. Anyway, the nice woman on the phone looked up my fine and let me pay it over the phone with a credit card. The suspension was instantly lifted, and the amount due was the original amount and did not include those ridiculous interest fees and penalties that the collection agency had tried to extract from me back in April.

So then my license was merely expired and not suspended. I really didn't want to drive back to Oregon with an expired license, so I went to the Indiana DMV to get it renewed here. I was a bit trepidatious about that, since, if the workers were on their toes, they might do a background check and see that I was in the process getting a license in Oregon. Of course, they weren't on their toes. (I doubt they ever are.) There were a few hairy moments, though, especially when they asked if my address had changed, and I almost said yes. (I guess having a mortgage in Indiana gives me the right to call it a residence.) They also asked if I wanted to register to vote. I explained that I was already registered. (Yes, I'm registered in Oregon.) Thank God they didn't look that up. There's that thing you have to sign that states everything you say is the absolute truth, and if you're caught lying, you're classified as a terrorist (or something like that).

I got my license and can now head back to Oregon with no fear. But once I'm there, what do I do? How do I explain at the DMV that I now have a brand new Indiana license after going through all that trouble to establish that I am an Oregon resident. If they're on their toes, they'll be wondering what the heck I was doing in Indiana if I am no longer a resident there, how I could even get a renewal in a state in which I am no longer a resident, and, oh yes, what means of transportation did I use to get there. The fun just never ends.

Snowy Road

I'm still not completely back in the swing of blogging, so I guess I'll just start posting pictures rather than writing. Here is a pic of the highway I traveled on my way back to Muncie.

Incommunicado

I'm off. Tomorrow I'll be on the road again to Muncie, Indiana. This will be my last entry until I start blogging again next Monday. Perhaps the old guest bloggers will entertain you while I'm away. (They still have their author privileges.) Also, I may post an audio entry from the road if something interesting happens along the way. See you in a week.

Part Four

So now we come to the fourth part of our saga. Hopefully I'll be able to conclude it today. (Of course, that's what I thought when I started my previous post and gave it that overly-ambitious title.) At the very least, I should say something about my meeting with Snowball, since that was the most memorable highlight of the trip. As stated previously, Snowball and I met to have lunch in Cheyenne at a restaurant called Shari's. I had the Garlic-Mushroom Swiss Burger (with a gardenburger patty), the Salmon Cæsar Salad, and an orange juice. Snowball had something from the breakfast menu, because, after all, it was early in the morning.

It was a deligthful meal with a delightful woman and a nice break from driving. It seemed as if we had only been chatting for a few minutes when suddenly my food was all gone (presumably in my stomach), and the check was on the table. The waitress never even gave us a chance to order dessert. The next thing I knew, I was out in my car drag racing Snowball through the streets of Cheyenne. (I won, by the way.) But our meeting was actually quite long. Perhaps we spoke for as long as an hour and a half. Here are the main points of our conversation:

• Snowball gave me some additional info about some of the other bloggers she has met. Unfortunately, I don't know what is confidential and what is not, so I can't go into anything here. Suffice it to say the Bakerina deportation story is a classic.
• Snowball showed me a picture of B, and I commented that he was wearing his Harry Potter glasses. Strangely, she did not offer to show me a picture of G, who probably had made a point of telling her, "Mom, I don't want you to go around showing pictures of me to all your freaky internet friends, understand?" At least we all know what her ear looks like.
• I was amazed when I heard X's actual name. It's so mild-mannered. I don't know quite what I expected, perhaps something like Spastic Fartmonger.
• We talked for a long time about Pikmin. Snowball remarked about how B had gotten upset when he first started playing the original version whenever his Pikmin died. I pointed out that it must have been especially hard for him during the nightfall scenes. For those of you who haven't played, it is important to always watch the clock in the game. Nightfall is the time when the large nocturnal predators come out in full force. You need to get all the Pikmin onto your ship before sunset, because, once night falls, your ship automatically takes off, and any stragglers left behind get eaten. As your ship slowly rises from the planet, you get a nice aerial view, and you see the poor little Pikmin making a mad dash to the landing site, only to find the rocketship already in the air. As they jump up and down begging for you to come back and get them, large lumbering froglike creatures sneak up behind them and slowly eat them alive. That was very hard for me (I mean B).
• Snowball got to listen to me go on for quite awhile about the historic reasons for the plural forms of Romanian and Italian being different from those of the other Romance languages.
• Snowball told me that the next time I drove through, I would be staying at her place rather than a motel. She may even let me play Pikmin. I'm also looking forward to going for a ride in her Miata, meeting her pets, and checking out the Bakerina-approved bakery in Snowballville.
• When Snowball was talking about the great mileage her little Miata got, I said something to the effect that it must get 600 miles to the gallon. Only much later did I realize that I had meant to say "tank" rather than "gallon". Once I realized my mistake (already in Oregon), I did that thing Chris Farley used to do on SNL, hitting myself multiple times in the head while shouting, "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" to myself.
• Snowball took a picture of me and her on her camera phone and instantly dispatched it to Bakerina, who may well have gotten to see it before we said farewell.
• We talked about X and how incredibly stupid he is. I remarked that he is always threatening Snowball with court and then invariably ends up looking like a fool before the judge. Snowball agreed and gave some additional details but added that the court threats still frighten her. And of course that makes sense, since court is where X could do some serious damage if he only had a brain.
• Snowball could tell that I had just washed my carseat covers. I told her that I had been afraid that the fluffy pink Hello Kitty™ one would not survive the wash, but it had come out of the dryer looking just like the hide of a freshly slaughtered Hello Kitty™. Snowball was more taken with Spongebob™, though.

And then I drove to Oregon.

The End

And into Oregon. . .

Let's see if I can't finish up this saga here. (Who could have guessed that it would be a trilogy?) Where was I? Oh yes, now I remember. I was watching that movie in my hotel room. I'm sure everyone's been on pins and needles waiting for me to tell them how it ended, so here's what happened.

The mother finds the body of her son's lover and uses very bad judgement. Instead of immediately (or ever) calling the police or even questioning her son as to what happened, she rolls the body into a tarp, throws it into her boat, and takes him out to the middle of the lake and dumps him. Unfortunately, she was not a very competent disposer of bodies. The next morning it washed up on shore and was found by the police. Uh oh. To wake matters worse, some professional blackmailers had made a tape of her son with that man (the dead guy) and were trying to use it blackmail her. Double uh oh. Furthermore, they want more money than she has or can get. Triple uh oh. And then in the middle of all this her father suffers a heart attack. Quadruple uh oh.

Anyway, it all turned out all right. The blackmailer felt sorry for her, and even though it ended up costing him his life, he helped out the woman. The police never made the connection to her son. And they all lived happily ever after (except for the two dead guys). That was quite a movie, and it ended just in time for me to go meet Snowball.

I drove to the restaurant and waited in my car in the parking lot for her to arrive. What I didn't know was that, even though she was willing to meet me at that restaurant, she was completely unfamiliar with it and was counting on me to guide her in once she reached Cheyenne. When she called and asked where the restaurant was, the best I could manage was something to the effect of, "Ummm. . . it's in front of me." Eventually I spotted a mailbox with an address on it, and she was able to triangulate the location. I saw a baby blue Miata come barreling into the parking lot, and I knew it must be Snowball.

And tomorrow I may actually finish this.

Moving on to the Middle

So where was I? Okay, I packed up my car and headed off to Oregon. I put the temon curd in the freezer for a couple of hours beforehand, so it would survive the trip better without refrigeration. I placed it on the floor next to a completely frozen two-liter bottle of cheery coke that would fuel me through the night and hopefully help to preserve the curd. The trip was fairly uneventful. In just eighteen hours and some odd minutes, I made it from Muncie, Indiana to Cheyenne, Wyoming.

That was the rendez-vous point for meeting Snowball. She lives way down in Snowballville but was willing to trek up to Cheyenne to see me. I got to Cheyenne early in the morning. This was intentional. since I had been up for more than twenty-four hours, I needed well more than eight hours of sleep, but I didn't want to sleep past checkout time and have to pay as if I were a two-night hotel stayer. I was a bit too early and had to go out for breakfast while they readied a room for me. The manager directed me to a nearby restaurant called Shari's, which I've noticed exists here in Eugene as well, so it must be one of those Wyoming/Oregon chains. In a previous call to Snowball, I had informed her that I would call her upon awaking (rather than arriving) in Cheyenne, so I would be fully rested when next I spoke to her and not make a bad impression by sounding sleepy over the phone.

I may very well have set a new sleep record that night -- possibly eighteen hours total! (Talk about being fully rested!) I'm sure this night marked the beginning of the decline of the lemon curd. The motel had no ice. (Actually, it lacked a lot of things, including a wastebasket in my room and a bible.) On the plus side, I didn't need to get a second bed for my mouse as I had on my last cross-country trip.

I waited 'til after nine to call Snowball, so I wouldn't wake her. I don't know her sleeping habits, but since it was a weekend and she didn't have to work, and since B was having a delightful time over at his father's, I figured Snowball would probably not be arising at the buttcrack of dawn. I reached her soon after she had woken up. She told me she would call me again once she had put herself together and was heading out the door to her car. When she called back, we decided to meet at the restaurant where I had dined the morning before (since that was the only place I knew how to get to in Cheyenne). It would take her about an hour to reach me.

During the wait, I relaxed and watched some movie (the title of which I no longer remember) on a movie channel (possibly HBO). It was about a single mother and her teenage son. They lived together in a boathouse on a lake. The mother is upset, because her son has become involved with an older thirty-something man in the city, and she tries to put a stop to it but to no avail. One night, the man comes out of the city and visits the boy at his house. The boy sneaks out to speak to him, and they go out on the pier. The man becomes physically abusive, so the boy hits him with something and runs back to the house. The next morning, the mother finds the body of the man at the bottom of the pier. (He had fallen through the railing.) . . .

It's almost midnight, so I'd better stop for now and get this posted. I'll put up the next instalment tomorrow.

Starting at the Beginning

Okay, now that I'm back to blogging, let me start at the beginning and tell about all the interesting stuff that has happened during the non-blogging interim. This is a picture of the stuff I brought with me to Oregon. Here it is in a heap on the floor. Last time I came to Oregon, some essential items were forgotten and left behind. This time I spent several days preceding the trip making a comprehensive list. Most of the actual work of packing involved gathering the various items on the list, dumping them into a pile in the living room and crossing them off the list. The only thing that was overlooked this time was my laundry card, and that I can live without. This pic shows almost everything I brought with me. All that is lacking is a crate of books and my clothes and toiletries, which were all loaded last. Traveling without my mouse this time freed up a lot of space in the car. (And having a lot of stuff already in storage and awaiting me here in Oregon helped a lot too.)

Besides packing, the other big drama involved the last minute shipment of vital lemon curd fedexed to me from Bakerina. It didn't arrive when it was supposed to, and there was concern I would be gone when it arrived. After e-mailing Bakerina about the situation (the non-arrival of scheduled curd), I discovered a fedex notice on my the door to my house. I had missed them, because they came in the evening rather than the morning as they were supposed to. I couldn't notify Bakerina until the following day, since I had no internet access at my house. In the meantime, she contacted FedEx. They swore up and down that it had already been delivered, so she demanded to see a copy of my signature. At this point things become confusing. At that time, I hadn't yet received it, so there could not have been a legitimate signature. Bakerina sent me a screenshot of her computer apparently displaying the signature, but all that was visible, was her taskbar. The rest was black, as if it were a video overlay and not a digital image. It was fun reading the many items open on her taskbar, though. I was hoping to catch her looking at porn or some other non-work-related websites (since she was contacting me from her place of work). At one point I thought I had her when I saw a webpage title that looked like the beginning of a popular nineties drama spoofed on SNL with the title "Pretty Rich White Kids with Problems". But it turned out (from what I ended up reading on the lemon curd box which was manufactured by her company (Yes, I did get the lemon curd (Don't you just love reading posts with nested parentheses?).)) that that was also part of the name of something company-related. So Bakerina is beyond reproach (well, unless you fault her tracking lemon curd packages on company time with the company computer (I hope this doesn't turn into another messed up row of nested parentheses (Oh, shit.).).)

I really should stop now while I'm still semi-coherent. But the saga will continue in tomorrow's exciting entry.

Lemon Head

My goodness, this poor lady has lemon curd in place of a head! Does anyone have an idea who it might be?

Sing hi for the open highway, sing ho for the open road!

psssssssst...he's gone!...

(sound of rapid, clicking footsteps)

Hello, dear friends of Tvindy. This would be Bakerina, the same Bakerina responsible for the lemon curd below (and Tvindy, when you get this, you're welcome, sugar), here to help keep the place tidy while our host heads back to school.

As those of us who hang around here know well, Tvindy is spending the next few days driving from Muncie, Indiana to Eugene, Oregon, with some stops along the way for rest and photography, to say nothing of a nice visit in Wyoming (not Montana!) with our lovely mutual friend Snowball. It is probably a sign of how long it's been since I've done any significant road travel, but I must admit that this road trip of his sounds like heaven in a teacup. It is almost a cliche -- no, scratch the "almost" -- but nonetheless I live it every day: I live in a densely populated area, I work in a cubicle in an office; every day I come to work and sit in a cube, and, Walter-Mitty-like, Sam-Lowry-like, I dream of escape, even just for a day. The fact that it won't happen this year -- I used up all my vacation time on One Really Big Adventure and thus have nothing left for a day off here and there -- probably just feeds the wanderlust.

I am a mad fool for any kind of traveling, always have been. When I can't go anywhere myself, I read about people who can, and have, from Laurence Sterne to Jennifer Brennan to Eric Newby to Bruce Chatwin to Anthony Bourdain. I know that there has been a planing off of our regional differences; our landscapes are dotted with chains and centralized businesses, one place in America looking very much like another place 1,800 miles away; still, I love the idea that we can move ourselves across big distances and at least have the chance to see something 1,800 miles away from home that we would never see at home. I am still giddy from my spur-of-the-moment Labor Day trip to Colorado, when Snowball drove me through Rocky Mountain National Park. As luck would have it, we were treated to rain and fog over much of the weekend, and Snow found herself repeatedly assuring me, "We really do have mountains out here!" Nevertheless, even with reduced visibility, I was entranced. I loved the snow-capped peaks; I loved the foothills covered with evergreens; I loved the early migration of elk into the resort town where Snowball grew up; and most of all, I loved the canyons and narrows, and the tiny little towns settled in them. I rode through winding paths in Snowball's little blue convertible, the top down, stark ragged rock less than 30 feet from us, and I'd never thought I'd seen anything so dazzling.

Of course, New Yorkers are saps for the wonders of nature, which is why we're such an easy butt of jokes for the locals of the places unfortunate enough to capture our teeming, pain-in-the-ass vacationing masses. I spent most of my wonder years in the Poconos, in northeastern Pennsylvania, where we had a fresh influx of exhausted city folk every season: trout fishers in the spring, white water rafters and families with lakefront vacation homes in the summer, leaf peepers in the fall, would-be skiers and snowmobilers in the winter. To this day, it still amuses me when I hear people say of New York, "It's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there," because that describes, to a T, my feelings about the Poconos. It's beautiful countryside, the skiing is great, the rafting is great, but eventually, when these things begin to pall, there is really very little else to do. And heaven forbid that you buy a lift ticket for one of the ski resorts, only to discover that the area gets an ice storm about once every six minutes from December through April, and you can't even drive to the mountain. I couldn't get out of town fast enough after graduation.

I try to remember my younger homebound self now that I am a sheep in the big city, but I'll admit it: I'm as big a sap for a new place, a wide-open pretty space, as those leaf peepers at which I used to poke such fun in childhood. A long weekend in Vermont, a day trip to Connecticut, a drive to Lancaster County with my mom to buy chocolate at the Wilbur factory in Lititz; it's all a shot in the arm. My One Really Big Adventure vacation, in northwest Arkansas, deposited me in a part of the state with so much natural beauty that I used to walk around for hours, wondering to myself what good deed I had done to be allowed to visit such a breathtaking place. There are more of these places out there, places both famous for their local charm and beauty and not-so-famous, desolate-sounding places loaded with their own offbeat charm. Most of them are accessible by airports of varying size, but there is something making the trip by car, really feeling that distance you travel, that makes me itch to go buy some sturdy little machine built for long drives, and to fill it with bags of snacks and music for the road. On my first trip to England I took a bus from Gatwick airport to my friends' house in Plymouth, Devon, a four-hour ride, and I wished I were driving so that I could pull off the motorway at all the exits that looked interesting to me. (Because its name was so frequently dropped in Monty Python sketches, I feel that it is imperative that I visit Dorking before I die.) If I had my way, I'd take that kind of trip now. I'd head west, light out for the territories, just to see what I could see, go meet Tvindy and Snowball for coffee, and then head to Thermopolis, Wyoming, just because I understand they have a hot spring, and just because I like the way Thermopolis sounds.

More Photos

I've uploaded the few interesting photos of my latest trip to Indiana into this album.

Creatures

I still haven't recovered from my trip. I think I'm suffering from jet lag due to driving so fast across the country. (I doubt many people can say they've gone from Utah to Illinois in twenty-four hours.) Anyway, I'll be taking it slow on my blogging until I recover.

When I stopped at a rest stop, right by where I-84 becomes I-80, I saw some people feeding small creatures. Two of the people were Tibetan monks, but they shied away when I approached with my camera.

Obviously these were mammals of some sort, perhaps a sort of rodent. I gave them a tremendous pile of roasted sunflower seeds, so I could photograph them.

As I was leaving, a family pulled up, and a little girl (at least fourteen) walked up to the animals and said to her parents, "What are those? Are those bats? They look just like bats!" I'm pretty sure she was wrong, though. These animals lacked the telltale wings present on most bats and did not appear to be nocturnal.

It is far more probable that they were those creatures from the Quiznos ads.

Bakerina's Music Meme

Bakerina's post unintentionally set off a new meme that is sweeping the internet. It involves posting your favorite smutty or suggestive song lyrics.

To understand my choice, you need some background info. Several years ago when I was doing my famous solo overland trip from Indiana to Brazil, I was traveling through Colombia by bus. Unlike on Greyhound buses here in the US, not only is onboard music not prohibited in Colombia, but the bus driver actually blasts it into the passenger compartment for everyone to enjoy. There is nothing like nonstop merengue music on a twelve-hour bus trip. After all, it's not like any of the passengers would be so silly as to want to sleep or read or talk amongst themselves or think coherently.

The one good thing was that there was little repetition. We got to hear an all-merengue radio station rather than tapes. But it wasn't exactly all-merengue. One in awhile (about one time out of twenty), it would play something American. Colombia, at least at the time, was one of the least americanized countries in the world. Really the only sign that the US even existed was the tiniest trickle of American music. But the selection was weird. Either it would be something really old, like endless love, or it would be something hopelessly obscure.

Once in the midst of my merengue lobotomy, the radio started playing something entirely different. The contrast and general weirdness of it almost drove me insane. The lyrics and song title are available by clicking on the "continue reading" link below, but you should experience this as I did, with no explanation whatsoever. Just click on the audio link to hear it. (Sorry about the horrendous sound quality.) It begins with a rythmic beat and then explodes into some very unorthodox lyrics:

audio post powered by audblog

The Aquarium

Ready for more pics? When I went to the coast, I also made a point of visiting the aquarium in Newport. Check it out here.

More Coast Photos

I've added photos from this weekend's trip to the coast to the album. The last ten shots are from the more recent trip.

Back to the Coast

I went back to the coast today, so I could experience it more fully. I am tired, so I will just post this one pic for now. Look at all those rules! I remember back when you could just go to the beach without all that bureaucracy. Anyway, I am sleep and must tired. (Or is it the other way around?) Tomorrow I will catch up on responding to comments.

The Oregon Coast

Yesterday I made it out to the coast. You can see some of my pictures here.