...soon.

So we are short-timers in Madrid. In March we are going back to Arizona, I can ride my bike to work, and I can grow a garden. This shot is form Alicyn's straw bale house, my garden from 2003 (??). The year before the elk devastated it due to a drought, they were desperate. I had never wanted to kill an ungulate so badly before. I built a slighty better fence out of a bunch of garbage that was laying around. I barely used freshwater, it was about 85% irrigated with greywater. I had so much salad I at it every day, gave it to friends, and still harvested a five galon bucket each week. Ted and I pooled our greens and sold them at the farmer's market. i would turn around and use the money for the stuff I didn't grow, like melons. The best thing about this garden is that when the autumn frosts set in, I went to dig up my first potato plant. I dug up a tiger salamnder who was spooning my spuds. It's rare to see these guys in the arid west, they are really elusive. There is no standing surface water anywhere nearby that house, so I have no idea where it came from.

In other news:
My personal lard index has dropped. I'm around 196 pounds now, very near my "ideal weight" and no longer Chubby McTubahan. I treated myself to some beer this weekend.

Bock Damm it all to hell!

All out France assault

didn't mean to spend so much time/space on air france, i got sucked into a wormhole. I have not forgotten that I was after all on vacation in France...


This place [Fontevorud Abbey] was the tomb, and still contains the headstone, of Richard the lionhearted. King of England, never spoke English. He might be a major reason why the middle east is such a seething bed of turmoil today several hundred years later. But pretty cool, right?






I've managed to see a lot of stuff in my stay in Europe. You tend to get a little jaded. For us Estadounidense, the mere presence of something older than about thirty years is remarkable. But it wears off after a while. You don't stop liking the beauty and history, it just becomes old news like your favorite movie you've seen 30 times. With that in mind, the Chateaux of the Loire valley were unlike anything I had seen yet. The Chateaus are castles, grand houses, hunting lodges, etc. of nobility. Many were elaborated from medieval fortifications, but in the Renaissance became rather fancy and dolled up. Chenounceau is a grand building that actually spans a river like a bridge. Chambord was the king of them all , and featured a central double-helix staircase which led to the roof, purportedly designed by DaVinci. The center of the staircase also houses the eye of Sauron, and has the property of permanently altering the structure of DNA. Louis the 14th once holed up here. His bedroom features a bust with his glorious luxuriant curly hair-boat, an old baseball glove, and a few playboy centerfolds and a Pink Floyd poster tacked to the wall. He hunted foxes in frilly ballet shoes. At night they added the projected christmas lights, handed out acid, and put on "Dark side of the Moon".

"Ni!"

So far, my favorite architecture in Europe has been the French gothic style that was copied all over Europe. I just like the crowdedness of saints and monsters, the massiveness of the naves, the impenetrable medieval symbology and the ridicuolus Saint stories that people used to believe and are depicted in the stained glass. And I like the way that age will turn a glorious white church into Castle Grayskull. The cathedral at Chartres is known for its outlandish amounts of stained glass, and it didn't dissapoint. Even more amazing was that any usage of the word Chartres (pronounced like "shart"), made 5 adults crack up multiple times a day for about 10 days.

We traveled north to the Normandy coast and its cliffs. They were made especially famous when some impressionists decided to paint some blurry pictures there. Nearby is the site where William the Conquerer set off to invade and conquer England. Before that he was Bill the Sheepshagger. Also nearby is the site of the D-day invasion. I reenacted the battle when I slipped in some mud and slid down the hill to a blasted out bunker. This heroism in the face of the enemy was rewarded with "You are like a five year old" from my adoring girlfriend. This brings me to why do French people purportedly dislike United Statesians, when 10,000 of us died in a few days on these beaches just for the chance of liberating occupied France? The answer is they don't, I dont think so anyway. I think it's a myth or cultural misundertanding. In my experience the French are a nice, quiet, polite people. I like them even if their kings used to wear frilly ballet shoes. Our two countries have a 200 year history of being the best of friends [we financed each other's revolutions, they gave us our favorite green lady statue, we were allies in the first world war, they loved Josephine Baker when we were too racist to do so, we rescued them from the nazis] why should there be any animosity? Why the freedom fries treatment, can't we just be friends like in the old days.





We learned on the trip that hindsight is fifty-fifty. In hindsight, going to a monastery to party for New Years seems kind of silly, but it worked out well. I have decided that Mont St. Michel is the finest synthesis of manmade and natural surroundings I have ever seen. It looks made up- like something from the cheesy cover of a fantasy novel with unicorns and dragons and shit. Granted I have not been to Petra, but I'm just going to say its for sure top five in the world. Its a tiny island capped by the extremely steep monastery with a city wall and tiny town. It is situated in a tidal flat and twice daily changeds form land-locked to island. We spent the day touring the city, then we were going to hit up the bars that night and bring in the new year on the ramparts. Theres was only one bar and its beers cost 7.50! We had the foresight to bring along a whopping 6 beers for 5 people. Luckily in addition to their own wine, the French like Belgian beer, and that shit is powerful. I have to admit the pink sky there is a little disconcerting, but we just went with it.

Frodo leads the battle charge only to chartres his pants

our lady of what the fuck is growing on your face

Oh yeah, then there was Paris. I'll confess, it was not a lifelong dream of mine to go there....I was more interested in seeing the beautiful mountains, farms and countryside like you see in the Tour de France. When we arrived at the apartment we were renting, I saw a little corner market and thought Paris looks just like I thought, like in the movies. It turns out by chance this was the market from Amelie, so it was in the movies. A few blocks away we visited the bar where Amelie worked just to keep up the theme. Theres just too much stuff in Paris to tediuosly describe it all, but for me it was just cool to be in the birthplace of art noveau [the metro entrances and the interior of the Sacre Coeur church are both examples of this], not to mention the city where Dali met Bunuel.

Our last day rocked. First we got into a screaming match in the train station about the ticket vedning machines or something, while trying to find the train to the airport. Then, at the airport, Becky lost her passport while peeing apparently. Miraculously, we found it, but then we were going to be late because it was taking so long to get through security. While in line a family of about 8 Spanish people tried to jump the line. Their reason was they were going to miss their plane (also our plane) because they were last in line and travelign with children. Seriously, only Spanish people would even think of trying that. When we finally did get through the scanner, we were in such a hurry we lost my only warm hat, becky's water bottle, and her belt. After all that crap the plane was delayed. For better or worse, we made it back to madrid.

Chartres.

One way ticket to fuckville! Vacation in France

We rendezvoued (spelling??? what is wrong with french people and their vowel assault!?) up with chris & bre, and their friend T, and Miles Quadshanks on x-mas day in Barcelona. We saw the living shit out of France, but first I gotta tell you how ridiculous and insulting Delta-Air France is. T got bumped form her flight by Delta because the plane needed a tire change. No joke. First they told her she couldn't resume her trip until like the 28th or so. But Chris, using something called the "internet", managed to find a flight via London, that the Delta douchebags could not find unassisted. Thus T was only a few hours late, but the big worry was we figgered her bags could be on another flight. Sure enough she arrived without bags, and the airline offered her nothing, not even a stubby toothbrush. They said it would be in the following afternoon, which messed with our plans, b/c Barcelona was just the cheap flight meeting point, and we were booked to stay some 8 hours drive away in the Loire Valley of France. We did not want to hang around Barcelona waiting for a bag. So Chris called at 7:oo am the next day to tell the people that it would be best if the bag were redirected to Bordeaux, or maybe Nantes, instead of Barcelona and we could grab it on the way to or while in the Loire valley. So we trusted them. Turns out the bag arrived in Barcelona anyway, even though they had 9 hours to make the calls to redirect it. Further, it turns out that the bag came to Barcelona via Paris, which would have been the idela place to reroute it to another French city....if only the Barcelona people had done anyhting at all. So Chris made sure that they intended to send the bag to France, only to find that the next day the bag was STILL in Barcelona. So the tactic was shifted, and we stopped calling Spanish employees of Air France, and started calling the French who were at least nicer but only a little more competent. Later that day a French guy told Chris the bag was landed on a plane at Bordeaux, and was suppossedly en route to Nantes from where it would be delivered by car the following day. We went about the following day checking out Chateaus in the valley, then found that the bag never got to Nantes, and was nto delivered. At about 6:00 pm we were informed that the bag had just been checked in in Bordeaux, which is where we were told it was about 24 hours earlier. At this point Chris demanded that they drive it to us that night. They wouldn't do it, claiming they had no driver. So Chris and T had to get up at 4:00, and drive to Bordeaux, wehre the baggage office opened at 7:00. Naturally the office actually opened at 7:30, just for a final insulting flourish, but due to luck lone they caught someone's attention who let them in to take the bag. Isn't that enough to make you punch a nun? Ok, enough complaining check out my pictures.