Great decision guys!

Thanks for all the feedback about Mike's hair!  Your comments, as well as our laziness and indecision saved his long locks.  Thankfully.  Had he shaved his head, we would have been the only blond hair/short hair combo in Santiago.  I have literally only seen about 6 people with blond hair in the whole city and no guys with a shaved head.  This place is overrun with headbands and curls and hair gel, all it needs now are some leather bands.  TBA

Las Drogas!

We tried to bypass the disorientation of jetlag by drugging ourselves on the plane – at Chilean bedtime we popped Ambiens and then ate a quick dinner before it all descended into funniness.  We were filling out our customs forms and I looked over at Azure looking at me like something was terribly confusing.  I asked if she was ok and she couldn't muster a coherent answer, so I assumed the drogas were doing their thing and knocking her out.

I grabbed her forms and looked back at mine, but the entire plane started moving in slow-mo, even when nothing was moving.  I was out after that, too, and woke up 6 hours later to find Azure's name only half-written on her forms, some of the letters shaped wrong… just general incoherence.  I remember during the sleep sprawling out so my legs were all the way across the aisle, my rationale being that it was unused space, anyway.

Somehow that round didn't correct our jetlag.  Maybe we timed it wrong.  Last night at 1:30am we both woke up and couldn't fall back asleep, so after talking, reading and messing around on our camera, we took another half Ambien each to try to fix it.
About 10 minutes later Azure asked, "How many emails do you get in person each week?"
I wondered what she meant by "in person," but answered anyway.  "Oh, probably 20-25."
She looked at me.  "What?"
"You just asked me a question… do you remember what it was?" I said.
"Do we need witnesses to go to the center?"
"Nope."

Tailgating

I hope anyone traveling to the US has the chance to attend a tailgate. An essential American experience.

On the one hand, it’s strange to have such a huge culture developed around an event that’ll only happen about 7 times a year. On the other hand, it’s like 7 Fourths of July. Nothing wrong with that.

Here are some pictures from Apple Cup.

Crowds

Shannon & Joey.
Dawgs eat cats.

Jaime & Bearden.
This was Bearden’s last game for a while. China beckons.

Kenny & I.
All we do is be cool, and we only do it always.

The Dawgs have got class
Shitloads of it.

Mike’s Hair

As you may know, Mike has been growing his hair out for the past few months from the buzz cut that he has been sporting since Barcelona 2004 when we tossed his long locks into the sea, as he claims “from whence they came.” The goal was ultimately to have hair long enough to look like an Argentine soccer player in preparation for our trip to South America (see Argentine soccer players, left). The result is that his hair now sports several “features” at any given time, meaning the back will go down, while the side will go out and the front curl will go around and the other side, up. The question now remains, should his locks return once again to their home in the sea or should they continue to grow towards the goal? Will his hair ever be ready for the headbands and leather straps that he desires, or should he go back to the more conservative clean-cut hairstyle of past years? I know we don’t have many readers at this time, but help!

It’s the fun things that make travel fun

There’s a dope little park in Lisbon, up on a hill, and all the old men hang out shooting the shit. In the middle of the park is a twisted, spidery tree whose branches would hang over onto the ground, except that the city built a metal awning that – simultaneously – lets the tree’s branches grow horizontally out from the trunk and at the same time creates a roof of branches covering a little cluster of benches.

It’s a dope tree. It looks hundereds of years old, all gnarled, but low. I sat under it reading, and a bunch of 15-year-olds came up and asked me something in Portugese. I shook my head and kept reading and they moved to the bench behind me, then climbed up into the tree and just sat, hanging out.

Now, there’s one question I ask myself more than any other question while traveling, and I was pondering it at that moment, “what the fuck am I doing here?”

I thought, Maybe I should ask those kids what there is to do around that area. I answered myself, “What, are they going to tell me where all the good climbing trees are?”

haha.

it took me about 5 seconds to realize that’s EXACTLY the kind of information that I’d love to have abroad.

A year later, Azure and I came across the “Chiang Mai Sports Complex,” a sprawling group of fields and buildings and courts and one gigantic pool. It’s an Olympic sized 50-meter pool (there are only 2 of them in the Puget Sound area, as far as I know), it’s CLEAN and there was nobody there. I don’t know why – maybe the Thai aren’t big swimmers, maybe the ex-pats don’t know about it, but it’s a gorgeous pool that should be packed. And it’s not. At the most there were about 5 people swimming.
The best part of this thing is that there’s an Olympic-sized set of dive platforms there as well and throughout the pool area there were zero lifeguards to try to keep me from doing stupid things and hurting myself.

I’ve never jumped from that high up. 10 meters, I think, it was a monster. I stood at the edge of the platform and looked down and just couldn’t believe how high it was – my knees were shaking and adrenaline rushing the whole time. I know I can’t sit there and try to rationalize it, to convince myself to go off – so my way of beating the fear is to just not think and just step off the edge. But when you step off the edge of this thing, you wonder to yourself, “What the fuck am I doing? There’s nothing under me!” And you fall. and you fall. and you fall. and you accelerate the entire way and when you finally hit it’s chaos. I hit and my arms & feet stung and my ears popped and water rushed over me and threw me into underwater flips… then I surfaced, and floated, and let the endorphins do their work. But here’s the amazing thing about falling from that height: I did it 7 or 8 times that day and EVERY time it was just as thrilling. I didn’t want to jump, my knees shook, I decided it was a bad idea while I was still falling… every single time.

Winter Plans

We'll fly into Santiago on November 27 and out of Buenos Aires March 3.  Thank you Nicole for teaching us Spanish!