Leaving on a jet plane
Tomorrow Im leaving La Paz en route to Toronto. Its going to be a long trip, about 14 hours (without delays), but by 10:30PM I should be firmly on Canadian soil still wearing Mexico appropriate clothing like flip-flops and a sleeveless shirt. Hopefully I wont be standing outside for too long, then again I welcome the cold because Ive been entirely too sweaty the past few months. I have a traveling companion from Mexico to Chicago, which should make things more interesting to say the least, but Im sure we will have a great trip.
Things Im looking forward to in Canada:
- Friends
- Canadian Beer
- Fishing
- Meeting with a producer
- Stargate
- Relaxing
- Highspeed Internet
- Subways and street cars
- Sushi
- Bubble Tea
- Cold weather
- Wilderness
- Holla Back
- Go time
Yesterday, I went out to purchase some La Paz swag for my friends back in Canada, I figured shirts would be a cool gift and there are a bunch of stores on the Malecon that sell them. I picked up a few general La Paz shirts and a couple of funny or exciting ones, Im still hoping I havent screwed up the sizes. When I got home I didnt think twice and threw them in the wash with a bunch of other shirts I had to clean and pack. When I was moving everything from the washer to the dryer I noticed a bunch of particles of sand or something on all the clothes. How can there be sand on my shirts after washing them if there wasn’t any on them before I washed them? Well, it wasn’t sand. Three of the shirts, almost half the number I purchased, were basically destroyed in a single wash. I was very angry and hopped on my scooter to return them when they were dry. Of course the guy was closed when I returned, but he wasnt this morning. He gracefully gave me replacement shirts, but told me they should be washed by hand. Sorry but the people Im giving them to arent going to wash them by hand, your prints were simply not cured correctly. This is most evident by the shirt that has a fine line where the print came off and where it stayed on.
& Don’t worry, Shannon is aware of the problem and will make sure that it will not be the case with the BMEfest t-shirts being printed here.
Im very excited that I will have my own handheld GPS soon. It’s going to make this fishing trip so much cooler, as well as future ones. Clive and I have long since wanted to include GPS coordinates for the fish we catch and is now totally possible, it will also mean that we can better control which areas we cover (and the ability to recover the exact area) as well as our trolling speed, a huge bonus for muskie and walleye. Another huge difference this will make is not getting lost on a foggy lake and being able to go night fishing. Midnight muskies here we come!
Of course Im not just a fisherman, Im also a geek. I now have a multitude of GPS related stuff I can also take part in. Things like:
Geocaching is an entertaining adventure game for gps users. Participating in a cache hunt is a good way to take advantage of the wonderful features and capability of a gps unit. The basic idea is to have individuals and organizations set up caches all over the world and share the locations of these caches on the internet. GPS users can then use the location coordinates to find the caches. Once found, a cache may provide the visitor with a wide variety of rewards. All the visitor is asked to do is if they get something they should try to leave something for the cache.
The Degree Confluence Project (I personally think would be much cooler if they represented each confluence with 360 degree panoramas, and allowed users to attach their personal images.)
The project is an organized sampling of the world. There is a confluence within 49 miles (79 km) of you if you’re on the surface of Earth. We’ve discounted confluences in the oceans and some near the poles, but there are still 12,286 to be found.
& The number one thing Ive been longing to do…. war driving, or strolling, cabbing, even flying.
Call me a nerd, a dork, a loser, whatever. At least Im not playing Pac Manhattan, not that I think theyre losers, but you have to admit its funny.
I have lots of cool stuff that I’ve been meaning to post about, but due to lack of time (and effort) just havent gotten around to. & So, here it is.. Well most of it anyway.
Ohio, everyones favorite mundane state, has a new Wal-Mart that specificly caters to the Amish. Amish items include, blocks of ice (instead of crushed ice), fabrics for clothes to be made at home, and an expanded parking lot that includes 37 hitching posts for horse-drawn carriages. Unless Microsoft can find a way to market to the Amish, Wal-Mart tops my current list of evil empires.
It seemed, to me at least, that the remenents of the bike (as in bicycle) punk movement had died off, or simply does not exist on the internet other than a few stickers. Its really a shame, their manifesto was very cool, I think I first read it in a homemade zine in highschool. As I recall they would would organize gatherings in large numbers and consume entire lanes of major streets in big cities pissing off drivers everywhere to prove their point. I hadn’t really thought much about bike punk, or bike subcultures for that matter until I watched Bicycle Gangs of New York just before leaving Toronto to come to Mexico. It seems that the “bike punk” groups have shattered in to over a dozen groups in NY alone, and at least from the movie they appear to have a common bond and affinity for one another. Anyway, if you have the opportunity you really should rent or buy the film if you have any interest in bicycle culture, and even if you dont its an amazing indie film project. Watch a video clip here (quicktime).
Every week I enjoy reading Post Secret more and more. The idea is people send in their secrets on anonymous postcards and they are scanned and posted on the internet. Some of them are extremely distrubing, others funny. All together its offers some great low brow humour, seemingly sincere emotional release, and bizzare human depravity. I can’t get enough. Here are some fine examples.
