Carbon

It was raining Sunday, so I pscyhed myself out of riding and went to the Reina Sofia art museum, its my favorite in Madrid. It houses several Dalis, Picassos (including Guernica), and you can watch Bunuel on a sort of big screen. I came here last March and spent about 6 hours. I thought I was really having a lucky day becasue the museum turns out to be free on Sunday. And then, there just happens to be a visiting exhibit from the French National Museum on Picasso which occupies 4 floors (!). The bad luck part was that the museum closed at 2:30, I had only seen half of the Picasso (chronologically through his classical training, experiments in expressionism, iconic analytical cubism, and his very unique primitive surrealism; hard to believe this is just one guy) and hadn't made it to my favorite pieces. I can't complain, it was free. When I got there there was a climate change rally in the plaza in front of the museum. Spain, like most of the world, signed the Kyoto protocol but is failing much worse than most of Europe. Their emissions have actually increased (according to very dodgy error ridden estimates) by 3%. At least they signed the thing. Watch, Iceland will be carbon negative in 25 years and profit from it by selling carbon credits. They will make the US, Australia, Spain and the rest of the world look like idiots.

Heres a bit of trivial knowledge: notice the Stop CO2 signs? You might wonder why they would make signs displaying the US style stop sign in English. Well they use the same signs here, in English. Heres another weird thing: they have adopted WC (like in England, it stands for water closet) as the symbol for a public restroom. Nobody knows why. One guy used to but he died.

Afterward, I had time to kill so I walked across old Madrid to the Catedral Almudena. I thought that this was a very old cathedral but it was actually started in the 19th century, completed in the 20th century and made "official" or "sacred" or whatever by good ole JP2. You remember in Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader had John Paul II frozen in carbon and gave him to Boba Fett to deliver to Jabba? Chewie was really sad and said "RRRAAAAWWWWRRRPP!". Well they put the carbon-frozen pope out here in front of the cathedral so Jabba and his muppet friends could admire and taunt him (see pic). I was actually thinking this as people were praying and leaving flowers for John Paul, I couldn't help it, the statue seriously reminds me of Han Solo frozen in carbon. Sometimes my brain has small adventures. Despite not being quite as ancient as I thought the cathedral was really pretty cool. I don't much go for the religion business but I do like large old churches. And nobody does grandeur like Spanish catholics that happen to be next door to a palace (yep. another palace. dime a dozen). Also its free, score!
Finally, I have occasionally seen some cool street art in Madrid, but stencils are rare. Someone actually made a stencil of two people making out on the subway, and sprayed it onto a pedestal at the base of a sculpture outside the art museum. That's the real life and art of Madrid, it belongs on a pedestal in front of the art museum.

I'm here to help

Tommorrow I take my placement exam in a language school. The class will cost a couple hundred bucks but is really fairly cheap as far as these things go.

So, I'm here to help you out with some highly useful information, I'll save the best for last.

Useful Spanish words and phrases, we'll start with "T" for no good reason. Forget your mexican slang, "chinga tu madre" and "pinche gringo" won't get you far in Spain. People will only laugh like we laugh when British people ask us if we are being "cheeky", or "are you taking the piss?", or "bollocks!". So heres some good ole Spanish Spanish for you:

trabuco: literally musket, but pretty much means penis
titiritero: puppeteer
tranquilo: calm, tranquil. You can use it to tell someone to chill.
tendedero: a rack thing with clotheslines for drying your clothes indoors when its raining
tio: everybody is your uncle in Spain. its the equivalent of dude, man, or dude man. If its a woman, yep its tia. Another equivalent word is chico/chica, e.g. boy or girl.
and by the way: space is espacio not espacia, and i said in an earlier post (I am an excellent source of bad info)
and heres a "P" thrown in for fun
putamadre: i'm unsure on the spelling but this is what I think I'm hearing. It means "motherfucker". You can shout it when some jackass cuts you off, or you can say it to express how good your food is. putamadre is damn good.


Ok the best piece of info, needs some background. I am addicted to Huy Fong Brand Sriracha chili sauce. Because of the rooster logo, its is referred to as "hot cock" or I've also heard "kickin chicken". Despite all the rumors, it does not contain crack. Its far, far, far better than crack. Some people will complain it's not "authentic" enough because its made in the USA with ingredients available in the USA. I don't understand this obsession with "authenticity". Either the stuff is good or not, who cares if it is authentically derived form one culture or a synergistic blend of multiple cultures (case in point: burritos, pizza). Huy Fong Sriracha is so damned good I have their rooster on my body forever. Greg Telles tattooed me for a 6 pack, or maybe for free I can't remember, with his homemade tattoo gun. Sometimes when I tell people that they think I am joking. They can't believe that anyone would actually get a tattoo of a hot sauce label, but that's how I roll. Won't I feel stupid having that tattoo when I'm old? I can proudly say that one day I will be 80 and I will have a bluish smudge on my arm and I'll tell people about Sriracha through my dentures and they wont listen to me because I'm old and I always say crazy shit that noone listens to. The point is, it won't matter if I feel stupid because everyone will treat me like I'm stupid regardless.

People have been telling me for years to write to Huy Fong and see if I can get any free stuff for being their walking billboard for over a decade. Maybe I'll do it soon and let you in on the experiment.

Ok long setup for this: I made my own Sriracha tonight. I have no idea if its good yet, it's maturing in the fridge. But I did it in the style of Huy Fong with ripe red jalapenos. I found someone's recipe on line. I should have added garlic, but if this easy recipe makes anything remotely similar to the hot cock sauce, I'll be pretty happy.

1 pound ripe RED jalapenos, so fully vine ripened
2.5 cups of rice or white wine vinegar
0.25 cups of sugar
1 tablespoon salt

put the chilis in the vinagre, bring to boil, dissolve sugar and salt, purree the mixture, let the ingredients get friendly in the fridge overnight.

End of an era

I don't have much to write about. No adventures to report. Just a realization that my Spanish is not advancing and I simply have to take a class. Everybody asked me if I spoke Spanish when they found out I was coming here. When I said un poquito, the stock answer was "you will." This will lkely come true, but its not the immersion experience I was needing because so many people want to practice English and I have to want to speak Spanish which I seldom do (just because I like to be understood when I speak, nothing against the spanish language).

It seems that this week is the week when everything breaks. The water heater broke. I broke my sunglasses in half. And my hair clippers finally kicked the bucket, a victim of high voltage. I remember my folks bought them from an old lady in the neighborhood, they were animal clippers and looked like they were from the 1960s. I must have been about 11, we used them to shave the dog because it got so hot in Vega$ in the summer. I have been using those animal shears to shave my hair for probably 15 years. I've dropped them on the floor probably 50 times, and they survived because they were apparently invincible like everything made back then. I realized I was getting shaggy, so I decided to shave some years off last night. I plugged them in using my universal AC adapter, and they got fried. I shaved most of my head, except of course I was unable to finish and was left with two parallel mini-hawks in back. Very stylish.

Deliverance

I mean deliverance in a good way (I'm saved) not in the bad way (I've been raped by inbreds)...
Maria returned from Andalucia with a grocery bag full of various chiles. Her Uncle grows them for seed and sell the seed in Mexico...nobody buys the seed or Chiles in Spain.

there is a little scotland embedded in the mountains of madrid

My weekend was spent in the Guadarrama mountains, i'm starting to have the lay of the land in el Communidad de Madrid stick in my brain. It's about the size of Grand Staircase, which as you may know is about the size of three Rhode Islands. This will be my first bike tour in Spain as soon as I can string a few holidays together (4-5).

I had no idea...but the foothills look like Wales or Scotland only sunnier. They are complete with stone walls, gray rocky outcrops, and lots of green. Santi and I went out to Pablo's house with a couple other folks from Mostoles, to drink beer and hang out. He lives in a tiny town called Zarzalejo.

In the morning we hiked up out of Pablo's gate straight up into the mountains...if you live in Flagstaff, picture walking out your back door on the east side to the top of Elden. We took Pablo's dogs (sounds similar to Pavlov's dog, but we didn't do any famous experiments), Ares, a war god who fetches pine cones non stop, and Sua the huntress. She captured and wounded a cool skink (sorry, forgot the snazzy spanish name), who then curled up like a baby on its back in my hand. Everything about the walk was beautiful , the weather and the view of the country and the monastery. And the rent is cheap there, and people actually have back yards with gardens (the picture is Pablo's back yard on the upper terrace. The lower terrace has a soon-to-be vegetable garden, and theres even more land above the house which has three small levels strair-stepped up a hill). There is excellent road riding there and probably mountain biking too. I would be really happy here in a similar house and I think Becky would like it alot also. The only catch is its 40km from Mostoles with lame connection via public transport. So, it would entail buying a car and getting a Spanish drivers license (a bigger deal than you think; and by the way this is my fifth and finally correct spelling of "license"), and being a major carbon emitter like everyone else that doesn't link climate change with their personal habits. Its totally the governments fault not me. Shit.




The next day Fernando and Dolo picked me up in Mostoles, and then we picked up Pablo to check out more of the mountains. They treated me to a very nice mini-tour. First we drove over Puerta de Navacerrado (the mountain passes are puertas). I was psyched to see bicyclists on our route the entire day...proof that it is possible even common to road ride in the area. I kept saying I wanted to ride this route and Fernando thought I was crazy and kept suggesting something shorter or easier, or insisting that for some reason I didn't want to do that because "you need to have strong legs". I guess its hard for him to believe that I prefer longer rides, and I like climbing mountain passes, and I actually do have strong legs and lungs. I'll have to show up at work one day and say "I rode the entire mountain range over the weekend, twice. Yeah, it was ok I just wish there was more distance and elevation gain. Frankly my legs were too strong". Pablo had some ride ideas near the Puerta, but unfortunately they were all mountain bike rides and I don't have a mountain bike any more. Shit i'll have to get another bike, bummer. The upper elevations are forested with Pinus sylvestris which has a lot in common with Ponderosa Pine, except in my opinion its a prettier tree than Pondo. We went down the other side of the pass toward Segovia to a small town called San Ildefonso. There is yet another palace here (I've seen four now by the way), but this one is my favorite (see pic). Yes that is a Sequouia in the foregound, and we think a giant cedar (like the famous ones that used to be in Lebanon). Kings have big trees. On the way out of town we stopped for a walk and once again i seemed to be in Scotland.

I even had time for a minor bike ride in Mostoles later. Excellent day.

sharpen your boomerangs...

when i was about 9 or 10 i saw the road warrior. it was not my favorite movie, that title was reserved for Conan the Barbarian...but I liked road warrior alot. Especially the feral boy. I wanted to be the feral boy. he was the mute wild child with the razor sharp boomerang, and a sweet loincloth made of rat pelt or something. he used it to slice off the fingers of one of the apocalypse dune buggie goons (boomerang not loincloth). i was thinking about the feral boy today strangely enough as I was walking around my new town. i have deviated from my early career preferences.

yeah there's typos, i don't care...

Teus- First day at work. right now i am in some sort of illegal alien limbo, i'm supposed to actually start work next monday but i need an national id card so i can get a social security card so i can register as a resident so i can sign my contract so i can get a university id so that, finally, i can begin work. and there is NOONE that actual knows the procedure. the local slang for this is burrocracy, government by donkeys. i also just heard today that my nsf grant was rated highly meritous (??), but will only be funded if there is available funds. 27 grants are getting funded for sure, and im ranked 38. there was 150-some grants... i thought for sure i had a better grant than # 38. so its possible i'll get something, but a long shot. i just moved into a new apartment about 3 hours ago with two graduate students. they speak broken english, i speak broken spanish, but theirs is a fair bit less broken than mine. everybody says they hate the town and its ugly...but its kind of cool to me. totally different. EVERYBODY lives in a multi stroy apartment building, so stanegly enough it feels like im in new york or something. Actually, in the film Rear Window, Hitchcock built a set with a simulated city in it, as viewed from an apartment window. I feel like I live on that set. both roomates are very friendly and fun so far. there is a kebab place by my building so i will not starve while in this hostile territory for vegetarians. my roomate santi showed me the traditional spanish market which was really cool, stinky with fish, but really neato. there is a whole olive store in it. i am having a shitty spanish lager to end my donkey government day... its helping.

wed- Fernando went with me to the police station to help me get my national id number assigned. we had to take the subway into Madrid. The first station we went was literally a former prison. Immigrants from numerous places go there to start their immigration process, mostly latin americans. hundreds of latin americans wait in line for hours to obtain a number, so they might actually be able to get inside the prison. amazing, their lives are so hard. after some smooth talking from fernando we exploit my unjustified privelege as a north american to walk right in to the prison. of course we are in the wrong place, so we have to get back on the subway and go to another police station in a totally different part of the city for researchers and students. Naturally when we got to that one it was also the wrong place, so, yes we got on the subway to another portion of the city. At the third station we just flat out got lucky. there was no cop at the door, and fernando talked us past the line and somehow convinced a woman to process me (for reasons that still elude me, what she did was illegal and she was taking a risk to help us out). imagine me trying to do this by myself! with no possibility of clear instructions. as we were walking out the door fernando was talking on his cell phone being interviewed on live radio- he´s from a small town and is locally famous. what a rockstar. This day is a major victory, at the end of the day i am registered as a Mostoles resident with santi´s help.

thu- Today, more fun- today I was finally assigned my social security number, so I can sign my contract. back in November to accept the fellowship i signed a contract and paid $75 to Fed ex it to spain. But again, for reasons i don’t understand, i need to sign a new contract. After seeing about 3 people over about 1.5 hours i am finally signing my contract. so here is the cherry on top of the burrocracy: I have to actually sit there and sign seven (!)copies of the contract. Que comica! More silly tasks tommorrow...back to the third police station to hand deleiver the donkey papers i received from other places in the morning.

fri- Soy legal!! Andrea helped me navigate the immigration shite, she immigrated from colombia a couple years ago. turns out shes into cycling and she told me about the anillo verde around madrid-64 km of car free riding. I need to interrogate her some more. just like in the us, when you ask anyone that doesnt ride..they tell you its too dangerous to ride a bike. But when you find someone that actually rides and knows what the fuck they are talking about...theres wonderful riding everywhere.

domingo- Last night I went to a play in spanish with some friends. The main charcatre was kind of like a cross between harpo marx and john belushi. I only got the really visual jokes, primarily the ones with american pop culture references (e.g. darth vader and alien). Ok so it flew way over my head due to my poor comprehension of rapid lispy ethpanol. I also went for a jog and saw more of my town. The parks have these funny workout machines where you can do a pushup, pullup, or rowing motion while lifting your own weight in a chair. Free gym! Im such a moron, Ididnt hardly eat prior to the play just assumiing i would have chance. I have been trying to eat on the spanish schedule, so my snack at US dinner time was meant to keep me alive until spanish dinner time (9:00 pm or often later). My roomate santiago was showing me the city at that time, then it was time for the play, then we had to get on the metro before they stopped running, all of this resulting in dinner at 2 am. Im just going to eat when im used to eating. i cant just go through llife with shaky hands and low blood sugar

Today i saw had a wonderfully spacy (by the way “space” is “espacia” en espanol, “ethpathia” in ethpanol) recharge day strolling around casa de campo, an enormous and varied park featuring pseudo wild bosque, a roman era aqueduct, a lake, views of old madrid (royal palace, catedral, etc.),a zoo, and an amusement park. I like everybody i know here but somedays i just need my alone time. Tons of latinos gather there to hang out and make food. particularly peruvians i am told. I got off the metro and walked into the park. my vague plan was to walk a few km to the lake and get on the metro 2 stops down the line to go home. So i walked a couple hours, after a while i saw that i was approaching a metro stop. I figured it was the one before the stop i was aiming for, and it was raining so i figured i would get on it and take the subway to the lake. As i got closer i realized that it was the same stop that i had arrived at. i looked at the map for maybe 10 minutes and decided it was simply impossible for me to have made this unintended circle without leaving the park. So apparently we can add at least one worm hole to the park attractions.

Strolling in the park with a light rain and joy division blaring in my ears was the perfect activity...well a bike would have been even better (next time). Everybody warned me not to be in the park in the dark because all the hookers in the city go there. I don't know why that is dangerous (zombie hookers maybe? brains!!), i think it’s like alot of things that people tell me here which i don’t understand fully. As i was walking by the lake, sure enough i saw a couple hookers sharing an umbrella even though it wasn't even close to dark. they must have been two early birds getting trouser worms. They did not attempt to turn me into a zombie or eat my brain, they just stood there by the road.

Viernes- This week im sort of getting settled and doing some work. I submitted one paper for the first time, and resubmitted another which was accepted quickly. I also had my first day in the field. Yesterday I helped Fernando and his student Cristina pick out some study plots. The research site is crammed full of research plots. Due to the daylight savings change…which I somehow made and then unmade…I was late meeting them. Because I was late, in a hurry and bike commuting for the first time in a city I don’t know yet, I was totally frazzled and disorganized. I forgot sunscreen, I forgot my second liter bottle of water, and I wore the wool hat I had been used to wearing recently. It ended up being not hot, but pretty warm compared to what I have experienced recently. So I pretty much looked like an unprepared douchebag (way to make a first impression!). I have probably done the equivalent of a year’s worth of desert field work days over the course of my career in all seasons (115 degrees to 20 with snow), so I am not a rookie, but I came off looking like one…and was spoken to like one (“you know in summer you will have to bring water, sunscreen, and you can’t wear your wool hat”). Annoying, but my own fault really.

I had a good ethpanol day today. I practiced a little with my roommate Maria as we walked to the health center. Then the doctor at the health center spoke to me in very slow Spanish with lots of gestures, and I understood the important things. Then a little practice at lunch, a little on the way to the supermarket with orta (I think his last name is Ortiz, but he is from Andalucia and they eat the end off of their words). I’ve never seen the name in writing. I successfully registered at the health center, so my tarjeta sanitaria is on its way.

My experience in Spanish grocery stores is simultaneously exasperating and an adventure. EVERYTHING that I think of as everyday, good and cheap fare is an exotic delicacy here. For example corn tortillas are totally absent, and flour tortillas are represented only by Old El Paso. Chiles in any form (dried, fresh, including jalapeneos or serrnaos or whatever) are hard to find. I guess Mexican-origin or Mexican- influenced foods are somewhat of a new trend, but they have been imported sans chiles, the thing that makes food worth eating in my case. I stocked up this evening by buying some kind of pimiento picante powder, and some kind of hot sauce from Louisiana (editors note: turns out neither are actually hot, I used a quarter of the hot sauce in one meal!), but in Europe it’s marketed for Turkish people. This wasn’t really expensive, but when I ask about red chili or fresh serranos or whatever nobody even knows what I’m talking about. I found some shite peanut butter, basically Euro-skippy, except in a container half the size of the standard…3.40 euros ~ 5 bucks!! Needless to say I didn’t buy it. Oh and about 4 bucks for a can of frijoles!! It’s hard even to locate dry beans of Mexican or central American varieties..im going to have to find a big bag of dry beans and cook a bunch myself. The local legumes are lentils, and chick peas which I do like…they are just not my favorite. So needless to say, my everyday diet will just have to adapt. One really nice thing is that decent olives are cheap, as is shitty beer, and the potatoes are cheap and good…way better than the russets that dominate the US supermarkets. Also the cheese is not cheap really, but very good. Theres a mozzarella-like goat cheese, and several aged varieties.

Sabado- Was up late until almost 3:00 am talking to Becky via internet. With a 6 hour time difference and both of us working, its hard to find an easy way to communicate. But it works.

Woke up and made coffee for the first time in Espana in my trusty French press, recently arrived from the US (thanks Becky!). I had been starting the day with a Spanish percolator. They have these crazy electric stoves here that can make the coffee in about 3 minutes…so perc coffee is actually decent you don’t have to boil the living shit out of it because the water is brought to a boil really fast and just erupts into the upper chamber. It just makes a normal-sized mug though, which is a lot by Spanish standards. The Spanish don’t sit around drinking coffee in the morning like Americans, they have one very stiff but tiny coffee in the morning, and usually one more in the afternoon after lunch. Because a Spanish “solo” is basically an espresso shot, drinking coffee is a quick affair. All the people that have ever lived with me know that I like to take a good hour to suck down a morning megablast that would kill a lesser man than me. But as you know I trained in a steel cage with Bruce Lee when I was younger. So, since it was the weekend I indulged myself and I felt awesome!!! I think maybe I have been chronically under-caffeinated since I got here. I’m not sure if I should take the opportunity to act more like a Spaniard and lessen my addiction, or say “Fuck it, I prefer feeling AWESOME”. My guess is “Fuck it…”.

So I took the metro back to Casa de Campo, the huge park from last weekend, to begin my ride of the Anillo Verde (try to stay with me here…the cycling path which circles Madrid, duh). I am expanding my territory systematically by returning to a known point and expanding from there. It felt great to ride again…due to all the snow in Flag, it had been many months since my last decent-length ride. Riding fast with my headphones, I am not the most attentive person around. You kind of have to watch for the route markers, especially starting from casa de campo because every path is a bike path, and there are many. So I commence riding totally enjoying myself, asking people where I am from time to time while looking at the map kiosk. Then after only a short while I arrive…at casa de campo. I found a second wormhole!! I am beside myself and can’t believe that I have made two attempts to explore casa de campo and surrounding places, and somehow looped back to where I came from in an hour or so. I got kind of pissed, because I wished I could have been riding last weekend, and now I’m here and still can’t seem to ride the green ring. But….i had a bike, I had many hours of daylight, I had food, and I had water. What was I mad about? It just means extra riding providing I can actually find the correct way. So I turned around and tried again, using every map kiosk that wasn’t totally illegible with tags. Is hard to explain how I got lost in words but I almost did the exact same thing a second time. I tried out some ethpanol on some other folks on bikes. They were British and were lost also (at least its not just me who is the douche)…it was because of a spot in the route that is under construction. It looks as if you are supposed to turn right, but really you are supposed to go straight even though the trail is not visible. If you make the right (the way I went), you will reencounter the anillo verde and get on it going the wrong direction. Unless you are familiar with the terrain, or at least not a space case, you could loop all the way back to casa de campo.

After this trouble spot it got a lot simpler. The northern portion of the ring was a little annoying because it makes 8 billion road crossings and you can never really get into your groove and stay geared up. So, its a lot slower than the mileage would indicate. Another rough spot was a portion under construction with a confusing detour. By this time, if riding clockwise like me, you are beginning the southern third of the ride. This part was awesome, with lots of long rolls and fewer unexpected turns. Naturally I got lost from time to time, going where I thought the trail SHOULD go rather than where it actually goes. Al l told the 64 km ring became about 80 km and took twice as long as I expected. But I’m not complaining, It was exactly what I needed…a nice long tour of the pseudo-wild urban interface and a rapid perusal of about half the city parks in the Madrid metropolis. I took the metro home pretty tired before the hordes of zombie hookers descended upon the park to scavenge brains. I wasn’t exhausted, but it whooped me a little bit.

my first ever blog

Okay, I'm new to this but promise some pics and other fun stuff soon.

This is about my experience as a foreigner in Spain. I hope to eventually be talking about bicycling and other adventures in spain and the rest of europe, of course with pictures. Vertrecht is sort of an in-joke, I went last year to Amsterdam with a friend, and we arrived totally jetlagged and stupid and had to figure out how to get a train from the airport to the city. In the train station, no matter what track we went to...all trains seemed to be going to Vertrecht. I tried to find Vertrecht on every map to see if it was on the way to the city, but it was amazingly absent from every map. Turns out Vertrecht is the equivalent of "arrivals". To me this summarizes the experience of being in a different country where everything is pretty similar to what you are used to, but 8000 small inconsequential differences keep you confused and looking stupid. I'm going to start by posting a journal compiled from various emails chronicling my first couple of weeks.