Getting into gear

So the ball is well in motion with respect to the whole brazil thing. I've (sorta) been in contact with ben; i think we've resoolved the whole when-we're-going-to-meet-up issue. it's going to be awesome to go down to brazil with that kid. I still need a job, but my cousin's friend is desperate to have me join this company of hers that teaches english privately to working professionals, so that could be some bank just in tips. I also still need a job up here or i'm going to wear down all my graduation money before i even get to brazil! it's not easy finding a job for just a month, so it's lookin like i may be a pizza delivery boy, but i also hear that doesn't pay dick, especially if you work day hours.

also, i've been shopping around for a laptop. now, my much more computer savvy friend kyle thinks i should not get a laptop and just get a much more powerful desktop later down the road. He raised some good arguments in our last dialogue (over eMail), so i've definitely got a lot to think about. i've wanted a laptop for a while now anyway, so this isn't just about going to brazil. But i'd have to be super careful with the thing; lord knows the beach humidity in ubatuba could thrash it, and it's 20 times more likely to get stolen (and make me a mugging target in general) every time i leave the house than it would in the US. Still, i'd really like to be able to take my work around with me, and it would make it super easy to collect music in brazil.

i really like that all my problems right now are really frivolous. I've been having a pretty good time since graduation, and it seems like i'm going to continue to for at least a little while longer.

Frustration

What is the deal with my internet? we finally got highspeed at my house, but we're using a wireless router and the signal strength in my room is really low. Consequently, i am constantly losing and re-establishing my connection. Most of the time, the internet runs so slow it feels like i still ahve dial-up. At least with dial-up the internet didn't keepdying though; i can't even download powerpoint presentations!

the internet wouldn't bother me so much if i didn't have all sorts of small errands I need to run online. I need(ed) to do a bunch of recert stuff for the fire department which required that I download powerpoint documents, then do a bunch of online quizes. I also need to do online training that is supposed to take an hour for kaplan. There's no way I can keep my internet connection for 10min, less an hour! the problem here is that I can't fill out my hours until I've done this damn training. That means I'm going to have to go to the library, but the local library only let's you use the computers for an hour a day, so I have to finish the training real fast. Still, i don't really feel comfortable connecting to my account for work from a library computer...

in the words of charles schultz, UGH!

even using facebook is a hassle. how silly is that?

Rolling with it

So I don't think of myself as the most spontaneous person, but I'm starting to realize that maybe i am much more spontaneous than I see myself. I've had this "roll with it" attitude towards life for a while now, and it really rules me when I'm out on the open road. I guess the freedom of not having any commitments or responsibilities and just being able to point my car in any random direction and say "I feel like checking this place out" makes me feel very at home with myself (if that makes any sense).

But yeah, returning to the point, tonight I probably made the most significant spontaneous decision of my life. short version: starting mid july i'm going to be living in Brazil for four months.

This happened so suddenly, LITERALLY no one knows it yet except for myself and my mom. not even my dad knows yet (you're probably hearing it before he does :-p).

The Long version
So I got a pretty sweet graduation gift from my family: on top of a decent chunk of cahs, they payed for gas for my drive home (which really made the drive possible, given how insane gas prices were this summer), and they also were going to buy tickets for me to fly down to Brazil and go to the beach with my family down there. My friend Ben Brokaw is going to be in Bolivia during the time I planned to be in Brazil, so we started kicking around ideas of traveling around south america a little.

A couple of days ago, a wrench was thrown into the brazil plan in the form of an opportunity. one of my relatives in Sao Paulo works at a school where I could potentialy teach english. The catches: 1) very little pay2) Sao Paulo is kind of a shitty city (lots of crime, bad traffic, and not much to do)3) I would have to kill my previous travel plans
Now, don't get me wrong, this is totally something I've wanted to do for a while now. I've been thinking about living in Brazil anyway, and teaching english was the main job I had in mind. My friend Mike de la Paz had similar ideas and had told me that after looking, he learned that such jobs were basically non-existent for kids like us, so when Helio called me up I felt like I was being handed a really golden opportunity.

Well, despite how cool this would be, I decided getting a no-money job in a lame city wasn't worth killing my much cooler travel plans.

So tonight, I sat down with my mom to start working out the ticket details (we hadn't done this sooner because I still had to work out some issues with my brazilian passport, but we had to get it done ASAP because this shit was getting pricey). kinda out of nowhere, we decided to extend my stay. I'm going to visit my family as planned, meet up with ben in Rio. then my plans end after he leaves, up until my return flight december fourth.

Summary
I intended to buy a ticket to visit brazil for 4 weeks, and ended up commiting myself to live there for four months. beyond the first few weeks, i have not established places to stay or jobs while i'm down there. I might not even be staying in rio de janeiro; for all I know I might end up living in a different city every week. That's the beauty of Brazil: my mom has contacts all over the place! I've got family and friends I can crash with all over the country. Thing is, -I- don't really know anyone there except for some family in Sao Paulo (which is probably not going to be where I spend the bulk of my stay), and I certainly don't know anyone my age.

I've never lived anywhere except home and college. I've traveled outside the country alot, but this is different. This trip is unstructured like one of my drives, but I won't have a car. I'll have some money, but I still don't have a place to stay. I have family, but I still feel like I'm moving to an area where I don't know anyone.

I'm not going to lie, I'm intimidated as hell. Mostly, I think it's just how suddenly this all happened. I'm not concerned, sure Brazil is not the safest place in the world; most of my family has been held up at gun point at least once, and my cousin was even abducted from his car at a red light and held as a security hostage by bank robbers. I really think that this is going to be an incredible experience for me, and that i'm going to have an amazing time. Mainly, I just feel really wierd about committing such a huge block of my life without any real thought.

guess I'll just roll with it

Elliot's house

MAN kyle is hard to wake up! So yeah, wed night the kid was up late, but I mean i wake kyle up at like 1130 or something so we can go hang with elliot, he goes back to sleep, and an hour later i'm banging on his door for like 10 min with no response. When that kid gets knocked out, he gets knocked cold.

So yeah, esterday my brother and I visited Elliot at his new place. Elliot and kate have the coolest appartment in the world. I'm so proud of them and am super jealous. They're down the stret from this gian cement troll that's installed under a bridge (appraently some kind of landmark around here), and their place is walking distance from some great restaurants too. The house itself is the perfect size plus an extra bedroom, they've got access to grills, and they've even got a silky smooth cat. Elliot is living the life.

As i was calling him to arrage hanging out yesterday, elliot was conveniently in the process o buing a wii. Guess what I did yesterday? that' right, ate a lot of good food and played alot of video games. Rock on seattle, rock on.

Today we're leaving (in fact, I should really wake up my brother soon so we can cover some distance). We're heading west on the 90 to yellowstone. Neither of us has ever been, and I'm kind of concerned for my car again. I mean, shit, i've already seen 3 bears on this trip, and yellostone is supposed to be grizzly central! don't get me wrong, I LOVE bears, but the fact of the matter is that i'm traveling cross country with alot of stuff in my car i'd rather not wake up to find strewn all over th campsite.

I'm sure yellowstone will be fine, i'm just wierd. After yellowstone, we're driving to chicago to meet up with wes, then cleveland to bother laura, then we're heading home. Depending on the timing, we might try to pass through tennessee.

i guess the trip is winding down, but it only feels like it's picking up. This is my life right now. This is how i'm starting the "life-after-college" segment of my life, and I think i'm doing fine.

5/11-5/23 Driving the west coast

I still need to try to write up some of the insanity of senior week ang graduation, but for the time being, let's stick with documenting the drive. If this all looks familiar, it's cause it's all on facebook :-p

5/11-5/16: Post-Graduation, still in town.
So a few days before graduation, my brother basically moved into my dorm room (5/11). We partied together, and he helped me pack out a bunch. I graduated (5/13), had a cool reception with sam sean and sarah (plus families and sean's friends, all good people), then my bro and I went to a party at the co-op later that night. We crashed on the floor of my parents hotel room the next 2 nights (mon and tues) while I ran errands around town. After my parents flew back home, we moved into Rob's place for two nights. While at rob's, my brother and I took a day trip (5/16) to joshua tree, which rocked.

5/17: On the road
From rob's, we drove north through sequoia and played near big trees. We even saw 2 bears! From sequia, we continued north on the 5 to yosemite, but decided not to risk bears tearing the car apart just to camp in a pretty spot and stayed in a motel outside the park. 5/18 yosemite and sacramentoThe next morning we had breakfast with some hungarians who were also doing a gnarly roadtrip, then drove into yosemite to enjo the park. As always, the drive in was gorgeous and the valley hard to navigate. we hiked up to lower yosemite falls and went off the trail to get wet under the waterfall (off course we forgot to bring the camera, as with most of our small adventures). We continued on toward mirror lake until we decided hiking without water wasn't going to be worth it, and walked a nearby road back to the car. We drove to this parking lot near some trailheads to make some lunch (the same parking lot I'd used when I went to yosemite over fall break with with the two laura's, nicole, ben, and aussie john). We hiked in to the woods a little ways, made quesadillas and cracked a few beers, theng ot back ot he car. we noticed this note on the car we hadn't seen earlier, but didn't read the note until we stopped for gas a few hours out in a town called oakdale. Turns out Sean Taft-morales from Rescue 2 was in the area for some rason and had recognised the stickers on my car! talk about small world, right?We took 120 out of the park, which was a ton of fun to drive, not to mention gorgeous. from there we took 5N to sacramento where we met up with laroi.Laroi's house was gorgeous. Small thing, hardwood floors, big garden out back with raspberries, different kinds of figs, sage, basil, kumquats....ridiculous, right? And he didn't ahve to plant or care for any of it, his landlord handled the whole garden. The house even came with these two awesome cats!

5/19: Laroi's house
Woke up, read some books laroi had thrown at me the night before and played with the cats while I waited for alex to wake up. laroi had work, so I taught alex how to drive stick for a little bit. When laroi got back, we hung out with some friends of his who graduated form pomona (jaqcqueline and her fiancee pete). Afterwards, laroi my bro and I went to a vietnamese place to get some pho for dinner; great great pho. We left, bought some drinks, and got drunk at laroi's house. We did some drunken qigong (I tried to teach laroi the dragon drill), then we did taco bell around 1:30-2am for chalupas. First taco bell i've had since high school. We didn't get to bed until around 3.

5/20: laroi and dave's
woke up, drank lots of tea and just generally hung out from 10am-1p. Laroi then taught me his wu dan qigong, and I finished teaching him the dragon and eagle wei tuo drills. Alex and I finally let his hose (after 3 days) at 5pm. We did some serious grocery shopping at the nugget, ate chinese in the parking lot, then drove to dave's house in oakland (piedmont).We arrived just as Dave's family and pete (his friend from pomona) were finishing dinner.dave, pete, alex and i then went to a park to slack line into the sunset. The line took a while to set up because we couldn't find appropriate trees, but we had plenty of fun when we finally got it together. We hung around that park until after dark, then went back to the house because pete had to get to bed early (had WFR class the next day).Dave alex and I were still up, so we found a park to go hango ut in, then wandered aroun the neighborhood taking in the piedmont view of the bay area and generally waxing philosophic. That night we all slept outside dave's house on this huge pole vaulting mat he has set up behind his house.

5/21: PCH, still not out of cali
That mornign we had bagels for breakfast in oakland with dave, then left to head north. We had al ittle trouble staying on 101 through the city, but ended up getting a nice driving tour of san fran as a result. We made our way across the golden gate bridge, and pulled onto the 1 (the pacific coast highway) as soon as we could. we drove the 1 all the way north from the bay area until it merged back with 101. lots of cool views and cliffs, pulled off a few times for pictures (much to alex's dismay). Blasted the beatles alot of the way. Had a nice picnic of sandwiches by this crazy view of the ocean, a few feet a way from what we didn't at first realize was a roadside toilet. That night, we camped at patrick's point just north of homboldt county.

5/22: Pacific Northwest
We'd slpet outside the night before, and i woke up to find that alex had moved into the car (that whole no-sleeping-bag thing can get kinda cold i guess). had a granola bar for breakfast, then built a fire to get warm while alex continued sleeping, or at least tried to as I kept going back to the car for different stuff.I'd hoped to see the lost coast brewery in eureka (or is it arcata?), but we decided we didn't feel like drinking so early so we continued north through redwood national park. beautiful driving through the old trees. stayed on 101 into oregon, had some coffee at a tiny local shop. checked out this wierd monument to a battle where a bunch of indians were killed (kind of a wierd monument), then got off 101 on the 42 to connect with the 5 a few towns north. From I-5, we drove north to portland where we checked in with Powell's City of Books. I called up Dan hoping to hang out, but he was running errands until we started to head out, and alex was getting impatient with the pace of our travel so we moved on.about an hour north of the city, we pulled off the freeway to make some dinner; pasta with onions, garlic, tomato, and parmesan. We were parked behind this restaurant about 20 feet away from a stak of used cardboard boxes, and periodically the restaurant folks came out to wierd us out about firesafety 9it was a propane stove...the thing doesn't even make sparks, come on). we think they were jsut generally wierded out by us. We ate and left as quickly as we could, then pulled into Kyle's house on mercer island (seattle) around 10 that night. We stayed up late listening to music, and kyle made us 12 mp3 cds for the road!

5/23: Hoh Rainforest
The next morning I had breakfast with Kyle's dad (since I always wake up earlier than everyone else). I started running some errands online, which woke up alex who was sleeping by the computer. We eventually decided it was time to wake up kyle. We all had some coffee, then left for this rainforest in olympic national park, west of seattle. Kyle thought it would only take a few hours to get there, but it ended up taking all day (another day in the car...). Whatever though, the drive was awesome and it was good hanging out.we arrived at the rainforest a few hours before sundown. The place was amazing. there was life absolutely everywhere, everything was green. Trees were growing out of fallen trees. ferns were growing out of piles of older ferns. there was this light moss hanging off of everything that looked like golden confettis, but was actuallly rooted prett firmly to whatever it grew off of (allegedly the stuff grows solely on light and air!). just an amazing place. Kyle and I drank water straight out of the glacial river that flowed thorugh the park, and also drank directly from a stream that was fed by mineral springs. yummy water.We had taken a ferry to get out of seattle, but it was pretty late when we drove back so we actually had t swing all the way down to takoma to come back. we didn't arrive at kyle's house until around 2:20am.

Driving home

Graduated, now i'm driving home with my brother.

Definitely going to cover a few posts, but for the time being, here's a map that shows some spots we've been to. i'm going to add lines later.

Journal (or "ideas: pt.2")

So earlier today I was digging around the trunk of my car for a book when I came across a small notebook: a journal I decided to try to write in periodically a year or two ago. There are only a few entries in it, probably not even ten, but well....it got dammaged. My car isn't exactly high-end, and water leaks into the trunk when it's wet out. I hadn't realized it until now (apparently I haven't even opened the journal since last summer) but since I left the journal in my trunk for months, it has been accumulating water damage. I don't think anything has become readable, but for a book I invested some emotion into I'm pretty annoyed I let this happen.

There was another book in the trunk that picked up water damage, a small pocket size notebook similar to what I described I was looking for in the "Ideas" post from a few days ago. At first I thought it was a travel log from one of my road trips x-country. When I opened it, all but the first few pages were empty, and most of the horizontal lines had been washed from the pages. What bothers me is that it could still be a travel log, just with all my entries washed out. That's just no good. A few days ago I came across another such travel log from my road trip home this summer. It hadn't picked up water damage because it was in the passenger compartment, but waws still in very poor condition from being trampled. I've gotta take better care of my memories; I have enough trouble holding onto them in my head, I need to cherish them after I commit them to paper.

At least I have that notebook I was looking for.