A week or two ago me and five lovely friends that I live with (Otto, Erin, Alex, Tom, and Pink) went on a 2,700 road trip/camping adventure in Colorado. There was a huge CSgathering that turned out to be a lot of fun. Here are 157 pictures of that adventure. Enjoy!
...a paintball sniper rifle with a night vision scope. It's just after midnight and the frats surrounding our house ("rush week" has just begun) are in full-throttle. In particular, some yahoo is sitting on the street corner with a beer in one hand and the other doing an amazing job of rapidly banging away on a pair of bongo drums. Surely two high-powered new pink stains double-tapped on his bare chest would silence the music maker, right?
Tomorrow I fly to Alaska... again. From there I'll drive down to California (where I am right now)... again. Why? Because I'm either a) crazy, b) a good friend, or c) both. I'll gladly own up to option C.
My lovely friend Casey and I will be driving her car down the 3,200 miles of the familiar stretch of road that I just rolled down a month ago. She's getting out of Alaska for a while and I'm glad to help bring her down to hang out with me in Berkeley.
The only concern of mine is that we have a schedule. We can't leave until Sunday morning because I don't fly in until late Friday night and she's actually in Germany right now at Oktoberfest (if envy really did turn you green i'd look like the Jolly Green Giant right now) and won't return to our fair continent until Saturday. But we have to be in Bend, Oregon, on Thursday afternoon to begin a weekend of wedding festivities for her friend which is 2,665 miles to cover in four road warrior-like days. Picture Cannonball Run but with geocaching pit stops and no wisecracking banter from Burt Reynolds.
So in the meantime I'm working on doing things like figuring out a realistic route, lining up potential overnight CouchSurfing stopovers in places like Whitehorse and Williams Lake, installing light fixtures in my room, programming a new tool for CouchSurfing's volunteer translation team, and cleaning the house for our first housewarming party that goes down tonight.
By the way, if you happen to be in the Berkeley area tonight you should definitely come by. It's a "3P" party, which means you should bring three things that start with a P. We're hoping for plants and pillows but we've already received yummy Passion fruit, a cool framed Picture, and a bag of condoms (Protection). Some come over and get creative!
Wish me luck on my upcoming adventure. It should be fun!
So I just returned from the place where "no news is good news". Who of you know where I'm talking about? Yep, I just did the responsible thing and had myself checked up at the PP clinic. I'm not particularly worried about my health but every six months or so that I find myself in Chico, CA, I make an appointment to be completely sure.
I had no idea there was an instant HIV test available. How cool! Getting a HIV test is fairly similar to being interrogated by a customs official at a border crossing. Your positive (hmm, that's really not the best word here, is it?) that you've done nothing wrong and that you'll just pass on through but you're pretty nervous anyway. And this time, just as quickly as most crossings, I was proved still innocent once again. Yay for instant tests!
Now, here's some free advice that should really be fairly obvious: when going to a place where you have to have a urine test, don't urinate before you go. This advice didn't ring through my head until not only once I actually got there but after waiting in the lobby for 20 minutes. Oops. After a lengthy stopover at the water fountain down the hall and a belly full of water I broke what had to be a personal record for turn-around time for liquid going in and leaving my body.
On a topic unrelated to the inner workings of my body, I started my motorcycle today! It's a 27 year old darling that gets very temperamental - particularly when left alone in a driveway for four month stretches. But with a little love (I've been told that it's cute how I unconsciously pat her gas tank while coaxing it to do what I want it to do) and a recharged battery she sprang to life without too much trouble. Yay! Either tonight or tomorrow I'll ride her back to her new home in Berkeley. I'm stoked to have a motorcycle in the Bay Area again. Driving non-parkable trucks and waiting in traffic (motorcycles can 'split' lanes in Cali) is for chumps!
I lugged this couch all the way to Thailand, practically in its own heavy, mostly separate bag, and didn't come back with one single picture of it. Yep, lame. But have I been to Wisconsin? Nope, but my couch has.
Above is a pic from my couch's recent voyage without me. At the rate she's going she'll probably visit all 50 states before I will. We have at least 35 together but on her way to the midwest she picked up a handful of others. I'm jealous, but at least I'm in the city that I love the most: my "adopted" new home of San Francisco.
Quick update: I went to Thailand for three months, workedworkedworked for almost all of it (working on one website so often leaves me very little motivation to keep on the computer and work on this one, sorry), had some fun even though I was sick with stomach viruses for most of it and/or limping around on a knee injury from a motorcycle spill (I did get an interesting tour through Thai hospitals, including my second ever MRI), met a lot of great people, but mostly worked.
And now I'm back in the Golden Gate City and seeing a lot more of my wonderful friends here than I thought I would. My original plan was to fly back here, say hello for a few days, and then steer my motorcycle north to Alaska. But my motorcycle obviously had other plans since it didn't want to start... at all. So one tow truck, seven phone calls, 10 days, and staggering dollar amount much higher than that bike is surely worth in even the best condition and I'm finally able to get back on the road. It's still far from perfect (a small oil leak isn't THAT big of a deal, right?) but she'll certainly ride. Now if it'll only stop snowing up north...
So that's my quick update. I'll try to do better during these next several months (oh yeah, I'm spending the summer in Homer, AK) but I might need a gentle reminder from time to time :)
As much as I complain about being temporary isolated out in boring Copperopolis, CA, it does have its fine points. a) we get a lot of work done (what else is there to do?) and b) the views are incredible (click below for a massive popup).
Last weekend, at 11am on a Sunday, I was asked this: "If you're not going to buy some coke (cocaine) why do you come dressed like disco?"
While there have to be 99 good answers to that question I couldn't think of even 1 (unless you count a blank stare through my gold sunglasses as an answer).
And no I didn't buy any coke. Yuck.
Have you gotta better answer? Hit the "comment" button below this and lay it on me.
What a difference a year makes. Well, maybe, maybe not. You be the judge.
The pic in orange is me from 365 days earlier than the one in purple (the somewhat new-found favorite color of my subconscious, it seems). For two years in a row I've attended a party at my friend Will's in San Francisco where he has a photo booth-type wall that fires off shots and puts them on the internet. I wasn't even trying at the time but it's funny how I practically replicated the same shot, only mirrored.
Well, what do you think?
Ok, so they don't really look all that different, do they? But they certainly feel different to me. This was my second weekend in SF and my first big party weekend in the city. Will's loft hosts hundreds of people during several parties throughout the year and this one is one of the most infamous ones. There were three sets of DJs and people everywhere. My first year I was a little overwhelmed with what SF (my current "favorite city in the whole world", by the way) had to offer and I was like a kid from the country taking it all in in one big swoop. By the picture in the orange furry vest you could probably say I did alright, but that guy looks a LOT different to me 365+ days later. Now I've settled into that purple coat and am typing to you now with that same polish on my fingernails. Life is damn interesting, isn't it?
Last weekend the four of us housemates (Casey, Jelena, Weston and me) were invited to Yosemite. A CouchSurfer that works there wanted to show us around before her summer job was over. We had a blast!
Katrina (the CSer) first took us on an easy 5-6 mile hike up to Angel Falls (I think that's what it was called, right?). It was a pretty deserted trail where we just saw only a handful of people. One of these hikers that passed us going the other told us to watch out for the bear up ahead, which we immediately ran ahead to snap a picture of (but didn't see). About halfway through the trail our experienced guide pointed out a side trail that most hikers surely missed. This took us up a deserted path to a beautiful spot looking over a waterfall on one side and an emmense valley covering dozens (if not a hundred?) of miles on the other. Wow! It was incredible!
Later that night we ate lots of yummy food, played a game of Scrabble, and went to bed at 10 or 11pm for a quick nap. And then it was up again at 1am for another hike.
Ok, so this was my first night time hike and it was definitely my first 15 mile hike. Needless to say I was more than a little intimidated by the length of it but we did actually talk her down from the proposed (and steeper) 18 mile hike. It was brutal on my poorly conditioned body hiking for 4+ hours (after driving for an hour or so to get to the trial head) but the view from the top of the mountain just as the sun was rising made it all worth it. It was soooo beautiful!
So thanks to Katrina for making my first real visit to our nation's first national park so awesome!
Oh, for added goodness I'm attaching a picture of me stretching out next to the lake at the end of the 15 mile hike. Enjoy! :)
Wanna see where I live? I took some pics and finally uploaded them. Check them out. And if you're in the area sometime between now and December come see me! We have plenty of room and we love company.
Ok, I hate MySpace...but I can't help but use them for their cool features. Most of the "features" blow but the one that lets you upload movies and have it automatically convert it to web-ready goodness is pretty freakin' cool. Here's one of my vids:
After more than a month I'm reunited with Gracie today. She's been hanging out in Donna's driveway in Chico for far too long. It's time to get her back on the open road and in my own (temporary) driveway for the next couple of months. We have lots of catching up to do. Where we're going there will be mountains to climb, views to be taken in, and lots of fresh air just waiting to be sampled. She's full of good gas (complete with a mix of Marvel Mystery Oil, of course), her tires are again fully inflated (her front tire only had a shocking 7 PSI when I finally checked it at the gas station), her battery if once again fully charged, and she's roaring to get down to our new home in Copperopolis.
I really shouldn't keep the lovely girl waiting. Off I go!
The New York Times called me last week to talk about sleeping on people's couches. Can anyone say slow news day? :) Actually, they did a pretty good job covering an angle that's rarely usually explored in their article Surfing the World Wide Couch - the concept of "home".
I don't have a set, physical dwelling to call "home" and haven't had one in 3+ years since my tiny studio apartment in Denton, Texas. But even then I never felt like it was "home" - it was just where I lived and stored my junk. Even throughout the 7+ years that I lived in Denton my nomadic ways were pretty clear. While going to school the longest stretch I ever managed to stick around in one house/apartment was 16 months. I recognized then that I enjoyed a regularly change of scenery but I've realized while traveling that I was really just looking to rediscover what "home" really is to me.
Throughout the last few years my own concept of "home" has taken on a different, more personally significant meaning. "For constant surfers, the couch becomes a new sort of home" writes Greene of the Times, "redefining, in many ways, their own ideas about what a home really is." The couch isn't literally where I feel at home (although I love sleeping on them regularly - sometimes even when a real bed is available.) A big chunk of my home has become the road itself and my relationships with the people that I meet along the way.
The author suggest that the lesson for long-term travelers is in "learning to feel at home anywhere." This one has always been pretty easy for me, as the article points out. "I used to think I was an insomniac," said me. "Now I find in new places I sleep like a baby." Comfort in my surroundings has usually been an easy one. Surely by sleeping best in new, unfamiliar places says that even my subconscious has something to say about what "home" really is for me.
I don't travel because I'm bored or lazy. I don't see myself running from the responsibilities that most people my age have taken on. But I was afraid. I always had a fear of wasting my life away doing something stupid and meaningless. NYT quoted me accurately when talking about the mundane jobs I held in the time between college graduation and strapping on that backpack where "I was alarmed that two years went by so quickly and I hadn't done anything significant." I was the youngest person in my office and surrounded by people who had worked there for years, constantly complaining about their jobs and lives but were too settled to do anything about it. The spirit of wanting more out of their lives had been slowly replaced by satellite tv and second mortgages. After two years I suddenly started to feel the apathy... and it scared the hell out of me. I had lived in my dumpy apartment for almost two years and had stopped showing any signs of looking for something more out of my life. My search for "home" had been forgotten and I was watching a lot of television. The time had come to expand my list of options.
42 months later (exactly to the day today) "home" has keeps evolving. At first it was a state of constant motion. For two years I rarely stayed in one spot longer than 2 weeks (my average was around 4 days). The actual transportation days were the most exciting. I loved spending 14 hours driving somewhere only to get to an unfamiliar sleepy city in Italy at 3am with no set place yet worked out to sleep and then having to just figure it out. Or to jump off a sailboat in Florida (who knew I got seasick so easily?) to hitch 200 miles back north to the parking lot holding my truck, hike 4 miles across a city that obviously has some beef with the idea of public transportation, and then drive 300 miles to Charleston to meet someone new who's couch I'll be sleeping on. Those are the days where I feel the most alive and, really, the most at home within myself.
Funny enough, these last 15 months have found me feeling much more settled. Last summer I lived in the same apartment for my three month stay in Montreal. After that I spent a couple of months in a tent in California followed by four months in New Zealand. Later it was two months in a small shared apartment in Holland. And now I'm again based for the next couple of months in a beautiful home (with a spectacular view, of course - I've learned not to settle for anything short of beautiful) on a lake in California. While I did venture out on mini road trips quite a bit more than the average citizen during each of these long stays (one particular "mini road trip" in New Zealand did last four or five weeks) I've been in places where I've unpacked my bags and used even had my own closet(s). "Home" to me, in the familiar sense, is putting my clothes on hangers :)
If you want to read the article but don't want to sign up to do so, just use mine:
email: nytimes [at] fliptophead [dot] com
password: nopassword (although it might be nopasswords - i forget)
...when I think I fully realized that I have an amazing social life came last night. My friend Dan invited me out to a pool party at the mansion of the millionaire that created a certain major website and I skipped out to try and remember what an easy, quiet Saturday night felt like. that either makes me a rockstar or an old lady. What has 30 done to me?
Correction: It was actually Friday night, not Saturday like I thought. Do I get more rockstar points for not knowing what day it is or senile, old lady points?
Can you believe it's been two whole months (and two countries ago) since I last wrote on here? Shame on me, I know. But I have good news! The adorable person typing this that you all surely hold dear to your hearts actually made it to 30!
Yep, this last weekend I celebrated my 30th birthday (or 10,957th day, if you didn't figure out the title) in the absolutely decadent style that I've quickly become accustomed to. The gala lasted from the late Thursday afternoon until the early hours of Tuesday morning. It all started in Chico, CA with my wonderful friends Donna, Casey, and Jelena - the first two taking Jelena and I out for dinner at the best restaurant in town. This weekend was also Jelena's 22nd birthday. Happy birthday, darling!
Friday I drove to SF to meet up with the lovely NZ Kristen (hereby known forever more - or at least until sufficient notice - as either "Kiwi Cuervo" or simply "Shooter") before she flew back to the land of the Kiwi in the late afternoon. The parking garage at the airport will never be the same without you, Cuervo!
Then it was off to change into the leopard pants and convene with 20 of my closest friends at the Porn Palace downtown. Now, Mom, before you faint - I've been to the PP several times and it's always been MUCH tamer than the title suggests. It's basically a big, fun place that a guy who makes, um, movies for a living owns and throws an open bar party for his friends once a week. And my friend Shameless just happens to know everyone in town and, in traditional superstar form, got us all in once again. It was pretty laid back and we mostly saw everyone's pics of Burning Man, which was a lot of fun.
and now back to our irregularly unscheduled broadcast...
Saturday I got my first (and certainly not my last) "Superhero Purple" (although that's not the official name of the color, just the one I christened it) manicure and pedicure combo. Although at least my toe nails have been purple for almost a year now (yes, I know some of you have Morrison's "People Are Strange" in your head right now... and if you didn't, well, you do now) I've never actually painted them myself. Usually it's Jelena doing a fantastic job on it whenever I can get the lil' swiss miss to lay her hands on me but on Saturday I went for the full nail spa treatment. Niiiiiiiice!
Afterwards Shameless and I gorged ourselves on sushi...in my surprise hotel room! Soon after about 20 of my closest friends showed up to help me ring in 30 in true style. We put on our favorite party clothes, jumped into the biggest limo i've ever seen, and rolled out to take on San Fran-freakin'-cisco's dance scene. The gala lasted all night and I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one surprised to see the sun come up earlier than really expected.
And then Sunday came the picnic on top of top of Mt. Tamalpais with champaign and lots and lots of fur. We had the city to our left and a beautiful sunset coming down over the ocean on our right. If there was a better place to be at that moment I couldn't think of one.
Monday night closed out the celebration with a relaxing post-Burn hot tub party in Oakland (called, cleverly, "Soakland", of course) with Shameless and High Dive, the latter a new awesome friend from New Zealand. More champaign, of course, and more bubbles all around.
A big kiss to Shameless Heather for making this weekend happen. I told her a week or two ago that I wanted all of my friends to come out dancing and to be surprised. I knew if anyone could show us the way to a wonderful weekend it would be her. And big love to Casey for the limo, the picnic and who really knows what else (he's so modest he'd never say). And big, big love to everyone who came out this weekend to show me the most amazing birthday celebration I have truly ever had. I love my life, I love my friends!
Who's ready for Halloween to come around again already? Yep, that's right - Winnie the Pooh is. Why did it take coming to San Francisco to awaken within me this love of costumes? Whatever the case, I'm ready to get Pooh back out of his bag and out on the streets. Who knows, maybe the next time you see me in the pub I'll be downing a pint in this lovable suit.
I made it for Round Two in San Francisco today and within an hour had my truck towed. Allow me to take a moment and explain how fun it is to have a vehicle in your possession in one of the car-unfriendliest cities in, oh, let's say the world.
Last time I was in town I learned that having "straight wheels" costs you $35. Translation for those of you from the flatlands (ie. places with no real hills, like Texas): curb your wheels when parking in SF.
Currently I'm parked in a neighborhood that only allows you to keep your vehicle in one spot for 2 hours at a time until 9pm including Saturdays! Why don't the parking peeps just take the whole weekend off? So while it wasn't for a full two hours until I noticed my truck wasn't where I parked it the quick and efficient City of SF was able to assess that my truck was edged slightly in a driveway entrance (thanks, no doubt, to bored neighbors with nothing better to do than call tow trucks and laugh behind the blinds at suckers on their cell phones standing in the empty spot where their truck was - i know you were there!) in just under in 42 minutes. 42 minutes. That's all it took for me to park and then have them move my truck for me while I was inside settling in. 78 minutes later I was on my bike flying down the hill to the towing place (conveniently located only 1.4 miles away) and soon to be $188.50 poorer.
To add insult to an already severely injured wallet I get my truck back with a $75 parking ticket on it. The ticket was dated 2 minutes prior to the time the tow company listed as the time they picked it up. $75!!! This is in addition to the $60 the tow company charged me for "SF administrative costs" (which was included in the $188.50).
So while my day has already thrown at me $263.50 in parking fees alone (oh! and the day isn't over yet! - i still get to go to the airport and wait for an international flight arrival...) I'm determined to find its upswing. The day and, most importantly, the night is still very young and full of potential. I know of no less than three sure-to-be swinging parties going down and I'm not one to get down just because I lost about 60% of my net worth because of three inches of concrete.
IDire straights such as these have a way of getting me motivated, excited, and re-invigorated. The time for the upswing is here.
Wanna know where the couch and I are now? Look below for a hint...
As you can see, Lucy has lost a little bit of air. We had a crazy day yesterday with three of us dashing all over San Francisco dragging the wee sofa to so many of the major photo op sights. We first hit up some cool cathedral (i have zero idea what the name is now, even though i drove there) for some pics of all of us piling onto a little statue in a park that I never would guessed would have held us all up, and then off to a park (again, i'm spacing on names) where the couch garnered a fairly significant rip along a seam that may or may not be repairable during a signifcantly loftly flight complete with an unfortunate landing on unforgivingly sharp edged concrete. We still hit up the Golden Gate Bridge (ah! one name i remembered!) for some "sad couch" shots, but the ones taken with my camera suck (my LCD doesn't work).
Last night I applied some patching mojo to Lucy and we'll see later today if she's capable of holding air again. The tear is a bad one AND on a seam (which contributes largely to its "bad one" status) so I may be in the market for a replacement. Who wants to send me a couch? Help me out and I'll snail mail you a big glossy of the first photo taken with it. Even if this one can be fixed it's certainly on its way to complete obsolescence (no one seems to build these things to be thrown from second story drops). And no one wants to see more sad couch pics!
After more than a month I'm reunited with 
I don't have a set, physical dwelling to call "home" and haven't had one in 3+ years since my tiny studio apartment in Denton, Texas. But even then I never felt like it was "home" - it was just where I lived and stored my junk. Even throughout the 7+ years that I lived in Denton my nomadic ways were pretty clear. While going to school the longest stretch I ever managed to stick around in one house/apartment was 16 months. I recognized then that I enjoyed a regularly change of scenery but I've realized while traveling that I was really just looking to rediscover what "home" really is to me.
