I locked my garage key in my car.  In the garage. 

I don’t claim to be intelligent.  Sure, I may have a huge ego… I may think that I’m pretty clevel.  And sure, I may very subtly attempt to manipulate people into thinking I’m a brain… but the important thing is that I don’t explicitly claim it.  In fact, I go the other way entirely… I’m a self-deprecator guy. So what’s the point of this little tirade?  Well, it means that I can act and call myself an idiot without losing any face.  It’s nice… because deep down, underneath my fake ego that’s hidden under my fake clown-suit… I’m a big moron. 

So I locked my keys in my car.  I saw a guy walk out of a little person door inside of the garage door, and I thought to myself, “self, you don’t need to keep your key on you because you can walk out through the little man-door.”  Idiot.  You still need to get back into the garage.  I didn’t call my landlord… I didn’t call the garage guy.  Instead, I waited outside the garage… in a dark alley… under a dim streetlamp… for an hour.  People were walking by thinking that I was about to rob them.  I was trying to look as inconspicious as possible… which means I strait looked like a villain lurking in the alley (this was well past sunset btw).  I was listening to Notes in Spanish with my head buried in the transcript for the podcast which ultimately made me look fishy as hell.  Sigh.  I hate being that guy.  So finally, after about an hour and a quarter a family-packed Skoda drove up to the gate.  As soon as the car disappeared into the door, I put down the transcript and followed them in.  Pure terror on this poor lady’s face.  I tried to be as peaceful looking as possible which means I was smiling.  For those that don’t know me, I don’t smile all that much.  I laugh a lot, and I’m more or less happy, but I need a reason to make the smiley face.  So in retrospect, I think the smile was in poor taste because I probably looked like one of those crazy clown-guys.

Anyways, about the MotoHippie stuff… it’s coming along very slowly.  The biggest stumbling block is not having a damn bike.  I may have one as early as next weekend, but I’m thinking it’s going to be a little bit longer.  The next delay is the fact that I can’t swallow my pride and just use a pre-existing blogging system to create my site.  I mean, I don’t even like using myspace (basically because it’s more or less the opposite of creativity) because you’re so constrained to other people’s themes and the requirements of the site, but how can I deny that more than half of the referrals to MH come from myspace?  Sorry, got tengential for a moment there… I’m going to have to suck it up and install something on MH.  I’m leaning towards wordpress, but I don’t know.  If you have any suggestions, let me know.  I’m looking for both flexibility and power.  I don’t want to be locked into any certain design, but I still want all the functionality of having permalinks and anonymous commenting while maintaining the ability to put crap wherever the hell I want to.  Uhhg.  I should just hire someone who actually knows how this stuff all works.

I took the written examination today for my license today.  No problems, but I’m going to have to wait 10-15 days before I have my license in hand which is unfortunate considering I need to have my license in order to buy a bike.  Oh well… I’m not exactly happy about the way this is going, but what can I really do about it.  In the meantime, I’ve been having trouble getting to the internet place as I’ve been working on getting moved into my apartment.  I took possession of the keys and whatnot this past weekend and spent my first night there last night.  The temperature dropped probably 15 degrees between when I went to sleep and when I was woken in the middle of the night shivering with a sore throat.  Crazy.

Anyways… the internet place.  I’m not going to make excuses, but for whatever reason, FTPing from here to wherever GoDaddy keeps my servers is not efficient.  I’ve been trying to install WordPress onto MotoHippie but it fails everytime.  It’s only about 1MB, but it’s just not working out.  I’ll be set up with DSL in a couple days at my apartment… so I think things will work out a bit better there.

Instead of turkey and stuffing… I much rather prefer Mexican pizza and popcorn chicken.  Well… maybe not.  But I do prefer low-key activities on holidays rather than making big productions of them.  It’s nice getting together with family every once in a while, but I’m not going to go out of my way to make Thanksgiving an event.  I was invited by a few co-workers to partake in their holiday feasts, but I was like, “can we talk about this later?” and then I forgot to bring it up again.  I appreciate the hospitality, but that kind of forced socializing is really painful.  It’s early afternoon, and I’ve already done a lot i.e. slept in, worked-out, tried to resolve my license issue (unsuccessfully), did some research, and a couple other items.  Not to mention, Green Bay and Detroit play in a couple hours

I took four years of Spanish in high school.  I consider myself good with languages although I don’t speak anything but English fluently.  And I guess that’s even debatable.  Anyways, I decided that a good way to multitask and force myself to study would be to listen to Spanish podcasts as I’m working out.  I found a couple which interested me, but I ended up going with something called Notes in Spanish.  They offer beginner, intermediate, and advanced podcasts for free which I found on iTunes.  I went to the site to try to get transcripts, but found that you have to pay for the worksheets.  So I did it.  The price was un poco alto, but I have a choice: I can scrounge around for something free over the next couple of weeks, or I can just suck it up now, pay, and get started immediately.  It took two seconds to download them, and now I just have to find a printer somewhere.  Plus, they’re sending the worksheets to me in the mail… and you know I like to get mail! 

It’s been almost a week since I wrote anything.  I’m not an excuse-maker; it’s unacceptable because I told myself I’d be writing everyday and publishing at least twice a week.  However, I have been busy with work and trying to get all of the paperwork and money stuff organized for moving into my apartment this weekend.  I’ve hit a bit of a wall, I guess.  It won’t last.  I’ll overcome, but the fact that I won’t be able to get my bike out of the lot until March really took the wind out of my sails.  Add to that the fact that this whole Web 2.0 thing that I have a vision for is really intimidating and you come out with a lot of frustration.  I’ve been good about reading everyday and thinking about different directions I want to go in for my travelling, but success revolves around an even mix of action and planning, and right now I’m doing more planning than acting.  At times, it’s more fantasizing than planning.  I have yet to make a video podcast, even if just for practice.  I still have yet to make a single mash-up.  I’m getting decent pictures, but I want them displayed like ‘wow’ on MotoHippie.  The programming can be a bit overwhelming.  It’s a lot of different disciplines, and I’m just having trouble putting them all together.  Additionally, the fact that Technorati isn’t indexing and updating my site is annoying.  I believe it’s because my site isn’t XHTML compliant yet, but who knows?  And it’ll be weeks or months before I figure out how to comply with that standard.  Anyways… BORING!  I’ve been thinking about how to isolate the road vibrations from a camera as I’m riding.  There’s all kinds of solutions out there for mounting, the most popular being Ram Mounts.  I’ve never used any of these, so I figured I’d give Ram Mounts a try before trying to build my own.  My concern is that hard-mounting a video camera to my handle bars or chassis will cause the camera to bounce along with the bike.  I’ve seen some good-looking video shot from a hard-mount like this, and I’m curious to find what my experience will be.  At first, I felt sure that I’d have to build some sort of gyro-stabilized/gimbaled rig, but shoot… I’m not sure if I want to spend my time doing that.  I may have to, but let’s start easy. 

I’ve been flip-flopping back and forth on whether I want to buy a little bike to ride while waiting for my license to come through.  I know this for sure: I can’t buy a new one.  I’ve looked around and found a few that interest me, but new Yamaha XT125X/Rs cost +3500E.  That’s about 6000USD.  Rieju 125s cost about 3000E.  Wow!  I bought the Hornet in Japan for about $1500, and that was perfect.  AND twice the size of these things.  So I need to be stingy these days… getting a new little bike would not be a thrifty move on my part.  I’m going to have to find a used bike some way or another.  If there are any Spaniards reading this trying to hand off a 125cc dual-sport, drop me a line.  But I do need to get a bike.  I can’t get away with buying a car or renting or whatever.  I’m afraid that if I don’t get a bike, I won’t be much of an explorer.  I need some mobility!  I’ve barely gotten out of my hotel over the past few weeks.

Go Rangers!  Kickin’ ass.  Wish I could be back there watching a couple games. 

I found one. It’s a beautiful little apartment a few blocks from the river
in downtown El Puerto de Santa Maria. I should be moving there in the next few weeks. As I’m cruising down Bajamar, I see a dingy BMW sign hanging above this bar. I turn the corner and right there, in my new neighborhood, is a BMW Motorad dealership and mechanic. Walking distance. Now, if I could only get my bike out of the lot. Anyways… walking around downtown, I can completely tell that I’m going to have a good time. I’m not a party animal by any sense of the word, but I like to be around people and know that if I want to do something, there’s a lot going on. Well, there’s a lot going on. The Spanish have a tendency to get a late start on the morning (which I admire, but can’t seem to imitate too often), but there always seems to be people out and about. Siesta is kind of weird. They take a huge chunk of the afternoon off, so if you don’t have a full fridge, forget about eating whenever you want.

It’s hard to sum up how the last few weeks have gone. I pride myself in quickly and easily adapting to new environments and situations, but this time I feel like it’s difficult to make a clean break. I left someone behind who I didn’t want to leave, and it’s been difficult re-assuring myself that I made the right decision. You know what the crazy lady down the street says: “Every living creature on earth dies alone.” I feel that this is true, and I’ve held this as a core belief of mine for a dozen years or more. It doesn’t matter the family that you spawn, the company you surround yourself with, the “legacy” you leave behind. When it’s over, it’s over. Lights out. Nothing. So what do we do in the mean time? I don’t know any more than the next person. I hear old men on their death beds. Love. Family. I’m not sure I know what those words mean. Instinctually I group “love” and “family” with words like “religion” and “code” and “standard.” These concepts are all relative. I don’t like the words because I feel that simply by speaking them we’re buying into someone else’s idea of what they are. I want my own standards and code and religion. I want to live for myself and find out what is right for me. It’s hard. Growing up I could count on one hand the number of single adult males that I knew. We’re shown the direction we’re supposed to go in. And as children we pick up on the body language that most happily married couples show around their single peers. Is it uneasiness? Is it envy? Is it disapproval? I don’t know. Or maybe it’s just my using my imagination. “When are you going to find a nice husband and settle down?” “Do you think you want to have children?” Maybe it’s condesention?

Growing up Catholic, I learned an interesting phenomenon: active recruiting is an ongoing process in that faith. I pray harder than you. Have you found Jesus yet? Do you need help finding the way? Aspire to my level of faith. The competition is staggering, and the anxiety and inadequacy that is cultivated is enough to push people out of the church. I am probably generalizing, but that’s how I feel. But I’m trying to draw a parallel here. It’s the same with married couples. The second that my friend returns from his honeymoon, he’s recruiting me. Come on man, you need to find you a nice wife. More than anything else, my friend, I want to find my own way. Am I fighting an instinctual need to procreate? Could be, but when I do something big like that… I need to be sure that it’s from my heart and not from the collective heart of a group of people that I like and admire.

So I finally went to a casino. I’m 27, and I’ve never been in a casino to gamble. Let me tell you… I had a good time. I sat on this blackjack table until 4 this morning. It was the most fun that I’ve had in a long time. Probably because I won a bit of money. You look at it like, “I could have spent $100 bucks out on the town, or I can sit in this casino and have them pay me. Oh and they bring me free drinks.” I’m not going to turn this into a habit, but seriously… good time. Can’t wait to go back.

I spent some time poking around Cadiz and Jerez yesterday. I couldn’t find any parking on the streets of Cadiz so I pulled into a public parking structure (which turned out to be quite cheap). I used the restroom in a gas station across the street and then headed towards the beach on the Atlantic side. Young kids were out skateboarding and hanging out. All the people seemed pretty laid back. I was walking down the boardwalk towards the old city of Cadiz, and I passed dozens of folks enjoying the afternoon. Then I realized my fly was all the way down. Thanks, Spaniards. I don’t know about you, but if I saw someone walking around with his fly open, I’d tell him. Strike Two, Spain!