Torre, Torre, Torre(guardiano)!

About 30 kilometers up the road from Los Barrios the Franceshis have a lovely place on the beach in the quaint seaside hamlet of Torreguardiaro. It overlooks the Mediterranean Sea and provides a wonderful vista of The Rock (not the Nicholas Cage-Sean Connery movie) as well as the north coast of Africa. We arrived shortly after sunset as the atmosphere was bending the last rays of the sun into brilliant oranges, reds and pinks before yielding to the turquoises, azures and violets that heralded the descent of night. In the bay before us was a scene so stereotypically Mediterranean that it was almost comical in its detail: A tiny row boat bobbing up and down in the surf beneath a moon carved in a crescent and hung with delicate care above the bay. Just to our right on the shore was a pile of copies of the boat in the bay, tossed there presumably by their sailors rushing to get home for dinner or perhaps just an aperitif; it was only 6:30, after all. I am reasonably sure I had seen the painting in a Greek restaurant before.







I know the second picture is blurry but I like it anyway, particularly in its thumbnail form. Unfortunately, many of the pictures from the condo turned out this way; it seems that at an ISO setting of 400 or greater, the Nikon Coolpix P90 produces quite a bit of digital noise and the pictures, once blown up, start looking pretty fuzzy. My only other option that night was to use a wide-open shutter, but that would've caused motion blur. Excuses, excuses, I know. Thankfully, my lovely fiance found a tripod for us to use the last day we were down in Andalucia, but more on that in due time. Once the light had completely drained from the sky, it was back to Los Barrios for some delicious pastries and another night at El Garaje.

When We Were In Baelo Claudia, We Were Roamin'

So it was that at 8:30 on the morning after our arrival that Alex came bounding into the room Sarah and I were sharing, much to my surprise. In the ten years that I had known the man I had come to believe that he was unaware that 8:30 in the morning existed. Apparently it only took a journey across the ocean to meet up with his best friend for him to discover it.

Considering that Alex and I had been up drinking until three o'clock the previous evening I was quite surprised to find myself in good spirits; Sarah had gotten a full night's rest and seemed a bit tougher to rouse. But rouse she did and we wandered around the picturesque village for a bit, listening to the din of a protest by city workers. Turns out there's a bit of corruption in Los Barrios and these unfortunate government employees hadn't been paid in four months! So they take to marching through the streets of the village every Friday, banging on drums and waking the town quite early to remind the denizens their plight. I have no idea how the mayor, who stands accused of skimming from the city's coffers, manages to avoid a nasty fate at the hands of those in his employ, but he does.

Fearing that I wouldn't properly capture the moment, Sarah snatched my camera and jumped straight into the crowd, snapping a few nice close-up shots of the put-upon before handing me back the camera apologetically. I wasn't really upset, though; I'm nowhere near brave enough to take my camera and jump in the middle of something like that. After we purchased some sangria it was off in Alex's parents' car to parts unknown. Or Baelo Claudia, to be more specific.

Located next to the sleepy hamlet of El Lentiscal on the Costa de la Luz, Baelo Claudia is an ancient Roman ruin that was founded in the second century BC (the age of settlements in Europe will never cease to astound me). Baelo Claudia's prosperity culminated in the first half of the second century AD when it was named a Roman city but shortly afterwards entered a period of decline; the city was abandoned completely sometime around the seventh century.

From Los Barrios, the ruins are a roughly one-hour drive along the coast but a drive well worth it. The E-5/N-340 runs along a cliff side south out of the bustling port city of Algeciras, affording a stunning view of the Straight of Gibraltar and the mountains of Tetouan, Morocco! The government of Andalusia has a good site regarding the ruins as does Andalucia.com. Baelo Claudia is cheap for foreign tourists at 1.50 euros and free for citizens of the European Union (and if you're an EU citizen reading my blog, leave a comment and thank you for dropping by).

The museum has some interesting artifacts from the excavation site as well as some good information, although the audio program is Spanish-only. But the real majesty is to be found in the ruins themselves. Neither Sarah nor I had been to a Roman ruin site save for the one in the heart of Barcelona and if you haven't been to one and you're planning to visit Europe, find one. There really is nothing comparable to it in the US though I imagine some of the ancient Native American sites in Central and South America might not be too far a cry. The path winds through Baelo Claudia, taking the traveler past an aqueduct, the fish-salting factories, a basilica containing a statue of Trajan and the habitations and baths that were the hallmarks of Roman city planning.

I found the theater to be the most magnificent portion of the city; it certainly seemed to be the most intact of the structures left behind by the inhabitants of the city. Alex and I, being the mature thirty-something adults that we are, naturally had to turn the stage into a ring to settle our gladiatorial differences. My faithful intended of course documented the great battle that ensued and left my thumb mortally wounded. We eschewed the guided map of the ruins and toured the town in reverse order, snapping pictures where we felt appropriate (and, in Sarah's case, whenever she could wrest control of my Nikon). My favorites are posted below.

A random aside that I found fascinating is that the site is so close to the coast of Africa that Vodafone sent a warning to my mobile regarding the extreme expense of roaming charges. It was at that point that I looked at Sarah and told her, "my cell phone says we're roamin'." Get it? Yeah, a month on and I don't think she's forgiven me for that joke yet.

Once we'd gotten back into the Spanish cell phone service area we gave a call to Alex's house and were informed that lunch was nearly ready and would be cold if we did not head back soon, which caught the three of us off guard; we'd been expecting to fend for ourselves in the wilds of Cadiz. We arrived to find quite the spread; Mrs. Franceschi had prepared a huge meal for Alex, Sarah and me as well as the pater familias that included fried steak and pumpkin soup. Although it looked more like something from a Thanksgiving dinner, I was assured that the feast was merely representative of the typical Spanish lunch. The food was terrific and a great way to cap off the morning.

A Special Announcement

As a part of my ongoing effort to make my blog less chronology and more personal story, I'm now going to interject a piece that has nothing to do with continuing the story where I left it. To allay your fears, however, I assure you that I will pick up both The Grand Finale and Andalusia where I left them in later posts. Right now, I would like to talk about my Holga.

I have spent several years pining for this camera, ever since my Uncle Terry purchased one for my Aunt Shelley and she brought it to Tampa. Must've been the summer of '07. My beloved happened upon me as I was beginning my picture-taking renaissance and for a year prior had put up with my endlessly extolling the virtues of this plastic photography wonderment from the sweatshops of China. It is a medium-format camera whose manufacture probably cost a tiny fraction of what I ended up paying for it here in Barcelona, but once I had found the Lomo store in our new hometown, I was destined to own one. Sarah practically begged me to buy it so she wouldn't have to hear me spew forth about it any longer.

Holgas are notable not for their quality or the quality of the pictures they take but for their utter lack thereof. Everything in this camera save for the film and the flash bulb is plastic. And leaky (as in lets in a lot of light from places that are not the lens itself). It's basically a toy, albeit one used by hipsters who have driven up the price to levels comparable to very low-end digital point-and-shoots.

But oh, the pictures! I don't know exactly how to describe them, but they have renewed my appreciation for photography to the point where I now want to dust off the film cameras that Sarah brought with her so I can shoot the way the craft was begun. The Holga's pictures are warm and vignetted (that's the distortion you see in the corners) and vibrant in a way that only post-production in Photoshop seems to be able to reproduce in my digital photos. I love them. I love the Holga. I love all those poor children in China who slaved away at making my Holga. (This is hopefully a bit of humor; I do hope Holgas are not produced in hellish sweatshops deep in the bowels of the People's Republic and I try not to support these practices through my purchases, although that is becoming increasingly difficult these days. Anyhow, Holga, here's hoping you're a fair trade item.)

I think I've gushed enough about an item for one post. I'll spare you any more flowery words. I'll give you flowery pictures instead. Enjoy and VIVA ANALOG!

The Andalusian Dog

Fair warning: this post will probably only mention a dog in passing, if it mentions one at all. I just like the name. If you don't know the reference, I recommend you look it up.

*Edit* The picture on the left is the Andalusian Dog. Right next to his Andalusian owner. In bronze. Through a plastic lens. More on the Holga later.

There are a number of things that I never expected to be able to say that I did. Most of them, interestingly, now revolve around the things that I have done in Spain. Coming to Spain is one of those. Now I'm living here with my fiance. Life takes some interesting turns. Another involves staying with my best friend Alex in Spain.

Alex's mother is a descendant of some rather prominent ranchers in the Autonomous Region of Andalusia and for the last ten years he had been quite keen to extol its splendor. "You've gotta come with me to Spain, man. It's awesome!" or a similar refrain would oft be spoken. After a decade and meeting the right woman, Alex and I were finally able to make it happen: He had a couple weeks' worth of vacation time from his job back in the States, I was unemployed and had nothing but vacation time and Sarah had enough time off from school. So we decided it was time to get out of Barcelona for a nice long weekend down south.

First and foremost, I would like to say that Alex and his parents are some of the most gracious hosts I've ever had the privilege of knowing. I'll fill in the details as appropriate, but suffice it for now to say that they took great care of us, opening up their beautiful home, lending Alex the use of their car and treating Sarah and I to some truly wonderful food. Mrs. Franceschi knows how to make a lunch, that's for sure.

A smiling Alex greeted us at Seville's airport with hugs all around. The drive from the airport two hours south to the Franceschi Compound as we've lovingly come to call it was unfortunately made completely in the dark. The Andalusian night is largely unpolluted by city lights, but a half hour trek to the south brings one to the beginning of the wind farms that dot the landscape the way cookie-cutter housing tracts do in the US. And while we couldn't see the entirety of the looming, triple-bladed generators, we could certainly make out the lights they used to shoo away passing aircraft. Through these lights, we could also glimpse the eerie majesty that is these giants, silently generating electricity (safely and greenly, I might add, but I won't mount my soap box in this forum).

After two hours' drive (and about 75 minutes worth of are-we-there-yetting), we arrived at our destination tired and a bit fragrant but ready for a drink. Or three. So we dropped our bags in our weekend bedroom and set out for Alex's favorite little tapas restaurant, filling up on some rather delightful, hotel-shampoo-sized goodies. Feeling gluttonous for punishment and filled with a desire to recreate some of the days of yore in Tampa, the three of us set out for El Garaje, a lilliputian dive not far away, for another round.

Alex and I finally managed to wear out my girlfriend but we weren't going down that easily. Proud of the summer home of his childhood, Alex and I walked to the edge of town from which we could see Gibraltar off in the distance when we squinted and looked at the aircraft warning lights just right. I finally put the kibosh on the evening around 3 am, realizing we weren't going to do much of anything the next day if we didn't get to bed at some point, which is why I was stunned to be woken by Alex the next morning at 9. But, he managed to rouse us and a day at Baelo Claudia awaited us!

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men...

When I originally envisioned this blog, I imagined that I would be updating things on a near biweekly basis, filling these pages with interesting stories about the wondrous places that make Barcelona and indeed the entire country of Spain such an amazing place to visit. I thought that I would have scads of useful information that I had managed to somehow sop up simply by virtue of being here and that I would be able to share all this with you, my dear readers, informing the masses at large and gathering a following great enough to provide me with a bit of income while I attempted to settle down and make a home with my fiance in a foreign country.

As you might have gathered from the title of this post and the utter lack of updates, this was not to be. Instead, reality has intruded; the drudgery of daily life exists here for me just as it did in Tampa (please, if you employed me in the recent past in the Bay area, take no offense; I simply mean that routines are to be found everywhere). I'm taking pictures when I can and I have more than a few of them I need to post. I've put a couple of pics up on my Deviant Art site (still not as kinky as it sounds) but I've also been jumping through blazing hoops trying to settle in this country legally and wed my fiance and find a company that might be willing to sponsor me for a visa and so forth. Alas, I have let the grind of it weigh upon me and my blog has suffered for it.

So, I have decided to abandon the format that I had laid out in my head wherein I provided a chronology of my goings-on here and instead will simply report on whatever topics I feel I would like to at any given time. I'll also be supplying some of the pictures I've taken along the way and giving you a bit greater insight into how I'm thinking and feeling. I'm going to make this a bit more personal, to put it succinctly.

I will try to update much more frequently, so I hope you will continue to drop by more frequently. I would also like to read your input. Keep those cards and letters coming, people! (I mean, leave some bloody comments, would ya?) I'll be seeing you all around. And, I hope you had a Merry Turkey Day!

The Grand Finale part 1

The final act of La Mercè, at least from our perspective, was the Human Towers Festival, an event as spectacular as it was alien to Sarah and me. According to the festival’s program, two of the best tower groups in all of Catalonia are invited by the Barcelona Human Tower Group for this exhibition. This year’s invitees were the Minyons from Terrassa and the Castellers of Vilafranca, a group famous enough to have earned their own page on Wikipedia.

Sarah and I made our way to Plaça de Sant Jaume along with a classmate of hers to witness the proceedings. Like Correfoc the night before, the plaza was packed to agoraphobia-inducing levels. This did not stop Sarah from once again squeezing through spaces in the crowd that a mouse would have a hard time jamming through, but recalling the awe of the spectacle the night before I swallowed any inclination to complain and happily followed her into the square just in time to see the Castellers de Vilafranca dismantling one of their constructions. The three of us managed to squeeze against a wall and witness the next group build their tower.

Construction is very deliberate, as one would imagine an effort of this sort would be. The teams are enormous as one look at the group photo on the Castellers’ Wikipedia page will confirm. This is done so that the towers have the necessary base, called the pinya or bulk in English, comprised of several hundred people, apparently. Depending upon the tower formations used, a second and even a third base is sometimes built on top of the pinya. The cool part, from an outsider’s perspective anyway, is when the teams begin building the upper portions of the towers.

From the mass of humanity one sees people climbing one another, building the castle up quite a few stories, until the final casteller reaches into the air with four fingers extended, indicating the tower has been capped. Then, it’s back down again; if the team manages to fully assemble and disassemble the tower in an orderly fashion the attempt is called descarregat. A tower that is built to the top but falls during the disassembly stage is carregat. Any tower that does not reach the final stage is called intent, which is about the only word that makes sense to me. Catalan is a VERY foreign language. I trolled the web looking for original source material on this sport in English but those pages are sadly nowhere to be found. Wikipedia does have a good article on the sport, though, and the links in Catalan appear to be working so it is at least a good jumping-off point for those adventurous enough to attempt to feed the outward links through a translator.

Sarah, her classmate and I stayed for the construction of four towers before we decided that the crush of humanity was just too great. While it might have been fun to see a few more towers being built the truth is that it was a warm day and the sun was just beginning to bathe the enormous assembly in its light; I am pretty sure it got mighty uncomfortable in the plaza by around 1:30 in the afternoon. But we caught some great tower building, got some great pictures (at least up until the point where it became impossible for me to hold the camera up comfortably) and Sarah got some great footage of two of the castells being built (I’ll share the footage with you in the next installment in an attempt to keep this upload from being unbearably huge).

Eponymous

As I am still in the process of finding a suitable site to host all of my glorious photos where I don't have to worry about them being stolen and claimed by the unwashed masses, I've decided to post some of my favorites here. The photos are really random pictures of nothing in particular (see how that works?) that I've taken and I really like. They're from Tampa, Knoxville, the Smokies, Barcelona, all over. I'll caption them as the mood suits me. Kick back and enjoy! And don't forget to leave your comments; I would love to know what you think of my pictures.

First up are a few selections from Barcelona.











This is the Arc de Triomf in Barcelona. On the left, I have used my favorite in-camera effect, lens flare. Eat your heart out, J. J. Abrams. Better yet, hire me as your Director of Photography for Star Trek 2.









On the left, sunset over the beach in Barcelona. On the right, Christopher Columbus keeps watch over Barcelona's harbor which is where he returned to Spain after his first voyage to the Americas.









From Tibidabo, on the left, you get a really wicked view of the city of Barcelona some 550 meters below you, as well as the Mediterranean Sea and, if you look real closely at the horizon, Italy. From our first apartment over here, Viladecans, El Prat de Llobregat and Barcelona look beautiful at night on the right.

I think that's enough for today, folks. But I'll keep putting some more pictures up and telling you about all the neat stuff there is to see and do here.

Correfoc

As the last echoes of the thrum of the batucadas rattled off the buildings ancient and new, Sarah and I wended down a number of ancient narrow alleyways and found ourselves soon in front of city hall in Plaça de Sant Jaume—in the middle of a concert of traditional Catalan music. The concert would have been interesting enough in and of itself, but many members of the assembled crowd had gathered together and joined hands, doing
traditional dances in rings all over the square! It was quite enthralling to watch people of all ages holding hands and slowly perform their circular dance well enough that it looked quite coordinated. If I have the pleasure of being here next year during La Mercè, I may have to join them.

As we were standing, taking pictures and enjoying the scene playing out before us, an old man came up and started speaking to us. At first he was using Catalan; once it became obvious that neither of us was following in Catalan (Sarah and I were both just nodding politely), he switched to Spanish. Sarah understood this part, but he quickly perceived that I did not. So, this septuagenarian who'd been born and raised in Catalonia switched to English! I was jealous. I only speak English and bad English and I understand about 5 percent of what's said to me in Spanish on a good day and here this guy was telling us about this festival in English despite having been born and raised here. If I'm ever in any position of power within a school system in the United States, I am going to do everything I can to make sure children are educated bilingually.

With the sun sinking low, we headed to a café for a bit of refreshment and had just enough time to sit down before Sarah’s phone was buzzing again: If we were to make it to see the correfoc, we had better hurry to Via Laietana, cried Sarah’s mates. Sans libation but anxious to see this after-dark spectacle, Sarah and I beat a hasty path to the appointed street to connect with the larger group. Our efforts to follow her classmates quickly were abandoned, though, as we began passing float after ornate float along the street. Feeling a bit crotchety and trying to keep sight of the group and my fiancé simultaneously, I did not snap a single picture, although she was able to capture several spectacular images of dragons and horses and demons and the like. The correfoc, or “fire-run” in English, “is the great festival of fire which starts with the opening of the gates of Hell, from which all kinds of male and female devils and fire beasts pour out…As there will be dragons, flames and explosions, it’s best to remain on the sidelines as spectators,” cautions the booklet. Spectators we remained, though I suspect Sarah had other aims as she came close to folding space and time attempting to position us among the crush of people gathered there.

My initial irritation at being squeezed through the mass of humanity there to watch the proceedings evaporated as soon as the first of the fireworks went off. I would love to tell you what the next half hour was like, watching costumed men and women walk down a street waving a vast array of pyrotechnic delights surrounded by people covered in clothes to protect against burns, but it’s probably just best if I show you. Scroll down and you will see some of the sights that I got to see. It was incredible. And don’t forget to click on the images to open them up in all their glory.

La Merce

Barçelona, as it turns out, has an annual festival to commemorate its patron saint, Our Lady of Mercy, or La Mare de Déu de La Mercè if you prefer the Catalan. (For those of you unaware, Catalan is the official language of Catalonia, the autonomous region in which Barçelona is situated. It’s the co-official language along with Spanish. If you’re keeping score at home, I speak neither although I am understanding more and more of the latter.) I have no idea why this festival is not more well-known around the world, but it isn’t and it should be. I just happened to arrive the weekend the festival commenced and while I only saw a tiny fraction of the festivities myself, they were INCREDIBLE! You can view an entire list of the events here.

Having never been to La Mercè, neither Sarah nor I were entirely sure what to expect. We decided to meet up with one of her classmates in Barçelona for a little lunch and to take a look around. The three of us ended up enjoying bocadillos (very basic sandwiches) near the Santa Maria del Mar, a church upon which construction began nearly 700 years ago. The massive cathedral is squeezed tightly into its location making it very difficult to photograph the outside without making it appear to penetrate the sky, but I did get a wonderful photo of a stained glass window from the inside. My fiancé was not thrilled at how I obtained the photo, but I believe the ends justified the means.

Sarah’s classmate took his leave as Sarah and I made our way through to a parade route where we encountered a lively precession of what would in the States be called drum corps. Each beat out their own tunes before a throng of spectators. I found it interesting that there was little attempt to separate the onlookers from the groups of drummers but for a couple of folks who would occasionally back us up whenever some of the larger percussion groups came through. Sarah was more adventurous than I in getting photos of the various bands; her philosophy on photography, “get in there and shoot until someone tells you to stop,” is a much bolder one than mine, although I think I shall have to adopt a similar attitude. I still got some decent shots, I think.




Those are a few of my favorites. I might post a couple of the videos Sarah took from the Batucadas a little later. It was quite exhilarating to behold. Little did I know that this was merely a prelude to something even more amazing: the Correfoc! I’ll have more on that, though, in my next post.

Whirlwind

After my 19-hour odyssey, I decided I needed to rethink my plan for defeating jet lag as it now appeared that staying awake until 11 or midnight Central European Summer Time was no longer a viable option. So, I decided instead to shower away my transatlantic journey and lay down for a bit. An hour and a half later, I awoke in dire need of sustenance and with a greater curiosity about my surroundings, so Sarah and I decided to head downstairs for lunch. Our apartment complex consists of a series of 13-storey towers connected at the bottom by a very American-looking mall, something that reminds me of downtown Chicago. Except that a much larger percentage of the population speaks Spanish.

I was delighted to learn that the denizens of Catalonia enjoy a good sausage as much as I do (also reminiscent of Chicago) as my fiancé and I sat down at a restaurant called “Frankfurts”. I ordered a Spanish sausage and Sarah and I split an order of what I am learning is one of her favorite dishes, patatas bravas or bravas, for short. Basically, they’re deep fried chunks of potatoes topped with just the right amount of a spicy mayonnaise concoction. I think these would go over extremely well in the states, perhaps in a fast-food-restaurant-style eatery. I recommend them highly should you ever see them on a menu somewhere.

We walked around a bit more and decided to meet up with Sarah’s classmates for dinner in Barcelona. Lunch and dinner are both taken a bit later here, so we boarded a train at 8:30pm (20h30 for those keeping score in the European system) to head into the city. Our suburb is a roughly 20-minute commuter train ride from the heart of Barcelona and the rail station is a five-minute walk from our building, making the commute relatively pain-free (or at least no more difficult than the one I was used to in Tampa Bay). The metro system, I could tell, was going to take a little time for me to grasp and the city at night looked like a bewildering maze. But we made it to the restaurant, where for a mere 12.50 € each Sarah and I enjoyed a veritable feast of tapas with toasted bread slathered in tomato, ham, chorizo, and a variety of other delectable menu items topped off with a flavorful sangria. I knew then that I could easily get fat living here for any length of time.

After dinner and conversation with Sarah’s new classmates, all parties decided to hop back on the metro and head out to a club. My betrothed lead me down a half dozen corridors into the commuter catacombs beneath the ancient city and it was all I could do to keep up. Even at 2am, the hallways were packed with travelers, most of whom looked to be college students shuttling to destinations unknown. We arrived at the last stop and walked to the club only to discover that it was somewhere neither of us wanted to be. Realizing that the regional train back to suburban Viladecans was no longer running, Sarah and I boarded one of the night buses that shuttles the rest of the populace around once the reasonable have gone to sleep.
I could quite probably write an entire post on the journey from Placa Catalunya back to our apartment complex, but I will leave much of it to your imagination and instead tell you that after an hour and a half, a change of buses and a phone call to our roommate we finally arrived home utterly exhausted. But I had a great big smile on my face.

My Apologies

My intention was to write quite a bit more once I got on the ground here, but as I am sure you can imagine, I've been quite busy. Exploring the city and looking for a new job is not easy anywhere, but I've been learning more and more about my environs and taking some great pictures all the while. So, if you'll just hang in there, I expect I'll have some more time to dedicate to writing coming up soon, especially once I've finished my TEFL certification. Although, hopefully not too much more time; I would like a regular paycheck, after all.

I shall leave all of you with a picture of the happy couple in Parc Guell, one of Gaudi's extravagant designs, and Barcelona in the background. Hasta pronto!

...Into the Wild Blue Yonder

If you are reading this, you probably do not live under a rock. So you know that moving is not the easiest thing to do. It’s not rocket science, but it is enough to send the most serene of humanity scurrying about in a futile attempt to pack everything they think they might need into boxes and suitcases and give themselves hernias in the process. Add on top of that the prospect of moving far, FAR away from one’s hometown and the tension becomes that much greater. Multiply that by a factor of going to a foreign country to attempt to settle down without a job or the proper paperwork to get one and…well, you get the idea.

Given that this was the first time I’d moved out of Tampa since my—let’s call it “eye-opening”—move to Tallahassee for school some seventeen years ago and I expected the morning of my travel to be filled by hovering over a toilet emptying the contents of my stomach from the wrong end. Needless to say, I was surprised this was not the case. Instead, I was able to enjoy a full breakfast with my soon-to-be father-in-law, cleaning my plate with the greatest of ease.

Surprisingly enough, the two hours I had left between flights at each stop proved to be more than adequate, though there were a couple times at Frankfurt when I feared this would not be the case. The first came when I realized I had to have my passport checked well before I reached the departure gate. Since there are roughly 215 ways to get from one gate to the next at Frankfurt (a prospect that can be a bit confusing for the uninitiated), I simply kept pressing on in the direction of gate A20 until I came upon a short, fast-moving line. A quick “hello”, or “hallo”, as it were, a stamp in the book and I was on my way—to the security line. I hadn’t anticipated that, but the Germans apparently take their airport security VERY seriously. You get off one plane and on another, you’re going to get your bags checked. And none of this screwing around with shoes crap, either.
The scariest point for me was there; my backpack was pulled off to the side and I was called upon to open it myself. Given that I’d filled my backpack with a 1.5TB hard disc drive, a Nintendo Wii AND a computer and I thought surely they were going to have me in an interrogation room for the next couple of weeks. A quick inspection on the part of the security officer though and it was finished quite painlessly.

The most difficult portion of the trip turned out to be the flights themselves. I had this idea that I would imbibe a bit the night before travelling and stay up relatively late so that I would be completely exhausted and unable to stay awake for my transcontinental flight, thus conquering jetlag quickly and painlessly. I forced myself to stay awake from Tampa to Philadelphia so that I would be alert upon arrival and tired enough to sleep on my way to Frankfurt. Just to be sure I was going to be able to get some rest on the flight, once I had found my gate in Philadelphia I stopped at a restaurant bar, got a little lunch and two beers, then another on the flight itself. Once on the flight, however, I had no way to get comfortable. I was in an aisle seat, the plane was packed, I was wedged firmly into my seat with my backpack completely unable to fit under the seat in front of me—it was a mess. I closed my eyes for what felt like several hours in a futile attempt at a sleep that remained out of reach.

And this is all without mentioning the fact that there was an air traffic control workers’ strike in both France and Spain that kept us on the ground in the plane in Frankfurt for an extra 45 minutes. So I arrived at my destination with a distinct odor of sweat, feeling unwashed, exhausted and much like I imagine a sardine does just before being consumed. But my bag was one of the first on the carousel, there was no one at the baggage claim to hassle me over whether or not I had picked up the correct bag and my bride-to-be was brought to the airport by our new roommate in her car, so I didn’t have to worry about taking my overstuffed baggage onto public transit. It was a great relief to fall into her arms a mere 19 hours after my journey had begun. Now, the real adventure begins…

Surgical Strike

Sarah and I have a penchant for making road trips much longer than they really are. On our road trip from Tampa to Knoxville for example, we managed to turn a 10-hour drive into a 14-hour one. On our way back home, we somehow managed to add another two hours to that. And then there was the excursion to see the shuttle. But I'll leave that for another post. So we planned this trip so as to avoid any of the time-wasting pitfalls that had plagued our previous adventures. I arrived at Sarah's house around 7:30 and found a bemused girlfriend waiting impatiently for me. It was my fault; I had taken my sweet time getting to her house because she had gone to dinner with her family and I figured it would take her longer to eat and chat than it actually did. Mercifully, she's a great sport and accepted my humble apology. We were able to load my intact-but-inglorious hatchback quickly and soon began our journey to parts heretofore unexplored by us.

Sarah drove the first leg of the trip as I got to enjoy the remnants of the ziti she'd saved me. I recorded a couple takes of her discussing our reasons for driving to Miami and then took to watching the scenery. The suburbs slowly melted into exurbs, orange groves replacing the groves cookie-cutter-housing that litter the landscape of central Florida. We soon reached the gently rolling hills of Lake Wales and as pasture land made way for swamps we were treated to a glorious sunset-in the rear-view mirror. Given more time I imagine we would have stopped, but the darkening sky meant our drive was already impinging on precious sleep=time later in the evening. And so we pressed on and I managed to snap a few out-of-focus, faux-artistic shots of a distant electrical storm. Think I can sell this one to Trent Reznor?

Once the light had completely faded, most of the rest of our trip consisted of random outbursts of intellectualism, marveling at the island cities in the center strip of Florida's Turnpike and trying to listen to CDs above the din of my car. After reaching the South Florida metropolitan area and Sarah capturing me launching missives at the city of Miami, we pulled into the hotel ready for a good night's sleep.

Sarah and I set about our business early the next morning: I the chauffeur, she the neatly-coiffed executive with an appointment to keep. I am still unclear as to what exactly took place in her meeting as those without an appointment were not allowed access to the inner sanctum of the consular offices, although I heard it was conducted in both English and Spanish, presumably to keep the possibility of mutual understanding at a minimum. For me, it was forty-five minutes of staring at a wood-paneled corridor punctuated with the occasional check of my car which had been illegally parked across the street at a Publix but was easily visible from the window.

After breakfast and a quick nap at the hotel it was time to get back on the road. We had a four o'clock appointment to keep in Ft. Lauderdale, so we first did a little shopping to kill sometime. My first glimpse of the Miami skyline in the daytime was an eye-opening experience; I had not expected it to be the wall of gleaming high-rises stretching across the horizon that it was. It was for me an awe-inspiring sight as I had believed Miami to be a larger, more sprawling version of Tampa. It reminded me more of Chicago though, and coupled with it's elevated train system the city served as a stark reminder of how far my hometown must go to attain my aspirations of greatness for it.

We decided to take US 27 back home. I figured I simply had to see the Everglades and Lake Okeechobee before we left for Spain since I had embarrassingly neglected to do so for the past 35 years. It was a beautiful drive along the East Coast Buffer, a piece of land the state purchased and set aside as part of an Everglades restoration project and while I can't tell you how well that project is coming I can say it makes for lovely scenery along the east side of highway 27. The afternoon sky was painted a brilliant cobalt that I can only recall having ever seen before in the high desert and neatly decorated with cotton ball clouds that were more typical of a Florida afternoon. The emerald fields provided a nice contrast and the effect was reminiscent of an over-saturated photo.

We pressed on through the sleepy agricultural community of South Bay and into the bustling sugar town of Clewiston (pop. 7173), where we had the best Mexican food I have ever tasted. Happily, we managed to finish our meal with enough time left over to catch the sunset on the big lake. The cobalt melted into lovely soft-focused pastels, pinks and oranges were strewn across the clouds and I barely had time to notice that the lake truly began on the other side of the island we were looking at across the waterway upon which the park was situated. In retrospect, the eastern shore of the lake may have yielded a prettier sunset, but I was pleased nonetheless with the one to which we were treated. And we wouldn't have had the delicious dinner on the other side.

Then, it was back on the road for the final leg of the return trip. A distant thunderstorm treated us to a glorious light show on the horizon. Sarah managed to capture quite a few minutes of footage that came out surprisingly well, considering we were traveling around 80 for much of it. All-in-all, our quickest, easiest trip yet.

Road Trip!

"Road trip," is one of my favorite phrases in the English language. I don't know that I'll ever tire of loading my car with clothes, a camera and gas, and I hope I never do. There's a hypnotic quality to driving; whether it's in the city, constantly rowing back and forth through gears, or locked on at fifth doing 80 with limited-access asphalt as far as the eye can see, I simply love the act of driving. To say I relish my now annual trip to Knoxville to visit my best friend (and the Great Smoky Mountains that are visible from her house) would be an understatement. As soon as spring rolls around and the weather begins to get warmer, I finalize my plans for that 10-or-so hour drive up I-75 and begin dreaming of the open road.

This year, I got to share my trip with my girlfriend who, thankfully, shares my love of traveling. (I pretend not to be jealous of the fact that she's done a whole lot more of it than I have.) Inspired by a travel show we saw a couple months ago, she and I decided we should take video of our trip, edit it ourselves, and create our own little presentation. Look out, YouTube!

Our first mistake was not packing the car the night before. We'd both finished rather grueling weeks at work and were just anxious to get to bed, figuring we'd be fine taking care of it first thing in the morning. So it was at the crack of 9:30 that we started packing, and an hour later, with my Ford Focus rally edition loaded up, we finally set out. Sadly, even before we were able to get out of the shadows of downtown Tampa, we found ourselves entangled in a fine traffic mess. A frustrating couple of phone calls to the 511 traffic information hotline informed us that there was an "incident" on the freeway and that we'd be wading through a jam for the better part of 10 miles.

Roughly an hour and a half later, we encountered what we believed to be the scene of said incident. Little evidence of what had happened remained, but assuming we had found the start of the blockage, then it appeared that a rather large chunk of guardrail met with an unfortunate end at the wheels of an exceedingly undisciplined semi.

Undaunted, Sarah and I pressed on to the Florida-Georgia border shortly after noon. We thrashed out our thoughts on what sorts of shots we needed in order to put together our video, and captured our crossing into Georgia. The transition from northern Florida scenery to southern Georgia scenery is subtle (and, thanks to seemingly unending construction, slow), but gradually pine trees and peach groves began to dominate the landscape.

We marked our entrance into the Deep South with a tasty ice cream treat and made an amusing little video about our inability to find pecans. As we reached the rolling hills between Macon and Atlanta, I began debating trying for a third time to take the I-75/85 corridor straight through downtown Atlanta. The skyscrapers would have made for dramatic footage, but we were already approaching the 9-hour mark and I was rather anxious to reach Knoxville before sunrise.

Ultimately, traffic made the decision for us. Before we'd reached the Perimeter, there was another jam just to the south of Atlanta. I can understand traffic heading out of Atlanta, as there is a significant number of sprawling suburbs among the interstate web that dominates the metropolis. What I could not understand was traffic clogging the arterial highway heading into Atlanta, particularly at rush hour late on a Thursday afternoon. Sarah’s camera battery nearly ran out as she was getting footage of me swearing aimlessly at the situation. As we reached our exit, the miles of cars suddenly evaporated almost as quickly as they had appeared, and we made pretty decent time passing through the western suburbs. However, this was immediately followed by the dreaded rush hour jam on the north side of the city. Another hour's worth of gear-grinding, break-wearing driving and language unfit for print, and we finally, gleefully, escaped from metro Atlanta.

After stopping for dinner in the northern exurbs of Atlanta, Sarah and I decided that we had earned ourselves some whiskey. I figured that we should wait to search for a proper liquor store until we reached Chattanooga. I randomly picked an exit that I hoped would quickly yield a liquor store, and wandered into a small Chattanooga suburb by the name of East Brainerd. Looking at a map of the area now, I think there's even a possibility that our excursion may have taken us momentarily back into Georgia. We found no shortage of churches and even a couple of grocery stores, but alas, the liquor stores in that part of world all shutter their doors at 10 pm, a full 20 minutes prior to our arrival! In a last-ditch effort, we stopped at a Bi-Lo, one of the local grocery stores.

We failed to find anything even resembling Jameson. While walking toward the exit with our tails tucked squarely between our legs, Sarah suddenly pounced on me shouting something along the lines of, "Omygod, omygod, omygod!" As it turns out, she had noticed an old Valentine’s Day display showcasing an arrangement of flowers in a Fat Tire six pack. Fat Tire, as it turns out, is one of her favorite beers and unbeknownst to her, can be found in abundance in Tennessee. I got some entertaining footage of her sprinting to the beer aisle, then skipping out of the store with her bounty of beer. Then we gassed up, texted our apologies to our friends in Knoxville (again), gave them our new ETA (again), and hit the road (again).

The last leg of our journey from Chattanooga to Knoxville was mercifully uneventful, although for some reason, I have a mental block about just how long it takes to get from Chattanooga to Knoxville and it took us another hour and a half. But we arrived intact to greet our gracious hosts shortly after midnight, exhausted (as were they) but no worse for wear and excited about the weekend to come!

The Journey of 667 or So Miles...

...Begins and ends with a boat-load of patience. I've made the trip from Tampa to Knoxville three times now and this trip was far and away the longest it's ever taken. It should under no circumstances take 14 hours to drive less than 700 miles up I-75. Yet it did. Thank you, Atlanta. But, my girlfriend and I got some great video and a couple of pics I'm going to post and we had a great time doing it. And now we get to experience the beauty of Knoxville and the Great Smoky Mountains! I'm so excited! I'll keep you posted. As for now, I'm off to bed.

The Journey of a Thousand Miles

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”--Lao Tzu.

This is my first step. Where will it lead? I'm not sure yet, but I have a couple of ideas. I plan to use this space to document my travels as well as my photos and my occasional random thoughts. Hopefully, you will find these pages interesting and perhaps even useful (although I make no claims to their utility) and hopefully I will find many interesting and useful things to post.

With that I welcome you to "Random Pictures of Nothing in Particular." Enjoy, keep checking back and have a great rest of your day!