a synopsis of our/my adventures from last (real) post to date

where in the world?

i'm sitting in my brother's new apartment in nagoya, japan. i helped him move here from takaoaka yesterday. looking southeast out from his 4th storey balcony, the city is grey and soaked from this morning's rain. i'm feeling a bit under the weather (figuratively, as well as literally), and so i've decided to do some documenting while adrian goes out exploring.

note: if you've followed along with google buzz and our picasa photographs, you likely know most of what follows.

well, we have a lot of ground to cover here and i'm as likely to get bored of typing up a drawn out account as you are to tire of reading it; accordingly, a list, starting in san diego, :

• february 22: vicki found us a craigslist ride to los angeles.
• stayed at the downtown stay hostel/hotel again.
• put the bikes into storage near union station (LA).
• stayed at a couchsurfing host's house (nice folks).
• flew to hawaii.
• first night, stayed at hostel/hotel right beside the airport, matt researched camping.
• second day, bussed to waikiki, stopped in honolulu and reserved camping for entire month , excepting wednesdays and thursdays, when all campgrounds close.
• stayed at really scummy hostel on lemon road in waikiki (the westmost of the three there)
• went to first campsite on sand island, near the airport.
• woke up to tsunami siren...looked outside, noted locals still barbequeing and not in any panic, went back to sleep. woke up again to locals telling us we had to leave quickly...they had all packed up and were ready to go, but graciously waited for 15 min. while we frantically packed and then gave us a ride to the nearest bus stop (some 3 miles away). these were the folks that the lady at the camping reservation place had cautioned us to avoid and even said not to leave our tent at night!
• hung out at mcdonald's, using their free internet to investigate the matter (chile, offshore earthquake).
• headed to higher ground by bus, watched for a couple of hours as nothing (thankfully/anticlimactically) came of the tsunami warning. a nice american couple drove us back to waikiki by way of the coast around diamondhead and we stopped and saw sea turtles.
• we attempted to return to sand island over the next two days but were turned away and just gave up (this was no easy feat, considering i was hucking all our gear in our gigantic backpack). having a week until our next campsite booking, we elected to save our money and joined the homeless that dwell in kapiolani park. concealing our technology (the only visible sign of our relative wealth, as you know how we dress). the laws relating to the dispossessed in waikiki are essentially designed to make homelessness inconvenient and to keep the homeless out of the way of the tourists by forcing them into a nocturnal state of affairs. we slept by day in our tent in the park, took the dinners offered by the various charitable (mostly church) groups every evening, and, by law, broke camp at 10 p.m. and vacated the park between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., when we would wander miserably around waikiki and drink coffee and play cards at 24 hour joints. sleeping by night on the sidewalk was a legal (broken paddle law) option, but we only tried that once and didn't sleep well at all. this was, to say the least, an interesting chapter of our journey and definitely an englightening one. although there was certainly a percentage of the homeless population in that park that were afflicted by either alcohol or drug addiction, many of the folks there were just living as they were, seemingly, by choice. during this time, i couldn't swim yet, because of my tattoo, which sucked, since waikiki beach was steps away and beautiful always.
• then began our camping life along the windward side of the island. with a new birthday ukelele (thanks baby!) life became a relatively even mix of eating (sometimes found coconuts, which i became expert at opening), swimming, reading, strumming, and lazing in the sun. there's really not much to tell. we were living the easy life (which can actually be hard, as paradise can be quite tedious after a while...i know that may sound silly).
• we visited the north shore where we saw the famous surf breaks, though we never surfed.
• we camped inland, vicki was sick, and i hiked around barefoot in the mud for four days.
• march 30th: we flew to las vegas.
• we saw some shows, lost big money (approximately 10 USD), drank cheap drinks and wandered around on "the strip", where droves of folks clacked cards together and attempted to force them into your hands...the cards were for escorts and had naked women on them with little stars or lens flare effects over the interesting bits. vicki collected these and, in vancouver, we later distributed them as party favours and momentos of our time in vegas.
• we took the bus back to los angeles. busses suck. they really really suck.
• in los angeles we reconnected with our friend lillie, who, once again, graciously hosted us. we went for a hike in the palisades and photo shoot in the huntington botanical gardens
• we collected our bikes, stayed at "stay" again, and got on the greyhound headed for vancouver. we almost killed each other when we were trying to box our bikes and didn't have the right tools or sufficient mechanical advantage to take off the pedals (despite that this was one of the first things i learned about, from nathan, in owen sound all those moons ago). in the end, we just left the pedals on and deformed the boxes by pushing the bikes in as such. the (four in all, i think) busses were horrible. sleeping pills (tylenol pm, gifted by lillie, many thanks) and foam ear plugs only marginally lessened the hell that is long distance bus travel. for the first part of the ride, the woman in front of us yelled ridiculously loudly into her (reportedly broken) mobile phone every once in a while, just to ensure that we couldn't sleep. at one point we broke down and changed busses.
• arriving in vancouver (april 9th, 2010, first time on canadian soil since october 23rd, 2009) we were greeted by (world class barista) kyle and we witnessed some violence between drunk belligerant racist skateboarders and transit security
• we hung out for a couple of weeks in vancouver with kyle and the vanhaus folks (chris upstairs, chris downstairs, and miriam). during this time vicki was doing life planning and i was simply bidding my time until my flight to japan to visit my brother, who has been there (here) for three years teaching english.
• i flew to japan, leaving vicki to fly, bus, rideshare, or hitchhike (she not being sure, and me not being comfortable with the last two).
• i watched three movies on the flight and attempted to learn enough japanese from my phrase book (purchased that same day) to get me to my brother, who had thankfully booked my bus to takaoaka, leaving me to sort out only my brief train ride to tokyo station from narita airport. aside from some last minute worrying about which bus was mine and then getting my legs crushed by the person in front of me while on the bus, everything went swimmingly and i soon found myself in a car with my brother and his friends tuan (from utah) and queenie (from australia) en route to a tennis tournament that adrian and tuan were participating in. that night, runnning on very very very little sleep in the past long long long time, i attended a farewell party of english teachers held for my brother and mony, another departing teacher. there was drinking and (too little) food and dancing followed by sleep, beautiful, wonderful, incredibly necessary sleep. since then i've been hanging out with my brother in takaoaka while he finished up there and then we packed up and headed to nagoya, where he is continuing on with his company but will now be teaching middle/high school children, which he is very excited about.
  

i'm going to write more about japan soon, but i just needed to get the ball rolling again, so that's my life to date, in a nutshell.

on may 16th i'll be headed back to vancouver, where the plan is to rent an apartment with vicki while she pursues meaningful career-relevant employment and i work part time simply to generate a little income and occupy myself while i continue to ponder what it is that i want to "do" (suggestions?).

microblogging via google buzz

hello everyone. we'll were in hawaii, on oahu, and trying to figure out which technology is best for letting you know (more precisely) where we are and what we're up to.

so, for the time being, here's a new spot to follow vicki and i on the web in a more convenient 'status update' style:

google buzz

cheers,

mexico, birthdays, ink, and phone bills

hello again.

despite ourselves, we're back at the OBI hostel...our de facto home away from home, it would seem.

three days ago we set out for mexico, paying $5 each to take the bus to old town and then the trolley from there to san ysidro, california (the border town).



from there we wandered into tijuana, mexico...there was a turnstile and that was it...we were in another country...no passports needed to be presented, no forms filled out...quite interesting.

we were greeted by moderately aggressive pedlars, beggars, and taxi cab drivers as we wandered to a money exchange and from there to the ABC bus station to get transported to ensenada, a town that we'd heard was less touristy and more enjoyable.

so, for $24 total (we only used pesos in mexico, but i'll name prices for this post in USD for convenience...you can probably get by just using USD in mexico, bye the bye) we hopped aboard a bus down the baja. on the bus i alternately studied the coastal geography and buildings and tried to avoid watching the marine 2, which was being shown dubbed in spanish with english subtitles.

we arrived in ensenada and were pleased not to be accosted by anyone. it was already getting dark so we wandered toward the shore and the main drag but veered off into the cheaper hotel district before going too far. there, vicki got us booked in to our hotel room for a total of $18 for the night (cheaper than going to the $15/person hostel we had info. for).



we then wandered around town, walking along the main drag and seeing many white folks about since there was a cruise ship docked at the port. vicki figured we'd best wander off the beaten path a bit, so we strolled past several booming discos and strip clubs, then past local bars and pools halls, and then to a hole-in-the-wall style restaurant that consisted of a nice lady with a stove and some shelves and a counter with seats on the sidewalk where we could dine. it went swimmingly with vicki's spanish...the only confusion was that vegetarianism seemed foreign to the lady, which wasn't a language barrier thing, just a cultural one. after some back and forth over what constituted meat (she figured fish and chicken weren't meat) we had two big veggie sandwiches and cucumber slices for under $5.

figuring we'd done well, we walked back to the main drag and had a few beers at a bar where americans were yelling at a televised sporting event that i didn't even bother to identify. here, vicki's spanish was immediately greeted with english (this happened often and frustrated vicki some, but both interlocutors simply wanted to practice the other language).

we retired to the hotel planning to explore on foot the following day.

setting out to do just that, we almost immediately ran into davog, who'd left the hostel 3 days before us.



we did breakfast and then walked with davog to his couch surfing hosts' place, on the northeast edge of town.





at the house, we met los adultos: elisabeth, alejandro, and edgar; los niños: padme and vader (yes, after the starwars characters); and, the pets: rami (perro) and boni (gato).







elisabeth is a puplished poet and alejandro is a tattoo artist. after chatting with these fine folks and dropping off davog's backpack (adding it to the collection: there were, absent at the time, two other travelers staying there also, one from iceland and one from new zealand) we went wandering around the city together.

here's the massive flag in town:



in the evening we returned to the couch surfing abode and were assured that it wasn't a problem for us to stay there also. vicki retired early and i had some wine with the traveling boys and we shared traveling stories.

in the morning vicki was a year older, happy birthday!

this was also the morning where i learned about toilets in mexico. now, i'd heard somewhere that you couldn't flush toilet paper, but figured that this must have been outdated info. after somehow luckily avoiding tragedy flushing paper at the hotel. at the house, i had no such luck...some frantic toilet brush work avoided spillover, which was a relief, but i had to jaunt to the local store for a plunger to rectify my wrong doing and feel a little less stupid. so, if you go to mexico, take note: you wipe and then discard your paper into the wastebasket that is inevitably beside the toilet (and should have clued me in).

after some dice rolling and tarot card reading, i decided to just take the plunge and permanently ink my body...when in rome. i choose the japanese kanji for tree, a symbol that i've always loved to draw, before i knew it was kanji or that it also could be pressed into service to symbolize my last name.







and, today, as i post this, from the hostel:



and for this, alejandro said the shop min. was $40 but that i need only give him a tip. i insisted that he take my remaining american dollars: $35.

after getting tattooed we got an escort from davog almost to the bus terminal and then rode the bus to the tijuana terminal, missing the stop we should have gotten off at to walk to the border and incurring an $18 cab fare back to the border.

coming back into the states, a border agent told us that we'd "be fine" to overstay our six months, since we weren't doing anything wrong and they basically had no way to track things (sweet!...so, we'll see how long we stay in hawaii and what we decide to do thereafter).

back at the hostel we celebrated vicki's birthday first with dinner at the famous hodad's, where vicki ate for free, and secondly with our duty-free tequila, shared with hostel-friends, culminating in watching the movie snatch and falling asleep somewhere around the half way mark. party animals!

today we were set to ride out but realized that, yet again, we hadn't done enough planning and so i paid up for one more day to get ourselves sorted.

one of my first stops online was my bank, which i hadn't been keeping track of...here i learned that i've unwittingly paid a ridiculous amount for the last three phone bills and nauseating phone calls with telus have not eased this pain...although i'm now on the plan that i should have been on the whole time...grrrrrrr...very expensive lesson learned.

presently, vicki is beside me at one of the public hostel computers (insert dollar bills here) and she's sorted out some transit to LA and bike storage solutions...i don't think we're going to ride there any longer, given the distance, weather reports, etc. blogging has mostly erased the stress of my phone situation and i'm ready to go stretch in the sunshine.

there you have it, a little update from us southbounded northerners.

cheers, to love, luck, and laughter.

ttys,

hostel life, broken netbooks, new picasaweb albums

hello folks.

so, hostel life is interesting indeed. it's a lot like being in a university residence all over again, except that i have no classes to attend and no responsibilities...i.e., it's great, for a time...motivating one's self to learn/grow seems the more difficult aspect of hostel living. for example, i've probably spent less than 1% of my time here attempting learn spanish, which is basically the only thing on my to-do list at present.

the OBI hostel has a work exchange type program where you can assist in cleaning the hostel for 3 hours a day and stay for free. we put our names on the list for this immediately but the crew has been full up until yesterday, when only one of us (vicki, as it were) worked. today we weren't needed either. many people in this hostel are long term folks that are on the cleaning crew or otherwise entwined in the operations here. it's a motley crew of people from different corners of the world.

there's also a lot of free food to be had: free breakfast every morning if you can manage to get up in time; free rice in the kitchen; a spaghetti night and a burger night (both with veggie options). deborah is the cook and she's awesome, as long as you don't do anything to upset her (e.g., fail to use the tongs to pick food up, neglect to immediately discard a bag that you've emptied of its contents, or step behind the line and into her kitchen when she's working). her raucous laughter is usually what wakes us up and gets us down to the kitchen (since we're situated directly above the kitchen and the kitchen window is open to a small space between the hostel and the adjacent building, bouncing the sound up and into our window).

from the foregoing, you may infer that one could live quite cheaply here for an indefinite period of time. if you're bored of the cold, i'd say just fly here and give this a try. you should probably take up surfing while you're at it...it's a 2 minute walk to the beach and there are pro surfers here.

it's a party here...constantly. for example, there is a recurring beer pong night where the house buys the first 30 tins.

we've made many friends here and had a lot of fun, but we're both ready to go to hawaii and start that adventure. perhaps vicki is more ready than i am...haha.

random news items:

• we went to balboa park and went to the science centre. we watched a relatively weak imax film, checked out the fun interactive though not terribly informative exhibits, then strolled around;
  
• there's a young canadian buck here named stephen who is a riot. his nickname is minky and his exploits generally include some mixture of intoxicants and public nudity;
• davog, my new irish friend, and i rode out to the end of point loma, but forwent the $5 expense of actually entering the park at the point. contrary to the impression robbie gave me regarding the irish in general, davog isn't terribly loquacious ;)
  
• the netbook crapped out and i had to get a replacement; consequently, i've started a new picasa web album for pics from this year: 2010;
  
• i bought a new shirt; and,
  
• vicki got dolled up by ashley, a student of cosmetology (check out the pics!).

mmhmm, just a little update. hope everyone is doing well.

thanks for voting, we totally ignored you!

so, we didn't go with the popular vote (train to austin, TX, then ride north).

vicki and i just bought tickets to hawaii (oahu) and will be flying there on the 23rd and working on an organic farm through the wwoofing network.

we have to be out the US by April 23rd (we think...), so we'll spend about two months in hawaii then jet back to LA and then either bus north to vancouver then ride to ontario; or, bus south to who-knows-where...vicki and i have to discuss what will follow hawaii next ;)

robots.