Gulch

Mental Vacations

 Once in a while, it's good to unfocus your mind, push your chair back, and take five minutes to go on a mental holiday.  Here's a couple quick links that recently helped me get away from it all for a few minutes:

• My all-time favorite beer commercial from Estrella Damm.  It comes with all the unrealistic expectations of any beer-driven marketing.  But still...Formentera.  Estrella Damm is the main beer in Catalonia and I used to think that it was inferior to my favorite Spanish beer of Cruzcampo.  Of course, that was because I once spent four months living next to a Cruzcampo brewery and could smell the sweet, sweet beer fumes everyday.  So, I guess the take home message is that the true way to market beer to me is via my nose.  Build a brewery near me and I'll be a customer for life.  The band in the commercial, Billie the Vision and the Dancers, has their music available for download by donation - the song is called Summer Cat. 

• The song Horchata by Vampire Weekend is currently available for free download from their website.  Horchata is something that will forever be linked in my mind with Guatamala, where I once stayed at a place that served it in all-you-can-drink quantities.  It turns out I can drink a lot of it. 

Night Crossings

It's a little before five pm and I'm sitting in the upper deck of an Air France 747 soon bound for Paris.  Part of my mind is thinking about the Trans Atlantic flight that lies ahead of me but mainly I'm wondering what type of people my row-mates are.  Specifically, I'm wondering if the fact they are both wearing shorts and tank-tops for a night flight between Toronto and Paris in early May makes them very Canadian or just crazy. 

The man is large and has a tattoo of some sort of motorcycle or perhaps snowmobile logo on his upper arm.  The woman is blonde and tan and a bit fidgety.  Before they have even sat down, though, they seemed to have charmed all of the more reserved French people sitting across the aisle.  Everyone likes it when a guest is enthusiastic about visiting their homes and their enthusiasm is strong enough to be contagious in a way that the CDC might issue an alert if they monitored such things.

Before our flight even takes off, I learn that they had won a free trip to a warm beach resort in the South of France from a radio station.  I relaxed a bit when I heard that, happy to hear the people that I would be sharing so small a space for the next six hours were optimistic rather than insane (which hasn't always been the case with people I've sat next to on long flights).

"This plane is really nice," the man states after a flight attendant serves everyone their own small bottles of wine.  "We should only fly wherever Air France goes."

I nod my head in agreement.  I have never ridden in the upper deck of a 747 before, as lowest price mostly dictates how I travel and the upper floor is usually business or premium class.  However, thanks to some tips buried in the forums at FlyerTalk and a little luck, I was directed up a flight of stairs as I got on board.  The upper cabin is surprisingly small and spacious and feels like how I imagine air travel to be rather than how it usually is: comfortable, relaxed, and modern rather than cramped and hassled.  Because of the curve of the cabin walls there is even an extra eight inches of space between my window seat and the window that has been fitted with an extra shelf. 

Our row is three back from the cockpit door and being that far forward makes the flight especially quiet.  The huge power and thrust of the engines clearly comes from behind us and it reminds me of the large car ferries I regularly rode on when I lived on an island, a fast ship sailing through the sky.  On a map, I imagine, the night ahead of us is a slow moving black glacier that slowly sweeps across the globe.  We will cross from one side of night somewhere over eastern Canada and arrive on the far shore of day near Paris. The night ahead of us is not so much a matter of time but a matter of distance, something to be crossed.  

The flight between Toronto and Paris takes about six hours and it crosses the night in much the same way it crosses the ocean: too quickly for the body but not fast enough for mind.  Or maybe that's backwards.  At any rate, one minute you're having dinner as the sun sets outside, eying the in-flight movie and being slightly amazed that Air France shows nudity, and the next moment your being served breakfast while the sun rises and you're pretty sure - but not positive - that the same movie is still playing.  Your mind feels like a two wheel drive car churning through mud, for all of the work and energy involved, there should be more forward motion.  The farther my body travels in the plane, the farther it feels like my mind falls behind.

"I can't wait to land and smoke," says the women sitting next to me as the sky outside lightens and night falls further and further behind us. She starts to fidget with the seat back tray.

"Oh, but there is no smoking in Charles du Gaul," says a french lady sitting across the aisle. "You must go outside."

"There's no smoking sections at all?" the woman asks, her voice taking on the troubled note of someone who just had their credit card denied while paying for dinner at a fancy restaurant.

"No, none," the French lady replies with a sympathetic smile.

"Oh, I hope we land soon."

And, for the first flight in a long time, I hope we don't.  Instead, as I sit back in my chair and watch the clouds go by, I realize that I'm happy in just the most basic act of travel: that of going forward.  Of course, I just hope my mind catches up. 

Life in the Frozen City

Before Jen and I moved to Toronto, one of the things that we were dreading was spending the winter in the Great Lake Region. Winter, though, proved to not be that bad and here is the photo graphic evidence to show off our winter survival skills in the big city:

Photo Album: Winter in Toronto

Montana Quarters

The Cowboy leaned over and thumped an empty shot glass down on the wooden surface of our table.   "What's Patrón?" he asked.

"Tequila", my brother answered.

"It's shit," said the Cowboy.

He, as young cowboys at bars in Montana often do, was wearing a wide brimmed black cowboy hat and a western-styled collared shirt. He was clean shaven, chiseled jawed, and very drunk.

Earlier in the evening, the country western band in the front of the bar had dedicated a song to one of his friends on the occasion of her 21st birthday.  The friend in question had a very squeaky voice and, to the amusement of the whole bar, was very excited to have reached the legal drinking age.

"This next song is for Jessica who is turning 21 tonight," the band said, unenthusiastically.

"Squeak! Oh. My. SQUEEAKING. God. SQUEEEEAK!" said Jessica with the loud sort of zest for life that only comes with finishing your 15th drink of the hour.

The Cowboy thumped another shot glass filled with a murky liquid on our table. "Here, drink this," the cowboy said to our table, which consisted of me, Jen, my brother, and his girlfriend.

Our table was silent. I made eye contact with my brother across the table.  He shrugged. His girlfriend giggled. No one made a move for the shot glass.

"Ah, come on. I ain't drugged it," said the Cowboy. He paused, and then looked at us suspiciously. "You guy's ain't from Nebraska, are you?" 

Our table was silent.

"Okay, here's what we are going to do," the Cowboy said, holding up a coin. "We are going to play quarters.  Whoever bounces it in gets to say who has to drink the shot."

He then flipped the quarter so that it bounced off our table and then hit the side of the shot glass.

"Quarters?" I thought to myself, frantically wishing I had attended the sort of parties in college that would have allowed me to develop the proper social skills for such a situation or, at the very least, helped me develop better hand eye coordination.

The Cowboy picked up the quarter and handed it to me. I bounced the quarter off the table and it spun sideways and landed on the floor, which was glistening with a wet layer of melted snow and mud that had been tracked in from the parking lot.

The Cowboy narrowed his eyes and slowly reached down and picked up the coin. He wiped it on his jeans and handed it to Jen.  I could tell there was no way she was going to drink a mystery liquid, given to her by a stranger, containing a quarter that had recently been on the floor. She bounced it off the table, it clinked the glass way below the rim, and landed back on the table.

I let out a breath of relief. I wasn't sure if she'd pick the cowboy or me to drink if she had landed it in the shot glass. The Cowboy handed the quarter to my brother. Clunk, clink,  miss.

The quarter was passed to my brother's girlfriend. Clunk, miss.

The cowboy handed the quarter back to me.  This time I managed not to hit the floor.

Jen picked the quarter up from where it had landed on her lap. "You know," she said to the Cowboy, "There's no way in hell anyone here's going to drink that shot."

The Cowboy looking puzzled, glanced at me.  I avoided eye contact by staring at the shot glass. Jen tossed the quarter and it hit the table and fell to the side of the shot glass. She picked up the quarter and handed it to my brother.

Clunk, thunk, the quarter was back on the floor.  The Cowboy reached down, picked up the coin, and handed it to my brother's girlfriend

"SQUEEAK! Squeeak!," said Jessica from the nearby table and the Cowboy looked over.

My brother's girlfriend, sensing an opening, lashed out lightening fast and dunked the quarter into the shot glass. It floated lazily to the bottom of the 3 ounces of murky liquid, leaving what I thought looked like a greasy trail behind it.

The Cowboy's head snapped back around.

Everyone at our table, as well an older couple sitting at the table next to us, cheered. The Cowboy peered at the quarter resting on the bottom of the shot glass.  "Huh," he said. "There's no way."

He peered at us and then turned towards the older couple he apparently thought were neutral observes sitting next to us.

"Did she really get it in?" he asked.

"Oh yeah," said the man.

"It was amazing," said the woman.

"You have to drink it," said my brother's girlfriend.

The Cowboy looked at the older couple, who just happened to be my parents. They nodded and shrugged as if to say, "Sorry those are the rules."

The cowboy picked up the shot and in one smooth motion downed the alcohol.  He sucked on the quarter for a moment, puffed out his cheeks and spat it out.  The now shiny coin sailed across the table in a perfect arc and landed down the front of Jen's dress.

Jen's face went red and she dug a hand down into the front of her dress.

"Wait," the Cowboy said, "Did I just get that down your …"

Jen's pulled her fist out of her shirt and chucked the quarter at the Cowboy. My parents and everyone at our table broke out laughing.  The Cowboy looked at us and then chuckled hesitantly, seeming somewhat unsure if we were laughing at him or Jen.

"Squeak," said Jessica. The Cowboy nodded at us and turned away.

A couple minutes later, the Cowboy turned around and thumped a glass of something that looked tropical and fruity on our table.  He held up a quarter.

"Okay," he said. "Here's what we are going to do…" he trailed off. He peered at our table, looking at each person.

"Ah screw it," he said as he took his drink back and turned around.

Downward Drifters

Some quick videos I recently took at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. The music is from the theme to the movie 2046 by Shigeru Umebayashi.