Lindsay says that my previous post about Sykes hot springs makes it sound like we had a terrible time. We had an awesome experience, that was physically painful and exhausting. But I am honestly thrilled that we did it. To show more of our true emotion, here is a short video we took ~5 miles out from the end of the hike (note this is after we were stung by wasps, but before the pain got too hellish in the knee department.
I can barely walk today – today is Monday. Last night we returned home from Sykes hot springs, where Lindsay and I completed (yaaa!!!) a 2 day, 20 mile hike. This is my second (Lindsay’s first) hike-in backpacking trip (the first being much shorter, only a few miles, into Joshua Tree), and for whatever reason we decided that it would be a good idea to start our backpacking experience together with a trail rated “difficult.” See everytrail.com for details if you don’t believe me.
We started out Friday. Lindsay picked me up from work and we drove straight to Big Sur Station, which is roughly 2.5 hours, perhaps a bit longer (and MUCH longer going the other way with Sunday traffic!). We slept in the Yaris (in retrospect I wish I had gotten a photo of this) which I would call a small car (wikipedia calls it a subcompact). Surprisingly we both slept pretty well in the car. We put the back seat down to make a flat-ish surface, then pushed the front seets forward so we had some room for our feet to dangle. With our camping mats underneath us and our camping packs in the foot wells to give us something to rest our legs on (well, in theory) I would not hesitate to sleep in the car again.
Saturday morning we woke up a little before 8 am, packed up our stuff and headed off. For anybody curious, an approximate list of items we brought include:
- Two man tent
- Four liters of water
- Iodine tablets + “nuetralizers”
- One sleeping bag (for me) plus one small blanket (for Lindsay)
- Two backpacking pillows
- Six packets of instant Oatmeal (which is the only food item we ended up not eating
- Five dried fruit leather things from Trader Joes
- Two instant backpacking dinners plus one freeze-dried desert. (Pad See Ew, Chick and Cashew Rice, and Mocha Mousse)
- One pair of pants (we each brought one), plus two tshirts (one to sleep in), swimming stuff, one backpacker towel
- Lindsay wore her running shoes, and I wore Keens without socks which turned out to be a bit of a mistake I believe
- Our packs
- A camp stove and two cups
- Starbucks Via coffee
- My book (A Dance with Dragons) and Lindsay’s book
- Cards (which we didn’t use)
- Two Nalgines
So anyway, we headed off with that stuff!
As I mentioned, this trail is marked “difficult” and about a mile in I realized just how true this is. The first ~3 miles is exposed and almost 100% uphill. Sometimes gradually uphill, in the good spots, but other times “this is really terrible” uphill. Not so bad that you had to scramble up or CLIMB up anything, but uphill. It was very beautiful, but honestly those first three miles I think we were really just trying to keep walking.
After the first three miles things got a bit easier. The trail NEVER really is “flat” (the entire time you are winding up/down the side of a mountain – at least I think it’s a mountain. In Michigan it was a lot easier to tell because there were not mountains, so you always knew you were dealing with a hill. In California, it’s a mixed bag. I’m going to call it a mountain.), but you don’t have such a clear feeling of dread when you do have to go up.
At mile five is a campground (whose name I forget) and you have your first real encounter with the river/stream that runs through the canyon/trail. If I were to do this hike again, I might stop here for the night to break up the walk a bit.
Around this point in the trip (ok, I’m lying – it was actually about 3 miles back) we started to encounter people on the trail walking back from Sykes who had encountered a hornets nest. The first couple we talked with claimed to have been stung something like 10-13 times EACH. Every single group we encountered after that had also been stung, for a total of something like 6 groups of people. The idea of being stung by a bunch of hornets wasn’t particularly exciting and unfortunately added to my general feeling of “man I wish I was done with this hike!” but oh well.
Around mile 7, which is Barlow Flat Camp, we started to hit a lot more downward sloping trail. This is perhaps one of the first times in my life that I ever have had a serious problem with my body in a mechanical sort of way. Basically my left knee started to hurt. Part of this is likely thanks to the fact that I was wearing Keens without socks and had a bunch of blisters on my right foot and was likely walking funny, but regardless, it started hurting. Honestly, my knee hurting was a major theme of the next two days, but it’s sort of boring so I won’t dwell on it.
OK, so finally we get to Sykes! It’s amazing! Green/blue pools of water in the stream. Etc. It’s wooded. All of the camping is along this river, so no matter where you put down your tent you have the sound of the river at night. And the hot springs are right there also.
I’d never really seen such a nice hot spring to be honest. There were basically two “tubs”, one you had to climb up to get into, and another that was directly beneath that collected the draining water from the first tub. The top tub was rock, and was deep enough you could easily sit and be covered with water. The water was the PERFECT temperature (well, in reality I would have probably preferred a nice cold pool).
So Lindsay and I sat in the hot spring tub for a while, then quickly jumped into the river to get rid of the sulfur smell. After that, it was back to camp (400 feet away from the springs, though it felt like a lot more with the pain in my knees/legs). Lindsay took a short nap and I read some of my book. I noticed the sun was just starting to go down, so woke Lindsay up and we made dinner.
Dinner (which if you read the list of packed items you already know about) was two freeze-dried backpacker dinners. They were not very good, but to be fair I believe I did a poor job mixing up my pad see ew. It wasn’t until after dinner that I realized there was a pocket of untapped flavor (basically ALL the flavor, by the taste of it) powder that I had failed to stir up. This stirred up some emotions in me. Mainly disappointment I’d say, because I was so hungry but dinner was so unfulfilling. On the bright side, the chocolate mousse was pretty good.
After cleaning up dinner (take only photographs, leave only footprints) we sadly went to bed. It was around 9pm. I think if we did it again, and if we had a day to recuperate, we would have probably went into the hot springs again at night. Frankly it would have been awesome. The stars were beautiful, I imagine.
I slept pretty well throughout the night. There was one time that I woke up and could smell skunk (note that bears were not an issue at this place apparently, but skunks were) but I just went back to bed. Sai woke Lindsay up a bunch of times (growling at random sounds outside) but overall the night passed without incident.
In the morning (Lindsay’s birthday!) we woke up and I made coffee for us. We skipped breakfast (possibly a dumb idea) and quickly packed up camp. I think by 8:45 we were on the road. And by on the road I mean making our way to the trail head. It took us a good 30 minutes to walk that first half mile on account of having to remove shoes to talk through the river at multiple spots. Etc.
It’s worth noting that at this point my knees BOTH started hurting again. I can’t really describe the feeling of dread I had at this point, knowing that we were JUST starting but had 10 miles to walk, with my knees already killing. But we walked on! Around two miles in we ran into the wasps we had missed the first time around, this time Sai was stung five times, Lindsay twice, and me only a single time (in the leg, to add insult to injury). This wasn’t so bad, other then the momentary fear that Sai was going to run off the mountain as she was panicked and trying to get the hornets off of her.
Miles 3-6 were relatively painless actually. Mile 6-9 were murder again. There was one moment when I remember wondering if I was actually going to make it, literally hobbling along. I walked backwards for a good mile I’d say, any time the trail went steeply downhill, to try and save my knees. It’s worth mentioning that Lindsay helped me not die.
When we finally got back to the car, we were both really happy, but also very tired. Sadly, I’d say we were tired enough that we felt more like we wanted to just sit and be quite with the AC on, then celebrating and highfiving. High-fiving. High fiving. Fiving-highly.
Then, I ate a chocolate flavored pretzel and had a strange sensation that my throat was being cut to pieces. I have no idea what the hell is going on, but as I type this (two days later) my throat is still killing me. I’m not sure if I have some sort of allergy thing going on, but it hurts.
Now, I’ve done a fair amount of complaining here, but at the end of the day, the take away from this trip has been that 1. I am really happy that Lindsay and I did this together.
We drove home (4 hours in traffic!), went to Round Table Pizza for the first time ever to get some perhaps not super awesome quality but awesome tasting pasta as well as a “cake” aka frozen cool whip – Lindsay didn’t want a store bought cake) and 28 candles for Lindsay to blow out. Due to my throat hurting I wasn’t able to eat much food, but I sang Happy Birthday and Lindsay blew out her candles and all in all it was a successful birthday weekend.
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Two More Monterey Dives
Lindsay and I have now done a total of three dives in Monterey. Two dives at Breakwater, two dives at McAbee beach.
The second Breakwater dive was with my Dad, and I think it was pretty great. We saw a small octopus, a bunch of great kelp, sanddabs, and the list goes on. Here is another quick video (note that I wouldn’t claim these are amazing videos but I record video for the sake of the memories, then try to cut them down into short-ish watchable chunks).
McAbee beach was a new experience. We (Lindsay and I) ended up parking downtown Monterey on a Sunday, so the streets were full of tourists, but there we were getting our gear setup in the middle of the street.
The dive itself was nice, but shallow. Reading about McAbee it turns out that in general it’s a pretty shallow dive, unless you swim out quite a ways (which we did, but not far enough). One thing that I think made the dive 100% worth it though, was a seal that swam with us for a few minutes (see: video). Lindsay was a tiny bit on the nervous side that it was going to eat us, but it ended up just swimming around us and playing with our fins for a few minutes. It’s pretty amazing to have such an animal just come right up to you and touch you. Having never dove with dolphins or any other “friendly” or curious animal like this in the past it was a pretty great experience.
We are going to do this dive again, but next time swim out past the kelp to where we need to be. If look around on the internet for dive reports from McAbee it looks like it’s not uncommon to see 2+ seals together, and honestly I’d LOVE to just sit and watch seals swim around me for an hour. We’ll see!
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Our First Dive on the West Coast
As some of you may know, I come from a family of SCUBA divers (from now on I’ll just say “divers” or “diving”, but I mean the SCUBA variety, not the free/olympic/etc variety… though I am very interested in giving freediving a shot). Still, despite having dove in a number of locations around the world (Michigan, Mexico, Belize, Virgin Islands, Thailand, etc…) I had never been diving in the Pacific.
Lindsay and I decided that it was probably a good time to do something about that. We had all of our dive gear out here (thanks family!) so there wasn’t much stopping us. Well two small problems:
-We didn’t have hoods or gloves
-We didn’t know where to dive
I DO know that the water here in Northern California is cold, and that there are sometimes serious waves, so diving here isn’t as “easy” as it might be somewhere like the Caribbean. Michigan has the same cold (or even colder) water, but is fresh water (requiring less weight) and also the water is generally a bit gentler.
I did some research, and luckily there was a pretty clear path for new Pacific coast divers: Breakwater Cove (or just “Breakwater”). Breakwater is in Monterey, CA which is a convenient(ish) 2-3 hour drive (depending on traffic) from Oakland. The Breakwater is very well protected from the open ocean, so you don’t have to battle breaking waves to get into the water, and the surge is generally pretty gentle.
We decided to leave on Friday evening after work. We camped over night at a great little campground (whose name I’m forgetting) and met some very nice freedivers who were going spearfishing in the morning. They were actually super helpful and walked us through the mental process of what to expect in the morning and gave us some tips about WHERE on Breakwater the diving was best.
Next morning we woke up early and headed to the dive shop. The dive shop seemed pretty nice. We rented weight (27lbs for me, 23lbs for Lindsay), hoods, gloves, and tanks. Sadly, this adds up (8 x 2 + 8 x 2 + 8 x 2 + 10 x 2). It’s a pretty quick walk from the dive shop to the grass where you “suit up” (see video below) so we just carried our equipment.
There is a really nice grassy area to get setup, and there are TONS of divers there getting ready, coming out of the water, etc. It’s pretty great in my opinion because it feels like you’re surrounded by dive culture. Of course many of the divers are part of dive classes, but I’d bet an almost equal part are just regular people like Lindz and I out for a dive.
The dive itself was great. We saw a bunch of starfish, anemones, kelp, an otter, and a bunch of other stuff. If I were to say my favorite thing about the dive, it’s that unlike many other places I’ve been diving, EVERYTHING is covered by living something or other. Even the sand is covered by hermit crabs, sand dollars, and all sorts of things. Also, swimming through the kelp is pretty awesome and a different experience that I’d never had.
Here is a short, not particularly exciting video from the experience:
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Mini Colombia Backpacking Trip
Lindsay and I went to Colombia in June. There we met Kyle, Sean (Lindsay’s brothers) as well as our dear friend Corie Brown.
I’m a bit late describing this trip, but it was one of the bigger trips of the year (actually, travel wise it is the biggest in the last two years) so I wanted to at least mention it.
I took 5 days of vacation, making a 9 day trip. Lindsay had two full weeks, as did Kyle and Sean.
I was the first to depart to Colombia. Not wanting to waste any vacation (and opting to spend more money to optimize time) I left on Friday and had a red-eye, or Red Eye, or Redeye. Whatever it was, it wasn’t all that great. My flight left around 11pm, which is a bit later then ideal, and arrived in Houston sometime around the middle of the night. This was a medium-ish flight, perhaps 4 hours or so. Then I had a slightly longer flight (but still not long enough to really get much sleep on) to Bogota, Colombia. Overall the travel was without issue.
I arrived in Bogota (btw, sorry, I do realize it’s “Bogotá”) around 5:30 am. It was early and the airport was pretty dead. Going through customs was interesting – I’m actually not totally sure that I actually WENT through customs as the people at the customs station were just sitting around talking to each other. Not the strangest entry into a country I’ve ever had (for instance, entering into Cambodia was pretty different!) but still pretty obvious we weren’t in the US any longer.
Corie came to pick me up around 6:15. That was perfect really, because it gave me about an hour to spend taking in the language/people around me – I actually enjoy this, being by myself in a new country, because I think it’s a bit different then when traveling with another person (or even a group of people). I ordered a cappuccino because 1) I wanted one and 2) I wanted to have my first spanish only speaking experience. I ended up with the drink, in the size I wanted, in ~3 times the time it probably would have taken me to order had I been a native speaker. I’d give myself a respectable 8/10.
Now, let’s not rush past this coffee. It was pretty good, but not great. I’d say that was a theme across the entire trip when it comes to coffee, and to be honest, the rest of the food. The normal coffee drink in Colombia (and in particular Bogota, as I understand it) is the “tinto” (sp?). This is essentially what must be a micro-shot of espresso, plus hot water, plus way too much sugar (disclosure: I don’t put sugar in my coffee). Or, if you prefer, a very small americano plus way too much sugar. Espresso drinks seemed to be more of a normal thing in Colombia, either mixed with water or milk. The issue here is that from what I could tell, most milk seemed to be of the shelf-stable variety that comes in bags. The bag itself is no problem (see: Canada) but the shelf-stableness is in the sense that the milk does not taste like “normal” milk.
All of this bitching aside, the reality is that throughout the short trip coffee was probably the most enjoyable food item for me. There was a small coffee shop that Corie took me to near her house that made great coffee drinks that I really enjoyed. And honestly, this was such a relatively short trip that I barely got a chance to acclimate myself to the flavors of the country.
Moving onto the food, I think the general consensus of most of the world, including Colombians, is that Colombia does not have the best cuisine in the world. If you google “food in colombia vs other countries” or just read many travel blogs about the country you’ll see. Obviously taste/flavor is very subjective and I didn’t spend enough time in Colombia to have a really informed option, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt :). The problem is that the food in general is just not very flavorful. Not spicy, not particularly salty, not garlicy, not ______y, etc. Just pretty bland.
The main food items that we tried (and honestly thank you VERY much Corie for showing us everything!) include:
Arepa – think corn tortilla flavor/consistency meets pita bread form-factor
Poker (beer) – a cheap and 100% perfect for me beer that has 1/52 playing cards on each label
Other – we had a bunch of other foods like traditional breakfast(s), lunches, etc
Ok, not exactly an exhaustive list. We also went to an awesome fruit market and bought one of nearly every fruit they had to offer (though we didn’t end up eating all of them!). I think if you are a fruit lover, the fruit selection here is pretty amazing. Even if you aren’t a fruit lover, given time the fruit here would be something you really appreciated. For me, whether or not I loved the food in Colombia, I really appreciated having somebody (Corie) to show us stuff and explain things.
So ANYWAY, Corie picked me up from the airport at around 6:15am. We went back to her place, I talked at length about my for-fun morse code project Morsel for way longer then you’d think one would talk about such a thing at 6:15 in the AM, and then the real adventure began!I’ve sort of already spoiled some of the events of this first day by talking about the food, because we did a lot of food related stuff (which was 100% the perfect thing for me) – coffee shop, grocery stores, street vendors, etc.
One thing in particular that we did on that first day when it was just Corie and I is go up a tall building that overlooked the city. I didn’t have a great sense of how large Bogota is, but on top of this tower it became clear that it was not small. Wikipedia says it’s population is somewhere around 7.67 million, which blew my mind because that’s basically the size of the entire city of New York. And by “basically the same” I mean if you round each to the nearest million, they ARE the same! If you follow that train of thought, 8 million – 8 million = nil/NO/0, but then let the math sort of come back in at the back of your mind then the difference of 0 is greater then the population of Oakland (~400,000) by far. Anyway, it’s a big city by numbers.
Later that evening after taking a nap (which happens once every few months), we went to the airport. Kyle and Sean got in first. They brought bright orange rape whistles, and I’m glad they did so that I could write this sentence. It was great to see the guys, even if it made me feel slightly less impressively tall. We went and had a not-particularly-authentic dinner (crepes) and waited for Lindsay. Lindsay’s plane was delayed, a few times, but eventually she got in. We went back to Corie’s apartment, drank a beer, and went to bed.
And then the days went by…
We did a bunch of stuff in Bogota, including visiting the Candelaria “district” to have a great breakfast and watch Corie’s concert, explore various markets and food places, walk around, drink Poker…
Monserrate…
Etc.
A few days in, we decided that we all wanted to do at least some traveling outside of Bogota. Everybody was very nice and because I was going to be in Colombia for the shortest length of time my desires weighed in a bit heavier. The thing that I wanted to do, more then anything really, was swim. And because Bogota is even chillier then the California Bay Area (low to mid 60s I’d guess?), that meant leaving the city and heading to the coast. So that’s what we did!
We took a short, hour-ish long flight to Cartagena. Now, this could easily be it’s own blog post (and in general I’d prefer that it was! But I’m trying to recap this entire trip in one blog post) but oh well. Cartegena is on the northish coast of Colombia and is a relatively large, seemingly industrial city. Cities being larger is a theme I experienced several times, but I suppose when I heard that we were going to a coastal town where you could go to the beach I was picturing something smaller. Size was not a problem however, because we didn’t stay in the city proper for long. Our goal was to head to this small area on an Island called Playa Blanca.
Getting to Playa Blanca was relatively straight forward, but perhaps a bit frustrating. In my experience traveling, generally the thing to do is go with the flow, being as clear as possible with your intentions, and be sure that all parties involved have as concrete an understanding of the agreement/costs/etc as possible. Then, expect that you will more then likely be screwed a bit, and write that off as a cost of traveling in a more developing country. Well, even with this in mind things didn’t go too smoothly. We read (<3 wikitravel) that if you weren’t very careful the boats that went from the mainland to the island would stop at various places where you had the option of sitting on a hot crowded beach for 2 hours or paying the equivalent of $25 to do one of various activities. In the end, even after directly asking various questions (even in Spanish) to insure we were getting a DIRECT boat to the island, all of the talk and discussion and arguing did nothing and we still got the extended tour. I’d consider this to be an annoyance, because generally when I’ve been places you start of expecting to get screwed, but again if you put in the time and effort to make it clear what you expect and what you expect to pay for, then you will be rewarded by more or less getting what you agree to. This was not the case in this situation.
But oh well! The slight hickup in logistics aside, the trip was honestly awesome. I’d also say that in a way it was humbling. I felt (and feel!) like a bad ass sometimes because of Lindz and my 6ish (Nick) month backpacking trip throughout SE Asia. We went to lots of places and generally weren’t able to talk with most people on account of not speaking Khmer or Thai or Vietnamese or … But the reality is that the travel was pretty easy. We stayed on one tropical island for a while (a week or two maybe?) in a little hut on the beach, but the little hut had a shower (cold water only, and directly above the toilette) and even an electric fan that we turned on while we slept. This island in Colombia had no such luxury. Electricity was via generator only, and only when it was totally dark. The re was NO running water, potable or otherwise, so the only chance you had to was yourself off after a day in the sun and sand and salt water was literally a small pitcher of water between the hours of 5 and 7.
But look!
That is the beach. And about 50 feet from that is the little bungalow that we all slept in:
At night empty water jugs with candles in them were put out when it started to get dark. I managed to read an entire book from Song of Ice and Fire (the fourth – A Feast for Crows) on this trip.
This type of experience was exactly what I had been looking for. Though it would have been great if the masquitto nets didn’t have holes in them, or if we had a fan of some sort. I woke up most mornings (and throughout the night!) sweating and covered in bights. But when the sun came up, I jumped straight into the amazingly warm and beautiful water and snorkeled around, and when not snorkeling I read.
Every night we ate some sort of fish that was deep fried whole, plus rice with cocoa (awesome) and fried plantains. And by “every night” I mean the two nights we spent on the Island.
Lindsay ended up getting a pretty bad sunburn (note to Lindsay: please wear sunblock) but other then that, we made it back to the mainland a bit tanner and swimmed out, which was exactly perfect.
Our last night in Cartagena we found a pretty nice hostel/hotel/guesthouse that had air conditioning which was pretty spectacular. I read for most of the night which was amazing, and Kyle, Sean, Corie, and Lindsay went out to dance Salsa and generally be a bit more exciting :).
Next morning we caught a flight back to Bogota.
We met a few great people back in Bogota, some of Corie’s friends, co-workers, etc. One in particular, Santiago, took us to his families “finca” (something like a weekend home outside of the city) which was sort of like something out of a movie.
Lindsay and Corie went swimming in a river, which I liked to imagine had piranhas in it. I have to give them credit for toughing it out. Despite loving the water, I opted to skip rocks with Kyle, Sean, and Santiago instead of swimming.
The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful, we traveled around a bit more of Bogota,I drank more coffee. Eventually I went home. Everybody else stayed and did what sounds like some amazing things. Playing a game in which you throw rocks at small bits of dynamite while drinking beer (very sad I missed that one). Hiking to a waterfall. Seeing more of the areas outside of the city.
So, that’s about it. My overall impressions are this:
1) Kyle, Sean, Corie, and Lindsay are great people to spend time with
2) Colombia is a diverse country, safer and more developed then I had expected (at least in the larger cities)
3) The Colombian food is not something to travel to Colombia specifically for
4) Travel in South America, or at least Colombia, seems a bit tougher then SE Asia
5) People are very nice in Colombia
6) I really liked the 4th Song of Ice and Fire book
7) Colombia isn’t quite as cheap as I’d have thought it might be
Well, that’s about it re: colombia. I’m sure that I’m missing lots of detail, but this is at least a pretty good overview.
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A sort of so long
Ultra quick post, because Lindsay wanted me to post something:
We MAY be leaving tomorrow (Sunday). Actually we MAY have left today, but as we are flying standby we are never sure for sure. Tomorrow morning’s flights are looking better then today’s though, so we’ll see!
We’ve been in Bangkok for about 10 days now, just hanging out. It’s been nice, and I think we’re going to miss Bangkok, as well as the rest of SE Asia of course.
For those who don’t know, my parents had planned on coming over however the international airport was shut down for something like a week+ thanks to a bunch of protesters (it was actually a pretty big deal and was a top story in quite a few international newspapers and things) which meant people were not able to get in or out. Including my parents. I’m still getting over the disappointment, but to be honest I think it was much worse for my Mom/Dad.
Anyway, because they were not able to come, we’ve decided we’re gonna head home. So that’s what we are doing. Originally our plan was to stop over in Tokyo, but funds are getting a bit “tight” and Tokyo would have been expensive, so we’re gonna skip it and just come home. If we are super lucky (and that’s doubtful) we may be home by Sunday evening in good ol’ Jenison. If we are not lucky (more likely) we’ll be home _______ night instead. IE we don’t really know. But eventually we’re gonna get on a plane! If you know anybody getting on the 6:40 AM BKK -> Narita flight tomorrow, tell them they should skip it because
This seems like a totally inadequate way of “signing off” of our trip, but in reality it’s not. Even though it may sound dumb, I think we’ve got at least a few more things we’d like to post/share for our own memories/etc. So this isn’t the end of the blog, but it could be the last post from the other side of the world.
Love you all, and again special thanks to Jan for making this trip 6 months instead of 4.
Also special thanks to StoraEnso/NewPage for letting us work for them and make money, which went a long way in paying for this trip.
And I’d say thanks to other people, but I feel like I’m making a Grammy speech.
See you all soon (hopefully!!)
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how i met vi.
a few days ago, while paroosing the second-hand book shop, i happened across a compilation of short stories by Paul Auster. well, not actually, “by” paul auster (which is too bad, because i love that man) but rather by 183 americans who decided to write NPR with a small anecdote about their lives to be read on NPR’s This American Life (which just so happens to be my very favorite of all NPR programs). naturally, without any hesitation, i bought it.
needless to say, the last few days i have been savoring the random tid bits my fellow countrymen and women have chosen to share with the rest of us. at the end of every story is the author’s name and where they live. i have been dreaming up crazy stories about what they might be like after reading just a tiny fragment of their life. i feel oddly connected to these people whom i have never, and most likely, will never meet. but, i suppose that’s what the book is all about. i have read stories about love, war, dreams, and even about a chicken who knew how to let himself in a screen door by himself. while they’re not all poetic masterpieces, they are especially poignant and in my opinion, time very well spent reading.
so, i have been carrying this book everywhere. on the bus, on the skytrain, everywhere. yesterday kevin decided that a trip to Pantip Plaza (a 3 story building solely devoted to selling electronic goods of every kind) was in order. not surprisingly, i declined and let him do his nerdy gadget shopping independent of his naggy “kevin, are you ready yet?!” girlfriend. instead, i thought a trip to Lumpini Park (one of our favorite hangouts) sounded nothing short of perfect. i could people-watch, read by the water, and just lay around under the shade of one of it’s many trees. so, we went our separate ways, and i headed down to the park. i cannot begin to tell you how amazing my afternoon was. lounging under this giant tree, water rushing by, people jogging, temperature at a balmy 70ish degrees…and my book…it was perfect. i was laughing, crying, and overall just totally immersed in the richness of these stories.
a few stories in, i started to read about a girl who’s day was going totally, and completely wrong. she was trying to make it across country for a funeral, during which she got on the wrong expressway to the airport 3 times, left her credit card at the gas station, realized she had brought the wrong check book, used her last few cents to buy a lottery ticket (on accident) instead of to make a phone call (i dont totally understand how this happened, but it seems like both the lottery ticket machine and pay phone were right next to each other? strange.) and the list goes on. i must admit, that i was enjoying her misfortune, and was chuckling to myself throughout the entire story. it was quite well written. so, after recanting the entire story about her god-forsaken day, she writes, “it’s annoying when life seems to shit on you when you least expect it.”
end of story. i smile.
just then, with this ridiculous grin plastered on my face, a pigeon shit all over me. and i do mean ALL over. all over my thighs, calves, feet and my hand. it is everywhere. so, here i am, covered in shit, book in left hand, shit on right, laughing out loud at how ridiculous this situation is. then, out of no where, this tiny 5’1 asian girl comes up laughing too, and hands me a kleenex. “i’ve been living here 15 years,” she said, “and you never can plan for when you’ll get shit on…and not just by the birds…”
and this, is how i met vi.
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Thanksgiving with prostitutes
I realize this blog may have a mixed audience so I’ll leave out the graphic depictions, but long story short Lindsay, Biggi, and I had Thanksgiving dinner at a bar/brothel tonight. It was actually a really high class place and the food was great, but it was certainly the first Thanksgiving dinner I’VE ever had that was served by somebody whom I could “hire” for “something that was NOT serving food.”
We had ham, turkey, yams, stuffing, gravy, tomato stuffed with green peas, and a piece of pumpkin pie with what tasted like real whipped cream. What’s more we sat with a 60+ year old drunk physiologist from LA who talked from the second we sat down until the second we left about his adventures and travels. Apparently he gave up working quite a while ago and has just traveled and done expensive things like learning to paint in Paris, and stuff, or something. Looked a bit like Jack Nicholson in the shining when he smiled. The girl you see in this photo is apparently a director or something who makes films in Sweden but lives in NYC… we didn’t talk to her, because as soon as she recognized the guy we were sitting with she moved to the other side of the bar.
Happy Thanksgiving all!
p.s. We’re thankful for all of you, in particular you who are reading this blog now.
p.p.s. I want to give credit where credit is due: Lindsay was 100% responsible for making Thanksgiving dinner plans, and without her I’d probably be sad and alone crying on a street somewhere or at least happily using my iPod Touch. Thank you SOOO much Lindsay, you are an angel and your teeth are so shinny and white (and big) and you are really great at cooking and I think your cheeks are very cute even though we all know they are a bit chimpmonkish. But only in a cute way. U r my little frog, my Wat Mahot, my little lamb.
Lindsay enjoys cilmbing stairs after running Bangkok Marathons, originally uploaded by Kevin Mitchell.
Lindsay ran the marathon and finished it, so that’s good. Jake, hope you enjoy this one. The drink in her hand is actually a new drink here that tastes like grapefruit but has no sugar or something, and it’s really good, unlike those other fruit flavored water drinks, which are not good.
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we’re terrible bloggers.
so another picture post will have to suffice.
here’s what we’ve been up to (well, some highlights, anyway) since our last blog:
tubing down the mekong river in laos.
surprisingly, there were even ziplines and tree swings, which were AWESOME.
cuttie patootie.
we also volunteered at an organic farm.
here’s kev feeding and cleaning out the goat pen.
we also milked the goats and made goat cheese. it was deeelish. 
then we went to this amazing waterfall.
we hiked up to the top (kev about freaked) and then went swimming in the rapids (not pictured).
then we traveled back to thailand for the last time!!! (chiang mai) and biked up to our favorite spot: the coffee village, which is about 30 km up the side of this amazing mountain. there aren’t any foreigners there, and it’s really just an amazing, unbelievably beautiful experience. we drank coffee (well, kev did), walked around the beautiful farm, and played soccer with a few of the guys that worked there. definitely a highlight of the trip.
i’ve decided i’m going to get on a co-ed team when i get home.
finally, as kev mentioned…i decided to run a marathon! so far, this is how i feel about it…
i have a feeling that my sentiments may change in a few hours.
dirk insisted that i needed to drink a lot of electrolyte drinks during the “training” process, which i personally hate and think are dumb. since there hasn’t been much (any) of a training process, i decided that one would be enough. here’s me enjoying my “electrolyte” (read: mcdonalds orange drink).
and finally, here i am with our crazy new german friends who talked me in to doing it to begin with. bridget and dirk, sporting our new spiffy special marathon shirts.
the bloody thing is in less than 10 hours, and i’ll be honest, i’m starting to freak a bit! kev and i are sitting in the internet cafe, biding time (he’s actually putting a bunch of podcasts and music on my ipod for my running enjoyment, such a sweetie.) before the big race! which, naturally won’t really be a “race” for me, but a “please god, let me finish it” experience. it starts at 2:00am and it’s supposed to rain. surprise, surprise. thank you, bangkok, for having awesomely humid and amazing weather. oh, and because i’m one of the runners who figures it will take them more than 5 hours to finish, i am running with the elderly (women aged 65-80 and men aged 70-90 :)) i’m sure the grannys and pops will kick my butt, but i can handle it. good for the ego.
gotta watch out for old people. their looks are deceiving.
regardless, i’m going to finish if i have to crawl my way to the finish line.
kev’s convinced that he has the hardest job, staying up for 8 hours, walking around looking for us, and taking pictures.
i’ll let you know if i live…or agree with him once the race is finished.
love and miss you all.
see you in (oh my god, less than a month!)
xxx
lgt
edited 5:37 PM POST race: i did it! and it was INCREDIBLE!!! although, my body is telling me (knees in particular) it wasn’t quite as “INCREDIBLE!!!” as i think it was. if i were just basing the experience on how my body felt, i would say potentially the “worst and most painful experience of my life.” but i’m not. i ran with a perfectly clear, “i know i can do this” mind, and it was without question one of the best experiences of my life. i seriously had a “runners high” the entire race (short of the last 3km, when i just wanted to see that finish line!!!!) i didn’t stop at all in the first 21km (1/2 marathon) and my time was around 2hr 15 min, which frankly, i’m pretty happy with. after km 20 though, i ran 2km and would walk for a while and start running again, and walk because my knees hurt so horrifically bad. but it was awesome. more than awesome. starting the run at 2:00 am in the king’s palace, surrounded by thousands of little old thai men and women (and a few young people, although i think i was one of the only (white) foreigners. the africans were ungodly fast, and passed me 2 hours after i had started (they started at 3:30 am) at the half-way point. naturally, they took the “golds” and “silvers” and “bronzes” etc, etc.
ahhH! running across bangkok’s largest bridge right at sunrise, watching the city wake up from the streetside, getting blessed by a monk (i think he was worried that my face was too red, and i might have a heart attack or something :)) and seeing kev at the finish line. amazing. i would do it again in a second….
well, maybe more than “a few seconds” 🙂
i’m starving, and kev and bridget and i are going to go rustle up some grub. one somewhat funny thing….at the end of the race, they handed out 2 mcdonalds burgers for ever finisher. isn’t that weird? at least a side salad seemed like maybe it would have been more appropriate.
regardless, i ate them both in less than 5 minutes 🙂
love you all.
cheers!