At the old ball game!

Disclaimer: I don’t go to sporting events to actually watch the game
(except hockey)

-Photo credit emples/flikr by Creative Commons

I took the above photo while riding on the back of a horse who was freaking out about how to avoid the truck.  To the Colombians, I must have looked like one of those jackass tourists on the Golden Gate Bridge, taking pictures while riding a bike!

Here’s some more stuff I’ve noted so far:

• Stop signs are pretty much just a suggestion here, in fact it can be downright foolhardy to obey some of them!
• Colombian beer (Aguila) is pretty good!
• There really are frequent instances of people with horse-drawn wagons in heavy traffic!  That and people carrying 50 gallon milk urns on a bicycle!
• The mountains around Bogotá are incredible.
• Most cops in the small towns are teenagers.
• Milk in Colombia is sold in a plastic bag and isn’t refrigerated until opened.
• There’s no way I’m going to try road biking here.  It would be suicidal.
• The weather in Colombia changes very quickly
• The sun sets around 5:45 to 6:15 PM year-round.
• It took about a day for my sea-level lungs to get used to the thin air.
• Even though the beef kicks ass and I found guacamole I like, there’s no way I’m eating lengua (cow tongue).
• People here don’t drink nearly as much coffee as a gringo would think.  Mostly they drink juices.
• The servings of coffee in Colombia are quite tiny compared to the US.  I bought a large mocha at a chain coffee stand (ie – kinda like a Starbucks but not) and it came in an 8oz cup!  For comparison “tall” (small) at Starbucks in the US is 12oz.
• Cañelazo pretty much almost killed me in the states (thanks Andrés!).  Even though it’s delicious, I can’t bear the thought of drinking it.  Seems to have minimal effect on Mr. Molano though.
• Colombia is in need of an interstate-type highway system.  The highways get closed to outbound traffic at the end of weekends for a period of time to allow inbound traffic to the city more space.  Cars line up and park on the side of the road for hours waiting for the highway to reopen!
• There’s a whole mall dedicated to just computers and electronics in Bogotá.  I was surprised to find prices pretty much comparable to US prices (I was warned they’d be higher).  Replaced the Molanos’ ancient 802.11b router that wouldn’t configure correctly with a new 802.11n router.  I did this all on a computer that’s in Spanish running Windows Vista (AY! Mierda! Haha!) mind you!
• Chevy is a hugely popular car brand here, but the cars aren’t actual Chevys.  They’re rebadged Isuzu, Toyota, Suzuki, Daiwoo, Opel, Saab, and Suzuki models.  Ironically most are better cars than most of the current “actual Chevys” in the brand’s native country.

OK… My “quick bullet points” are becoming long-winded and they’re coming less quickly.  It’s time for lunch anyway.  More later.

• A huge cathedral built inside a mountain of salt
• Army guys with machine guns gaurding the smaller highways from guerillas (give em the “thumbs up” as you pass)
• Small towns with cobblestone or dirt streets, each with multiple stores selling wares.  Each town has it’s own thing, music, pottery, textiles, etc.
• Monte Negro
• Two lane highways with no shoulder and no guardrail winding through The Andes
• Bunk beds are fun
• People in Colombia drive like they’re trying to kill you… seriously!
• There are several types of arepas, and they’re all pretty much awesome
• Cheese factories are hugely popular roadside attractions in Colombia
• An arepa, a beef patty, and queso fresco makes for an awesome cheeseburger
• A sixteen-stringed instrument is very hard to tune (can’t remember what it’s called, but I bought one)
• Who knew the skinny-ass cow grazing on weeds by the side of the road could taste SO DAMNED GOOD?
• A maid?  Wow.  I was set to do my own laundry, but OK.
• A huge field in the desert by Monte Negro filled with huge, ancient South American Indian penis statues… seriously!
• Busses covered with flashy disco lights
• Tiny old Renaults
• I CAN actually like guacamole, if its made the way they make it here (whipped)… seriously, I tried this stuff, ate it, and THEN they told me it was guacamole!
• I’m bringing home some of these wheat crackers, man!

That’s it for now… gotta get going. 
More when I sort my photos and videos and stuff.

This was my first meal of the day.  I was craving diner-style breakfast food and decided to have a “pig out day.”  As of late (since the last week of April) I’ve been keeping a pretty good eye on what I eat (and how much) and have been exercising to try finally getting in shape for the first time since I turned forty, so at least in comparison to everything else in the past few weeks, this is way out of line with my usual.  I’m not eating like a professional athlete or a hippie or anything, but I’m not eating like this either.  By the way, there were two little pancakes out of range of the picture included in the meal.

The day started off not too badly.  It’s my day off, I slept in.  I’d planned to go for a bike ride, but since it was rainy, I didn’t (I did manage a nice ride last night).  I got a couple small errands done.  Overall pretty OK.

Then, I went out to eat.

I headed to a neighborhood greasy spoon called “The Bashful Bull.”  It’s one of those diners that you see imitated in movies and television shows.  Half a star for ambiance, two and a half for the food.  I ordered the biscuits and gravy combo, something I have rare opportunity to eat peacefully because if I order this kind of thing when my girlfriend is around I get the loving lecture about how bad a dietary choice it is.  “It’s like eating a heart attack” she has said, further telling me she can picture the gravy trying to navigate my arteries.  BUT TODAY IS “PIG OUT DAY.”

Starting almost immediately after I left the diner, my mood started deteriorating.  All of the sudden, traffic was irritating.  Pedestrians seemed to be trying to piss me off by crossing in front of me extra slowly. The rain was getting to me too.  I went home.

At home, I laid on my bed, Hulu running on my MacBook, drifting in and out of sleep.  My laundry needs done.  There are dirty dishes in my sink.  I need to get online and renew my nursing license.  I did none of it.  As the sun started to peak through the clouds around 3pm, I though I should get on my bike and go for a ride… then I thought “Nah, I’ve got a CPR class at 5:30.  I’ll rest ’til it’s time to go there.”  I stayed on the bed, intermittently snoozing until I left the house at 4:45.

On my way to CPR class (on Mission downtown), I took the route that takes me up and over the hill above the Castro.  My intent was to cut over to South Van Ness and follow it to Mission.  Somewhere, I took a wrong turn and got mixed up on the one way streets in the Castro.  Those who know me understand that I very rarely drive in the city because it’s just too much of a pain in the ass, so I don’t know my way around very well except for major streets and routes I travel all the time.   Otherwise, it’s busses, bikes, and cabs (formerly walking too, but I live too far out for that now).

I tried using my iPhone’s map feature to find where I was and plot the course, but to no avail.  The GPS kept telling me I was in places I KNEW I wasn’t… not even close.  So, I drove ’til I figured it out and then headed on my way, fuming.  By the time I reached downtown, it was 5:15.  There were cars everywhere and people were driving like they were just figuring it out for the first time.  My blood was boiling.  I tried to call my girlfriend to vent, but ATT’s suck-ass service wouldn’t place the call.  With every tick of the clock, my head thumped faster.  At 5:30, the door would be locked and no-one else would be admitted to the classroom.  I’d have to reschedule.

At 5:30 on the dot, I found myself in the neighborhood of the classroom… but with no parking options.  The nearby garages were marked “full” and all the meters were loading zones or half hour limit zones.  No good.  I missed the class.  $60 in nonrefundable fees down the toilet.

By this time, my day was ruined.  I was a wreck.  My girlfriend cheered me up somewhat and eventually I got my act together, rescheduled the class, and started feeling a bit better (although there are still the matters of the laundry, the dishes, and the nursing license… but in due time).  Then I got to thinking about the fact that I’d not really been able to pinpoint any reason for my shitty mood today.  The only thing I could piece together was that my mood changed at the time I at a huge meal laden with fat, salt, processed sugars, and probably loads of MSG.

Not exactly a scientific experiment or anything, but we’ll see if my mood improves after I start eating real food again.

Not that I’m an advocate for chemicals in food, but I’m hearing the latest buzz about pesticides being the reason Americans are fat and thinking “riiiiiight.” No one ever wants to blame it on eating too much crappy food and not exercising enough. And why is it these presentations “recent studies and research” about some uncontrollable reason for obesity always seem to be brought to light by an overweight person?

Image: KFC advertising

When I was a little kid, I hated the idea of cars that would run on electricity or solar power because all the good car chases in movies used fast cars.  Remember, I was a kid in the 70s, well before the Tesla Roadster was anything but a sci-fi fantasy.  I also like watching car races, which were fast and loud… I think that’s how a lot of grown-up kids think today.

Well, apparently electric cars can be fast and fun.  Yes, most electricity is produced by burning coal, but that could be changed if we wanted to change it.  Apparently, many race cars run on alcohol (NASCAR uses carbureted gasoline engines).  Ethanol and methanol can be produced from biological material and, while that’s more expensive in the short run, it’s much cleaner and safer than gasoline (they use alcohol at the Indianapolis 500 because the cars explode and burn in a much less nasty manner than they would using gasoline).

Of course the almighty Big Oil will do anything not to lose it’s chokehold on the US market for energy… but perhaps at the very least we could hope they’d be compelled to shift their business model to corn or sugarcane production.  Hell, we already produce far too much corn in this country anyway, and do redhead bastard stepchild things with it like feed it to animals that aren’t meant to consume it and produce fattening Frankenstein “food products” for our already fat population.  Maybe there’s a better use for that corn, eh?  (Although I just had a weird vision of an engine that runs on liposuction fat)

Countries like Brazil, Russia, and China are already doing this, by the way.  Yes, China; the last country on the planet to stop producing smoky-ass steam engines for mainline railroad use.  Yes, switching energy sources would be a major pain in the ass, but if we already have to drill miles under the sea and possibly create situations like the mess BP is in right now (betcha they don’t fix the problem before the end of the summer).

Image from The Big Picture at Boston.com – “Caught in the Oil.”

Vidcon?  Hmm… got a chance to go to Colombia instead.  Guess which I picked.

Anyway…

I’ve got to get some sleep as I’ve got a bike ride in the morning… but more later.

I think the “lost iPhone 4″ story is fishy… Some guy finds it in a bar in Redwood City and has the notion and knowledge to hand it over to one of the internet’s most popular tech blogs for it to be shown in powered-down mode only?  Hmm… just seems like it creates a bunch of traffic for Gizmodo and a bunch of iPhone hype for Apple.  Biggest “win/win” of the year.  Besides, Apple is so careful with its products pre-launch that I just can’t imagine their handing out prototype iPhones for their employees to be leaving on barstools in public places.

On top of that, I can’t imagine a well-known company like Gizmodo willingly paying some guy $5000 for what would most definitely be stolen property only to post pictures of said stolen property on the internet in light of the fact that Apple probably has one of the most formidable legal teams in the world.  If this were really the case, it could be like handing ownership of the blog site over to Apple.  They can’t possibly be pulling that much ad revenue to cover the cost of possible legal battles.

Plus “Apple remotely killed the phone?”  Not quite sure about that one.

I call bullshit.

(photo link Gizmodo.com)