Tag Archives: travel

(Almost) the happiest guy on Earth.

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Tonight I said, “If you can plug in my laptop behind the bar, bring me Dos Equis draft and a Green Chile Cheeseburger, I’ll be the happiest guy on Earth.”

“No problem,” she said.

“Lots of green chile.”

“You got it.”

Then she plugged in my laptop, but it seems there is no juice in that outlet. That’s the “almost” part. It’s the only outlet in the bar that’s not in a closed section. I’m typing as fast as I can.

I’m not supposed to be here right now. I was taking a leisurely morning in Merry Olde England trying to find Internet access. I was foiled by little things at every turning. I was checking in quite early for my flight and a dude asked it I wanted to jump an earlier one. “Cool,” I thought. I’ll use the extra layover time in Dallas to get in touch with everyone.” I had to hustle to make the flight, but I was on my way dang near three hours ahead of schedule.

I didn’t notice that they also gave me an earlier flight to Albuquerque. Once I got through Immigration and customs in Dallas I looked to see what gate to go to. It was then I noticed the time to begin boarding had already passed. D’oh! After an airport sprint to the gate I took five minutes to try to get online but the pay service was so slow I hadn’t even managed to give them money before I had to go.

So I landed in the Duke City three hours early, and nobody knows. But you know, that’s OK. Of the airports I’ve been through on this trip, this is by far the best one to hang out in. Free Internet, green chile, and, of course, beer. It’s quieter, and just a lot less hectic. In the end, things worked out pretty well.

Thanks!

London Calling

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I awoke muddled. Miss-the-tram-stop-and-have-to-walk-in-the-rain muddled. It’s all Big D’s fault for getting married yesterday. The day was hot and muggy and we had no problem with the idea of leaving the festivities early. Then there was a very light rain, the breeze picked up, and I was in a really good place, sitting out in the bar’s garden, drinking beer someone else had paid for, watching the sunset. We stayed longer than we should have. Also, I should never ride the trams before I’ve had tea.

I woke this morning at 5:30, tried to go back to sleep but there was too much to do. I had crashed at fuego’s after making plane reservations, and I was up in time to see them off to work. I sat down to check emails. I had a few responses to my announcement of travel plans, and a couple others from Rudolph (we’ll call him Rudolph until I forget and give him another name). Rudolph is on the ball. He’s not terribly experienced but he has the one key quality that every producer must have: he does not wait to see if things work out. He has a list of concerns, and when he has a problem he makes sure he’s not the only one with the problem.

Currently he is most worried about filling in some key holes in the production team. These are all volunteers, so in some cases they want to work on the project that will best help their own careers. That’s either the best script or the project with the industry mentor whose ass they most want to kiss. Our mentor, Seldom Seen Smith, could be a big boost for a New Mexico filmmaker’s career, but he hasn’t made an appearance yet. So fair enough, the Director of Photography candidates are waffling, but Rudolph doesn’t like uncertainty. He wants these guys to commit. I want to make sure that when they commit, they really commit.

This morning Rudolph also sent some heads-up messages about a couple of potential Ruthies. One candidate, apparently, is really, really tall. We’d probably have to hire Kareem Abdul-Jabaar as the pirate captain, but I’m not sure if he can say “Arrr!” with sufficient gusto.

Rudolph, despite his concerns, seemed to be looking forward to taking a break today and cutting the top off a car. And here’s one of the cool things about making a movie. People say yes to the most outrageous things. rudolph has a buddy with an old station wagon that runs well. All he wants out of it is he motor, so the body is our plaything. Because we’re making a movie. The art director says she can cut the top off no problem. It’s just how things work.

In the last shot we wanted fighter jets to fly past. Knowing that that was an outrageous request for a production of this scale, we wrote in a pair of black Suburbans instead, the kind the intelligence agencies are stereotyped to use. Rudolph said the suburbans were going to be a problem. There is really no money in the budget to rent cars, there’s just people and equipment. At some point we mentioned that what we really wanted was jets, anyway. It’s not a done deal by any means, but apparently jets are more doable than cars, since if the government agrees, they pay for it. The governor of New Mexico is not a lightweight and he’s a big supporter of this festival. So we’ll see.

Jets. That would just plain kick ass.

The flight from Prague to Gatwick was an odd one. I flew on a budget airline called “Smart Wings”, which may be Czech-owned. The crew was czech, and I took the in-flight magazine as a czech tutorial since it had the same articles in both Czech and English. While the crew may have been czech, the passengers were English. They were drunk english men, to be precise, most of them on the large side, all on the loud side. Some groups had matching shirts, so I assumed there was some sort of sporting event in Prague that had just wrapped up, but one group’s shirts were to commemorate a bachelor party.

I looked around the waiting area and there was exactly one female waiting to board, sitting as far away from the worst of the drunkards as she could. In the end there were two female passengers on the sold-out plane. We almost didn’t take off; the copilot came back to talk to some of the rowdier passengers. Riot on Airplane I imagined the headlines. I’ve had enough tear gas in my life already, thank you. (It doesn’t take much tear gas to be enough.) Finally things calmed down and we were on our way, but the copilot put in an appearance in the cabin a couple more times. “Don’t make me pull this thing over!” It wasn’t a long flight, it just seemed that way.

So here I am in a bar in England, paying far more for my beer than I am used to paying, but I must say I’ve been missing the ales. I keep speaking czech to the bartender. It’s the only czech I really know, and I guess this place still feels foreign enough that the czech impulses reign. Approaching the bar: Don’t be stupid. Speak English. “Another four X’s?” “Ano, děkuju.” D’oh!

Now, I’m very tired. It’s early here, and it’s early afternoon in New Mexico. I should stay up late tonight, to start adjusting. Yeah, right.

Tomorrow I hit the ground in Albuquerque. I need to find some Internet tonight to coordinate just who is meeting me and where I’m sleeping tomorrow night. Everybody is jumping to help. Rudolph sent a picture and said I could stay with him, which is probably the best idea, as long as he is a better conversationalist than I am.

Thanks!

Well, here I go…

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Welcome to the new blog category, Pirates!

For the next month I will be dedicating myself to two things: Making a short film, Pirates of the White Sand, and documenting the whole adventure on this blog. Updates will probably come in bursts as I pass in and out of Internet shadow. But fear not, me hearties! I shall be jotting down my impressions as I go.

It is 5:30 am Prague time as I write this, and I will be starting my travels soon. On the way over the ocean I will be finishing getting the storyboards into final format and working out a more specific music plan. We have some talented people on board for the music, but I haven’t heard any of it yet. We’ve lined up our B-cam operator, 2nd Nick, and our editor, 1st Nick. (It’s good to know Nicks in the business).

Much to do today before I take off, but there should be plenty more to add while I’m cooling my heels in the English countryside (Gatwick airport, specifically.) I will have a lot of time there.

Dang. I’m already tired.

Thanks!

Magic

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I’m working on getting the Slovakia pics into my album this morning; by the time you read this they should be there. Up by the castle I took a dozen pictures to stitch together into a panorama. fuego’s camera has a cool feature that shows the last picture on the screen offset by a certain amount to help you line up the next shot. My digicam has no such feature, so I just took a whole bunch of overlapping pics with the horizon in about the same place.

“Time to learn PhotoStitch”, I told myself this morning. PhotoStitch is the program that came with my big camera for turning lots of little images into one big one. I anticipated a process in which I told the software which points matched up on adjacent photographs. It would take a while, but what can you do?

I was wrong. I arranged the photos in sequence and hit the merge button and it just… did it. Here’s the result:

As you can see, one section is a little dark, but that’s a quibble and is easily fixed. The slices were by no means of equal size, yet the software knew how to line things up. I watched as it added the slices, completely amazed. You can’t tell from this tiny version, but along the seams everything is still very sharp. Incredible.

As for the picture itself, it is about 180° taken in twelve shots. The river is the famous Danube, and on the other side are endless gray housing blocks made from pre-fab concrete. On the near side are the old church towers and red tile roofs from pre-Soviet times. A (somewhat) larger version of this pic can be found over in the Slovakia section of my photo gallery.

Thanks!

Pub 12

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I am in the Slovak version of an English pub. I was hoping for a pale ale of some sort, but the Guinness is mighty fine. I just got here, so there’s not much to say yet. There’s a strong wireless signal, but the network has been secured.

European history will be marked by the

* * *

Time has passed and I have been pleasantly interrupted by a distractingly attractive bartender, a black frenchman who works for IBM, and a hungarian family on holiday. All of them in their own ways mark European history, but for the life of me I’ll never know what great wisdom I was prepared to impart above. There I was, on the verge of bringing the continents together, predicting the future for crying out loud, and I forgot what I was going to say. Woe, continents! I have condemned you to continue your drift, aimless and destructive.

There’s a cover of California Dreamin’ running around, and while it’s pretty damn disco, all the leaves are brown here, and the sky is often gray. I wear long pants and socks all the time. If I were back in San Diego on a Friday afternoon I’d be at Callahan’s or Tiki, doing much what I’m doing now, but it would be warm outside. I would have taken off my shades when I went in. I would have kicked off my shoes (although at Joe’s Place (r.i.p.) stealing my shoes and hiding them was a matter of sport for a while). But California, while a legend, is not a myth. The days are easy there, and the nights are warm. The women are as beautiful as science can achieve, and there are good cheap beer nights if you know where to look.

It’s nice.

I’ve been in Europe for a few months now, and I can’t help but think where I’m going next. It’s cowardly, really. I have heard many times people speak with admiration about what I have done and continue to do, but in the end, what does it pile up to? If I never stay still, I never have to form attachments. I have a bit coming up at Piker Press about that – I really hadn’t planned the story to come out that way, but it just happened. I’ve slowed down my submission rate over there because most of my short bits have the same tone and I want people to say “Hey! Cool! There’s one by Jerry this week!” Instead of “I read it last week.”

I’m rambling now, not writing, which by the title of this here blog I’m allowed to do, but I don’t want to alienate any more regulars, so I’ll stop.

Thanks!

Dateline: Liptovský Hrádok, Slovakia

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It was a pleasant trip down here yesterday. fuego did the driving, MaK the navigating, and I the passengering. To navigate in this country you have to know the names of every damn village and cottage between your start point and your destination — referring to roads by number at an intersection is rare, and using the same town name at two consecutive intersections also seems to be against the rules. Sometimes even when you do recognize a town name on a sign it’s difficult to tell what intersection the sign is referring to.

One wrong turn eventually led us to a little place whose name translated (with only a little license on my part) to “Snowville”. It was pretty and appropriately named. The snow was coming down hard as we went through, and it seemed that everyone in town was out with shovels. We got to see the village twice, as we reached a dead end at the far end of town. The road went on, but when we asked a guy if we could get through he said “maybe in a Jeep.”

Eventually we got here and settled in. This place is nice, and very inexpensive. We have the bottom floor of a house — two bedrooms and a fully-equipped kitchen — for less than $30 per night.

Once we settled in it was time to set out in search of pivo and a bite to eat. We quickly discovered that options are limited in L. Hradek. We walked down to the most center-of-town-like area and surveyed our options, but one place had the wrong kind of beer, one was an English-style Pub which was right out as far as MaK was concerned, and one was a not-so-special hotel restaurant. Finally we asked some people on the street where a good place to go would be. After much discussion, first directing us to one place and then another, we said we just wanted to go to a place to have a nice beer and relax. One of the guys took charge, and walked with us to a place very close to our little home away from home. The man said hello to everyone in the pub, including the kitchen help.

It wasn’t a fancy place at all, but it was comfortable. It is part of a hotel that serves a sports complex; I assume it is where teams stay when they visit. We sat, our beers came, MaK chugged hers in the Czech fashion, and we settled in for a nice meal. My dinner was excellent. While sipping my dessert beer I said to fuego, “You know what I like about this place? It’s not smoky.”

fuego looked around and noticed that there were no ash trays on the tables. It turns out we were in a non-smoking bar. fuego asked if this was a Slovak law, and the bartender said no, they just didn’t want people smoking in there. I honestly never thought I would find anything like that in Eastern Europe, where tobacco is a food group. When we were done we bought some beers to go and made the short walk back here, tired, happy, and not smelling of smoke. It was a good day.

Thanks!

She was a writer, part 2

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I was in a nostalgic mood the other day, thinking about the meaningless encounters in my life that, had things gone differently, would have meant something. I wrote about a woman in an airport bar in Cincinnati. I’ve thought of her off and on for more than three years; I even occasionally tried to dig up an email address for her through her publisher. I didn’t try very hard, I admit, but for me she was always out there, a person I had hit it off with but had not had time to alienate. Even as I wrote that bit I wondered if she would stumble across it.

She died in 2002.

You may have read John’s comment to the previous piece informing me of the case, and you may have read my reply. I’m embarrassed by my reaction; I tried to make light of it and ended up making her early death to be about me. I knew the moment I posted the comment I would want to delete it, but in the interest of honesty I will let it stand. You’ve all read it by now anyway. I have not seen any other replies, as I am in Slovakia and Al Gore hasn’t been here yet. (George Bush is in the capital right now, but I think he still expects someone to hand him a sandwich when he says ‘Bratislava’.)

During the drive down here I thought of her. I wonder what ended her life. I wonder if the cancer came back or if she lost her long struggle with her own self-image. Probably neither of those things. Perhaps it was a car crash. Maybe she was struck by lightning. She was thirty-nine, give or take. My memory, not the best, had munged the name of her book; for the record, her name was Lucy Grealy and the name of her book is Autobiography of a Face.

In the end it doesn’t matter. For a few hours I sat on a barstool next to a bright light. I checked out her ass. We had a nice chat. Did she already know she was dying? As we sat there was she facing her own mortality and chasing the inevitable with Chivas and Beer? Could I have made a difference? What if she died of loneliness, while I was thinking of her all along? Then again, for all I know she was happily married, and I was just some guy in a bar during a particularly tedious layover. I’ll never know what that encounter meant to her, and she’ll never know what it meant to me.

I wish now she could know I still think of her, but I have no way to tell her. Her striking eyes are dust, her figure is lost, even her deformed jaw is just a playground for the worms. And I still sit alone in airport bars.

Thanks!

She was a writer

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The airport was deserted, except for the bar. Everyone got there hours early, only to discover that even the most earnest security official can only delay you for so long. I sat down, and ordered a big beer. “You can have a shot with that for an extra buck,” the bartender informed me. I looked over the booze and figured a shot of Chivas was worth almost a buck, and had that tacked on. I was sitting, contemplating which to drink first, when a woman pulled up one barstool down and ordered a Sam Adams, large. Moments later she had also ordered a Chivas, for the same reason I had.

We started talking. We both feared what was going to come next. We both thought that Bush was stupid (“lightweight” was the word I used), and that a terrorist attack was just what his administration had been hoping for.

Physically, she was striking. She had a great butt, piercing eyes, and her lower face was a wreck. She’d had some disease as a child that ate her jaw and (if hyperbolic memory has not overtaken me) almost her life. She had written a book about it, Anatomy of a Face. If memory serves. We’d had another double-round by then. She was on the NPR rolodex under self-esteem, and was coming back from an interview.

She held her hand over her face much of the time. I guess even if you’re synonymous with self-esteem you get tired of people staring. “I’m a writer,” she said. I wanted to say I was a writer, too, but it sounded pretty me-too-istic. Probably I mentioned it eventually. I still had a day job, though.

I wonder, all these years later, if she remembers the guy in the bar at the Cincinnati airport who was checking out her ass when he didn’t think she was looking, who occasionally had the courage to look into her terrifying eyes, and most of all had a great conversation about everything under the sun while a cloud hung over our nation. Maybe it was the time, maybe it was the setting, maybe it was my own slower disaster, but I will never forget her.

Thanks!

Getting a life

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fuego and I went out apartment hunting today, and I got myself a phone. As with any complex operation, it did not go perfectly. I bought the phone at one place, the phone number and airtime at another, and when I put them all together… nada. Phone and service did not get along. MaK made a couple of calls and it was determined that I needed to go back to the phone storre to have the phone unbuggered so it would work with services other than Eurotel. Usually they sell the phones preunbuggered, but they had missed this one. So, a call to the real estate guy (on fuego’s phone) to tell him we will be a little late, and back to the phone hut we go.

Phone sales guy is apologetic and sends us across the street to the service center. fuego and I follow a series of big red arrows and footprints on the floor that are so obvious even an American can figure them out. Down a flight of stairs, around a couple of corners, and I am expecting to find a cramped little desk with a grumpy tech sitting behind it.

Instead I find a place that is much more spacious that the store on the street above. Music is playing, there is a glass case with displays of obsolete mobile phones, and a friendly woman ready to help us. Oh, yeah, there was a bar there too. Gambrinus and Pilsener Urquell are available while you wait for your phone to be serviced. What a country! It turns out that there’s good reason to have a bar there, they were very slow. But hey, they were probably drinking too. They sure seemed cheerful for people at work.

The flat was encouragingly nice. I’ve got a couple more to look at on Monday, but this was encouraging. The giggly property manager will have to be another episode, when we know more about where that goes.

* * *
Some time has passed since I wrote the above; Jardo (pronounced Yardo) and Teresa joined us and hilarity ensued. At one point I got mildly surprised looks from the others when I said tři correctly, a feat I was unable to reproduce. fuego and I were out pretty late, so today has been more or less a writeoff.

Thanks!

Welcome to Moravia. Do you want beer or wine with that?

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Now that my hosts are back in town, I will have no choice but to have a social life again. The day they arrived back in country, weary from their long journey, we were invited to a party hosted by Marianna’s mother. The travelers tried to weasel out of going, but Jirka, Mariana’s stepfather, would have none of it. Eventually we headed over there “for half an hour”. I knew before we started that this would not be the half hour that the Assyrians invented so long ago. It was more a company party than anything else; not too crazy but not many people there that I could talk to. No biggie, I had some munchies and a couple of beers and fun was had by all. At the party Jirka insisted that the next day (yesterday) we go down to their house in Southeastern Czech Republic, the region of Moravia, to pick up a car that Phil (still working out what to call my brother these days) and Marianna will now have to look after (and, worse, park).

The adventure expanded (unbeknownst to me) into an overnighter. As the time to leave approached I was finally informed that we might be spending the night down there. Despite some anxiety about stayiing in touch with Piker Press (I have a new bit coming out today and I was worried about some edits) I packed up the laptop and toothbrush (what else could I possibly need?). We packed into a car and away we went.

I was rather surprised that wedged into the car, unable to see much in the darkness, not driving, I still got some of the road feelings as we headed out.

First stop was a 24-hour roadside cafe next to the motorway that Jirka had been visiting for years. Better by one beer and one schnitzel I squeezed in with my fellow travelers again and off we went. It was dark by the time we got to the smaller roads, so I didn’t see much of the farmland. We went around a giant Soviet-built nuclear power plant (since then the good people who built Three Mile Island have checked it over and declared it safe) and to a little village not far away. Before going home we stopped off to visit the villiage priest, whose name is also Jirka. That’s when things started to get interesting (sorry about those previous paragraphs).

We went up the stairs to the priest’s rooms and when we opened the door we were met by the small of cooking sausage. Jirka the priest is fairly tall but doesn’t look it because of his big belly. He sweats a lot, and his diet seems to be composed mostly of cooked meats. His slightly shaggy dark hair is in full retreat from his forehead. After he made us comfortable he left for a moment and came back with a bottle of wine from the vinyard of a friend in his home town. Then there was the next bottle of wine. There was an unlabeled bottle of what I assumed to be homemade slivovitce (distilled plum hootch) sitting on the table, but Marianna’s mother nixed the idea of breaking that out. Still, I’ve never hung out drinking with a priest before. He was a good guy.

Just up the road was our final destination, and after more snacks and beer we went to bed. In the morning after breakfast Jirka was trying to feed me more of the sausage I had complimented the night before, and I jokingly said, “No, beer is all I need.” I thought I had made it clear that I was joking, but not too much later I was wrapping up breakfast with Pilsner Urquell. As my brother pointed out as he raised his glass to mine, “You’re not in California any more.” That’s also what he said when we passed the fitness center/bar.

Thanks!

Adventure

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I started writing this a couple of weeks ago. I had written of my adventure in a crowded store after forgetting how to say “excuse me.” I posted the episode and then noticed I had an email from Keith.

Here’s the thing. On the day I write about making my way through crowded drug store aisles, I read about how he scaled Everest with his pants down. Or something like that. It doesn’t stop there. Keith’s kids have huge adventures, too. It’s like the army commercial but worse. Before this boy reaches ten years old he will have done more than you will ever manage to pull off in your whole miserable life. While I’m sure his kids will on occasion disagree, Keith’s the kind of guy I’ll hire to raise my kids, should I ever have any. Or, perhaps, cuckoo-like, I could slip my progeny into the Sherwood nest to be raised as one of theirs.

So, adventure. When I meet people who know about my dislocated lifestyle, they say, “you must have had lots of adventures.” Well, yes and no. My so-called adventures are generally just inconveniences with some floral prose wrapped around them. I didn’t look for the adventure, it assaulted me. When I overcome adversity, it would hardly be appropriate for me to throw my hands in the air and shout to any gods who would care to listen “Yeah! Wahooooooooo! Fuckin-aaaaaaaa” That’s just not what you do in a drugstore, even if it is a chain.

I do think, however, that all my little adventures do add up to something. I’d be lying to say I’m not proud of my decision to put a hold on a lifestyle that saw me successful, sheltered, and fed to go off romping around the world in pursuit of new goals. Raising a family, I imagine, is a similar adventure, filled with a long series of little surprises as well, the subtle lessons that never end and slowly change who you are. The only thing that makes my adventures stand out is that they’re different. All parents go through the diaper poop explosion. That doesn’t make it less of an adventure than figuring out the bottle return thingie at the grocery store, though.

So I’ll continue with my little adventures, built largely on uncertainty rather than heroism, and I’ll enjoy the stories of others whose adventures tend more to the spectacular. And I’ll remember that life itself is the grandest adventure of all, and that we are all in it together.

Thanks!

A Small Tour of Prague

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As I mentioned yesterday, I took advantage of the sun and took some pictures from around the neighborhood. As I write this now, a few stray flakes of snow are hesitantly drifting down outside my window. I’m glad I took the opportunity while I had it.

cemetary

This picture is from a couple of weeks ago, actually. I didn’t go to the cemetery yesterday, but it is one of the cool places near home.

low sun at noon

The sun is low in the sky, even at noon. I think most of the traffic on side roads is people looking for a place to park.

cars and construction

A crowded street, looking down to an interesting old building. There’s a river down there somewhere. I should go look at it sometime.

No excuse for being late to a service at this church. Hey God, what time is it?

telecom tower

One thing about living near this beast: No matter where I am in the city, I know the direction home. But, wait a minute… What are those things crawling on it? Could they be… nah, that would be crazy. They couldn’t possibly be…

GIG

Giant Iron Babies!!!!

As I mentioned above, there are a few more pictures over in the photo gallery, including more Giant Iron Babies and more from the cemetery. Take a look!

Thanks!

The Deterioriation of Jerry

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I had Folly out the other night. In general, I’m not a namer of things. Only one car I’ve ever had earned a name (The Heap), and never have I felt the urge to name my computers or other durable goods. My big, fancy camera, however, has a name. Folly. It’s a much bigger, fancier camera than I should be bothering with, and I still have issues with taking my photos through photoshop before I can post them (and usually photoshop resets the time and day info, so they don’t sort out right with the snaps from my little camera). Overall, labor per picture is about ten times the effort for my little fuji/iPhoto/gallery routine. In the online galleries, there are still many more shots taken with my little camera than with the monster. Granted, the results with Folly are better. Sometimes much better. On those occasions I pat myself on the back for having enough faith in my abilities to spring for the damn thing.

Not that it was a difficult decision at the time. I had borrowed my cousin John’s camera for a trip to Yellowstone. I took about 150 pictures and had a lot of fun. Being able to change lenses makes a huge difference over even a respectable zoom feature on a digicam. So I was looking over the results from the day’s excursion while having a few beers with John because that’s what we do, and I was really happy with the results. Really, really, happy. I’m squealing with delight like a schoolgirl, sipping suds, and occasionally sharing my success with John while he’s on his laptop pulgging away. Finally he says, “OK, here’s what I have for you,” and he lists off a camera, three lenses, and a few accessories. I thought of a couple more accessories and told him to make the purchase.

John likes to spend money on cool toys. At the time, his money/toy ratio was a little thin, so I think he had fun working on mine. I knew that I was making a poor decision, and if I waited and thought about it carefully reason would prevail and I’d chicken out. That’s the beauty of the Internet.

So anyway, that’s not what this episode was supposed to be about. I was goofing around with Folly, taking self-portraits. Amateur photographer, amateur model, extreme light conditions. It was a long night. In the process I discovered a camera setting that would have improved my pictures of Amy immeasurably. Next time I’m hanging around with her while she’s in her little nightie I’ll be ready. But that’s another digression. This episode is all about me.

I noticed something when looking back at previous self-portraits. First, the ones taken with Folly were way better (granted, I shot about 400 frames the other night and never got the perfect one), and second, I look different now. A lot of it is hair, of course. Is that the only difference? You be the judge. In fairness (and, um… vanity) I have posted the most flattering pics from each era.

self-portrait by pool

Exhibit A: May 2nd, 2004, San Jose, California. This is the earliest picture of me while on the road trip, exactly one month after it began, and moments before scampering back into the shade. Those lily-white shoulders don’t see the sun if I can help it.

self-portrait crater lake

Exhibit B: May 30th, 2004. Crater Lake, about a month later. Beard is getting full, hair is still in the “respectable” range. (Hair covers rather pronounced forehead tan line.)

Buffalo Milk!

Exhibit C: July 22, 2004. Drinking Buffalo Milk, Two Harbors, Catalina. Things are definitely not moving in the direction of “pretty”. Desert and ocean have done their work on my skin.

Self-portrati PB Library

Exhibit D: July 31, 2004. The beard is gone! Still not looking exactly clean-cut, but I was wearing shoes while in the Pacific Beach Library.

Self-Portrait Veermillion Cliffs

Exhibit E: October 9, 2004. After some attempts to stay clean-shaven, I had given up. Hair is becoming a nuisance when driving at highway speeds with the top down.

Selp-Portrait Prague

Exhibit F: December 10, 2004. Shaggy, with two-level beard. (I had started to shave it off, but stopped at a goatee, and now it’s been growing in on the sides.) As I mentioned before, this picture is one of the best of the hundreds of shots I took. I got so close so many times, but never nailed it. This wasn’t my first night shooting myself, but it was the first session with Folly. You won’t be seeing any of those previous results. I got a heck of a lot closer this time than I ever had before. This shot would simply not have been possible with my little digicam.

Looking at the first and last pictures tells me I’ve covered more than just miles. Time has passed, obviously, months of not having my own bed, of quiet solitude punctuated with raucous good times with my friends and family. Months of wearing the same clothes, of living with only what fits in a suitcase. Months of restaurants and bars and of not showering as often as I would have liked. Months of worry, fatigue, peace, and inspiration.

Damn, I’ve got a good life.

Thanks!

Now, there’s someting you don’t see every day

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Dead Rooster on the Landing You don’t have to be assaulted by crowds of little people, accused of manslaughter only to be instantly acquitted because the victim deserved it, then snared into a blood feud with the victim’s sister, to know that you you’re a long way from home. Sometimes the signs are more subtle, but they add up.

Take being locked in the building. Any building manager that would change the locks without warning so that his tenants could not get out in a fire would be arrested in the US. Here, people just shrug and go find the guy to get their new keys. Apparently it’s not that uncommon of a circumstance.

I smell ham right now. Mmmmm… ham. I can smell the ham because my window is open. It’s really quite chilly outside, but it’s nice and toasty in here. In fact, it’s downright hot. There is no temperature control in the apartment. In the true collectivist spirit that reigned when this building was slapped together, everyone freezes or bakes together. I guess the man with his hand on the dial down in the boiler room likes his toes to be toasty.

And speaking of buildings, there’s a dead rooster on the little balcony outside one of the landings.

I have to say, everyone I’ve talked to has been very friendly – or at least they sound friendly. For all I understand all the things they say, they could be cursing at me from behind their friendly smiles. When they discover I don’t know what they’re saying, that doesn’t stop them at all. On they go, discussing the weather or, well, whatever. Once NaNoWriMo is over, hopefully I’ll have more brain to devote to learning czech. The guy at Roma Pizzeria has taken it upon himself to teach me one new czech word each time I go in. Last time it was “Dobrou chut” (bon apetit), which I already knew, but I didn’t know how to tell him I already knew.

Thanks!

The Slacker Method for Avoiding Jetlag

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Location: pL and Marianna’s place, Prague (map)

Had a great burst of noveling over the weekend, then caught a couple of z’s before rushing out first thing on Monday to pick up my wireless router. A few hours of setting that up was followed with a long, long night of catching up with various organizations, pontificating in the nanowrimo forums (I’m not an expert but I sure can sound like one), and of course, getting things rolling again here at MR&HBI. On top of that, I had my computer hooked up to pL’s stereo system. Sounding good! I resolved to get the plug adapter soon so I could listen to my REAL music collection, which I’ve been lugging around on an external drive for seven months. Well, that distracted me way into the wee hours and then I realized that I had been neglecting my novel, so I spent the rest of the night on that. Then my computer died. About then I realized that I hadn’t eaten in a long time. Or slept.

Some days I wake up early, some days I just don’t go to sleep at all. I think I need to leave the house more. I’m going back to the Roma Pizzeria for some more writing-in-bars action today.

Yesterday, having used physical violence to fix my laptop (mechanical problem called for a mechanical solution) I was up with the sun to go out and get a plug adapter so I could run my external drive and turn it into a backup drive as well as a music collection. I had spotted a store right up the street that seemed promising. I knocked around the apartment for a while, giving the place time to open, and at 8:30 out the door I went.

The place was closed. “No problem,” I thought. “It must open at 9:00.” I enjoy traipsing up and down Vinohradská. It is filled with the little shops that cater to little shopping trips executed by people who have to carry their booty home. More on the automobilization of Prague in another episode. So I went a’wandrin. Lots of shops were still closed, and I started to notice that many of them had hours posted that said they should be open. At first I laughed to myself. “There’s an interesting cultural difference,” I thought. “The keepers of these little shops aren’t so worried about their hours.” It was after nine when I got back to Electra Electro, and it was still closed. I checked the hours on the door; it said it opened at eight. I pulled out my dictionary to make sure I was looking at the right day. Maybe Wednesday is a traditional shop-closing day. Nope.

Then it hit me. Holiday. I had noticed that traffic was relatively light, and everything fell into place. It was a holiday. All the adaptér electricky stores were closed. I started walking down toward the center of town, hoping to find a place down there that catered to tourists and would therefore be open. Vinohradská goes straight down the the top of Václavské námisti (Winceslas square), with a statue of the good king himself (map) gazing down the long, broad street with every sort of shop imaginable crowding in on each side. Except electric adapter stores.

Finally I found a place, a computer and Internet store tucked way back in a not-so-glamorous shopping arcade (map), the kind of place that you could imagine people in Cyberpunk novels go to get contraband chips to put into their heads. I paid way too much for the adapter and back out I went into the threatening rain. The weather threatened and for the first time since being on my own I gave in and took public transportation rather than walk. Standing on the metro, I realized that I still hadn’t eaten more than a snack.

While getting all my technology straightened out, I started reading a book during file copies. I read the book almost straight through, pausing at 03:30 to take a nap. I finished it this morning.

This morning (no, wait, afternoon! It’s hard to tell; the sky has been cloudy almost constantly since I got here) finds me sitting, sipping tea, planning my day. Gotta get out. Gotta get back to the novel. Gotta start using my “Talk Czech Now” CD-ROM. Gotta get a new hard drive for the laptop and get my external working. Gotta start getting to bars.

I think I’ll take a nap.

Thanks!