Tag: ‘music’
Sunday, August 29th, 2010
We’re still in San Francisco eating breakfast in a civilized way, breakfast burrito à la Leigh.
Friday night was great, we drank wine an went out in search of jazz. When we were told it would be $5 cover, Erica didn’t lose heart an pleaded that we are poor back packers, and in we went yay. It turned out the guy must have been high because the girls tried thanking him later and he was far from this planet.
The night was great with random guys jamming out, quite chilled and cheap.
Yesterday was spent getting the penultimate pieces for our preparations for burning man, and I am officially sick of shopping, we’ve done more than enough for the year.
So now we are just enjoying our last hour or two of being indoors. Probably reluctant to leave since it is so cold here in San Fran. But it will be warm where we are going.
The car is so bloated that when mcdonalds were having cars towed from their car park on Haight St we couldn’t be towed, cool maybe, but poor car.
We have almost 150L of water, 20L of alcohol, many bin bags of fancy dress, a little food, a van with new brakes, but the front left wheel is on the edge of falling off. We do have a garage in Reno sourcing us a used part, so fingers crossed we make it to the burn and out again. The can is so low on the suspension that it bottoms out entering and leaving car parks.
So a mission is ahead of us and it looks like it’s going to be a time to never be forgotten, I’ve had enough preparation and am ready to go, let’s have fun.
Tags: adventure, burning man, buy, california, camper, club, jazz, music, musician, nevada, party, reno, rv, san francisco, shopping, tired, travel, use, van
Posted in Canada summer '10, la vie | No Comments »
Friday, June 4th, 2010
So time for new beginnings.
But I’ll start with a recap of the last few weeks;
So after I finisked working at Nakiska I had plenty of time to ride for myself. I purchased a new snowboard in the sales for just over $200 to replace my years old board. All of this lead to huge improvements in my riding, and me performing new tricks and gaining lots more confidence.
I started working as a line cook in the Elk and Oarsman pub, the busiest pub in town. I worked on the salad/pizza/desert section so could munch on yummy fresh food all the time. Being able to take food home meNtion saving spending on groceries too! It was fun working there, met a few good people and made some good contacts.
I started socialising more with my new found time, and not having to wake up for six am. So this gave me time with my friends and party a bit more.
At the end of the season, the last day we went to Slush Cup. I started off by tobogganning from the highest lift on the mountain, which was crazy. Nobody on a board could keep up with me down the longest black run, only alan could manage, and that was with the brakes on. I hit moguls went flying and throw myself off to stop, heart pounding I saw the ski patrol waiting for me to tell me off. Needless to say he was nice, and just called all of the lifts to stop us from taking the sled up again.
So maybe I’d pushed fate and come off fine, for later while making my last run I caught an edge and fell down hard. Had it not been raining over the weekend, then snowing, turning the mountain to ice, I would had been fine. But hitting the ground face first onto ice left me checking for all of my teeth and questioning where all of the blood was coming from. Well I should have been wearing goggles because my sunglasses cut the bridge of my nose. I smashed my nose in causing a big nose bleed, and I grazed the skin from my face from chin to forehead.
The lively lady in ski patrol cleaned me up, gave me a little plaster so I could wear my glasses to protect my eyes from the sun and off I went to enjoy the festivities. My first slush cup was fun all in all.
Why is it I manage to smash my face up each year?
So I looked haggered and scary for a good week, I can only breathe a little through my nose, and I have a mousache because I can’t shave my upper lip.
I got a hold of a ticket to Sasquatch, a music festival in Washington state that Alan and co. were going to and I had come to think I had no chance of getting to. I rode down in convoy with some guys I’d never met, a great road trip with much junk food along the way, 13 hours in all. The venue ‘The Gorge’ is possibly one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. It’s a canyon like the Grand Canyon, but smaller and greener with a natural amphitheatre and beautiful sunsets.
The music was great especially LCD Soundsystem, Vampire Weekend, Z Trip, Booka Shade, Simian Mobile Disco and Deadmaus, and I had a good dance.
So I met some great people and had an awesome last weekend with Alan, Chris, Sarah and Sarah, so farewell to them I’ll miss them.
On the way back to Banff, I didn’t want to go back, we had trouble at the border, misunderstanding a question, getting searched and fined for not declaring alcahol. But on the upside we some a family of black bears, momma and three cubs, my first sighting of bears!
This left me with 2 days to sort my life out, pack up and clean the house.
So lots of farewells and help from Malcolm and so we left Banff, Malcolm, Natalie and I in her VW Golf laden down, roof rack piled high off on the next adventure.
We drove west, stopping got lunch in Revelstoke, an awesome mountain town.
We then hit BC and the Oakanagon valley where we’ll live for the next few months. We’ve come to pick fruit and live a leaisurely summer on the farm. I called around a few weeks ago, with little positive response but one guy Al we met up with us has given us a place to set tent, and given us lots of advice, no promise of work but things are looking positive.
So this is our new life and we are super excited for this will be a wonderful summer!
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Tags: alberta, america, band, banff, bc, blood, british colombia, cook, cut, dance, dj, drive, end, farm, festival, food, free, friendly, fun, golf, graze, happy, help, hurt, ice, la vie, music, new, nice, orchard, pain, party, people, pub, rain, roadtrip, rock, snow, snowboard, summer, sun, trick, usa, vw, washington, winter, work
Posted in Canada summer '10 | No Comments »
Saturday, October 31st, 2009
Was the best personalised plate I’ve seen in a while, on an Audi S4, nice.
So now we’re in Toronto headed out in the car to go and see courtney’s dad, the dentist, because has cavities which need sorting now.
So back to the other day and our journey away from America. With ian in the car we had a gorgeous drive up through Vermont to the border, the car clean and tidy we expected the worst. I guess it was a bother that we had to cross the border on the highway, putting us an extra hour out of our preferred route to the cottage.
But upon talking to the border guard, she seemed so overwhelmed by these English guys asking for their work visa that she didn’t even care about our lack of car registration, let alone check our vehicle contents, score 1.
Then inside the building we had to await for a grand 8 minutes and were issued with a Canadian work permit, score 1. It couldn’t have gone more smoothly 
So we spent a couple of nights at ian’s dads cottage on lake mamphemagog, peaceful, beautiful totally chilled.
We had a hike up the ski hill, showing us how unfit we are, but the views were awesome.
Then we all had a campfire in the Cold and a BBQ, damn my garlic aubergine steaks were killer.
Wednesday we went up to Montreal. Ian spent all day stressing having left his phone charger in the states, we not having a place to crash, so we stayed in a hostel, so great to meet some random people. And later we met ian’s uni mates for a few drinks, finished off with a tour of mont real to see the city from above at night, stunning.
It’s a nice city, an the girls are gorgeous, but it was time to move on.
So on the boring drive down the 401 to Toronto we got the blue and red flashing lights of trouble. So we got pulled by an unmarked police, very amiable man. But still he issued us with a $170 fine for driving with a radar detector, fair enough, but if we’d known then we wouldn’t have driven with it. So now he has it and we can only guess that in general it’s saved us money on speeding fines on our 7000 mile drive around the states.
So toronto. It’s obviously pretty wealthy compared to most places that we’ve been to on our trip, I’m judging by the abundance of nice European cars and expensive fashion around here.
So the city skyline is nice especially at night with the CN tower pulsing with different colours.
Hangind with courtney and laura and their friends we are getting to see the cooler side to the town, bars and music and it’s great to hang around with some lovely ladies.
So far we’ve been having a great time, though it’s been a while since I’ve not felt tired, maybe linger since we’ve had a night off from partying, but good times.
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Tags: band, bar, bbq, border, canada, city, drive, easy, fine, fitness, girls, highway, hike, hostel, lovely, montreal, mountain, music, night, party, police, quebec, radar, roadtrip, shoes, shop, steak, ticket, tired, toronto, trouble, usa
Posted in US road trip autumn 09, la vie | No Comments »
Monday, October 26th, 2009
Feeling pretty rough in Amherst.
Last night we saw jay-z and it’s was one of the best gigs that I’ve been to in my life. I’m not a huge fan of hip-hop, but jay-z is one of the biggest acts there is. The stage setup was awesome and the live acts awesome. The arena was packed out, 10000 people, all loving it, knowing the lyrics, the energy was unbelievable. The security was totally anal, but it’s cool because the whole experience was such a surprise and gotta say it, sic!
Before that we drank round another student house and it was so stereotypical of an American party, like in the films. Kegs, beer pong, music, girls who love the english accent, general madness.
After the gig we partied some more and now feel pretty tired.
So now we’re chilling, waiting for Christian so that we can find a printer to print off our Canadian work visa because we’re going to cross the border. Ian’s taking us up to his dads cottage for some time out.
America has been unbelievable, we’ve driven over 7000 miles through 20 states. We’ve met some great people, had many once in a lifetime experiences, lots of first times, a trip of a lifetime that words will never quite describe.
I’ve taken some nice photos and will upload some when I find time.
So fingers crossed that we don’t have too much trouble getting into Canada.
Tags: act, american, awesome, beer, college, conneticut, crazy, drive, drunk, fun, girls, hiphop, jay-z, live, massachussets, mushroom, music, party, rap, roadtrip, sing, stereotype, trip, usa
Posted in US road trip autumn 09, la vie | No Comments »
Sunday, October 11th, 2009
Nouvelle Orleans.
It’s interesting to say the least. The experience thus far has been great, almost overwhelming.
So we drove through the back roads, swamps, alligators, needing the toilet like no other day. We drove the most zig zag route into here in search of interest.
Our host is intriguing, involved in politics here, half Jewish, half catholic, half Italian, totally American and gay. I/we haven’t had so many/strong discussions that aren’t bullshit in a long time, well as brothers, ever.
We’ve had a great tour of town, and local beers, and some else.
We watched a football game, on TVs. We had a bar crawl, being that each bar that we went to wasn’t fun enough for supporting the local college team. We met people, well Vincenzo knows everybody in town. We met the bucket man, who sang alan and I a sang inside a bucket!
In the end we came back home, I guess at 11pm ish to cook gumbo, and for me, pasta. The other couchsurfer came back from being musical, and together we chatted away while cooking failed. But we drank the chili wine. We chatted about life and Krishna, and lucid dreaming, and ioraska(maybe I can’t spell that), and katrina, and new Orleans, and now everybody is laying to sleep in the dark but me.
I think it’s time, gone five hours of cooking, eating and chatting to meet the zzzzz’s
Tags: beer, car, chat, city, conversation, cooking, culture, dreaming, drive, food, gumbo, local, louisiana, music, new orleans, pasta, road trip, spirit, sport, support, swamp, talk, toilet, tour, tv, usa, walk, watch, water
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Friday, October 9th, 2009
it’s pretty humid, got the fan on my legs, and alan’s laptop roasting my legs.
we’re couchsurfing again in texas, and it’s warm. we’re staying with a group of students, of all different ages, but young, and it’s been pretty cool, melissa is the girl that is the organiser, but we’ve been having fun with all.
we came to austin to party, and party we have. we’re even staying a day extra for some reasons. reasons to stay, cheap drinks tonight, and pretty girls asking us to stay, good enough? yes!
so what’s happened, we arrived into austin, and arrived at the house, and i kind of though that melissa’s brother knew we would be coming, but he didn’t so it felt kinda awkward until we explained our invasion. it’s their first time hosting, so their couchsurf virgins, not the first time for us, but i quite like being with people who’ve never hosted for them. that way, not only are we new to a place, but it’s a new situation for them.
so after that, alan and i went for a nice midday run by the river in the afternoon sun, super humidity, almost 40 degrees, owch and swaety that was, fun, but tiring, the first time i have gone for a run since cross country when i was 12. then we headed down to barton spring for a dip in the cool cool creek, and chilled in the sun.
come evening melissa, sharleen, emily alan and i met a couple other guys, had dinner and then almost went to a heavy metal gig. we were aiming for a rock gig, but got lost walking round the block. i think the metal was lively like we would hacve liked, rock being too mellow, no dancing or anything, but it was cool, and we even got some 3d specs! trippy, well the guys beard was when we were wearing them.
afterwards, a little tipsy, some more than other we all went and climbed some old thing and watch the night city with wine.
then for more stupidity and grazes we came back and with beers climbed up a tree house in a field out back. melissa had lotsa trouble and i hacve embaressing photos to prove, but i kind of fell/slid half down the tree, so my arm is looking pretty bad ass.
then most of the guys found some sort of a bed, emily and i lay in the field, no stars, a field in a city, but no cows, was wicked though. i’m finding fields can be one of the funnest places!
so yesterda, i called fed ex to ask where my macbook is, and they were useless, had no record of it, let alone trying to deliver it 7 times and leaving notes at my mate’s office in san francisco, bloody idiots. so i got on to apple customer care, and after several periods on hold, and thirth minutes of a call, she even complained that the line way crap, so i informed her that i was on a iPhone of course, and she found me a lady who know where my computer was being held. it had been returned to apple in Tenessee, great! so now it’s being delivered to ian’s mom in new jersey, so i hope this works better for me and my laptop.
we finally got to town in the end at almost 5pm, and time for cupcakes.
then end.
not.
alan just pointed out to me that my 3000 photos that i’ve taken matches how many miles we’ve done, a picture per mile! but i have no macbook to view them with!
oh yeh i was doing some couchscouting for new orleans and came across this profile, check it now!
There are two requirements if you stay with me:
2) EVERYONE (collaborative efforts are OK) who stays has to draw me a picture in my picture guest book at some point before departure.
I can bake like a motherfucker; it’s science.
I’m still alive. Stand in awe; bask in my glory.
to say the least.
back to yesterday and we saw some crazy shops, but best off found our halloween costumes, but u can find out at halloween!
we had a little bar crawl down to the colorado to see the millions of bats fly out from roost, to go eat the pesky bugs.
out again we went last night, and sonow we’re kinda shattered, thus chilling before we go out again tonight.
i am covered in mosquito bites, it’s a little annoying, but i hope not a sign that it’s going to get bad.
that’s it for real.
Tags: apple, austin, band, bite, care, couchsurf, dance, drink, drive, eat, fedex, field, friend, fun, gig, girl, graze, laptop, macbook, mexican, mosquito, music, party, pretty, problem, road trip, sex, sleep, student, texas, tourist, uni, usa, walk, weird guy, wine
Posted in US road trip autumn 09, la vie | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
We ended up spending almost a week in New Mexico, a bit longer than the expected day and a half. We certainly enjoyed our time there.
As you can tell we aren’t in NM any longer but now Texas, so far we drove 60 miles and saw 2 cars until we got to this town for a late mexibrunch.
Albuquerque was pretty cool, and felt like we were there three days, rather than the 1.5 that was reality. It was our first couchsurf of the trip, staying with jessica and cloice near their university. So first off we went out to a greek night held by a church. Nothing religious, but Greek food, dancing, drinking and fun. We even tried dancing, couldn’t get the footwork down but was a laugh. Love for spinaköpita! After we had a bit of a drink with their friends before turning in.
Shame it wasn’t an early night as we had to get up at half four un the morning, which was painful. And so cold that it required dressing for winter. We had to queue for a park and ride, yellow school bus #3, and queue and queue again for the event, toilet, lame breakfast burrito. We spent a good while watching the bizarre spectacular that is known as Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, the worlds largest event of this type. Literally 100,000s of people from all overbthe world come to see around 750 hot air balloons taking off, or for some just attemping, supposedly the worlds most photographed event! It’s was cool, amazing, surreal, cold and we we knackered.
So after another sleep we woke up, feeling like a new day we went into town for a chill, chat and pizza. Later after being locked out, we went out to a blues night, which I’d pretty cool, no way I’d try to dance to that, bit it was enjoyable to sit and watch and drink the night away. I had a minimal sleep being kept up by our host, but we escaped yesterday after an authentic new Mexican meal, not to be tried again!
Yesterday we passed by White sands, where the first atom bomb was tested, they still create misiles and there are the White sands dunes. In the middle of nowhere are some pure brilliant White beautiful sand dunes, great for some fun, photos and alan to get his second run in with the law. Luckily for him he still managed to go Scott free.
Later we arivedbin Carlsbad, a little late, for our next couchsurf experience where we slept from arrival to departure. Oh and barely escaped alive thanks to that mental dready dog. All fingers still attached we went to the the caverns by the same name which was awesome. Not the largest, deepest or longest cave system in the world, maybe the beautifulest. It’s a nice long walk, with lots of geological wonder.
So no more new Mexico, time for the mammoth state of Texas, which doesn’t sound too exciting, going by lonely planet and Lets Go guide books.
It’s about time we made some distance.
Tags: albiquerque, balloon, blues, carlsbad. van horn, cavern, cocktail, cold, couchsurfing, dance, drink, drive, dune, fiesta, food, greek, hot air, live, meal, missile, music, new mexico, party, pizza, road, sand, sex, sky, spectacle, texas, trip, usa, white sands
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Saturday, September 12th, 2009
Cooling off.
Dad, Alison, Paul, sophie, alan and I are near Salisbury at the maybe’s house in the country. We had a nice nature hunt in wellies. Then snooker, the oldies being smashed by the kids. A lovely home meal was followed by a crazy three a side familiy on on family ping pong match, which was pretty chaotic. Five balls at once is hard to follow.
So what better way than to have a sauna/swim session? So ultimatly I feel tired but freshhhh.
My walk Tuesday was great, I wrote a poemish thing. Then sweated a whole load and ate lots of free fruit.
Wednesday involved doing Very little. Dad alan and I saw district 9 in letchworth cinema, nice, comfy, cheap. I must say that the film I worth watching, it’s a new idea, with good morals. The basics are refugee treatment, and solidarity and freedom, see it, it’s wicked!
Yesterday we had a memorial for Ian/Nam, with some old family friends, families who we grew up with, nanny, some of his school friends, and family. It was emotional, but wonderful. Again yo hear such wonderful things, atop a hill under the sun was great. Being talked into taking part was definately worth it, it was cleansing, and left me feeling great.
Afterwards, some came back to dads for dinner, and it was the first time that us Home Farm kids were together in donkey’s years.
So to bed and a day of who knows what tomorrow.
Tags: car, clean, countryside, creation, creativity, district 9, drive, family, film, food, fresh, history, la vie, love, memory, movie, music, ping pong, pogo stick, relax, remember, reunion, salisbury, sauna, sport, sweat, swim, talk, uncomfortable, walk, water, write
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Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
Ben’s party was nice. Excellent to chat with people.
I had naughty thoughts about a friend. Never before. Well was a strange weekend in all.
I came back to the boat to go fruit picking with Amythest, but I read some dive homework and passed out in the sun on the deck. I’m nice as brown again.
The past two days, martin and I have been on out dive course at Andark near southampton. It’s going great, didn’t matter too much that martin and I hadn’t done all of the homework in time, we’ve caught up now.
The only sketchy thing wad martin guiding me about without my mask, in a murky pool, getting lost. All fine.
We splashed out, mind the pun, and bought snorkel, mask, fins and boots, not too costly, but now we look like raving trouts!
So off on Thursday to Frome in Somerset for our lake dive.
I feel good this evening. I’ve walked and bought cider, local, for drinking in Switzerland. I finished my homework. I have time to sleep early.
Good night.
21:12:2012???
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Tags: berry, birdham pool, birthday, buy, chichester, course, dive, drive, friends, fruit, homework, house, learn, london, mix, music, padi, picking, read, rest, scuba, sleep, southampton, sun, tired, wet
Posted in la vie | No Comments »
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