Peru Anyone?

AHHH!!! So after months of intermittent electronic correspondence with three of my friends from college, I’m finally at the airport on my way to LA to meet up with them… And by them I mean, Davide, who I visited India with last year, Noah, who’s known as my “Pop’s” in some circles (even though he’s younger than me), and Tom, who’s best described as a modernized version of George of the Jungle.

I’m not sure what else to say or where to start, probably because so little is already planned. We know we’re going to Peru. We’re going to hike Machu Picchu. We’re going to go to Lake Titicaca and hang out with some Uros on ancient man made reed islands. And after that we should find our way to some UFO landing strips known as the Nazca Lines. Other than that… We get there on the 21st… Come home on the 7th(?)… And are going to have a blast.

We’ve had lots of talks back and forth over the months on how much gear we want to bring. We’ve all agreed that we want to stay on the cheap, so avoiding hotels and even hostels when we can in favor of camping, so there are definitely sleeping bags in our packs. We’ve talked about going a light weight as just bivvy sacks and a single tarp for the 4 of us, and contemplated using tents. All of this probably would have gone really smoothly but Dave and Noah were on tour for the last month or so (just getting back tonight!), and so its been hard to get a hold of them, and so I haven’t a clue what I’ll need on this trip. Which leaves me with a dilemma.. What to pack?..

My answer? EVERY THING! Hah. I don’t think that I’ve ever packed this much stuff. At the check in counter I weighed 2 bags and a carry-on at a little over 100 lbs! I doubt I’ll take even 1/3 of this gear, but its best to have it all with me and be able to choose what to take from LA. I’ve got a tent, a bivvy, a tarp, 3 big packs, and 2 day bags, 5 water bottles, a camel back, stove, pots and pans…. you’ve got the picture. A lot of stuff.

Speaking of the stove. My fuel bottle for this was probably 1/2 full from my last camping trip, and when I got to my house I asked my dad if it was ok to dump it into my gas tank since I wasn’t sure if it was gasoline or Coleman’s white fuel. He basically called me a fool (rightfully so) for chancing risking ruining my car for a dollar’s worth fuel, and so I was going to dump it out. This is when I got side tracked of course and thought it’d be a good idea to take a picture of myself for the side of the milk cartons in case I go missing, and help my dad out with emailing some images to someone.

So there the bright red bottle is on the side of my bag as I ride to the airport, still 1/2 filled with fuel. I think of the best ways to dispose of this petroleum based liquid, but most of them end up with me getting arrested for trying to plant a bomb in the bushes outside the entry way.

When I got off of the bus, there was an elderly airport security officer in his bright yellow rain jacket and thick glasses, who I’m hesitant about asking what to do with this in fear that he might take it the wrong way and think I’m trying to pull something fishy. I figured this was better than lugging the bottle all around the airport with me and so I made up a small white lie and said that I was just going home after a camping trip and needed to get rid of it. I asked if I could pour it in a trash can or on a street drain, but he said that people throw so many cigarettes around there that that wasn’t a good idea. He said not to say that I heard it from him, but that I could just dump it down the drain in the bath room, which was what I had come up with as well, but also saw the off chance of someone thinking I was pulling the old ‘cherry bomb’ in the bathroom trick, so was glad to have someone that if worst came to worse that I might be able to fall back on to verify that I wasn’t a terrorist.

That was about it for excitement thus far. But that’s not a bad start for a rainy afternoon in a small New Hampshire airport. The people watching’s been good. Most entertaining has been a woman in her late 20’s/early 30’s who was sitting across from me. She was holding a magazine open and a bag of chips in one hand and stuffing them into her mouth with the other, the crumbs of which would fall onto her baby which was securely tied around her neck. This and the free wireless internet available here (WOO!) kept me entertained as I talked online and told my friends about the woman with the baby necklace.

All this while I’m supposed to be writing my last spec for work before leaving for vacation. Not as productive as an afternoon as I was planning but pretty good all the same. I’ve been so stressed about everything lately that it feels good to be able to sit back, relax, and just enjoy the little things in life. I made a few phone calls, heard from an old friend from high school, who I’ll unfortunately miss tonight (he’s just home for the holidays), and squeezed in a small amount work to boot, (not to mention writing this post).

And now they are boarding for my flight so off I go!

Getting Neverhood to work under Wine

Last year for Christmas my sister got me a copy of an old claymation video game from my childhood called Neverhood. Its a pretty fun puzzle type game, that I almost beat under VMWare on my Mac, but it was really too slow to really be playable and so I never finished it. Being an old game I figured it should run no problem under WINE. That wasn’t exactly true, but with a little help from this site ( http://frankscorner.org/index.php?p=neverhood ) I was able to get it working. Now I just have to beat it.

Paris – Take II

Well AGAIN, its been another long stint since I’ve updated this thing, but here’s another random posting. Probably a month ago now I went back to Belgium for work again (the second time this summer!) and did some traveling. I just wrote up a summary to my friend Marine who had given me some tips of good places to visit and figured I’d post that here too. So here it is:

Friday morning I came down with one of my co-workers and friends, Nate. We tried to catch the first train from Belguim to Paris but the ticket counter only opened 5 minutes before our train left so we missed it and had to wait for the next one. We got student tickets which were cheaper than the ones our company was going to buy us and so we got to go first class which was really nice. Once we got to the city we headed to our hostel which was off of Malakoff Plateau de Vanves on the 13. Kind of on the outside of the city but not bad at all.

We weren’t feeling so well, probably due to the lack of sleep we got our last few nights in Belgium because there was a huge festival in Gent that week, so we top a quick nap before going out. We went over to Notre Damn which I had tried to climb just about every day my last time in Paris, but the line was always pretty long, but never got to. The line was still long this time, but it moved fairly quickly so we stuck it out. It was pretty cool. The insides of the bell towers (the belfries) were all made out of wood because the stone would crack due to the vibrations of the bells. I thought that was pretty neat.

After that we headed over to the Louvre which was free because we were students which was pretty nice. I had been here once before but there is so much to see! We stuck mostly to the Greek and Roman statues and sculptures, but wondered through other sections too for a bit.

When the museum was about to close we headed outside where we saw some kids on roller skates. This reminded me of something I had read about how hundreds of skaters come from all over the city to skate around in one massive group. So we asked these kids where that was and it turned out we had just enough time to get there so we hurried off. We got there just a few minutes before they all started going which was pretty cool. The streets were PACKED! I’d never seen so many people rollerskating, it was pretty cool. We tried to find somewhere to rent skates really quickly so we could join in, but most everything was closed so we’ll have to remember to bring our own next time.

Its seems like this was a lot already, but we still hadn’t even eaten dinner yet so we walked around for a while till we found a place that looked interested and got a bit to eat. After that we headed over to the Eiffel tower to watch the lights and rest before taking the last train back home. All and all, it was a pretty good first day in Paris.

Saturday we slept in a bit and then headed over to Nepolion’s tomb. I was kind of on a budget and wanted a little bit more sleep so we split up, Nate went in to take a look around while I took a nap in the park outside.

After this we went to this street that Marina had told us about where we there were lots of people and little shops with places we could eat outside. I had actually been on this street late one night on my way back home with friends looking for Gyros and Nutella Creepes the last time I was in Paris, so it was pretty cool to see it again during the day. I found the same shop I had gotten a Gyro at before so we stopped for a quick snack. We wondered around for a long while and did some people watching and walked outside of les Halls. It was a beautiful day out so we just kind of took it easy and enjoyed it.

After a while we started to wonder away from there and over towards the Seine. Nate had wanted to get his girlfriend a picture or something so we looked at those little shops along the sidewalk there. When we were there we found out that right below us was the start of a huge festival so we checked it out!

The whole river was like a party. There were bands playing (we saw Champion and Dumas), people all over, roller blading and sun bathing on the man made beach, a pirate playing old French classic songs on a piano, it was a blast. We got ice cream, and dinner, talked about life, enjoyed the music and just had a good time before walking home (or at least part of the way till we jumped on a metro).

Sunday was another late wake up for us. We packed up our stuff and check out of the hostel. We really didn’t have too much time before we headed to the airport and le Parc des Buttes Chaumont, which Marine also told us about, so we decided to go there. On our way there we got off at Place des Fetes where we found a nice Sunday market to get breakfast at which we ate at the park and before exploring around. You were so RIGHT! This park was great. The waterfalls and the view from the tower of Sacre-Coeur and the hills! We actually probably spent a few hours here which was just about the perfect amount of time before catching our plane back home. All and all it was a pretty nice relaxing spot to wrap up our visit.