We're Not Coming Back

Europe on a shoestring

2008-06-18T03:59:00.000-07:00

It was surreal leaving work that day. Though I was really glad I would never go back I instantly missed my students. How could I not after they give me presents like these. I had my fair share of problems with the administration of this school over money and little things they do but the students were really the only thing to tip the scale in my favor of staying there. Not all the students though.. just a few.

Okay so right after work I head to the airport. I have a flight booked to London to go visit Bailey for a couple days before she goes back to the States. I get to the airport and go through the whole airport check in routine I have grown used to. I walk up to the counter, show the lady a confirmation number I entered on my phone, she asks for my passport, I get my ticket, I then proceed through security.

Always in security I have something removed from my bag. Usually I will just throw in shampoo or shaving cream in hopes they don't care. They always care.

After I put my clothes back on I go to my terminal and just read. This is fine until my flight terminal is changed right before my scheduled flight and everyone is speed-walking in a panic to get to the new arrival gate. Doesn't matter. My flight is delayed almost three hours.

My flight is about the same as always. Anyone flying with a budget and fairly long legs is destined for a few uncomfortable hours and sore knees on arrival.

I finally touch ground in London.

Next routine is the arrival. Easy. I get off the plane. I walk out of the airport. Only.. I forgot that England had immigration officers. I was just looking for the exit and then I saw that everyone was filling out landing cards and then taking their place in line. Almost everything went to the line for EU citizens. I think one other person besides myself went to the Foreigners line. He was first. He handed the man his passport and his landing card, participated in some idle chat and proceeded through to the United Kingdom.

My turn.

I was barely paying attention. I had one headphone in and was searching my pockets for my boarding card while he was looking at my passport. He begins:

Officer: So what is your purpose for this visit?

Me: Visiting a friend for the weekend.

Officer: And where are you going after that?

Me: Back to Spain.

Officer: And when was the last time you were in your country. It says here it was in September.

OH SHIT.. OH SHIT..

I didn't say anything for a little bit. I had COMPLETELY forgotten I was not supposed to be in Europe at this point. All the other countries I traveled to never checked my passport for more than a few seconds. It was to the point where I didn't even think about it anymore. I'm sure my eyes grew wide and my knees weak. My heart started beating as if I had just ran a race. By this point I had gotten very little sleep the entire week (probably 4 - 5 hours a night), woke up at 6:30 am to go to work for eight hours, wait in the airport for another six, fly for three hours and somehow make it off the plane awake but staggering a bit. I look like hell and my throat was instantly dry. I tried to pull the "act ignorant" thing in hopes he doesn't notice.

Me: (coughing to clear my throat) Uhh.. I think.. September 24th I believe.

Officer: September 25th. You know you are only supposed to be in Europe for three months out of the year. (he's holding my passport and going through all the stamps during this questioning.)

Me: What?!? I kind of give a little awkward laugh at the situation.

Officer: Why are you laughing? You think this is funny?

Me: No, of course not. It's just very surprising to me. ( I am trying to speak as properly as possible)

Officer: Can I see your ticket?

Me: I don't have a ticket. (All I have is a confirmation number on my phone)

Officer: You don't have a ticket?

Me: Well my booking is online. I can show you if you have internet

Officer: Does it look like I have access to internet where I am?

Me: No but..

Officer: What have you been doing to fund these travels of yours?

OH SHIT.. DON'T TELL HIM ABOUT WORKING!!

Me: Well I was visiting some friends and..

Officer: Where do you get your money!?

Me: Over the summer I..

Officer: What do you do for money!?

Me: I have been saving money for..

Officer: Tell me what you do for money.

Okay he wins.

Me: I.. teach English. In a school and private in-home classes.

Officer: So you have been in Europe illegally for six months and working illegally? Do you know this is a serious offense? Do you think that just because you are an American you can do whatever you want?

Me: No I don't and I had no idea. No one told me about this. This is all new to me. Really.

Officer: You didn't bother to check into the laws of a place you were traveling to? That's a bit irresponsible isn't it? Any time I would THINK to travel somewhere I would make sure I at least knew the laws of my destination and have a printed ticket of my flights. What is your friend here doing? Is she working here Illegally as well?

Me: No, she is studying here for 5 weeks.

Officer: Can you give me any sort of reason not to send you back to your own country as soon as possible?

Me: No, I can't.

Officer: Do you know what would happen if I were to be in the United States over the allowed time and try to fly back? They would have me in handcuffs and a jail before I would know why and soon after deport me.

Me: I understand. I am not in much favor of the United States practices in traveling as well. I know that.. (he kept cutting off my sentences..)

Officer: There is a flight leaving back to Madrid in one hour. Why should you not be on that flight?

THANK GOD!!!!!! As much as it would suck to spend a lot of money and just end up flying back to Madrid, this made me really happy. I assumed it would be a sign that at the very most he would not deport me to the United States in handcuffs. After this my heart returned to beating at its normal pace.

Me: I.. don't know. (This is no joke, we are staring directly into each others eyes and I am trying to look as modest as possible with a hint of unsureness and fear.)

After a couple seconds...

Officer: Well, you are lucky this time. The United Kingdom is a bit more liberal than the states. I will give you (stamps hard on my passport) one week in this country and I hope you are out of here before then.

Me: Thank you sir.

By this time, this man and myself were the only people left in this giant room of the airport. It was nearly 2:45 am (I guess only 1:45 British time). I still had to find a place to convert Euros to Pounds, Take a train to Central London, Figure out public transportation ( I had an old underground map but even with that it is quite a bit different than the Madrid metro that I am used to), find my hostel and pray to the son of Apollo that it was not closed until morning. Apollo granted my prayer and my hostel happened to have an internet cafe open 24/7. I shared a room with 20 other people.

The next day went a lot smoother. It was awesome seeing Bailey for the first time in almost a year. Of course we each had a lot to talk about and it was overwhelming. As soon as I met up with her she informed me about a meeting she had just returned from with her flatmate. She said she got our names on the VIP list to the Ministry of Sound. A world-renowned club where top Dj's got their big break. It was incredible. A welcome compensation to my previous 24 hours.

Ministry of Sound VIP

I Feel it Too

2008-05-07T10:59:00.000-07:00

This is me officially signing off. There were a lot more things I wanted to put up here, but I got frustrated trying to put together the Morocco video and lost the will to continue from that point. You'll hear the rest of the stories if I ever write a book (not going to happen). Good luck Glenn. Miss you Europe.

A night in the north

2008-04-20T10:30:00.000-07:00

Alright, long time with no post, I know.

Even if there is no post up, just assume I am still carrying out basic traditions the five of us had always done since the day the crew interrupted Spain's delicately balanced society. Most of my time is still consumed by a job so whatever pieces of time I can muster together I travel. March offered "Semana Santa" or spring break which carried me to Rome (amazing) and Barcelona (Just thought about Rome). This is basically just a post on a recent venture for a short duration of time.

I believe (yes 'believe' because I am probably wrong) it is safe to say that almost every European country has its own stereotype for culture and cuisine. I made a little chart, dope huh?

Okay, not all these stereotypes are accurate but pretty close. For me to pick a favorite just out of this small sample would form clusters of cancer cells in my brain.

Worth it, I pick Belgium.

Displaying an assortment of British, French, German and I guessing... umm Belgium (?) architecture, you start to grasp the answers of why Brussels is the capital of the European Union. In the heart of Belgium, smells grip every fiber that allow you to smell and focuses it on their Waffles. It doesn't matter what you were doing at the time, when the scent of these majestic goddesses (waffles) float gracefully on small air currents reach you, you could possibly become the most manipulative, abusive, selfish human ever. You will do horrible, unforgivable things to get one of these waffles in your greedy, trembling hands. The common way to do so is simply fork over the 2.50 Euros, get your caramel, cream, and strawberry coated waffle and not have to run from your shameful past.

Brussels has two main languages; Flemish and French. Both required to properly describe a single piece of chocolate.

When a country is upset and depressed about their failing economy and tremendous crime rates topped with over inflated housing markets, grandma Belgium would simply step in with her jolly red cheeks and a fresh tray of warm comforting chocolates and gently suggest that, "Everything will be alright." (and it will be)

An eating competition in Belgium would kill every participant. Not one would die unsatisfied of his or her life.

Cocaine has a nonidentical twin. Sold legally and fair priced. Waffles.

'Once you pop the fun don't stop!' f*** off pringles, you tourist of taste.

I have only been home from Belgium for about 2 hours now and I have thought multiple times about paying for my next trip there. Perhaps the only thing keeping my cursor off the ticket purchase link is my last 250g's of chocolate by my side. Brussels, I will return someday to your waffle presses of gold, your knowledge and understanding of true flavor and your neglect of not sharing such riches with me at an earlier age.

We saw God standing at the Brussels airport security entrance with an acceptance list. Eating chocolate.

Unfortunately we were only in Brussels for a night.

I've read the Horan.

2008-04-20T10:02:00.000-07:00

*Mark Horan

I no longer feel like constructing a post out of this. Main events are as follows.

Couch surfers from Salt Lake City, Utah show up. With them is Mark Horan (x-mormon). Mark Horan went on a 2 year mission for the Mormon church and had never drank anything before coming to Europe.

First night (At our apartment, not Europe)-

We drink. We play chess. I go to bed. Mark Horan has a push up competition with himself. Mark Horan loses. Mark Horan throws up and then sleeps in the bathroom.

Second night -

We drink. We play chess. We all have a push up competition. Mark Horan loses. We go to a disco. Mark Horan drinks more. MarkHoran appears in such videos as this. (I have to wait to upload the video)

Third night -

We drink. We play chess. Mark Horan sings to Avril Lavigne on video. Mark Horan drinks more. Mark Horan calls everybody gay for a couple hours. Mark Horan drinks more. Mark Horan slides on our wood floor head first into the corner of a table. Mark Horan is dragged into the bathroom. Mark Horan throws up and then sleeps in the bathroom.

He is called Mark Horan.

Mark Horan makes an appearance in the following pictures.

-- -- -- -- cut here -- -- -- -- --

2008-03-09T09:14:00.000-07:00

As you know, for over a month and half we have been whoring out our* apartment to any stranger without cost or question.whoring Request after request since the originals* left have been answered in complete carelessness of whether there was room or not for them. South Americans, Belgiums, Canadians*, Australia (no dingo, I don't need your help with couch surfing), and even appearances from our home shores.

First assault from the States: I don't know how much you might have been filled in by the return of the originals so I will make this part quick. Three Americans from salt lake city asked to stay with me. I say yes. They stay. I told them they have a job teaching English if they wanted. They wanted. Emily, Derrick, and MARK HORAN* are now my current room mates. They are pretty entertaining.

Second assault: Girl from New York. Asks to stay. I say yes. She stays. She leaves. Bye.

Gangs of New York

It was two days after the apartment was finally clear of couch surfers and it was back to just myself and the other three English slaves when I receive a request from Jimmy (simply Jimmy).
Jimmy writes:

Hey,

I am all new to this...I just heard about it while
traveling in Ireland. But me and my two best friends
from home (NY) planned this trip to Madrid...and we
were going to stay with my friend max's buddy from AUP
(american university at paris) but her grandmother just
passed away and things are too hectic at her house to
accommodate us. We are going to be traveling with two
other girls, one from NYC and one from Boston who go to
AUP with my friend Max. We are all between the ages of
18 and 20.

I didn't know till right now that there are people
willing to accommodate 5 people...we are really not
looking for anything more than a place to leave our
stuff and a floor to sleep on (maybe a pillow or two).
A shower would be over the top luxury for us.

As of right now we have a hostel booked for Wed and
Thurs. but they are all sold out for the weekend for
anything under 30 euro. We are leaving for Barcelona
on Sunday if we can find a place to stay for the
weekend.

Come out with us and the drinks are on us...

Thanks for your time and consideration...if you could
only put us up for the weekend that would still be
sweet. Just let me know as soon as possible and at
the least we could exchange numbers.

I write:

hey sure, no problem. (sends address)

The five of them stumble into the apartment at around 2:00 am due to a delayed plane. Tired from working all day I just wanted to sleep however I felt obligated to entertain these strangers for at least a little while. MARK HORAN awakes from us talking, crawls out of bed and jumps into the conversation. I tell MARK HORAN to shut the **** up. They appreciate the crude humor and admit that our apartment building at night resembles an abandoned factory where people are murdered and processed into food.. or shitty beer. I confirm that it is and tell them not to sleep with their faces exposed or I will cut them off and wear them to work. They laughed and looked at each other for some sort of proof that I was not serious. Eventually people started looking for places to sleep. Three people tried sharing one of the single beds, failed, so two slept on the floor. Oh well. Free floor right? **** 'em. I try going to bed myself and one of them starts snoring louder than Joel used to. His name was Dan I think. He had just arrived in Paris that day, met up with his friends, and flew to Madrid. First time in Europe. Myself and my room mates leave for work at 7:45 roughly and Dan wakes up with a surprise and no one there to blame.

Saturday night I went to Madrid to meet up with these guys and it was hilarious. Tapas bars, racing up subway stairs, talking to Spanish people, running around buildings getting chased by security, met random English girls, went clubbing, got separated, and just when I decided to head home, who did I run into sitting in a random metro station waiting for it to open? While waiting for the metro, a man who had clearly been heavily drinking shows up and starts chanting and waving his arms until we could do nothing but clap for whatever important information he had to offer us.

See also..
Our* Sorry guys, still working on your deposits. Until then, enjoy the apartment you have in Madrid. Don Luis is a two faced snake.

Originals* I can no longer say my American friends because that confuses new couch surfers of whether I'm talking about the crew or the Mormons.

Canadians* They were incredible. Being from Montreal, their English was not as good as you would expect when you hear the name Canada. However when I said I was going to blow up the ham leg they fully understood and left me a small can of gasoline as a going away present. Oh yeah.. and I am going to blow up the ham leg.

MARK HORAN* I would like to include the asterisk details of MARK HORAN in this post but unfortunately it won't fit. Look forward to it though.

The Thief's Theme

2008-02-26T12:51:00.000-08:00

Brock has this to say about the place we are in:

Stepping off the plane in Marrakech, right onto the tarmack (like Nixon I was), and the first thing I see, a cat, a very skinny and very mangy looking cat. I think to myself, "Why is there a cat in an airport runway?". After the first hour I stopped asking stupid questions like that because the best answer I have found for any questions that I have here is in fact, another question, "I'm in Morocco, what did I expect?". Brendan and I arrived in Marrakech on Saturday i think, and if we can be frank (can we be frank? Thanks), we dont want to leave.

At the airport on what I believe to be a saturday night Brendan and I were trying to figure out the best way to get to a hostel, no map, just a plan. Get to the center of town, which was a problem on its own because neither of us speak french and we didnt know where "town" was. Then once we get there, make our way through the endless moving and breathing labrynth that is Marrakech to a hostel that we only heard about from a group of mormons currently inhabiting our previous place of residence. Hell, right? Wrong. All you have to do is find an English speaking French guy to make friends with and he will figure it all out for you. We were just lucky enough to find one, and his name was Luka. An English teacher coming here for his first time too, and he was kind enough to let us tag along with him. He knew what stop to get off of the bus at, and he found us a hotel for five euros a head, and we were hanging out with him until he had to leave on the 26th, going to the desert i think, he said something about a "Rainbow Gathering".

Now Marrakech. Its unbelievable, narrow streets filled with vendors selling everything from Luis Vuitton bags and Gucci sunglasses ("They must not know what they have! Designer eyewear for 3 euros! Get out of town! I was in Paris and I saw that same suitcase for 800 euros and this guy is selling it for 20.") to hookahs and ("No seriously, its real silver!") jewelery. The main square is packed with food vendors all selling the same unclean, yet delicious, food, orange juice stands, cookie pushers, snake charmers, men that wisper "Hash, I got good sh*t" in your ear and men that dance at you (for a price).

This is the land of bartering. Everyone here, save the resteraunt buisinessmen, try to sell you their wares for some outlandish price, but in the end they can all be talked down to a fraction of that. Enter "The Crumb Snatcher". Here is some background for all of you, we tourists have an unwritten deal with the cookie pushers. We give them 1 Dirham (their monetary unit), and in exchange they give us one delicious cookie (some little coconut number). HE BROKE THE RULES! I go up to the crumb snatcher and ask for 1 cookie, he hands Brendan 1cookie and i hand him 1 money. So far so good, until he holds out his hand, a sign that this transaction is not over. I stare at him with a look of misunderstanding, and he manages to utter just two lttle words "Duex Dirham". After lots of arguing, Brendan and i managed to walk away with our eyes to the ground 6 Dirhams freed from our pockets and 3 cookies in our hands. Ashamed we walked back to our hotel room, the "penthouse suite" with a terrace outside where we can sit peacefully above all of the heckling. Paradise at last.

Sorry there are no pictures, I have them on my camera but I dont have the cable I need to put them on the computer.
Sorry.

Brendan has this to say about the place we are in:

We would have been lost without the French guy.

The climate is a lot more welcome than Norway's and somehow the locals seem comfortable walking around in sweaters and jeans when it's 75 outside. About 80 percent of the people in the streets and squares want to sell you things and that ends up being quite a few people. "You want some hash?". Cobras dance to flutes, don't look at them though, eye contact is usually a contract and an empty hat will be in front of you begging for coins. I am not paying 2 Dirhams for a cookie that everyone else sells for two. Brushing your teeth with Moroccan water might not actually be considered progress as far as hygiene is concerned. No I don't want any hash. Taking a picture with a monkey isn't free either. No I don't speak any English, none at all sorry. Where do all these slippers come from and how do they convince people to actually buy hem? Quit calling me Ali Baba. What do you mean the bread costs 10 Dirhams? The bread is free everywhere else and I didn't even ask for it in the first place you just brought it out here. Yeah America, New York, Boston, all that good shit. "You won't find these anywhere for that price, give me your serious democratic price." All of these motorcyclists want to kill you. The megaphones on the towers wail for prayers and the rain chimes in at full force. Thunder has a word with both of them and the frenetic streets below are muted. "Follow me, good shit". I might just wither the rest of my days away here on the terrace, all I need is the sun and the sandwhich shop down the street, you'll never see me again. Seriously kid I am not going to give you another coin, get outta here. No toilet paper in the bathrooms. Sunglasses salesman slaps my pockets demanding that I give him all the money I have. You get used to the hecklers after about two days and their catchprashes (Hello, Yes, Hashish) hum along with the rest of the white noise. Here just take the cookie back OK? I don't want the cookie. The market labrynth is a cruel sorcerer of space and time, it's hallways limitless. Rumor has it that the final dead end right past the last desolate carpet shop, next to the shoe store at the edge of the universe is home to the last digit of Pi. I know your secret Marrakesh, Satan sold you these horrible smells. It's odd to imagine that somewhere beneath all of this people are living normal lives, growing up and going to school. "Come to my shop just to look, no buy." Never seen lightning like this before. How are you going to charge me 15 Dirhams for two slices of eggplant? I didn't want it, you gave it to me. Every guidebook says not to follow some shady fellow into tiny alleys in the middle of the night in search of a hostel but we did it anyway, they can't be all bad right? Once you put money in someone's hand you will never get it back. Why are you calling me Bob Marley again? This dancing man is going to keep jangling that metal until I walk away or give him money. At this point the days have a rhythm, a fine balance of walking around for half an hour, the returning to the terrace to nap for two hours. Rinse, lather, repeat. I love this place. "Promise you come back, no buy, just drink tea." Those cats couldn't possibly look more desperately scruffy and malnourished. I don't see one word spelled correctly on this menu. Always bring shoes no matter how nice the weather is supposed to be. That doesn't even make sense, you hand me a flyer and then you say sorry? Washed out canvas billboards turn their offers to the clouds, ready for rain. Every trinket wants your attention. "We have same price as everywhere else." Suspicious old French man wants to trade his old face, taped up, tattered 100 dollar bill for change, I bet his rates are good! And his money is probably real! You wake up on the terrace and hours days and months have no significance. What it boils down to is that we are invaders, and this is a small price to pay. This is their city and they are just trying to eat. Fine, just give me the cookie. 6 Dirhams, three cookies. Little kid should be in school. Oh Marrakesh, one of these days I'll have to say goodbye.

Brought to you from the shittiest Internet cafe on the planet, so forgive the errors.

Frostbit Corpses

2008-02-23T03:24:00.000-08:00

Norway has a lot less vikings than you would expect.

What it does have are rock hard roadside mounds of far from virgin snow, long since deflowered by the savage hands of dirt, gravel, and whatever other grime the sidewalk has summoned. Those filthy monuments coupled with the crippling temperatures almost made that strange land feel like home.

Don't get the wrong impression though, Norway has far better things than that to offer. O's with lines through them, coins with holes in them, and sweet brown cheese. Statues doing things that the FCC wouldn't allow on cable TV. Libertarians throwing elk droppings at each other in the middle of the forest. An opera bar where some anonymous goddess crushes more and more rose petals with every heavenly note that runs from her mouth around the crowded pub. She isn't content with breaking you heart with only her song, the lonely galaxy in her eyes will make you want to leave a world that could ever to harm to such a creature.

It was really cool in general and Brock made this cool movie. We must also take this time to offer our infinite thanks to our hosts Ane and Marius, whom we love because they get our jokes.

We landed back in Madrid at about 12:30 AM on Friday, and finally made it home after escaping the railway tentacles of the Metro Monster that threatened to leave on stranded in the Spanish night.

Open the door to the bathroom to find a plastered Mormon passed out on the floor, eradicating any hopes of making it to the toilet to relieve your travel weary bladder. Stay awake for four more hours listening to rap music waiting for a break in the slumber of the beast.
Saturday, go somewhere else.

Those are Cocoa

2008-02-23T03:17:00.000-08:00

So we were in Norway, but that isn't important.

What is important is what I found there. This.

What the hell is going on? I assume we are behind the candy curve over here and I want to know why I wasn't informed of this shocking development. Surely you people knew of this bastardization. I understand that you were probably just as traumatized as I am right now, but after the smoke and the rubble cleared someone should have called me. Is some sort of candy revolution getting underway? Do they have chocolate in with the peanut butter too now? How is Willy Wonka doing in the primaries? Fuck you guys for not telling me about this.

The Walls Won't Win

2008-02-12T12:36:00.000-08:00

Berlin, where the streets are paved with women and the women are paved with gold.

The majority of our time in Germany was consumed by the various delights of Dessau provided by our wonderful host Alex. This included, but was not limitied to, going to a handful of hilarious parties and chatting with wonderful Germans all night long, staying up till about 6 AM every night and completely destroying daylight with deep slumber, whipping it going 180 MPH on the Autobahn in an Audi A8, and making a pizza delivery guy walk up six flights of stairs without any tip.

After all of this was through we said our goodbyes and got on a morning train to Berlin, where we had planned to stay one night in a hostel and one night in a train station. Everything pretty much went according to plan except that we ended up staying in an airport as opposed to the train station.

People died trying to cross that wall because they had cool shit like this on the other side.

The two days we did spend in Berlin were incredibly well spent, we gawked at the incredible monuments, attended an Anonymous vs. Scientology raid protest, walked many miles in search of shoe stores, and generally consumed the intoxicating wonder of Berlin. Adam had his camera handy and he was shooting videos all day, so I put this little number together.

We will be somewhere else on Thursday.

What a Place I'm In

2008-02-06T18:21:00.000-08:00

We are going to try to do something about that wall they got going on.

Within about ten minutes of walking around the cavernous carcass of the sleeping giant at around midnight I had come to the hasty conclusion that Berlin was my favorite European city.

Due to poor planning the ten minutes turned into about four hours of scuffing up my new Dunks on cold sidewalks and being mesmerized by the architechture. Almost every street we walked down was a canvas crammed with an eerie mixture of bombed out brick buildings, soaring gothic structures, and glossy glass faced puzzle boxes of glowing light that will probably employ robots at some time in the very near future.

Berlin is in the past now though, and right now we are in Dessau spending most of our time making fun of how freakishly tall the monster known as Alex has become. For the uninformed he was an exchange student a couple years ago at SHS that we all became good friends with-even though he couldn't pronounce Robert's name correctly if his life depended on it. We love him nonetheless.

We had loads of fun last night at the birthday party of a young man named Felix (a young man, not cat) which featured a litany of lovable Germans, and a subway sandwich that was about five feet long. This sandwich definitely beats out those good old U-boats as far as german subs go (at least in the taste factor-I have yet to test the underwater destruction capabilities of the sandwich but I am hopeful).

Reports on many more adventures, pictures, video, and posts with more effort come after slumber.

BONUS SIDE QUEST: If by some small miracle someone among you knows anybody in Berlin that will let me stay with them for a couple of days I will give you a really special prize. Tell them three Americans need a place to stay and one of them knows some good knock knock jokes.

Day Job Free

2008-02-01T05:46:00.001-08:00

I present to you three unemployed young rapscallions.

Glenn is staying here but we have plane tickets and we'll be out of here by Monday.

Bowl

2008-01-29T11:51:00.000-08:00

I am not one to write much. So here's the abridged version of what happened. Glenn somehow convinced one of the interns at school to go go-karting with us at this big ass mall not too far from where we work. So we (Glenn, Brock and Myself) took the bus to where we were going to meet Sophie and her friend Mercedes(not a car, a human). We found them and got in the car, in which I had to hunch over or possibly suffer neck injuries if we hit a bump. We decicded not to do the go-karting cause we are a bunch of cheap bastards. Instead we went bowling. It was fun, but I suck ass at that sport. The shoes just aren't fly. After Glenn narrowly beat Brock by two points, we left ate some dope food then went to go to some bars. We tried to go to some pubs, but they were creepy old man bars where I guess old men hang out to talk about how old they are. We then went to a playground. It was a rocket ship. I liked it. We saw a traveler kind of guy with his large backpack on the same bus as us and he got off at the same stop as us. No one gets off at our stop. He threw up his giant hood which made him look like the bad guy from "Last Action Hero". He was kinda following us from a distance so I deemed him "The Night Ripper" and I thought he was going to murder us and wear my face as a mask. A very handsome mask. When we got home Brendan told us that we were having company over thanks to the couch surfing web site. As it turns out "The Night Ripper" was actually the company and his name is Dingo. He has been travelling Europe for around 2 and a half years. He is from Australia and he does fire spinning and street performing to earn money. He is rad. He called Brock an asshole. Thats about it.... DIngo is still here and we get to hear some awesome stories.

The Brekkan and Dingo

Where's Buggy?

2008-01-24T11:16:00.000-08:00

For those of you, who, for some wretched reason, cannot foresee the general idea of this post, here is the family background of it.

All my life, I have lived in a family of four; mom, sister, grandma, (myself). Couldn't ask for a better family. However one of us has forced the rest of us into weird, unnatural habbits that general humans should not possess. For example, my sister watches television out of the corner of her eyes with her head turned away at a 35 degree angle (even when she is alone). If asked a question without my full attention I automatically respond no. Though some aspects of this post might sound harsh towards an elderly, it is completely nescessary. Keep in mind that we all love this woman and always will. Cheers Donna.

It has been in these last six years that a solid, daily pattern was discovered. Everyday after school, at whatever time I got home, this woman would be standing in the kitchen ready for my arrival with the same questions. Definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Always the same. She wore a concerned look of anticipation like the information I contained would shape the future and her important questions would unlock these secrets. The questions:

"What do you want for dinner?"
"Where are all your friends?"
"Do they want something to eat?"

-Ten minutes later...

"Do you want something to eat now?"
"What about something to drink?"
"Im going to start fixing dinner, what do you want?"
"Did you eat enough lunch today?"

So before you spew out the classic lines, "You are so mean", "you are so lucky", "I wish I had a grandma like that." etc.. There are some things I promise you overlooked. I still don't know how to use an oven, constant frustration. True, these are only six questions but each one of these follows a struture similiar to this:

Keep in mind that we all love this woman and always will.

Donna: "What do you want for dinner?"
Me: "Idk, anything."
Donna: "well pick something soon so I can cook it."
Me: "Just make anything, I'm not that hungry."
Donna: "What?"
Me: "It doesn't matter, make anything"
Donna: "What? The tv's on I can't hear you." (it was always on)
Me: "ANYTHING, DOESN'T MATTER"
Donna: "You don't have to yell."

-Pause-

Donna: "When do you want to eat?"
Me: "Whenever it's ready."
Donna: "What?"
Me: "In a bit."
Donna: "You have to speak louder."
Me: "IN A LITTLE WHILE."
Donna: "You could say it a little nicer."

If there is a way to scream as loud as you can in a polite fashion... I have yet to discover it. More time would pass. More conversations like this would pass. All starting the same. All ending the same. Everyday. For years.

Then my favorite question would always, always, be asked two or three times a day. Here is how this conversation generally goes.

Donna: "Where's Buggy? (My cat. Not her cat. My cat.)
Me: "I don't know"
Donna: "Well look for himmm"
Me: "Why, he's fine."
Donna: "What if he is outside?"
Me: "You're right, he could be walking around and stuff." (I often resorted to sarcasm after a certain point)
Donna: "What?
Me: "Nothing"
Donna: "I can't hear you."
Me: "NOTHING."
Donna: "I think you should find him before it gets too dark."
Me: "Oh, he is right here on my bed." (He wasn't)
Donna: "Okay, good." (Then she tries to call him downstairs for a while. "BUGGY, BUGGIERA, BUGGY...")
Me: "He doesn't want to go down stairs..." (she always spoke for the cat, why can't I?)

Keep in mind that we all love this woman and always will.

After countless conversations like this, my friends caught on quickly and started asking me "Where's Buggy?" at random intervals throughout the day. Recently however, since none of us have been at my house for several months, I had almost forgotten about this ongoing dissapearing cat situation in which I was always appointed chief detective on the case. Then, of course, when I least expect it... I get a christmas card from my Grandma (I know this because there is a post-it note on the card that tells me).

It reads:
Dear Glenn,

Love and merry Christmas. We had our first snowfall today. It was all white outside when I got up this morning, almost eight inches and cold, must be good at the ski slope. Buggy went out the door and just stood there and looked all around trying to decide whether he wanted to go out. I'm sure Buggy misses you and wonders where you are. I really miss you but I'm so happy you like being there and got such a good job and everything worked out for you and all the boys. Your mom said you like the fish. How do my tacos compare to theirs? Wonder if they would like my meat balls. Wish I could send you some. etc..

I cannot possibly try to explain how excited I am that my cat not only misses me, but that the search is finally over! At least for an hour or so..

So for those of you wondering, Buggy is alright and he went outside on November 27th, 2007. Probably sometime in the morning around nine or ten in the morning. He looked around a bit and became confused.. Thus silencing the question echoing in my thoughts every few hours since I started on this trip. Sleep at last.

Though it seems like our relationship is fragile and frustrating, I think we both had some fun in argueing. Sometimes they even ended in both of us not being able to keep straight faces while argueing about what kind of cookies Buggy liked, who was a better driver, and why we always get weird milk.

Keep in mind that we all love this woman and always will.

Love ya G-ma. :)

You Will Be Missed. (not you joel)

2008-01-22T12:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day for those of you who missed it. We over here in Spain seized the moment to celebrate one of our native holidays. We celebrated in a way that i think MLK would have appreciated. Maybe....

pourin' out some of my 40

celebrating?
A joint made of cookie crumbs. (Thanks for the cookies Donna)

Wrote Your Name in Wet Cement

2008-01-15T11:22:00.000-08:00

We did our best to keep it a secret, but now it's official. The cat is out of the bag, running rampant around the quiet north Idaho havens that we once called home and digging in the dirt near the graves of everything we left behind.

Last Friday Joel narrowly escaped an expensive catastrophe and successfully boarded the vessel that would jettison him permanently from the tendrils of our odyssey. In the wake of his absence I find it necessary to place his departure in proper context and explain exactly what it means.

It means I can have the bottom bunk now.

It means I have to pay 40 more euros of rent each month.

It means Glenn has one less person to steal socks from.

It means my wardrobe will become significantly filthier as I have yet to learn how to operate our washing machine, always having been content with being blindly led by Joel's domestic mastery, conveniently washing clothes whenever he did.

It means the dishes may never be clean again.

It means I have to explain to concerned kindergartners that even though yes-Teacher Joel is your friend, no he is not coming back.

The truth is that it couldn't have been anyone other than Joel to go home first. That is not a slanderous claim, what I am trying to say is that he was the most balanced of the fraction of The Crew hosted by these foreign lands. The closest we had to a figurehead, the anchor that kept us from drifting too far from reality, the megaphone of reason that always made sure we got on the right train at the right time. And now he is gone.

What this means to me above all else is that if Joel can make it out alive then there is hope for the rest. As pretentious as I know it may sound (along with the entirety of this post) Joel's return represents the possibility for the rest of us to conquer the feelings burrowed beneath the skin that drove us out of the homeland in the first place. It is a promise that we may someday contentedly climb down the steps and drag our feet to the next phase of life. This is not an admission that any of us are ready to resign to a normal life. We are still thirsty, but at some point this well will dry up. When that day comes we too will be reunited with the rest of our loved ones back "home".

I miss you Joel, but as we both know our adventures together are far from over. Eventually I too will drift from this continent and together we will paint frenzy across the Land of the Brave. Same goes for everyone else I love in that country.

Sorry Joel, but I had to use this picture

A Whole Host of Roller Coaster Riders

2008-01-07T12:07:00.000-08:00

A looming temptation that has forever taunted me during my time in Madrid has been the Warner Brother's Theme park that lies many kilometers from the vicinity of downtown. This past Sunday Adam and I were walking around Madrid with our respective visiting brothers looking for something to do. After we discovered that the museums that we wanted to go to were either closed or boasting long long lines we decided to do the next most enlightening thing-go to Warner World.

The place was pretty much deserted, it was the last day of the season for them and the entire park was a desolate playground where we could gleefully fill the gaps of eerie silence with expletives from our foreign language. The only other sounds that clung to the barren air were classy christmas songs and brassy big band tunes that everyone knows, but nobody knows the name of. We discovered the secrets of the Wayne mansion with Batman at our side, we blasted shady fuckers coveting our scooby snacks with laser guns, we dared succumb to Lex Luthor's latest dubious invention "The Invertatron", we rode some incredible roller coasters-one of which we can thank Superman for, and we were shot up and shortly thereafter plummeted from the highest freefall tower in Europe.

And we only had to wait in line once.

I'm not going to get too long winded on this one, we have some delightful video and pictures courtesy of Evan Holbert that will do the rest of the talking.

Deutschland Über Alles

2008-01-06T17:43:00.000-08:00

Don't say that in Germany, you'll probably get arrested...

Glenn and I came to Germany on the 30th of December. It's been fantastic. Definately one the the highlights of my time in Europe.

We left our apartment at 11 at night thinking that we would make it to the airport before the buses stopped. We got one bus, but then the buses stopped, so we were stuck at a bus stop not very far away from the airport. So we went inside a bar to ask if there were buses or if we could call a taxi. Luckily there was a taxi driver in the bar... Perfect. So he got a glass of water, chugged it, then we drove to the airport with him. The airport was fine, we slept for about an hour or so then go in line. We eventually got on the plane (after sitting next to this guy that was totally taking a hooker to Germany... That bitch was weird... and disgusting... and he was like 40, balding, with a moustache...) Anyways... we got on the plane and sat there for about an hour because there was something wrong with the plane. So then they took us off and then put us back on 5 minutes later. It was fantastic.

We made it to Germany. Germany is beautiful. Then we got on a bus, then a train, then another train, and then got off one stop short of our destination... Damnit.

So we walked along the train tracks for a while in the rain, heard some bums yelling and throwing bottles... then we decided to get on the road. We waved down a car and I used my immaculate German skills to ask for a phone, but the guy didnt have one, but he pointed us to the tram station. We got there and I talked to some old lady and she said it was coming, but nothing happend for like 45 minutes. So we tried using a payphone, couldn't figure it out, then somehow Glenn got some people's attention and they invited us to use their phone in thier apartment. Those people are amazing. The dude called Alex for us and told him where we were and Alex and his roommate Daniel came and picked us up.

After that we went to a party at some chicks house. It was pretty fun, there were a ton of wasted Germans that were all super rad. But we were super tired so it kind of sucked. Then we went back to Alex's and slept.

New Years was rad. We started out at a LAN, drank some stuff, then walked to the main square thing were all hell was breaking loose. Drunk Germans everywhere blowing shit up. It was fantastic. I got hit in the leg by a loose firework, I knew it hurt, but didnt realize it did damage through my jeans until the next morning when I took a shower. Anyways... we saw a bunch of people from the night before and a lot of other people, and we blew stuff up and drank some more.

After that we went to this house party thing, it was pretty cool, but nothing out of the ordinary for a party, except that I hit a German with a firework and he almost kicked my ass, but luckily I was with some kid that I met 5 minutes before and he talked to him for me, and it was fine... haha. Rad.

The next day we slept. And the next day... etc.

Then on Friday we went back to the same house that we did on the first night and partied with all the same people. It was so damn fun. This is the one place that I've been that I have liked every single person that I have met. It was so fantastic... All of these kids are rad. Super nice, outgoing, funny, rad, weird, everything... So that night was super fun. I'll let the pictures show you. Then we went to Alex's parents' house and slept. Then woke up and had food prepared, it was fantastic.

Then the rest of the week we pretty much chilled at Alex's apartment. Played a lot of CSS and Halo, smoked hookah, and chilled. It was rad. Just being here with Alex and Daniel was amazing. It didn't feel like we had been apart for 2 or 3 years at all. And it also felt like we've been friends with Daniel the whole time also... It was perfect. So yeah, Glenn and I head back to Spain tomorrow, kind of sucks... but whatever. Alex, Daniel, and this kid Felix (He got trashed one night and broke down the door to his house because he couldnt find his keys, because they were in his pants, that he took off.... Anyway, he ran into his house naked and yelled at his parents and told them to get out... That kid is intense. Hahaha.) But they might come to America this summer... so that would be tubular. Much loves. Enjoy da pics yo...

Frosty is a Baller

2007-12-29T07:26:00.000-08:00

Last Friday was the last day of work before Christmas break. For about a month prior to this day I had been teaching my kids how to sing Frosty the Snowman in English so that they could sing it in front of their parents. By the grace of God they actually learned every word of the song. It was fantastic. But, I had to dress up like Frosty for the presentation. I forgot I had to dress up so Danny (A teacher that I work with) and I found some trash bags and some other crap, and I put it on. So, we looked like jackasses, but whatever... It was for the kids. The kids were really damn cute, as you can see... And they sang the song (almost) perfectly. Again, it was fantastic.

After the day was over we got our money and went home and... Um... Balled...

This isn't related, but...

Juan Carlos is totally throwing up the double

Kings in a Castle

2007-12-29T07:12:00.000-08:00

This weekend Brendan, Jonnie (Brendan's brother), and I decided to make a little excursion to a tiny town called Belmonte to see a castle. So we took a bus and arrived there at about 5 P.M. We saw the castle in the distance, so we walked through the town, up the hill, to the castle. On the way the only people that we saw were groups of children doing random crap like dropping rocks on the street. We talked to one group of children that asked us where we were from, to which Brendan replied the U.S. then one of the kids called us liars in spanish. As you very well know we are from America, but for some reason they didn't believe us, then the kid said something about Homer Simpson, then we went our separate ways. We made it up to the castle only to find that it's closed for the winter season... So we walked around it and found a place that we could climb the castle wall, so Jonnie and I climbed up, but it was raining a little bit, so when Brendan's turn came the rock was really slippery so he couldn't get up. Jonnie and I checked walked around for a bit inside the wall and decided it was the sweetest fucking thing ever. Then we used Brendan's shoulders as a stool, and got back down off the wall and walked back down into the town. We walked around the town for a while then went to the bus stop to see when the next bus was... According to our interpretation of the bus schedule the next bus was at 6:30 A.M. So basically, we were screwed.

Throughout the rest of this post there are a lot of instances of us walking through the city of Belmonte for periods of time ranging from 30 minutes to an hour. So I'm going to just say WALKED to take up less time. So, when we found out we had 12 hours to kill until the next bus so we WALKED.

It was dark now, and the castle was illuminated by giant lights that we figured were automatic, due to the state of the castle inside the walls (Didn't look like there was much upkeep during the winter months). So we walked back up to the castle, found an easier place to scale the wall, scaled it... Then, we used an old bed frame as a ladder to climb onto the innner wall of the castle. We all made it up and we walked around the castle for quite a while. It was rad. Just the feeling of standing somewhere where people used to stand a long time ago is kind of a cool feeling. The city lights looked amazing from the viewpoint we had. Pretty much everything was perfect. We found a place to sit by the gate and just sat there, feeling awesome. While we were sitting there we heard a car, thinking it was just another car driving by on the road at the bottom of the hill we didn't do anything. Then Jonnie looked out of an arrow slit and saw the car parking at the front of the gate and said, "Oh shit." So we ran. We ran back to the place that we climbed in, jumped down, and ran down the hill. We relaxed a little after we thought about it, we figured it was just someone going up there to make out or something. Then Brendan turned around and the lights on the castle were off, then we heard yelling, then (we think) we saw someone running by the wall we just climbed down. So we ran again, this time into the city.

We eventually found a bar that served food that was open so we went in, got some sandwhiches and killed as much time as we could just to be out of the cold. After about an hour or two we...

WALKED

It was about midnight by now, and we were pretty tired, so we went to a park and found a dry spot under a tree and took a nap. That lasted about an hour then we all got really cold, so we WALKED.

Eventually we got tired again, so we went to the bus stop and tried to sleep a little bit, but it was getting really cold. None of us brought any super warm clothes because we thought we were going to be out for a couple hours then go home. And we got really cold again. So we squeezed into a phone booth to warm up. But the phone booth had a ton of vents and openings, so it didn't work very well. So we got the great idea of insulating the phone booth with cardboard. We put cardboard on the floor, over every hole, and a big one over the door to block the opening. Right as we were starting to sit down the policia drove by. Stopped. Came back. Got out of the car. And asked us what the hell we were doing. Luckily Brendan and Jonnie are really good at Spanish, so they explained our situation, they asked us where we were from, the usual repetition of Idaho commenced.
Cops - "Where are you from"
Us - "Idaho"
Cops - "Ohio?"
Us - "No, Idaho."
Cops - "Iowa?"
Us - "No, Idaho, it's next to Washington."
Cops - "Oh."

Brendan told them that we live in Madrid and that Jonnie wsa just visiting us etc. Then they asked, "You live in Madrid?"
Brendan - "Yeah, we're students."
Cops - "What are you studying?"
Brendan - "Spanish."
Luckily they bought it and didn't ask for proof.
After that, they showed us the bus schedule and explained that the next bus was at 3:45 P.M. So our countdown went from like 3 hours back up to 9 hours. We weren't too stoked about this news. They then told us that there are more buses going to Madrid from a town that was about 5 miles away. We asked how we could get there and they didn't know. So Jonnie asked, "Can we walk?"
Cops - "That's pretty far."
Jonnie - "It's not that far."
Cops - "Ok, but it's dangerous."
Jonnie - "Oh, Ok."
So, the cops left without mentioning our cardboard lined phone booth again, and without helping us in any way.

We took the cardboard down anyways, and used it as a seat and kind of a blanket inside the bus stop and tried to sleep again. But of course, we got cold as shit again so we WALKED. We talked about walking to the next town but realized we had no idea where the next town was, so we decided sticking it out in a city would be better than getting lost on a highway through gigantic fields.

We eventually came back gathered our cardboard and set it up as a bed in a corner of a building that blocked the wind. We spooned on our cardboard mattress under our cardboard blanket for an hour or so, then, guess what happend...? We got cold again. Brendan and I couldn't feel our feet. So we WALKED.

On our walk we managed to find a sign that pointed towards the town we wanted to go to. It was about 7:30 A.M. at this point and the bus was supposedly leaving to Madrid at 9:05. So talked about it for a while, couldn't decide if we thought we could make it or not, then we just started walking just to see how bad it would be. We decided it wouldn't be that bad, so we kept walking. Keep in mind that we had barely any sleep, had been walking all night, and were cold.
We tried hitchhiking, but it didn't work. I thought Karma would be good to me after all the hitchhikers I've picked up.

Fuck Karma.

We kept looking at the time every time we reached a kilometer marker, and kept finding out that we were getting more and more behind schedule. But we kept walking. Luckily the highway was a perfectly straight line from Belmonte, and not dangerous at all. We finally came over a hill and saw the city. It was 9:00. We found the bus stop at 9:05, and the Bus to Madrid arrived right on time. It was beautiful.

We got back to our apartment ready to tell Glenn what the hell happend because we figured he was just sitting there all night wondering what happend to us. But we got back and he wasn't at the apartment, then he rang up a little bit later. When he got up he told us that he locked his keys in the apartment the night before, so he was in pretty the same situation we were in. However, he got a much better deal. He went to a club that we go to fairly often in Alcala that is pretty small, so we see a lot of the same people everytime we go there. He got drunk, found a girl that we had met a while ago, met her parents, they got drunker, they offered to let him stay in their hotel room with them. He eventually accepted. So while we were sleeping on cardboard, Glenn was sleeping in a bed with this girl and her parents...

Hope everyone had a good Christmas.
Later.

Poor Righteous Teachers

2007-12-19T12:47:00.000-08:00

Last Friday, our night was booked up with the promising opportunity of a night out on the town with the teachers from the Infantil division (which Joel, Adam, and myself work in) of the school in which we are employed. Infantil consists of ages 2 to 6, a reasonably troublesome spectrum to oversee, so understandably the teachers felt a need to reunite outside of the work environment and shed their woes for at least one night.

The dinner began mildly enough, with the usual barriers of language and shyness partitioning us from the rest of the table. However once the bottles were brought to the table and all those around me began to douse themselves the levees were broken and we all became one jolly group. Glasses and bottles were spilled, people crawled under tables, at one point during the night the teachers from different classes were called upon to stand up and recite the songs and dances they had been teaching their pupils. Everyone else in the restaurant at the time probably hated us, but it was OK because we spent our days raising their children-well probably not their children, but you get the point.

In short, we brought the motherfucking ruckus.

By the time we left the restuarant, our destination a nearby bar, most of the group was pretty sauced up and had left behind any memories of their long day spent shouting at kids.

The bar experience began how it usually does for me when we go out with people, that is me doing my best to politely decline vehement offers for drinks from drunk people who are pretty sure I should be drunk too.

We climbed down from our makeshit thrones of pedagoguery and exchanged our deepest fears with eachother concerning our roles in these childrens lives. What if we were doing it all wrong? How were you supposed to teach them if you just end up yelling all the time? What sour injustice swiftly snapped them out of the necessary gleeful years of early childhood and firmly placed them into the faculty's factory at the age of two? It was as if we were getting them used to being told what to do as soon as possible, so that by the time they get to high school they couldn't even dream of a better time if they tried, following the rules would be their past, present, and future. Three year olds didn't need to be told to sit in their chairs, they needed to be able to run around.

That is the frightening thing about teachers, they are fallible humans beings like the rest of us. Yet it is up to them to be the leader of many, shaping and molding young minds from a cockpit that may not be aimed so steadily itself.

I obviously care about the children I work with immensely, but I couldn't help but be jealous at the evident passion of those around me who were so frustrated at the position they were in. These were people who were determined the educate, no matter how much bullshit administration or snotty kids got in their way. These kind of feelings are infections, and thoughts of genuinely dedicating myself to educating these kids rapidly flicker throughout my mind, and the line is blurred between this just being a job and this being what I really care about.

So as all these thoughts were tearing through my mind the night carried on we left the first bar in search of a place to dance. An uphill walk through chilly streets soon led us to a line outside of an unfamiliar place with an unfortunate 10 euro cover charge.

It was well worth it though, we descended into the club, a long corridor packed with people and made our way to the coat check. And there we stayed until five in the morning, the music far too loud to allow any depressing conversation, the laser lights coaxing us to be content with simpler things in life than lofty goals of saving the world.

However, the line between life and work refused to remain distinct, a techno mix of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" blared from the all encompassing speakers as we refrained in succulent irony, "Hey teacher, leave those kids alone".

The Butcher Boys Cleaver is Alive

2007-12-16T11:29:00.000-08:00

On Friday while Adam and I were taking part in our usual routine of hanging out in the teachers lounge after lunch until the time came to venture to Comedor to forcefully shovel slop into the mouths of the silverspoon Spanish youth an exciting message came to us.

There was apparently a present waiting for us in the adjacent library which we were to pick up at the end of the day. Knowingly betraying my common sense I immediately began to dream of the possibilities of this wondrous gift. Was it an envelope full of cash that would finally fill the gap between the slave wages we were making and minimum wage? Was it a coupon for the next two months in our apartment for free?

It was a box of food.

And a leg of ham.

These massive appendages are the closest thing Spain seems to have as a national delicacy. They stalactitically hang from the ceilings of supermarkets, their horrendous smell fighting off any confused urge to actually purchase one. Once stripped of the packaging, the item manifested is something very far from any thing that has ever been presented as "ham" before.

There is a petrified glaze over the entire thing, some sort of posthumous swine defense mechanism, a final line of defense against the impending consumption of the long deceased Wilbur. Amongst the vast surface area of this thing, there is not one minute location that looks like something that is fit for human consumption. The fucking toes are still on it.

We plan on unlocking the secrets of this mystic dish this week at work, and maybe one day when we are braver men, we will eat it.

Phone Bill About 2 G's Flat

2007-12-12T11:12:00.000-08:00

Actually it was only $1,700. We were collectively dreading the revelation of just how much money we had tallied up on Brock's cell phone which we have been sharing throughout this journey and at long last the bad news has arrived.

Thanks a bunch to all the jerks that we love that felt like we had to talk to them on the phone. Maybe we can get a fund raiser going or something.

In Dust We Trust

2007-12-07T10:09:00.000-08:00

A couple weeks ago, while waiting for a coworker at a subway stop in downtown Madrid for a night of bar hopping and clubbing, Brendan Dunne lightly taps my shoulder and directs my attention to a poster crudely taped up at a bus stop. In commanding, bold letters it reads 'Chemical Brothers' with other useful text written directly under it. I neglected to read it. With a little internet research and a surplus of procrastination, I obtained the date of the event, the time, the place and most importantly two tickets (one for myself and the second for Adam Holbert) at 38.50 euros ($56.21 Dollars) a piece.

Sunday, December 2, 2007. Tonight, like most other weekend outings, starts with a bottle and a half of wine (45 euro cents each) in my stomach and likewise with Adam except for his choice, discount, alcoholic beverage was champagne cleverly disguised in a 2 liter fanta bottle. A sobering fifteen minute walk to the bus station, 35 minute bus ride, 25 minute subway ride (a man played a joyous tune on the accordion in the subway), and a 10 minute walk to the Madrid Arena, we arrived an hour after the start of the event. Perfect timing. A short ticket line and hundreds of people still shuffling slowly into the massive building to join up with the other thousands. The faint, distant, rhythmic, beating sound of the bass slowly growing as we reached the entrance. Security guards filed people into single lines to search for weapons however they just patted us on the chest and shoulder and directed us inside. Luckily I remembered not to wear my chest mounted, semi automatic, machine gun or my shoulder mounted anti aircraft guided missile turret. We fought our way through the dense crowed and settled on a fairly close spot just to the left of the stage and a couple rows of people back from the speakers. The opening DJ (whose name I can't recall) was winding down. Humans were still pouring into the already packed floor of this stadium. DJ something or other finished and the sound cut out so only a murmur of people talking could be heard. Five minutes must have passed.

One deafening roar from the ceiling high, tower of speakers silenced the crowed momentarily only to erupt when two figures ran out on stage. They appeared to be brothers... Chemical Brothers.

Anticipation could have been lethal. With the music twisting, distorting, and growing at an enchanted like slow pace, everyone knew what was coming and it was beautiful. The crowed was no longer composed of people. They were molecules of boiling water that bubbled and danced in the giant cooking pot that was the Madrid Arena. Finally, the Chemical Brothers could no longer suppress the electronic disease that would plague every individual to move whether they wanted to or not. The pot boiled over. All of this happened in less than half a minute. An Imax sized screen behind the Dust Brothers controlled us. It displayed for our entertainment high contrasted images of police officers line dancing, sparks that morphed into butterflies and then into graceful levitating humans and the clown. Oh yes... The clown. Bald, tooth decay, eyes that could sense fear and a grin that could scare blind children. He was loved by everyone. His caked white face flashed on the screen, disappeared, and then flashed back in a new location. He was summoned by each bass hit. The music fell to a background sound and we were alone with the clown. He spoke. His voice was thunderous, cracked, and slow to drive into us what he was saying.

"YOU ARE ALLLL MY CHILDREN"

"YOU ARE ALLLL MY CHILDREN"

"YOU ARE ALLLL MY CHILDREN"

..and we were.

The show ended Monday, December 3, 2007 at about 1:30 A.M. The music had faded, although the ringing in our ears was still very audible. The subway was absolutely packed. We were almost unconscious on the subway and when we looked around to make sure we had not missed our stop we realized our subway car was empty. It was freezing outside at night and the little energy we had left would have been put to better use shivering yet we decided to dance in the subway car.

We got back home at around 3:30 in the morning. I was a little late to work.. about 4 hours. Adam stayed home.

Happy Homecoming!

2007-12-02T07:26:00.000-08:00

On the 23rd of November, I flew to Minnesota, I have my own reasons for doing this but mainly, its because I'm a jet setting playboy. Well I got back last Friday where the boys threw an impromptue homecoming party. I was having a great time. Being away for a week made me forget just how much fun I have with these guys, but still, something was missing. Adam filled that missing space in record time. I can remember at one point, Adam was walking and talking with his usual swagger, talking shit about Glenn and how he "cant control himself" when he is drunk. Two minutes later, Adam was using the Delta Airlines discharge bag, that i brought back for him from the flight. whats the point of giving someone a gift that they wont use? Everything was going surprisingly well, seeing as this turn of events happened so fast. Then Adam dropped the bag. Nobody sits in the middle of the couch anymore.

Kiss the Flickering Images

2007-11-29T11:55:00.000-08:00

For people who don´t like words. Pretty much every picture here has a good story behind it, maybe if anyone is interested you can comment on the ones you want to know about and I´ll write something. Too lazy to type captions.

In Return the Pilgrims Killed Em´

2007-11-24T11:53:00.000-08:00

Spain seems to still be bitter over the fact that they sent Columbus off on that mission so many years ago, and ultimately fucked up in creating a country so economically superior to them.

This may or may not be why they don't celebrate Thanksgiving.

It didn't feel right to just let the momentous occasion of Thanksgiving slip past us, we had to celebrate somehow. We couldn't be rest easy knowing that our respective families back home would be arming themselves with fork and knife, fully prepared for the feasts in front of them, then contentedly waddling away from the table after the last turkey slice had been snatched from the platter to enjoy the rest of their extended weekend. For us the normal nightly rations of spaghetti and salt wouldn't do. We needed something more.

So we took a box of potato puree that had been sitting in the cupboard since we got here, hesitantly stumbled through the directions before finally deciding that we couldn't really screw it up, and then sat down at the table for the first time in a while to enjoy our "Thanksgiving" dinner. It looked like this.

In order to make it a true "feast" Joel pulled some spaghetti out of the fridge that had frozen into a solid block. We weren't sure how much of our normal readership would stay up on the blog this week as the most of you are probably spending time with people who have the same last name as you that you care about more than us, but I decided to throw this up anyway. If you don't really know why they don't celebrate Thanksgiving, you're an idiot.

30 Thousand Kings

2007-11-18T06:48:00.000-08:00

This is hot hot shit!!! filmed by me, edited by joel. this video is basically just a bunch of stuff that I filmed in and around the apartment... and in a sewer pipe. when put to music it makes our lives look like an awesome dance party, which it kind of is. we hope you all enjoy it immensly.

ps. the needle you see at the end of our film is an actual heroin needle we found used next to a matress in a bum nest.

Also, here is a link to our government video: http://blip.tv/file/396801/

Diggin' in the Crates

2007-11-14T04:27:00.000-08:00

There are quite a few used record shops around downtown Madrid, and there was one right down the street from our hostel that had been tempting me every time I walked past it.

It turned out to be a lot like MSMG, minus the video games and piles of useless shit. They had a ton of records and CDs, most of which no one would probably ever buy. I couldn't risk the chance letting a Fondle Em' pressing of Operation Doomsday sitting on the shelf, so I forced myself to flip through the "Rapp" section.

I found one gem-the soundtrack to the Street Fighter movie.

Most of the album is filled with songs by a bunch of early nineties emcees that you have never heard of, but there are a few tracks that made the three euros absolutely worth it. This includes some good exclusive shit from Nas, Ras Kass, Ahmad, Saafir, and Pharcyde. Right now I am listening the the hilarious Craig Mack cut in which he directly references every character in the game. I am very proud of my find.

Bonus: The copy I have is a promotional one, littered with savory "not for sale" warnings. Campcom special offer indeed.

Here in Alcala I repeated this process when I stumbled upon a shop that offered a challenge even more formidable than the last. The CDs weren't separated into genres so I had to sit there and rapidly thumb through literally every CD that they had. Glenn insisted that I was wasting my time, and I partially agreed given the incredibly dismal selection.

Despite my low spirits, I was determined to walk out of there with something in my hands. What I eventually stumbled upon was far better than I ever expected to find. I have no idea how it found it's way in there, but there sitting on the shelf was The Foreign Exchange, the album with Phonte from Little Brother (and several other Justus League affiliates) produced by Nicolay. It was the kind of find that would be exceptional even in an American record store, and how I managed to find it in some hole in the wall place in Alcala is beyond me.

Unfortunately though, CDs apparently don't release simultaneously in America and Spain so I am going to need someone to send me a copy of American Gangster ASAP.

Numb from Gut Fuel

2007-11-11T11:51:00.000-08:00

Our apartment sits on the outskirts of Madrid, much closer in proximity to the town of Alacala de Henares. Our nightly routine usually consists of wandering to downtown Alcala, purchasing an hour at the Internet cafe, then aimlessly perusing the streets like lost children, searching for people who speak English.

For everybody else, this nightly journey is usually embellished by the consumption of alcohol, which results in moments like this.

These two young men got distracted by the opportunity of arson, and thus a temporary schism formed in the group, as Brock, Glenn, and myself continued into town without hesitation. It was later than usual and the Internet cafe wasn't an option so we sat in the plaza as the brisk nightly quickly grew stale.

We soon decided to return home, but only a few minutes after our departure we were reunited with Joel and Adam, which seemed to inject some hope into what previously looked to be a desperate evening. Glenn sat on a bench talking to a statue of Sancho Panza (Cervantes was born in Alcala) and we kept our fingers crossed that some Americans would walk by.

They did.

The utterance of a frustrated "Goddammit!" from amidst a small group of girls was all it took and we instantly hurled proof of our native language in their general direction, hoping that they were as bored as us, or at least interested in talking. They were, and we lamented about only things Americans in Spain can-ham isn't that good, mullets are ridiculous, mopeds are annoying etc. The girls were students here in Alcala, and they were headed off to a club, we followed them, trying our damnedest to pull Joel and Adam away from their new friends who spoke a little English and knew a catchy song about communism.

The club was decent enough but for whatever reason I didn't really enjoy myself. When 4 AM rolled around I finally did what I had been wanting to do for the past couple of hours and walked home.

There were no stars in the sky, a frustrated Spaniard was enveloped in the hood of his broken down car, squealing horns blasting out of his speakers, hopefully warming his heart but surely doing nothing to combat the unforgiving morning. I turned down my street, ignoring the hookers' heckle from across the corner.

I was the first one home, so I sat up waiting as the rest trickled in. We evaluated the night, and soon slipped into reminiscing mode. The echo of the "old days" came back around again for some reason. I don't know what time we went to bed.

Of course all of this was done in celebration of Danny Roop's birthday which was on Friday. So everyone send him some money for his birthday so he can afford to buy me something nice for Christmas.

I am thinking about doing some more retroactive posting about France. Does anyone object to this practice or does our readership not find the sweet nectar of continuity as sacred as I do?

Halloween Costumes

2007-11-05T11:33:00.000-08:00

The night before Halloween was somewhat stressful because we were supposed to come up with costumes for school. We're too broke to buy anything for a costume, we don't really have that much stuff with us, and we're lazy. This combo isn't the best when people are expecting you to have somewhat good costumes because you're American.

So we improvised.

There were a lot of shitty ideas thrown around. Especially by Glenn. "I'll be a student." Which would have consisted of him not wearing his lab coat... Other ideas were wino, giant banana, bum, hiker, Uncle Sam, etc. By far, the best terrible idea was Brendan's. He put a plastic bag over his gigantic dome piece and made the actions of being a fetus. This was funny as hell. However, when we took the picture we all shit our asses for about 15 minutes after seeing it because it seriously looks like Brendan has down syndrome.

Down syndrome is not funny.

But, Brendan having down syndrome was the funniest shit I have ever seen. The way his eyes are folded, the shape of his dome, the way he is holding his hands, and the expression on his face is seriously... Fucking ridiculous.

The rest of the pictures are what we actually were for Halloween. Adam was a zombie, I was a ninja, and Brendan was a beautiful butterfly. Brock and Glenn suck and didn't dress up.

Bush Jumping

2007-11-02T04:45:00.000-07:00

This started in Biarritz, but there were a lot of pictures on that last post, so I figured I'd split it up and make a post about this.

The title explains it pretty well. We find some nicely groomed bushes with a lot of leaves that look very inviting, and we jump into them. The usual technique for jumping into bushes is running full speed at the bushes then jumping with a 180 degree turn on the x axis and a 90 degree turn on the y axis so that you land on your back on the soft mattress of spikes. However, there is also the usual front flip which results in your ass being penetrated by multiple shafts upon impact.

This is super fun, but it causes a lot of scratches, rips, and loss of personal property, which sucks. I lost mp3 player and I just ripped my new sweatshirt.

I know I'm a dumbass, but whatever.

Biarritz

2007-11-02T04:07:00.000-07:00

So it's been a while since we were in Biarritz, but we didn't get the opportunity to post anything about it, so I am now. Biarritz was the shit basically. We sat on the beach all day, we slept on the beach at night, went swimming in the ocean, saw titties (old titties are gross), drank beer on the beach, what more could you ask for? (Besides the old tits part). Brock was supposed to make the post about the karaoke bar that we went to, but he didn't so I'm doing it for him. Brock wanted Glenn and me to sing some karaoke, so he bought both of us a beer then picked a song...

"Barbie Girl" by Aqua

Pretty much Glenn and I made jackasses of ourselves (more so than the people that were actually trying to sing karaoke well) We screwed up the song in multiple places, I rocked the shit out of the oooos and yeahs and ahhhs while Glenn sat there laughing trying at random times to make a ken voice and occasionally he tried to sing some of the words that appeared on the screen, but over all (and I feel like a jackass saying this in a post because I'm writing it) I rocked the shit out of Glenn, and I wouldn't have said anything, but everyone else agreed that Glenn sucks at karaoke.

But yeah, Biarritz was amazing. So here are some pictures that sum up our experience there fairly well.

Wood Floors in the New Apartment

2007-11-02T03:43:00.000-07:00

As a further extension of my efforts in delivering a crushing antithesis to everything that the naysayers stand for I must report to our readership our current living arrangments.

We have an incredible apartment.

Can´t Tell Me Nothin

2007-10-28T11:43:00.000-07:00

The following post is dedicated to the naysayers. It has been crafted in memory of all of the snarky comments insisting that we would be back in a month. This one goes out to every by the book know-it-all who was somehow affiliated with some esoteric knowledge of Europe that insisted that there was no way we could ever find jobs.

All of these people are idiots.

After about a week here in Spain we all have jobs, the five us are now English professors.

Game us, naysayers kill yourselves.

Flashing Lights

2007-10-22T07:20:00.000-07:00

We have been in Madrid for a week now, and for the most part it has been an uneventful week. Now I know the negative connotations that the word "uneventful" carries and I need to dispel those with all possible. It has been deeply satisfying to sit on our asses all day every day, a welcome break from the busy pace that we had been keeping.

Regardless of how you feel about the word "uneventful", Friday night fucking shattered any notions of that particular adjective having anything to do with the city of Madrid, and after the shattering, the tattered pieces were swiftly crushed into a fine dust. The dust was then jettisoned into the furthest reaches of space, never to be seen or heard from again.

We decided to go clubbing.

Madrid is an optimal destination for the raccoons and vampires among our readers (Vampyres? Jon?) in that it really comes alive at night. In the downtown area the streets stay pretty much packed from about 11PM till 5 or 6AM. Amidst the pedestrians that fill the streets there are countless solicitors, patient vultures who perch on corners with fliers and eager eyes, ready to preach to you about whatever club, or brothel, has employed them.

Their efforts were in vain however, as Adam and I had done a little bit of research earlier and already picked our destination for the night. The five of us could not be deterred as we walked steadily downhill to the club, Joy. When we at last arrived, we hung out near the entrance for a couple of minutes, debating whether or not the it was full enough to be enjoyable(No pun intended, I swear that shit was an accident).

We decided against entering at that moment, as it was only about 12:30. So we continued our walk down to Sol, one of the many plazas that people gather at when the night comes. There was some strange event going on there which I still don't understand. About sixty people had formed a circle around a few attention starved jackasses that were parading around with thongs on, wielding dildos, and pretending to engage in lewd sexual acts with each other.

It wasn't funny.

The thing that the people didn't realize was that no less than 20 feet away from them something truly hilarious was happening. Some enterprising bum had apparently grown tired of endlessly degrading himself asking people for change, and realized that payphones had tons of change idly resting in their depths. It was determined that the optimal tool for obtaining said change was the payphone itself.

This money hungry son of the gutter was maniacally smashing the receiver against the box with every ounce of force he could muster. I wouldn't imagine that such a man could muster up much force, as I'm sure his feeble diet consisted of little more than bread crumbs flavored only by the stench of piss surrounding him and bingo tickets with ketchup on them. But he wanted that fucking money and he wasn't going to stop.

While I was watching this, Brock was being befriended by a couple of questionable Brazilian fellows that kept offering him free drinks that they concocted right there in the plaza. I was weary of these gentlemen, but they had gained the attention of the rest of the group, so I entered in the fray, offering up my meager knowledge of Spanish, meeting them halfway with their substandard English.

We told them what we were up to, and it seemed as good of a time as any to go to the club, so we began the short trek to Joy. When we got their we learned that there was a guest list. This brief moment of panic was remedied when the Brazilians offered up another location. We didn't know any better so we agreed.
We got to the door and paid fifteen euros to get in, a steep price partly due to the free drink ticket it included-useless to me for obvious reasons. We climbed the stairs and upon our entrance to the first room, this club was immediately disappointing.

The lights were impressive and the music was decent enough, but the room was filled with people who at the very least were a decade older than ourselves. The small dance floor was populated with thirty and forty somethings gyrating mildly in a last ditch attempt to masquerade youth and vitality. We all exchanged "What the fuck?"s for a couple of minutes before slipping into one of the many side rooms.

We posted up in this room for a bit, wondering what to do next, and soon enough the Great Goosby had attracted the attention of some chick. They talked for a bit, and I think it was during this time that Joel wandered off further into the depths of the club to see if he couldn't find something more suitable for us.
Joel returned with a fervent pitch insisting that he had found a satisfactory room. We followed him, as anything had to be better than the room we were in, and he was absolutely right. We had finally escaped from the geriatric shuffling of rooms past, and found our home. Glenn eventually followed with his new friend in tow, and we were introduced to her friends, a handful of lovely girls from London who were on a trip for a Spanish class. It turns out the girl Glenn was hitting on was their teacher, and she was 27.

We stayed with these girls for the rest of the night, and I have to say it was much better than our clubbing experience in London. The only problem was that the club was playing mostly Spanish club tracks, which often break down into a series of clicks and clacks just barely resembling percussion, severely reducing the low chances of us not looking like jackasses when we were dancing.

Also, while we were at the club we met a couple of guys, Chris and Jonah.

That's right, fucking McLovin and Seth.

Superbad had premiered in Spain a couple of days earlier so they were there doing promotional stuff. We would go over to the area that were hanging out in throughout the night and check up on them, talk for about fifteen minutes then go back to dancing. The funny shit was that Chris (McLovin) is pretty much the same person in real life as was in Superbad. Honest to God, his voice actually sounds like that. They were completely willing to sit around and talk shit with us, even though I would imagine that it wasn't that exciting for them.

So there you have it, we danced all night long with some cute British girls, hung out with McLovin (fucking McLovin!), and finally went home at 5AM. When we were half a block away from the hostel Joel stopped to piss in some alley. I sat on the steps of the metro stop waiting for him, and some enchanting Spanish girl said something to me that I didn't understand.

I pleaded her to repeat it for me, but I still didn't comprehend whatever she was trying to convey. She walked off into the night as I tried to decipher the message, but it was no use.

Joel finished pissing, I still wondered what she said, and at last the night was over.

Garbage Bodies

2007-10-22T06:20:00.000-07:00

So we´ve been in the same hostel in Madrid for about a week now and I feel like I need to describe the interior of the room that we have spent a majority of our time in. It is a fairly small room with one bunk bed and three other beds crammed tightly into a small amount of space. So, with that, our huge backpacks, and us... there isn´t much room for anything else.

Except garbage.

The amount of garbage that we managed to pack into that room is ridiculous. There´s a supermarket right up the street that has a ton of cheap food and drinks, so we go there all the time. The amount of bread crumbs (Glenn´s broke ass sucks at eating fucking bread.), 2 liter fanta bottles, chip bags, Doo Wop wrappers, and other miscellaneous items was ridiculous. I managed to fill about 7 grocery bags almost to the bursting point, but there was still more. The lady at the hostel walked in one day and started laughing at all the trash we accumulated. And then we took it out, because we felt like bastards, only to have it reappear a couple days later.

But the main point of this story is garbage bodies. Due to the large amount of garbage, multiple times one of our beloved crew members has laid down on a bed, then when he stands up, he has a multitude of small pieces of garbage that have molded to his body. The best example is Brendan. Brendan sat up after reading or something and had created a breadcrumb farm on his back with a nice little tinfoil ball barn burrowed into his skin right below his shoulder. That is when the term ¨Garbage Bodies¨was coined.

Masterpiece Before the Curtains

2007-10-19T05:46:00.000-07:00

As was mentioned in an earlier post, the Rugby World Cup is currently taking place in France. As I'm sure you can imagine, there a many festivities surrounding these events. One of these is the massive screens situated around Paris that display the matches.

During our time in Paris, we were lucky enough to attend the screening of a game between France and the New Zealand All Blacks team. New Zealand was the favored winner and from the few rumblings I had heard about the match things did not look well for France.

We climbed out of the subway station at the Hotel De Ville, whose massive courtyard was filled with the most people I have ever seen in my life. Everywhere around there were Rugby zealots with flags on there faces and in their hands. We began the arduous process of finding a place to sit among the massive crowds.

I will spare you all the actual details of the match, except the fact that we won. I feel kind of like a moron saying "we" as I am not French by any means, but sitting there with all those people around, erupting with them every time France scored a goal, booing the New Zealand team, and ultimately enjoying the pinnacle of the celebration when the game had ended as champagne bottles sprayed all around and flares lit up the night, I felt like I sure as hell wanted to be.

We waited after the game as the crowds dissipated, then we walked off into the night heading off to a party in celebration of the beautiful victory. The streets were alive, flooded with joyous pedestrians who still chanted the praises of the team and cars that utilized their horns to the fullest extent.

Friendly people walked around us and told us all about themselves while bombarding us with questions. It was a beautiful night.

We finally arrived at the apartment of a girl named Alta, daughter of the French playwright Yasmina Reza. The party that ensued was massively delightful. For the most of the night I sat there watching people dance.

They fucking danced all night long. It was beautiful. Watching them move around I felt like I was surrounded by the classic, romantic, fantasy France. That apartment was some romantic time capsule with scenes that played out like the massive canvas paintings in the Louvre.

Thank you to all the the people from that night, the gregarious Pianist, Vincent-who may be the best dancer in the world, the sultry couple who passionately threw each other around on the dance floor, the two girls who stepped perfectly with together, Alice of course, the young man who loved Queen, and everyone else.

If He Led a Life of Reason

2007-10-19T05:36:00.000-07:00

The unfortunately brief amount of time that we spent in Paris was incredibly enjoyable. Many thanks must be extended to Alice for allowing the five of us to stay with her in Paris. She was incredibly hospitable, cooking us meals and cleaning our clothes, and we are very thankful for all of this.

The first night that we stayed with her we hopped on the subway heading to the Eiffel Tower to meet some friends of hers.

When we were on the subway I saw the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. At one stop a strange looking man entered into our car, on his shoulder was positioned a Casio keyboard, similar to the placement of a boombox in Golden Era B-Boy fashion. He tapped a button on the keyboard and a cheesy hi hat starting ticking. A thin beat followed which was then flushed out by his playing the keys.

He began a mournful wail in some middle eastern language. I have no idea what he said. He had a lazy eye that rolled all around the car testing to see how uncomfortable people were becoming with their strange visitor. For a while I was holding back laughter, but then something about his song won me over.

He was telling us all something even though he knew we couldn't hear it. That shit was hot. At the pinnacle of his opus we sped across the Seine River, with the Eiffel Tower now in view.

I must utilize one of my signature breaks at this point to explain this thing that the Eiffel Tower does every 40 minutes or so. It is illuminated brilliantly all night long, but occasionally it will burst with little tiny flashing lights that cover the entire surface.

So as we crossed the river and the strange being sang to us the tower exploded into a galaxy of lights. At this moment I was content with my existence.

Posted up at a Playground

2007-10-16T04:58:00.000-07:00

So, before we got to Madrid, we made our way to a beautiful coastal French surfing town called Biarritz. The first two nights we got to stay at a really nice hostel. The third night had us sleeping on the amazing beach where for the past two days we had just chilled at all day. We stayed there for a while then decided to catch a train to Madrid which in turn we missed. So that night we camped in a nearby playground. Joel, Brock, Glenn and Brendan had a nice two story apartment complete with a slide and a climbing wall, which left me in a shabby little one room house that my feet stuck out of and left my head with one inch of clearance between the ground and a child sized bench. Needless to say, some of us went pee where i am sure children frollic. Don't be too worried though, we were able to wake up before kids decided to utilize our newly acquired housing for their stupid games. When we went back to the train station in the morning we saw a guy, Dan, that worked for Brock's dad on their house. It was fucking surreal to see someone else from Sandpoint in Biarritz.

Madrid is weird

2007-10-16T04:42:00.000-07:00

So we´re in Madrid, haven´t really done much. But since we´ve been here I´ve seen some weird shit. Tons of people have dreads, which isn´t that weird until you´re looking at a guy that has a normal haircut, then he turns around and reveals like 5 dreads dangling right above his ass. Then this morning I was standing on the balcony of our hostel and I saw to cops on mopeds run into eachother, yell a little bit, then drive up a really steep hill, which was pretty sweet because they we´re going really slow because their mopeds sucked ass. Then, a little bit later, Adam, Brock, and I saw a clown dragging a suitcase on wheels cross the street then enter a building. Then, not long after I saw a midget. My hopes are high in regards to at least seeing some sweet shit while we´re here.

Merci Beaucoup Alice!!

2007-10-16T04:24:00.000-07:00

I´m not sure if this has been mentioned in the bike post or not but our main goal for making the journey to Paris was because this extremely kind young woman by the name of Alice offered us to stay with her for a couple nights in her very nice appartment. We had all met her before when she traveled all the way to Sandpoint to stay with our good friend Autry for a little while. Other than a couple nights of camping and hanging out at the fountain, the five of us were practically just foreign acquaintences. Yet we were treated like family.

We were greeted at the train station and followed her to her very nice residence. We took showers as she prepared an excellent meal for us. Warm food was a wonderful change from eating just bread with either cold sauce or cheese. She even offered to keep our constant train of laundry going while we walked around Paris during the day. Taking care of damp clothes that were sitting in our bags since the bike incident was a task we did not even want to tackle ourselves.

So far, Paris has been my best experience on this trip and without the generosity of Alice, it would not have been even as close to as much fun.

So once again, Thank you Alice. Hopefully we will see you again or be able to return the hospitallity.

Watchin' The Long Arm of the Law

2007-10-09T17:45:00.000-07:00

The cops in France are an odd bunch and I am having trouble finding out whether they like us or hate us. Our first run in with the authorities happened in Rouen, when we were sitting in a park/market area chewing on baguettes and sipping the cheapest, shittiest soda in the world.

There was a little walkway leading up to the park area, but the thing about France is that cars are allowed anywhere and everywhere. So a cop car rolls up with a man intently staring out of it looking for wrong doers. Joel was standing in front of the rest of us, his hand cupped counting what little change he had. I imagine this look liked a drug deal, Joel holding the coveted crack rocks that so need to survive. The cop called him over and Joel explained in French that didn't speak French, and all was well.

The next encounter occurred when we finally made it to Paris. We sat down with all of our stuff right there on the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower and Glenn and I went to walk around the park. When we came back there was a group of officers congregated around the rest of the group, patting them down and all.

The cop touched Adam in a bad spot

Glenn and I arrived on the scene and asked what it was all about. They assured us that it was merely a routine check. Of course they didn't find anything. They made a bit of small talk and seemed pretty friendly about the whole thing and eventually left, wishing us a good time.

Further into the day our chances of finding a place to stay for the night were dwindling, and we decided that we would stay right there in front of the tower. We figured we would stay up all night, sleep in shifts whatever. As it turns out many people sit there until pretty late drinking the cheap champagne that is hawked by Indians carrying backpacks full of the shit. So the bottles were purchased and they proceeded to drink and drink, befriended those that surrounded us.

Good times were had that night until Joel and Adam began to feel the downsides of all that alcohol. Joel sat on a bench puking and Adam disappeared into the bushes, busy with the same task. Glenn slept on a bench for a while and eventually ran off into downtown Paris to find some Pizza at 2 AM. He didn't find any. After they had quelled the alcoholic aftermath they rolled out their sleeping bags, right there on the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower. Brock and I were the only ones not drunk, so we found these actions questionable. Surely the cops would not agree with these arrangements, we turned out to be the only people there actually spending the night.

On top of this, the Rugby World Cup is going on right now in France, so they have this gigantic inflatable Rugby ball sitting about twenty feet from where we slept, with guards patrolling all night and occasionally staring at us. Brock and I decided it was best that we stay awake and keep an eye on things just in case the cops did arrive and have a problem with our camping.

I grew tired of this sitting and walked over to the tower, where I could see and hear to bums screaming at the top of their lungs at each other, in French. I have no idea what they were screaming about, but they felt the need to do it at the loudest possible volume. I avoided them and walked all the way down to the other end of the park. On my way back I saw that they had found someone to bother, they were now screaming in front of the inflatable rugby ball, while the guards stared at them, their hounds barking in protest. I was sure that the guards would at least do something to silence these madmen, but they merely watched in awe.

I saw back down with Brock as the bums approached us. They were so fucking loud. One of them borrowed Brock's lighter, and the other kept trying to tell us that we should "sleep, sleep" showing us hand gestures to make sure we understood. I am absolutely positive that he was trying to lure us to sleep in order to either rape us or steal all of our stuff. They yelled at each other longer, and I think they were arguing over who was to rape who.

They walked about thirty feet away, still yelling. At this point in time Brock and I turned around to see three men discussing something with the guards at the rugby ball. In the next instant the men charged towards the bums. They split up, one ran up to the closer bum, grabbed the upper half of his body and swept his legs dropping him to the ground. He pulled something out that sounded like a switch blade and pointed it at the bum who stared back in fear. The other two proceeded to deal with the other bum, throwing him down in a similar fashion. The bums got kicked repeatedly while they were on the ground and eventually cuffed.

We now realized these men to be plain clothes officers, and readied our passports as they approached us after throwing the bums in the back of their van. Brock and I were sure that at this point that we would be asked to leave. However, the cops said nothing about our camping. They merely asked if the bums had caused any problems with us, we responded and that was all we saw of those officers. We had somehow miraculously managed to still be watching over our passed out friends in front of the Eiffel Tower.

We went to sit on the bench when a cop car arrived, pulling up next to some bushes right in front us, then repositioning itself so that they were pointing directly at us. Now the jig was up, the cops had come to watch us for a little bit, then cart us off to the same place the bums went. Once again, they merely sat and watched for about an hour then drove off.

When the morning came there was a large ceremony occurring at the massive rugby ball, which housed a sort of mini museum on Rugby and New Zealand. The prime minister of New Zealand was there, as was all the press, also they had a bunch of natives dressed up in their native garb chanting and screaming the native chants while parading around the entrance. This woke Joel up for a brief second, which I would imagine was one of the funniest things to wake up to. After all this hullabaloo was complete Brock and I sat back down still in awe of everything that had just happened.

There, to the right of us was the Eiffel Tower. To the left was the worlds biggest Rugby Ball, hundreds of cameras and a Prime Minister. In the middle, Joel, Glenn, Adam, and our five backpacks soaking up the morning dew. Never have my eyes seen such an odd sight.

The tourists began to come and at around 10AM the cops visited once more, this time waking up our friends. The bizarre night had come to a close.

Garfunkel and Goo Face

2007-10-09T15:41:00.000-07:00

"Baby Face". A name i was given against my will. I had long been awaiting the day that i would be able to come back with a name for my two main hecklers, Glenn and Brendan. The day has come. Brendan's new name came about yesterday while having dinner with Glenn's fine elderly relatives. Jacques is a man of few English words, but he loves to point out the fact that Brendan doesn't drink or smoke at every meal. He usually says something along the lines of, "You no drink wine, you no drink coffee, you no smoke. You are a poor man." But i digress. So we were sitting at the table and Jacques looks to Brendan and he looks as though he is trying to tell him something and he tries to say things but all that comes out it is broken indiscernible English. Finally Jacques gives up trying to say what he wants and leaves the room to retrieve a visual aid. he returns with a CD case and shows Brendan the back of it and points to the picture of Garfunkel and says "This is you!" and then proceeds to let out his large infectious laugh. This is the picture, so guess which one is Brendan.Jacques also named Brendan Water Monger because of Brendan's lack of drinking alcohol leaving water as his only option at meals.

Now as for Glenn, he has a much shorter story. I was trying to explain the face that Glenn gets after too much alcohol. It is hard to explain, but it is kind of like he's very content with something he just did. Like he did something slightly funny, but not funny enough to provoke all out laughter, just a nice smirk on his face. It appears that his head is to heavy for his neck to support. His eyes randomly shift and focus from point to point but never seem to acknowledge one certain thing. He just looks really drowsy, like he smoked a brick of weed. The Best Term I could come up with was Goo Face. It's something the whole group hates to see, but Glenn has been known to drink a bit of alcohol in his day. I would honestly rather fuck a badger with AIDS then see his shitty goo face but its a burden we must all bear. Here is the best example i have ever seen.

Peddled to the Corner

2007-10-09T09:17:00.001-07:00

This is the saga of the bikes.

It must be told. I regret the expenditure greatly, however, I hate to admit that is was a vital part of our journey.

When we landed on French soil we had one mission-to get to Paris. We arrived in Le Havre on a Saturday I think and we need to be to France by the following weekend in order to meet up with Alice. We figured that in the time between we would slowly make our way to Paris, enjoying the towns and cities along the way. For some strange reason, the majority of our group saw the available transportation (trains, buses) an invalid option. They wanted to buy bikes.

Then something terrible happened. They actually found a bike store.

If you ever visit the Le Havre Go Sport branch do me a favor and damn them all for their sales tactics. A seemingly friendly man who spoke little English immediately descended upon us, his ignorant prey. We were idle dolls stuffed with money, the seams of which were his to tear apart. I knew from the beginning that bikes were a horrible idea, but everyone else insisted that they would be perfect. It was quicker than walking and that way we could make our way to Paris at a leisurely pace. I protested endlessly, but it was in vain. The other four were convinced, and I knew that I had no choice but to give in and buy the bikes. I was tired, hungry, and my will was weak. The only thing I could get from them was one hour to walk around the mall and make my decision. I was stalling and I knew it was worthless. We came back to the store and the employees continued to talk up the bikes, assuring us that we could ride them to Paris.

Here I must diverge from the story slightly. When we first presented the idea of riding them to Paris to the man at Go Sport he said something along the lines of "Oh yes, you ride to Paris", and presented us with a promising thumbs up. Every single other person who heard about this idea was convinced that we were idiots. They were right. Now, back to the story.

One by one they tuned up our bikes, which were to costs 160 euros each (roughly 220 USD). And one by one Joel, Brock, Adam, and Glenn wheeled them up to the counter, gladly slapping down their plastic payments and walking out with smiles on their faces. I dragged my feet, stumbled my tired ass into the store and put my hands on the handlebars with a frown on my face. I knew it was a bad idea, but I could do nothing.

The worst purchase of my life

After all was said and done we said goodbye and saluted them with many "merci's". After watching me stumble around the store the salesman felt the need to impart his wisdom to me "no more drink, is bad for stomach". I'm sure his incorrect image of me being drunk was enhanced by my having to carry Joel's newly purchased wine bottle around in a plastic bag. The salesman did not understand the irony of calling me drunk.

By this time we had alerted many people in the mall of our presence, they sat on the benches watching the stupid Americans with their shiny new bikes wondering what the hell we were doing. I wondered the same. We dragged them out of their, clumsily lugging them up the escalators, then finally took off, to Paris apparently.

So naive

I will admit that I was briefly optimistic about the bikes when we began riding them. That feeling was quickly extinguished by the time we made our slow departure from Le Havre. People gawked all along the way, making faces and heckling as we went through the shadier parts of town. One young man yelled at us in French, then quickly switched to English.

Young Man-What are you looking for?

Me-What's that?

Young Man-(mocking tone) What's that?

I hate that Young Man, but it some cliche poetic way his inquisition summed up this odyssey.

My bike chain broke. We(Joel) fixed it. Progress was slow. As the day began to fade we knew we needed to find a place to sleep, but we were still in the outskirts of Le Havre with houses surrounding us. We rode uphill to where the forest was and eventually found a spot that seemed safe. We quickly wheeled our bikes up the hill and hid them behind a tree, then stole off into the thin forest to take our packs off and rest.

We sat for a few minutes until we were startled by the frequent sound of mopeds and four wheelers buzzing around. As it turned out we were right next to some forest road that was obviously frequented by such vehicles, they zoomed by every couple of minutes, each time we would duck right by the road, praying we weren't discovered. At one point while driving by they stopped right by where we were for about thirty seconds, and we were sure we had found.

In order to try to lessen their anger, Joel and Glenn left to go find those who had seemingly captured us, hoping to play the hopeless wanderer role and beg for a place to stay. Apparently though they hadn't actually seen us at all, but they did tell us that was OK for us to camp there, although only for one night. Also, they told us we were crazy for trying to ride bikes to Paris. So we set up camp, tents and all and slept well for our first night in France.

The next morning we woke up at about 11 and didn't get out of there until about 2. We rode in the wrong direction a couple of times until finally making our way down the hill and posting up at a roundabout. Here it was decided that we would wait until night to ride our bikes, as the highways would be way to crowded on the day. I thought that this too was a bad idea, but the majority ruled and there was nothing I could do. We enjoyed the small town all day long until night came (around 9) and we were on our way.

We rode for many kilometers. Five retarded Americans with gigantic backpacks whizzing through the night on their shiny Go Sports. The rain came and went intermittently, mostly sticking to a bearable drizzle. We finally made it out of Le Havre, with hopes of making it to Bolbec, the next non-village, by the next day.

Here I must stop again. As we left Le Havre, every sign we saw still insisted on pointing us to Le Havre. I am fairly certain that some French ordinance mandates that every road sign in France must point to Le Havre. No matter where you go, for many miles you will see signs to Le Havre. Do not follow them.

After much riding, and uphill pushing we finally arrived at the next town, a medium sized village called St. Romain. We were exhausted. We coasted down the hills until we found a church that we deemed a proper resting place. Everyone collapsed, setting up shop in front of the church. They rolled out pads and sleeping bags while Glenn and I walked around to have a look at St. Romain. After our short walk Glenn went to sleep in front of the church and I stayed up. We agreed that in one hour we would awake the others to continue our journey.

We rousted them, they slowly collected their gatherings and we once again rode. Joel was tired from the beginning and pessimistic about further riding during the night, but I was convinced we could do it. I was wrong. I was full of shit. Bolbec was "only" 8 kilometres away.

We peddled in the drizzle for about two kilometres when we all realized how tired we were. We pushed our bikes further and further until we found a "good place to camp". It was where a road diverged from the highway and there was a large arrangement of flowers and bushes that we could sleep behind.

This was the worst night of my life.

Earlier that evening, Satan struck a deal with Neptune. They agreed to collaborate in relocating all of the water from the seven seas to the skies, and dumping it upon us in one night. The rain was unbearable. It did not stop. There are only so many ways I can describe it. I did not sleep at all that night. I sat up straight on top of my backpack with my rain jacket on, watching the entire country of France become soaked. The night was also incredibly long, it stretched on as I prayed to see some hint of daylight. This night was not like a night of camping when you get soaked, because you know even then that you will hike back down and get in a car, go home and take a hot shower and wash your clothes. We were thousands of miles away from home, on the side of the highway in France.

Please kill me

By the grace of God morning came. Everything was soaked. We had to make the decision between moving on to the next town or going back the short distance to St. Romain. Thankfully, we chose the latter. We pushed our bikes all the way back, our sopping backpacks weighing us down; confused locals staring at us. Finally we posted up at the same church, absolutely drenched and unsure of what to do next.

All we knew was that we needed a hotel room. One needs such a thing after such a night. There was only one in town and it was booked for the next fifty days. Funny now, but terrible news at the time.

It was at this moment that we all knew what had to be done. We needed to get rid of the bikes. I wasn't even interested in gloating about the blunder they had pushed upon me, I just knew that I never wanted to see that hellish machine again. So there at the church we heckled passersby, Glenn utilizing his limited French to offer new bikes for sale at the low low price of ten euros. That is how desperate we were.

Nobody wanted to buy them. They just wanted to know why we were selling them for ten euros. Why did we try to ride to Paris? I didn't know why. While we sat at the church with our pitiful sales pitch a man, presumably a priest, arrived on his way to work there. Glenn pleaded with him, but he was confused and not in the least bit interested in the bikes. This young man seemed fairly amused and kept looking around like the whole thing was some practical joke.

He left us, he had to go work, and we sat there with the five bikes around us. We all knew what was next. We had to leave them there. 160 euros down the drain. One of the bikes was the brunt of our rage as a couple of us smashed the tire and threw it on the ground. We said goodbye to the bikes and left them in the alley, hoping to never see them again. We walked to a bar, sat our stuff down, and Glenn began to inquire about how to get to the next town along the road. A helpful man gave us a ride to the bus stop where we sat, shivering, glad to have the bikes safely in our past. Glenn walked around some more, returning with the familiar shit eating grin on his face, riding one of those bikes. He said that when he walked down to fetch it the priest was looking at the bikes, Glenn told him we would be back in five minutes to pick them up.

Of course, we never went back.

A new home

Glenn parked the bike, trying once again to sell it at a hot price, but his efforts were useless. A couple of minutes later, some city workers came by and asked if the bike belonged to any of us. We said no, and they carted it off on their truck. After much waiting the bus finally came and we rode to the next town, Bolbec, where we immediately found a hotel and got two rooms for the night. All of our clothes smelled horrible, one shirt of mine so gross that I threw it away days later due to the mold that had grown on it. Sitting in the hotel room we were sure that the saga of the bikes was complete.

A funny thing happened the next day.

We were slowly figuring out how to make our way to the next town, sitting on a bench and procrastinating about walking to the bus stop, which was half a block away. There we sat as a car drove up across the street and parked. Out of this car appeared the priest from the day before. He had clearly come to the bigger city to utilize the post office, and by bizarre coincidence saw his friends who abandoned the bikes a day before. He smiled and flashed us the thumbs up, apparently happy with his new found gifts. May he make better use of them than we did. And thus, the saga of the bikes was complete.

Kinda Hard Being Snoop D O Double G

2007-10-09T09:02:00.000-07:00

Long ago, when we were still in Le Havre, we were enjoying a quiet meal of the usual baguettes outside a local supermarket. While we were minding our own business a couple of locals teens approached us and began babbling in to us in French. They soon learned they we were American and one repeatedly insisted that he was Calvin Broadus himself. He would wave his hands and say "Snoop Dogg!" but in this odd way that shortened the vowel sounds until they were almost non existent so it was more like "Snep Deg", he was also adamant about the phrase "Shet m' neggas".

Native of France

After all of his bouncing around and impersonation he started pointing at a cigarette in his hand, dubbing it "the shit" and "Snoop Dogg". He then proceeded to pull out of his pocket a large brick of hash, offering it to us for only 50 euros. Of course, we declined.

Ballin'

2007-10-06T10:37:00.000-07:00

Me chillin' with Samus in Le Havre

The Harbor is Yours

2007-10-06T10:15:00.000-07:00

When we left England from Portsmouth we ended up spending all damn day sitting at in the ferry terminal because for some reason Glenn and I booked our tickets for 11:30. The time went by relatively fast, but Glenn got kinda bored and decided to down his two pound(as in money) bottle of wine.

Now if you have spent some time with Glenn you know that when he downs a bottle of wine he gets two things:

1. Purple teeth and lips
2. Really shitty ideas

As our departure grew nearer Glenn convinced himself that it would be beneficial for us to try to sneak onto a different ferry line that was going to a different destination. He vehemently spewed the wonders of this plan, he insisted that if worst came to worst we would pretend like we had made an honest mistake and wait for our real ferry. Also, the different destination, St. Malo, was apparently really nice and closer to Paris than Le Havre.

I was the main detractor from this plan and I struggled to shoot it down as he slowly gained the half-assed support of the others. It really sounded like they were going to commit to that shit. Once again, he had the wine in him so he kept saying things like "St. Malo is closer to France" which Adam paraphrased well as "France is closer to France than France".

For some reason he eventually gave up the idea and it seemed that things were going to go as they were supposed to. I picked up Joel's gigantic map of Europe to check just how far away Le Havre was from Paris. I also checked out where Glenn's fantasy destination, St. Malo was.

Just look at the fucking map.

All My Baby Pictures

2007-10-06T10:02:00.000-07:00

How big do you want your ice cream?

One Saturday about a week before we left for this journey I ran into Robert's father downtown at the farmer's market. He was asking us about the trip and he referred to Adam as "the baby faced one". We had been taunting him, about this for a couple of weeks when we arrived in London, where we learned that he is internationally known as a babyface.

One night while we were wandering around town a black man approached us asking for cigarettes. He was sure, due to my manly physique, that I was probably the rugged smoker type. He was not convinced about Adam.

Black Man- I no ask him, he babyface. You all the same age maybe but him babyface.

He was right on both accounts.

Lights Are Blinding My Eyes

2007-09-29T04:27:00.000-07:00

Just for the record, we are currently in France, but a lot of stuff happened in London that we didn't get to write about so expect the next couple of posts to be a mix of retroactive London reports and hot off the presses France exposés. This is one of the former.

We were trying our damndest on what was to be our last night in London to find something exciting to do because none of us really got to experience the city to any fulfilling extent, most of the time was spent lamenting over how hard the exchange rate was raping us and figuring out how to get out of there. So we decided to hop a bus to Picadilly Circus, one of the more happening districts, to see what we could find. We wandered around trying to find a club to go to, saw the London New Era Flagship store, and were about to give up when we saw a sizeable crowd qpproaching, this looked promising, so we inquired about their destination, and it turned out to be a large group coming from a hostel headed towards some club. We joined them and Joel was instantly befriended by a fellow named Erik. Erik quizzed Joel about where he thought he was from, Joel guessed England-a wrong answer that was met with the response "Poopy". Turns out he was from Sweden, which was further affirmed when the quite inebriated Erik prompted Joel to come up with villain names for the both of them. The conversation went something like this.
Joel-I don't know
Erik-Yaws
Joel-Yaws?
Erik-Like from James Bond

Yaws

We followed this group led by a short Portuguese man who was somehow able to make everyone around him join the group. We were heckled by other promoters along the way who demanded to know what club we were going to. We finally got there and it was pretty ill, I had a lot of fun dancing till two in the morning, but unfortunately the stars did not align, nor did the weak become heroes. The club was full of the same bullshit as real life where all the girls are attracted to the older guys and the morons. Despite this, it was a lot of fun. More to come soon, this post was created on a French keyboard and costed Glenn two Euros so you had better be happy. Hopefully more posts soon on the following subjects
Babyface
Banksy
Bikes
And much much more!

London Sucks

2007-09-26T12:39:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone, we're currently in London trying to get the fuck out. It's super expensive here, so we're going to book a flight tonight to the mainland. We're thinking either Spain, Germany, or France... Other than it being expensive here, everything is going well. I almost got my ass kicked because I wouldn't give a guy a smoke (because they are super expensive) but I ended up giving him one and he walked away, so whatever. We think we saw some Banksy shit, so that's pretty rad. Well, our next post will be from somewhere on the mainland.

Checklist

2007-09-20T14:15:00.000-07:00

The reality of leaving is growing, slowly. Three days left in the United States.. I started packing a couple hours ago and got the core of my stuff together; clothes, camera, mp3 player, pocket knife (to insure Adam's popularity in the death poll will not be a waste), sketchbook, etc..

After putting most of it in piles to give me a false sense of organization, it really hit me that these possessions were essentially going to be everything I own for a really, really, long period of time. The temptation to pack up my computer is punching me in the eye socket. As sad as it sounds, I get this feeling like I'm missing out every time I go a day without checking my usual four websites; Reddit.com, 3Dm3.com, Penny-Arcade.com, and Facebook. Even with a 12 hour plane flight still between me and my new home, I expect the surreal feeling of getting off the plane, looking at our crew and optimistically saying "Now what?" to be a Kodak moment.. but with audio. Maybe a Sony DSR-VX2100 moment instead.

My Passport on Pivot

2007-09-18T19:31:00.000-07:00

Proud member of the European Union

Naysayers-1
Us-1

I aint dead yet

2007-09-18T00:29:00.001-07:00

Since i am killing the "first to die in Europe" poll, I am interested in how the folks out there think i am gonna die. There are a lot of possibilities out there, but i plan on going out like a king, and that king is M.L.K. Trying cocaine once waking up in a gutter outside a brothel in Russia in time to see the car that is running over my face. So lets get some viewer participation on the site and lets see how Dr. Science(Adam) is gonna get snuffed. Badgers, terrorists, mugging, tell me what you think.

By the way i have created a rating system that contains three different levels of posting status from me. Thumbs down= sober, Mid. level= drunk, Thumbs up= Trashed.

In the recent words of Kanye West, "We outta here baby".

It's possible..?

2007-09-17T00:29:00.001-07:00

One of our problems eventually is going to be a shortage of money.. and a shortage of food. I estimate this will happen in about 3 months or a little less if we don't work at all. Joel and I agreed that we would all shrivel to bone and flesh with the exception of Brendan due to him eating all of our food while the rest of us are intoxicated. His swollen, meaty fingers would shovel anything edible into his gaping pit of a mouth yet still careful not to spill on the Nikes. A thick, rich sauce would roll from one chin to the next before the fabric of his shirt would finally end it. Anyway, I think this trip could eventually lead to a Darwinist attitude towards hunger. The picture is a concept of what this might look like if Brendan was doing well in the struggle.

Waiting...

2007-09-16T20:47:00.000-07:00

Well, we're still in Sandpoint, but not for much longer. Thank God. We work, sit at the fountain, eat, smoke (except Brendan), and sleep. Sandpoint is super neat when no one is here. We're going up to Canada on the 23rd and our plane leaves on the 24th. We're all trying to get our shit together, but just like everything else in our lives we procrastinate until the last possible second. But whatever... fuck it.

If you're reading this you probably know who we are, but we decided to put this little roster up just in case some random humans come across this blog and decide to give a shit and want to know who we are. So, if our crappy plane doesn't crash on the way, my next post should be straight outta London. Peace out. Homies...

Homeless, Cardboard Cribs

2007-09-15T09:46:00.000-07:00

Our initial plan on arriving in London was to stay with my Aunt for a couple of days to get situated and decide where we wanted to go next. The idea that we had a free place to stay in London was always valid ammunition to battle the naysayers who insisted that we "couldn't make it" and it would be "too expensive" etc. etc. If nothing else it was a place to leave all of our stuff and tell customs agents that we were going.

Well,

that has all gone to shit.

There was some medical emergency with my aunt, so as of right now we are homeless(when we get there).

Yeah, like this guy

Hopefully we will get it all figured out, we are kinda sorta in the process of looking for Hostels to stay in. Thumbs up to the naysayers though, I guess you guys got it right so far.

Naysayers-1
Us-0