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The Trip (Introduction)
This isn't Thoreau. I mean to change no minds here, but to keep a candid chronicle of events past. Two weeks in the northern states, nine of those backpacking in Olympic National Park. After, Seattle, Vancouver, and San Francisco. It's a medium sized adventure; there will be no crazy Amsterdam nights nor sky diving from private jets owned by wealthy barristas. I will tell it as it see it, mostly, though I'm given to exaggeration and flattery; I just might tell it as it should have been. So maybe a lot of this didn't happen, though even I don't own that large a grain of salt.
The First Day – Driving
There will be problems, delays, unfortunate accidents, fights, and quite possibly, death. That is the first rule of car travel. It is the easiest rule to forget and the most difficult to break. Keep that in mind as you read this.
We started the drive late, as usual, sans Brenda, from Van Nuys.
Stop. Who's Brenda?
I'm sorry, i forgot to introduce our wonderful contestants. Without them, there is no story to tell.
There's Max, who's apprehension to danger will either save the day or seriously annoy us.
Mark, loud and brash, keeps us entertained with mile a minute stories that either end in someone having sex with a hyena or the line "You're so fired".
Brenda, who is quiet as usual, meaning she has much to say but no guts to. She keeps a journal parallel to mine, though I'm sure hers is actually true.
Ngoc is quick to smile, quick to frown. She is our Frasier to Max's Nile Crane. She shall save us with her practicality.
Dan, who assumes the role of leader, though an assumption it shall remain. He is loud and bold, but always forgets to bring along a big stick.
Finally, there is Nick, who describes himself with silent words such as narrator, mythmaker, and perspective. He does carry a big shtick, but never gets to use it.
We'll get to know them better soon. They are not so an unlikely crew; simply joined by circumstance and timing. On we go...
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Alcohol, Tears, and Ingested Seared Flesh
I’m a little drunk, tired, and crying. None of it is my fault. Anyhow, now isn’t the time to write, which makes it impossible to resist. It’s easier to surprise yourself when you aren’t, well, yourself. I mixed myself a tall glass of scotch and lime margarita mix, in a lame attempt at a whisky sour. Twenty minutes later, two drinks away from finishing it, I find out the margarita mix is already mixed with Tequila. Oh, and “I put in some rum because you can barely taste the tequila,” says my dad. Never mind that margaritas are meant not to taste like tequila. The bottle says 12%, so with the rum that’s, hmm, fuck, who cares. So I just drank the equivalent of 8-9 shots of hard liquor. I’m a little lightheaded. Being tired for no apparent reason is a staple of American life. Nobody does nothing like us, or needs as much medication to recover from it. I prefer caffeine and nicotine, mostly because they work, cause relatively little damage to my body, and are cheap. A few minutes ago I was wiping tears from my eyes. Real, goodness to gracious, tears. Maybe it’s the yuppie chemical cocktail. I’m watching Six Feet Under, and Nate just died, and that is, fucking sad. If you haven’t been watching for five years, you don’t care, or understand. It feels good to cry for something. Especially because it’s a TV show and I don’t have to deal with true tragedy as long as I’m weeping for the imagined. They bury Nate out in the middle of nowhere, wrapped in a shroud instead of a casket, and un-embalmed. A green burial; which is just like the fucker. Watching his family go really nuts, and this family is nuts enough, makes it easy to cry. Two more episodes and it’s (the show) over. I’m old, aren’t I? (Oh, Claire is hot. Crazy artistic red heads with surly dispositions are hot.) Tomorrow I start eating meat. I doubt it’ll be permanent. It’s hard to even think about it. About a year ago I wrote an essay on not eating meat. It makes it easy to be foolish when you’ve carefully organized your reasons. Maybe sometime next week I’ll clean it up and post it. This camping trip I’m going on is either going to be an absolutely great time or a disaster. But then again, what can’t that be said about?Ja.
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Sawing off the edges
It’s okay to be a pretentious prick sometimes. The trick is knowing when those times are. I don’t. I’m not that good at anything I do. I can play guitar, but I’m not that good. I’m a graphic designer, but I’m not that good. I’m a writer, but I’m not that good. I’m a computer tech guy, but I’m not that good. I use to think it counted that I can do a lot of things, but it doesn’t. It really doesn’t. Nobody cares about not that good. I sure don’t.So, for being a pretentious prick I’m sorry, but if it turns out that that’s all I’m good for, for that, for that, I’m not sorry, not sorry, not sorry at all.Now go be better than me, that’s all I ask.Ja.
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Reignition…
So, I moved my site over to the Movable Type platform. It's a stable, production ready piece of software. They moved from an open source license scheme to commercial licensing a couple of years ago, so I had shied away from it. They do however, provide a free license for non-commercial, single-user sites, so here I am.This is a work in progress, so stuff might change from day to day, but not too much. I'm working on transferring all the old entries over, even though my original Mambo entries are probably lost.Suggestion, as always, are welcome.The calendar was a default, it is now gone.The "thing" above (in the banner) is actually a picture of a neuron, taken with a electron microscope (a rat, I believe by the looks of it, interneuron).
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Early at Smc
It’s a bit early by my standards. I’m here at school, in the library, killing time before I have to go back to another mind-numbing lecture. Its quiet here; peaceful even. There is a serene, thoughtful mood to the morning. Everybody is still wondering what they should have for breakfast.Despite what I may say occasionally, I don’t hate school. There are a lot of things I could do without: homework, homework, and attendance policies. The learning part is great, but this only happens occasionally while I’m actually at school. Usually, reading the severely overpriced textbook will get you the desired grade on the test, plus you can set your own pace. Reading is the whole of my usual study time. So far, I’ve had only had one class where studying was required to get an A in the course. I loved that class. The teacher gave us third level exams on a first level course, and then threw in a curve to compensate. Those tests were cruel. Even if you memorized the text, you’d never get an A without the help of the curve ( unless you had a Master’s in Neuroscience and Developmental Psychology).This summer is mentally grueling. I wish it was the material, but I took both chemistry and geometry sophomore year of high school, and even then it was easy. No, it’s grueling because both of my teachers are boring. They both have heavy accents. My chemistry teacher is intelligent and competent, if dull. My geometry teacher can barely speak English, so I can’t tell if he’s intelligent. He frequently leads the class down erroneous paths, to which I can only roll my eyes. I’m not there to fix anything. Teach me, goddamn it!So this post is stupid and useless, but it’s too early for anything else. At least there’s something new on here.Ja.
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