71:Hendersonville:T’was the night before Thanksgiving…
In the morning I drove back up the mountain and back down to Hendersonville where I was hoping to run into Miriam for Thanksgiving. She was up in North Carolina with her friend Patrick having come up the night before. I checked my messages when I got out of the park and back into normal reception and found she had left me *my* number to contact her on. I parked up in town, wandered around for half an hour and just came out of the Music shop and was wondering about my next move when I heard “Mark!!†and she jumped out and into my arms for a hug. Well the move was the same as I planned and I dragged them both to the Bear Paw Café for a coffee and more importantly, the use of the restroom. Miriam was desperate to use the internet to submit some work so after only drinking half her earl grey she and Patrick ran off to the Library to sort that out, leaving me with sipping coffee and trying to automate my GPS logs a bit better. She returned about an hour later, still not having gotten online and displaying the all too familiar signs of not having any food. Patrick took her home which I didn’t object to, I wasn’t looking forward to another crisis that afternoon and I went looking for a coin laundry.
67:Savannah:Spooky Savannah
Next morning I set off on a proper touristy day to check out Savannah. This is an old town for the States, a bit of a tourist trap really but full of old and interesting architecture and compact enough, for an American town, to walk around and see most of what it has to offer in a day. I drove in, pulled out my camera and set off to explore. There were plenty of trolley tours going around so I grabbed one of their maps to give me an idea of what to go and look at and then just wandered at random. The northern end of the town had garden squares all over which was really nice and rather unusual too I thought, horse drawn carriages ferried tourists about (mostly American) and the town had a aura of understated wealth about it. Old money they call it.
60: Palm Beach-Stuck in the middle with you…
I was very happy I hadn’t been drinking that whiskey at 3am when I took a look at Randy’s face. It was 10am and he was 2 hours late for work. He took some time to show me his weapon though and I got shot… I meant I got A shot. Always get them confused. He took out the magazine and checked the chamber, a real pro and apparently a deputized cop. Not someone you want to be insulting while drunk but then I always get away with it when Im around WPC Tim Keenan :p
Everyone had seemed to disappear in the night, Randy ran off to work so that just left myself, John and Carrine to head off for breakfast. I did a bit of work as payment for my accommodation first and help do some wall scrapping. Very therapeutic I think.
Tampa Fl: Windy Night
I had a nice nights camping the previous night in Little Manatee River Park, was my first state park and for $16 I couldn’t complain. I had water and power right next to the camping ground, I sat, lit a fire and played my guitar. I tried to forget about my sunglasses :p
I was just south of Tampa/St Peterburg and it was coming up on the weekend. I got back in the saddle and headed North, back into the burbs and civilization. Or what passes for it in
Pirate Harbour : Extreme Paranoia…
Back at the Holiday Inn I did the usual move of stealing not only their wifi but getting a zip-lock full of ice for my cooler. I have to stay hydrated and cool!! :p Its so nice to sit by the pool checking your email and enjoying the sun. Next time I’m going for a swim too J Instead I went back to where I saw the sunset and lay there crunching my abs, checking out the babes and watching the pod of dolphins frolicking 30 meters off the shore. I couldn’t get them to come any closer when I jumped in for a swim but my waterproof camera’s battery was dead anyway L I was heading North to the Tampa area now but no one on Couchsurfing seemed to really be interesting, and I didn’t want to sleep in Wal-mart again if I could help it. I looked on the map and saw a place called ‘
New York : Tensing for the sprint south….
After the excitement of the previous night we weren’t up until late, Marie went out to buy a new phone while I lazed around. We went out for bagels in a cool little store nearby and decided what to do with the rest of the day. I wanted to go to a legendary camera store which was closed the previous day so we set off to walk most of the way there. It was hot and sunny again and, despite my protesting feet, another perfect day to spend in one of my favourite cities in the world. I was really going to be putting the miles in on those shoes, new or not. We took a subway a few stops since the store was going to close reasonably early and its a good job we did. The place was a mad house! Its jewish owned and run, which means its closed on Saturday so it was full of local shoppers who packed the place out. It was a huge store anyway and they stock everything. I got given a catalogue on the way in which was 3 cm thick and despite the masses of staff still had to queue to ask questions. I had wanted to buy a big telephoto zoom but I was still waiting on my last pay cheque so decided to hold off. I did pick up a nice point and shoot though which will now live in my pocket when I need something convienient to take with me. The store has a set of tracks that deliver the items to the assistant within a couple of minutes that is a wonder to see. They didn’t have the elusive backpack I was after though, that will be a job for ebay I think…
New York: New York Reality
Driving in Manhattan seemed easy enough on thursday night at 9pm but I was about to try it on a Saturday morning which was going to be fun. I gave myself plenty of time… I thought. The traffic was pretty heavy, I wouldn’t like to do this on a weekday, but I just had to go for it and cross my fingers. I was hopelessly lost after a while but Yoda knew where to go. I was thinking ‘when am I going to go over the bridge’ before I realised I was already halfway downtown and had missed the junction. It cost me less this time too as I missed all the rip off toll places that had cost me a fortune the night before. I saw Jax again on a billboard as I turned into the Theatre district which was funny. Glad to see she’s still working and has an excuse for not mailing me and inviting me to a load of model parties! :p
New York: Chasing Dinosaurs
George went to work early and I tried to remember how I get to the train station for my express train into Manhattan. Finding the station was fine, getting back wouldn’t be so easy. I took the 10.05 express train to 125th in Harlem and got off and went looking for the subway. Its a pretty poor neighborhood and the African Americans outnumbered everyone else by 20 to 1. I started wondering if getting a late train back from here at 1am would be a good idea…. I decided to buy a 7 day pass, I might only stay in NYC for a few days but it would be a saving if I used it for 3 or more days. I jumped on a train heading downtown, went too far, came back and failed to read the subway map correctly, ending up on the west side and thinking I was on the east and then walking the wrong way. I was saved by a local girl when she saw me looking confusedly at my map and pointing me in the right direction. I was there at 11.25 and no renae. She had no mobile either so I had no way to contact her, nothing to do but grab a soft jalepeno pretzel and wait and see. She came about 15 minutes later having sat at her subway stop waiting 30 minutes for her train. She only had 10 minutes travelling time but when the trains dont run you go nowhere.
The road to New York City
I managed to haul my ass out of bed at 10am or so and sorted my stuff out. Renae had mailed me the previous night to say there was a NYC party on that night and when that happens it usually means something. She needed someone to go to a gig she wanted to see too so my next stop looked like New York. I went and got the car, loaded up and then what? NYC was quite close, only about 4 hours away and the gathering wasn’t until 9pm so I had time to kill. I decided to see something of Rhode Island so started driving south. I grabbed some lunch in Providence which is the state capital but you would never guess it from looking at it, it’s tiny. I carried on down to Newport and stopped at some mall for a couple of hours for some supplies, I went to the dollar store and got basic camping and cleaning gear as well as some stuff from Radioshack as my power inverter was lost in my little bag. I was still on a budget of sorts though so refused to get a $20 tape adapter. Shocking prices. I had a minor heart attack when I got back and found I had walked off and left my trunk wide open!
Boston Ma: Police Busts and Strip Jenga.
I had another fun weekend all told. I woke late on Helens couch and it was warm and sunny outside. I checked craiglist and there were now a glut of reasonable looking vehicles. Great.The distance they at was not so handy but I phoned one of them and the guy, Eric, offered to drive down to show it to me the next day. Cool. There were a few more but this one looked pretty decent and it had the advantage of a broken AC unit so would be a lot cheaper. I decided to go for a wander over and around Harvard and mentally prepare myself for the party at Tony Daggets that night.
(more…)
A walk in the woods.
The woods smelled of strawberries, but maybe that was just wishful thinking as the season was too late. Maybe it was the ones Daniella had brought with her, we ate some for breakfast, but not poor Mounia as she is allergic. Somehow we had managed to stay up until midnight and didn’t drag ourselves out of our tents until 11am. I had a cold night despite my down sleeping bag and crappy sleeping mat. Perhaps another couple of pairs of socks would have stopped my feet feeling like ice blocks.
Im all stiff!!
Not in the erotic sense of course, I went rockclimbing last night for the first time. Ok I did it in Thailand up a mountain, but that felt more like the guy pulling me up. Was where the Tsunami hit, I wonder if he is ok…Im in Montreal, everything is in French, sexy girls keep walking past, it really could be in France except Im on the wrong continent. I came over on Sunday afternoon with a couple of guys from Venezuala who live here. I met them on Thursday night in the Cadillac lounge and then went dancing.
Longest Friday
What a hectic couple of days, lots to do, things to sort out, post, put up lofts, computers to fix, relatives to see… felt like it would never end. And then I go to sleep at 4am, get up at 9am, run around madly for the last few hours, make it to the Airport 3 hours before my flight, walk through customs in 5 minutes and then sit and wait for my flight. Ane wait. And wait…. still no gate assigned but it says there will be one in 25 minutes. They have been saying that for the last 2 hours.
I checked my insurance I bought this morning and it doesn’t have delay cover. Damn! Im sure there is someting about a flight being delayed by a certain time in the EU travelling outside the EU means you can et something. Maybe I should go and ask because its going to be at least 3 hours delayed. A cancellation and days delay would be good, I can get a last crack at the post office and burn some more DVDs.
My main concern now is somewhere to stay, as couchsurfing turned up nothing, I didn’t bother with Hospitality Club and all the hostels are either very expensive or full. Well, very expensive being £30 for a room, which considering I spent £50 in Dublin isn’t too bad. I need a different mindset now though, I have to cut costs as much as possible to stay on the road for as long as possible. How long I can manage this in the first world will be interesting to see, but camping, sleeping in Walmart car parks and hopefully getting some hosts will help. If Im haerroraging money I will be out of the country quick smart and GW can find some other sucker to prop up his ecomomy.
I cant believe the Euro and US cash machines in the airport have the gall to say they are commision free. The rate is shocking, 1.34 and 1.86 respectively. I will be getting $2 for my pound in the States Im sure, which is a nice 8% better rate. Its a good job too as I have things to buy. I need a laptop which will last me and let me blog, surf, organise my site (as well as a couple more) and post process all the photos Im duty bound to take. That itself is a rather scary idea, nice camera and a itchy finger means I could well be having to deal with hundreds of photos everyday. I will have to get myself organised and work out a good workflow for them otherwise I will be stuck with an impossible task.
That is a good idea for an outsourcing business that I may have to investigate, send your photos off to India and let them label them, crop, rotate, correct the colour, delete the dross and generally tart them up before mailing them back or putting them on your website. Just a place to upload the stuff I take onto my site will be another challenge I will have to overcome. Im sure the US is chock full of free wifi spots but what happens when I get further south? This is why I shouldn’t be so lazy about maintaining my contacts in Sweden where super fast internet connections for *uploading* files are mega cheap.
I will also be pricing up a couple more lens’ which are a bargain in the Stateas compared to the UK. The advantage is though that when my money runs out I will/should be so good I can come back to the UK and earn a mint as a wedding photographer. Nothing like a couple of years taking photographs of anything that moves to get you proficient with a camera. I even have my old SLR which cost me an absolute fortune in Autralia and is now essentially worthless as a backup body. I would rather that gets snatched in the ghetto than my beautiful digital body. I have to pick up a compact camera too, probably one of those groovy Pentax waterproof ones. With my phone and video camera I will be overdoing it a bit! :p
And then there is the issue of a car….
The flight was fairly uneventful, I spent half of it trying, unsuccessfully to get my GPS to reconnect but I think we were going too fast. It seemed to work fine until at least Ireland and then it lost the connection and never got it back. I hardly think its a huge problem, Im not intending to take any flights for a very long time.
So glad I hit the toilets before I got on the plane, after a 3 1/2 hour delay we enventually got under way about 5.30 and the reason was that they had been having problems with the toilets. I sat by the window, occasionally chatting to the middle aged scouse couple who say next to me (she constantly gave me gum, Im sure I brushed that morning… :p), watched Oceans 13, 90% of Shrek The third, the last bit of that ice skating comedy and wild hogs on a terrible TV in the ceiling. Not sure if I slept, it certainly didn;t feel like it. Im not sure if I should write to zoom and complain, I dont really think it was too bad, but by western standards it wasn;t good. If you’ve ever spent any time on Chinese trains your standard tend to slip a bit.
When we eventually got into Toronto 4 1/2 hours late (head wind for an extra hour) I sailed through customs and after a longer than average wait for my bag was in Canada. It was a bit damp but as I sat waiting for it I was imagining it was covered with bits of broken toilet and god knows what else.
Now I faced the dilema that I had force myself into, I had no guide book, no hostel booking, no map and had never been here before. The hotels looked pretty expensive and if I booked in would I even be able to get something cheap the next day? After 20 minutes wandering and looking for a working ATM I asked how much the Hertz rentals were. Well, no compacts but I could get a mustang for $47 a day… hmmm. Would be nice but not great for sleeping in, although would it mean I could go to a bar and pull with a cool car….? Theoretically…
I opted for a mini van, figuring I could just find somewhere quiet and stretch out. Only after I had paid did the guy tell me 90% of the company was on strike and there was a picket line for the cars. Great! but I thought it was simultaniously kinda cool, I would have to break through the rioting workers, getting hit by placards and getting spit on. Not quite as cool, I collected my keys and sat in a queue of cars waiting for the barrier to be lifted. After 20 minutes (which let me get changed in the back, get my GPS working on my phone and find a cool radio station (“the edge” is really good)) I was at the front of the line chatting to the Indian Security guard until my 5 minutes were up.
So now where? Hotel? Camping spot? Jail? I hit the gas and repeated my mantra about driving on the right choosing a random direction by following the majority of the cars. It kinda reminded me of a nighttime xbox driving game in my sleepy state, without the cops or crashes. I drove for 1/2 or so, bought some random groceries and drove a bit more to find a big car park and got my head down. You can see all this on the GPS map! Cool eh??? /zzzzzzzzz :p
I can’t believe it
I’m in shock… Someone left me a negative feedback on ebay! I was on 232 and doing so well! And for what? He bought some LCD shutter glasses and ‘Actually, I needed to buy a special converter for these to be effective at all!’. Yeah, the ‘special converter’ is a video card here in a box.
How annoying, but Im still on 99.6% positive and he has -1 :p I sent him a mail, I also have his address and I have a good mind to go around to his hick USA town and give him his £5 back (in 10p peices 
). He’s on the map now….
Here is the mail I sent him, with luck he will close his account and the negatives are then wiped out.
Just a few pointers.
You shouldn’t leave someone negative feedback if you’re slightly unhappy. Did I misdescribe the item? Did it not turn up? Was it damaged? Did I really rip you off on the postage?
The answer to all these questions is ‘no’.
You bought something you thought would plug into your video card and would magically make all your games into 3D. Try doing some reading and research, it will only work on certain ASUS cards, which is what I wrote in the description.
I suggest you close your account and start again, people are wary of buyers who will leave negative feedback for no reason. You got exactly what you paid for but because you have no idea what you’re buying that somehow becomes my fault.
Welcome to ebay, I really hate having to give someone negative feedback, it just makes me so cruel, but its all I can do to keep unreasonable idiots like yourself away from everyone else.
Have a nice day!!
Mark
Independance Day
Africa » Ghana » Accra
Flight was ok despite being delayed by an hour or so from Amsterdam. Had to
kick a Ghanaian guy out of my window seat. which is good preparation for the
weeks ahead. Over mainland Africa you could see the desert but it was soon
swallowed up in dust and sand. the ground then just looked like a circle of
fluffy yellow, with a few clouds.
Immigration was a minor nightmare. I joined one queue out of the 5 going and
one of the guys dealing with my line left for a break shortly afterwards. An
hour and a half to get through was the longest I’d spent in line anywhere
abroad. I spent the time eavesdropping on the Swedish couple behind me as
they attempted to get in front of me in the line. fun. Once through (without
a mention of the £50 yellow fever vaccination I had had 
) I grabbed my
backpack and hit the scrum of tax drivers. I didn’t have a single cedi on me
so I ignored them and went for a ATM hunt. no joy. Not surprising really as
the airport was like a deserted concrete shopping mall, the lights are on but
no one is home.
I got a taxi driver to drive me to an ATM and onwards to my hotel. the Lemon
Lodge. I knew straight away that we weren’t going in the right direction, I
might only have been in the country an hour or two but you know when the
airport is 4 km from the city the lights should be getting brighter as you
go in. it seemed like we were heading into the ghetto!! After 5 mins of
mounting concern I realized that plenty of people had seen me in the cab, the
driver insulted and laughed at someone who gave me a stupidly high quote and
was chatting to someone at the garage/ATM. I relaxed. but where the hell was
he taking me? After about 30 mins we arrived at the Golden Lemon Hotel.
Hmmmm. I got my book out relieved to be alive and unmugged and pointed out
the right place. More expensive to get there but I had a night tour.
Lemon Lodge was full so I checked in next door. What a dump for the money I
paid, although the fridge was nice. I had been working nights that weekend so
I was pretty tired. I went for a walk around though, despite it being 10pm
and pitch black outside. There were a couple of local bars but no tourists,I
bought some water and found an ATM for the future. I wanted to walk to the
main tourist area, but after wandering around for a while and nearly getting
lost the map I had didn’t make much sense so I though it best to get some
sleep.