THE LIGHT IN FRONT

Wow. Sitting at Washington DC Union Station, mooching off someone’s wi-fi, with finally a bit of time to update this thing. There’s far too much to write about, and if I expect to be able to update more often, I have to be more brief and to the point. Basically, I’m balls deep in America, and these are the highlights of how I got here. Instead of one big post, I’m separating it into three consecutive posts so I can get the locations on the map on the right. The order switches a bit here, the top post (Orlando) being the earliest, and Atlanta at the bottom being the latest. Read below… I got Smithsonian museums to catch up with!

-Headed straight here after Tampa, really quick drive.


-The plan was to go to Islands of Adventure with my friend Elly all day. After Busch Gardens I was pretty amped for more crazy rides.


-Decided to chill and catch a movie, watched The Hangover. Fucking hysterical, go see it.


-Awoke next day to ridiculous +100° temperatures. Elly confeses that she’s prone to severe vomiting at park rides, and would rather sit them out. Fuck Islands of Adventure, let’s hit a water park. The previous day at Busch Gardens was pretty brutal heatwise, the shitty rapids ride there turned out to be one of the best rides on account that it occasionally tossed water at you.


-After some Bloody Mary’s, went to Aquatica at Sea World, it was awesome. Look how happy I am:

-Got out of the car at the parking lot, and there was a giant fucking eagle standing on the roof of the car next to us. Just chillin’. Took off, couldn’t get a pic. I don’t really have many pics of this place cause my shit ain’t waterproof, and this was basically all water, all the time.


-Paid $6 for this piece of shit beer.


-Got to ride nearly every ride before a massive thunderstorm rolled in. All the rides were shut down and people taken out of the pools. One of the lifeguards was actually yelling “We’re at Code Red people, we gotta get to solid cover!” as if it was a fucking tsunami that was coming in.


-The Ginodoll did not get to ride on any fun slides. Instead he was left out in the rain, alone, where I was hoping he’d get struck by lightning:

-People in Orlando are fucking ugly. After the surprise of Tampa this was a hard shock back into reality.


-The next day I was already set to leave the state of Florida and enter true America. It was a long drive to Savannah, GA, for what I call the Friends from The Internet phase. This is because for the next few stops I’d be staying at with people I’ve only met online, particularly at a graffiti forum called 12ozprophet.com, and who’ve proved to be fucking incredibly awesome people in real life.

-I was really struck by how beautiful Savannah is. There’s something very exemplary and idyllic about it.


-That said, I could not find a single thing that would make me say “Oh wow, I gotta get a picture of this!”. Therefore, there are no pictures of Savannah. Actually that’s a lie, before I left I desperately drove around to find something to take a picture of and only found this fountain. So uh, enjoy, I guess:

-Ron has a cat with opposable thumbs. Again, I wasn’t gonna be all like HEY MAN CAN I TAKE PICTURES OF YOUR FREAKY CAT so you’re just gonna have to imagine it.


-Rus has a Wii room. It is a room entirely dedicated to a Wii, with a projector and everything. It sounds really gay but it was actually pretty fucking awesome.


-Drank some really good beer and ate some really good BBQ while I was here. I’m loving this good beer shit.


-Learned quite a bit about how everything is not so idyllic in Savannah. Racial tension is still very present and almost palpable here.


-Ron and Rus, and their respective girls, were exceedingly awesome and generous. Truly rad people I’m glad to finally have met.


-I actually ended up driving a lot around. It’s just a nice town to drive around in.During this time I truly felt the landscape transitioning into what felt a lot more like the idea of America. Florida was too swampy and humid and there’s something about it that feels totally off from the rest of the US… once I hit Georgia I was like “Now we’re talking”. Then I took off for a 5-hour ride to Atlanta, to meet up with another Friend from The Internet, Trent.

-Trent and his lovely wife live out on a much more rural area than what I had experienced so far, just south of Atlanta. It was a very welcome change of pace, especially since a 20 minute drive placed you square in the middle of another giant metropolitan city.


-Trent has two super awesome Boston Terriers. It’s an extra rad breed of dog:

-While mulling over where to go eat and hang out that night, Kate (Trent’s wife) calls a friend, who casually mentions that they’re screening movies outdoor at Centennial Olympic Park in the city. I’m like “Fucking awesome, what are they playing tonight?” GHOSTBUSTERS. Of course I want to go to this!


-Before hitting the park, they decide to take me to this place called “The Varsity” to get some chili dogs. Trent’s like “It’s truly awful, but it’s definitely an Atlanta experience”. After eating the chili dogs, I agree 100%. I’ve never seen a fast food place as big as this, by the way. Check out the front counter here. It’s like 4-5 Cheesecake Factories big, but with far shittier food. It ruled:

-When we got to the park I was completely blindsided by how packed it was. Thousands of people packed. All there to see fucking Ghostbusters. And they all applauded when the Ghostbusters catch Slimer, and when they blow up the Marshmallow Man. It was absolutely fantastic. I thought the movie was gonna feel a bit stupid and outdated, but it’s still pretty fucking funny to this day.


-I slept in some manly blankets that night.


-The next day Trent and his wife had to work, so I decided to venture into the city by myself and check out the most recommended attraction, the Georgia Aquarium. I already had plans to check out the Baltimore Aquarium when I happen to roll by there, but I said fuck it and jumped the gun on this one. And it was so fucking awesome that I’m pretty sure I’ll go to the one in Baltimore regardless.


-If I hadn’t gone into design as a career, I would have probably gone into marine zoology. I’ve been in love with the underwater world since I was very little; I would snorkel every single day of the summer in Vega Baja, touching and prodding things, getting bit and stung by crazy creatures, and growing more and more fascinated by it. Aquariums are heaven for me, and this was a hell of an Aquarium.


-Unfortunately, unless you got decent photo equipment, pictures in aquariums suck dick. Regardless, I gave it a try, so here’s a sampling of things there:

-Check the rest of the flicks on this flickr set, including a large version of that panorama. That tank was freaking enormous.


-It was fairly packed, which means I had to make a long line and therefore entered and left much later than I had anticipated. Unfortunately I had to take off immediately to get to Elberton and locate the Georgia Guidestones to set everything up for sunrise the next day (more on that on the next post), so I wasn’t able to meet up with my awesome hosts again. I was especially peeved that I wasn’t gonna have enough time to see what is undoubtedly Atlanta’s second most essential attraction, the National Museum of Patriotism.


-And so I took off to Elberton, a small town in the middle of nowhere, about 150 miles northeast of Atlanta. It was the first time I veered away from major highways and really dove into the countryside, and it was absolutely incredible, straight out of a storybook illustration. Old barns, sweeping farms, rolling low hilltops. Pictures of those on the next post.


The bizarre story of Elberton and the Georgia Guidestones will have to wait a bit. It’s 1:30 AM in the NC backcountry and I have a long drive to Washington DC tomorrow. Till the next break I get…

So, state #1, Florida, is now over. It was a pretty awesome experience and an overall hilarious first impression of the US. Each city had its own special flavor of people, but they were all, without a doubt, Floridians… kinda hard to describe.


So, first off, Tampa. The two main things I noticed right off the bat are that Tampa is fucking cheesy as hell, and that the women are unexplicably hot. I didn’t have much time initially to dwell on this, since upon the first 5 minutes of my arrival in the city I was deeply involved in a ferocious game of beer pong:

Welcome to Tampa.

Bobby and I squared off against his two lifetime opponents, whose names I forgot, but we’ll call them Hinduman and Douchey McHerbington. I don’t know if the drive from Miami had honed my senses or what, but I was on fucking fire, and we completely obliterated their asses like 3 times in a row. This caused the opposing team to become complete assholes to us and thus earn their new nicknames. That’s Douchey McHerbington up there on the left wearing his douchey polo shirt.


From there we left to a bar of staggering lameness, called AjA or some shit, where scores of crazy hot blondes were flirting with low tier quarterbacks with gelled hair and armband tattoos, excitedly talking about how next week fucking Brody from The Hills was gonna host a Top 40 mashup party at AjA. I actually have the flyer around, but haven’t found a scanner yet. It fitfully describes Tampa in one single, soul-searing image. It was OK though, I had a good time nonetheless catching up with the Bobster and shooting the shit.


Next day Bob had to work, so I took the opportunity to go buy two very important items for the trip. First, I tossed out my fucking Zoolander phone and switched to Sprint to cop a Palm Pre (funny, doing a google image search for “zoolander phone” turns up quite a few images of the Pantech c300). Sorry AT&T, I’m not fond of the tremendous ass-raping exchange policy for a new iPhone, or the tremendous ass-raping plans that don’t even include text messaging. So far, the Pre’s kicking a ton of ass.


The second, and probably more important item I bought, is these fucking shoes:

Oh u mad cuz I'm stylin on u?

Go ahead, laugh it up. These things are fucking AWESOME. Closest feeling to walking barefoot possible, great for running, climbing, roundhousing children in the face (and leaving finger slap marks too!), and getting weird looks everywhere you go. If you wanna read a bit more about why these shoes are fantastic, check out this blog post, which breaks it down better than I could.


When Bob stepped out of work, we hit up the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg. Understandably, no pictures were allowed, so I don’t have much to show, but it was out of control incredible. I thought I was over Dalí to some extent, I’ve just seen so much of his stuff over the years it almost became cliché (ooooh, trippy melting shit!!), but I’d never seen a painting of his in person. Holy fucking shit. I don’t wanna get into some boring art discussion although I’d love to, so I’ll just say that if you find yourself, god forbid, anywhere near Tampa, you HAVE to hit this place up and have your mind blown the fuck away. Seeing The Hallucinogenic Toreador up close in real life is like having your brain get a blowjob while being shot out of a rocket that’s shaped like an octopus with a moustache.


That night we ate some incredible thai food (yet another awesome thing we don’t have in PR), then went to some friend of Bob’s apartment where they were apparently making fancy martinis and shit. No sooner do we step in the door we are met by, yep, you guessed it, Hinduman and Douchey McHerbington. These fellas were so butthurt from the previous night’s beating, they wasted no time getting to business and challenging us to something a little more complicated than beer pong: MONOPOLY. I shit you not, we started playing fucking Monopoly at god knows what hour. By that time I was so drunk off lychee martinis (which were fucking delicious) that I was only able to focus on playing with the little metal figurines and speculating on the worth of property based off on how fancy their names were. Even though we landed in jail like 17 times, somehow Bobby held it down proper and we were actually raking in the cash and killing everyone at the game. I’m not exactly sure how the game ended or who won, but I know it just gradually collapsed as people were getting drunker and drunker and unable to follow the nuances of the game. In any case, those dudes are still herbs and we’re still fucking awesome.


Next day was spent dealing with another massive hangover, and surviving the relentless assault of Busch Gardens. Because what better way to spend a hangover than walking for hours in 98° heat, riding heart-stopping rollercoasters, and constantly smelling animal shit. I kid, of course, because Busch Gardens was really fucking awesome. Here’s a few pics from the tour:

Busch Gardens is Pro-Gay Monkey marriage.

You just know the gorilla wants to punch her lights out.

I think flamingos are complete faggot birds. Fuck you, flamingos.

Snapshot of African landscape, complete with zebras, giraffes, and a wagon full of machete-wielding Hutu rebels.

This made me jealous.

Hippos are great at scuba diving. But they're fat, so I win.

When I grow up, I wanna be a giant animal shit shoveler.

You can see a few more pictures on flickr.


Of course, we couldn’t leave out the awesome rides here. This is Sheikra, a short but ridiculously  intense rollercoaster that basically takes you up crazy high, then drops your shit facefirst to the ground at 70mph. Sorry for the crappy photomontage, but I couldn’t fit the whole thing into one picture:





And of course, this post wouldn’t be complete without a first-person video of one of these rollercoasters. This is me and Bob, shitting our pants at Kumba (make sure your sound’s on):





And finally, I would like to introduce you all to the Ginodoll. Gino is a good friend of mine who had the narcissistic gall to make a few dozen figurines of his likeness, and the stupidity of giving me one of them to take along on the trip. I decided then, that this will be my travel gnome of sorts. Except that instead of doing awesome things like travel gnomes get to do, the Ginodoll will be subjected to endless humiliation and general misery while I get to have all the fun. So I tossed him into a crazy parrot cage to be assaulted and molested by fancy birds:

ATTACK THE FACE.

ATTACK THE GENITALS.

THREESOME!

I was really upset I couldn’t get a video of the 5 seconds right after that last picture was taken. Apparently the birds were not happy at all with Ginodoll’s presence on their tree and they proceeded to pick him up in tandem and toss him the fuck out. It was fucking fantastic.


We left the place tired as hell, ate a shitload of wings and beer, and passed out relatively early that night. The next day Bob was back at work, I got my shit packed and ready, and took off for the next stop: Orlando. More on that coming soon. All in all, had an awesome time in Tampa besides it being a pretty lame place, and it was all due to the Bobster knowing how to host. Thanks a lot dude, shit was awesome.


Hope you enjoyed, folks.

Well, Miami’s a wrap, and what a hell of a start for the trip. I’m gonna be honest, I’m not a big fan of Miami, in many senses it’s like an enhanced and magnified version of the type of places/people I didn’t enjoy being at/with in Puerto Rico, but it can be fun to visit every once in a while and live it up. And that’s exactly what I did.

NOTE: I recently spoke to someone who was following the blog, and was extremely surprised (and alarmed) to learn that this person wasn’t aware of the links to pictures I’m embedding within the text. I’m sure most of you are aware that the little underlined green words are meant to be clicked on, but if you aren’t, you’re losing at the game of Internet. Go ahead and click the green words for the full audiovisual experience.

As I mentioned in my previous post, the place I was staying at was seriously badass. Complimentary valet, crazy lobby, ill furniture, awesome art, and fancy pets. It belongs to my good friend Karla, who’s out in Bali, while the place and the dog are looked after by David, her chef boyfriend. I’m pretty sure it’ll probably the nicest place I’ll stay in during my trip, so I made sure to take as much advantage as possible of it before my sleeping situation slowly degrades to nearly homeless status as I head out further west.


Second day in Miami was spent doing semi-responsible shit with David, buying stuff at Wal-Mart (car battery booster, tools, power inverter, bins to organize and put all my crap in, etc.), and organizing all that stuff through a lengthy game of Car Tetris. At night we went out to eat an enormous amount of ribs, and then proceeded to go batshit insane all over Miami, in the Miami-est way possible. $250-a-bottle-minimum bars, champagne on fire, latin girls, Sinbad, questionable locales, and even more questionable people.


We ended up capping the night and staggering home around 8:00 AM, supposedly to crash for 2 hours before we went wakeboarding at 10:00 AM. Obviously, that didn’t happen. What a fucking night… Big ups to David for hooking it up proper.


Waking up instead at 2-3 PMish, I took about 3 hours of catching up with comments on the blog, mainlining Tylenol, getting my shit together, and contemplating murder when the fucking Pomeranian started to bark and yelp at non-existent entities. Don’t get me wrong, the dog is pretty rad, friendly and cute, but it’s a Paris Hilton dog all the way, with all that it implies. It’s no surprise evil thoughts began to creep in as the hangover got worse and the barking got louder.


Eventually I managed to come to my senses enough to head out to Lincoln Rd. and meet up with Adriana, an old friend from PR that I haven’t seen since college. Enjoyed a couple of good beers at Zeke’s Roadhouse, which was fucking fantastic… honestly, Puerto Rico needs to seriously step up their beer game. Straight up, beer fucking sucks down there, and if there’s one thing I’m glad to be switching to, it’s the option to drink genuinely good beer. And 40’s. After that we went to stuff ourselves silly with food at Nexxt Cafe and shoot the shit a little more, then we parted ways and I headed back to lounge and pass out. Long drive to Tampa the next day.


All in all Miami fucking rocked. My wallet got straight punched in the facial repeatedly while I was there, but I’ve since come to learn that that’s just the way it goes down, you just gotta be willing to open the faucet and let it rain. Which reminds, me gotta sit down and square out the budget. Check out the full flickr photo set for more photos and comments.


Drive to Tampa with playlist music to share coming soon… gotta get moving on this end. Remember to suggest roadtrip music and contact me if you have mp3’s you want to send me. Later peeps.

Pretty action packed, if your idea of action is not knowing what the fuck is going on.

After about 4 hours of sleep and a mad last minute scramble to leave shit in relative working order at home, I managed to get to Ft. Lauderdale without a hitch. Then I got into a cab with a Haitian taxi driver who looked like Joshua Clottey and things got interesting from there.


Dude could pretty much not speak english at all and was having a lot of trouble understanding the basics of what I was trying to do (ie: go next door and pick up my car at the shipyard), so you can imagine the zany antics that ensued once we got to the clusterfuck that was the shipyard itself. For starters, apparently every single employee there is required by contract to limit their conversations with you to “What are you doing here, sir?” and “I’m gonna have to ask you to pop your trunk”. Any other attempt to communicate with these beings would result in blank, vaguely confused stares.


Checkpoint guard: “What are you doing here, sir?”

Me: “Hi, I’m here to pick up my car from Seastar!”

Checkpoint guard: “…”

Me: “Can I, uh, pass to pick it up?”

Checkpoint guard: “Please pop your trunk sir”

Me: *Makes hand signals to taxi driver to pop trunk*

Checkpoint guard: *Looks at trunk*

Me: “So, I don’t suppose you can tell me where I can find the Seastar dock around here, can you?”

Checkpoint guard: “…”

Me: “Do you know where I can find Seastar?”

Checkpoint guard: “What are you doing here, sir?”


Meanwhile the taxi driver was busy drawing a picture of a goat cause he clearly had no interest in figuring out what the hell was going on. This quickly devolved into a series of misunderstandings, bad information, and at least three solid backtracks that turned a $10 taxi fee into $30. Eventually I was told that the key to the puzzle, both literally and figuratively, lay with a man named Gustavo, but nobody seemed to know where the hell Gustavo or his office were. Eventually I was left under the rain with my bags, to find Gustavo and his magical cabin office on my own. The taxi driver refused to shake my hand when I paid him and apologized for the mess. I assume this was because, as we all know, handshakes are forbidden in Haiti, or perhaps because he was in fact Joshua Clottey and was all mad cause Cotto styled on him last Saturday.


All said and done, I emerged about 2 hours later with the SuperYaris, with a furiously blinking gas tank light, and proceeded to get lost roughly 8 times in search of a gas station and my eventual landing spot in downtown Miami.


Speaking of, you have no idea how fucking BALLER the spot I’m staying at is. The SuperYaris is parked (by valet, of course) along Maserattis and Bentleys, the condo lobby looks like an European nightclub, and the apartment itself (which belongs to my dear friend Karla, who is currently balling even harder in Bali) even has a fancy, neurotic Pomeranian to round things out. Pictures coming soon.


The rest of the day was spent heading directly to Best Buy to grab a GPS for my directional woes, eating enough food to feed half of Namibia, picking up the boxes of crap I had sent to Nobox Miami in advance, and watching The Dark Knight in soap opera mode until I passed out.


Bring on Day 2.

Obviously a trip of this magnitude requires appropriate equipment. This includes food and nourishment, shelter, medical items, outdoor clothing and footwear, explosive rockets, and at least one broadsword (to fight off bears). To help organize the mess of things I have to bring with me, I will attempt to list everything that comes to mind in no particular order. If there’s anything you feel is missing from the list, or rather, stuff that IS on the list but shouldn’t be there, I would appreciate your pointing it out via comments.

• Tent (already have a tent, but it’s unnecessarily gigantic. I need to get one that’s for two people tops, and super easy to set up and take down in seconds. I like them shits where you just toss em in the air and they go POOF! Instant tent. They’re probably fucking terrible tents though.)
• Sleeping bags (2)
• Awesome pillow
• Propane stove
• Propane lantern
• Propane bottles (2-3)
• Solar shower
• Can opener
• Utility knife
• Utensil set
• Hammock for Xtreme activities
• Folding chair
• First aid kit
• Pills (headache stuff, cold stuff, fucked up stomach stuff, vitamins and healthy things, sleeping pills)
• Toilet paper
• Baby wipes
• Assorted toiletry (toothbrush/paste, deodorant, gay moisturizing crap, vast amounts of chapstick)
• I was about to write down shaving cream and blades, but it would be entirely unappropriate to NOT grow a sick beard on this trip.
• Condoms
• Nail clippers
• Earplugs
• Sunglasses
• Tools (Dremel, allen wrench set, screwdrivers, pliers)
• A big fucking hammer to smash things real good
• Flashlight(s)
• Headlamp
• Batteries (AA, AAA, and D)
• Power inverter for the car
• Cigarette lighter socket splitter
• Jumper cables
• Car battery booster
• An iPod that fucking works
• GPS Nav system
• Smartphone
• Extra battery for the laptop
• In-ear headphones for walks and hikes
• Full-size headphones for mind explosion while staring at the epic Badlands sky
• CamelBak
• Binoculars
• Camera (I have a simple Olympus point-and-shoot that has survived 4 Burning Mans, but am considering purchasing a Casio Exilim EX-FH20 somewhere along the trip. I’m a sucker for that sweet slo-mo mode)
• These silly-ass shoes (I know they look 12 kinds of retarded, but these are the closest thing there is to going barefoot, which is my preferred choice of walking style)
• Hiking boots
• 2 pairs of sneakers
• 1 pair of normal shoes in case I gotta go somewhere semi-fancy
• 2 weeks worth of everyday clothes (which reminds me, have to schedule laundry stops in random cities as needed)
• Warm clothes (big jacket, several hoodies, sweatpants, thick socks)
• Swimming trunks
• Fucking sweet wolf shirt
• Towel(s)
• Bandanas (go well with wolf shirt)
• Assorted hats
• Bear and/or Sasquatch costume
• 4 gallons of bug spray
• 5 gallons of bug repellent
• Flamethrower (for bugs not affected by spray OR repellent)
• Ice cooler
• Beer
• Potentially hazardous amounts of beef jerky
• Asian hookers
• Stogies
• Hulk hands

And I kinda ran out of steam. There’s def more stuff to go on this list but I think that covers the general gist of it. Any ideas and suggestions? I’ll be adding them to the list marked in green as they roll in.