I absolutely adore aggressive city cycling. I am not talking about the usual getting from point A to point B, although that is the main objective for me. I am talking about a heart pounding, flat out effort across town running every red light you can find
, even red lights that you do not have to go through. A balls to the wall sprint with your head band on to keep the sweat out of the eyes. Malicious pedals dragging on small dogs as you go the opposite direction on the side walks to avoid a particularly heavy chunk of road traffic. Simply, whatever it takes to beat your cousin going from South West London to central North in Camden. I have mentioned in the past my love of the Argentine system for making sure that this would not even be a contest. Well London is a little different and let me explain.
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From Argentina, I went to California for two weeks thinking that was enough time to settle my life in that continent before heading off to England. The complexities of “settling my life” in that continent will be saved for another entry. Two days after arriving in England, I boarded a plane to Istanbul. In Istanbul I had enough time to buy a bottle of fine tequila and then get on another plane for Izmir where my good friend and fellow blog author is currently living. I spent two weeks in Turkey with three days on some Greek islands where I learned about the intense problem of middle eastern immigrants trying to get into Europe and the idea that certain generations of people just simply hate each other regardless of any sort of reason. But I will not pass judgement on some of the things that they had to go through. Charles was a fantastic host as always and a play by play of the trip should be given to give him full respect but instead I will go through a tattered page of my journal that I found with a bullet point list of things I needed to remember. In order as I wrote them and to the best of my memory. If you plan on sharing a conversation with anyone in England, you better be prepared to discuss the weather. Without fail, it will be the second thing talked about regardless of the encounter you find yourself in. For example: “You alright?” (Equivalent to ‘how are you doing’ often said without the ‘You’.) “Ya, excellent|lovely|not bad.” (excellent is heavily used here and on par with ‘like’) “So how ’bout that weather?|What crap weather.|Beautiful day we are having.|Absolutely pissing down.|…” (many more but all roughly the same) The other person will usually take a long hard look into the sky, and then agree with the given conclusion. Last night, apparently there was one of the most visible meteor showers of the year in the northern hemisphere. I was meandering down a very dark lane blasting my iPod to “The great gig in the sky” and gazing upwards into the lightly misting rain wishing the cloud cover would move. It got me thinking… Continue reading English and their Weather My usual method of planning a trip is to make absolutely no reservations and simply pick a few things that I must do while I am in the area that I am going to. For my European two month train journey with a rag tag bunch of friends, this list included; visit Rikard in Sweden, start in England, run with the bulls, try and goto the olympics in Greece, stay with friends in X, Y, and Z. This is always a loose list and liable to change. A last minute addition to this list came from a long lost friend from high school who randomly got a hold of me and suggested I visit her in Siena Italy and if possible, arrive on these specific dates to watch the Palio. I had no idea what the Palio was, but it was a welcome respite to stay with someone after being in hostels for ages so in a very warm August, we arrived in Siena. So as I stumble through life trying to make sense of what exactly it is that I am trying to accomplish, I absolutely love hearing stories of how other people are dealing with that very same experience. Even more so when it doesn’t involve the all too common answers that I have heard back . . . → Read More: http://www.thesoccerproject.com/ I left Charles in Izmir for a three day galabant through two Greek islands called Chios and Samos. These islands were filled with extremely dangerous moped driving, investigative journalism sneaking around the coast guard finding wet back packs with Somalian photographs in it, drinking really cheap wine and eating pork which does not exist in Turkey, and generally good times. I landed back on Turkish soil and boarded an eleven hour night bus that would drop me off in Istanbul at 7am. The over night was not so bad minus the guy next to me who had no problem leaning his head on the crook of my shoulder. My first day in Istanbul was not as bad as it could have been thanks to Charles’ amazing friend Gizem who saved me from carrying my heavy backpack and also got us tickets to the final Galatasaray game that night. In a previous blog about the worst night I have ever had, I briefly mentioned something about the ping pong show that I went to and I realize that might have sounded extremely sleazy to some of you. I think I have only been to 4 strip clubs in my time, and received only one lap dance which pretty much put me off paying for lap dances for the rest of time. But if the ping pong shows came to this part of the world, I would be gathering up my friends and telling them to dress up, put their goggles on, and get ready for a rager of a night. The sheer talent possessed by these girls is enough to make any one weep with joy. Here is how I wept… As I exited the plane doors in Bangkok Thailand, I realized I was probably the most unprepared I had ever been for any of my travels. I was armed with a small backpack that would last me two months, several stories from a few friends about places to go and how to get mugged and lose all my cash, and a Lonely Planet book ‘Southeast Asia on a Shoestring’ which is intended to get you around to all the countries in the region and thus only provides few details of each country and adds a few kilograms to any backpack. While in the customs line getting hassled for my passport and being sent to the back of the line for some reason I will never know, I befriended an English guy named Johnny who had reservations at a hostel somewhere so I followed him with his permission. My first few days in Thailand were in Bangkok and I thought I would be lazy and quote from my journal from the time of these days as it is not the intended story of this entry and then I will get to the point. It was close to the half way point during our Europe trip and we were all feeling a little weary. We needed a little rest and relaxation so we headed to Sweden. Sweden is mysteriously not included on the eurorail route but our method around that was to just not buy tickets. The only problem with this is that you are on a train with assigned seats and you will need to move maybe a dozen times or more during the trip from Denmark to Stockholm. This wouldn’t be so bad normally, as long as the people are friendly which they definitely are in Sweden, except for the fact that we had just slept in the park in Copenhagen playing a derivative of bat spin relay and |
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