Samoa to Seattle

2011-11-22T11:36:00.000-08:00

2011-02-20T21:03:00.001-08:00

2011-02-20T20:36:00.001-08:00

2010-10-26T22:09:00.000-07:00

तो Cuzco and Mancora

2010-04-20T21:11:00.000-07:00

From Puno, we took a tour bus to Cuzco. We had heard that this route had been blocked by protesters recently. We later met a guy who was on a roadblocked bus and he ended up walking the last 20 miles into Cuzco. We didn't have any problems though. People get mad at the government in Peru and routinely block the highways. Then traffic just has to wait I guess. Sometimes this lasts for weeks. I don't think this would work in the U.S.

Our bus made a few stops on the 7 hour drive from Puno to Cuzco.

One was at the little town of Pukara. There are some of the oldest pre-Inca ruins around there.

Also, all over Peru, people put Pukara bulls on their roof for good luck.

We stopped by a glacier.

Stopped to check out some llamas.

and at what they told us were the oldest Inca ruins. There was this wall of a big temple/meeting hall:

and also a ton of grain silos:

The Incas used to collect grain from all over as a tax and stockpile it in these depositories for times when there was drought or they otherwise ran out of food.
There were also some intact fountains from back in the day as well:

Once you get over the pass from Puno and towards Cuzco, it is pretty nice.

We also stopped at an old church.

I almost got left behind there because I was buying some weird corn pop at a store and the bus started to pull away. The corn pop is pretty bad. Um I mean it is really good, you should try it.

We made it to Cuzco

but only stayed for one night. We were tired of being cold. When we were in Aeraquipa, we had found a cheap flight from Cuzco to Tumbes, on the border with Ecuador, so we booked it.

We got into Tumbes after dark and there were a ton of cab drivers trying to get us to go with them to our destination. We told them where we were going, they gave us a price and I picked one. The dude kept trying to get us to go somewhere else, which irritated me. Then he said it would be an extra $10 once we were most of the way there because it was farther then he thought. We said ok, but no more. So he said ok and kept driving. Then he took us to the wrong place. Finally we got to the right place and he told us we owed $40. I told him to eat shit. He threatened to call the police, and then when we walked away, he left.

This place was out in the middle of nowhere, but it was nice and on the beach.

There was pretty much nobody else there.

Naomi really liked this bathroom sign:

We just stayed there the one night and the next day flagged down a crammed bus to take us to Mancora. After a couple hours and several security checkpoints we were there. The hostel we booked was pretty sweet.

We had our own 2 story hut on the beach. Ours is the one on the far left:

pretty nice really

nice beach with relatively warm water:

Nice balcony too:

And super cheap.

Our friend Michael Marsik happened to be in Peru at the same time. Him and some of his friends had gone to Macchu Picchu and he had another week in Peru. So, he came and met us in Mancora.

We had a really nice most of a week. There are lots of cheap seafood restaurants on the beach and all through town. There's a nice beach and decent bodyboarding right out in front of the hostel.

The hostel had cheap and good food, cheap beer, and activities for everyone to do like volleyball:

Also, there were party themes, such as pirate night (Meg). For pirate night, you pay $10 and get all the rum drinks you can drink for 2 hours.

We really just hung out and were beach bums most of the time. We spent a couple hours each day searching for and applying for jobs on the internet. Due to the horrendous economy that had fully kicked in by now, this turned out to be a total waste of time that should have been spent on more bodyboarding and beer drinking.

I wouldn't say the actual town of Mancora is all that nice.

Really is is just a couple loud and sometimes muddy streets. But, aside from internet use, you really can just walk up the beach to restaurants when you get tired of your excellent hostel food and drinks.

Movie Reviews:

Invention of Lying: 3
This movie had some potential and started out pretty funny. But it just dragged on and on and got pretty boring and tired by the end.

Up in the Air: 5.5: It is a well made movie, but it just isn't all that exciting or interesting. Just a little above average.

Zombieland: 7 You're not getting high drama with a zombie movie, but this one is pretty good as far as they go. It doesn't try to be scary. Tries to be kind of funny, and succeeds mostly. Good acting (for a zombie movie). I liked it and hope they make a Zombieland 2.

Lake Titicaca!

2010-04-12T21:40:00.000-07:00

Downtown Aeraquipa is pretty nice. The whole center is an old colonial city and the neighborhoods around it are nice too.

The outskirts, not so much:

We took a bus towards Lake Titicaca.

The biggest city in that area is Juliaca. It is about 30 minutes from the lake. It might be the most depressing place I've ever seen. Pinotepa National in Mexico is pretty depressing, but Juliaca is in another league.

In comparison Puna is like Vancouver...in a still sort of crappy sense.

But, it is really not too bad and it is on the lake.

We walked around town and went to a nice place for a drink.

And looked for a place to have dinner, but the high $7 menus around were too expensive, so we found a place that had a $2 dinner special. Here's Naomi enjoying a stuffed avocado.

I don't remember what I had. But, I remember what I had did to my insides. It did bad, bad stuff.

The next day we headed out on the lake. Our first stop were the floating reed islands.

The people that live there moved out there to get away from the other tribes. They make islands out of reeds and live out there. They still fish and raise reeds to keep their islands intact but now they make most of their income from fees paid by tourist groups to check out their islands.

So they mostly hang out there, give tours and sell stuff to tourists.

Exploitation?

I suppose, but would you rather eat reeds or get money for hanging out on your reed islands, weaving mini-reed boats, and running little shops and restaurants? I think I'd go with option B.

The aliens in my body hadn't quite hatched yet at this point, but they were working on it.

As part of their program the reed island ladies serenade you as you pull away on your reed boat.

We got back on our big boat for another 4 hours or so to Amantani Island in the middle of the lake.

I was hurting pretty bad by then. I was smiling on the outside.

and I bought a llama hat woven by the lady whose house we were staying in.

But, not feeling to good AT ALL.

After a little bit to hang out, we were supposed to meet in the town square and then take a hike up to the top of the little mountain on the island.

But, I decided after waiting in the square for a while that what with the apparent lack of any trees to duck behind and the scratchy looking nature of the crops in the area that I should ~~make my way~~ shuffle very urgently back to our house.

Naomi made it up there.

Here's our fearless leader pointing out quinoa. He was a nice guy. Not so much with the English part of the English tour though.

It looked pretty cool up there though.

The lady at the house was worried about me and brought me some special tea that was to make me feel better. She was really nice.
Later on that night, the host families dressed all the tourists up in traditional gear and took them to a dance in the town. I was felling horrendous, so I just stayed in bed. Well, I was checking things out. The bathroom there was an outhouse with very limited tp next to a sheep pen. I checked that out many, many, many times. You flush this sort of toilet by pouring a bucket of water into the bowl. No bucket was provided this night. Sorry family. Sorry sheep.

Another guy was staying at the same house. He was a really cool pharmacist from Salta, Argentina. Naomi and him went to the dance with the little kids from our house.

The next day we took the boat to Taquile Island.

We walked around the island and our guide tried to point out different things to us. He pointed out different herbs that you can make tea out of and the significance of different types of dress people wear that designate their marital status.

Then he told us the same things over and over and over again. It was pretty funny. At one point, I got Naomi to ask him if there were any donkeys on this island.

"No, no donkeys this island. On the Amantani Island, some burros...many horse. On the Taquile Island, I don't horse."

While we were walking around a bunch of guys were repaving the path. They were taking huge boulders and splitting them into huge blocks with sledgehammers. Then they were hauling them to the paving place. That was pretty impressive- really hard work.

We had a nice lunch there and then after hanging out for a while, we headed back towards the port. There are a dearth of bathrooms and especially bathrooms with tp on the islands. At the port, a stand sold tp. I had a long 4 boat ride back to Puna. At least the weather was nice, so the boat wasn't rocking furiously like it was on the way out the day before.

Aeraquipa, Peru

2010-04-11T14:42:00.000-07:00

The next day in Aeraquipa was Good Friday. We switched to a nicer place:

They aren't allowed to sell alcohol in stores during Holy Week. But, everyone has the whole week off and tons of people come home for the week. They do sell alcohol laced punch/tea on the street though and everyone in the city is on the street eating, drinking, and watching processions. It was pretty cool.

I think Naomi was still a little disgusted by the bed bugs at the first place.

We signed up for a trek to Colca Canyon. It is the 2nd deepest canyon in the world. We had to leave at about 5am to make the LONG drive to the canyon area. There was snow on one of the passes on the way there. I think it was about 15,000 feet here:

We finally made it to the canyon area:

and stopped for a while to check out some condors.

Then we drove quite a bit while longer to get to Cabanaconde:

From there we started our trek down to the bottom of the canyon.

There were some goats hanging out by the rim.

These donkeys have a hard job:

There are towns on the other side of the canyon and at the bottom. The only way to get to these towns is to walk up and down the canyon, or ride a donkey.

The first day of the trek we walked down to the bottom and stayed at a town on the edge of the river.

It is pretty steep, but going down wasn't too bad really.

Our accommodations were really pretty nice. We had our own little cabin and we had some pretty good food cooked for us. It was much, much nicer than any of us on our trek expected.

The next day was pretty much walking down the canyon all day.

We stopped at a couple little towns.

One had a museum with some traditional costume stuff you could put on and look like a dumbass.

Then we made it to the little town we were staying at the second night.

It was ridiculous. Even though they have to pack everything down on donkeys, every place you can stay has swimming pools.

It was WAY nicer there than we expected; a super, super nice place and we had our own hut. And they sold cold beer for not all that unreasonable prices. Crazy.

We hung out and played games with our people on our trek. Then the next day we had to get up and leave at 5am so you can get up the canyon before it gets too hot.

It is pretty damn steep and fairly far.

But we made it! You could ride a donkey up for like $15, but those donkeys have a hard enough job without hauling me up the hill.

Our guide was super tough. She wasn't even tired:

We had breakfast in Cabanaconde and then headed back to Chivay to have lunch.

Lunch was shockingly good. There were just a ton of things in a buffet at the restaurant we went to.

After lunch we went to a hot springs. The hottest pool was super hot. Pretty much too hot to be in for more than about 60 seconds at a time.

On our way back to Aeraquipa, we stopped to check out a big herd of alpacas and llamas that were hanging out by the road.

We made it back to Aeraquipa and were tired.

If you're ever near Aeraquipa, you should really do the Colca Canyon trek, it is great, and super worth the cost and the effort.

Movie review:

Hurt Locker: 6
Best picture? Really? It is a movie that people should probably see. It probably gets across how hard it is to be over in Iraq. But, it isn't a superb movie. Some of the parts seem pretty unrealistic and stupid.

District 9: 8.5
Way better than the Hurt Locker. It is super stressful to watch and I'm not sure I would want to see it again anytime soon because of that, but it is pretty high quality.

Roof pumpkins:

Out of Argentina

2010-04-11T13:08:00.000-07:00

After one last day in Salta, we left Argentina and headed back to Chile over the Andes to San Pedro del Atacama.

The pass was ridiculous and was over 15,000 feet at the top.

There are a ton of high salt flats up there and a ton of wild donkeys:

Then we made it to San Pedro. It is a cool tourist town.

It pretty much never rains there. It is in the middle of the driest desert in the world. So, there are tons of cool restaurants with all outdoor eating areas. Most of them have fire pits going in the dining room. It is a nice setup.

Pisco sours are the specialty drink of the area. I liked the Chilean ones better than the Peru ones (sorry Oscar).
One morning we got up at 430am and took a tour to a 14,000 foot high geyser field at sunrise. It was fricking freezing up there until the sun came up.

There are just tons of little geysers up there.

The hill in the background is in Bolivia:

After the geyser field we went to a nice hotsprings.

There were weird rabbit/racoon things all over there but I think those pictures are on Naomi's camera.

Also tons of vicunas.

And ostrich things.

Then we took a hike down a canyon that was pretty cool.

Another day we took a tour to the Valley of the Moon.

There are some huge sand dunes you can sandsurf down or just sand bodysurf down.

Next we headed to Iquique on the Chilean coast. It is a long way through the desert. We were stuck in the crappy little town of Calama for half a day waiting to change busses.

I think most of the population goes to this street to take pisses. That's what it smelled like:

The bus driver put on a couple DVDs of the Chilean band Los Bukis for a couple hours. He really liked them. They are just brutal. This is a terrible recording, but try to check out how ridiculous the drummer is:

Iquique is an ok place. Parts of the town are pretty nice.

Some parts, not so much.

Iquique is at 20 degrees south latitude. Puerto Vallarta and Hawaii are around 20 degrees north latitude. But, the water there is as cold as Puget Sound due to the cold current coming straight up the coast from Antarctica, so that part kind of sucks.
But the air temperature was nice.

Our hostel was really nice and we ended up spending an extra day in Iquique hanging out by the beach.

Then we headed to Peru. We took a bus and a cab to Tacna and tried to make the last nice bus out of town to Aeraquipa.

There was a cool Holy Week parade going on.
In Tacna, they have their dentist offices with the operating rooms in windows so everyone can see you get your fillings:

But, by the time we got there it was sold out, so we had to take a late crappy bus to Aeraquipa.

We got in about 3am. That sucked quite a bit. Then, when we got to our $9 per night hotel, Naomi did not appreciate the bed bugs, so we moved to a different and nice place after the first night.

Yes!

2009-12-14T22:23:00.000-08:00

Jake Locker is staying, and it looks like the Mariners are trading for Cliff Lee. What a great day!

Cafayate

2009-12-12T14:49:00.000-08:00

Cafayate is a few hours south of Salta. You cross through a desert on the way there. The town is pretty small and is in a pretty dry valley, but with a real river and several creeks coming down from the Andes around the town.

The town itself is really pleasant.

We stayed at the Rusty K Hostel. If you're in Cafayate, I can't recommend you stay there enough. It is great. They have bikes there to ride around town and to the surrounding wineries. Also, they have a really nice and really pleasant courtyard where you can hang out and use their parilla grill. The courtyard has a cool retractable roof and is otherwise covered overhead in grapes that you can pick and eat at your leisure.

There are wineries right in and just outside of town. They're growing grapes all over.

They are also growing goats!

There's a goat cheese farm right outside of town that we walked to. When we got there, a lady was just driving out and told us the place was closed for a couple hours, but if we wanted to go visit the goats, we could go right ahead. Great!

So we hung out with the goats for a while.

They also had a couple llamas hanging out there.

It was really hot though, so we got tired of waiting and walked back to town up a creek that runs by the goat farm.

There was some donkey representation as well:

We visted several wineries in and around town.

For a few days there we just rode bikes around, went to wineries, barbequed at the hostel and had some fantastic food. We found this restaurant that ended up being owned by a couple from Colorado.

It was definitely a top 5 meal on the whole trip.

One day we rode up the hill outside of town to a couple wineries and to hang out in the creeks up at the opening of a canyon.

It was really, really hot that day. Naomi didn't think she was going to make it.

But she did, so we took some wine that we got at a winery, put it in water bottles, and hung out in the creek most of the day. That was a really good day.

There's another little town in that area, Cachi, that is supposed to be cool also, but we ended up spending all our time down there in Cafayate. If you're in NW Argentina, you should at least to go to one of them.

After Cafayate, we headed back to Salta for a night, and another feast at the Inti Huasi, and then we were to head over the Andes and leave Argentina for the trip.

In real time, here's what I hope the M's lineup ends up looking something like:

2B Figgins
RF Ichiro
LF Bay (and Vlad)
DH Vlad Guererro (and Griffey)
1B Branyan and Gomes platoon
CF Guittierez
3B Beltre (but I can live with Hall/Tui)
SS Wilson
C Johnson/Moore

Felix
Sheets
mystery pitcher we trade Morrow and Lopez for
RRS
Snell

Salta

2009-11-24T21:12:00.000-08:00

They have a gondola up to the top of one of the hills in Salta, so we went to the top of that.

You're way above the ground the whole way up; a little scary.
At the top they have just a massive artificial waterfall system. Ridiculous, but cool.

We walked back down.

They have some humungous spiders and spiderwebs over the trail for the top part of the trail.

There's a big and nice park in the middle of Salta. Our hostel was right by it so it was pretty convenient.

There's a constant little market in the park selling lots of tourist crap, but also some really good food.

12 Empanadas for $1.50 is pretty much impossible to beat. It is right up there with 5 for $1 Mexican street tacos.

Our hostel was just awesome. If you're in Salta, stay at the Inti Huasi. It is really nice, cheap, and on Wednesday and Fridays, they have this ridiculous parilla dinner for $8. It comes with all the awesome Argentine steak you want and all the wine you can drink, and it lasts for about 3 hours. Probably the most impressive part is the truly high quality vegetarian creations that the house chef makes. This was definitely one of the best meals we had the whole time in South America. We ended up having it twice.

Our first time, the owner/manager guy (seen in the picture above) just kept forcing the wine on us. We had plenty, then when he got tired of pushing steak on us, he went back to the wine. I had a big water glass, and I thought it was cool that he kept re-filling it. But after a while, I was done with wine. Then when I turned around, he would fill it back up. He tried that on everyone. Then about 11pm, he said, "Ok, we're all going out to a club! OK, we go in 10 minutes; I know the owner, I can get us all in." Um, ok. So we hop in a few cabs and are pretty suspect about this, but what the hell, we've had liters of wine. We get to this area of Salta with clubs all over this street and lines snaking out of all the clubs. Our guy runs inside and after a few minutes, I figure this isn't going to work but, whatever. Then, our guy runs outside and yells for him to follow him and we all not only get in free, but get to cut in front of the huge line. Pretty cool, and pretty fun.

Again, Salta is a really nice place to hang out.

The next day we headed back south a few hours to Cafayate (pronounced Caf a Jat e).
The drive down is pretty picturesque through some pretty spectacular canyon country.

We'll start with Cafayate next time.

I really like college football, but at least at the end of this season I can stop hearing about Tim Tebow. He's a good college player, and he likes church, and sometimes he gets concussions. OK, I get it. Enough!

Barreal

2009-11-23T18:14:00.000-08:00

Barreal is a pretty small town way out in the middle of nowhere. It is a pretty pleasant place though. People from San Juan (Argentina) drive out here for weekends. Mostly they just hang out and enjoy a break from the city and the nice views.

We headed back the same way we came and may have passed 2 or 3 cars the whole way back to Upsallata.

We headed back to Mendoza and camped just outside of town near the winery areas. They had a little farm there with nandus there:

The next day we went out to try to go wine tasting. It is a pain in the ass in Mendoza though. You can't just drop in, you have to make reservations. We ended up making it to one winery tour. Nieto Seniter is apparently the oldest winery in Mendoza. It was a cool tour because they were harvesting grapes.

We went back and stayed in Mendoza again and signed up for a winery tour for the next day. It is pretty much the only way to conveniently do it, and it was fun and easy.

We went to four wineries. Then we went to this place for a terrific lunch. There were just tons of different kinds of food and also all you can drink wine.

They let us stay there for a couple hours to eat and drink.

That evening we took a night bus to Salta. Fully reclining seats are terrific.

Salta is nice. We really liked it there.

If you end up in Salta make sure you go to the mummy museum. It was probably the best museum we went to on this trip. They found mummies on top of a 20,000 foot mountain nearby that were really well preserved. They don't let you take pictures of them, but they do let you take pictures of the stuff they found with them. Here are one mummy's shoes:

and llama figurines:

Some of those are made out of gold.

This isn't the best picture, but the mountains here are just enromous. It is hard to believe how high they look from Salta. Salta is around 4000 feet, and these mountains are around 20,000 feet.

I'll have more about the Salta area later.

Seahawks game review: 0. We suck.

ओं थे वे तो बर्रेअल

2009-11-10T21:46:00.000-08:00

Those goats are still messing up my titles. In English, that says on the way to Barreal. In goat, it says the above.

It rained:

Naomi was actually kind of worried about this situation. Once we got back to Upsallata, we started to head out to Barreal and realized the road is a dirt/gravel road totally in the middle of nowhere to get there. She was concerned about that, but then it started pouring down rain.

But there was nobody else out there, so she could chill out with a beer:

Here's a map that clears right up where you are and where you're going:

I thought it was pretty cool out there.

Then she had enough and made me drive (even though I was not an authorized driver on the car! omg!)
and it started to clear up for a while.

We found a dry lake bed:

Drove around on it for a while:

Saw some goats:

and made it back to paved roadway, just outside of Barreal, much to Naomi's relief.

Movie review: Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist: 6
Not too lame for a teen movie, really.

आफ्टर सत. पैट्रिक'स Day

2009-11-09T21:34:00.000-08:00

I don't know what is up with the weird characters in the title. My browser has a goat add on, so that could have something to do with it.

Anyway, back to the long overdue updating, starting with a couple days after St. Patrick's Day 09.

We left Bariloche on a deluxe bus. A 19 hour bus ride sounds pretty bad, but if you get the fully reclining seats on Andesmar, it really isn't too bad. They give you decent meals, wine, champagne, movies. There's even a bingo game.

Bariloche is on the border between the mountains and the dry plains. Just to the east it looks a lot like Eastern Washington. I think Zach and Shane should go buy some waterfront property there.

Our next stop was Mendoza. Mendoza has about 400,000 people in the area. It has a nice downtown area with some nice squares and a bunch of fountains all over.

Mendoza is about 10 miles to the east of the front range of the Andes. The real Andes are another 100 or so miles to the east.

We spend a couple days hanging out in town. One day we took a walk through the big city park. It is pretty nice by the downtown entrance. The farther away you get from that, the less they feel like cutting the grass or picking up trash. If you walk far enough, you run out of trail and get to walk by the edge of a highway to get up to the top of the little mountain. Up there, there's a nice view, the stinkiest zoo I've ever smelled, and a monument of Argentina war heroes.

Most people drive up there do to these conditions. I didn't enjoy our walk all that much, but we were walking with an irritating girl we had met at our hostel and she really, really didn't like it, so that made me kind of like it. I think it is likely that the other people we were with felt the same way.

The next day we rented a car in the afternoon and headed east towards the Andes. We had picked a lake with a few campgrounds around it about 2 hours out of Mendoza. It turns out that that lake really sucks. Not really the lake I guess, but the area around it.

The lake is a reservoir and they flooded a little town- Portorillos- when they made it. To compensate, they built this weird replacement town with new, adobe looking houses that look all the same. At some point, they must have run out of money because the roads in the little town were barely passable. Outside of this town were a couple really small towns on the way to the "campgrounds". The first campgrounds we went to were in the unacceptable category. There was one up the road 15 or so miles that sounded good in our guidebook. We drove all the way up this bad road and then down this washboard dirt road to a place in the bottom of a canyon where someone had a crappy house, wild pigs, some cement slabs, and a firepit or two and called it a campground.

So we ended up driving another hour or so to another little dirt town - Upsallata-

that was much less crappy. The campground was pretty shitty, but the site came with firewood. And it was dark and we were tired of driving. The campground also came with some gypsies that kept their light on all night camping nearby and some barking dogs. Argentina is #2 in the world (as far as I know) for wild barking dogs (American Samoa). But again, the dogs in Argentina aren't usually mean.

So the next day we headed up towards the Andes.

After a couple hours, we made it up to the base of Acongagua, the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas.

It takes 10 days to hike up to base camp from where we were and climb it. So we didn't do it. They had some exhibits about Naomi's favorite animal, the Miladon:

But we did drive up a really windy road:

The windy road takes you up to the pass between Chile and Argentina. It is really windy and cold up there.

Then we went to the Inca Bridge. There's a hot springs there too. Look cool?

I thought it would be, but it turns out it is one of the lamest tourist attractions in the world. The biggest problem is that it is mostly closed off. You can't get to the hot springs anymore. You can't get close to the "ruins" either. But, what you can get close to are piles of rocks for sale... and also elephants and camels made out of clay. Yipeee!

The cemetery for climbers killed on Aconcagua was cooler:

On our way back down to the east, a bunch of dark clouds formed where we were heading.

Did it rain? You'll have to wait until I update this blog again, which based on recent history, could be months.

Movie Review: Big Man Japan- 6
It is a weird, weird movie. A little slow sometimes, but has some cool, funny parts. Check it out.

oh, read this too

2009-07-22T21:50:00.000-07:00

Jeremy had a great Samoa post recently

St. Patricks Day 09

2009-07-22T21:03:00.000-07:00

So the day after our bike ride was St. Patrick's Day. We spent the day hanging around town mostly. Towards the afternoon. Naomi realized she lost her ATM card. She was pretty upset about that. Combine that with it being St. Patricks Day and that the hostel in which we were staying was owned by Irish, and the local vodka population was trembling.

Vodka? That's not very Irish, you say. Well, no, I agree; I stuck to good old green beer. It was fun. A bunch of the owners' friends from Ireland had planned it so their trip through South America would land them at Pudu for St. Patricks Day.

I woke up on my bed the wrong way with my clothes and shoes still on.
I was by FAR in better shape.
We caught a local bus to the Catedral ski area the next morning. From there, the plan was to take the ski lift to the top and then backpack from there.

Above is Naomi and the ski area. Not feeling so good.

She is pretty damn tough though. She started feeling a little better.

And the top of the ski lift view was impressive.

Really nice there.

But we had to get moving so we could get to your camp spot before dark. And Naomi still wasn't feeling that great. I'm not sure how into backpacking I would have been if I felt that bad.

The hike was one of the best I've ever done. It started out along the top this ridge which was pretty much straight up and down. We just followed the crest for a few hours. It was a spectacular area and being on the top of the ridgeline made it even more fun and exciting. It was rarely scary though because there were huge boulders everywhere keeping you from having the feeling that you might fall all the way down a 2500 foot cliff to your death.

After hiking for a long time, we got to a junction to hike down to Refugio Frey, which was our destination. We had to hike down a really steep rock cliff.

Going up would have been awful. Another guy at the hostel had recommended just hiking up from the bottom instead of taking the chairlift. The chairlift was $7 each. That is well worth an extra 3000 feet of elevation gain to me.

Picking our way down was still really time consuming. But, again, it was just beautiful there.

By the time we made it to the small lake, we figured we were almost there. It took another hour to make it down another big rock cliff and then to the lake where we would camp and Refugio Frey.

I took a lot of pictures on this trip, but this was a big omission. I don't have any of the actual refugio. Way out in the middle of nowhere is this cabin where you can rent a room (we didn't) or have lunch or dinner. We had dinner there. It was superb. Really, not just for camping, but for anywhere. The ranger/cook guy took his job very seriously. We had a fresh basil, avocado, and tomato salad that was one of the best salads I've ever had. The key was his terrific citrus poppyseed dressing. It would be good anywhere, but in South America, you get oil and vinegar or no dressing. To have something this good was shocking. Then there was fresh pasta with a fresh tomato and vegetable sauce, and a homemade dessert. We had lots of fantastic meals in South America, but this was one of the 5 best.
Also it was a really impressive location. If you go to Bariloche in the summer, make the hike to Refugio Frey, and make sure you eat dinner there.

In real time, Naomi is finally here. That's really cool.

Punta Arenas to Bariloche

2009-07-20T21:16:00.000-07:00

This place is pretty far south:

It is the very south tip of mainland South America. To celebrate, they made a copy of Aberdeen, Washington and stuck it there. Except they made it more dreary, dirty, and cold. Punta Arenas is a pretty ugly town. It also was cold. We got there in early March, which is the same as early September in the north. It isn't usually 50 degrees in early September. It was there. To compensate for the cold and general unpleasantness of the town, they entertained themselves by making up local delicacies. (you'll have to click on these and enlarge them to really see)

Like Suck of Seafood:

and Potatoes Sauteed with Butter and Merkin:

They have penguins there, and that is pretty cool:

They are all over out by their nesting grounds.

These are Magellenic Penguins. Their other name is the Jackass Penguin. Check out their noise:

We saw an ad for a pretty nice looking casino on Punta Arenas on the flight down to El Calafate. We figured out where it was and walked across town to it. But when we got there, the place was still under construction.

On February 13, we flew from Punta Arenas to Puerto Montt. On that flight they had the same Punta Arenas casino ad. Upon further inspection, I could see that the picture in the ad was a computer drawing. Thanks a lot bastards.

We were plenty happy to be leaving Punta Arenas and its miserable weather. It was about 43 and pouring down rain on our way to the airport. It is about 2.5 hours flight north of Punta Arenas.

We got to Puerto Montt and checked out their downtown. It was bad weather that day there too, but it was a much much nicer place, and much less cold. They have tons of seafood there and we each had a wonderful huge bowl piled with clams and mussels for about $3.50 at a nice restaurant. Then we headed back to catch our bus. Except they screwed us.

They canceled our bus from Puerto Montt to Osorno (about an hour away) where we had to transfer to Bariloche (about 6 hours from there). Finally, they got us on another bus, but once we got to Osorno, it was too late; the bus had left and there wasn't another one til the next day. I was pretty damn irritated. The bus company paid for us to stay in a hotel, and it was AWESOME. Awesome is Chilean for 'smells like you are in a diesel tank'. It was so strong that it was pretty hard to handle. They clean floors in some places in South America with diesel. They must have cleaned the shit out of this place.
Another bonus about Osorno is that there is nothing to do. It isn't a bad place really, but there's nothing to do. I was debating whether it would be better to be stuck in Osorno or Longview, WA for a night. It has to be Longview. At least in Longview there are types of restaurants other than BBQ and pizza. Plus, there are bowling alleys. Osorno is 3 times the size of Longview, and it has 1 movie theater. We had read that that was a big deal because for several years it had none.

The next day we got out of Osorno and were on our way to Bariloche, Argentina. The ride was mostly nice and through a beautiful landscape. There are nice big lakes with resort towns and a few cool volcanoes once you get a little east of Osorno. The only bad part of the trip was the border crossing. Chile has the stupidest border crossings. They search you going out and make you go through a ton of red tape. Why? You are leaving. Even the US doesn't do that. The border crossing took over an hour and there was no line of cars.

Finally we made it to Bariloche:

It is nice there. Really really nice.

Here's the view from our room at Pudu Hostel in Bariloche:

The next day, we rented some bikes and rode around this local circuit that was recommended. It is pretty spectacular.

Naomi was excited they had roadside blackberries:

Bariloche is in western Argentina right up against the Andes. Also it is on a humongous lake. It is kind of like Chelan but the lake is way way bigger and so is the town (120,000). And it is nicer there (though I do like Chelan). The town is really nice and clean and there are tons of outdoor activities year around.

Living in Bariloche from January to May would be a great setup:

The place we were staying was owned by an Irish couple in their 30s. The next day was St. Patrick's Day.

Movie review
10,000 years B.C. 2
Some ok effects. Dumb, boring storyline. Lots of boring fighting. Bad.

Here's Naomi torturing a giraffe and pissing it off:

Torres del Paine Part II

2009-07-16T21:20:00.000-07:00

Well, that was a bit of a break from blogging. Thought I gave up, huh? Where was I? OK, when last I did something on here, we were heading up to Campamento Britainico. We just kept going up and up forever.

We passed really close to a huge set of hanging glaciers that would regularly calve off and crash down the cliff.

Naomi wanted to quit.

It was getting close to dark and we had to make it all the way back down the hill, so we agreed to stop after 10 more minutes.

And we were there in about 7:

From up there you can see the back side of the Torres and this huge valley surrounded on all sides by cliffs.

When you are planning your hike around Torres del Paine, I recommend not camping at Campamento Italiano. Why? It is shitty.

Literally. The sewer had backed up and the whole place smelled like a sewer. Most of the campground had been closed due to the sewage, but the part that was not was conveniently infested with mosquitoes. Also the actual campground is just a bunch of dirt in trees without a view.

Just across the river though is a pretty nice bug-free spot where we had dinner:

The next day we headed towards Cuernos Camp.

I think I had a Trapper Keeper with a picture of the Cuernos in grade school or middle school. I know for sure I had a Trapper Keeper with a cool looking mountain on it, but didn't know where it was until the Jeff Barrow-No Snowshoes- Almost Die of Hypothermia-Snow Cave trip in college. It was Mt. Shuksan. Anyway, I'm sure you are happy to know that, so here are a few pictures of the hike to the Cuernos Camp.

Another reason why you should push on to Cuernos and not stop at Italiano is that the Cuernos camp is awesome. It is a nice campground with a lodge, but the setting is spectacular.

We only had time to stop at Cuernos for a little bit because we had a really long way to go. 19k with packs on is hard. The hike was really beautiful and for quite a while that made up for the constant up and down.

But after several hours of this, it was getting pretty hard.

After hiking through a windstorm and a giant rockfield,

we could see the campground.

My feet and one knee hurt worse than they ever had before and I was pretty much hobbling into camp. But it was a really really nice campground.

Naomi found some crazy yellow branches that she was hoping to make a potion from that would cause a heavy downpour the next day so we could stop hiking.

I would have been disappointed if it rained the next day because I really wanted to make it to the Torres. But, my legs were incredibly tired, and the thought of not hiking 22k the next day was pretty attractive. It didn't look like it was going to rain, anyway.

It was really nice the next morning. So we started up towards the Torres. This is the only picture we took on the way up the first super steep and pretty long section of the hike.

That's because when we stopped it was to catch our breath to avoid passing out. If you started with this hike as your first day (which is possible) you could make it up with a pack, but it would be brutal. On your 5th day, it would surely be your worst hiking day ever.

We drank all of our water in about 45 minutes. Luckily, you can drink the water in streams down there. There are no little animals to deposit giardia. There are just birds and guanacos.

A steep, but spectacular hike:

After a long time, we could see the Torres:

Here, we were just .75miles from the top of the trail.

But that 3/4 mile had 3000 feet of elevation gain. The map said it would take an hour. After about 20 minutes it looked like we'd make it in 25. We made it in about an hour. There are no pictures of that part.

But it was easily worth the effort. There were lots of people with guides up there. One of the guides said he does this all the time and that day was the clearest he had ever seen.

Pretty cool.

Team Puppy!

Guanacos hang out all over the lowland areas of the park. Orange camels:

We stayed at the same campground after the hike. The next day we headed back to Puerto Natales for a day of relaxing and then hopped on a bus to Punta Arenas.

Movie Review: Hot Fuzz 3
Tonight (in real time) I watched this movie. Isn't horrible really and there are a few funny parts. One part in particular has a really funny ridiculous graphic scene where a guy has a church tower land on him. Mostly it is just sort of boring. I stopped paying close attention and started working on this blog post.

Torres del Paine, part 1

2009-04-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

OK, so back to when we were in El Calafate, Argentina. After having to dodge thousands of rabbits on the way to El Calafate we made our bus to Puerto Natales. On the way, we saw some nandu, which are South American ostriches. Anyway, after a 5 hour bus ride that included the biggest waste of time border crossing I think I´ve ever seen, we made it to Puerto Natales:

The town is not the most attractive one, but it isn`t horrible either. It certainly is in a beautiful location and is well setup for people planning on hiking in Torres del Paine National Park.
After a day to rest and get our stuff together for hiking, we headed up to the Torres.

It is about a 3 hour ride to the park. Once there, we caught a boat that took us to our starting point on Lake Pehoe.
When we got there, the weather was horrendous. We had the pleasure of setting up our tent in driving rain and about 48 degrees.

That night there were about 100 people in the cooking hut because of the terrible weather. After we were done, it was still awful out, so we had a drink in the bar there. They have bars and little restaurants out in the middle of the wilderness in South America. Chilean wine is really good and really cheap too.

The next day, the rain had let up somewhat, but the wind was even worse. There´s the forecast for that day:

We started up our 22 km hiking day to Glacier Gray and back in just ridiculous winds. A couple times it just about blew us over.

The lake is probably 15 miles long, and once you get to it from Pehoe, there are icebergs that have floated all the way down there.

It was pretty cold, so we made pretty good time up to the glacier.

Once you are up there you can walk right up to some icebergs in the end of the lake.

You can walk up to the glacier as well, but it is another hour or two one way and we were freezing, so we headed back.
The wind didn´t stop, but on the way back it actually started to clear up:

The next morning it was much much nicer. Mostly clear and pretty warm. Compare this picture to the other one of the campground. It is the same place:

Our walk from Pehoe to Campamento Italiano was really pleasant (and flat).

We made it to Italiano, left our heavy packs and headed up towards Campimento Britannico:

When you get to Britannico you can see the back sides of the Torres and the Cuernos. You probably have seen pictures of the front sides of both. But I´ll get to that part on the next post.

In real time, we´re heading to the beach tonight and will be hanging out there for several days. We´ll have time to update blogs and apply for jobs there.

Movie Review
Forget Paris: 0
This is an old Billy Crystal movie they played on a bus ride. It is just supremely bad. I am not sure I´ve watched a more irritating movie. Ghosts of Mars and Ghost Rider are bad, but I´d rather watch them back to back (by far) than watch Forget Paris again. Super stupid, super irritating, super pointless, not funny. It kind of makes me mad just thinking about it.

It looks like kids in Chile have moved on from drugs to harder things:

From where I left off in Buenos Aires

2009-04-04T09:58:00.000-07:00

We were in Buenos Aires for most of 2 weeks except for 4 days in Uruguay.

Uruguay (well, Montevideo and Colonia de Sacramento) is nice and very European like, like Argentina.

Our hostel in Colonia had free bikes to take around, but they were also the most uncomfortable bikes EVER:

After Urugay, were were back in Buenos Aires. We were going sailing, but first we helped Maxi´s friend Juan move a little.
Moving by pulling a couch up 3 stories with straps and ropes to a balcony:

How do you like that method Annemarie?

Sailing with Maxi and his friends on the Rio Plata.

Maxi bargaining for fishing poles:

Plata is silver, but it does seem a little brown to me. It was an awesome time though and it was super nice of Maxi´s friends to take us out on their boat and then we sailed over to an island and camped there.

Then we flew to El Calafate, Argentina. They have some big glaciers there:

The Perito Moreno glacier is really cool. Huge, house sized chunks of ice break off all the time and drop into the water. It is really loud and makes pretty big waves in the lake. A few years ago, a big chunk of ice fell into the lake and the wave from it killed several tourists. Now they don´t let you get as low down to the lake level near the glacier.

Here´s a video of some ice falling (well, some falls about the 1 minute mark... sorry Samoa):

We camped at a really cool campground nearby that night. It was definitely one of the best private campgrounds I´ve ever been to. A fox ran through our campsite too.

The next day we had to get up really early to head back to El Calafate to catch a bus to Puerto Natales, Chile. From there we´d be backpacking in Torres del Paine National Park.

Today we´re in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

2009-04-02T17:03:00.001-07:00

It has been impossible to find a computer that is capable of reading a SD card. Finally I found one in probably the smallest town we have stayed in the whole time.

So, I´ll update what we did earlier later when I have my other chip with me. I just had my camera with me, so I´ll put a few recent things on here.

How´s everyone doing?

OK, here we are by Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the world outside of the Himalayas:

We were at about 10,000 feet here.

We went to Barreal, Mendoza, Salta, and Cafayate after that. I´ll get to most of that in more depth later.

We had a really nice time in Cafayate for a few days.

Then onto Salta which is (along with Cafayate and Bariloche) probably the nicest place we´ve been.

Some Cafayate:

Then today we went over the Andes. The road was just ridiculous. We were over 15,000 feet for a long time. Usually when you go over mountains, you kind of go up, over and then back down. Today we went up, then stayed up for about 5 hours. It is just crazy how big the mountain range is and how weird looking it is. A few examples:

Tomorrow we have to start a geyser tour at 4am so I need to get to bed, but I wanted to at least get some pictures up here while I can.

Hopefully I´ll get a chance to update further while still here.

Passing a gas truck in a no passing zone on a corner, on a cliff, at 12,000 feet is a great decision:

Aaron

Argentina

2009-02-28T06:34:00.000-08:00

I made it down to Buenos Aires with a 5 hour layover in Miami where Susan very nicely picked me up and took me to lunch on the beach. Pretty cool.

Then to Quito for about 30 minutes, then Guayaquil for about 20 hours. Guayaquil seems like a pretty cool place. Things in Ecuador are super super cheap. It was hot and humid there like Samoa.

and look, a breadfruit tree:

After Guayaquil, I had to go to Lima for a day. When getting off the plane in Lima I was waiting for the girl across the row to go and I looked at her, and it was Sam McManus. Crazy. Her and her fiance are also traveling around South America. They recently went to Antarctica too, which is pretty cool.

So I met Naomi at the Lima airport the next morning and we flew to Buenos Aires and met Maximo and Gonzalo for a beer by their work. Really cool to see them.

So Buenos Aires is not like Mexico at all, despite being in South Mexico. It is a lot more like Italy, but probably cleaner and definitely more orderly. People like to make lines for everything. The food here is really good and everything is really cheap too. You should come and check it out.

Maxi and Gonzalo have this group of friends that has kind of like their own private bar. El Pude:

They have stuff about 3 nights a week there, sell beer for cheap and have a bbq for sale as well. It is a great idea. Someone in Seattle should get that going.

We went to Uruguay for a few days also. Uruguay is pretty much the same as Argentina, maybe a little more expensive. Montevideo is a really nice city too. They have nice beaches and waterfront. We got lost and did a ton of walking there, as this has been a major theme of the trip so far--- tons and tons of walking duet to lostness...which is good for me.
We saw a carnival competition there, which was cool, but I didn't know what they were saying and parts of it were like a Mexican sitcom.
Next to Colonia del Sacramento, also in Uruguay. It is a small, well preserved colonial town on the river. The river here separates Uruguay and Argentina and is probably 60 miles across. 60... really.

OK, Maxi is hassling me to go to lunch, so here are some more pictures. Gotta go:

Fa!

3 more days

2009-02-02T17:57:00.000-08:00

Well, my weekend started out on a sad note. My Grandpa passed away Friday morning. That is sad of course, but at least I got to see him when I was home in October.

I need to upload some pictures from this weekend. We had a going away sloshball game and mini Palagi Olympics Saturday. Really fun.

The Super Bowl was a good game, but come on...how many blatant holds can Pittsburgh get away with? When you have a slow QB that holds the ball for 20 seconds every play, why else is he not getting sacked. Oh, and you can clearly see the holding anyway. There were plenty of other ridiculous calls as well. And no replay at the end of the game? Really? Wow.

UW handily beats ASU at ASU, leads the Pac-10, and ASU is ranked ahead of them? How is this possible? UW has a tough road trip coming up, but if they can lose just 2 more and win the conference tournament, I think they'll be in line for a 2 or 3 seed.

I'm going to try to squeeze in one more round of golf and a trip to Sliding Rock this week. Then, I'll be mentally ready to go I think.

I will really miss this weather though. I saw that it might snow when I'm home!

9 days left in Samoa

2009-01-27T21:21:00.000-08:00

I'm enjoying my time that remains here in the tropics. It was cool today. It is 630p right now and it is only 84 degrees. Plus the humidity seems lower than it has been.

On Friday, Team Puppy backpacked down to Massacre Bay for some camping.

On the way up, it was NOT cool out. I'm guessing it was about 92 and 100% humidity. And that trail is steep. I was a super sweat machine.

The trip was really fun. Sleeping without pads sucks though even when the ground is sand.

So I applied for a job a month or so ago in Seattle working for the US Dept. of Labor adjudicating workers compensation claims. That seemed pretty cool. A couple weeks ago I had a phone interview and the people that interviewed me also seemed cool. Plus the job is in downtown Seattle. Today they offered it to me, but want me to start March 1. I knew I might get an offer for a while because my boss said they called him for a reference the day after the interview. It was really stressing me out for a while. It is really hard to pass up a job in this terrible economy, especially one in Seattle, but I've decided I can't take it. I can't not go on this trip that I've already paid for. Plus, I don't have a mortgage, or kids, or anything else that would make it harder to go. I think I need to do it. I'm going to tell them I can start June 1, but I doubt that will work. Regardless though, it is nice to get an offer for the first job I applied for. Hopefully I won't be unemployed in 8 months. I think I'll be ok. Maybe another position at the same place will open up that starts in June.

I was disappointed to see the OKC fake basketball team won 5 out of 10. I was hoping for worst record of all time (not that the NBA isn't dead to me).

I hope the M's sign Griffey. I know he could suck, but he could help the team as a DH/sometimes LF with power. $5M/ 1year would be great.

The Huskies are ranked! I don't know how the coaches could not rank the Huskies and still rank UCLA. UW has a better record, is 1st in the Pac-10, has a higher RPI, and just beat UCLA by 11. They need to keep it up. If they could possibly keep the losses to 3 from here on out, they'll get a relatively high seed in the tournament. That's a tall order, but at least it looks like they'll make the tournament. So I'll have to find an internet cafe to watch the tournament games online.
I'm really glad MBA didn't break his toe too.

My neighbor's clothesline:

Happy New Year

2009-01-06T20:09:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas too. I guess I haven't done an update since before Thanksgiving either.

So, here's a great local music video to make up for that: King Aeto!

I have less than a month left on the island now. Since my last post, Fred left the island. He'll be missed.

I think coming to Samoa is a great experience and it has been a great time. But, two years is a long time. When I leave, I think there will only be four people in the group that were on-island when I moved here.

Today the Huskies hired USC's defensive coordinator. That is a pretty positive sign. At least we can't do worse next year.
Also, it should be noted that UW's D coordinator makes more than WSU's head coach. That is probably appropriate.
Speaking of the Cougs, the Huskies finally beat them at basketball. Nice job.

One month from now, I'll be in Hawaii. Weird! Weird but good.

I'll be back in WA on February 9th. I plan on coming up to Seattle probably for the 10th and 11th. I know it is during the week, but I'd love to hang out with people there if you can arrange it. Then I'm going to hang out with my parents and belately celebrate my mom's 60th birthday.
On February 15, I fly to Miami on a red-eye, then head to South America. In case anyone wants to meet me along the trip, I'll provide what I think is our itinerary:

Feb 18-March 2: Buenos Aires area. We'll be staying with Maximo in town and also checking out a nearby town for Carnival and probably a couple days in Uruguay.

March 2-13: Patagonia. We fly into El Calafate and have one day to check out the Perito Moreno glacier. Then we head south to prepare for 5 days of backpacking in Torres del Paine park in Chile.

From here on out it gets less scheduled, but it'll be something like this probably:
March 13-18 Bariloche, Argentina area, some of this time spent hiking/camping.
March 18-23- Make our way to Pucon, Chile- camping probably along the way.
March 23-28 Pucon, Chile. There's an erupting volcano to climb there, rafting, and all kinds of things like that.
March 28-30 Make our way up to Valparaiso/Vina del Mar, Chile
March 30- April 5- Valparaiso/Vina del Mar/ Santiago, Chile
April 6-10 Mendoza, Argentina area
April 11-14 Salta, Argentina area
April 14-15 travel to Sucre, Bolivia
April 16-18 Sucre, Bolivia
April 19-22 La Paz, Bolivia
April 23-25 backpacking in Bolivia
April 26-28 Lake Titicaca (Bolivia)
April 29-30 Lake Titicaca (Peru)
May 1-8 Cusco & Macchu Picchu
May 8-12 Lima- hang out with Ayla.
Then it is back to Miami and a few days hanging out with Susan.
Then to Indianapolis for a few days
Then to Chicago for a few
Then back to Portland on May 26

I'll have the same Vonage phone number 206.501.2135 and I'm taking a phone (provided by Nate) that I will be able to (hopefully) plug into computers at internet cafes to call.

Here's a pirate and a bat:

Whoa, finally an update

2008-11-05T22:10:00.000-08:00

I've been back in Samoa for over a week now, but I did have a nice couple week break in the real world.

First though, WOOOOHOOOOOOO! OBAMA!!! I'm really happy about that. Finally; finally a president who is interested in trying to do the right thing and won't embarrass the country on a regular basis.

thanks for the picture Liz

I've been avoiding updating because it takes so long and since I haven't updated in so long it is going to take longer...a vicious cycle. So, I'm just going to mostly keep this to an update about the mainland. Goings on in Samoa such as dead dog disposal, Halloween, and of course bad sports (other than as relates to this post).

Sorry if I have not responded to anyone on here, I haven't even been able to get myself to look at the blog.

So, I flew home with the intention of surprising my dad for his 60th birthday, attending Jerry's bachelor party, seeing my friends and family, enjoying the real world, and watching some big Husky victories. 3.5 out of 5 was the result on that one.

First I had a layover for 10 hours in Honolulu and my friend Risa who used to live in Samoa was nice enough to guide me to a restaurant with real food and beer. That was great after being out of the states for 20 months and not even off Tutuila at all for 6 months.

I got to Vegas at about midnight and it was great to see everyone there, except it also sort of sucked because Jerry couldn't make his own bachelor party, though through nobody's fault. I don't have any pictures from Vegas and hardly any from my house because my computer wasn't reading my memory card. I don't even have any pictures of my mom, so here's one of her in Samoa enjoying the best Samoa has to offer (sorry about that taste, world):

It was also great because in Vegas they have things that American Samoa does not. Things like fresh food, things to do aside from go to the beach or thrash through jungle (nothing wrong with that, but some variety would be nice).

After a great weekend in Vegas, Meg picked me up at the airport and took me to her house. On the way, we stopped at a Trader Joes. I spent about 5 minutes in the cheese aisle and could not make a decision. Crazy... more than 5 kinds of cheese. Plus, no mold on any of it? WTF is going on here?

The next day, Meg had our dad meet us for lunch. My mom took a half day off and met us as well. When he walked in, I was there. I think he was pretty surprised. Mom did a spectacular job of keeping this a secret. She knew for months about this and was able to not give it away. Very impressive. So that worked out great.

(not an action shot of the surprise)

The rest of the first week, I mostly just hung out in Castle Rock and enjoyed being someplace that worked and where you can get things, and it was cool to be home and hang out with my parents. I saw a few friends in the CR area. I also went to the Pastime Saloon to check it out. It is a little different; not quite as good, but still very classy as you can see by just looking at the bathroom:

I visited my grandpa and Helen:

and also saw my grandma. Plus I avoided getting bit by Big Panther (a real hazard) the whole time I was home:

The first weekend, we went up to Seattle to go out to dinner at Rovers for my dad's birthday. It was super super good. The next day we all went to the Washington-Oregon State football game. There, at Husky Stadium, the Huskies got a nice big beatdown from the Beavers. It was just awful. I knew we sucked, but seeing it in person really makes it clear. Embarassing.

Afterwards, my parents and my sister and I went to get a couple beers. Incredibly, bars have beers other than Coors Light and Vailima. Even more incredible, outside the bar within a 1/2 block you can get middle eastern, Thai, and Indian food, which we did (all) and took it back to my parents' hotel for a great dinner.

The next week was more hanging out at home. Great still.

Then, it was back up to Seattle for the Washington- Notre Dame game.

On the way I got to hang out at Shane's for an evening. That was fun. Then the next day I met him for lunch at one of his favorite local bars. Check out the kind of shots you can get at that bar:

Oh, man. This was the worst sporting event I have ever attended. At least OSU is a decent team. ND sucks and they still just demolished us. It is lucky Wazzu is around or this UW team might be the worst Pac-10 team in 10 years.

Great weather:

Bad team:

I did get to wear my purple safari at least:

Here's the feeling about the state of Husky football:

After the game, we went to the Crazy Moose (Meg's favorite) Casino. I ended up talking to a Samoan dealer and got a big box full of decks of cards for free. Plus I won some money.

Then I had a long trip back to Samoa. Thankfully this was broken up by meeting Michael Marsik in Hawaii, who was nice enough to drive me around. It was great to see him, as I missed his going away from Samoa party while I was gone. In addition, I got to have a few Guinesses on tap, which I know won't happen again for a few months.

I was dreading coming back to Samoa, but was glad to be back. It was great to see Naomi

(in replacement clown outfit)

and great to see all my friends here. Plus, Samoa can be a pretty nice place to live as long as you get away periodically. 6 months is too long without a break. Way way way way too long. If you live here, do not, DO NOT let yourself go 6 months straight on Tutuila. At least go to Western, but probably a trip to NZ or HI or the mainland is necessary about every 6 months anyway to remain sane and happy.

It was great to see everyone. Special thanks to my parents, Adrian, Carolyn, and Meg for housing and feeing me. I really appreciate it and had a wonderful time.

Live show review:
Believe (in Vegas, w/ Criss Angel): 2
There are some cool effects, but the storyline is SUPER, ultra dumb. C.Angel is a maximum douche. There is hardly any magic in this magic show. Lots of suck. Do NOT go see it. Even if the other Cirque shows are $50 more, go see them.

Sports review:
Husky football: 0

UW-OK pregame

2008-09-13T15:54:00.000-07:00

OK my delusional state has set in. The GAME is in 45 minutes. I think we can win.

UW 33
OU 32

Wow I'm tired of slow internet

2008-08-15T00:36:00.000-07:00

The internet has been worse than ever. I tried to download an hour of All Things Considered today. After 3 hours, it was only 2/3 downloaded and I gave up.

I have been wary of sitting down to download pictures and repeatedly turned away, so I haven't had an update lately.

The M's put Washburn on waivers and he was claimed. Hooray!
Then they pulled him back because the Twins wouldn't give enough. Come on! They'd be giving plenty! They have to pay him $11M next year and the M's could use that money a little more wisely. Put him on irrevokeable waivers please!!!!!

I got cable recently. Hooo boy. When I have a little more patience, I need to put a review of it with pictures and video. Incredible, just incredible. If Pacific Island Cable was a major league baseball team, they'd probably luck out and win 1 game, but go 1-161 with lots of 0-40 games. Think of all the times you have been frustrated about bad cable or dish tv... then add it all up and times it by 1000...then if you take that and spread it over, say, 3 days, you have the average 3 days of cable here. For example, yesterday, they realized that they don't have the rights to show the Olympics despite advertising that for weeks and that being the cause of me getting cable now... oh, and BBC and CNN have been blank for 2 days. This is just the tip. No matter how much I put on here about it, you wouldn't believe it unless you were able to actually experience the awfulness.

More good weather lately...high 70s, low 80s and not much rain.

Work is more of the same.

That relay finish in swimming was pretty awesome. (though I had to watch it on Youtube)

Restaurant reviews:
Bay cafe
OK, this is preliminary since I've only eaten there one time, but it is maybe an island 10. They have sandwiches for $1.75 and the are actually good. Fresh bread, lots of toppings, non rotten vegetables, what else can you ask for. For Tutuila, I thought that was probably too much to ask. Island 9.9 Off island 7, at least for the price.

Golden Chopstick:
Ghetto place by the canneries that we've talked about for well over a year. We finally went there today. It was very disappointing. There were no rats, dogs, chickens, or cockroaches inside. Actually, that's not true, there were cockroaches, but they were just on the potato salad...no big deal. Anyway, despite the name, they don't serve Chinese, but instead the same yucky greasy Samoan fast food that they serve in 1000 other places on the island---all the same. Maybe the chicken was a little better than average. There were drunk guys there dancing, so that was a bonus. Island 4 Off island 0.

Thank God Jake Locker wasn't seriously hurt.

Pacific Arts Festival 2

2008-07-31T22:43:00.000-07:00

I'm a little worn out. It was great that we actually had things to do on a nightly basis. But, it is just a week and a half of events, so most people felt like we better see as much as we can while it is here, so you end up staying out late (by American Samoa standards) every night.

So, did the miracle weather and overall lack of problems despite the overall lack of planning continue?

Amazingly it did. It had rained so often during the past few months; I can't recall 24 hours without rain since April or so. I think it rained maybe one hour during the entire festival. And not just no rain, it continued on with the best weather since I have been here. About 78-82 every day, low humidity, lots of sun. It has been great. The arts festival participants along with the passengers of a huge cruise ship that was in for a day got the best face of this island. They will surely tell their friends this place is an island paradise.

Here are some pictures from the Arts Festival:

OK, wait, why was I worried about this? Well, you can read back on some other accounts of problems here, but on the lighter side, here are some of the pre (ok, when I say pre, I mean, maybe finished the day before or even the 2nd day of the festival) festival decorations:

OK, back to festival pictures:

When Taiwan got done, their leader yelled: " yay Samoa, go! go! go!" It was hilarious and ridiculous, but she was very enthusiastic and a big hit with the crowd:

Torabind Islanders (between Australia and Papua New Guinea).

"my hat is like a shark's fin"
Torabind Islanders are huge LL fans.

In the middle of the festival was Oscar's birthday party at his house. It was a 70s/toga theme. Doug, Nate, and I tried to do both. It was fun, as are most events at Oscar's.

Doug got tired:

Have you had pulse energy drink/liquor drink? Anyway, I had 2 and by the time I got home, I figured it was around 1am or so. Yeah, it was 6. I was first alerted to this possibility when I noticed it getting light while I was jabbering at Naomi and torturing her by preventing her ability to sleep with said jabbering. So, it was probably reasonable that Doug was tired. Happy Birthday Oscar!

And, some more arts festival:

The festival officially ended yesterday.

It was supposed to end on Saturday, but the Governor had to go to the coronation of the new king of Tonga, so it was cut short. That is just ridiculous. But, with the festival not being a disaster, the gov probably is looking pretty good for re-election (if you believe that very many people vote for who they want---I'll get into this later). Looking good because of the festival working out well in general, but even more for the fireworks. These were some of the best fireworks I've ever seen. Imagine having a fireworks display for 4th of July at a medium size American town (maybe somewhere between Longview, WA and Redding, CA). Then put yourself IN the fireworks. This was a decent display for a town that size, but the fireworks only got shot about 50 feet off the ground before they blew up. It was really cool, and a little scary, but mostly just great:

Add to this that a lot of people had never seen fireworks before. It was aweseome! People just screaming because either they had never seen these in person before, or didn't know fireworks like this even existed.

It was too bad that the finale happened on a Wednesday and everyone had to go to work the next day because everyone was really jacked up after the fireworks and possibly could have stayed up all night.

Movie reviews:

The Devil and Daniel Johnston:
(groan) I remember watching Jeepers Creepers with Seigel and both of us were pissed about the time the movie ended. He said something like, "WTF? I guess you can just throw any pile of crap idea for a movie at a studio and get it made". Well, that's kind of how I felt at the end of this one. No, not the end, the whole thing. This movie is really not good. Don't watch it. It isn't entertaining because of it's awfulness. It is just crap. This is a documentary about a crazy guy that some people think is famous and some sort of a music God. There are only two groups of "famous" bands and people that I've ever even heard of however. One of them is Sonic Youth. OK. The other one is Butthole Surfers. I saw Butthole Surfers once in college and that was a pretty decent show. But, Butthole Surfers were playing at a UW Kappa Sigma party. Anyway, that was the best part. Don't watch it! Just because it is so weird, and not horribly done, I give it a 1.

Harold and Kumar escape from Guantanamo Bay:
Dumb! Really really dumb! Not believable. Totally inappropriate humor. Also, pretty funny: 6.5

Everything is Illuminated:
Not too boring, not too exciting. Kind of weird (in a good way), but not funny enough to be really good. If you run out of movies to watch, this might be tolerable: 3.8

Ms/Trade deadline:
I think the Ms got a fine deal for Rhodes.
I don't know what was really offered for Ibanez. If it was 2 major leaguers, I can only guess they were ones that Toronto wanted to get rid of, so no problem with not taking that deal. I can't believe the Ms weren't approached about making Ibanez part of the Manny deal; maybe they preferred Bay, I don't know. But, if the Ms got the same offer the Pirates got, we should have taken it: again, just speculation.
Washburn: If the Yankees offered Gardner and Igawa for Washburn, I don't know why we didn't take it. Gardner could be good, could be worthless; probably he'll end up like J.Reed, but it is better than nothing. Igawa probably won't be great, but he could be decent and still, he makes about $8M less than Washburn.
WHY ARE CAIRO AND VIDRO STILL ON THE ROSTER????????? Cairo even started today! What is going on!??!! I'd rather see us lose all the rest of our games this year than see Vidro or Cairo start another game. If Riggleman is trying to win games to keep his job, he's losing any chance to keep it, at least in my mind.

It'll be August 1 by the time you read this: my birthday!

Oh, and in honor of my birthday, the Governor gave us a day off Monday. Don't you get Monday off? Really, we need it from all the arts viewing. Now if they could only mix in some things to do and see throughout the year...

Pacific Arts Festival

2008-07-26T16:00:00.000-07:00

So far, it is a miracle. No humanitarian disasters yet. Lots of the venues here would be mudholes and the audiences (should they show up) would be drenched if it rained. But, after months of routinely bad weather, it has been perfect weather, with the exception of a little drizzle for maybe an hour a couple nights ago.

Yesterday was probably the best weather day since I've been in Samoa. 79 degrees, low humidity (comparatively), and almost no clouds (very rare here). I was sick though and didn't get to enjoy it, but it looks like today is about as nice and I'm feeling much better after 11 hours of sleep and pretty much resting all day yesterday after a very brief morning court appearance.

Also, the Arts Festival events have been really great and entertaining. It is such a novelty in the first place to have a bunch of people walking around that you don't know, but the performances have been very interesting and the groups are so friendly and happy to have people interested in their culture and art, it has made for a really fun time so far.

The internet is so slow today that I'm going to have to cut my update short here because I have to go. It took about 3 hours for it to finally upload just these pictures.

I'll have more later.

Now I'm off to Oscar's (and sort of my) birthday party at his house. It should be really fun.

Update for Goat Island review:
It can't be a 9.5 and 6 or whatever. We went again, the service was unbelievably bad even for here. As bad as the Deluxe Cafe. The food was also nothing special this time. I was pretty disappointed. So, like most places (every place except Sook's, McD, and Carl's), it is inconsistent at best. So I'm going to have to lower it to 7 on island (still is a nice location) and 3 or so off-island, though my last experience was a -10.

OK, I have to go

Food poisoning

2008-07-21T19:35:00.000-07:00

I think. Either that or some flu type thing has been kicking my ass from the inside the past couple days.

I left my camera at Samoa Steve's place I think, so I'll have to retrieve it before I can add some more pictures. This weekend was not super eventful, but mostly enjoyable. Golf Friday. It continued to be bad weather here, so we played Risk most of the day Saturday. Then Saturday night we went to Liz & Markus's wedding reception put on by Liz's co-workers. That was pretty impressive. It was quite a production, and all done by her co-workers without any request or expectation on Liz's part. They had tons of food, a live band, and had 2 sets of traditional outfits made for Liz & Markus.

Then Saturday night around midnight, I started to feel not so good. Yesterday, I pretty much couldn't move. I even had a fever, which is pretty rare for me. Today is better, but still, I can't go to work, unless I can work from the restroom, which if you've seen the restrooms at my office, you'd think is not a viable option.

Check out Jeremy's blog. He got to go to China for work. Pretty cool.

Manu'a Flag Day

2008-07-16T22:53:00.000-07:00

We got today off from work to commemorate the anniversary of the islands of Ofu, Olosega, and Ta'u joining Tutuila under U.S. control.
I think having Wednesdays off should be made a more permanent feature of work weeks.

Today Team Puppy (Matt, Doug, Naomi, and I) did a couple of short hikes. First we went to the hospital to eat lunch, but of course the cafeteria was closed for the very important holiday. So we hit the hike which starts in a rock quarry (very safe looking excavation) back behind the hospital.

There is a lower falls and pool, which we thought was it.

At the top of the falls we walked around a little and around the corner of the creek, there's another falls.

Today was another really cool weather day (maybe a high of 78). We got in the pool, but it was a little chilly due to us not being used to a heat index under 90.

Here's Matt jumping in:

Afterwards we went up to the big WWII guns that are on the west side of the harbor (there are apparently some on the east side as well). This is a newly cleaned up tourist attraction.
There's a shantytown on the way to the guns.

It is really nice at the top of the hill though:

There is another gun up there as well that hasn't been restored yet.

Check out this very safe, permanent, and professional wire stringing job we noticed up near the guns:

At Sadie's by the Sea, they recently finished building their new restaurant named the Goat Island Cafe!!!

Restaurant Review: Goat Island Cafe
It is really hard to believe that this place is on Tutuila. It feels like you're in Western or some other place. It is nice in there, there is outdoor seating and sliding glass walls. You would think that in such a warm place, there would be many locations to sit and eat outside. Incredibly there are hardly any.
Maliumai has outdoor seating, but their food (aside from their poke) is not edible. The food at the Goat is good. We were all shocked and spent about two hours there on a little mini-vacation from Pago. On island: 9.5 Off-island 6

The other day a whale was apparently stuck on the reef near my house. Some local kids hauled it in. Guess what happened to the whale next?

If you guessed: (x) tie its tail to a rock, you were correct.

It died of course, but according to Alden and April(in this picture with the whale) it was probably from being attacked by other animals at sea.

Naomi is getting pretty good at Bust a Move

69 degrees

2008-07-15T20:09:00.000-07:00

This morning it was 69 degrees! I for sure didn't think it would get close to under 70 while I was here. Also it rained as hard as I've ever seen rain today.

And as a followup to the cleanup post. People mostly were through "working" by 10am and then everyone went home then. And, the DPW guys were just hanging out mostly watching people clean up trash from their trucks. Oh, except a few guys also illegally mined sand from the beach and also bulldozed part of a creek (but they were sure to leave the trash in it)

ASG! Yay!

75 degrees

2008-07-14T23:07:00.000-07:00

I'm freezing. Right now it is the coldest it has been my whole time here. 75 degrees. I'm still wearing a t shirt and shorts, but I'm considering putting on sweats.

This last weekend we had a good sloshball game, a bonfire, and then hiked to Palagi Beach on Sunday. Pretty good.

Some pictures...
Wyland, the muralist (apparently he's famous, though I hadn't heard of him prior to being here) came down a few months ago and put this mural on my office building for the Pacific Arts Festival:

Some local Seahawks grafitti:

Alden breaking out some music:

Naomi's temporary tattoo for Rutger Day (ask her what that is):

Swimming in a little pool near sliding rock:

Action shot of Barbie by the canneries:

Planting a little garden:

Lunch at Sook's:

Outrigger paddling:

Restaurant review:
Crap fast food stand in Tafuna
On the main Tafuna road if you're coming from the main road towards the airport, you pass KT2 mart and then right before a stretch of road with no buildings on it is a little stand on your left. They have the usual really bad local fast food, but they also have a sign for fish and chips. Naomi had the fish and chips, I had some fried chicken. I'm pretty sure that was the worst fried chicken I've ever had (including when I tried to make my own and burnt the hell out of it while making a giant grease mess). I'm positive that the fish AND the chips are both the worst I've ever tasted of either and could possibly be the worst thing labeled as food that I've had the misfortune of eating--- strike that, tasting because it was so bad I had to spit it out. Horrendous isn't strong enough. ZERO

Do you all have big plans for Manu'a Flag Day? It is Wednesday. I actually forgot that we had a holiday this week until yesterday, so it is a nice surprise 4 day week.

Island Cleanup

2008-07-11T00:21:00.000-07:00

The government has a very large Department of Public Works that is supposed to build and maintain roads, keep the trash picked up, keep the public areas' brush trimmed, and lawns mowed.
The road projects don't get done by DPW, so the government has to contract that out. (they recently contracted out the re-paving of a 1.5 mile stretch of road for $8.1M)

DPW was supposed to rebuild the public market. But then they realized they'd have to do some work, so after tearing down the roof, they wanted to burn the debris. This is old roofing materials that may contain asbestos. There is probably 4-5 pickup truck loads of debris. I know because I've had about 7 months of looking at it. DPW asked EPA for a waiver to burn it because they said it was too hard to pick up the debris and haul it away. EPA denied that. So they kept asking for a waiver. EPA said no. DPW said it is too hard then and they can't do it. Instead of forcing DPW to do their job, ASG contracted out the re-building of the public market. (this is probably a 4000 square foot space, but the contract is for over $1M)

So what does DPW do? Nothing. There is a washed out section of road on my drive to work. It has been that way for a long time before I moved. Instead of fixing it, when it washes out and is full of nearly impassible potholes, DPW leaves it for a week or so, then they throw on a truckload of dirt to smooth it out. Guess what happens when it rains again?

Anyway, you would think DPW would have plenty of time to pick up trash and keep things neat looking around the island. You'd be DEAD WRONG. They do none of that. Even the Governor has had to hire a private yard service to keep up the brush around the entrance to the residence. So with the upcoming humanitarian disaster (Pacific Arts Festival), the Gov has decided that the island needs to have some of it's trash picked up. So tomorrow every ASG employee is supposed to go to their assigned location around the island and pick up trash and trim the brush. This starts at 8am. I have court at 9 so I don't have to do it. But this situation is ultra-pathetic. Plus, I don't expect the showing-up rate ASG wide to be much more than 50% tomorrow, nor do I expect the "work day" to last past 10am. This place just doesn't stop amazing!

The last time we played sloshball, it rained, but we played anyway. The weather looks pretty bad for this weekend here, but we're playing again. Here's a picture from last time.

Also, I figured out how to get N64 games onto my Xbox. I now have Mario Kart64 and Bust a Move 2. Woohoo!

4th of July

2008-07-08T20:17:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone had a nice 4th. No fireworks at all here because they're illegal. Aside from that problem, it was a pretty great weekend.

Golf on Thursday after work.

Friday, pretty much all day BBQ/party at Matt's. He hung out in the pool, played bacci ball, ate lots of food, and had no beer shortage. It was just a nice, fun, relaxing day.

Friday was so nice just hanging out and really not doing too much, Matt, Doug, and I pretty much hung out all day, watched a couple of movies and did nothing else. It was great.

Saturday night, Oscar had everyone over for a going away party for Ayla at the Mexican compound. Oscar just went crazy with the cooking and being a fabulous host, as always. Some of the best ribs ever and tons of other great food. Great party/girls doing shots- probably the best party in a while.

Sunday was another big day of hanging out by the pool.

Happy birthday to my sister Meg. She's an old donkey now.

Movie review:

Wall-E. For a movie with pretty much no words for an hour, it does a good job of holding your attention. This movie is much less of a comedy and a kids movie than the other Pixar movies. I thought it was pretty high quality. Also, I liked it because the spaceship part reminded me of Samoa. 8

Music review: Djavan. I'd never heard of him until a story about him on The World (the best radio show www.theworld.org ). Check it out. All I have right now is Ao Vivo vol. 2 and that is great.

Sonics are still gone, M's still suck, otherwise things are pretty good here.

I didn't take my camera this weekend, so I'll have to wait until Naomi gets her pictures from her camera for some 4th pictures.

Here are just a few I took recently:

Uggggghhhhhhh

2008-07-03T00:18:00.000-07:00

What the hell?

I mean really. What was Nickels thinking?

a. I watched that trial, and you know what, Oklahoma deserves a basketball team.
b. Eh, it'll be fine, we'll just get the Celtics in here no problem, and everything will be just fine.
c. I'm really tired of being mayor. I wish I would do something really stupid and pointless so I could lose my job.

Of all the horrible low points with the Sonics:

This is much worse. And it makes it worse that it was self-caused. The city sure looked to me like it was going to win the lawsuit. The city certainly should have anyway. They showed what they had to show to win the case.

But, instead of fighting, they just took $45M. After Nickels said it wasn't about money, just pathetic. Sounds kind of like A Rod to me. Except far less understandable.

$45M over the 10 or so years the city is without a team is 4.5M per year. Regardless of what you think the Sonics bring to the local economy, it probably at least exceeds that amount. So why do this?

There should have been plenty of time to think out the eventualities of what to do if the city receives whatever offer. There is no reason and no excuse for a time crunch caused horrible decision. Even a complete loss at trial with the Sonics paying zero is preferable to giving up. At least then the city could appeal and force the team to stay here for 2 more years while the Schultz lawsuit could play out and possibly (probably) Bennett's friend David Stern would step in and work out a settlement so that OKC gets an expansion team right away. Instead, Nickels gave all the options up for essentially nothing. Great job.

Here's the mayor with Ernest Borgnine:

Oh, I guess it is councilwoman Jan Drago (who actually bought into Bennett's lie that he'd move the Sonics to Vegas if it turned out OKC wouldn't work out---please, his plan all along was (quite obviously) to move the team to OKC).

Just disgusting!

6-26

2008-06-26T22:39:00.000-07:00

What's been going on here? Nothing too exciting. Ridiculous court decisions, playing golf on Fridays, mostly just hanging out.

I have started outrigger canoe paddling. I don't have any pictures yet, but I'll put some up when Naomi takes her waterproof camera out. Naomi has been paddling for quite a while now. I just started and I still suck pretty bad. At the moment my back is really sore from top to bottom from it. Paddling is really hard because they're race training every day, but it is good exercise and nice to be out on the water around sunset.

The golf is $3 for 9 holes, so you can't beat that.

I see that ridiculous court decisions aren't limited to American Samoa though. This is nearly legally indefensible in my opinion. The militia requirement is pretty clear. The majority acts like it has never been a real requirement and they just gloss over it. That is totally not the case. I am not saying all guns should be illegal, but if a jurisdiction decides it needs to put some restrictions on guns, they should certainly be allowed to do so. The members of state national guards should be exempt from any such law. This is another pathetic politically driven decision like Bush v. Gore.

This is what happens when you put unqualified and/or politically motivated judges on the Supreme Court.

Golf tomorrow, poker/Markus's bachelor party Saturday---maybe head to Apia for Manu'a Flag Day (you all should demand July 16 off work) long weekend. After that it is the Pacific Arts Festival here on Tutuila. Hopefully the supply of food won't run out on the island. This place is completely unprepared for any large event and this is going to be a disaster. Then when the disaster is over, the Governor will declare it a great success.

Samoa

2008-06-25T00:42:00.000-07:00

Today started out early because I had a trial set for today.

On my drive into work, I listened to the morning radio show for a little bit. At first there was the usual extremely easy trivia that callers miss until there's only one choice left.

Then there was some discussion about the local election. Then it was mentioned that this is a big election for here and for the US.

Host: so who do you like in the presidential race, John McCain or Barak Hussein Obama?
Nana: (laughter at the Hussein comment)McCain, gotta go with McCain.
Host: Yeah, McCain is the man, I mean he's a war hero and POW.
Nana: Yeah, McCain...uhhh, McCain, yeah.
Host: All right enough of that I'm going to hear from all the Obama supporters out there. Maybe they'll paint my car like the Laker fans threatened last week to paint it yellow. What do you think the Obama supporters will paint it.
Nana: Black, they'll paint it black.
Laughter.

On the main radio station here.
Neat.

Oh, and a really nice legally incorrect ruling during trial- I even feared this incorrect ruling so I did a bench memo setting out some caselaw about this issue. No matter... still the same ruling.

Awesome.

Almost halfway mlb predictions

2008-06-20T15:46:00.000-07:00

Wins:
Boston 100
Tampa 91
NYY 90
Tor 83
Balt 73

Chi 98
Det 87
Cle 83
Minn 78
KC 66

Oak 88
LA 86
Tex 74
SEA 66

Phi 97
Atl 88
Fla 86
Mets 83
Wash 65

Cubs 101
Stl 91
Mil 81
Hou 76
Pit 73
Cin 71

Ariz 86
LAD 80
Colo 75
SD 72
SF 70

McLaren

2008-06-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

I don't take any joy in the firing of John McLaren, but it had to be done too. Even if this isn't his fault at all, they needed to at least make a change to have the appearance of starting over. McLaren's been with the M's a long time though and on a lot of the great teams.

Here's part of a story about a Lou Pinella onfield freakout with a nice McLaren comment:
Mariners manager Lou Piniella delivered the masterpiece of a long and distinguished career by calling upon his full range of talents and putting them all together on one stage. In protest of a call at first base, he charged onto the field, hurled and kicked his cap, screamed at the umpire, kicked dirt and tossed first base into the outfield -- twice -- before leaving the field to deserved and thunderous applause.

"That was the best," said bench coach John McLaren, who has been witness to most of Sweet Lou's eruptions. "He had all his greatest hits in it. He had the cap, he had the base, he had yelling in the umpire's face. He had everything."

They can let Riggleman endure the rest of this season, and then hire:

Bobby Valentine.

Please designate Vidro and Cairo for assignment today!

For the rest of the season, see how the young guys do:

1B Ibanez/Clement/Jojima
2B Lopez
SS Betancourt
3B Beltre
C Jojima/Clement
LF Balentien
CF Reed
RF Ichiro
DH Ibanez/Clement

If someone gets hurt, bring up and start LaHair.

It is too late probably to convert Morrow to a starter this season, but he definitly should be one next season.

See if anyone will take Bataista and Silva.

Somebody will give us at least something for Sexson and Washburn. Take whatever the best deal is as soon as possible.

If we can get value for Bedard, trade him. If not, keep him.

The Sonics trial seems to be going well. Bennett got pounded pretty hard about his lying explanation of "a man possessed". A man possessed to keep the team in Seattle...right. Plus, he admitted that they stopped all work on trying to get a new arena in Seattle 6 months into a 12 months best-efforts period. That helps Schultz's suit.

Restaurant review: Dog sticks

Behind the courthouses in Fagatogo is a little ghetto looking store called ABC Fax. Out in front, a guy has a barbeque set up every day grilling skewers of meat. They're a buck. He has them marinating for at least hours before they go on the grill. What kind of meat is it? Could be pork. There are lots of extra dogs around and... No I think it is pork...probably. This is not a guy you want to rush because if you get there and order some dog sticks but they're not quite cooked yet, he'll hook you up with some semi-raw meat. I think Nate has paid for this situation in the past. So as long as you make sure the dog chunks are fully cooked, it is actually good, and at a fair price. On island: 9 Off-island: 6.5 (as long as the dog is cooked)

After some thought I also need to adjust the off-island rating for Sadies. 4.5 is too high. I'd never go there. It is just way too crappy for the price. 2.5

Tractor painting

2008-06-17T12:18:00.000-07:00

Sharon's old truck (now Amity and Sam's), The Tractor, got a facelift this weekend. Check it out on Jeremy's blog here.

I know the weather in the NW has been pretty rough lately, but it hasn't been #1 here for the past several weeks either. Aside from Sunday and yesterday, there has been lots of rain pretty much every day. Here's what it looks like at my house right now:

It is 78 degrees, yes; but it still gets old when it rains pretty much all the time.

So, again this weekend we were forced inside after getting in about 6 holes of golf between downpours on Friday. Samoa Steve is back from 2 months on a boat:

Ben got punched in the face this weekend (here's an exaggerated re-enactment):

Mainly there was just your standard hanging out.

Ayla drank a LOT of beer:

We're even reduced to entertaining ourselves with eyebrow contests:

Restaurant review:

Sadie's. This is probably the best actual real "restaurant" on the island. It isn't as good as Falepule, but Falepule isn't open on a daily basis. For lunch, I'm a fan of Sadie's. They have an $8.95 special including bread, soup or salad, and iced tea or lemonade. Dinner and other things on the menu are still way overpriced, but if you're only going there once a week for lunch, having just two choices is not that bad. Overall, the quality varies between about as good as and a little better than Denny's (but aside from the lunch specials, priced like a 4-5 star restaurant). Like everything though it is not always consistent. Once in a while it is really good. Once in a while what you get would never be allowed to be served at a Denny's. The service here is actually pretty good in general and just awesome for the island.
Off island: 4.5 On island: 9

Finally!!!!

2008-06-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

Bill Bavasi is gone. After transforming a perennial winning team to the worst team in baseball, he finally was fired after 4.5 years (which seems like 45 years).

Here are some highlights:

Carlos Silva making about $10M per year:

Giving Jeff Weaver $8M last year:

Carl Everett:

$12M/ year to bat .196:

$5M/year to bat .064:

$11M/year to be average:

Horacio Ramirez (worst pitcher in baseball aside from Jeff Weaver):

Why's Carlos Guillen so happy? He just won the World Series and Bavasi traded him for nothing:

It might be nice to have Rafael Soriano (traded for Horacio):

and George Sherrill:

Also we traded our top prospect for a just above average pitcher that is injury prone and just signed our .230 hitting catcher to a 3 year $25M deal.

How did he last this long?

Well, at least it is over. Now we'll probably hire Allard Baird.

Nickelback

2008-06-15T18:01:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you realize things suck but then after a while if they hang around long enough you stop thinking they suck and start to like them.

Raul Ibanez is an example. When Lou used to keep bringing in Raul in clutch situations, it was time to pack it up and go home. He was a guaranteed out. But, he stuck with it, hung around and now he's one of my favorite players.

Red wine is another example.

After a long time knowing that Nickelback sucks, I've determined that I like them. I'm still not sure I can say that they don't actually suck with a straight face, but they've grown on me. Specifically, the Rockstar song has changed my mind. The video is helpful, but mostly it is the "I'll have the quesadilla" line. It is so dumb and so awesome at the same time that I'm now forced to overlook all the other suck indicators of Nickelback.

(the band indicating their dislike for the unattended dog problem in Lions Park)
(alternatively, they're telling someone where they can sit...like Doug)

Nate is on yet another trip off island for work. I'm still locked at zero. Anyway, due to the unceasing incompetence of ASG,

they didn't book the travel arrangements two or three months ago, but instead waited til last week. Guess what...the flight was booked! So after lots of lying on the part of the travel agency that they'd make a flight or that Hawaiian had sent a smaller plane than usual, they had to spend not only the extra money for booking flights last minute, but they had to send him to Fiji in order to get him to Hawaii.

A month and 5 days until the Pacific Arts Festival. I'm sure that since ASG can't even do something like book a flight to Hawaii, we're in for a myriad of minor and moderate disasters during that time.

Maximo/ Leti/ Rich/ Ed

2008-06-14T17:06:00.000-07:00

We took some losses somewhat recently here on the island.

Maximo left back to Argentina

Leti left to Florida

Rich went to Washington DC (unless NOAA shafts him)

and Ed died.

I'm not sure what killed Ed. The housing guys found her by Nikki's house I guess in Lions Park.

A while ago we played poker at my new place. I had the poker chips. But...I left them in Barbie's trunk. That would have been fine except that Barbie's no-wheel problem was still being fixed and Barbie was in Tafuna at a repair shop instead of here.

so we had to use rummikub tiles, jenga blocks, and beans for chips:

OK, restaurant review:

DDW
DDW used to be one of the only decent dependable places to eat around here. Then it changed hands and got even better. They tried having different things (unheardof on this island) and they kept their excellent coconut cream pies. Unfortunately, now the place is on a steep descent. They switched from ordering at the counter to ordering through waitresses. This is a complete disaster. There are two competent waitresses at DDW. So, they put one to work in the kitchen and one to work the cash register. For the floor, they hired two of the top 3 worst waitresses in the world (see Evi's Taco Hut). Incompetence is not even close to a strong enough description. It is truly unbelievable. Nobody could move slower if they were trying. Screwing up your order is a MUST. It makes me angry every time I'm in there and it takes several minutes just to get your order across. At first, I thought it was kind of funny because it is just so ridiculous. But, over time it has not improved at all and I don't see as much humor in it these days. The last time I went there, part of my eggs tasted like fish. Yuk! I've been forced to put DDW on my boycott list. I'll now only go there if all I want is a piece of pie. They haven't ruined that yet, but one dose of tuna will take that down as well. Off island rating: 1 on island rating: 3.

Also, I hadn't had KFC for a while. It sucks every time but I had it anyway. Guess what, it sucks. Unlike McDonalds and Carl's Jr., the KFC is not up to off-island standards. Off island rating: 1.5 On island rating: 3.5.

Who is advising John McCain?

2008-06-13T19:04:00.000-07:00

I have an idea:

McCain's statement today probably took him out of consideration for a relatively large chunk of voters.

Giving rights to defendants to be tried fairly is not exactly something that is against the American ideal. I'd say it is the opposite.
And confirming that defendants have rights is one of the worst decisions in history? Wow.

I really doubt that there are many voters at all that agree with McCain that aren't already set on voting for McCain (or rather set on voting against Obama...did you know he's black?).

I'm stunned by McCain's stupidity, but I welcome it.

Lakers

2008-06-13T18:12:00.000-07:00

That was a great NBA game last night. Maybe the controversy about fixed games promoting teams with the superstars they want to promote made them hold off on giving Kobe every imaginable call.

Whatever it was, the Lakers just paid themselves back for that Blazers comeback. That was a pathetic second half performance by LA, and I love to see it.

Go Ray Allen. Did you see they guy sitting right by the scorers table with a Ray Allen Sonics jersey?

ohhhh, what's the matter Kobe?

6-19 in that one. Can't blame Odom for this one.

Shane 2

2008-06-11T22:00:00.000-07:00

Once we were back in the AS, Shane did some of the usual sightseeing, such as it is, on Tutuila.

We went to Tisa's

Mostly, I think he enjoyed the rest of his time here chilling out.

But, he did also enjoy Sliding Rock (Tutuila version), one of the nicest features we have:

and Nuu'uli Falls:

These crazy kids were climbing way up the falls and jumping into the pool.

And then he headed back to the real world of bad weather and things that work correctly.

Fa'afetai lava Shane for coming out to visit our island.

Shane's visit to AS (western samoa edition)

2008-06-08T11:49:00.000-07:00

Before I get to that, I'm glad that the primary race is finally over and very happy with the result. I think if Obama picks Hilary for VP, he's nearly sure to win. But, I kind of think he really doesn't want to. So I think it'll be someone else. Maybe Jim Webb. That would be pretty good. He talks a lot of shit about W, and anyone that talks a lot of shit about W is ok with me. Hilary could be made Secretary of something, stay in the Senate, or maybe put on the Supreme Court. I'd say AG, but I think John Edwards is going to get that.
So check out this shirt:

It is awesome!

So, Buff came to visit:

And Shane made it too:

I picked him up at the airport late on a Thursday night. The next day, I rode into work with Nate so Shane could drive Barbie around the island. He went to check out a couple things, then came into town to meet for lunch.

On his way, Barbie had some minor trouble. Her wheel fell off.

What? Your wheels don't regularly fall off? I've seen many, many cars on the side of the road here with their wheels off. I suspect this is due to 2 factors:
- Everything here corrodes because it is so hot, humid, and salty, so the bolts just end up breaking.
- Most work here is done in the least thorough way possible when it finally gets done, so installation may be at issue in some cars missing wheels.

Anyway, we made it to the airport on time and headed to Western Samoa. We got in a taxi van and headed to Apia. On the way, there was a car stopped on the road for no reason. Our taxi passed it. Apparently, this pissed off the driver of the stopped vehicle who engaged us in a high speed chase for about 5 minutes. He was right on our ass and was swerving all around. It was insane. High speeds & Samoan drivers do not make for a safe experience. But, we made it and had a fantastic dinner again at Apaula Heights- though Shane had to go on the DL for most of the evening.
(19 Hosley--- out for night with unstoppable nosebleed)

The next day we hit Sliding Rock.

We gave some British guys a ride on the back of our rental car down from Sliding Rock to Apia. Naomi wanted me to gun it and knock them off, but I guess I'm just not as mean as her. (this picture was taken out the window towards the back of the car as they were trying to hang on)

Then we headed over the pass to the south of Upolu and towards Lalomanu.

Shane saw plenty of roadside pigs on the way:

Lalomanu was awesome as always.

It looks kind of cold in this picture, but it is always warm to hot not only outside, but in the water as well.

We stopped by the sea trench again

This time we got in it.

That was a really good call. It is kind of scary to go up and down the ladder, but once you're down there it is pretty spectacular. You can swim underground between the holes. The whole time you're kind of gently moved around by the tide also because on the ocean end of the pool, it is connected to the open sea. Apparently you can swim out there underwater through a tunnel. Nobody felt like drowning that day, so it wasn't tried.

We had lunch at Sea Breeze, which is not too far from the trench. It is awesome. I think the food there is even better than Apaula Heights. It also has a near perfect location.

Here's Shane, off the DL with the aid of nose plugs.

Next we hit Black Sand Beach.

There were actual waves breaking on the sand. It was really fun and we stayed for hours.

The waves beat the shit out of us though.

That night we went to Virgin Cove to stay in their fales. The water there is weird. There are no waves because it is so sheltered. We walked about half a mile out into the water and watched the sunset in about neck level water. Really really cool.

They do a really good job at Virgin Cove. All the fales are connected by paths that are lighted at night by oil lamps. The food is good as well. Maybe not as good as Lalomanu, but still a great deal.

and we survived one more flight back to American Samoa.

Restaurant review:
Rose Garden: It is yet another Chinese place, but probably the best one. Nothing we have had was total crap yet and that's through 3 visits. They actually clean their bathrooms too- incredible! Off-island rating: 3.5 On-island rating: 8.5

Makeup posts

2008-06-07T19:04:00.000-07:00

When I was still living in Lions Park, one day we went for a hike from Sailele to...we didn't really know. We usually like to travel without a plan here on this island.

We walked along the water from Sailele to another village (there's no road between them).

Then we just kept walking and made it all the way to where the end of the main road comes out at Onenoa.

We then decided to walk down the road all the way back to Sailele. At least Doug, Matt, and I did. Naomi thought that was far.

So we walked to Tula, and went to the NOAA observatory... passing up rides along the way. After we got done with the observatory, we'd kind of had enough walking and went to the bus stop. The bus stop is outside of a store in Tula and inside there was a lady working who informed us that the last bus of the day just passed us. Super. So we set out walking

After a little while we were able to hitch a ride in the back of a truck.

Then we got dropped off because that was as far as this car was going and we set out walking again. We flagged down a bus and hopped on that. It WAS far. We just kept riding and riding. It seems that we (the guys at least) have no concept of how far things on the island. After riding forever, we got let off at Fagaitua and figured we would walk over the pass back to Sailele. That also apparently is far. We walked for maybe 15-20 minutes up the steep hill and luckily were picked up by some guys drinking beer in their work truck. I had thought the pass was just around the bend, but it wasn't. It would have taken us forever to get back walking. But, hitching rides was fun and it was a really great day overall.

On the way back we stopped off at our house because we had heard a rumor it was for rent. Naomi ended up talking to Wally (our landlord) and hooked us up with where we live now.

How does Bill Bavasi still have a job? The Ms are HORRENDOUS! Come on, how long can this go on? Get Valentine in here today! and just get somebody else to be GM, anyone except Woody Woodward.

Some brief movie reviews:

Sweeney Todd: too much singing 3.8
Superbad: Really pretty good. I especially like the real-life dialogue. 7.5
Juno: Good, different, funny. 7.5
Jumper: Sam Jackson, but no damn snakes. This movie is stupid: 2
We are Marshall: Not bad, not great, kinda boring. 4.5
North Shore: Have you ever seen this movie? Its from the 80s and surfers just love it. It is sooooo stupid, it is hard to describe. This is a movie that sucks so much you should see it just to see how bad a movie can be and still get made. The most incredible part is if you get the re-release version there are all the commentaries by the actors and the producers. They talk about this movie like it was good and are serious about it. Unlikable main character. Ridiculous bad guys. Dumb, dumb, dumb! I give it a 1.8.

Legal research

2008-06-05T01:04:00.000-07:00

So work has gotten a little more frustrating. They've hooked all the staff up to the internet now too. So we have over 20 people on one 128mb connection. You probably have 15 times that speed or more in your house divided not at all. It is so slow that it is locked down once everyone rolls into work by 10 or so. So I have a trial next week and I'd like to do some research preparing for it, but I can't. Just super.

I'm about the most optimistic Seattle sports fan except for maybe KC, but this Ms season is over. Their only chance after this miserable start was to sweep the Angels. Instead they got swept. 15.5 out of first. The Ms have about the same chance of catching the Angels now as Joe Biden has of catching Obama. Why is Jose Vidro, Miguel Cairo, and Richie Sexson still on the roster. Let Jeff Clement play every day. Even if he sucks, we'll at least have an idea that he does. Get rid of Washburn too. Someone might even give us something. Let Morrow start now.
I'm not saying we should cut Batista, but if someone will trade for his salary my asking price would be a bottle of Vailima...same for Silva.

This season is the worst since 2004. The Ms sucked that year and it was unexpected. They won over 90 games in 03 and then collapsed to 99 losses in 04. This only isn't as bad because the situation doesn't look permanent. They have 2 really good starters now and should have 2 more coming (Aumont and Morrow) soon. Balentien and Clement still should be good. Ibanez has a few years left (maybe as DH soon though), Betancourt and Lopez are solid and Beltre has one more year before they decide to keep him or not. Plus Ichiro. The Ms should spend whatever it takes to get the pitcher from Japan that plays for Bobby Valentines team and get Valentine too. That'd be potentially 5 really good starting pitchers. The Ms have a good bullpen. Even a crap hitting team (like the Ms) can win with great pitching.

I have no confidence in this season though...and the same for being able to, you know, do my job when it comes to legal research at work anytime soon.

Movie Review

2008-06-03T01:42:00.001-07:00

OK, I just finished watching Indiana Jones and the Plot of Doom.

What

the

HELL?

I was looking forward to this movie more than any other one coming out this summer. and
it
sucks

Go ahead and watch it I guess. You should probably experience its badness. I remember the last election when the results started coming in and everything was looking good and then around 10pm or so, everything went to hell. This was kind of like that except 10pm came about 5 minutes into the movie. Much like the result of the election, the remainder of the experience was AWFUL.

They had some ideas...that I'm guessing they got from the first 3 Indiana Jones movies since it was all the same stuff- moving ancient bricks showing a hidden palace and rivers of sand followed by underground rivers. You have the guy that gets killed because he won't stop trying to loot some treasure. Nothing really new at all there, except that despite the advances in special effects, this was done shittier.

Add in some aliens, falling over 3 1000 foot falls in a row without even falling out of their Ride the Ducksmobile, some 80 mile per hour vine swinging, and (even for this movie, what the hell?) Indiana Jones surviving a nuclear blast by hiding in a fricking refrigerator that gets blown about 3 miles from which he emerges uninjured, and you have this pile of crap movie.

Actually, no there are more stupid parts too.

Worse than Transformers (but still w/ Shia Lebouf).

The best I can say is it wasn't as bad as Ghosts of Mars or Ghost Rider. Had they managed to throw Ghost in the title and given Nick Cage a role though, they might have had a chance.

I give it a 2 just because it wasn't as torturous as those movies or as boring as say Remains of the Day.

Blech!

Moi's wedding

2008-06-02T21:43:00.001-07:00

Weave promised when he left the island that he'd return if Moi got married. He made it:

Moi's dad of course made it too:

Moi and Polu's wedding was at Moana o Sina, a mini-resort (sort of) in Fogagogo. It is an extremely nice place. If you didn't know better, you'd think you were in Hawaii. The ceremony took place right by the cliffs with waves crashing up in the background. Pretty cool.

One of the things with Samoan weddings is getting matching outfits made, so I got my first Samoan suit made for this event.

I certainly wasn't the only one though.

It was a really good time with lots of good food and plenty of beer available.

looks like someone may need to trim their eyebrows

Oh, looky- its the Lieutenant Governor:

(currently set for trial in January)

Court today was just ridiculous.

I leave you today with some dancing: