The Deadly Pagoda - a steffengo adventure

Kuliouou Ridge Hike - 3 miles to happiness, another 3 back to the car

2010-11-23T11:24:00.000-08:00

It was a saturday morning, bright and early. My hiking plans had fallen through last minute the night before so I was sitting around the house at 6am watching the sun rise. Hmm, gym, long bike ride, run? I just wasn't terribly motivated to do any of the same old things. I made myself some tea and did what any young person does these days to kill time...internet. I logged onto facebook, my instant messaging accounts, and my itouch. Surprisingly, not many people were online that early in the morning, except for the people in later timezones. I saw that one of my friend Shogo's friends was online, and I struck!

"Hi, what are you doing up so early?" I said.

"Just up, deciding what to do." he replied

"Yeah, I had hiking plans that fell through so now I'm deciding what to do."

"I'll go hiking with you"

"Cool! Here's my address, come by and I'll drive to the hike."

Simple as that, I now had a last-minute hiking buddy. We had only met once before, so on the short drive over to the hike we caught up on general chit chat. Some people I find hard to carry on conversations with, but we seemed to be maintaining a decent conversation without too many long silent pauses. I for some reason began pulling onto the wrong street to go to the hike. I had never been on this hike, but new the streets to turn on, somehow I spaced out and turned onto another street that had an equal number of syllables and lettering. After sitting and waiting for the light to changed I looked at the light again and realized I was turning on the completely wrong street. I pulled back onto the main road, and shortly we were at the trailhead after a couple turns and twists.

The trail is well maintained the whole way and since it was still only around 730am it was nice and quiet. There was an option for the ridge hike or the valley hike. I think the valley hike has a couple waterfalls, but we were more interested in the ridge hike. We started on the hike and it starts as a number of switchbacks running back and forth up the side of the mountain. It ascends at a good pace so that we weren't too out of breath but it was a good workout. Once you get up a decent elevation the flora turns from arid shrubbery to more mountain-like. It started reminding me of california with the large numbers of pine trees and the smell of the cool damp air and soft pine needles underfoot. We only passed one older couple before a young couple with a dog ran past us. I always find trail runners fascinating, especially when they're running uphill. I can easily run downhill, and usually do, but the uphills are killer. I'd dye after a 1/4 and there were these two trotting up the hill with their dog.

Towards the top of the hill we stopped for a second to relax and enjoy the cool breeze coming over the mountain. The entire ground was covered with soft pine needles and we sank down into them to rest our legs for a bit. I could easily have thrown down a pillow for a nap, but my hiking buddy had buffet lunch plans in waikiki at 11am which at this point only gave us three hours to get up to the top (wherever that was), back down the mountain, then drop him off at his car in time to get to waikiki. We hopped back up after about 10 minutes and headed up the hill again.

The pines began to fade away and soon we were in the lush tropical area. This is my favorite part of any hike, where one type of foliage fades away and transitions almost immediately into a new type. This jungle foliage is my favorite; it's dense and lush and the colors are spectacular.

Occasionally there are wild orchids there, which I saw a few of while we were hiking. It was at this point that the terrain turned steep. We huffed and puffed and I made sure to stop every once and a while and turn down as the views kept getting better and better. There were views all the way to the ocean on the south side, and the mountains all around. Its so nice to see that some of the beauty of hawaii hasn't been paved over for a shopping mall or disgusting townhomes.

We were getting shorter and shorter on time. It was almost 930am at this point and I had set a mental target of 940am before we would have to start heading down the mountain to make it back on time. I could see that we were getting closer and closer to the top, but every time we turned a corner it seemed as though there were more steps. About 20 feet from the top I saw the couple that had run past us on the way up. They were just starting on their way down. I gave out a yell as I made it to the top of the hike. The top of the hike was the payoff; a view straddling both sides of the island right at the ridge. It was of course windy which helped to dry off my now wet tshirt. I took a minute to rest and snap a bunch of pictures. The breeze, the clouds, the views of the mountains and oceans on both sides were spectacular. We only had about 15 minuted to enjoy the view however as we had to immediately start back down the trail. The trip down took about 1/2 as long as the trip up which put us right on time getting back to the car. It was a good workout and great views, definitely glad that I got to go on the hike instead of sitting at home drinking tea (which I did after).

Tantalus Hike...the end is just around the corner.

2010-11-23T00:26:00.000-08:00

Don't ever let me go on a hike with a hungover Kaui again. Apparently it zaps her memory. I wanted to do a long hike, but after getting ahold of Kaui in the morning she decided what she wanted to do was a short hike, then go to the beach. That was fine with me really, as a good short hike is just as good as a good long hike. Unfortunately this hike wasn't as short as she remembered.

We started out at the top of Tantalus and parked on the side of the road to gain access to this hike. I actually don't remember the name of it, other than it was past the bridge at the top of Tantalus. We started walking, but it had rained the night before. The nice part was that it cleared up so the air was crisp and the sun was shining. The unfortunate side effect of the rain was muddy trails. We squished along for about a mile or so before i got fed up with sliding all over my slippers (flip flops). The ground was soft and the trail was going to be short so I ditched my slippers and put them by the side of a tree to be picked up on the way back. Now, for some reason it didn't even occur to me to carry them with me or snap them into my backpack, but I guess lesson learned.

I squished along through the mud for a while. We stopped and took pictures of moss, and flowers, and looked for snails. Then we continued walking. And then we walked a little more. And then a bit more. I was assured a number of times that we were "just around the corner," but after a few more miles I was starting to doubt. By this time I had walked over coarse lava stones, numerous tree roots, sharp sticks and any number of obstacles. I trudged on however, thinking that we were very close to the end. That never happened.

The trail met up with another trail, then another, before splitting off again. It was at this point that Kaui had stopped saying that she thought we were almost there and just started saying "i dont know." we were having a good time nonetheless just chatting and it wasn't a terribly rigorous hike, but my feet were starting to pay the price. We passed a couple of guys that were playing in the trees that had come upon a chameleon. They of course knocked it out of the tree which was unfortunate for them and the chameleon, but good for us. We stopped to take a close look at it as it was trying to make its way up again.
After taking a few pictures of the chameleon we gave up on our quest to find the lookout and instead just headed back towards my slippers. By the time we happened upon my slippers my feet were so numb it didn't really make any difference whether I put my slippers back on or not. The short hike was actually a long hike with no payoff, but we still had a nice time nonetheless and then headed to the beach for a nice rest.

Cave Kayaking, San Diego

2010-08-31T13:59:00.000-07:00

I went home for a 10 day visit to San Diego for a wedding and to spend time with family. Unfortunately mom had to go in for emergency heart surgery the day I landed which turned out to be a blessing since I was able to be there, but it definitely put a cramp in spending "fun" time with mom. I was able to sneak away from the hospital for small bits of fun here and there to see the sun and take a break.

My first break was spent kayaking with Theresa. She's been taking care of my kayaks since I moved away, and I'm glad that she's been able to use them intermittently while I have been away. No point in useful things sitting in storage. We loaded up the kayaks on her roof racks and drove them to La Jolla shores. By far La Jolla shores is the best place to kayak. It has an easy place to launch the kayaks, the scenery is nice, and its relatively calm there. We launched the kayaks and while paddling out I saw a couple stingrays and some leopard sharks. Summer time seems to be pretty popular for both creatures. The leopard sharks can get up to about 6 feet long, but these ones were only about 4 feet. Unsettling if you didn't know that they are harmless. Nobody likes to see shadowy creatures swimming beneath them.

The water was calm and glassy, and it made kayaking out over the waves relatively easy. We headed straight for the cliffs nearby which takes about 15-20 minutes. Not much to see in the ocean along the way, but the scenery of the beach, the hills, and the cliffs is always beautiful. Usually I kayak in the early morning, so it was nice to kayak while it was quite warm out. Of course there were kayaking tours going on, so we sped past them in hopes of getting a bit of quiet time near the cliffs and caves. Along the southern part of the area are the caves that probably stretch up about 50 feet or so. There are small caves running through most of them, but depending on the waves and tide they're not always navigable.

We were able to make it to the caves just as a small group had toured around. The cave entrance is fairly small, but opens up quite a bit once inside. If its anything but low tide you can usually kayak all the way through, then come out near the shore on the other side. We entered and just kinda played around, taking pictures and kayaking around. The sea was very calm so hanging around inside the cave was easy. We were in there about 20 minutes and I think we went around a couple times before heading out and getting a close look at the seals that were sunning nearby.

The big seal was fighting for a position on the rocks and most of the smaller ones scooted to the side so as not to be bothered by the ruckus. A few of the curious seals swam around in the water near the kayaks, poking their heads up every once and a while. I got a nice glimpse of them swimming under the kayak and was able to see a few of the orange garibaldi fish hanging out near the kelp underwater.

After taking a bit of a break and a leisurely paddle along the cliffs and back to the shore we arrived safely without tipping over while riding the waves into shore. Surprisingly coming back to land is usually when you get the wettest as your kayak wants to turn sideways and tip over when riding a wave in. We both managed to steer ourselves straight in, and then after getting settled, headed to Sushi Deli for an early dinner.

New Orleans : drinks to-go

2010-05-20T21:42:00.000-07:00

I was home at some point last year visiting with my mom. We talked like we always do (well she talked and asked questions, and I answered since I'm not much of a gabber). We somehow got on the topic of traveling and places to see. New York came up, Germany, Canada, and New Orleans. She hadn't been to any of them (although I think she was in the southwestern part of Canada some time ago). Come Christmas-time, I was as usual lacking a decent present to get her. What do you get someone that won't ever tell you what they want? I decided to plan a trip for us-a getaway for a few days that, with a decent pricepoint, would save me the trouble of getting both a christmas and a birthday present.

Germany was out of the question, the planning, cost, etc associated with that was not gonna do it. New York made me uneasy with the pace and imagining getting runned down on the subway stairs while everyone was trying to hop on an arriving subway. I settled on New Orleans. It was not terribly expensive, it seemed like a decently fun place to take her and it was somewhat close to San Diego. I booked the trip and sent mom the info to look at.

Fast forward to the beginning of May...we were headed to New Orleans. Somehow along the way, a trip for two expanded to a trip for 6. My good friend Michelle and her fiance' David decided to come and Davids dad and step mom lived in Louisiana. Flying into New Orleans, my mom and I had a couple hours to eat dinner with Michelle and David before they drove out to meet his dad. We sat down in the restaurant of the lobby of what was to be Michelle's hotel the next night. I had forgotten that some parts of the world still smoked indoors, but they seemed well ventilated. A beer and some catfish, and I was pleasantly happy. The catfish was fried, but with just a dusting of flour it didnt retain much oil and was so moist. We had some food, chatted a bit, then David and Michelle said their goodbyes and we headed out for a walk towards the french quarter.

The walk to the french quarter from our place was about 6 blocks. The area we were in was just east of the french quarter. Its an area that is being updated and it seems like quite a few young people are moving into the neighborhood to make it cool and funky. A block from our place was a great modern 60's cafe with cool interior design and good mochi ice cream. The houses along the walk were amazing. Trim, colors, design, things you just dont seem to see an abundance of anymore. After a trek through the french quarter I walked back with mom and got her settled in, then changed and headed out to Bourbon street (where all the partying and drinking goes down!).

Last time I was in New Orleans was some time ago and for a big gay dance, drink, etc party. It was wall-to-wall gays. The go-go dancers were completely naked (i saw some of them accept bills in the most unlikely ways). While this was no party, there were still a decent number of people out even for a thursday night. The straight area of Bourbon St was quite busy with the smell of puke and the stumbling of guys and girls occurring at regular intervals. I basically wondered around from bar to bar to check things out and hang out. i was struck at the, um, shall we say, disadvantage appearance of most of the gays that were out; okay, they were ugly, I said it. Not a problem for me, but it's always nicer to be around pretty people. I guess the lack of exercise, constant drinking and smoking doesn't really do well for your appearance. Most of the bars were two stories and had everyone been condensed into one or two bars the places would have been packed. Instead there were about 6-7 bars that were only about 1/2 full. I stayed out for a few hours perusing the scene, then got bored and went home.

Friday morning we got an early start (of course), and walked towards the French Quarter. We marveled at the buildings again, walked towards the Mississippi river and toured all the tourist shops. As in most tourist destinations, there were three shops, repeated 500 times. All the bars and drinking places were open fairly early. Since mom had to stop to use the restroom about every 500 feet, i felt obliged to order a drink at most places while she used their facilities. Not a bad compromise. Soon we were passing through the French Quarter and heading onto the streetcar through the Garden District.

The streetcar was cool, but the operators really made it fun. They all seemed to have a similar quirky, outgoing personality. Passing through the Garden District was beautiful. Giant houses well maintained and beautiful. All of the ones on the main street that the streetcar passed by were fantastically maintained. We rode the Streetcar to the end of the route, turned around and came back. Total trip was about 40 minutes or so. For $1.50 each way, it was completely worth it. We popped off the streetcar and grabbed a bite to eat near our hotel. We ate at the Praline Connection. All the waiters were dressed like it was the 20's. Fedora hats, white shirts, i wasn't sure if we were at lunch or in a michael jackson video. Not knowing what we wanted to eat, we shared the sampler plate which basically had a taste of everything. It was a taste though, so you never really got enough of the ones that were delicious, and the ones that weren't all that great were easily stomached. It came with an amazing bread pudding for dessert. Crispy and caramelized with a wonderful rum sauce. Not usually a fan of bread pudding, but this was delicious. I gobbled it up and we headed back to our place for a little rest before meeting with with Michelle et. al.

Michelle, David, Davids dad (Al, I think), and his girlfriend Faye all arrived. Their place was a block from ours (since ours was booked up when Michelle made reservations. We met them in the restaurant in the bottom floor of their place and had a drink before heading out for a walk into the french quarter to find some food. We walked and talked and took breaks, then grabbed a carriage ride through the french quarter with descriptions of some of the buildings and sites to see. It was only $15 per person, so it seemed like a decent deal. They even stopped at a bar, had a waitress come out and get our order, and delivered drinks to us without ever having to get out of the carriage. After the carriage ride we hopped in a cab and headed home. We after dropping the elders off at home, we freshened up and Michelle, David and I headed out to Bourbon St to have some fun.

The straight area of Bourbon St is infinitely more busy than the gay section. It was fun to watch the straight people walk down Bourbon, then abruptly stop at the gay section and ponder the other side from the corner. Most of the time they just turn around and head back the way that they came. Occasionally they venture over into the "dark side," then get bored when they see it's not as exciting as they imagined. David, Michelle and I took turns picking places to go. We started off at a gay place and had a drink there, talked to a few people (one of which told us about a bar that had a mechanical bull painted like a killer whale), danced around a bit, then headed out. Next was Michelles pick. We went to the Hurricane bar and all split a "Grenade." It was some sort of mixture of medori, coconut rum, and a variety of other mixers and booze. It was entirely too sweet and even with the three of us splitting it, we had difficulty finishing the sweet drink. The bars were pretty packed this friday, but not entirely entertaining. I guess drinking was the entertainment. Oh, i forgot to tell you the best part of Bourbon St.... to go cups! You can buy a drink in any bar, drink it, take it outside and drink it while walking around, and you can even walk into another bar with it. It was awesome! We drank, then left a bar and walked around till we finished it. After we had tackled the Grenade drink it was Dave's turn to pick. He thought that the mechanical killer whale sounded interesting, so we headed down towards the end of Bourbon St to find this mythical killer whale. How we found it, I'll never know (I had put away a few drinks by that point). Eventually we made our way down a small side street that emptied into a large outdoor bar/club. Everyone was dancing and drinking and eventually we pushed our way to the back of the club towards the towering Shamu inspired mechanical bull. Michelle tried to get me to ride it. Haha, "no way!" I flatly refused. Although no one seemed to be paying attention to the platform, I didn't really have any desire to ride it. After some haggling back and forth I agreed to ride it only after Michelle hopped on it. I dont think either of us really were going for a record (i held on with one hand), but we just wanted to be able to say that we rode it. I'm guessing that if I were sober and used both hands that I could have stayed on for a decent amount of time, but since that was not the case, I really only lasted about 20 seconds for each ride (marginally longer than Michelle's ride). Luckily Dave took video with his iphone for all to see. Shortly after the Shamu ride, everything else seemed rather dull. I think we stayed around for a bit longer, before making our way back down Bourbon St. Michelle and Dave caught a cab home and after about another 30-40 mins out, I walked back to our place also.

Saturday was our trip to a plantation. It was called Oak "something." Taking about an hour to drive there wasn't so bad, and I would say it was worth it. The house itself was fairly unremarkable, although it was huge and southern. The tour girl was interesting to me. I wasn't sure if the accent that she had was real or fake. It sounded pretty fake, but I'm not accustomed to high-brow southern accents so I could have been mistaken. She told us about the original owners and how ownership had changed over the years. About the uses for a variety of the old items that were in the house. I found it interesting that the most recent owner poured tons of money into the house to get it back to its original look, but left the location of the kitchen unchanged (which was clear across the yard to keep it from setting fire to the house). I also don't remember seeing a bathroom in the house. Either I overlooked it, or maybe you had to cross the yard for that as well. We stayed for a few hours, to see the plantation, the house, and get some food before making our way back to the French Quarter.

Sunday, our friends departed and it was just me and mom. Mothers day. Mom woke up at the crack of dawn as usual, while I tried to sleep in. When i got up she told me that she had already eaten breakfast, so we went out and she watched me eat breakfast at a cafe down the street. Then we walked over to the French quarter, checked out the French Market and decided to take a steamboat ride down the Mississippi. The steamboat ride was pretty neat. I was surprised at how quiet and smooth the boat was; i guess without all the noisy propellers and engines things used to be a lot quieter in the past. The boat ride took a few hours, just enough time to get a forehead burn and relax in the breezy sun. I felt kinda like a lame duck since my mom paid for breakfast and the steamboat ride, but I dont even put up a struggle anymore on those things. I'll offer to pay, but if she starts to get insistent I completely back down. I've learned my lesson over the past 30 years. After the steamboat ride we went back to finish up the French Market, picking up some organic candles and voodoo dolls, before heading back home. We grabbed a sandwich on the way and I soaked in the hot tub for a bit while mom relaxed in the a/c. I of course went out one final time that night and was lucky enough to head into the French Quarter with a gay couple that was staying in our same place. They were in the Master suite downstairs which was HUGE and had a kitchen and everything. They made us drinks for the walk (ahhhh new orleans) and we used the time on the walk to get to know each other.

They were from Texas and had been together for about three years. I've completely forgotten their names at this point, but I'm not very good at names anyways. We had drinks and chatted and sat on the balcony of one of the clubs and made fun of people down below. We popped from club to bar to bar drinking along the way. It was another semi-busy night but could have been much better if there were more people out. Nothing terribly eventful happened and at around 1am we walked back to our place outside the French Quarter.

Monday we killed time with a tour to one of the cemeteries and then gobbled down German food before heading to the airport for our flight home. It was a relaxing end to the long weekend and we were home by 10pm to have Dave and Michelle pick us up and drop us off at home. I had a good time and it was nice to be able to take my mom somewhere she hadn't been before. I may go back, but probably only for a bit event week or something like that. It'd be nice to see the place packed like the first time i went.

Raiders of the lost temple...Bauphoun

2010-02-09T17:30:00.000-08:00

Yes, we came all this way to see Angkor Wat, but it seemed to be last on our list. While I did get some really awesome sunrise pictures from Angkor, my absolute favorite temple was Baphoun. Unexpected and eerily quiet, it was just an awesome surprise. We arrived at Baphoun fairly late in the morning and headed into the temple. We were dropped off by the entrance and followed the usual procedure :

1) get dropped off

2) get mobbed by kids selling crap

3) run away from the children

4) get mobbed by other kids selling crap

5) escape into the temple

It seems that its an unwritten rule that the kids selling their junk are not allowed in the temple area. Makes it nice to be able to enjoy a temple without the prospects of tripping over a small child and the uneven stones at the same time. The walk to the Baphoun temple seemed rather lengthy and followed a dirt road in a straight line. Since we didn't really know anything about the temple we just meandered down the road chatting. In a little less than 10 minutes the road opened up into an awesome site. As soon as I could see the temple I knew why it was featured in the TombRaider movie. The front entrance has several HUGE trees growing from random places. These trees seemed able to plant themselves anywhere and grow up hundreds of feet. On top of stones, between stones, under stones, it didn't matter. These huge trees planted their roots and grew, and grew, and grew.

This temple once stood firm huge with lots of covered passages and flowing with carvings. During the Khmer war the militia came in and tore it down. The interlocking stones fell like a giant jigsaw puzzle in minutes. In no time the entire temple was flattened, but not completely ruined. While the pieces remained scattered, they were left fairly intact, the hard part has been reassembling them. With money from the World Heritage Foundation they have been reassembling this temple stone-by-stone in hopes that it can regain some of its former glory. In its current state however, I find it completely breathtaking. By far, my favorite of any temple that I have seen the pictures do not do justice to convey the size and scale of it.

I took a number of pictures near the entrance (which i believe ended up being the rear entrance). The tall towering trees climbing out of the stone was something I just could not get enough of. We wondered through the temple for a little over an hour, but I easily could have spent hours there. It was not too overrun with tourists and there were pockets of isolated silence everywhere.

As grandma wandered off (as she was frequently doing), and David went to hunt her down, I snuck through old doorways and hopped over scattered parts to the building. When i came out the other side it was an area that was completely empty of people. The trees were mostly shading the area and it was still cool since the sun hadn't warmed up the stones yet. I spun around in the empty side courtyard and took a moment to enjoy the stillness. I could have sat there and enjoyed for quite some time. I looked at the carvings on the face of the old stones that lay everywhere. Still well preserved even after all this time and having fallen down from the original structure. I guess in war, there's no appreciation for anything, just destruction. It's always possible to rebuild, but so much easier to maintain.

When I figured enough time had passed that David and Grandma would be looking for me, i scampered back over the stones, through the doorway, hallway and another courtyard before coming upon grandma and David. We had only been through about half of the structure, so we spent another 30-45 minutes looking around some more. After some time we headed out the opposite way that we came in, which ended up being the entrance. Workers were in place rebuilding the long raised platform where people must have entered when the building was intact. I would say that about 80% of the original structure remained in some form, but most of that was laying in jumbled pieces on the ground. they were putting everything back in place and refilling the missing pieces with concrete.

Although it will be impressive if they are ever able to return this temple to its original form, I'm not sure how I would take it. Seeing the filled in pieces and cracks with concrete, the restoration just looked...disappointing. I feel like even though it would come together, it would still be missing something. I much prefer to let my mind piece the building together, brick by brick, and imagine its former glory. in the mind, everything can be recreated however you want, but when there's a physical structure there its sometimes hard to live up to your imagination.

Slideshow:http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157623097103504/show/

Angkor Thom - The Temple of Many Faces

2010-01-29T15:10:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately my memory of my trip is fading fast so i figure I should get it down in here before it's completely gone. Luckily I have pictures to pick up where my memory left off.

I think it was at this point in our trip that I started thinking of how nice it was when i was traveling the year before. I had no job, no time constraints and my pockets were filled with cash/euro/yen/pounds (thanks to all my Illumina stock options that I cashed out). This trip we had 4 days in each country, and even though we were staying in the same city in each country, it just didn't feel like enough time. We had just digested our first day in Siem Reap and were off to two more sites in one day (the second one comprised of many temples). After Bantay Srey, we headed on the long ride back towards "town." After over an hours ride (at which point I marveled how David and his grandma were able to fall asleep...their heads swaying back and forth in the tuk tuk) we were at the entrance to Ankor Thom. Certainly impressive from the road, each cardinal direction had its own entrance. The entrance we went through was not well preserved and most of the heads were missing from the statues. Even still it was impressive. We paused for pictures, and to stretch our legs before heading into the walled area.
Before embarking on our tour of Angkor Thom we stopped to get a bit to eat at a roadside stand. The food was good and David and I each got a coconut to drink. They basically just chop the top off and stick a straw in it. So delicious! After the coconut water was empty i grabbed a spoon and began to scrape out the coconut meat from inside. The way i scraped I was able to get the entire meat out in one piece. The locals for some reason got a kick out of that and were all pointing and smiling.
Fully refreshed in the muggy heat, we started off to what i called the "faces" temple. It had faces carved into the stone on almost every surface. As usual I kept imagining what it looked like when it was first built since it was so impressive even still. Davids grandma understandably didn't feel like going up the narrow stairs so David and I headed up to look around and take pictures. It was such an awesome sight and for some reason reminded me of old Mayan pictures. We grabbed space in the shade when we could to admire the temple before heading out to find grandma who kept wandering off all the time.
In Angkor Thom there were a number of sites, but we were pointed to the Elephant wall, the "faces" temple, another temple, and the buddha statue. We popped by the Buddha statue for a moment to rest before walking on the Elephant wall. The surface of the elephant wall was covered with sculpted elephant heads that went on for hundreds and hundreds of feet. We walked towards another temple, then a reflecting pool, then along the top of the elephant wall for a while. it was at this point that nothing was interesting to me anymore. I was bored of the temples and didn't feel like walking on a wall any longer. I sent david and his grandma off to finish sightseeing and I collapsed on the grass. Even though I was in the sun, at least I wasnt moving. I was able to watch david and his grandma walk away and examine the stone elephants. I wondered what it used to look like as the elephants were marched on this wall between the temples. A parade of elephants, must have been an amazing site.

After not too long we collected ourselves and headed back to the tuk tuk. We stopped by a couple of other temples that were small in comparison, but still interesting to look at. We we mobbed by children selling their wares at one of the small temples. After working them down to $1 for two packs of ten cards David walked away embarrassed for having gotten these cards for so cheap, and me smiling brightly on such a good deal. On the way out of the Thom compound we exited through a gate that had much better preserved statues. Most of the heads were still there, and quite a number still had their faces on :) We thought we were done when we were driving back, but it turned out that there was one more thing to see...monkeys!

I guess i've never seen a monkey up close, except at the zoo. They're rather cute, but intimidating for their size. Rather like a feral cat, you just never know how nice they're gonna be. I stood and took pictures of David feeding bread to the monkeys before I asked for some to give to them also. I ripped a piece off and handed it to one of the monkeys. His little 5-fingered hand stretched out and grabbed the piece then backed up a safe distance so he could scarf it down. I'm not really sure if bread is their thing, but they ate it nonetheless. At this point the monkey came back for round two, unprepared, I hadn't ripped off a piece of bread for him. "thats okay" he thought "i'll just take the whole thing" and with that he grabbed the entire baguette out of my hand and bounced away. Sneaky little buggers. Luckily David still had some bread so I shared with him-guarding it more carefully. We smiled at the monkeys, and bounded back into the Tuk Tuk for a ride home. The rest of the day was spent lazily around town. Walking through the market and grabbing dinner at the Butterfly Restaurant. Unfortunately butterflies dont fly at night, but the food was still good.

Slideshow :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157623096828746/show/

Banteay Srey....its far far away

2010-01-11T09:59:00.000-08:00

Our first "real" temple visit was to Banteay Srey. Because it was so new (in historical terms) and left relatively undisturbed, a majority of the carving and stonework was left well preserved. We had an early morning breakfast and headed to the temple sometime in the morning. We used our usual Tuk Tuk driver and headed out. He said it was a faraway temple, but i dont think we realized what that would mean in terms of time. With three of us in a Tuk Tuk we puttered along s.l.o.w.l.y. Cars, busses, motorcycles, and even other tuk tuks passed us with ease. We probably added another 30 minutes to our 1.5 hour trip to the faraway temple. The drive was nice enough through small villages and tiny roadside stands. After about the first hour though the trip got to be really sluggish.

Finally though, we arrived, hopped out of the tuk tuk, stretched our legs a bit and headed straight for the bathroom. Being the camel that I am, i decided to take a look at the informational plaques about the temple while David and grandma headed to the restroom. The temple was just down the way, and just on the otherside of the restrooms was an outdoor market. The area was surrounded by a small irrigation moat that fed some water plants and a bird sanctuary. We headed past the market and towards the Banteay Srey temple. Since it was the first temple in Cambodia that I was to see up close (the sunset temple didnt really seem like a full-fledged temple to me), i made sure to take in the whole thing very slowly. The entire temple had an entrance that led up to a walled area which then had a moat surrounding the temple. I could imagine that when it was fully preserved that it was remarkable. Even now, it was remarkable. The outer temple was poor in preservation, but even from afar you could tell that the inner temple was extremely well preserved.

Out of all the temples i have seen, the stone carvings of this temple were the most amazing. I imagine that they all looked like this at one point or another. The detail was so amazing and since it was so newly discovered everything was fairly well intact. There were figures and shapes covering almost all the surfaces here. I believe the temple was built to honor Shiva, but i'm not exactly sure on that. I could have stood for hours just admiring and touching the carvings, and we may have stayed there for about an hour and a half just looking at the carvings. I snapped up a ton of pictures and eventually we headed out the backside to walk through the forest on the backside.

After heading around the temple we passed through the water field where the bird sanctuary started and then headed to the outdoor market. The children here were extremely eager to sell you anything. I got a couple of cold cokes for a buck (the currency in Cambodia is not officially the US dollar, but no one uses anything else). I think we ended up buying 5 scarves for a buck each (after working them down from $4 for one). I became the master bargainer in the group for two reasons : 1) i really don't want anything that they're selling. Sure they have some nice stuff, but the through of lugging all the crap back home to give away as souvenirs just never suited me (which is why none of my friends get anything more than a postcard when i'm traveling) 2) i'm unsympathetic. David and grandma either feel so sorry for these kids trying to sell you a deck of postcards or a scarf or tshirt that they eventually cave. Me? Nah. I'll work them down so low that they're practically paying me to take it off their hands. So in the end we walked away with a couple handfuls of items for 6 bucks which i still considered to be overpaying.

My favorite part of Banteay Srey was the monkey sculptures. They were set far inside the temple and there wasn't access so you couldn't get too close, but even from far away they were quite a sight. As far as detail was concerned this temple was by far the best preserved and most detailed out of all the temples we had seen.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157623065058462/show/

Sunset View - everyone's invited

2010-01-07T15:11:00.000-08:00

After the visit to the "Floating Septic Village" we piled into the Tuk Tuk and headed back into town towards the Angkor Wat ticket office. At $40 for a 3 day pass to the entire temple area it seemed rather expensive (food for 2 weeks, lodging for 3 nights, etc). The pass entitled us to view any of the temples/sites in Siem Reap (there are probably somewhere between 30-50 of them).

We forked over our cash, had our pictures taken for the badges and within minutes we (and 50,000 other visitors) were on our way to take a look at the Phnom Bakheng temple for a sunset view. The view from Phnom Bakheng overlooks most of the Angkor area which at one time housed over 1 million people (far more than any other city at that time). In order to see the view you would first have to trek up and around the small mountain on which the temple was perched.
It was arm to arm with people and there was nothing but dust in the air as people trudged their way up. We went at a slow and steady pace for about 30 minutes until we got to the top. Already the upper area of the temple was crawling with what looked like ant-sized people. Every seating space was filled, but in order to get to the top you have to climb the tall steps of the temple. The proportions of the building made the steps seem surprisingly average-from afar. As soon as you got to the steps you realized that each step tread was about 5 inches in depth (perfect, if you're walking sideways up the steps). The rise on each step was easily 2 feet. I guess they hadn't established the 7"-11" rise-to-run rule yet for stairs. I headed up first to see if it were even possible to get grandma to the top. About halfway up it was obvious that there was no way we could get grandma up, even if we carried her. I ran up, took a bunch of quick pictures and then headed down to keep grandma company while David went up for the view.

The view was pretty spectacular, but i couldn't help feeling like it would have been better before sunset. With the sun setting in your face you lose all ability to see the surrounding area and treetops, so really what you get to see is the horizon line and a big glowing orange ball of sunlight. We milled around, catching about 30 minutes of the sun setting before I thought it would be a good idea to head down the mountain. There was about 10 minutes of sunlight left and I wasn't really keen on scampering down the hill in the dark with hundreds of clumsy tourists.

We convinced grandma to go down with David on the Elephant. Not necessarily for the thrill of riding an elephant, but because it was the easiest way for her down the mountain. i trotted and weaved through the throngs of people and made it down to the bottom about 10 minutes before David and Grandma-just enough time to snap a few hazy pictures of them on the elephant (all the dust being kicked up in the air made it impossible to get a good picture at that point).

We met up with our driver and headed back to town for some food, a shower, and a good nights rest.

Floating Village - the poorest waterfront housing

2010-01-05T15:00:00.001-08:00

After passing through Bangkok for a few days I met up with David and his Grandma and we headed to Siem Reap Cambodia. Grandma had been traveling for about 2+ weeks in Bangkok already, but she was full steam ahead on our way to Cambodia. We flew Bangkok Air which is always a treat (even on an hour flight you still get a meal packaged in cute little boxes served by beautiful girls and guys in traditional outfits).

We hopped off the plane, walked across the tarmac and zipped through customs in about 30 minutes after which we hopped into a taxi and headed to a guest house listed in the Lonely Planet guidebook. The taxi driver gave us the runaround and dropped us off at some crummy guest house (no doubt a friend of his) that was next to a busy intersection undergoing construction. We took a look at the place and decided it wasnt for us and headed to the place we initially intended where we were informed that all the rooms were booked. The alternative was their newer location about 2 blocks away. The new location wasn't on the river, but it was new, cheap, and had a swimming pool. We piled all of our items in the back of one of their tuk tuks (basically a motor scooter with a riding trailer attached) and after jumping in ourselves putted along at what was no faster than the pace of a slow jogger. We took a look around and settled in to a nice, clean, new guesthouse that was expensive at $22 a night. The tuk tuk driver told us he would take us to see the floating city, get our Angkor Wat tickets, and enjoy the sunset view from the temple but we had some time to kill so we headed into the city to grab some food and look around a bit.
Food was good, although not really Cambodian, and after looking through the shops we piled into the tuk tuk and headed to the floating city. Our initial plans were just to see the sunset the first day, but we were easily swayed into seeing a bit more. It was off to the floating Village of Chong Khneas.

I don't really think that I had anticipated the poverty of a floating village (in my mind it was like a little city of colorful houses bobbing along the edge of the huge lake.) Once we stepped into the loud rickety motorboat operated by two kids whose total age was still less than my age of 31. i kept my eyes on the floorboard for what was sure to be a leak that would spring up at any moment and ran through various escape scenarios of how we would swim to shore tugging grandma along.

My fears were never realized, but after about 20 minutes we arrived at the beginning of the floating village to see a child being held over the edge to take a dump in the water. Seconds later i would see the same water being used to wash the dishes on another boat.

The beautifully colored floating houses ended up being rickety barges or small boats tethered to each other or some river trees. The more we rode through the city the more depressing the view got. I suppose thats only from my point of view since we take certain luxuries for granted. The village consisted mostly of Vietnamese refugees that had come during the war in their country (so we were told). The conditions looked bleak, but apparently had persisted for some time. They lived, ate, crapped and bathed in the same lake water.

The most interesting sight was the young boy floating around in what looked to be a large aluminum pot or cooking tub. He had one arm and was paddling through the choppy lake water. The tub barely fit him, but it was apparently enough to get him to where he needed to go. At one point a small zip boat passed by and simultaneously through our driver a soda and collected change without apparently even making contact with our boat. We declined their offer for drinks and our next stop was a floating building that housed farmed catfish and alligators. i'm not really sure the purpose of this building other than another reason to have tourists stop and fork over some cash for fresh water or a snack. We were in and out of there in about 5 minutes, headed back to the port.

The entire trip took perhaps 2 hours with grandma doing most of the talking to the boat "captain." I guess they operated the boat for the owner for free in hopes of collecting enough in tips to make it worthwhile. I'm assuming that in an average day they made perhaps 5 trips through the floating village and collected enough to sustain themselves. The entire visit was a bit difficult to handle. I tended not to take pictures when i made eye contact with them as i felt rather like a visitor at a zoo, with the exception that the animals were just people in unfortunate circumstances.

We took a minute to get back into the tuk tuk and plugged along to the next stop : Angkor Wat ticket booth.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157622940173717/show/

Hawaiian Halloween

2009-11-16T09:57:00.000-08:00

Okay, Halloween in Hawaii is nuts!! Waikiki is packed so full of people that in order to walk down the sidewalk you have to take baby steps. As usual I waited until the last minute to pick out a costume. As usual it turned out okay, but could have been better.

Since I was cheap and my coworker Anita is broke we decided to go simple. Zombies! Its easy enough to be dead people, but we thought we'd add a little twist and be zombie doctors. With stolen scrubs from David and Anitas stolen lab coat, plus $5 in face paint we were able to turn ourselves into ugly dead zombies in about 20 minutes. David was more a political statement with his "do ask, do tell" military outfit. Signifying the current ban on gays in the military. David didn't want to be a zombie because its one of his fears in life (sharks being the other). Sharks, I kinda understand, but zombies? Oh well.

Anita came over a little before we were supposed to go out and we plastered on the white face makeup and dark circles. Looking at the pictures I probably should have followed Anitas lead and whitened my arms too (i had the tannest zombie arms around). It didn't take more than half hour or so before we were all ready to go out. Our plan was to walk from my house over and meet Davids sister at their hotel room that they rented. A bit before we were planning to head out Anitas friend called and wanted to go to Halloween in waikiki, but didn't have a costume. Luckily I still had the Ugly Betty costume that I made last year (or ugliest betty as I liked to call myself last year). We decided at the last minute that we would get picked up by Anitas friend, give him the costume and since he lived in waikiki we could go park at his place and walk into waikiki together. Our goal was to head towards Davids sisters hotel room which turned out to be on the opposite side of waikiki from where we parked.

As we walked into waikiki, we were met with the biggest crowd of people I have ever seen in hawaii. Every inch of the sidewalk was crammed full of people. I would say about half were just here on vacation and didnt have costumes, the other half were dressed up in a wide array of costumes. Zombies seemed to be the clear favorite, with a surprising number of Jackson's as well. I think my favorite of the night was the gingerbread man, although I can only imagine how hot and sweaty that guy was in that huge costume.

We walked down the main street towards the hotel, shuffling the whole way. Eventually we ended up meeting up with a bunch of my coworkers. Hawaiian tourist, The Ring Girl, Zombie, and chocolate guy were who we met up with. We grabbed them, then headed towards the hotel in a group. As Anita, David, Betty, and I went upstairs the rest stayed in the bar downstairs for a drink. Along the way we picked up Dinosaur Kiandra. Upstairs Kaui, Ahlinn, and Keenan had a bunch of friends over and they were having drinks before heading out. Kaui was Jessica Rabbit, from "who framed roger rabbit", and keenan and ahlinn were characters from a video game/movie. After about 45 minutes of hanging out we all went downstairs. The rest of the night was sort of disjointed with everyone kinda going their own way. Anita and I stuck together since Zombies have to stick together. At one point we headed into Jack in the Box for a quick bite to eat, then we saw Jack in the Box walking down the street with Ronald McDonald. We saw plenty of the usual slutty costumes and decided that next year we weren't going to be so ugly. We havent decided on a costume yet, but we're thinking that we want to be something a little more sexy. We're in our thirties and we're not getting any younger. Time to show it off before we look like zombies every day when we wake up.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157622733249544/show/

Home sweet home...in Hawaii

2009-11-05T12:12:00.000-08:00

So, for the most part my place is pretty much put together. There are some odds and ends that I still need to finish up, but I'd say it's about 80% done. I've struck out on accent drapes for upstairs, but found a steal for the accent ones downstairs, so I suppose i'm about even on that front. I still need some rugs, and I'm undecided on an accent color upstairs, but all the major pieces are in.

I suppose when you've gone to design school you're never 100% satisfied with anything that you do and my own places have always been that way. I've had to make a lot of compromises with my own personal style and design for my place for a few reasons. One is that things are crazy expensive here in Hawaii so I've furnished my place with items I found on craigslist. With exception of the entertainment center for my television and my mattress (certainly not going to go second-hand on that). Overall I found some pretty good deals although prices are inflated.

The view and the breeze through my unit are my favorite qualities. The clouds in the morning with the sunrise coming over diamondhead are beautiful most mornings. I have two air conditioning boxes, but have unplugged them and haven't really had the need to turn them on at all thanks to the wonderful design of the building. In addition to the fact that each unit has an upstairs and downstairs, each unit also spans the entire width of the building. To get a nice breeze going all you have to do is open the windows/door on both sides of the building and it flows right through.

The hard part about designing for this particular condo is that one entire wall is concrete. So installing anything like pictures or art is particularly difficult. The stairwell sconce at the bottom of the stairs is held on by double sided tape. I used a TON of it so that it wouldn't fall off at some point and shatter on the ground. The artwork in my bedroom is the same. I used small picture frames and put them up with double sided tape. Apparently the frames don't like to stay up because for the first three nights one or two of the pictures would crash down in the middle of the night. Luckily they're small and don't break easily so there hasn't been any shattered glass. On the downside I think that it so traumatized my cat that she hardly ever sleeps downstairs anymore for fear of being woken up in the middle of the night by falling picture frames.

I'll put more pictures up when i have it finally how I want. Just a handful of things left to do:

change out the rollers on the sliding glass doors (good thing I'm in shape cause these things are heavy. basically it takes quite a large effort to pull the doors opened or closed since the rollers have worn out many years ago)

Decide on an accent color upstairs and paint the inside of the front door and one small wall.

Put up some artwork behind the television somehow (concrete wall, still not sure what to do)

Accent drapes for the livingroom.

Small rugs for the kitchen, bathroom, and livingroom as well as the two lanai's.

Install a ceiling fan for the bedroom downstairs. (concrete ceiling, that could be interesting)

Possibly replace the carpeting in the bedroom downstairs. (currently it's crappy apartment-grade carpeting)

Reupholster the dining room chairs and make matching accent pillows for the sofa/sidechair.

Japanese Bon Festival - sending souls out to the ocean

2009-07-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

First, A Description : "Obon (お盆) or just Bon (盆) is a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the departed (deceased) spirits of one's ancestors. This Buddhist custom has evolved into a family reunion holiday during which people return to ancestral family places and visit and clean their ancestors' graves, and when the spirits of ancestors are supposed to revisit the household altars. Also called the Feast of Lanterns, it has been celebrated in Japan for more than 500 years and traditionally includes a dance, known as Bon-Odori.

Bon Odori originates from the story of Mokuren, a disciple of the Buddha, who used his supernatural powers to look upon his deceased mother. He discovered she had fallen into the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and was suffering. Greatly disturbed, he went to the Buddha and asked how he could release his mother from this realm. Buddha instructed him to make offerings to the many Buddhist monks who had just completed their summer retreat, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. The disciple did this and, thus, saw his mother's release. He also began to see the true nature of her past unselfishness and the many sacrifices that she had made for him. The disciple, happy because of his mother's release and grateful for his mother's kindness, danced with joy. From this dance of joy comes Bon Odori or "Bon Dance", a time in which ancestors and their sacrifices are remembered and appreciated. See also: Ullambana Sutra.

As Obon occurs in the heat of the summer, participants traditionally wear yukata, or light cotton kimonos. Many Obon celebrations include a huge carnival with rides, games, and summer festival food like watermelon.

The festival ends with Toro Nagashi , or the floating of lanterns. Paper lanterns are illuminated and then floated down rivers symbolically signaling the ancestral spirits' return to the world of the dead. This ceremony usually culminates in a fireworks display."

We started out the evening waiting for John to get home from shooting a new work commercial. Lori was sick, so she wasn't going to join us, but she packed up a bunch of delicious food for us to take to the festival. She stayed home to rest and David, John (davids dad) and I piled into the Prius for the ride to Haleiwa on the north side of the island. The ride takes about 45 minutes so we had time to chat about our days. John asked if I would be okay with going to the festival because it was Buddhist. I told him that of course, and that if I were to choose a religion it would probably be buddhist because it seems the most benign. I've never a problem with religion per se, but I have issues with the institution of religion that tends to distort the actual message of religion. What was once supposed to be something that brought about peace and unity has been so distorted that it's really just a polarizing point of view these days. Buddhism these days seems to be the most "easy going" of religions that I've been exposed to.

We arrived in Haleiwa at around 630 or so and there was plenty of parking available, so we pulled in and unpacked the car. We met up with a group of the Yamane's friends that were already camped out, but had been waiting for us before they started eating. We laid out the food and descended like a swarm of hungry locusts on it. As always, there was way too much food and so I would say that about 1/3 of it was being pawned off onto one person or another at the end of the night. Usually they try and push it on the youngest of skinniest, or in David and my's case...the biggest eaters. We sat down to eat and chatted with everyone. We had our japanese robes on and bandanas (i'm not sure what the real word for the head things are). By the Buddhist temple they had music and food booths setup. Shave ice was only $1, but it was not very good. One flavor, I called it red flavor because it didn't distinctly taste like anything other than sweet. it definitely wasn't cherry or strawberry...just red flavored.

Once dusk was upon us they began the dancing and the girls of the group, plus one of the ladies with her little son went to go dance. We joined them, but at first just to watch. In the courtyard by the temple was a large tower, at the top was the music and singer, and later the drummers. Around the tower, in a circle, were the professional dancers. They were there to dance properly and if you joined in you were to dance in the outer circle. In this way all the beginners had someone to follow who knew what they were doing. It didn't take long before we jumped into the outer circle and followed the dance. Each dance lasted less than 5 minutes, which was just enough time to start out looking like a fool and end up looking like an amateur. We had a good time though and did about 5-6 dances before heading back to "camp."

The dancing progressed for a few hours until the chime sounded indicating that it was time to light the lanterns to send the souls out to sea. The yamane's had 3 lanterns and told me to write my Dads name and David's grandma on one of theirs. We headed down with our lanterns to the waters edge. Slowly a crowd formed and the lighted lanterns were carried out into the water and set adrift on the current. We got our lanterns lit and i waded out thigh deep to place the lanterns on the surface of the ocean. I gave them a slight push and the current picked them up and carried them towards the mass of floating lanterns. It really was a beautiful sight to see all those hundreds of lanterns floating calmly on the top of the water. David and I stood in the shallow water and watched the laterns as they floated away to join the rest of the group. It wasn't long before they were lost in the crowd of floating lights. It was very calm and though there were lots of people it was quiet as well.

We returned back to the camp and could watch from a distance as the people dispersed and the lanterns floated out and away under the sliver of the moon. There was more dancing to be had and the party wrapped up a little after 10pm. It was a great experience, and hopefully I'll be able to go again next year.

Still unsettled in my new place

2009-07-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

Yes, i've been moved into my new place for about two months now. it's been a really slow process and not moving as quickly as I would like. Its the small things that are either unavailable here or extremely expensive. We finally have two Target stores here, but their prices are at least 20% higher than back in san diego, so its not such a good deal. The killer so far are picture frames. Who knew they would be so expensive here? I bought a bunch of rolled up art back with me from san diego figuring that I would mount them and frame them here. In general you can get nice art frames for about $50 bucks on sale in san diego, and sometimes even cheaper. So when I seem ugly art frames starting at $150+ i'm reluctant to try and get anything here. and of course, the saviour of all budgets, IKEA, is nonexistent here...nor do they even ship here. Occasionally people on craigslist will buy a ton of IKEA stuff, leave it boxed up and ship it in bulk then post for sale here. They tack on a 100% markup and voila you can buy IKEA furniture for 2x the amount anywhere else in the States.
My place is liveable, I have a bed, dining table, sofa and tv. Its comfortable but not quite as nice as I would like it to be. Kitty loves her new home, she sits frequently at the top of the stairs where a constant breeze flows through my place. Its been great so far, I'm still waiting for the real heat wave to hit, but so far I havent had to turn on my A/C at all. So for now, no pictures of my place. You'll just have to settle for a morning view from my livingroom lanai

Hawaii Loa Ridge Hike: Its like walking on clouds

2009-07-09T15:52:00.001-07:00

David finally had a sunday off and so he decided to join Ethan and I for a hike to Hawaii Loa Ridge (i think that's the name). Ethan picked this one out and so decided on the Loa Ridge hike. It's a short drive east towards Hawaii Kai before you turn into a gated community off the main road. It's a little strange pulling into a gated community to go hiking, but such is Hawaii. After checking in with the guard and telling him that we were there to go hiking it immediately began sprinkling. The guard said "are you sure you wanna go today?". "you may see us again very soon," we said. After checkin we drove up, and up and up the hillside till we got to the top where there was an entrance to a state maintained trail.

We thought it was strange that there were so many cars parked there already given that it was only about 730 in the morning, but we were there so we shrugged it off. The rain had stopped, and the temperature was maintaining so we started hesitantly on the hike hoping that it wouldn't burst out pouring on us. A couple of minutes into the hike we heard some loud yelling and the wind had picked up a bit. We passed a number of people heading towards the parking lot when we realized why there were so many cars in the lot. A bunch of kids had decided to camp out on the trail over the night. I'm fairly certain that its not allowed, but they likely came late and were leaving early, and leaving a mess behind. The first guy we saw was carrying a BBQ along the trail, while the second person dragged a large cooler along. We passed them and then came upon their tent that was swaying violently in the wind with two guys in it. Trash was everywhere and it didnt seem like these were the type of kids to clean up after themselves.

The rest of the hike was a bit more pleasant and we didn't have to see anyone until we were well on our way back. The trail begins mostly exposed roaming through pines and in and out of tall shrubs. It's not long until you're completely shaded by the pines and other trees. The ground turns soft from fallen leaves and the edges of the trail sprout a mossy covering. The only thing you hear is the soft rustling of the leaves when the wind picks up heavily. Like a roller coaster the trail goes up and down frequently before passing over a large hill. Once you step out from the large hill you can finally glimpse the entire ridge that you'll be following on until the top. The tall trees disappear and evolve from ferns into grass before finally changing into a slightly muddy trail going up the side of the mountain. Overall the hike was a little strenuous but it was the last 1/4 that really kicked our asses. We stopped for a break under the scattered clouds and ate a couple of snacks and took a water break. The views from there were so nice and relaxing, but we knew we had more of a climb to do and so we trudged on.

Since it was a state maintained trail there was decent footing in most places, but with the soft ground and ill-prepared tennis shoes we lost footing frequently. Wearing white on this hike wasn't a great idea, but there wasn't much we could do about it at this point. We climbed and climbed and took a few breaks so david could take a puff from his inhaler. Right before we reached the cloud later we took another short break in preparation for the final ascent. Hiking into the clouds was an awesome experience in just a few short feet we went from views of the coastline to views of fog surrounding us. It was nice in a way because it forced you to focus on the hills directly surrounding you and prevented you from seeing how far away from your final goal you were. The last part of the climb was a killer where each step is about 3 feet from the last, not a problem with good shoes as you can get footing in the surrounding soft dirt, but with ours we were scrambling for footing and hand holds.

short time later you reach what looks like a small helicopter landing pad on the top of the mountain. A small sign marks "end of trail" so you know that you've actually made it. You could see that the more adventurous types took to walking across the ridge to other peaks, but given that the ridge was only a foot wide and had drops of a hundred feet or so on each side it wasn't likely that we would be trying those trails today. It was a little disappointing at the top only because you're supposed to have fantastic views straddling both sides of the island. Because of the clouds you're pretty much only in view of 100 feet or so on each side. I guess that would be good for those that are afraid of heights, but it would have been nice to see a bit more. The wind whipped up the side of the mountain heavily which was nice since it cooled us off from our final push up the mountain. We ate our PB&J sandwiches and drank some of our water before deciding to head back down again. The way down was definitely quicker, but we tended to slide a bit more and have a bit more difficulty making our way. About 1/2 way back we finally crossed paths with some more people making their way up the hill. We made it back quickly having only taken about 3-3.5 hours for the entire hike round trip. It was only 11am and we still had a full day ahead of us.
Slideshow:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157621488929986/show/

Palolo Valley Hike : The Indiana Jones of Hikes

2009-06-22T16:40:00.000-07:00

For our second hike, I got to pick. I'm always a fan of waterfalls and this hike seemed to have everything, waterfalls, lush jungle, streams, views, and a good long walk. What it didn't apparently have was a good way to get to the trailhead. I'm not a huge fan of trespassing, but when you drive 40 minutes to go on a hike and the only way to get to the start is to walk past the "DO NOT ENTER, TRESPASSING" sign...well, sometimes you just have to disobey. Ethan and I parked, and then walked up the street until we saw what seemed to be the only entrance to the trailhead that we wanted. Luckily it was early and so we just kinda walked quietly up towards someone's driveway and then followed the big orange "DO NOT ENTER" signs until we were in the jungle of Palolo valley. Right away you follow along side a small stream, that probably gets quite large when the rain starts coming down. The sun was just starting to rise over the ridge and so every once and a while it peeked out through the trees onto the water. We weren't very far along into the hike before we heard some people calling out. The were on the other side of the stream and up high on an embankment. I was trying to figure out how they go there as it didn't seem like they were on any visible trail. Just kinda hanging out amongst the plants. They asked how far the trailhead was and we told them that it was very close. i'm not sure if they were coming or going, but nonetheless it seemed as though they were trying to get out. Our hike meandered for quite some time near the stream and under the dense cover of the jungle. It remained extremely shaded for a majority of the hike which is always nice in hawaii, the sun can be brutal. The trail we were on seemed to fork and converge randomly, but always headed in the same direction so we just kept heading up the valley.

About 30 minutes into the hike the trail began its gradual ascent up the side of the ridge while still remaining in earshot of the stream. The foliage turned from a dense jungle setting to more of a lush fern setting as there was fewer and fewer trees and the trail hugged closer to the valley wall. The trail was narrow, but deceptively safe. There was a thick growth of vines and bushes towards the right into the valley which made it seem like you had plenty of footing on each side. In actuality if you took a wrong step in the direction of the river you were sure to tumble about 10-20 feet until something stopped your fall (best case scenario). The hike so far was calm and relaxing, no traffic noise, just the sound of the wind and the birds that were constantly chirping away. In the few clearing spots we stopped to admire the view and I took some pictures. Once we were up and out of the canopy from the river basin it got a lot brighter and you could see much more of the valley that we were hiking in.

In about another 30 minutes we were heading back down again towards the water in what we hoped would be the first stop at a waterfall. Shortly thereafter we were at the base of the first fall. While not exactly a waterfall by most standards, it was a thin trickling of water down the side of a tall drop into a pool. It was fairly dark and shaded so a dip in the waters wasn't warranted, but we stopped for a bit just to relax before continuing on. The next waterfall was fairly close to this one and so in about 15 minutes we were at the second fall that was very similar to the first; long drop of water, shallow pool, shaded basin and muddy water. i suppose some people stop here, but on this trail it seems that there is always further that you can go.

To get to the next section required a bit of a climb up some rope, then clinging to some stone before scampering up the side of the waterfall until you go to the top. From there you could stand on a huge stone that stuck out near the top of the waterfall. There was a small plaque that was inset into a large boulder overlooking the fall. it had someone's name on it and I though "that would be a nice way to be remembered." Who wants to be buried in a cemetery, just put a plaque on a rock and scatter your ashes. Seems like a nice place to end up.

We stopped for just a second before continuing on the hike that was now further into the valley and higher up in elevation, but the best (or worst) was still to come. To get to the next section you walked a bit further before having to climb up some more rocks and luckily there was some rope that was left there to assist you up. Once there it was a little more walking before you are faced with the juggernaut. At the base of the next fall is a large pool where the fall runoff combines with a small stream that arrives from a different direction. the pool looked like a swirling pit of frothy sewage, and it didn't seem to get very good circulation unless it rained fairly hard. in order to continue on the trail you walked on the side of the swirling sewage and then had to climb up about 100 feet or so of slippery rock to pass this next part.

The climb up the third waterfall is tricky. There are spots of slippery rock and it would not be a fun fall if you lost your footing. You climb up 10 foot sections at a time aided by some guide ropes that were left there some time ago. I'm always a big nervous about using ropes that were left behind. you never know how long they have been there or how much weight they can hold. Unfortunately on this climb they're pretty much a necessity. Luckily it hadn't rained recently so the footing was somewhat stable and you didn't have to worry about slipping to your death. The climb seemed to go on and on and on. It was tiring, but not exhausting. I just kept wondering how difficult it was going to be coming down. Once you reach the top there's no magical view, no amazing pool of water or anything else...just more trail.

We continued on and the flora changed into more mountainous plants. Lots of ferns, more dirt, and some interesting trees. At this point it felt more like a california mountain hike than a hawaii jungle hike. The trail continued on and on and on up a new ridge. It wasn't until you were midway up the ridge that you could see what this part of the hike was. The mountains that separate the north and south side of the island are directly in front of you (and within walking distance). To the left is a large volcanic crater that had flattened out and now filled with water that turned into a tall grass filled marsh. It was that water that ran down the rock and fed into the river that we had been hiking along. The view from the top of the crater was amazing. You could see the entire crater, the valley down below, and if you looked far enough in the distance you could see a few of the tall buildings of waikiki. i think we had been hiking for a couple hours at this point and I still had energy, but wasn't sure how difficult the hike down would be. I completely sweaty and so I took a breather while Ethan decided to hike up a little further and see what kind of view he could get. I relaxed and sat down in the dirt while ethan explored further up the trail. He was only gone for about 15 minutes and I was somewhat relieved when he said that the view wasn't much better up at the top.

After admiring the view for a bit longer we made our descent down the edge of the crater, scrambled down the long waterfall and then back the way we came. Although we hadn't seen anyone at all on the way up, we must have passed 6-7 groups on our way down. It always surprising how late people start out on long hikes. By the time we finished, the sun was fairly strong, and the bugs were starting to buzz around. So far i think that this is one of the longest and technical hikes, but the payoff was definitely worth it. Tons of greenery with only a small hint of city view at the very top...just how it should be.

Koko Crater Hike, aka the stairway to hell

2009-06-18T12:50:00.000-07:00

Before buying my new condo I was trying to go hiking at least once on the weekends (a practice that I'd like to resume as soon as the dust has settled on all the things needed for my new place). Luckily I have found an accomplice, Ethan. David goes to school with Shelbi and her boyfriend Ethan also likes to be active, but is in somewhat better shape than I am. Our first hike Ethan got to pick and was at Koko Crater. Neither of us had been and so we were excited to go. We started out early at around 7am and headed out towards the east side of the island. We found the start fairly easily and then were excited when we saw the large peak that we were going to end up on.

That all changed shortly thereafter. Koko Crater isn't so much a hike as it is a tremendously long set of stairs. An old military lookout at the top, a narrow train track was laid in order to haul items up and down to the top of the peak. That's what the hike is, an endless row of stair stretching from the base of the mountain all the way to the top.

We set out slowly and easily along the tracks which gradually rise up the base of the mountain. After about 10 minutes you're feeling okay which is right when the pitch of the tracks increase and get steeper. Every 5 minutes or so from then on the pitch gets steeper and steeper until you finally make it up the top. I stopped about 4 times to catch my breath, wring out the sweat from my bandana, take pictures, and drink some water. Ethan had a surprisingly easier time than I as about 3/4 of the way up the wall I was completely out of breath and my shirt was pretty much drenched from top to bottom. It was early, yet there was still a decent amount of people out. Ethan and I watched as one little girl lost her footing and stumbled down about 15 stairs before coming to rest at her fathers feet. Two other guys we saw were running up and down the sets of stairs. I watched as they trotted up and down the stairs while I huffed and puffed on each stair near the top. I realized about 1/2 up the hill that I shouldn't have gone for such a long bikeride the day before and was hoping that I wouldn't be too sore the day after.

When Ethan and I reached the top we stood on the ledges and looked at the beautiful view. It was a bit hazy out, but even still it was magnificent. From the top you could see from hanauma bay to waikiki and then look down into the Koko crater itself. We lingered for about 15 minutes at the top to catch our breath and admire the view before heading back down the mountain. Going down was easier for me and because of the spacing of the treads I found it easier to hop down rather than slowly walk. I felt great, but tired the rest of that day. The pain, I would find, wouldn't catch me until the next day.

All in all it took me about 4 days before my legs were not so painful that I could actually walk normally. I stretched them in every direction and still I walked like I had ridden a horse for too long. By thursday of that week I was fully recovered, but not sure that I'll be doing that hike again anytime soon.

Family is like hiking, it's wonderfully exhausting

2009-05-21T11:53:00.000-07:00

The family came for a visit, all together this time. David and I picked them up at the airport with the customary lei's for the girls and kukui nuts for the boys. The seemed fairly refreshed after their flight, so we headed out for a quick lunch before I dropped them off at their hotel so I could go back to work.

They were staying down in waikiki, in a fairly busy part, but we managed to find a good place to pick up and drop off that wasn't too much in anyone's way. Nearly every day I headed down to pick them up and we drove around to get a sampling of what the island has. The hiking, I took them to Manoa trails, for beach, I took them to Lani Kai, waikiki, and a smaller beach on the other side of the island. We went snorkeling at hanauma bay, ate shave ice at waiola's and had dinner at side street inn.

Of course for the kids there was the dole hedge maze. I opted out for that and just decided to relax since it was a nice day out. Of course we had the pineapple frozen yogurt there and sebastian had a chocolate banana. We decided to splurge and go on the train ride (although i can say that it really wasn't worth it for either the adults or the kids).

The kids seemed to enjoy the pineapple displays a lot and thought that the varieties of pineapples were really cool. There was also a koi pond there with some very hungry fish that practically leapt out in order to get at the food.

We found ourselves on a tiny beach one day after hanauma bay was full at 10 in the morning. We continued to drive around the end of the island until we found a nice relaxing spot where we could lay down and play in the sun.

We got to hanauma bay the following morning at 7am. Definitely the earliest that i have been there, but it was so much more relaxing and peaceful there. I can honestly say that I probably wont ever go back there unless it's that early. It just seems so calm without all the tourists jumping around and walking on the coral (which they're specifically told not to do).

I took manuel and christi on a hike to manoa falls. It's an easy hike and i think that we really lucked out on the weather. Because Manoa is usually very rainy and wet the ground tends to be muddy, but on this day it was dry and sunny. No mosquitos to be found anywhere.

On the drive to lani kai we stopped at pali lookout. The windy lookout over the northern side of the island was cloudy and cool, very typical.

It was great having the whole family, and while I got the sense that the kids just really wanted to stay at the hotel and play in the pool it was just nice to have everyone together and be able to spend a little bit of time with everyone here in hawaii.

Maunawili Hike

2009-04-07T14:54:00.000-07:00

The name is funny, but it's an interesting hike.

Davids friend Go had two friends visiting from California, so as part of being a Hawaii resident he was giving them a tour of the island. Part of the tour included a hike at Maunawili falls. I had been on the hike once before, so I was glad to go when he called me up to see if I wanted to join them. He picked me up around 730am and after a brief introduction to his friends (whos names I have already forgotten) we headed to a town on the other side of the mountain for some breakfast before the hike at a

little breakfast shop. They were famous for their macadamia nut pancakes which was really just regular pancakes smothered in this rich cream cheese and macadamia nut sauce. It was delicious for sure, but I just had a bite. I got an omelette, which was okay at best. After breakfast we headed down the road and eventually made it to Maunawili trailhead.

It starts off on a paved road, but quickly turns into dirt when it begins winding through the jungle. For most of the hike you follow the river that runs in from the mountains down through the jungle and then empties out at some point into the ocean. There isn't a

of great plants on this hike, but the greenery and the sound of the water rolling down the stream always makes for a relaxing hike. On a couple of occasions you criss cross over the river by stepping on stones and luckily no one fell into the water. After about 45 minutes we made it to the first stopping point, Maunawili Falls. As waterfalls go, it's neither the tallest, nor does it have a ton of water, but it is very pretty. The water carved out a very deep basin which makes for some nice swimming and even better jumping. For now, we would just rest and take in the quiet calm. There were only three other people there, and a couple of people jumping into the water from some cliffs above. We watched for a few minutes and

decided to move on to Stage II, the moss slides.

Okay, well the trip to the Moss Slides is more about the adventure than the actual destination. Here's how it goes: 1. Climb up the side of a vegetation-covered rock wall. 2. hike a short distance in and around a small stream until you get to the base of an old metal and wood bridge 3. climb up to the base of the bridge and then climb up and across the bridge making sure you don't step on the middle of the broken wood slats. 4. once across the bridge, walk on the edge of an old stone aqueduct until you get to a large metal supply pipe 5. walk across supply pipe and continue along the aqueduct on the other side 6. arrive at the moss slides. 7. if there's enough water, slide on the the rock.

We made it to the moss slides and played around in the water for a while before sitting to have a few bites to eat. I of course wore

white shorts, that looked like i took a dump in them after sliding down the mossy/dirty rocks a few times, but oh well. Go was the biggest slider and of course tested his limits by sliding down face first. Probably the last time he'll do that

We spent about 30-40 minutes at the moss slides before heading back to the falls. The hike along the way is adventurous and interesting, but only for the very active. One of Go's friends (we called Moon) was afraid of heights, so I think his version of the trip was slightly less fun than ours. Once we got back to the Falls we rested again and I swam the backpacks across the pond (there isn't a way to walk across and when Go tried to swim across he nearly drowned, taking his backpack with him). I seemed to be a bit more buoyant, so I didn't mind swimming the items across. The falls area was packed this time and a group of marines were showing off by jumping off the two highest areas at the falls. I've jumped once, and it was scary enough, so I don't think I'll be doing it again. Go jumped off the higher area and so we got some nice pictures from that, which is good enough for me.

Another 40 minutes and we were back at the car in time to drive home and relax for a bit. I think all in all it was about a 3-4 hour hike, with plenty of breaks and time to stop and explore. it's one of my favorites, but not one of the easiest, so this is only the second time I've gone, or third maybe. I don't recall

The state of things so far...

2009-02-26T11:12:00.000-08:00

Yes, I realize it's been a while since I've blogged. Anyways, just wanted to give you an update on what's going on with me. I gave up on the job search after the one and only job offer I got was extremely low. I rejected it and headed home to San Diego with my 4 suitcases full of clothes. It was sad, but I was ready to get back to San Diego and start working.
I was home a week, getting settled in, playing with kitty, and hanging out with friends when I got a call from the university that I interviewed at. They made me a better offer and after a few minutes of thinking about it, I accepted it. They were eager for me to get started working, but I told them that I would need at least a couple weeks before I could started. In that time, I went out to eat with my mom, went out with friends and sold my car.
I was home for about two weeks before I had to pack EVERYTHING up and head back to Hawaii.
I've been in hawaii a little over a week. Started my first week at work, went to a segue birthday party and had a welcome to hawaii picnic.
Before I left San Diego I went to a birthday party for my friend Theresa, helped her move, went to Balboa park with Michelle and saw a couple IMAX movies, and spent some time with my mom.

Balboa Park with Michelle:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157614430695581/show/

Theresa's Birthday Party:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157614475771576/show/

Kiandra's Segue Party:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157614621949954/show/

Kiandra's Segue Birthday Party

2009-02-23T00:48:00.000-08:00

For Kiandra's party we rented Segue's and rolled around Waikiki. It was a lot of fun, but you really can't help but look like a fool on those things.

Don't Divorce

2009-02-10T17:06:00.000-08:00

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

On Maui with mommie Clare

2009-01-27T19:03:00.000-08:00

We arrived in Maui Friday night and Davids mom picked us up from the airport. We headed to meet up with some friends and relatives at a golf club where they were having a large celebration dinner. We just had a few drinks since the kitchen was closed and chatted briefly with david’s cousin and his daughter. Luckily we had gone because they had won tickets to a stage show that they had already seen called Ulalena. Davids mom Clare convinced them to give us the tickets (good for two people) before heading home to play a quick game of scrabble before bed.

In the morning I cooked breakfast for everyone (scrambled eggs, Portuguese sausage, and rice) and then we headed out for a drive to meet some people for a hike and then to restore a farming area. We were already running late and didn’t have great directions, so we missed the restoration, but we stopped to look at some Hawaiian petroglyphs that were near the restoration project. The petroglyphs were interesting, but honestly it was hard to tell which ones were really old and which ones were just done by some young bored kids looking for late night entertainment. After the petroglyphs we decided to go to a Hawaiian cultural event, which isn’t as simple as it sounds.

In order to go to the cultural event we had to pick up some signs and informational material for Clare’s friend that was working at the event. Clare is extremely involved in Hawaiian conservation (of the land, the people, and the culture). Because she is so active she is frequently donating her time or running errands for other people that do similar non-profit work. We drove a ways back towards home and met up with a lady that was giving us sign material and information to hand out at the cultural even. We got all the heavy material packed into the car and then headed towards the event where we met up with Clare’s friend to help set things up. It was close to noon and by this point it was a beautiful day out, with one exception, the wind. The wind was consistently strong and at points gusted up even more. This would have been fine except for the large wooden board that we were trying to put up and the flimsy paper signs that were were trying to display. The paper signs flapped around flimsily and the large wooden board felt like it wanted to take flight like a heavy dangerous wooden kite. It took about 15 minutes, two bungee cords, and three straps to get the board safely secured to a chain link fence. I was then enlisted to make a sign to tell people about the lack of water for native farmers. Maui has a decent amount of rainfall that collects in the mountains and runs through rivers and streams before eventually emptying out in the ocean. The rain used to be enough for the island before the huge golf courses, resorts and farming conglomerates began setting up shop on the island and siphoning off the water at the source. This has resulted in a water shortage for the local populations as they ship the water from its origin to other parts of the island. The Kalo farmers (a native Hawaiian plant species) have had to close down their farms because the water that they previously used was no longer available. Anyways, I made a sign and drew some Kalo leaves on it to illustrate this fact. Once this was done we had a chance to relax and head into the event to enjoy the afternoon. The music at the event was a bit loud, but it was good at least. After a hearty Hawaiian plate lunch and shaved ice I was out like a baby, falling asleep on the grassy field. I think we stayed for a couple hours then decided to head to the beach shopping town of Lahaina.

We parked in the small shopping town and popped in and out of the various stores that line the street. We weren’t really shopping, just killing time by browsing everything that was for sale. Nothing terribly unique for sure, but it’s a cute area which is just nice for walking around. After tiring of the stores we decided to pop into a restaurant to sit down for a bit and enjoy the ocean. I had planned on getting a mai tai, and david and clare were going to share a dessert. None of that actually happened, I got a beer (hey it was happy hour), david got an iced tea, and clare got a coffee. While it was actually very chilly walking on the shaded streets between shops, in the direct sun of the restaurant patio it was searing hot. We applied sunblock and put on hats, but we all felt like we were baking alive. After about 45 minutes we decided it would be good to get out of the sun and walk a little more. We headed toward a site that Clare knew about. The old Hawaiian rulers had residences and temples that blanketed the islands. Most are being excavated, some are being bulldozed for shopping centers and many more have been forgotten and buried under decades of dirt and plants.

Clare explained that the site we were going to visit was a temple of sorts of one of the old rulers. It was once a large building that sat in the middle of a nature-made moat supplied by a local stream that surrounded the entire building. Over the years the location had fallen into ruin, the water source had dried up and it was eventually covered over the years by dirt. When conservation of the area had failed they decided to fill in the rest of the space and put in a baseball field over the site. The site was eventually rediscovered and there is a battle in the legislature to allow the area to be restored to it original native condition. Just about the time that Clare had finished with the story we had arrived at the location. Only one small section had been restored and a plaque was there to commemorate the initial restoration project. The recent rains had given local grasses a stronghold and they were sprouting up in a corner of the site. Clare said a Hawaiian prayer and then began clearing the site by pulling out the grasses by hand. David and I kinda looked at each other and shrugged and then we helped her pull out the grass to clear the site. There was dirt and stones and grasses and we just grabbed handfulls and tossed the grass to the site after we had plucked it out by the root. I think we spent about 45 minutes or more pulling out the grasses, but by the end we had cleared most of the site and just had filthy hands to contend with, oh and we were now running late for our show we were supposed to see, Ulalena. After a quick rinse of our hands, a changing of clothes and a dash to the theatre we had arrived in typical Clare fashion, right on time, if not a little late.

Ulalena is much like the typical Circ de Solei shows, but with a Hawaiian influence. The show traced the evolution of the Hawaiian culture, starting with Hawaiian mythology an the pulling of the islands out of the oceans, through settlement of the islands, and finally ending with the landing of settlers and the eventual destruction of the Native Hawaiian way of life. The show was about an hour, but it was packed full of entertainment the entire time. The music was great and it was a really nice experience. After such a full day it was off to home, too exhausted to even shower, we crashed into bed and fell quickly asleep.
Sunday was another full day with a trip to the beach, a great lunch out, a hike through untouched native Hawaiian lands (scheduled to be bulldozed and covered with yet another golf course soon), a trip to the nude hippy beach where drummers were playing and people were dancing, and finally a trip back home for dinner and then a rousing game of scattergories.

Monday was a morning hike, a benefit concert at a café to celebrate Obamas election, before finally heading to a mall and then to the airport to head back to Oahu.
I’m sure you’re tired of reading, and I’m definitely tired of writing. I’m currently on a plane back to San Diego. My job hunt in Oahu ended up being unfruitful, so I’m heading home to start up my hunt back in San Diego where there should be a bit more available.

Slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157612912730351/show/

Snow Day!!

2009-01-15T18:34:00.000-08:00

One of Davids Christmas presents was a large Russian fur cap from my mom. It's really cute, but rather impractical for someone who lives in a state where the temperature rarely falls below 65F. It had been cold in San Diego, but still not really cold enough to warrant wearing the hat around town. We opened our presents Christmas eve which always leaves us with a bit of a dilemma for what to do on Christmas Day. Mom had headed to my sisters house to spend the morning with her and the kids and open presents. We were left at home and twiddled our thumbs while figuring what to do on a day when everything was closed. I had heard that snow fell in the Laguna Mountains, so I suggested to David that we drive up there and play around in the snow "since it's Christmas." I was surprised when he agreed without too much resistance to drive up to the snow.

It's no secret that David isn't too keen about snow (or cold weather in general.) A few months after we started dating his sister Ahlinn was having a bachelorette party in Tahoe, so we decided to drive up and meet them for a long weekend. I got a long lecture about his fear of driving in snow, his hatred and fear of snow and all things cold, and all his horrible childhood memories of being dragged with the family to the snow at least once a year for family vacations. He would sit in the hotel while everyone else was out snowboarding and skiing. His stepmom told me once that as a little kid David socked her in the face while she was trying to get clothes on him to bring him out to the snow on one of their many snow trips. According to the family, David never verbalized his dislike of the snow, he just got irate and unreasonable when the family went on trips to the snow. When we went to Tahoe for his sisters party David stayed home in the cabin while everyone else (me included) went snowboarding for the day. It was only my third time going and even though I came back all battered and bruised, I still had a really good time. Anyways, with all of these things, it was surprising then that David agreed to spend the day in the snow.

We headed out of the house and drove down the 8 freeway towards the Laguna Mountains. It's about a 45 minute drive from San Diego to Laguna and so for a little snow day, it really is very convenient. The weather in San Diego was patchy clouds and the closer we got to the mountains the worse the weather got and the windier it got. It was really just on the bridges that I got nervous as the winds were extremely strong over them, but other than that it was a smooth ride. Soon we were turning off the freeway and heading up the Sunrise Highway towards the mountains. After leaving the freeway, it's really only another 15 minutes or so before you actually hit the top of the mountain. About 1/2 way up the ride we were beginning to see snow. Growing up in San Diego, I very rarely see the snow in person, and I've only actually seen it snow twice that I can remember. So it's always very exciting to me to see the snow, it always just says "Christmas" to me. By the time we reached the top of the mountain everything had been blanketed in snow and it was beautiful. David was pretending to hate it, but I could tell that he was somewhat enjoying the sight. "It is kinda pretty," he said at one point (haha, the shell has been broken, I thought to myself.) We bypassed the initial places where everyone had pulled off the road to jump and play around in the snow. Because it was Christmas, it was not as busy as it probably would otherwise have been. David had mentioned that he needed to use the restroom, so we drove ahead to an area that I knew had an outdoor public restroom.

The small street that led to the parkinglot was slushy and covered in snow, mud and water. Luckily it was downhill from the main road to the parking lot, so I figured it would be fairly easy to get down, but might be a bit more troubling to get out. I eased the car down the hill letting the momentum pull us through the slush until we hit the parking lot, then we parked. When we stopped we could tell from the sounds that it was really windy out, added to that the slight sprinkle of rain and you had wind that felt like it was sandblasting your face off. We jumped out of the car and ran to the bathrooms, screaming the whole way. We were covered head to toe in clothes, but we should have had more layers. The cold cut through the layers of clothes like nothing. We screamed and laughed on the 20' run to the bathrooms. As with most public bathrooms, this one didn't smell like roses and cinammon. We held our breath and did our business, surprised that everything came out in liquid form instead of solid blocks of ice. It wasn't much warmer in the bathrooms, but we were at least protected from the icy wind. We hesitated as we prepared to exit the bathroom, bracing ourselves from the cold. We threw open the door and ran out into the elements screaming and laughing like two little kids. We figured since we were out that we might as well take a few pictures, so we ran around looking for cover from the wind and snapping pictures haphazardly. We probably weren't outside of the car more than 5 - 10 minutes, but we were both shivering and clamoring at the heater controls when we jumped back in the car.

It was time to make our exit from the parkinglot now. I knew that we would probably make it, but i also had visions of trying to push the car up the hill while snow and mudd splatered on me from the spinning tires. We were at the base of the hill ready to gun it and let the momentum bring us up the slushy driveway when a group of people began walking in front of the car. It's clear there is only one way for cars to get out of the parkinglot, so it surprised me then that everyone was walking directly in the tire tracks of the exit, directly in our way. Rather than inch along behind them I decided just to let them walk rather than get stuck somewhere between the parkinglot and the road we needed to be on. They sure did take their time though and I halfway imaginged ramming them at full speed and using their bodies to get the traction I needed to get out of the snow, but it was Christmas and Santa had deemed me Nice with many presents. After the pedestrians had left I sped up and clunked up the street to the main road without getting stuck.

We continued on the road towards a lookout point where I knew there would be a good place to park and take some more pictures and in about 5 minutes we were there. When we arrived there was just one parking spot, so we took it. We cranked up the heat on high for a bit to give us some warmth before running out into the elements again. We looked like sissies compared to the phillipino family that was in the van parked next to us. There were at least 7 of them and they walked out of the car like it was a sunny day in florida. No wincing from the cold, no screaming and no running around in an attempt to find shelter from the cold. They got out calmly, walked around as if they were strolling around in a garden and then the kids plopped down in the snow and played in it like they were making sandcastles on the beach. In contrast, David and I ran out to the edge of the lookout platform trying not to slip on our asses, then scampered down the stairs clutching to the railing. We got to the snow and threw snowballs at each other and made a lame attempt at a snowman, that actually just ended up being a large snowball that David then picked up and hurled at me. After about 15 minutes we hopped back in the car, chilled to the bone, while the family was still walking around like it was a warm summer day.

And so ended our snow "day." Which actually ended up being a snow hour. We had fun and it was beautiful, but we didn't have a sled and we were cold anyways. We stayed just the right amount of time and left with smiles on our faces (both of us.) David had a good time, I had a good time; it was a good choice for a Christmas outing.

Christmas: Time with Friends

2009-01-08T23:08:00.000-08:00

I flew back to San Diego with my mom on December 11th to spend the holiday break in San Diego. David was finishing up some errands and entertaining a couple more friends and so he arrived on the 15th. That gave me time to add a few more blankets to the bed (since the average house temperature at my moms house was usually in the 50's during the winter.) I pulled all my winter-ware out of some of my boxes in the garage and tried to make the bedroom as livable as possible since David and I would be spending about 3 weeks sleeping in it.
By the time David arrived, we had hit the ground running and there wasn't a day that we didnt have something planned. Between Davids friends and my friends, there was always somewhere to go and always someone to see.

The Friends Timeline:
Ice Skating:
I didnt bring my camera for this one, but there are pictures out there somewhere. My friend Michelle came over to our house and we grabbed some food before heading out to go ice skating at Horton Plaza. The ice skating rink at horton plaza only opens during the winter because it's outdoors. It's always pretty popular, but we didn't have to wait very long until we got to go on. It had been ages since David and I had been ice skating and my friend Michelle had never been before. We were there to meet two of David's friends Christi and David (we call them the Ansdelles because that's David's last name, and they're a couple). The skating actually went very well considering how bad we all were at it. Michelle only fell once and that was the only person who ate it the entire night. After ice skating we hit Urban Outfitters to get a few Christmas presents since I hadn't gotten anything yet (it was the 16th at this point, so I was a bit behind).

Dinner with Mumma:
We met with our friend Kevin, and Sean with mom at Starlight. It's a bar/restaurant in kinda a weird area of town. Driving past you would never know that there is a nice restaurant there, but the food is good and the design of the space is really cool. Again, no pictures. The food wasnt as good as it usually is there, so that's a bit disappointing, but we had a good time and it was fun chatting for sure.
Thursday was lunch with Li and Michelle from work. While we were out I also ran into a couple other
Lunch with Friends:
coworkers that were getting frozen yogurt next door. Michelle, Li, David and I went to Tea Station for lunch.
Mostly we just go for the tea, as the food isnt all that great and they tend to mess up our food orders a lot. This time was no exception and they gave us the chicken in a pool of curry sauce when i clearly said i wanted it on the side. The food was otherwise good and the tea was delicious as usual. I got the same thing I always get; iced green tea, no sugar, with aloe. We stayed for about an hour while we talked about everything new that was going on. Really, not much had changed though. After we dropped them off it was time to pick up my kitty and bring her home to my moms house.

The Kitty, She hates me:
At first when i saw kitty she was somewhat interested to see me, but it's always hard to tell with cats. Walter had take very good care of her (almost too good of care.) He brushed her every day and kept her food topped up and played with her. He works from home so he had plenty of time for that. When i came in to swoop her up i know she was thinking "oh, you leave for 3 months and now you wanna just come back like nothings changed? i got it good here. who are you? I aint leavin" anyways, thats just how i imagined that her brain was working. If she seemed indifferent to me, she was hostile to everyone else once we got her to my moms house. With the smell of the other cat lingering everywhere, Kitty seemed constantly on guard and took swings at both my mom and david on occasion. After a few days however she settled down and was on speaking terms with everyone. She slept at the foot of my bed for the entire time i was there which is always a little dangerous since she was sandwiched between my size 13 feet and the metal footboard of the bed. I half expected to wake up some mornings and find her pinned between the rails gasping for breath, but luckily that never happened.

The New Years Eve:
For New Years, David and I didn't really have any concrete plans. When we went out to dinner with Sean, he had mentioned possibly going to Palm Springs for New Years, just for something different. It sounded like fun to David and I, so we tentatively agreed and then tried to convince our friends Sarabeth and Kevin to come with us. Initially, it sounded like a go to all parties so we booked a room at the colony palms in a room next to Sean's. By the time New Years came, it ended up just being David and I meeting Sean and his friend Dan. Not really a problem, except that we had booked a room with two queen beds in anticipation of a larger group. On the downside we had a more expensive room, but on the upside we each now had our own bed that we could sleep in; and comfy beds they were. We all pretty much arrived at the same time and then grabbed some lunch and drinks by the pool and relaxed for a majority of the afternoon. Sean blew off work and we all paraded around in the terry cloth hooded robes that were in the rooms. We looked like Rocky on a spa day, and had no problem with wearing them for a majority of the afternoon wherever we were in the hotel. We liked them so much that we ended up keeping one for the road as a memento (shhhh, don't tell.) By the time evening came we decided to finally start getting ready for our night out. We all took our time getting ready, but didn't put much effort into making ourselves pretty. A little note about Palm Springs for those of you that don't know. It's not really what you would call a place for youngsters. Miami for the gays, its where older couples go to retire and lounge around for hours in the sun and dry desert heat. "The grey, gay, graveyard," "Geriatric Park" these are just some of the nicknames for Palm Springs and it gives you and idea of the people that generally inhabit it. Because of this, shaving, showering, actually cleaning up in any capacity is not really a concern. When you're about 1/2 the age of most of the people there, you have youth on your side, and so "getting pretty" isn't really worth the effort. So, I didn't shave, but I did have the decency to shower and brush my teeth for the sake of my friends. We met up with Sean and Dan in their room next to ours and listened to music while they finished getting ready. At around 7 or so, I think we were all ready to go out. It was early by anyones standards, but we had a quorum and so figured why not head out early? The first place we went to was called "the barracks," the name pretty much says it all. I had been there once before and it was packed wall to wall with people. This time, it was not. The population more than doubled when we entered, but on the upside we were early enough for happy hour still. After a round of drinks we decided it would be a good idea to play pool. Clearly not any of our fortay we had fun anyways, and it helped pass the time. Between laughes and scratches we danced around the empty bar and took pictures. The highlight at the Barracks was Sean's pool game with a local tranny. Not a very convincing woman, we called her Nicolette Sheridan (from the TV show Desperate Housewives), as that's who she most closely resembled. It took her about 4 minutes to clear all her balls off the table, at which point I think Sean had gotten maybe one or two of his balls in. A definite pro, Sean was no match for Nicolette. After that last game of pool we decided it was time for a venue change since there was at most 3 new people at the bar.
Bar II was Hunters. No line, no cover, no ID check, but lots of people. The place was fairly packed which was a nice change from the emptiness of the Barracks. We immediately headed for the dance floor and shaked our booties for the remainder of the night. We all faired pretty well. No one was excessively drunk and we were all still smiling at the end of the night. Midnight came and went with little fanfare and it was shortly after that point that we all decided to head home. We spent the next 30 minutes trying to find some greasy mexican food, but we gave up and headed to one of the few places that was still open and serving food at 1am.

The Coworkers:
After getting back from Palm Springs, David and I had time for one last outting to see some old coworkers of mine. As it happened two of the couples were russian, then there was David, my mom, and me, and then Grace and Frank (chinese and dutch respectively.) Pop us up on a billboard and we could have been a benneton ad, or something for the United Nations. It was a fun night where we talked about old work things, current work things, and funny things in general. Igor, one of my old coworkers, cracks me up. I dont remember all of the things he said over the course of dinner, but his story about his firemarshal neighbor killing his non-fire-retardent tree was hilarious. Also funny was when he tried to convince us that it REALLY didn't start getting cold until it was -30. "-10, -20, those are very nice temperatures. It doesn't really start getting cold until -30." The fact that he was serious was the funniest part of it to us. Her was David and I wearing hats and long sleeves for 60F and Igor was trying to tell us that it's "really very nice at -10."

The Trip Home:
Christmas was fun (i'll write about that later), but eventually it was time to head back to Hawaii. We had one last night out with the friends for a night of clubbing before heading out after a quick breakfast with mum the next morning. We said goodbye to kitty and goodbye to mom and then boarded our flight back to Oahu, Hawaii. The flight went by really quickly. I slept for about an hour, played a game of scrabble, then re-watched "Eagle Eye," an average movie that was halfway interesting. Davids dad picked us up at the airport and we settled in at home.

Tour Guide Part Two: Momma

2008-12-13T12:53:00.000-08:00

After showing sarabeth around oahu for a couple weeks I had a bit of a break to enjoy thanksgiving before mom came and I got to do it all over again with her. Mom was easy, she's been to the island enough times that she's familiar with what there is to do. Surprisingly we only went to the beach a few times during her two week visit, but we seemed to get caught up doing everything else. We drove around the eastern part of the island one day, went for a "mini hike" on manoa trails before turning back when the mosquitoes began swarming. My mom loved hanauma bay so much that we went back twice.

We visited with family, went to the swap meet and some farmers markets and mom did a bunch of shopping. It was a fairly uneventful vacation, which I guess is really what a vacation should be. Surrounded by friends and family and relaxing the days away. I got some nice pictures:

The wild chickens on the way to the Manoa Falls Trail. They are everywhere, and if you stop and look you'll see them in the bushes, in the trees...everywhere. I didn't know that chickens and roosters went into trees, but my mom and I stopped and looked up while walking and saw three of them sitting on a limb that hovered over the parking lot.

Around the eastern side of the island I got some nice panorama pictures of the beach below. We opted for stopping at a lookout point rather than doing the hike to the lighthouse. I've been on the lighthouse hike about three times now. It's not really all that exciting, but there aren't any mosquitoes and that's always a plus. I love the color of the ocean in hawaii. The light colored sand and the lack of sediment in the water means that it's blue and green and so clear that you can see about 20-30 feet through the water on a nice day from above.

On our way back from Hanauma bay we stopped in a shopping center to walk around a bit (and use the restroom.) There are a few cute stores there and the back side of the center is on a harbor. It's one of the few large harbors around the island, but it's well maintained. I got a cool panorama of the view, although with the clouds it wasn't as nice as it could have been.

I took a few nice pictures of Hanauma bay before we spent the day there (which is why mom isn't burnt, salty, or sweaty yet.) Mom loved it there so much that we went twice. We got a snorkel on her and even without her glasses she was able to see a number of the local fishes. It really is amazing the fish that you see. They're so accustomed to snorkelers in the water they barely move when you're hovering over them in 4' of water. It's a huge tourist spot there so we try and get in before it's busiest. We brought lunch each time to saveon money and a trip up the hill to the snack shop. With Sarabeth, I was lucky to see a turtle and an octopus, so I didn't mind that I just saw fish this time around. On any given trip you can see probably about 15 or so different varieties of fish swimming around.

One night while especially restless while mom was tired and David was studying for finals I called up David's sister, Ahlinn, to hang out. I kinda had in mind to go out to a bar or something social, but when Ahlinn said she was packing and moving boxes I jumped on the opportunity just to get out of the house. She had packed all of the boxes, so the hard stuff was done. All we had to do was move them to her other house. I kinda laughed to myself because I dont think that any of the boxes weighed more than 5 pounds. I dont even think I broke a sweat the whole time. Before we took off to move the boxes, I took a few snapshots of the waikiki skyline from Ahlinn's balcony. It's really beautiful at night even with all the light pollution being pumped out at street-level.

Other than that, just a quick trip to the old dole plantation that's been turned into a tourist spot with a hedge maze, pineapple soft serve, food, and all types of candy. Near the end of my moms stay we took one final drive around the island and stopped to eat lunch before taking a few nice pictures at the beach.

At the end of the trip it was time for mom and I to head home. David would join us in a few days after he caught up on chores and some last minute school stuff.

The slow slow swim.

2008-11-26T18:19:00.000-08:00

I went to the gym this morning as usual. With no job to speak of and plenty of time to kill, there is never a good reason not to go to the gym. The nice thing about the gym that I go to in waikiki is that it's literally on the beach. So while I sit back and pedal away on the stationary bike reading my book, I can occasionally glance up and watch all the tourists frolic in the ocean. It's always crystal blue, with just enough lightness to distinguish it from the blue sky. After they gym, I decided to read a bit more at the beach, so I walked back towards the car so I could get my beach gear. The walk along the waikiki boardwalk is probably one of the most beautiful beach streets I have ever been on. Plants are manicured a few times a week, streets are swept and washed daily, and the beaches look like they're combed and flattened every morning before the sun rises. There is never any trash on the beach (mostly due to the impeccably clean japanese tourists, and the ever-roaming cleaning crew) and never anything but people floating in the water.
This morning I walked slowly down the boardwalk with my gym bag watching all the people getting set up for a day in the sun (it was around 1030am). My gaze fixed to a woman slowly testing out the water. She had left her slippers on (aka, flip flops, sandals, etc) and as soon as she hit the water her feet sank into the sand and she nearly tripped face forward as her feet stuck in the sand but her body continued to slowly move forward. I heard two guys laugh and yell out something to my left. Apparently the lady was with them and they laughed and mocked her near faceplant into the ocean.
I continued strolling until the next person that affixed my gaze. It was and old man making his way into the water. It's the man in the picture above that I took. It's not clear from the picture, but he had on docker shorts (shorts to go to a restaurant in, not swimming in), a linen shirt tucked in, and he used a cane for support. He moved slowly, taking tiny steps and feeling with his cane for extra support. The man seemed more likely dressed to go out to breakfast than swimming, so I i stopped to watch. The man was easily in his 70's so he took the time to make sure his steps were well placed. He eased into the water gingerly until he was up to his waist. He paused before flopping face down into the water. I hadn't noticed until he flopped into the water but he had a snorkel and face mask on. He set off slowly swimming forward, his cane floating behind him, tethered to his leg.
It may lose something in the story, but the whole scene just seemed so touching to me. This guy could easily have resigned himself to sitting at home in front of the television. Instead, he got dressed up, put on his face mask and snorkel and headed towards the beach, can in hand. I guess there's nothing one can't accomplish if they really want it bad enough. It may be more difficult, it may take longer, and you might have to make some adjustments, but you can do it.

No H8 in 808

2008-11-15T18:56:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, November 4th marked a bittersweet turning point. On one hand, america and the world, took a sigh of relief as Obama was the clear winner of the election. On the other hand, California removed the right of gays and lesbians to marry legally in California. Prop 8 was one of the most expensively lobbied propositions in history and we lost the battle, by only about 4 percent. It was shocking to many people, especially to Californians, typically thought to be one of the most liberal states in the country. Over the following week numerous protests and rallies were held to express outrage at the stripping of rights of a minority group. Thousands of people protested in various cities in California and throughout the country.

A few days after the passage of prop 8 that effectively removed the short-lived right of gays and lesbians to marry, a woman decided that something needed to be done nationwide to express the outrage of those affected. She started the group "join the impact." It was solely an internet-based campaign to rally the major cities in the US to join together and rally at the same time, starting at 830am in hawaii, 1030 in the west coast, etc, etc. It was only 8 days until the rally was to occur, but the news online spread like wildfire. After two servers were overloaded, the site was moved to a larger server that could support the number of hits that the site was getting. Within a few days, over 300,000 people across the nation had visited the site and pledged their support.

We got the news fairly late here in hawaii, but had about three days to react. The night before the rally I designed and printed out flyers and sent david and sarabeth out to the gay bars to hand them out. Within a few minutes they had handed out all 60 copies they had gotten and returned home. I stayed home and made posters so that we could hold them up at the rally. By midnight we had finally finished preparing and went to sleep.

While friday was a gloomy and rainy day, saturday started out really nice. Sarabeth, David and I headed out and picked up David's sister, Ahlinn, on the way to the rally. We weren't sure exactly how many people would be there since Hawaii has a rather small gay scene. When we got there at 830am there were about 100 people already there and small amounts of people trickled in over the next few hours. David and I wore matching outfits to suggest that we had just got married and we tied cans to the back of our pants. Our signs said "just married" with a big red slash through the words. We were mistaken for mormen's and an actual married couple with people congratulating us when they saw us. We posed many times for people to take pictures of us, and with them.
The site of the group of people there when we arrived was amazing. People honked as they drove by, others waved, and media showed up to document the rally. The rally lasted for a few hours before we marched from city hall down to the county office on another main road. Everyone was happy to be there, and given how early it was, we thought that we had a fairly good turnout. Some estimated the crowd to peak at around 400 people. In the morning heat we sweated and waved and hollered when people honked. By around 11am, we were exhausted and decided to call it a day. We came home to relax and get cleaned up.

I spent a majority of the next few hours watching how the rallies were going across the nation. San diego, it turned out, had the largest turnout with estimates of between 20-40,000 people packing the streets and marching from balboa park to downtown san diego. It made me sad that I couldn't be there for it, but it seemed that Hawaii needed my efforts more.
The battle over prop 8 and marriage equality will certainly continue for quite some time. It's no doubt that the gay and lesbian community will not give up until some sort of national equilibrium can be sustained. In the meantime, we'll just have to settle for being married in massachusetts or connecticut.

Halloween, Hawaii, and Sarabeth's visit.

2008-11-13T00:35:00.000-08:00

Although I seem to have plenty of time, I've let my blog fall behind quite a bit. I arrived on the 20th of October in Hawaii and spent a few days getting settled in. I immediately began sending out resume's and emails looking for a job in either interior design/architecture, or science. I got back a number of responses, unfortunately most of the responses said that the companies we either packing up, or severely downsizing and were not looking for any new employees. Since then I've made it a goal to do at least one "job hunting" thing at least every other day. In between the job hunt I've had the chance to get back to the gym and relax in the sun.
Within about a week after arriving in Hawaii it was time for Halloween. Everyone seems to take halloween pretty seriously here in hawaii; it's not terribly uncommon for people to have more than one costume in the course of a day. I made sure that I adopted this strategy so that I at least looked like I fit in. The first Halloween even was for the homeless shelter on the west side of the island in Wainai (i do not think I'm spelling that right.) It was actually the week before halloween, but there are two homeless shelters on the island that the med school students volunteer at, so they have to have one a week early.

===i had this blog finished and then my web browser crashed without saving it, i'll redo it, but it'll be shorter===

anyways, we packed up the van and picked up a couple of the med school students before heading over to the west side of the island for the first halloween carnival for the homeless clinic. It was a nice drive, but took a little over an hour. once we got there we unpacked the van and began setting up for the carnival. we set up games, prize booths, and activities. The most popular part of the carnival was the dress up picture booth. we had a whole stack of childrens costumes so the kids would put them on and then we would take a picture of them and print them out. i made sure to sneak in to get my picture taken as well in the costume that i was wearing. david and i came dressed as swimmers so we had floaties, and water wings and goggles on. the carnival lasted for about 7 hours where we set up, had the carnival, and then cleaned everything up. by the time the carnival was over, we were exhausted. we had just enough time to grab lunch with kiandra (a friend and med school student) before heading home to manoa. the carnival was fun and everyone was really appreciative.

the next week was the halloween costume contest in the afternoon at the med school. david and his friends dressed as the seven deadly sins. david was vanity so he was a plastic surgery patient. Kiandra was sloth, so she dressed as a sleeping kid. The costumes at the contest were pretty funny. They had the adams family, the strawberry shortcake girls and a number of other funny costumes. I came dressed as betty from the show ugly betty, complete with a pancho that I sewed together, wig, glasses, and braces. It turned out pretty good, but being so tall, it wasn't the best look for me but it was funny. That night, david dressed up as wolverine from the xmen and i was a skeleton/zombie. We went to the second homeless carnival on halloween night, but didn't stay long after david got into an argument with one of his classmates. We headed home and david studied the rest of the night.

Shortly after halloween was Sarabeth's visit to hawaii. She had never come and since I could show her around, it seemed like a good time for her to come. Sarabeth is a friend and old roommate of davids and she was the one that introduced me to him. I had visited her a few times in japan, so it was a nice way to return the favor. She arrived on a monday and david and i picked her up from the airport and we grabbed lunch before heading home to get her settled in. because david is busy with school most of the time, it gave me a chance to take her around while he was busy. The second day she was here we met up with her cousin and cousins son. They picked us up and they were going to take us around the island. I had been to most places, but it was still a nice diversion. We started off by heading towards north shore and stopped at the dole plantation. They have a huge hedge maze there and lots of varieties of pineapples that you can look at. The hedge maze gives you a prize if you can collect the icons in 8 minutes...after 50 minutes we still had one left, so it was clear that we werent' going to win anything. An hour of running around in the heat and humidity was quite tiring so we drove up towards turtle beach and watched some of the turtles swim in the ocean and then took pictures by the one laying on the beach. From there we headed to another beach and layed out for a while and swam in the water for a few hours. It was a really nice day out and the beach was cool and refreshing. There's also a large rock that juts out into the ocean that people jump off of. I went with Evan twice and jumped off into the water. he's only 8 so we picked a small point to jump from that wasn't too high out of the water. Even still it was a little scary at first. After the beach we drove around the rest of the island stopping to eat some shrimp plates. We headed home and relaxed for the rest of the day. Wed we went for a hike at manoa falls.

I've been to manoa falls about 4-5 times. It's a pretty easy walk and it goes straight through the jungle up to a small waterfall. It's nice because it's very close to david's house. Manoa is one of the wettest parts on the island, so it's very lush and very green. The downside is that there can sometimes be a lot of mud and a lot of mosquitos. When we took sarabeth to the falls there wasn't too much mud, but there was quite a lot of mosquitos. After the 1-2 hour walk we headed in the car to get some shave ice.

Other than that, we've pretty much been going to the beach a lot. Mostly we've headed to waikiki, but we've also gone to some on the northern side of the island as well. The beaches up there are a bit more secluded and the water seems to be extremely blue and clear. Sarabeth took off yesterday to meet up with a relative on the island of Kauaii for just a couple days. She gets back tonight and hopefully tomorrow I'll take her snorkling at haunama bay.

I've been running errands here and there in between. I got my Hawaii drivers license, which is cool because it has rainbows all over it. The DMV is in a small strip mall and it took me just 30 minutes to get my license. I filled out the paperwork, took the written test, and then paid for my ID. They print out your new license and give it to you right there. I also picked up a library card and am waiting for the books to be transferred to the library down the street so that I can pick them up.

Other than that, it's just job hunting and stuff. Oh and this saturday we're going to protest at the city hall here in hawaii. It's a nationwide protest on the ban on gay marriage. There are supposed to be protest marches in every state of the country. I expect the one here in hawaii to be small, but we're hopefull that we'll get at least a few people to turn out.

Well, that's all for now. I'll try and be better about updating my blog from now on...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157609010592279/show/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157608420172634/show/

Settling into my new home

2008-10-26T09:03:00.000-07:00

It's been about a month since i wrote last i think. Hmm, a lot has happened.

The Kitty (aka, trinity):
I arrived back home with little fanfare to my family and tom and angelo. After settling in for a couple of days and getting clothes washes and folded I just relaxed with my friends and kitty. I knew my time with her was limited, but my first concern was finding a place for her when i moved to hawaii. Hawaii has very strict laws regarding importing of animals so you have two options. Option 1: bring your animal over, and they sit in a quarantine shelter (basically a kennel) for 120 days at which point you can go pick them up. Option 2: get them fully vaccinated, and have two rabies shots each 90 days apart, then get them microchipped and have their blood collected and sent off to a lab to test that the vaccinations have taken. Once the lab has received the bloodwork, wait 120 days and then you can bring your animal over to hawaii where they can be released between 1-5 days. I wasnt about to have kitty sit in quarantine for 120 days, so i took option 2. After three trips to the vet and a very unhappy kitty, I finally got everything done. The next step was finding a place for her to stay while her 120 days ran through. I first sent out an email to all my friends and family and got several noncommital responses. No one was taking, and I certainly didn't want to put kitty somewhere that she wasn't absolutely wanted. My next, and last, resort was to put out a craigslist ad. Putting my cat in the care of a complete stranger was not something that i wanted to do, but at that point it was my only option. I carefully worded the ad not to mention money outright (i didnt want that to be the motivating factor for someone to watch my kitty) and made sure to include a photo of her (clearly her selling point.) I got back a number of responses. The worst of which was:

"Your cat is BEAUTIFUL!! I would love to do this only thing is how is she with dogs? We have two cats and two dogs all indoors. We have two pekingese. As long as the cat doesn't go for the dog food, they're cool with cats. "

While i appreciated the response, who in their right mind would want to take in another animal when they already have 4 indoor animals? I politely responded that she didnt get along with other animals. After about a week I got the response that I was waiting for from a guy named Walter. He had a cat for 16 years and 2 years ago it passed away. He had been thinking of getting another cat, but was leaving in feb for 6 weeks to go camping and hiking so he didn't want to get a cat just to have to leave it. The timing seemed to coincide well with my need for a 3 month cat-sitter and he genuinely seemed interested in taking care of her. At no point did the topic of money come up. He came over and met kitty and i went over to his place (that happened just ot be a couple blocks away) and made sure that his place was "normal." Everything was perfectly fine. He agreed and i agreed and so the day before leaving for hawaii, I took kitty over to his place and dropped her off. I'm still really sad about having to leave her, even if it is temporary, but I'm comforted by the fact that Walter was great with her and seemed very excited about having her there with him. With kitty taken care of, my heart was relaxed to continue on with everything else.

The Fun (aka, going out and friends):
I got settled into home for a few days and then headed out with Tom and Angelo for a night of bars and clubbing. Lets just say that I went out with a bang. Every October for the last three years I've gotten into the habit of not drinking for the entire month. It started as a test of will, and then just became a habit. It seems a good way to detox and clean out before the ensuing gluttonous fests of thanksgiving and christmas. It never fails, however, that sometime in September I have one last binge, and this year was no exception. I really couldnt say how it all ended (as i blacked out sometime midway through the night), but I can tell you how it started. Basically Tom and I went out to Richs for a night of clubbing. With his schedule and me traveling we hadn't seen a whole lot of each other and since we were both in town, it was a good chance to hang out. We had a drink or two at home, then headed out to Numbers (a club near the house), to see a DJ that I liked. We were on the list, and after going inside were thankful that we didnt have to pay to go in. You could practically hear the crickets chirping above the sound of the loud club music. There was absolutely no on there. We stayed for a drink and I talked with the DJ for a while who was pretty miserable given the fact that there was no one in the club. Then tom and i finished our drinks and chatted for a while before deciding that this place was never going to get busy. We walked down the street and headed into richs. It was also not very busy, but still had a decent amount of people there. We had a drink and walked around and chatted before heading out on the dancefloor to dance. After about an hour and a few drinks into it the club was packed and i was getting sloshed. I remember seeing Angelo arrive, and thats about the last of it. The night ensued, in spite of my memory. Apparently we had a great time. I took pictures with the photographer, tipped the tranny gogo dancer with my teeth, and found a drivers license on the floor and proceeded to question everyone in the club if they were the person on the ID, or if they knew the person on the ID. I went home at some point and woke up the next morning LATE. I very rarely wake up any later than 8am, so i was shocked with Tom grabbed my foot at noon and told me to get up because we had to get ready for Charmaine's wedding. To say i was hungover would be an understatement. I managed to drag my way through the wedding, a visit to a graveyard, a stop at my moms house, then the wedding reception and finally a night out to dinner with my friends Michelle and Cynthia and their visiting Taiwanese friends. It was a long day, and I was glad when it was over-it was the start of my sober month (a week and half early, but nonetheless necessary.)
The rest of the month was busy packing, catching up with friends, packing, seeing the family, packing, going out to eat, and some more packing. I slowly worked through the entire apartment boxing up items and wrapping them carefully. Since I had basically furnished the entire apartment, there was a lot of stuff in it that needed to be boxed up. I worked a little bit every day so that in the end I was left with just the big things to move. The day before my trip to hawaii I finally took out the last of my stuff and dropped off kitty. Charmaine my neighbor was great enough to help me move all my furniture into the uhaul, and kevin, michelle, and theresa were nice enough to come by my moms to help me unload it all. We celebrated my last night with a dinner at my moms house and all marveled at the quirkiness of my friend michelle. She never ceases to amaze me with her weird stories and crazy people skills, but she entertains.
i got some good family time in with a trip to glen ivy in corona. Its about an hour drive from san diego, but something we havent done as a family for a very long time. It's a great day spa with mineral baths, hot tubs, pools, mud baths, and saunas. A really nice and relaxing day, and it was good to spend it with the family.

It's been a long week

2008-10-16T08:23:00.000-07:00

Sometimes i feel like this:

Jetsetting...NYC-HNL-SFO

2008-10-06T20:47:00.000-07:00

After my trip to fire island I headed into the city (NYC) for a few days for some fun with friends. Over the years it seems that everyone has flocked there which is great for me since it means I always have a place to stay when I go. I kicked off my night in the city by getting settled into my friend Lyuba’s place and then heading out to meet Angelo’s sister Gabby (Brie, or Gabriella). Gabby works for a record label so we met up to see a couple of the artists on her label. Her cousin that I had previously met was also there so the three of us sat down and chatted between music sets. The two groups that were playing were interesting, although I probably wouldn’t ever have run out to buy their CD’s. It was nice hanging out, but after a morning of making it from Fire Island to NYC I was tired by the time midnight rolled around, so I headed back up to Lyuba’s place for a good night’s sleep. Over the next few days, I lunched with friends, ran in central park, and had a picnic with other friends. Overall, I think I was only in NYC for 4 days, it wasn’t enough time to get settled, but was at least enough time to catch up with my friends there. Before leaving I had decided it was still possible to make it to Hawaii for my boyfriends sisters wedding reception. I could have taken a nonstop flight from NYC to Hawaii that left in the afternoon and arrived late in the afternoon, or left early and made it into Hawaii earlier. I decided to take the earlier flight.

It was a long day, but I eventually made it into Hawaii early in the afternoon. I was even able to see my roommate Tom for a little bit in the Minneapolis Airport. When I arrived Davids sister, Kaui, was able to pick me up from the airport and sneak me home. I was planning on surprising David, but also surprised Lori since she didn’t get my email that I sent the previous day. It was good to see them both so surprised, and excited to see me. It was also really nice to be back in Hawaii, my second home. I went to the gym, spent a lot of time with David, went to the beach, and made it to the reception. I was so glad that I made it there. I saw family members and got to be introduced to a number of people. Its so interesting to me sometimes, the whole gay thing. I always chuckle on the inside when I’m referred to as Davids friend, or vice-versa. I guess people still have trouble saying the word “boyfriend” when it refers to same-sex couples. The food was great, the family was great, and the speeches were great. Oh and the view, amazing. It was on the top floor of the Sheraton Hotel in Waikiki and had views of the entire beach and Diamond head in the background. I made sure to take plenty of pictures of the view. I was only in town for the weekend and headed out on Monday or Tuesday to San Francisco. It was a really short stay, but I left knowing that I would be back in about a month. I hopped on the red eye flight at night and at 6am arrived into SFO.

I gave my friends Jason and Sarabeth about a days notice that I was coming, but were gracious enough to host me for the weekend. I made my way by mass transit to sarabeths parents house and arrived at the doorstep at 7am. A groggy sarabeth greeted me and after giving her time to get ready and chatter with both her and her mom, sarabeth and I made our way down the street for breakfast. From there we went to meet Jason at his work to pick up the keys to his place so that I could drop off my stuff. We said hi, dropped of my things and then went through Chinatown, little italy, the wharf, then back to jason’s place. Sarabeth headed home and I took a nap (still a little tired from the plane ride.) After a couple hours, I woke up just in time to greet Jason and head out for some juicy burgers for dinner. It was an early evening for us both that night. I zonked out quickly on the couch while we watched some movies. The next day Jason and I went out for breakfast, then walked through golden gate park, an arboretum and the gift shop at the modern art museum. After a few errands we finally headed home and vegged out a bit. We decided to have sarabeth come over that night and we all went out in the castro. Jason dressed up as Veronica and we all went out and had a blast. We had to call it an early night since Jason had to work the next day, but it was fine because the crowd was thinning out around the same time we were ready to go.

The next day it was time to head home. I had just enough time to walk around with sarabeth, grab some food and then made my way to the airport for my final ride home. I flew on Virgin America, by far the best and nicely styled airline I’ve ever flown. It’s amazing what small changes inside the plane can make. Individual direct tv screens, cool mood lighting and background music. We arrived early and was swiftly picked up by angelo. Its been so great to be home. Now I’m just packing up my apartment and getting ready to move to Hawaii on the 30th.

My Best Friends Wedding...

2008-09-19T08:53:00.001-07:00

Well, I was just home for about two weeks before having to jet off again to New York for my best, and longest, friend Leah’s wedding. I was able to get on the same flight as her sister and sisters husband, which made the flight a little nicer. It was Jet Blue, which is one of my favorite airlines to fly. The individual TV’s helped pass the time for the 4.5 hour flight. A plane, two trains, and a ferry later, we were on Fire Island for the wedding week.
I met up with our group and put my stuff into the apartment I was sharing with 6 other flight attendants. Kevin had nicknamed it the “anne frank annex (or attic)” because of the low ceilings and location. It was really cute, but awkwardly shaped. I would walk up the stairs and say “get your papers ready,” or “show me your documents” in as thick a german accent as I could muster. Kevin would reply “the Gestapo are here, everyone hide.” The first day we got everyone settled as people were arriving throughout the day. Fire island is a pretty strange place because it’s a very long, but very narrow island. You can easily walk the width in about 10-20 minutes, but walking the length would take hours and hours. Over the course of the first few days we all got together, drank pretty much nonstop, and chatted the entire time. Thursday was a drunken wild game of trivia pursuit highlighted by an amazing random answer from Leah’s dad…”well, queen Victoria was the only one that died in 1909.” First hand knowledge Leah said. Our team lost in final death, but it was a close game.
Tom, Kevin, Valerie, Michael and I made a long day trip to the Pines to visit Kevins boyfriend that shared a house there. It was an extremely long 2.5 hour walk through places like the sunken forest, dunes, cherry grove, and creepy desolate towns. It really was a great and varied walk punctuated by visits from deer and breaks every once and a while to allow Val to pee (she’s pregnant and apparently that shrank her bladder to about the size of a walnut.) Once we got to the pines it of course began to rain, then rain some more, then rain some more. Valerie and I began a game of scrabble. I was blessed with amazing letters and whipped her ass. Tom and Michael began making Caprihna’s and they were strong. I finished about ¾ of mine and they had a few. By the time we actually left the two of them were slurry drunk and yet still had enough room for shots and beer while we waited for the water taxi. On the taxi ride back we watched as the two sloppy messes danced around the back of the boat getting splashed by rain water and sea water simultaneously. We half hoped they would fall overboard so we could skip the wedding BBQ that we were going back for and just hang out in the pines. We made it back to the BBQ whose highlights were 1) Michael sidestepping the ice cooler barricade and walking through the screen door, which nearly took out the bride and her sister. 2) Tom flicking his wet umbrella at me thereby drenching Leah, me and a few other people. 3) Kevin and I getting into our beds for the night and finding (for me) a bed full of cinnamon candies and (for Kevin) a bunch of candies and a bag of empty beer cans.
The wedding was Saturday and was so beautiful. In the morning everyone was busy getting ready and the 6 people in our anne frank annex were spacing ourselves out evenly to make sure we all got shower time. Once we were ready we started the wedding precession by waiting for Leah and Mark to ride up in a golf cart for photos. Leah posed and strutted and looked amazing. I’m not usually a big fan of poofy dresses, but hers was amazing and suited her well. We headed from the first meeting place down to the beach for the exchange of vows and the ceremony. The actual ceremony was quite small and intimate except for the people on the beach who had turned their sunning chairs towards our direction. The wedding party was just the immediate family although it was really cool to see everyone dressed up on the beach. From there it was a short walk back to where the reception was to take place.
The reception was on a deck on the water with an attached pier. In the afternoon light, the water sparkled and was very calm. I sat at a table with a bunch of my friends and had drinks and appetizers while chatting. Leah was pretty much nowhere to be seen as she and Mark were off taking pictures while everyone was still fairly sober and no makeup had run. It gave everyone a chance to get acquainted and loosen up. The reception carried off nicely. I was able to round up the troops while the lighting was good and get some nice pictures on the pier that jutted out over the water. By darkness, everything was hopping. The food had been served and consumed, the drinks were being drunk and the music had started. By the time Leah had joined us on the dancefloor things were in full gear. Dancing, talking, having fun and more dancing. I followed Leah around snapping pictures (which turned out to be a good idea since two cameras were stolen that night.) Most of my pictures were really great. I had Leah do a couple twirls to send her dress flying and once she saw how much fun it was, she didn’t stop. I tuckered out a little past midnight and was awoken to the sound of a herd of elephants coming up into the apartment. The drinking continued at the house and I escaped to the room like a fuddy duddy. That didn’t last long as about 5 people bursted into the room to say hi and wake me up. Leah and Rosanna sat on my feet, and Judy sat on the bed next to mine. We chatted and talked and were having a great time. Tom ran around and tickled my feet that were sticking out from the covers. It’s really my only ticklish spot, and I’ve sent many pedicurists hurling backwards during feet scrubs. This time was no different. My uncontrolled knee-jerk reaction sent Leah flying and Rosanna to the floor. I apologized and everyone laughed and recovered a bit. It was a little after 3am before everyone finally left for their own beds, and I tucked in and got some shut eye.
In the morning the apartment looked like a blast had gone off. I took some time to clean up a bit and put everything where it was supposed to be. People began to groggily wake up after 9am. Most everyone met up for a brunch the next morning. Sunday was the day of exodus and most people that were there for the wedding headed home. A small group of us headed towards the other side of the island to hang out poolside in The Pines and party the night away. Unfortunately there weren’t many people ready to party that night and Tom and I ended up going out and having fun even though there were few people out on that Sunday.
Monday afternoon it was off to Manhattan for a few extra days of fun with my friends.

San Diego: Home again...and everyone's sick

2008-09-07T10:00:00.000-07:00

I arrived back home and took a few days to conquer the jetlag. It wasn't as bad as going east (as far as being tired all the time), but my brain didn't quite work right for about 4 days. I think it was used to being switched off during my new daytime hours and so I was just really stupid for a matter of days. I went out to dinner with my family and friend Kevin after getting back. We went to this japanese restaurant where they cook the food in front of you. We had been there before for my moms birthday last year and had a good time. It was nice to see everyone and get caught up, but my mind still wasn't working right so i was mainly just a fixture at the dinner table, not really remembering anything or asking stupid questions that I already knew the answers to. After that, it was all pretty much downhill:

My car was sick: During it's sit, the battery had died and lost a cell. I wasn't able to jump start it, but was able to push start it (which the car did NOT like at all). I got it running, but then realized i was almost out of gas to had to start and get refueled, but then could not get the car started again. Eventually i had to replace the battery, but after getting a jump start from a tow truck and driving it for a couple hours just to make sure the battery was totally dead...it was. Luckily it was still under warranty, so i only had to pay 30 bucks for a new battery.

Kitty had fleas: The whole apartment complex had apparently contracted fleas while i was gone. Kitty had them and the apartment had them. Tom and Angelo had flea bombed the apartment and locked kitty in the bathroom with the window open and towels under the door to isolate her. Angelo had given kitty flea medicine, but none of that seemed to work. I ended up giving her a bath, which she took much better than i had envisioned. The apartment was clean and kitty got rid of her fleas (at least until i could put her on the good flea medicine)

Kitty got sick: A few days ago, kitty started throwing up and stopped eating. I took her to the vets to get her checked out. After 500 bucks I am still waiting on test results. The xray showed that her stomach and small intestine were swollen and inflamed. She hasn't eaten anything, but i was able to get her to lick some baby food off my finger.

I got sick: I've traveled 6 months over a ton of countries and other than an upset stomach, never caught a cold once. I'm back home for a week and all of a sudden I'm sick. It's not a horrible cold, but they're never fun.

The roundup: Other than that, i've been to the beach with my friends Kevin and Theresa, laid out in the park and read my book, had tea station, went to balboa park with my friends and family, babysat my nephew ethan, watched the "dark knight" at the IMAX theatre (it was awesome), gone to the gym every day, went for a dental checkup, and today i'll go to the beach again.

My rest will be short-lived. Wed i'll be heading to NYC for my best friend, Leah's, wedding. It should be a great week, and i might go to SFO on the way back.

http://flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157607163784105/

The End of the Road is Paved in Gold...(and mud)

2008-09-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

My last few days with my relatives was wonderful. I went on a barefoot hike with Gabi and her parents. It was something I hadn’t done before and was really great. It was a hike through the woods, but the path was made of various materials that were supposed to give your feet different experiences along the way. I was continually surprised at how active Gabi’s parents were. Karl, Gabi and I tossed off our shoes and indulged in the various materials like mud, pinecones, sawdust, pebbles and even treated glass. I loved sinking into the cold mud and battering my feet with sawdust, but after the experience my feet were begging for some flip flops or shoes. It felt so good after the hike to have my flip flops on that I told them it felt like I was walking on clouds. We went to a nearby lake for a quick stroll after before indulging in some delicious german food for lunch. Likely my last german meal before heading home I had bratwurst, sauerkraut, and klersa. Oh, it was so delicious I just kept eating as everyone passed their leftovers my way. After lunch was a quick search to find me black forest cake for my final goodbye sweet. Most places that we tried were closed, but then we went to a café where one of my relatives used to go with her friends once a month to get together and chat. They served me with a huge slice of black forest cake and I gobbled through it in seconds. It was actually the best one that I had eaten so far, but could have uses just a bit more of the cherry liquor on the cake. With that, we headed back to drop of Gabi’s parents and said our goodbyes. As we drove away I watched as Karl pulled out his white handkerchief to blot his teary eyes. It was so touching and it warmed my heart to feel like such a part of a family that I had just recently been united with.

That night we went to the town where Juergen was from and I saw his parents house and the rooms that had been converted into the children’s playground wonderland. Train tracks and toys were sprawled out covering almost every square inch of the floor. It looked like toy heaven.

Juergens town was typically cute and typically small. Known for their gold industry there were a number of items scattered throughout the town that had been gilded in gold. After a tour of the city that included a new H&M in a great small shopping area we relaxed at a café near the center of town. We sat for at least an hour or two and just talked and ate and relaxed. It made me yearn to learn german since both Gabi and Juergen had done such a great job with their English. I was slightly embarrassed a number of times to my visit in germany that I wasn’t able to speak the language that my father and all my ancestors spoke from birth. It’s on my list of things to do now.

I decided to head home the following day for a number of reasons not the least of which was that I was just simply tired of traveling after so long. I had started off at the end of march going from Hawaii to asia and then traveled the other way from san diego to London and then through the rest of Europe. Close to 6 months in total of traveling I was completely saturated with experiences, sites, and foreign languages. It seemed a perfect ending to my voyage to have spent connecting with my past and easing my transition home in a place that reminded me so much of home as a child. My ride home was an exhausting day that began at 6am with a train ride to the dusseldorf airport and then continued with a flight to Detroit followed by a flight to san diego that would put me in 24 hours after I had left. I kept my eye on the prize continually buoyed by the fact that I was going home and would see my friends, family and kitty.

http://flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157607072022544/show/
http://flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157607075651169/show/

A day of memories

2008-08-30T14:01:00.000-07:00

Monday was a visit with Gabi’s parents and her father Karl was going to take me around to see some sites from my families past. Both Karl and Gertraud were a lively couple and Karl had the energy and enthusiasm of a teenager. You could tell that he clearly loved history, especially as it related to the family and was a complete wealth of knowledge for everything relating to the family. We stopped by their house and Karl, Gabi and I headed out into the city of Roth. First we stopped by a house that my great grandparents had lived in at one time. It had obviously been kept up well over the years and was still in great condition, those germans sure do know how to take care of their stuff. After the first house we headed down the street and Karl recanted a story from my grandparents past. My grandfather had been a highly decorated pilot before WWII and near the end of the war he was given orders to report for duty. They could tell that the war was nearing its end, but also knew that reporting for duty was a certain death sentence. My grandma and the other women hid him in the attic of their house for quite some time until the war had finally ended, thereby keeping him safe. Even as Karl struggled with his English to describe the situation I struggled to hide back the tears from the emotional story. It took me a while to recover from the story and luckily had done so by the time we crossed the street to the city hall. Karl wanted to try and get a copy of the marriage certificate of my grandparents and were pretty sure that they had been married in the church across the street. We sat down with the record keeper and searched in vain to locate a copy of their marriage license. Karl then decided to see if my great grandparents had their license on file there. After some looking the man was able to locate it and I got a copy. It was funny because I, as the direct descendant, was the only one allowed to see the book and obtain the copy even though I couldn’t read any of it. The marriage certificate was huge. Hand written in old script it was two 11x17” pages and gave as much detail about the people getting married as you could imagine. It was from the document that we were able to tell that my grandparents had likely gotten married in the nearby town of Roth. Karl was enjoying the experience and as excited at getting the marriage certificate as I was.

After that amazing bit, we headed across the street to the church and went inside. It was small and had probably looked much the same inside for decades. I lit a candle to honor my past and soon we headed through the town a bit more. It was hilarious to walk through town, we couldn’t go more than 10 minutes without running into someone that Karl knew and I could tell that he was giving everyone the lowdown on what we were doing that day. We headed through an old estate that had been turned into a museum with a dali exhibit. The dali exhibit was okay, but the interior of the building was amazing. Painted ceilings and amazing woodwork, it was certainly a grand location. We wondered through the building and then headed out and over to the cemetery where a number of my relatives were buried. The cemetery wasn’t all that big (not surprising given the size of the town) but it was amazingly maintained and most graves had flowers growing from them. We took a break from the tour and headed home to pick up Gertraud and then head out to a restaurant to meet another relative, Annelore.

At the house we ended up leaving Karl as he fidgeted with his computer, trying to get the marriage licenses copied. “guys, always the same with their computers” the girls said. We went to the restaurant and met up with Annelore and sat down to eat. We had gotten drinks and ordered before Karl had caught up with us. Most of the conversation was in german, so I struggled to latch onto any words that I knew to get an idea of what they were talking about. Annelore’s English was very good and she told stories of my family, the war, and my father. It was nice and touching to hear those stories told. Gabi later told me that it was nice for her too spending time with her parents and hearing stories that she had never heard before. We spent a couple hours with Annelore and then went back home for coffee and gobs of dessert. I had helped myself to three before I decided it was better if I didn’t have any more. We said goodby to Annelore and then had two more sites to visit before finishing the “family tour.”

First stop was the house where my Opa was hidden during the war. Karl had no holdups about walking up to the house and going into the backyard even though there were people living there. I thought it was hilarious. Nothing stopped him, but no one ever seemed to matter. Nearby the house was the small pergola where Gertraud had been born. They were on their way to the nearby hospital, but she had come to quickly and so was born right there on the edge of the woods. It was a fascinating place and it was still amazing me to be able to see these places in person.

The last house was where my grandparents lived before they left to the US after the war. It was impossible to see behind the overgrown trees around the yard and so we looked around the side to see if we could get a better view. There was a gate that led to the front door so of course Karl tried to open it and go in. A lady living at the house saw that we were trying to enter and had buzzed us in after calling the barking guard dog back inside the house. Karl had walked through the gate and Gertraud and I hesitantly followed. The owner of the house was also home and Karl explained that my grandparents had lived there before coming to the US and that I was there in germany visiting all their old residences. The man was nice enough to show us around the outside of the house and then invited me in to take pictures of the rooms where he though that they had probably stayed in. It was very kind of him and I was very appreciative of the opportunity. After a bit of time we all headed back to the car and then Gabi and I headed home to meet up with Juergen who pulled up from work just as we were arriving.

Juergen, Gabi, and I went for a long bike ride through trails and then to a local castle. The hill up to the castle was a killer and I wheezed my way the entire way up the hill. It wasn’t until about 20 minutes after we had gotten up to the castle that I had finally caught my breath.

The entire day was absolutely perfect with amazing history and stories and was capped off perfectly with a strenuous, but beautiful bike ride. I’m not sure that it was enough to work off the three desserts and lunch that I had that day, but it was a great day in all.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157606994801170/show/

a day of fresh air

2008-08-30T07:30:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning it was time to say goodbye to Daniel and Florian, they were headed to the mountains with Juergen’s parents for a week. We had the usual 10-course spread for breakfast and then walked the kids out. Juergens parents were quite vibrant and didn’t seem at all like typical grandparents, they were active, engaging and as warm as the everyone that I have met so far. We just met briefly, but you could tell that they were good people.

After the kids were gone we headed to a nearby area for a hike, but got to feed deer and boars before the walk. The animals were kept in large areas so that they could run around a bit, but they mainly kept near the fence where there were frequent visitors that fed them. Gabi explained to me that the land was owned by a nearby restaurant that we would eat at after the hike; I tried not to get too attached to the animals.

The walk through the forest was nice, both for the views and for the company. I don’t know if it was the practice or the comfort, but Juergen’s English seemed to be improving drastically in just a very short amount of time. It was great just spending time with them and getting to hear all of their stories and talk about the area and their families and everyday life. It struck me that it was the most that I had talked in quite some time and struggled occasionally to keep the conversation going. I loved that they are so active and could take the time to show me around the natural part of their region, they told me how the forest was known for it’s witches and fairy tale stories. There were stories on plaques scattered about the hike with various stories, but unfortunately they were all in german, so I had no chance. After the hike we went to the aforementioned restaurant that owned the livestock farm. We all ended up getting the same thing as we saw one pass by us on it’s way to another table. It was a big hunk of meat with a potato dumpling and I think some red peppers. I of course scarfed my down in no time flat and scoured the bone for any remaining flesh. Juergen did a pretty good job at finishing his off, but Gabi was a good girl and took home her leftovers.

I think after that we headed home and I took a quick nap before we headed out to Nuremburg to walk around. Nuremburg was actually quite a surprise for me. I didn’t pay much attention to it in my guide book as I hadn’t ever actually heard the name before. It turned out to be a very lovely city indeed. It’s sister city is Venice and it boasts a number of canals that travel through the city. There is, of course, a castle and cathedral and a number of other small sights to see. Everywhere you could smell sauerkraut or some other delicious meal being cooked up in a restaurant. We spent the remainder of the evening walking through the city and checking out various buildings and fountains. The pictures really say it all. There were some really great views around the city of old houses/buildings and accompanying canals. We were there at just the perfect time for picture taking; a couple of hours before sunset. At the end of the walk through the city we stopped for a snack and some beverages at an “American diner.” It was American-inspired for sure, with hamburgers the size of a newborns head and deep fried appetizers. We shared some garlic bread and a mixed plate of appetizers. While the names of the appetizers were the same as we have in the states, the taste wasn’t quite the same. The breading and everything was just a bit different from what I’m used to. It was okay, but I was still pretty full from lunch so I was okay just nibbling.

Before heading out we passed through the cities movie theatre and I longed so much to see any of the new movies that were out, but they were all in german. The evening at home was relaxing and Juergen and I played on our laptops as Gabi read from my travel book to check the credibility of the writers, no doubt. She said they did a decent job at giving just enough information on places, but was lacking on some parts. A fact that was fairly expected, given that the book covered the entirety of Europe and yet was still smaller than a Volkswagen beetle.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157606965632681/show/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157606997807999/show/

When you have family, it's always Christmas

2008-08-29T02:55:00.000-07:00

I left Berlin a little saddened that I hadn’t gotten to experience it fully, but just had a small taste, but was excited to be going to see family near Nuremburg, Germany. It was a bit of a journey and I was to arrive around 6pm at the Buchenbach train station to meet my relatives Gabi and Jurgen. I wasn’t exactly sure how we were related, but my Aunt had put me in touch with them and it was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass by. It was clear when I got on the train from Nuremburg to Buchenbach, that it was a small place as there were not very many seats on the train and even still it wasn’t full. I had previously been nervous that we might miss each other at the train station when I arrived, but when the crowd of 10 people exiting the train left I was greeted by Gabi and Jurgen. They were a very smiley couple and greeted me warmly before we headed off to their house, which was no more than a 5 minute drive. Everything was very lush and green around the town and very comfortable; their house was no exception. They had a large green yard with plants in every corner and the house was the perfect size. We got to the house and I met the children, Florian (14) and Daniel (11). They were like the nuclear family from the 50’s; all smiles and a glimmer in their eye that relayed a contentment (or in the children a slight mischievous quality.)

We sat down and had a german spread, the likes of which I haven’t seen since I was a child at my grandma’s house. Meats, cheeses, breads, fruit, etc. You name it, it was there. They had truly gone out of their way to welcome me and I felt a little unease that they may have been inconvenienced by my visit, but their warmth had eased any nervousness. We sat and chatted for a while at the table where it was clear that Gabi had done her homework. She had read my blog and referenced it frequently, asking about David and talking about my visits to other places that I had written about. It was amazing to me that she had taken such an interest in my visit and it made me feel so welcomed. I think we sat and chatted for some time before going to the computer to check out google earth and see everyone’s houses. I must say that compared to germany, the US looks pretty ugly from the sky. Rows and rows of houses, even large parks and open areas seem insignificant in the maze of streets. In germany you could tell where the trees had been cut down, but there was still a vast area of green. We looked at san diego, Hawaii, germany, and then looked at pictures from all those places. I was attempting to convince them to come visit so that I could return their hospitality, but we’ll have to see how good of a job I did. Late that evening we headed to bed for a fresh start the next day. I slept soundly with a quiet that I hadn’t heard for some time.

The next day was a visit to two towns, spectacular, but strange, in their own way. First was Rothenburg, and old town likely known for it’s collection of well preserved old buildings and wall surrounding the city, but will always be known to me as ChristmasLand. We walked through the town first and saw all the great buildings, but it was all just a precursor to the store where Christmas lasts all year long. The Christmas van and nutcracker outside give you a hint at what’s to come, but the treasure trove of holiday cheer whacked you in the face as soon as you walked through the door. It was wall to wall Christmas as far as the eye could see. Lights, bulbs, decorations, incense, candles; you name it, they had it. The smells and sights were all very reminiscent of our German Christmas’ as children, but was just a bit off during August. The whole thing was a bit overwhelming at times, but you just couldn’t help but smile; like “it’s a small world” in Disneyland, it was just so damn happy. I think we must have spent about an hour there looking at everything, and Christmas lovers could easily have made an entire day out of just the store. After the Christmas bonanza it was off to a teddy bear store to ease our way slowly back into reality. We spent the next hour or so walking the city and climbed the stairs to the top of the wall that encircled the city. From there you got a great view of the town and it was a nice quiet break from the streets. We all got a bit hungry and so headed into town to look for a place with good traditional Frankonian food (the region). We found a good restaurant and I chowed down on some meat with cabbage and Klersa (a traditional german potato dumpling.) It was so good I could have easily eaten two meals, but really had just the perfect amount of food.

Next stop on out journey was a trip to Bad Windsheim where we went to a sort of open air history museum. This place had taken extremely old houses from all over the region, dismantled them, then rebuilt them in this large farm-like setting. They were basically recreating an entire village of historic houses. We arrived to a flock of sheep roaming the parking lot. That gave me a pretty good idea of what this place was like. We stopped shortly before starting out walk through the town to have a drink and some dessert that we had picked up before leaving Rothenburg. I, of course, had a piece of Black Forest Cake while everyone else sampled a sort of layered buttery dough ball that Daniel loves. Once we had rested a bit it was off to tour the town. I must say that I was a bit nervous when walking into the first house; the smell of a million sheep or cows clung to every crevice in the old stinky house. It was enough to stop me mid-breath and have me heading straight back through the front door. I wasn’t sure if it was representative of all of the houses we would see, so I kept my fingers crossed as we headed to the second house. Luckily the first house was the one and only that smelled like that, I was now free to breathe normally and enjoy the houses. I’m not much a fan of history, but these houses were pretty amazing. I think they ranged from the 1500’s to more recent 18-1900’s and each was very different and very interesting. The furniture was fascinating to me, much of it was in incredible condition considering its age. The beds were the funniest and were smaller and shorter than the typical twin sized beds we have today. After walking for maybe an hour or two we were all pretty tired and headed back to the car. I was exhausted for the car ride home and struggled to keep my head upright and stay awake for the entire journey. I did okay, but was so completely tired when we finally arrived at home. I think I turned in before 9pm that night.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157606961362740/show/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157606964688453/show/

Ich bin ein Berliner, with sugar on top

2008-08-24T12:56:00.000-07:00

My only regret in Berlin was that I didn’t have enough time to do everything that I wanted. There were only two days available in the hostel and the weekend was fully booked for some sort of soccer game or other similar event. I arrived around noon to Berlin. The train station is amazing and huge. There are about 12 tracks and additionally there is the local train station a few floors up that connect to alternate parts of Berlin and nearby cities. The only thing they don’t have is a connection to the Ubahn (the underground or metro.) It doesn’t connect to there. Unfortunately for me, the only directions that I had were from the Ubahn. I was able to locate a city map and find the final stop that I needed, it looked close enough, but ended up being an agonizing, sweat drenching walk that took about 45 minutes with my two backpacks. The walk wasn’t terribly inspiring once I left the train station, but I had heard good things about Berlin, so I was hopeful. My arrival at the hostel paid off and I was greeted with the nicest hostel I have stayed at to-date. It was 23 euro a night for the 5-person dorm room, which was a little on the high side especially considering that breakfast was not included (but the breakfast buffet was only 5 euro.) Everything looked brand new and you could tell that they were continually doing construction. The entryway had free wifi (which was broken while they were extending it to cover every floor), and all the hallways and rooms required card-key access. The bathrooms were modern and sparkling (something I haven’t seen since david and I stayed in the nice hotel in Bilbao.) I checked into my room, grabbed some food and showered off the sweat. I decided that since I only had two days in Berlin that I should hit the ground running, or cycling that is.

I rented the last bike downstairs for the remainder of the day and headed out after some guidance from the check in staff. For the next 6 hours I was on a nonstop cycling event around the city. I quickly learned the cycling rules and realized that some cities were made for bicycles and some weren’t. Whereas in the US cyclists seem to be the targets of frustration and over-eager drivers, in Europe they’re just as respected and considered as any car. There is a street, a bike lane, and then a sidewalk. Typically the bike lane is raised on the sidewalk which gives you further protection from the cars. As my first journey I headed east towards the wall. I stopped at a number of areas along the way to enjoy the scenery and check things out. Getting to the wall took much longer than I had expected (about an hour.) Initially I hadn’t even realized that I was cycling next to the wall, it was much less impressive than I had imagined. What was left of the wall was still covered with graffiti, but it was recent. The wall is only about 11feet high, but the thickness surprised me. It was less than a foot thick (I think it actually only measures 7” thick.) I continued cycling towards one of the few small neighborhoods that were recommended to me, not realizing that I had passed them about 20 minutes before. I backtracked along the river and came across some great areas where small flat-bottom boats were anchored in canals and had been turned into restaurants. I biked around a while more, but it was starting to get cold and the weather was beginning to change. That’s one thing about Germany, the weather is completely unpredictable. One minute you’ll be basking in the sun and the next minute it will be raining on you.

I must say that there are some great neighborhoods in east berlin, but they’re scattered and isolated. The entire city is under construction and completely in debt, but I imagine it will all pay off in the end. I headed back home, passing by numerous museums and great sites throughout the city. When I got home I had barely enough energy to rinse off, eat some dinner and crash in bed.

Thursday was my only full day in Berlin, so I thought I’d see everything of the city that I could. I set out in the morning on bike after breakfast to see the sites to the west. I started in from my hostel, went south to a big cathedral and museum, crossed the canal and headed west. I followed the road through the main park then headed north along its edge before cutting through near the train station. I passed through the small part of the park that went through the zoo and then crossed another canal where I came out into a big main street. The aquarium, and a number of sites all surrounded the park, so there was no shortage of sites to see and things to look at. After a few hours I needed a break and happened upon an H&M. I definitely needed just a few new tshirts as the white ones I had were now overstretched and a sort of grayish beige, and I really only had two tshirts that I actually enjoyed wearing. After my quick dip into H&M I scoured the nearby neighborhood for some place to grab a bite to eat. My 3 hours of cycling had completely evaporated any amount of food left in my system. After a bit I struck gold in the form of rainbow flags! I had found the gay area. I locked up my bike and set out on foot to stumble into the first loud and raucous place I could find. It was only 11am, but in a city that parties 24/7 there was surely somewhere I could grab a lively brunch or lunch. Most of the places were pretty tame until I walked into a place that was bustling with activity. It wasn’t until I entered that I realized it was just a bar. Eager for something, I saddled up a stool and got a beer. Once my eyes had adjusted I could tell that this wasn’t a place for a morning drink and some chatter, these guys had been going nonstop since the time when the berlin wall still stood intact. The ravages of all night partying and drinking were shown in every crevasse in their faces. They really were a hilarious bunch, even though I couldn’t tell what they were saying. Shortly I was fingered as a foreigner (not only by the fact that I had difficulty telling the bartender what kind of beer I wanted,but in the fact that I looked about 20 years younger than everyone in the bar). One of the guys sitting next to me who had a decent grasp of English began to chat with me. His stained teeth and sallow complexion turned me off a first, but he was nice enough to overlook it. He was from Amterdam and was just here for a holiday. He came there a lot just to vacation. I don’t remember his name, but do recall that it took him three times pronouncing and one time spelling before I even understood what he was trying to say. I asked him for recommendations for places to go and he suggested a number. He was surprised that I hadn’t gone out the night before, but I had explained that I was tired from biking around all day to see the city (a concept he just didn’t really understand.) He was here for the nightlife, which turned into the daylife, and back again into the nightlife with probably no rest in between. Most of the places he recommended were nearby, which meant a long trip from my hostel. He suggested a naked Barbie party that started early and everyone headed out to different places after that. It sounded cool and exciting, even though I barely understood what he was trying to say. He repeated a few times before I told him I understood. It was, then, with great shock when I checked online later to get more details about the club before I headed out. The “naked Barbie party,” was not at all what he was saying. The club was actually hosting a naked party…party. You basically go inside and immediately strip off your clothes and dance around and party. Judging by the clientele that I had seen at the bar, it wasn’t the type of experience I was looking for that night.

Anyways, after tooling around the gayberhood and walking through all the cute shops and boutiques I headed back to the hostel for a break and another bit of sightseeing. I, yet again, overshot my destination and had to backtrack slightly to get to where I needed to go. The nice thing about where I was staying was that it was very close to the famed communist era TV tower which rises higher than any other structure in the city and is viewable even from miles away. It sits next to an equally ancient world-clock that looks like something from old school space mountain at Disneyland. I was able to get a little break and changed and cooled down before heading out again for the night.

My night out turned out to be an evening out. I biked the 35 minutes back that night to the gay area and grabbed a horrible bite to eat, pesto gnocchi with cherry tomatoes. I ate about 1/3 of it before deciding I couldn’t stomach any more, even with the ½ liter of beer I was chasing it with. I sat and sipped and relaxed for a while, but it was still hours until even the earliest of clubs would open. I weighed my options before deciding to head back into town. I was just too far and it would be too late of a night to go out and still get up early enough to pack and head to the train station.

The ride home was actually very nice with two exceptions. 1. The bell on my bike didn’t work which actually wouldn’t have been such a problem except that 2. The lights on my bike didn’t work either. Most people I was passing didn’t even realize I was near until I was right upon them. I made it home safely, but only traveled in the street when I was flanked, both front and rear, with other cyclists. I hit a number of the sites that I had missed previously and was able to get some decent shots even though it was dark (can I just say how much I still love my camera.) When I got home I had a nice conversation with another guy in the dorm who was from Chicago and then a couple from New Zealand. We chatted about how difficult it was to spend an entire day running around the city sight seeing and then still have enough energy to go out partying all night. We all felt kinda lame for not going out, but found comfort that we were all being lame together.

I spent the remainder of the night packing, then chatting with another fellow from NY who was just there for a few days. Friday morning brought breakfast and heading out to the train station (amazingly there is a bus that goes straight from the hostel to the train station, a fact that I completely missed on my way in.)

Leipzigged when it should have Leipzagged

2008-08-24T12:42:00.000-07:00

Leipzig is a smallish city south of Berlin. It’s nothing special to speak of, but has a old east-germany feel (which was why it was recommended to me.) I was there for three nights, which was more than enough time to get acquainted with the city, but in retrospect might have been better spent either in Belin or Munich (unfortunately both were full which is why I elected to stay those three days in Leipzig). Most of the time I walked through the large, but largely unimpressive park. It was decently maintained, but just kinda blah. I went to a stasi museum (the old GDR secret police that monitored everything from the daily mail to telephone taps.) The museum was almost entirely in German, so I walked around and looked at all the surveillance equipment before going out for lunch.

The city was nice, and typically german, in that everything was going either construction or renovation. It was not quite as small as Triberg, but definitely not as big as Munich. The typical sites were there from the cathedrals, parks, museums, etc. I saw a few of the historical pieces from WWII, but decided I would spend more time in Berlin doing that (since it seemed to be the hub of East/West and Hitlers movement. I really cannot report that I did a whole lot while I was in Leipzig other than walking around.

I met a nice chatty fellow in my hostel named Heinrich. He came from a small town outside of Berlin, but was now living in Amsterdam. He was certain that I would love Berlin and we talked about languages (specifically the dutch language and how he thought it was probably one of the most horrible languages to listen to.) He was there for a computer gaming convention that was in town so a number of the hotels and hostels were completely booked for the 4 day even. As I wandered around town I could hear nerdspeak going on everywhere in regards to the convention. English was the common language of communication so it was nice to fill my ears with a bit of English, even if it was about computers and games.

I guess the highlight of my time in Berlin was the day I got lost. I was looking for the park, which was about a 25 minute walk from my hostel. When I was midway there I started talking to david on the phone. We finished our conversation when I was about a block away from the park. Somehow when I hung up I turned left instead of right and didn’t realize that I was heading in the complete opposite direction of the park until about 30 minutes later. I turned and headed down the next interesting street which turned out to be a goldmine. The first store I went into was Leipzig’s version of the 99cent store. Most things were under a euro, which, even for the exchange was a good deal. Realizing I had limited space, I didn’t get a shopping cart, I was limiting myself to only what I could carry in my hands. For 6 euro I snapped up 4 quadro pens, 2 regular pens (I had gotten fed up with the one that was continually breaking on me), graph paper (I had started designing houses to keep myself busy since I was lacking a book), two rainbow luggage straps (for 50cents each; my previous ones were continually stolen when I flew to Hawaii. I had purchased my other ones for over 10 bucks each), and some other nick nacks. The rest of the street was really cute and nearby had a small café next to a modern art museum. I wasn’t expecting much from the museum and didn’t really feel like paying to go in, so I opted for the café that was a modernized version of early Victorian.

The rest of my days were spent watching simpson episodes, wandering the park and checking out the absurd collection of souvenirs. So, for everyone that got a little something last time I traveled, don’t expect anything this time. My bag is already too heavy, and most of the crap in the stores would have ended up in the donation bin in a few years anyways. Other than that, I was off to Berlin.

Black Forest: Land of cuckoos, cake, and memories.

2008-08-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

Nowhere in my life has a place brought back such fond and vivid memories of my childhood than my last 4 days in the Black Forest. A small region in the southwest corner of germany, the black forest gets it’s name from the dark canopy of evergreen trees that cover the mountains and hillsides. I came for what I thought would be an excruciatingly long 4 days centered in the tiny town of Triberg, who’s claim to fame is both the highest waterfall in Germany and the largest cuckoo clocks in germany (sorry, I didn’t get any pictures of the house-sized cuckoos). Something about my visit here was so familiar; everywhere I turned I was reminded of happy childhood memories. The town is littered of cuckoo clocks that reminded me of the one that used to hang in the kitchen of my dad and Tricia’s house. Every half hour it would cuckoo and every day at noon it would play a tune that sent two little figurines out of matching doors on either side of the cuckoo bird. There was the potato pancakes I had for breakfast nearly every morning in the restaurant of my family-owned hotel that reminded me of breakfasts at my Ammi’s house with buttered rye bread and cups of licorice tea. Then there was the incense burning figurines and candle powered Christmas windmills made of balsa wood that were for sale in every shop; they brought back memories of family Christmas with my mom where we spent hours unwrapping all the bits and pieces and putting them together, or Christmas dinners at my aunt Karin and Uncle Bob’s house with the whole family. Everything I ever knew, or thought I knew, of as German came from this small region. It is why I leave today with some sadness and head to Leipzig. It’s like saying goodbye to my childhood.

I arrived on a Thursday from Munich, and was quite unsure exactly of how to get to where I needed to be or what trains to take, but everything seemed to fall into place at the last minute. I arrived at my hotel and got the key to my room. It’s adorably cute and adorably german. The hotel itself (especially in the black forest setting) was a little “Shining” esque. Long old corridors that stretched on for much longer than the outside of the building seemed capable of; and ever passing a single person in the hallway on any floor. It somehow wasn’t ever as scary as I think it should have been. The waterfall that the town is centered on is just a few blocks up the street and I went there every morning after breakfast and every afternoon before coming back to the hotel. The woodland creatures were always out in force and I even had a small dark brown squirrel follow me for about 10 minutes down a hiking path. I was convinced it was my dad who had come by to say hi to me (but I think it was probably just a squirrel after my bread and jelly that I was munching on). The daughter that checked me into my room was very nice and gave me tips on places to go at night when I got bored and things to do in and around town. It was unfortunate then that she had a haircut normally reserved for the slow or feeble in the US.

There really wasn’t much to do per say in Triberg, but I always felt content just walking up to the waterfall and looking through the shops around town. I went for a hike one day and followed the trail for about 4 miles at which point the trail continued, but it was blocked by an unlocked gate and electrified fence. I debated whether to go through the gate, but kept staring at the 15 cows and bulls on the other side wondering if they would be so kind as to let me pass. After about 10 minutes I decided to trudge through the high grass and continue my walk along the highway until I got to the next town. It seemed to be the only way, but not necessarily the best way as I was (I think) offered a ride by an old lady who pulled over to (I think) tell me that it wasn’t safe to walk on the side of the road and see if I needed a ride. It’s all really speculation as what happened was: she pulled over, unlocked her door, said something in german to which I replied “nein, I’m okay. Danke shein.” And she drove off. I eventually made it to the next town, pants and shoes soaking wet from walking through the high grass. I said “morgin” or “goot morgin” to everyone I passed and they smiled and repeated all morning long. The neighboring town (shonach, or something like that was cute, although with the drizzly weather on a Friday no one seemed to want to be outside without necessity. I, however, was content to walk through the town with my wet shoes and jeans and flattened blonde Mohawk smiling and saying “goot morgin” to everyone. I eventually caught a bus back to triberg if for nothing else than to get out of my wet clothes and take a hot shower. After that I headed up the street to hotel Pfaff for black forest cake and a large beer (oh it was like heaven.)
I attempted one night to hit a bar that was recommended to me by the “daughter shining” as I referred to her in my head (the daughter of the hotel owner.) It was pretty much a bust; with nothing to read, no dancing, nor any conversations to eavesdrop on, I called it quits after one beer.

Yesterday I headed out of town to Freiburg. An adorable college town with narrow shopping streets that had water channels running through most of them. In all the shops I looked into, prices were a good 20-30% more than they were in Triberg, so I didn’t get anything there. After walking the streets a while, I headed towards the hills and made my way to the top of the mountain. There were occasional lookouts that offered tremendous views of the city and surrounding hills. Unfortunately it was one of the rare cases in which the city looked better from inside then looking down upon it. You couldn’t seen any of the charm or the adorable streets, just the neverending view of an urban landscape.

So, that was my visit to the Black Forest. I capped it all off with a beer and a nice dinner at a restaurant overlooking the waterfall and turned in early to get up and pack before breakfast. It was a comforting visit and somehow, with not much to do, I could easily have stayed another few days.

Fussen: Inspiring Disney with both castles and lines

2008-08-17T13:04:00.000-07:00

I had all but sworn off castles and cathedrals, but the one in fussen is one of the more famous in germany so I figured it would be a good one to check out. It turned out that with better planning it would have been better to see from Salzburg as it was much closer to there than it was to munich, oh well. I left to head to the train station at around 730. It turned out that because of the type of ticket I bought that I wasn’t able to leave until after 9am. The next one was at 950, so I had a ton of time to kill walking around the train station (bonhoff) and the stores outside. I bought some new face lotion and hair wax. Both were kind of absurdly expensive, but no biggie. Time came and I headed out to fussen arriving right on time at a little before noon. Of course this was the worst time to get there, but once the train let out and the tourist dust settled it was quite calm and quiet in the town. I rented a bike that turned out to have a flat tire and while waiting for them to fix the flat I was stopped by the border patrol. An older weathered gentleman and a younger muscular one approached me and flashed me some sort of badge and asked for my passport. I told them I didn’t have mine on me, but gave them my ID. I wasn’t really sure who they were or what they wanted, so I held tightly onto my wallet and backpack. After about a minute while they perused my ID and wrote down some information I questioned them as to who they were and what this was all about. At this point they got a little nervous that I was questioning them and seemed almost apologetic, but I was just curious more than anything. It turned out that they were just border patrol for the Austria-germany border. It seemed a little strange to me given that they had open borders and both countries were regarded in highly. The younger guy, to fill time while the older one was deciphering my information, started nervous chit chat about his recent visit to California (los angeles, palm springs, and vegas.) Yes, the entire world somehow thinks that las vegas is part of California territory. The conversation was thankfully interrupted by the bike clerk telling me that my bike was ready. I grabbed my stuff and headed out.

The visitors bureau was a joke in fussen. Sure, they had all the information in every language, but it was far from useful. I was pointed to three maps and brochures for information when I asked just for a map of the city. The first map unfurled into something the size of a twin sized bedsheet, making it ridiculously unusable. The second map I grabbed was the size of a regular sheet of paper and had about 5 points of interest on it that were connected by hand drawn lines, equally unusable. The third was the most useful of the three, but was still rather large and lacked the detail that I needed to find my way on bike. I resorted to plan B. From the train I had seen the Neushwanstein Castle in the hills and occasionally you could glimpse it from areas of the city. I headed out on my bike and just headed towards the mountains. The ride through the mountains was beautiful. Although it was summer, it felt more like spring. There were clouds, the fresh smell of rain and trees that grew over trails so thick that just the hint of sunlight would pass through occasionally. I had prepared for the cold, but found myself shedding layers from the bikeride up the mountain. I really only had an approximate idea of where I was going, but in fussen, all roads lead to the castles, so I was safely there in about 45 minutes. Arriving was like the parking lot at Disneyland.

Never before have I seen such a disorienting mess of traffic, people, trams and carriages. They all seemed to be pushing forward so I parked my bike and followed on foot to the ticket booth. The ticket line, just to get tickets (which put you in queue for the guided tour of the castle) was easily over an hour and a half long standing under alternating hot sun and drizzly clouds. “fuck this” I thought to myself. I decided just to walk up to the castle, see as much as I could from outside and then head back down for a ride through the countryside on my bike. The hike up the mountain was about 35 minutes straight up the side of a mountain towards the castle. I dug in full bore for the entire hike passing everyone in sight including two horse drawn carriages. At the top I nearly collapsed and was a sweaty mess which was fine because with the intermittent drizzling everyone pretty much looked that way. I was able to get plenty of pictures of the outside of the building and then hiked to a bridge that towered over a nearby waterfall. If it hadn’t been such a touristy mess it really would have been quite beautiful. The bridge was amazing as it was directly over a huge waterfall that emptied into three separate large pools. The only scary thing about it was the wooden boards that flexed at least a couple inches underfoot as you walked over them; I made sure to hold onto a railing as much as possible. I lingered for as long as possible until the crowds got annoying and then headed down a quiet path to the parking lot. All said, I was probably up in the mountains for about 2 hours from start to finish. I think it would have been nice to stay overnight just for the possibility of seeing it early in the morning or very late at night when it was less crowded.

I stopped to get a bite to eat at one of the local “fooderies.” Oh, it was so good. At this point I was starving so I got cordon bleu with mashed potatoes and then an additional plate of sausages with sauerkraut. The waitress looked at me with bulging eyes and I said “I’m very hungry.” I could tell she doubted the strength of my hunger, but 30 minutes after she delivered the food I was scraping the plate for every last morsel. She smiled, pleased, and said something in german which I think meant “you really were hungry, huh?” I smiled, patted my belly, and nodded a yes while slouching in contentment. Surprisingly even after that much food in my belly I was still fine to get onto my bike and ride around. I wandered a while on the trails surrounding the castles and passed by some lakes that were so still they reflected like glass. I stopped to take some pictures and rode around relaxing. I stopped near a small lake to take pictures of some swans when I could see the two castles built by king Ludwig in the background. Just perched in the mountains, they were so beautiful against the quiet hills. It was paradise even if the weather was slightly less than perfect. David called around that time and we talked for a bit as I stared off over the lake. It was just so relaxing, I was tempted to jump into the lake and go for a swim, but I was getting close on time and headed back.

The ride back to the train station was not quite as easy as getting out, but I had my compass and so a general direction. I eventually made my way out of the forest and into a town which led to fussen. I passed by some beautiful rivers and thought that fussen would be a good stopping point from Salzburg into germany. That was my day trip to fussen, after talking to the lady at the front desk of my hostel she had told me that I did the right thing. She tries not to dissuade people from going into the castle, but says it really isn’t worth the hassle since you’re ushered in and out in about 30 minutes and the real beauty of the castles is their setting and the surrounding countryside. I talked to her a lot (Ingrid I think was her name) in the days that I spent in munich. She gave me great advice on places to go and things to see and choices in Bavarian food (which was really just a plate full of different meats.) It was talking to her that made me realize how much I was dying for some conversation and she had become the only familiar face I had seen.

It’s Thursday now and I’m off to Triberg in the Black Forest of Germany. No one seems to know of this place, but it’s the birthplace of cookoo clocks and black forest cake. Both I’ll be indulging in for sure. It should be a nice relaxing few days of hiking in the forest and walking the tiny town, probably better suited for a romantic getaway, but I’ve got my computer to keep me company.

Slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157606689861620/show/

Munich, my people have welcomed me home

2008-08-17T12:52:00.000-07:00

Ah, some relaxation, just what the doctor ordered. I think that since i can see the end of my journey I’m a little torn between all the things that I still want to see and the desire to head back home, see my family and friends, and pet my kitty. I arrived in munich on the 9th I believe. From there, I checked into my hostel in the morning and got cleaned up. As usual, the train ride from Austria to munich was beautiful and there was plenty of room on it. From what I’ve seen they tend not to pack the trains full here in Austria and germany which makes for a much more comfortable ride. I walked around the city a bit and stopped by a café where a friend of a friend worked. I stopped in and said hi, but it was a busy Saturday afternoon, so I told Peter I would get in contact with him later and probably go out that night. Since I arrived on Saturday, it was time to go out, so after a quick bite to eat and a nap I hit the streets. It happened that I was within a 15-20 minute walk of the gay area and so after a quick visit to the cash machine I was out on foot. Because of some road construction and closed streets I had made a few detours and it took me a bit longer, but soon I could hear the music from the bars and clubs. I went into a random bar that seemed to have a decent crowd and good music inside. When I walked in, it was like the prairie dogs had just popped their heads out for something interesting on the plains. A quick scan revealed that I was in a bear bar, or as they call them here in germany, a teddy bar. I didn’t really feel out of place, but I surely looked out of place. I was double digits different in both weight and age from the rest of the crowd, but they had magazines and good music, so I plonked down a chair. The beer was cheap, and better yet it came in two sizes bottle, or ½ liter. After a liter of beer I was ready to move on and try another place.

The morritz was equally interesting to walk into. I’m not sure if munich is the type of place where everyone knows everyone, but it seemed like I wasn’t quite typical around here. Everyone was dressed either far more casual, or far more conservative than I. I think I looked more like a white gangsta to them than anything else. Anyways, I had a couple beers there before getting the urge to go dancing. It was still fairly early (perhaps around midnight), but figured I would go out anyways. I went to NYC which was supposed to have been recently renovated and a good place to go. It was really nice, but lets just say that the ceilings weren’t the only things that were high in that club. The legs moved as fast as possible and the jitterbug would have looked like slow dancing at this place. People were off their knockers, but eventually when a few good songs came on, I joined in as well. I could only stomach about 2 more drinks and 5 more songs before heading out around 2am at which point the club was packed. I quite quickly got lost and disoriented and found myself next to a river. A river, I knew, was nowhere near where my bed was.

I got out my compass and my map and eventually made sense of the street signs and landmarks enough to wander back home. Sunday I slept in and eventually made it out of the house around noon to grab some food. I had forgotten that everything was closed on Sundays, and so while grabbing a small bite to eat at a café was relatively easy there were no stores open to get some food for later or a water for walking around the city. I made my way to the north part of the city where there were some famous buildings and churches. At this point I’ve lost all interest in any sort of historical building, I’ve seen them all and even though they all have their special points of interest they’re all very similar. I headed to the grouping of three museums, equally unappealing except for the fact that they were 1 euro on Sundays; can’t pass up a bargain. I hit the modern art museum, which was great. They had a good selection of modern art pieces that actually looked like they took talent to create, there was a great exhibition of old and new cars and some nice lighting effects. I was able to take pictures, so long as there was no flash on (as I was to find out when I accidentally took three pictures in a row with a flash.) From that point on I had been marked and was followed around by one of the museum volunteers who constantly reminded me that flash was not allowed in the museum. I got some great pictures and headed to one other of the museums, but lost interest and strength about halfway through so I left. I was dying for thirst at this point, but there was nothing open, so I eventually bought a bottled water and iced chai tea from a coffee place for a ridiculous amount of money.

From there I headed north east towards the English gardens. Supposedly the largest urban park in germany (or maybe Europe, I cant remember.) It definitely was huge, and continued off the page of my map that I had. It had a large river that ran through it and split multiple times so that on a sunny day people could be seen floating down the river and cooling off. I hadn’t planned for swimming, so just laid down and listened to the sound of the river and watched everyone jumping in to float down stream. I think I was there for a couple hours before I decided to head back home and relax for the evening.

Monday was another relaxing day and I spent most of it lounging in the English garden with Peter and his friends until clouds came and it began to sprinkle. Tuesday it was off to Fussen to see the magical castles created by Mad King Ludwig.

Slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157606671767836/show/

Von Trapped in the salt mines

2008-08-08T23:37:00.000-07:00

Today was a trip to the salt mines. To try and save money, I decided to find my own way there instead of paying the 33euros for transportation. I ended up saving about 25euros by getting there myself. I walked to the train station, but later regretted not paying the 2 euros to take the bus there as it’s a bit of a walk, but I picked up cranberry juice, water, and a bar of dark chocolate (my lunch) during the walk. The train ride was quick at about 20 minutes, where I had a little difficulty getting the bus to the salt mines. I actually was okay, but then another bus driver asked me where I was going and when I said saltworks (the name of the salt mine) he said “yes, come.” After it didn’t feel right I asked if he was sure I was on the right bus: “Yes to Salzburg” “oh shit” I thought as I hopped off the bus and watched the one I actually wanted pass by. It would be another 30 minutes before the next bus came, so I walked along the route and stopped in at information while waiting for the next bus. To walk the whole way up would be about an hour up a steep hill, or a 10 minute bus ride…I elected to wait for the bus.

The ride up to the saltworks was beautiful, as is everything here near Salzburg. Green hills and forest that stretch on as far as the eye can see and small wild flowers that grow everywhere. Once at the salt mine you buy your ticket (I made use of my student discount for once) and headed inside where we were informed that we needed to wear white uniforms that they supplied. I’m still not sure if this was to protect our clothes, protect the mines, or make us more visible to the guide. The tour was totally worth the money. It started with a mini train ride into the mountain via the mine shaft (it’s single-file, straddling a small train over the tracks and watching that you’re not decapitated by the low ceiling.), Up next is a walk through the mine where you learn about the original celtic miners and the subsequent refinding by an archbishop and further mining. The history was done by the tour guide and several mini-movies that were actually very well done; entertaining and interesting. Next up was a slide down one of the mine shafts on what I can only describe as a straddle-slide where you straddle this thing and slide down it with your feet up. “do not try and slow yourself down or break, and get off as soon as you reach the bottom” were the only instructions we were given. We had to ride at least two at once, so the first time I went with a big burly german and the second time with the tour guide, a Ukrainian, or something, named Svetlana, I think. It was so much fun. The third fun part of the tour was an underground ride over a salt lake in a small wooden boat. For 10 euros, I definitely think that it was a total deal for everything that we got to do. I wont bore you with the informational details and the history of the mine, but it was fairly interesting (given my complete disinterest of history or all things related.)

At the end of the tour we got a mini bottle of salt (I’m assuming it’s from the mine, but who knows?) and an escalator ride back up to the surface. I’m not sure how long the tour was, but I think it ran about an hour and half and it was entertaining the entire way. When you finish the tour you’re left in a small celtic village on the side of the mountain. I walked up for a ways, but got bored and decided to head back home. I decided to walk since it was downhill the whole way, but took the bus route instead of the much shorter walking route that cut through the center of the mountain and down into town. I made it back to the hostel and as I walked through the doors it began to pour down outside, perfect timing. Tomorrow I leave for munich, so I had dinner, I’ll take a nap, and see what this town is like on a Friday night. Given what I’ve seen during the week and at one of the two gay bars in town, I’m not expecting a whole lot.

Slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157606609650638/show/

Giant Ice Cave in Austria

2008-08-08T07:36:00.000-07:00

Yes, Vienna was beautiful, it was clean, it was proper and orderly, but it got boring. After the window shopping, the visit to the usual cathedrals, touristy sights and gay bars I wasn’t left with much else. After three nights stay, it was time to go. Next stop, Salzburg, Austria.

I used my eurail pass as it was 44 euros (around 65 bucks) for the short two hour ride. It was a bit expensive, especially considering that the same ride was about 1/10 the price in italy. Anyhew, I made my way to Salzburg and loved the entire ride. While the countryside in italy was very Mediterranean and filled with wine fields and trees, the Austrian countryside is much more varied in both the flora that covers it and the topography. Much of it was densely forested with small flatlands where the trees were leveled for farms. Soon we arrived in Salzburg and I hopped on the bus to get to my hostel. The weather was perfect; cool, sunny, with just a slight whisper of clouds. The town was hard to see from the bus, but there was a large river that bisected it and tree shaded walkways lined each bank. I got to my hostel, checked in and then had to make a quick decision; stop and see the city or walk back to the train station and catch a train up north to a neighboring town that housed the largest ice cave in the world. I chose the latter as it would save me about 30 euros in travel costs being able to piggy back my trip on the same travel day I got to Salzburg with. I checked in at 1130, dropped off my stuff and walk/jogged back to the train station and just missed the express train to Wurfen (I think that’s what it’s called). The next one left in 10 minutes, and it was only about 15 minutes slower from start to finish. The ride to Wurfen was spectacular, images I’ve only seen in Disney movies and in fairytale books. Best was that I got to see it as a relaxing ride from the train. So, I arrived and the clock started; It was close to 2pm at this point and the last bus back to the train station was at 530pm. It seemed fine at first, but then I started to add up the times. 75 minutes for the ice cave tour, 40 minute walk up, 40 minute walk down, I was already behind schedule! In the bus I went which dropped me off at the trail point.

I jogged/walked up the steep hill to the gondola, passing everyone along the way (they must have driven themselves). I made it to the gondola and paid my fee. It was 19 euros for the gondola ride up and down and the fee for the cave tour. I thought it was pricy, but when all was said and done I would pay that much again. I nearly shit my pants in the gondola. It’s a small car for about 6 people, but they crammed about 10 inside. It whisks you up the side of the mountain fast enough to make your stomach drop, but the entire journey takes 2 long minutes (note to self, do not watch as the gondola climbs higher and higher.) From there, it’s about another 20 minute walk up another trail to the top of the cave entrance. By the time you get there, you’re so exhausted you just wanna sit down, but I kept running. I made it to the entrance and waited for the next group to go in.

They have a door on the front of the cave entrance to keep all the cool air in, unfortunately this causes a temperature difference between the two sides so that when they do actually open the door, it flies open and you’re hit with a wall of freezing cold air that nearly knocks you off your feet. You actually have to dig in and hold the door jamb in order to get inside. They say that in the summer when the difference in temperatures is greater that the wind at the opening can reach up to 100km/hr. Anyways, I wont go into too much detail about the cave other to say that it was truly an amazing experience. Every 4th person carried a lantern and you really only got to see the true scope of the cave when the guide lit one of his bright light flares that only lasted about 30 seconds. The only drawback were the two stupid people that brought their dogs (one that kept trying to climb up my leg for warmth) and one of the aforementioned people that decided it would be okay to smoke inside the cave. I was the very last person at the end of the line, so i kept getting huge mouthfuls of smoke until the tour guide saw and told him to put it out and that it was totally unacceptable. Of course he just tossed his cigarette onto the floor of the ice cave. Morons in every country. Anyways, it was beautiful, it was amazing, and I’m so glad I did it. I snapped a ton of pictures along the way, but neither a description nor the pictures seem to do it justice.

Slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157606592509735/show/

Bicycle vs Train, train wins.

2008-08-07T09:55:00.000-07:00

i was playing with my camera when i shot this, i thought it was funny.

Vienna, it's a little too perfect.

2008-08-07T08:57:00.000-07:00

I’m heading from Vienna (Wien is what they call it here) to Salzburg (which I keep spelling with S’s and e’s). Vienna was interesting. Austria is so far the cleanest and safest place I’ve been so far. Everything is just so…perfect. After a while though, it almost seemed to be too perfect. It always reminded me of that horrible movie, the stepford wives, where the town is always so orderly and manicured and then you find out that they’re replacing all the wives with robots. Oh, I should really start at the beginning though, the trainride.

So, for my 14 hour train ride it only cost me 7 euros with my eurail pass. I really should have suspected something at that point since it cost david about that much just to get to the airport from the train station in rome. so i get into my train from rome. the line to hold luggage was over an hour long so i didnt even bother to try and ended up just staying in the train station all day instead of walking the city with my bags. my train left after 7pm, but was actually about an hour late leaving. i realized when i got on why it was so cheap, it was like a long distance local train. only three of the 15 cars were actually going all the way through to vienna. the seats were much like the ones that we sat in from venice. a small cabin with 6 seats, 3 vs 3. i knew it was going to be a long 16 hour train ride, so i tried to sleep, but that's when the commotion in the next cabin started. i had closed the door to mine since i was the only there and was trying to keep in the a/c. there was some mixup and too many people were trying to get into the cabin next to mine. I laid down and immediately some stinky austrian or italian opened the door and sat down. she was supposed to be in the other car, but got fed up arguing and just plonked herself down. then some chinese italian guy came in too that wasnt supposed to be there and sat next to the ac to suck it up, he smelled too. eventually the ladies husband joined her and they both stunk, but to make matters worse they pulled out a huge salami sausage the size of an ear of corn and began to eat it, which further stunk up the cart. because it made so many stops, people were constantly getting on and off and sitting down. the real owners of the seats eventually came and that was a whole yelling match. an english girl had come in and sat next to me while it was happening, so i had to fill her in on everything I knew. The stinky people were so rude, and wouldn't even look at the couple when they had said that those were there seats. they just said something like "nope, we're not moving." anyways, the people who actually had seats there got the police and the train staff and the stinkers eventually got kicked out and had to sit the whole time in the aisle outside. the english girl was really nice, and we rambled on for a long time. She told me about her month off from school she’s taking and how she’s god mosquito bites and bacne, and that her wisdom teeth were coming in (a story she later recounted to another girl that sat down next to her.) I was just waiting for her to start telling me about her diarrhea and her menstrual flow, but she luckily stopped short of that.

i got maybe two hours sleep on the whole ride, but finally made it to austria. the hills on the train are the most beautiful things i've ever seen. i wanted to take pictures, but didnt even wanna get up or move, i was so tired. i got into town and checked in, but couldn't get my room until noon and it was only 10, so i walked around the city. everything is closed except food places on sunday. i mean everything. the nice thing is that there is a whole shopping street near the station and there were three h&m's on my little walk.

Everyone here is very nice, very considerate, and very orderly. It’s like the western version of japan, without the high rises. Hardly anyone honks, there are no speed limit signs, they have a great mass transit system, and people don’t dare cross until the walk sign is on. Its very strange and almost too perfect at times. There is a ton of shopping and during the week, the streets are filled with people, but they tend to go home early.

I saw the typical sights, the cathedrals, the food, the shops, the gay bars, but other than the prettiness of it, not much to visit here in Vienna. Perhaps Salzburg will be a little bit more lively and I can get my hands on some yummy food. I’ve only had a few hot dogs, bratwursts and such. So good, but a bit expensive for what you get.

Anyways, I’m on my train now through the countryside and it’s still very beautiful, but it must be a different way from how I arrived because it’s not quiet as picturesque and there are more villages and houses to be seen.

slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157606588393386/show/

The church screwed me again.

2008-08-07T03:30:00.000-07:00

Vatican city sucks. Okay, maybe sucks is not the right word, but it definitely was a letdown and overpriced. It started off well and good with an argument between david and I about how I just like to aimlessly wonder around without necessarily heading in the right direction. True. But here’s my thing. 1) We ain’t got nowhere to be 2) my legs work 3) I’m getting my exercise David likes to jot from point a to point b without any meandering. But most of the really cool things that I stumble upon are from just wandering, but david doesn’t like to wonder. Oh okay, so we went into some church/cathedral thing and that was nice. Great beams of light that fell through the window either made you feel like it was time for your alien spaceship pickup or that god was summoning you for something. I’ll assume that the latter was the architects intent. Lots of nuns, lots of tourists snapping pictures, lots of pretty paintings. David and I liked it, but out of all the things we’ve seen both of us thought that the sights and paintings inside the Toledo cathedral were far more impressive. That goes for the sisteen chapel too, oh, I’ll rip that place a new one in just a minute. Oh, the cathedral was the first place we got to see the swiss guards. Oh they were so adorable, I can’t really imagine them fighting though. They looked more like characters out of a Disney movie that someone that could keep order. They were dressed in striped outfits that either looked like poorly draped curtains, or sofa covering from the late 60’s. I’m not sure what they had on their heads, they looked a little like a beret, but gayer and floppier. All in all you would have rather seen them dancing in the square singing showtunes than guarding a cathedral, but I guess that’s their thing.

Next stop, the Vatican museums and the sisteen chapel. First disappointment was the price. I think it was 14 euro, far more than anywhere we paid before. David got a student discount, but I was too old to use my fake student ID. Hell, if I had known that there were age limits I would have just had my fake student ID say I was 25. So, then there is the museum, or museums, I’m not sure if it’s one or more than one, but once you get inside you’re pretty much trapped and cant get out unless you’ve seen everything. The museum was nothing special, other than almost every single statue had been defiled and had an ivy leaf placed over it’s genitals. Apparently the sight of a marble penis was too much for one of the popes and he had them all covered. Rather disturbing if you ask me. So, we saw sculptures, we saw paintings and the usual stuff. The claim to fame was the ceiling paintings that had been restored and of course the sisteen chapel. I’m no history buff, but I’ve heard of the paintings and who hasn’t seen the pictures of Michaelangelos creation painting where god is touching the finger of adam and they’re both on clouds or something. I would remember better, but they don’t allow photos in the room. So, when you finally get inside the room, it’s PACKED. I mean, wall to wall people, and this was on a Thursday morning. It’s dimly lit and the ceilings are high, perhaps 30 feet or more. The paintings are all pretty small. From the floor they look about the size of a king size pillowcase, but maybe up close they are larger. Anyways, from that distance how can you tell how good a painting is? Well, we saw it, it was spectacularly unimpressive, and we left. By left, I mean continued for another 30 minutes through the maze of rooms and hallways until we were finally able to make our way out.

We headed to the pantheon after, maybe. I don’t remember. Anyways, we saw the pantheon, I don’t remember where or when, but we saw it. It was a big open domed building with amazing carvings and huge stone walls. Best part of it was that it was free. Oh, maybe we saw that on a different day. I dunno, I’m losing steam. We saw the pantheon which was cool, the Spanish steps, which were lame, and some large plaza near a huge park that we didn’t go far into.

That about sums up the rest of our trip to rome. I’m not giving it enough credit at the moment, but the city was great. At the end of Rome it was time to say goodbye to david. I had just finally gotten used to traveling with a companion and now it was time to go solo again, but I will see him when I go back to Hawaii to look for a job. We parted ways on the same day, he was off to the airport and I was off to the train station to head to Austria. The ride to Austria was horrible. I might need a whole day of writing to explain it all. It was a 14 hour train ride for one thing, and I was in a seat instead of a bed and there was a big hassle with people moving around and seats being stolen. Ooh, it was juicy to watch.

Rome wasnt built in a day, but maybe you could see it in one.

2008-08-06T11:05:00.000-07:00

I’ve run outta steam in writing these blogs, so lets make this simple. Rome was awesome, not terribly expensive, very clean, tons of things to see and do, and a good mix of urban central with quiet areas. The trevi fountain and the tomb of the unknown soldier started off our introduction to the city, and the next day was a visit to the colosseum (I know I keep spelling that wrong) and a trip through the palantino hill.

The coliseum was awesome, and since it was so close we got there fairly early. Even still there was a bit of a line, made much worse by people who hadn’t apparently ever purchased anything in their life before.
1) arrive at location
2) get wallet ready (yeah, you’re gonna have to pay something)
3) read the signs while you’re waiting in line.
4) get to the front, pay for your ticket, take the ticket and go into attraction.
It’s always surprising when people are digging in their pockets or their purses for money, or don’t know where to go after they get their ticket. When in doubt, do what everyone else does, and follow the crowd.

We get inside and it’s HUGE! Old towering stone, huge underground maze of cells and cages. It really was a sight. It was impressive from the outside and just as impressive on the inside. You could really imagine how crazy it got when the whole thing was filled with people, everyone screaming and yelling and cheering. Ahhh the killing. I only wished that perhaps they had restored a bit of it. I mean, I understand you want to keep old artifacts intact, but I wished that they would have just restored maybe 1/3 to ½ of it so you could see how it looked when it was in use. Then I talked myself out of it, I mean why would they pay money to fix something when people waited in line already to see it all crumbling and falling apart? Guess it’s like the leaning tower. No one would give two shits about that town except for some guy built a tower on unsolid ground. Now it’s a major tourist attraction. So, other than its impressiveness, not much to say about the colosseum, no battling tigers, no big bulky sweaty men, and no blood; time to move on.

Included in the price of admission was a visit to the palantine hill (or something like that.) I never really was much for history and don’t usually pay much attention to the details of things, so other than knowing that some guy had a house there, and it’s a big place with lots to see….well, I guess that’s about everything I know about it. We entered on the side by the coliseum and already it was scorching hot out. We melted in the sun for a majority of the time, but that’s the price you pay. Again, I wished more of it were restored, but people were already paying to see it, so whatever. Ruins, ruins, ruins, blah blah blah. Pillars still intact. Oh I guess I could just give the highlights, huh? Underground passage: there’s an old underground passage that is still intact. It had natural holes for lighting and was really long. It was nice and cool, protected from the beating sun. We made angels of ourselves by catching the light in our hands and took some pictures. They turned out pretty cool. A group of a few people came that had their own personal tour guide so we eavesdropped a bit while we were walking to sample some of the tour. That led us out to more of the same ruins and stuff that we saw before we went in. They had water areas and fountains not to far from there that we stumbled upon, and this was the beginning of the nice part of the hill. Apparently we had entered in the lame side of the hill and all the good stuff was on the opposite area. Much of the cool area was closed off for repair, construction, or excavation. I think a majority of the hill was still buried under dirt. Towards the area that we exited were huge structures of arches and buildings and whatnot. They were cool and impressive, but we were on archeology overload and were just snapping pictures of anything that looked old (except for the tourists of course.) more stuff, more stuff, stone, marble, columns, that about sums it up.

slides: http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157606539483360/show/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/steffengo/sets/72157606537574542/show/

Rome, more sites than dogshit

2008-08-05T10:11:00.000-07:00

Rome is, so far, my favorite city, battling some stiff competition. The eurostar train ride was about 2 hours, but far less comfortable than the regional trains we had been on. The upside was a 2 hour vs 4 hour trip and no stops. Arriving in Rome we hopped on the metro which was interesting in itself. The main line is the B line which runs mostly through the center of the city, and the A line which runs mostly the perimeter. They’re currently adding a C line, but I’m sure it wont be finished for years. Metro B is old and fast, with cars that have been graffitied into moving urban art. The doors slam with speed and a sound that makes you certain not to have any extremities anywhere near them, stick in a hand while they’re closing and you’d surely pull back a bloody stump. The A line is airconditioned and brand new, and almost always empty. We hopped on the B line for two stops and held on as it rocketed through the underground tunnels and then came to a screeching halt for each stop. At the second stop, we got off at Colosseo. Up the stairs and outside we immediately were faced with the monumental coliseum. It was huge, it was old, and impressive. A two block walk past the coliseum and we were at our guest house; a converted residence we had a huge room with large windows and newish IKEA furniture. The Ukranean girl that let us in spoke no English and by her accounts, not much Italian either. We paid and settled in. It was a great place, with a great location and a great price. It had two great flaws; one was that there was no a/c which might have been tolerable if there were a fan in the room, but there was not. The second was that it was loud outside from the street noise. With the closeness of the buildings, the sound transferred straight up from the street directly into the room. It was a constant battle between turning the room into a sweaty sauna or cooling it down by opening the windows and letting in the deafening roar of the street noise, which was actually quite devoid of traffic most of the time. We settled in, showered and headed out to see the city.

The first day we just walked around a bit and looked in awe at the sights around the city. The city itself seems surprisingly small and condensed, with a good deal of it within walking distance. On our first day we were amazed at everything that there was to see. We were attempting to make it from point to point, but we constantly sidetracked by another monument or set of ruins being unearthed throughout the city. Our first day in the city took us to the Trevi Fountain, a gay restaurant, the monument to the unknown soldier and the small island located in the center of the river that ran through Rome.

Even though we were eager to get started seeing the city, we were both hungry so we wanted to grab a quick bite to eat before we started walking. Luckily there was no shortage of food places near our place, including some of the most delicious gelato around (spicy chocolate was my favorite.) Anyways, we stumbled on a row of restaurants just across the street from the coliseum that had decently priced lunches. The one in the middle had a large rainbow flag on the façade, so we of course thought we should eat there. We were a little confused when we got closer as it was mostly straight couple tourists and families. Apparently this place, like a closet case, was only gay when the sun went down. They had good prices and so we sat down and had a decent lunch, laughing at the Midwestern families and other tourists who may not have noticed the rainbow flags and the restaurant name “coming out.” After lunch we hopped on the metro and headed for the trevi fountain.
The trevi fountain was much more spectacular than I had thought it would be. First, it was huge, and the stone sculptures were quite amazing, it was also blazingly hot and packed full of people, but the crowd ebbed and flowed so we were able to get some space near the fountain. We took turns tossing in coins, drinking the water that flowed out one of the sides and taking pictures. Had it been cooler, we may have stayed a bit longer, but the sun beating down was overwhelming at times. Oh, Rome is hot by the way, on several occasions the temperatures climbed well past 100F.

After the Trevi Fountain we walked a few minutes and saw a spectacular building in the distance so we headed towards it. It turned out to be a monument to the unknown soldier. It was David’s favorite sight, and we spent a good hour walking around it and taking pictures. It offered some amazing views around the city of various duomos and we could even see the coliseum in the distance. There was a museum inside and an elevator that would take you even higher up for about 8 euros, but we were content with seeing what we had seen. Consulting our map we then decided to head towards the island (Isola Tiburina) that lies on a small land mass in the middle of the tevere river. We were on and off the island in a matter of minutes without even noticing. The bridge basically leads you onto the island where there are a few buildings and then there is another bridge maybe 50 feet from the first one that leads you off. The river itself is beautiful and there are banks along them where shops and bars setup once the sun goes down. We had been beaten by the heat at this point, so we headed back towards our place where we showered, relaxed, then ate dinner before heading to bed. It had been a long day, we had seen a ton, but there was plenty more to be seen. According to our guidebook there are more monuments and ruins than dog shit in this city, and from our first day, it certainly appeared to be true.