customer service

today was one of those ninja guidant, nothing-is-getting-in-my-way sort of days.

i am a mac user now apparently. i honestly am not proud of this and do not think i am cool. i hate those stupid commercials about mac vs. PC, i want to vomit every time i enter the apple store and honestly the whole "customer service" thing that apple claims to do infinitely better than its PC brethren is just complete bullshit.

so anyway, i use a macbook these days.

as part of the augmented product offering-- and by this i mean the slate of applications that comes with a newly purchased mac-- apple offers a program called "stickies." basically, its a electronic version of the fabled sticky note.

i love sticky notes.

it is not out of the ordinary for me to forget things from time to time-- rather, more frequently from minute to minute-- and so sticky notes tend to be a damn good friend to me. its no joke when i say that i typically carry one stuck to my wallet every day. otherwise, i usually get too caught up in one task and then totally forget about the other. or i rack my brain trying to think of the one thing that i was supposed to do that day. that being said, it makes complete sense for me to believe in stick notes so much.

and i mean, how can you not? talk about a versatile product. no need to limit yourself with using sticky notes only as a way to write out your 'to-do' list. theres so many more things that they are good for: napkins, tape in a pinch (using only the sticky part), toilet paper, creation of a simple funnel (that can actually filter motor oil in to your engine if need be), bookmark, paper planes... i could go on and on.

anyway, mac's have this utility called stickies where you can treat your eSticky as if it is a 'to-do' list on your computer. and today happened to be one of those ninja-guidant, nothing-is-getting-in-my-way sort of days because i managed to rumble through everything on my sticky.

awesome.

10:22 am - arrive at camera store.

issue: my camera is having symptoms that point to the fact that a particle of some sort is resting on the image sensor. every time i take a picture i get a black spec that shows up in the upper left hand corner of the image.

(this caused me to nearly punch a hole in the dashboard of dear friend steve's mothers beautiful audi sedan the other day. here we were at a monumental viewpoint roughly 10,000 feet up looking out in to olympic national park at the mountains. the sun was setting. this is when i start to take pictures feverishly and i certainly get overly excited. well, this moment was ruined because every photo i took had a black dot in the upper left hand corner. i diagnosed the problem as a piece of dust that was sitting on the image sensor. i would need to visit a camera store. i remained very frustrated as i tried to fix the problem so that i could take some good photos of the mountains)

so today i walked in the camera store. a champion greeted me at the door-- his name was brian and he was dressed in an overly official set of trousers and dress shirt. that was completely irrelevant but oh well. he was asian-- i am guessing from somewhere like indonesia, but this is also completely irrelevant.

i have a horrible attitude when it comes to customer service. i go in to it typically bearing fisticuffs and ready for a 5 round fight with whoever it is that is taking care of me. i have had every piece of electronics that i own break in some way, shape or form (whether my fault of otherwise) and i would say my success rate with having the company stand behind the problem is somewhere in the neighborhood of about .00002%.

yep.

now, this success rate (well, that lack thereoff really) suggests my carelessness.

HOWEVER, i beg to differ. from 2003 onwards, i have chosen to take every precaution with anything expensive-- this involves an awkward carrying case most of the time and always a bit of extra effort because these stupid "cases" are inconvenient to lug around and what not.

just three months ago my previous apple laptop spontaneously combusted (ie the motherboard melted) but there was just no fucking way that apple would stand behind it. i complained up and down the ranks of their employees-- this included an email and phone call in to steve jobs' office. i was eventually talking with one of his executive assistants getting "help" with my problem but i actually got nothing out of the deal. apple would not fix or replace my laptop.

(if you see this steve jobs, i will forever say bad things about your company and customer service no matter how neato my new macbook is).

ANYWAY, events like these are contributing factors in to explaining my sullied opinion of 21st century customer service.

so i walk in to the camera store today not expecting a ton of help. but i would at least go in with a plan. for the 22 minute walk leading up to me entering the door to the camera store, i was conjouring up this plan and how i would approach the situation where i was to require some customer service.

instead of entering the store and bitching that i have a piece of dust lodged upon the image sensor of my nikon d40, i needed to have a plan. typically getting a cleaning of your camera costs about $30 to $40. i was hellbent on not paying this inordinate amount of money because thats about $20 north of my daily budget.

instead of going in and asking for cleaning, i would march in to the store asking to see nikon's latest lens release-- the beautiful new nikor 18-200 VR lens. this puppy has been something of a hot commodity in the USofA and was running a rather hefty price tag of $750.

i would go in and act as if i was going to be purchasing this lens in the next week or so and wanted to do a price comparison.

brian piped in after me standing in the store for roughly 92 seconds, "can i help you with something sir?"

"absolutely, i am going to be purchasing the nikor 18-200 lens this week and would like to do a price comparison."

"certainly. well, we are actually selling this lens for only $750."

"oh wow. bravo! this is the cheapest i have found it. i only have a few other places to check, but that is the cheapest i will likely see it for. please tell me your name so i can come back and talk with you?"

"it is brian. i would be happy to gift wrap it for you when the time is right."

"yes, i will need that. i will be back this week to purchase. thanks and have a good day."

"sure, and just so you know we price match on these lenses."

"oh wow. ok. well i will be seeing you later this week then brian. thanks very much."

i begin to walk out of the store. i open the door to exit the premises and suddenly hault.

"OH! brian! i almost forgot. i am sure you can help me with this. i believe i have a piece of dust lodged on the surface of my d40 image sensor."

"do you have your camera with you?"

the camera is in my backpack but i of course will not reveal this to brian as this would make it look like i actually have a plan.

"it is in my car, give me a few moments to fetch it."

i definitely walked to the camera store and had no car in the parking lot. i walked outdoors and around the corner. i paused to kill some time. i returned with the camera in-hand.

brian piped in, "well... i might be able to remedy the situation. let me have a look, this should be no problem."

brian shows me this trick so that you can open up the shutter all the way and have a full view of the image sensor. what a beautiful piece of image sensory it was-- just a lovely little pale blue'ish gray piece of silicon circuitry that kind of looked like a mirror. brian produced a roundish piece of equipment that most closely resembled the thing that pulls buggars out of infant's nostrils-- looks something like a much smaller turkey baster.

he gave that image sensor a few puffs of air and voila, i was taking particle free photos once again.

success. customer service received as a result of very manipulative behvior.

(it should be noted, however, that my customer service batting average in the state of washington is very promising-- just last week i also got my watch replaced free of charge, no questions asked. i didnt even have a receipt. needless to say, i am wearing a brand new version of my watch today.)

12:01 pm - peanut butter and jelly sandwich in hand.

this was actually on my sticky note. staying with steve has yielded me inordinate amounts of incredibly tasty food that i am reasonably sure i will never be able to re-create. that being said, today i needed to dip back in to roadie roots and have myself a PB&J.

delightful.

12:32 pm - coffee in hand.

while sitting and sipping, items 3 - 9 were just x'ed off of my 'to-do' list in swift fashion as i sequentially talked with the owner of seattle's green tortoise hostel, inquired about the status of a credit payment that is nearing the stages of being late (it wasnt... awesome), sent a few work-related emails and finished off a thank-you note.

thats the kind of ninja swiftness i am talking about. i was pretty pleased with myself.

4:21 pm - i made it just in time to get in line at the post office.

holy cow, there must be a dangerously low amount of post offices in seattle because this was the most crowded a post office i have ever seen. you know these little automatic kiosks that they provide as an alternative to waiting in line? well shit, even that thing had a 45 foot line trailing behind it. i waited. and waited.

i would text message and play road rally racer on my fossil of a cell phone to kill the time.

turns out i managed to get my all-time highest score on road rally racer. jesus, does someone want to inform me that i won the lottery?!

i walked out of the post office and it was pouring rain. in most situations, i would take the opportunity to curse to myself and worry about my laptop getting drenched in my backpack.

nope. not today. i packed my rain coat. i threw that puppy on OVER the backpack and kept chugging.

5:09 pm - turns out there was a felafel shop situated near the post and so i obviously stopped in for a bit of a treat. i havent even seen so much as a greek salad in some of the other towns traversed, so i didnt hesitate to pounce on this opportunity.

that little pita pocket of crushed garbanzo bean delights was just gorgeous. i think i consumed the whole thing in about 49 seconds.

awesome.

5:19 pm - i began walking home-- to steve's house that is.

as i cruised along, i most closely resembled marcus in the movie 'about a boy' when he is walking down the hallway at school with his headphones on mouthing the lyrics to mystikal's 'shake it fast.' he is shouting out "shake ya ass, watch yo'self, show me whatcha workin' with." marcus, of course, was 12 and about as white and british as he could possibly be so it made for something of a humorous scene.

so with some gangsta rap on my ipod to keep things hype it was clear there was only one song to keep things appropos:

ice cube - 'it was a good day'

fotographien

grand tetons national park, wyoming: brad and i did a ride through the park because it was closed to motor vehicles this time of year. we were pumping pretty hard, cruising along at a steady pace when we spotted these punks (female elk) hanging out by a pleasant little mountain scene. i think i cleaned out my front set of brake pads trying to dangerously come to a stop to get a photo. as it turns out, it was kind of an overcast day which made getting a decent shot of the snowcaps rather difficult because of poor lighting. and as chance would have it, for the bit of time i had to pull my camera out of my pack and snap the shot, something happened with the sun-- it cleared a cloud or something. this was exactly the shot i wanted, and it just so happens that we got some beasts in there as well.


highway 41 between whitehall and dillon, montana: these four shots were taken in sequence at varying points between on this particular 55 mile stretch of country road. sunsets have proven so difficult to take pictures of when you are hellbent on capturing certain elements, but the possibilities are endless. i find myself shooting as many photos as i can and drastically changing the settings between each shot. this can describe the variations in colors that you see. that said, it was this evening that certainly secured montana as the most scenic state thus far.


idaho border: brad took this photo with my camera as i was gazing up at at the sign. i can assure you this is not a habit we have-- that is, stopping to take photos of the "welcome to...." signs, but there was something about getting in to idaho that got me going. it seemed like something of an american lost frontier. i talked about this in an earlier blog i think. if you look closely it appears as though somebody torpedoed the sign with a few eggs maybe a couple nights before. that was probably my favorite part-- dont know why.

highway 95 approaching lewiston, idaho: this was when i was rattling off winter driving instructions to brad as we rambled along at 22 miles per hour. we were en route to spokane on this highway. what normally should have been a 6.5 hour trip from ketchum ended up taking 9.5 hours. awesome.

my top 5 most popular road albums up to this point:

1) magnolia electric co - nashville moon
2) watson twins - southern manners
3) wilco - being there
4) kings of convenience - quiet is the new loud
5) daft punk - discovery (tie)
5) hilltop hoods - the calling (tie)

other notables:

LCD soundsystem - sound of silver, eddie vedder - into the wild soundtrack, herbert - scale, caribou - andorra, ben folds five - an old live show recording i have from clutch cargo's in pontiac (brings back some good memories).

fertile grounds

you have good days and you have bad days. plain and simple.

driving along an idaho country road in the middle of a blizzard with a kid at the wheel who is used to driving in florida typically creates a bad one.

brad and i had just gotten off of spending three days in ketchum, idaho. ketchum, as some of you may know, is the city where ernest hemingway decided to call it quits and blew his head off with a shotgun. brad was keen to check out his old home (which is preserved by the ketchum historical society) and see his gravesite. i was game for checking this stuff out only because of the confusion that resulted after reading a miniscule amount of hemingway material in high school.

turns out there was more to ketchum than hemingway.

i took a liking to the "wake up and live" coffee house as the muffins were second to none. however, and a big however at that, amidst sitting there for four hours every morning i counted more face-lifts than i have ever seen in my entire life. i kid you not. maybe there was a two-for-one special last season. who knows? i eavesdropped on conversations those three days that involved nothing other than dinner parties, clothing brands, ugg boots and trips to the spa.

awesome?

hemingway blasting his face off and plastic barbie doll women-- this ketchum place was a dangerous locale.

we decided to stick around for one more night because it was the 30th anniversary party at the local bar and they were serving alcohol at the prices they did 30 years ago (translation - 1 beer = $1). the night was full of-- you guessed it-- the affluent and elite of ketchum's best getting wasted in the bar that gave them their kicks ages ago.

i was lucky enough to meet a woman who introduced herself as a "trust fund kid that traveled the world and ended up in ketchum." the only thing i heard in that introduction was "traveled the world" and hence inquired about the locales she traversed. what resulted was both peculiar and astonishing. when she was my age she actually went through australia and lived in coogee-- this was the place i lived whilst studying in australia.

very weird.

the evening came to a close and the bartenders made an attempt at drastically overcharging me on my bar tab. this yielded me tipping $2 and causing something of a mild uproar in the place. this was the sort of exit i expected from this town. we left the next morning and this was probably the worst decision given the snow conditions.

i was running through a virtual checklist for driving in the snow to brad as we plodded along idaho 95 at 22 miles per hour. we had been rocking it in 2nd gear for the past 2 hours. every 10 minutes or so brad would lose partial control of the vehicle and we would get caught in a snow track. there was an 18 wheeler semi behind us and a pontiac sunfire. i was absolutely baffled at how the sunfire was blistering through the roughly 5 inches of unplowed snow and ice combo that was being dumped on the country road.

"brad, this vehicle is equipped with ABS braking technology. this means that in the event we will need to slam on the brakes, you must apply steady pressure brad. DO NOT pump the brake, brad"

i was trying to sound as professional as possible so as to convey the fact that this was nothing to joke around with. we were on a two lane country road and the state of idaho had no intention of sending out the snow plows for this baby.

it became clear that i had inherited a trait from my father. it was his habit when speaking to someone professionally to repeat their name throughout the conversation at least 44 times.

for example:

"philly, when you rake the leaves i need you to bag them when you are done, philly. this is part of the job, philly. now please philly, if you could just do that philly it would be great."

as i spoke to brad rattling off the virtual checklist it was clear that i was handling this no differently than daddy dearest-- and i couldnt be happier about it. my dad happens to be one of the best people in the universe.

"should you find us skidding in a snow track brad, it is absolutely essential that you turn in to the direction of the skid. otherwise brad, we will find ourselves in the grill of the oncoming 18 wheeler or down a mountain face roughly 2200 feet below this country road."

again, very professional.

things loosened up a bit as the conditions got better. i eventually started filming brad driving and this was arguably 100 times more dangerous than when we were driving through the polar ice caps 50 miles prior.

we got to lower elevation and the snow turned to rain. lovely. having made it through that mess, we opted to stop at the seven devil's tavern and have ourselves a cold keystone light. the bartender was an interesting gal which made for the kind of conversation that got us out of the bar after one beer.

safely arriving in spokane made this a good day.

good days and bad days. plain and simple.

going to costco (similar to sam's club except approximately 18 times better) typically results in the day being characterized as "good." friday, november 16 would be something of the exception in this rule.

i woke up feeling an inexplicable desire to visit the warehouse that presents to you all things amazing-- oversized EVERYTHING. when you buy a bag of peanuts you dont just get a bag of the nutty delights-- you get TEN POUNDS OF PEANUTS. now, thats A LOT OF PEANUTS.

this is the type of stuff that makes me extremely happy.

(on one particular camping weekend when i was living in chicago, it was necessity that this monstrosity of a peanut purchase be brought along as one of the snack items. i wasnt going to complain. well, two nights and three days later this bag of peanuts would not be consumed under any circumstances. there were about a dozen and a half people present for this weekend trip. still, the peanuts could not be consumed. as it is, we lugged the gorilla sized bag of peanuts back to the apartment where it tended to be people's hunger in the TV room for the next three weeks. THIS is costco style. you buy things there that just keep giving.)

i needed to re-fill my camping stock of food. as mentioned before, this typically consists of peanut butter and jelly, wheat thins, ramen noodles, canned chicken and apples. this is what i have been living off of with brad.

well, brad is now gone. he decided to take off early from the trip to go home and share thanksgiving with his girlfriend. a kink in the plan? absolutely. and sure this presents hardships if you approach the situation from certain angles, but goddamnit on friday november 16 it meant that i was buying all that "unhealthy shit" that brad wasnt much a fan of.

i headed to the checkout line donning my newly acquired arsenal of foodstuffs. carmen, the woman arming the cash register, asked me if i would like my goods boxed up.

"no, thanks," i casually replied.

about 1 second later i realized i had forgotten my debit card.

awesome.

i told carmen i would be back in about 30 minutes to retrieve my groceries. she told me she would set them aside for me. in the back of my mind i was really hoping that this would work out because i got the last mega pack of polar ice gum and if someone took this from my cart i was going to be pissed.

this little debit card fiasco is clearly the result of staying with my friends matt and jill. i have become quite disorganized and lazy over the past few days with them. normally, i would have had my debit card in the truck tucked in the console where it always is. but now that i am living like a king in their basement my debit card lay resting near the futon where i have been sleeping.

this is as good a place as any to outline the fact that i really do have slobbish tendancies. my buddy nate has taken pride over the past 3 years to call me "the sloppiest person he has ever known." while i think this is a gross exaggeration-- and i obviously have no tolerance for exaggeration, i only deal with facts-- i could perhaps slightly agree with his claim.

great.

i am not the world's best with driving directions. this is a pretty well known fact. spokane has to be one of the worst locales in the country when it comes to road signage. the result is some dangerous wandering that takes place when it is time to go from point A to B. driving back to get my debit card was something of a small nightmare. getting frustrated with the road system of one way streets and turnoffs that were very poorly marked, i inadvertently turned on to a one-way road and had a semi heading directly for my face about 32 feet ahead. i quickly averted the situation and pulled to the shoulder and meandered my way back to good road.

i arrived home in one piece.

getting out of the car to head back in to the house i stepped in to a giant water puddle. shoes completely soaked. this was about par for the course. i swore at myself and kicked the tire as i got out of the car.

debit card now in hand, a different pair of shoes on my feet and a pretty good idea of how to get back to costco i set off.

i was driving along, magnolia electric co pumping through the stereo, and an odd smell began wavering through the air. normally, i immediately chalk this up to things like foot odor, temporary outdoor smells--

but no, this one was not going away.

i rolled the window down and problem solved. the odor could no longer be sensed by my nostrils. when i was freezing my ass off 6 minutes later i decided to pull in to a starbucks to have myself a medium sized black coffee and do a thorough interior inspection to help get my hands around this odor that was getting exponentially worse with time.

coffee in hand-- check.

well, preliminary odor inspection uncovered the fact that i had a massive piece of dog shit lodged between the grooves of the entire bottom of my shoes.

i thought about this real long and hard. how in the sam hell did i get dog shit on the bottom of my shoes? there is no dog at the hulswit household, the neighbors have one dog but he stays fenced in. and then it hit me. the one day i got up off my ass because i needed to get some exercise, i decided to rake the leaves for matt and jill. i determined it highly likely that while doing this activity i stepped in said pile of canine excrement and this was now fucking up my universe.

see, this bodes horribly for my relationship between humans and dogs. i already have an extremely difficult time enjoying the company of those smelly, hair exploding creatures. people call them 'man's best friend' but honestly i couldnt think of a worse friend. dog's have no ability to consume beer, they certainly can't tell a good joke and i have never seen a dog attend a concert or other social activity. in my experience, dogs typically chew your favorite sneakers, piss on your carpet, vomet on your t shirt and chew the bindings of your favorite book. and really, i dont think anyone can disagree with the points i have laid out here. if we are going to enjoy dogs these days, we need to at least adjust our expectations of these animals. perhaps we create seperate living quarters and make it the norm to hire people to take care of them. this lies nowhere in my budget so it is reasonable for me to say that i will never own this type of mammal.

awesome.

in an effort to clean the small army of poop molecules that were now covering my sneaker, i went to the closest water puddle and began stomping and scraping my shoes through the watery mess. after 12 seconds of doing this i realized my actions were seriously alarming to passers by. to them it must have looked like i was doing some violent rendition of stomp or a vicious tap-dancing routine.

"are you ok?" asked the woman, her husband clutching her arm as if they were in the presence of a terrorist.

"yeah, just cleaning my shoes thanks."

there was no way i was revealing that it was dog shit that was causing the whole problem.

i spent about 6 minutes in this puddle and dealt with the whole "are you ok?" comment 91 times. by the time the last group rolled through to ask about my actions, i just ignored them and kept hammering away at my soles trying to rid them of the fecal matter.

eventually i got back in the car, feverishly sweating from the labor it took to remedy the shoe-shit problem and clearly frustrated at this point. the smell still lingered in the car. i took a couple sips of my coffee and spilled at least 2 tablespoons of hot coffee on my crotch in the process. i threw the truck in the drive and was trying to remain calm.

onwards to costco.

my cart was waiting for me in the exact same spot i left it with a giant sign across it that read "RESERVED FOR PHILIP - forgot debit card."

SUPER. normally i would call this superior customer service but today i was pissed about it. the entire universe now knew that i forgot my debit card. maybe it would have been appropriate for her to also write on the name card that i had now driven nearly 40 miles to pay for this cart of food, endured hot coffee crotch and had an entire sneakers worth of dog shit laced to my feet.

there would be only one way to fix this day-- THE COSTCO CAFE.

for those that aren't in the know, this is the spot where you can get a massive bratwurst and a fountain pop for $1.50. yep. not in the mood for a brat? how about a behemoth slice of pizza for $1.95. these are the proper combinations of price and portion size that will eventually fix days like this. most people would call this an "issue" of mine.

i opted for a slice of supreme pizza and a smoothie.

i sat down at the table just wanting to demolish the food before me when a voice piped in from above my shoulder, "anyone sitting here with you at this table?"

this happened to be the busiest costco in the universe. i mean costco is a popular place, this is fact. but there was a waiting line at the sample stations even. i waited behind a line of 4 just to get a 1 inch portion of a chicken taquito. the coffee line? i didnt even attempt to weave through that mess. the people of spokane were like ravaged hyenas at this particular costco-- exactly how i like it.

the checkout lines were roughly 50 feet long. the costco cafe was no different. all tables were taken. as it was, the one that i managed to sit down at was full when i first showed up. instead of moving on to the next table i awkwardly stood there waiting for the couple to finish as it looked like they were nearing completion.

i eventually sat down giving a smile to the mildly perturbed couple. 20 seconds later i addressed the voice that was beaming from the rear of my left shoulder.

"no, you're welcome to sit down" i replied back.

i was eating my pizza slice at speeds that i was hoping would deter my guest from speaking with me. i didnt feel like talking.

turns out the guys name was larry.

well, 68 minutes later i left costco nearly giving my new friend a hug. eric, the doctor friend of larry that happened to join us at about minute 19 of the conversation, offered to put me up in his home if i wanted to stay in spokane any longer. we talked about everything from the quality of the bratwurst that larry was enjoying (i kid you not, this man managed to get mustard ALL OVER his face. and it appeared as though there was a worldwide napkin shortage because he refused to clean it up.) to the experience of booking vacations through costco. larry was hands-down the biggest fan of costco i have ever met in my life. now, this is something of a feat seeing as how my mother spends roughly 1/3 of the household income at costco every year.

larry has done all the following with costco:

-purchased his wife a ring
-booked multiple vacations
-had windows installed all throughout his house
-two cars with tires installed at the tire center
-health insurance
-an annual grocery total that was alarming (which he happily shared with me)

i determined that if costco were to blow up and be eliminated, this guy would be in some serious trouble.

perhaps this testimonial will make my dad happy knowing that there are folks out there that are purchasing costco items in volumes much more extreme than mother dearest.

when it was time to go i had one more remaining task to take care of at costco: a car battery. yep. its astonishing that i decided to push forward with the tasks laid out for the day given my luck in the previous 3 hours.

buying the battery was potentially the easiest task of the day. carrying it the car, however, was something of a feat. i didnt realize that car batteries weighed 100 pounds. i thought my biceps were going to explode by the time i threw that thing in the car.

i drove over to the tire center and asked to burrow their socket set. no problem. i started laboring away pulling the old battery out and realized that-- this was no surprise mind you-- i had a bit of a problem on my hands. the old screw and nut that was securing the battery harness in place was completely rusted and would be impossible for me to extract given my current set of tools.

"hey, you guys have a bolt cutter here?" i belted over to one of the tire center guys.

nothing.

awesome.

now with my battery half pulled out i needed to put it back in and go to a mechanic's shop to try and fix this issue. i knew i also needed an oil change so i figured i would go to a shop and then just casually ask them to extract my battery and put the new one in.

remarkably, this worked.

my battery is now being held in place with a bungee cord mechanism that was custom-fit by yours truly but the mechanic agreed that it would be just fine. a miniature victory, indeed.

(don't worry mom).

so, this was something of a bad day with an extraordinary finish-- the car was well again, my shoes didnt smell NEARLY as bad as before and i had all my food (with some added junk items) packed in the back. i was road ready.

but not so fast. i still had a few days yet to spend in spokane.

amidst my penchant for the couch and watching movies, i discovered the ultimate combination of laziness and technology that produced perhaps one of my new favorite pasttimes: VIDEO CHAT.

that's right.

having purchased a new macbook that is equipped with a built in camera, i have the luxury of seamlessly partaking in video chat sessions. two individuals connect over AOL instant messenger and beam each other a video feed of themselves. what results is an extremely personal and FREE way to communicate with friends and family despite being on the road.

this paid dividends two-fold whilst in spokane at the matt and jill homestead.

on friday night, matt and i opted to have a few beers at the house and just have a good chat. once chatting was over and we became inebriated, we first had a bit of a wrestling match (this is pretty standard for matt and i). after getting past that masculine bit of fury we then opted to have a video chat with matt's brother who lives in los angeles. the three of us continued drinking together. never have i experienced taking shots of whisky over techno-waves, but let me tell it was pretty awesome.

the madness continued saturday afternoon when matt and i were still enjoying a few beers and watching college football. at halftime, i decided to give my sister emily a jingle. what resulted was an hour long video chat that had me doing things like giving emily a tour of matt and jill's house through the webcam and again having a bit of a "cyber toast" over a delicious cold beverage.

these two video conversations were arguably the highlight of my weekend (aside from UofM losing to ohio state and MSU beating penn state).

a few days later, i now sit in seattle at a nice little cafe called ZOKA. the coffee is uncharacteristically good. apparently they roast their own beans. the inhabitants of this particular cafe range from professional to uber-hippie. i have no qualms with this as i have counted zero face lifts up to this point. this is terrific news.

thoughts are racing through my head at a mile a minute. i have quite a few decisions to make in the months ahead. where will i be working? where will i be living? what do i want? what do i care about? what are my priorities? how do i place myself in a position to inspire my actions going forward?

inspiration is key.

at this point, i have no conclusive answers but a laundry list of possibilities. a good shot of freedom kicks me in face about every half hour as i think of the infinite routes that i could take on my road from here forward.

patience is of the essence.

my dad placed a line his last email that hit me particularly hard just a few days ago:

"i believe that if you place yourself in fertile grounds you will have the ability to see an opportunity when it meets you."

and thats just it! i couldnt agree more! i have to place myself in a position where i am pleased-- where i am breathing deep breaths and living life with a vigor that this gift so rightly deserves! those are fertile grounds!

ANYTHING LESS THAN THAT IS FAILURE.

i will tuck dad's message in my back pocket as i continue forward.

this is life. this is invigorating. this is happiness.

(choose wisely).

outside, there is a casual passer-by through the relatively desolate streets. the curbsides are littered with an ocasional honda sedan. some hybrids. i am in a cozy little neighborhood north of the city-- one where it appears that people may be friends with their neighbors. its a typical cold and cloudy pacific northwestern day, but i couldn't be happier sitting here thinking about soaking in the beauty that is within a cup of caffeine and a blueberry scone.

a good day. plain and simple.

the downtown zebra

let me recount the best halloween ever with my cousin jeff.

wait a minute, let me back up.

i hate halloween. hate it. bah-humbug. don't enjoy it.

i am reasonably sure that the hatred started in my youth but is rooted in my bloodline. believe it. i just found out a few days that not only my mother hates halloween (its no wonder dad was always on duty for dragging us around the neighborhoods), so does her sister and brother. this was big news. it explained a lot. it will be worthwhile in the next year or so to dig deeper in to the family tree and see if there are mysterious photos of my great great grandpa HANK holding up a sign reading "fuck halloween."

ok, so maybe profanity wasnt necessary there, but profanity always proves a point. and i hate halloween. i want to tell you why.

going back to my youth i was always a bit on the husky side. i was very frequently getting the "philip, you just dont know how strong you are" line from mom when i would accidentally dislocate friends' shoulder's and things like that. as such, i never fit in to the cool costumes that you would find at halloween USA or meijer.

nope, just not happening.

i was permanently demoted to being a football player for something like 6 years straight (with the exception of being a pirate in kindergarten-- it should be noted, however, that the pants didnt fit and that we had to cut slits in the side to stretch them around my waist) because in my eyes that was cool. every single halloween when all the students at central elementary would line up single file and do the halloween parade after we had worn our costumes to school i would plod along in the middle of the line donning my detroit lions costume.

6 years in a row. this is enough repetition to bore a hamster. this is the beginning of halloween hatred.

living in michigan around halloween time was painful. it was always cold and rainy on halloween. now, try wearing a silly hutch football uniform in these conditions-- tight football pants, short-sleeve jersey, helmet, etc. then before i would hit the streets for a night of candy parading, i would be instructed that i had to wear a jacket under my football pads in order to prevent the onslaught of sickness throughout the night.

bullshit. this killed the costume.

instead of looking like a burly football player i now looked like the pilsbury dough boy. try walking around trick-or-treating and having people tell you your dough boy costume is great. fuck that.

fast forward now.

college. wooo! halloween parties! everyone loved halloween because the girls managed to create a slutty version of nearly everything. what started humorously as the slutty cop eventually morphed in to things like slutty librarians, slutty veterinarians, etc. all of the sudden the girl who didnt say anything in your geology class showed up to the party with two 40's taped to her hands wearing a slutty gorilla outfit.

absurd. this holiday somehow became the coveted invitation for college youth to just act like slutty idiots.

i still hated it.

the parties ended up being absolute shit-shows and nobody ever remembered anything anyway. i can remember one where i managed to break a tabletop in the living room by standing on top of it trying to dance. i had consumed a pint of blue label popov vodka for the occasion. now, for those that dont know, this stuff duly acts as paint stripper but was perfectly suitable for getting absolutely anihilated on halloween night my freshman year.

i never put thought in to my costumes and this killed halloween for me as well. sure, this is my fault. getting a halloween costume involved going to goodwill the day before and trying to finagle my way in to something of a costume. lord knows the day before halloween everything in all the thrift stores had been filtered through and what remained was rubbish reserved for me. as such my costumes always sucked.

one year i was an old lady-- this was my attempt at wearing something comfortable and warm (hot pink crushed velvet stretch pants, multi-colored windbreaker with my wool sweater beneath it). if i was going to participate in this stupid day, i was definitely going to be comfortable and warm in my costume.

the best costume i ever came up with was in 2002. i dressed up as everyone's best friend steve irwin. god bless his soul, its no wonder halloween was at least tolerable that year. but rest assured, shit hit the fan when a ceiling tile fell on my head later in the night.

halloween still sucked.

now, post-college.

there are no more slutty winnie-the-pooh costumes all over the place and i am no longer drinking popov vodka.

awesome.

so, we roll up to the great salt lake city on october 31, 2007-- halloween night. it was approximately 5:12pm when i pulled up to cousin jeff's house. as we pulled in, i was secretly saying hail mary's in the drivers seat in hopes that jeff will not bounce out of his house in a costume screaming that he has a shitkicker of a costume party for us to attend that evening.

oh, the suspense.

i think within 10 minutes of our coming together i inquired about the plans for the evening. this was very important. and it was like angels, wizards, doves, panda bears, puppy dogs and everything else adorable in this world were singing the words "i have no plans" when jeff replied with such news.

beholdeth! the great news hath come upon me!

i was jumping for joy inside, there were no plans on halloween night.

and thats just it, that was the best halloween ever. there were no shitty costumes, there would beno paint-strippper vodka, there were no falling ceiling tiles, no trips to goodwill shop, the weather was uncharacteristically beautiful.

instead cousin jeff, his girlfriend kirsten, brad and i produced a medium-sized arsenal of halloween candy and increased our pabst blue ribbon stockpile to somewhere in the neighborhood of about 32 cans.

delightful.

what ensued that evening is just exactly how every halloween should be: family, friends, candy and beer. doesnt that sound so wholesome? i could be mistaken for martha stewart right now giving an account of her favorite halloween. but no.

we handed out halloween candy to what turned out to be a cheery and polite group of kids in the neighborhood (sans the kid that showed up as a box of kleenex with the words "blow me" written across the front. i will give creative points there, however). brad ate approximately 98 bit-o-honeys. we killed all the beer. and we laughed a lot becuase halloween was fun this year.

i loved halloween for the first time in my life.

and the fun didnt stop there. hanging with jeff in salt lake turned out to be something of a legendary time. he was a gracious host to two smelly, grimy roadies and didnt bat an eye. he even gave me his coffee press so that i could stop drinking the instant folgers crap that has been littering my stomach the past couple weeks. just a champion that cousin jeff, just a champion.

i think i could have stayed in salt lake for a while-- having a bed, a house with ample amounts of coffee and a patio to sit on was more than luxury. it was tough saying goodbye.

and then all hell broke loose.

well, sort of.

en route to jackson, wyoming i got the red light of fury.

we stopped at the idaho border crossing over from utah (you have to cross over to idaho from utah to get in to jackson) so that i could get a photo with the sign that welcomed us in to the great state. all throughout my life i have had some sort of romantic vision of idaho-- this relatively undiscovered frontier. it is an odd-shaped state and i think this intrigued me in early days of map-glancing. plus, nobody ever talked about trips to idaho or the lovely sandy beaches that it had. the only thing i could associate with idaho were potatoes and napoleon dynamite-- but even that was a stretch.

so here we sat on the border of idaho, taking photos of the sign. we hopped back in the car and i really gave the accelerator hell.

within approximately 53 seconds of pedal-to-the-metal activity i got the red light.

CHECK ENGINE.

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh god.

for those that dont know, i have something of an extremely rough past with cars and check engine lights. i really dont want to re-hash the nightmare that was, but basically i bought a giant conversion van a few months ago and within 3 hours of driving it off the owners driveway the check engine light went on.

awesome.

i took the monster to the local auto zone and told the attendant my situation. i was sweating profusely and struggling to put cohesive sentences together. the young man hooked it up to the computer and prompty told me, in these very words:

"you got boned, man."

turns out this gorilla of a van was misfiring on all 8 cylinders. after a quick look under the hood, he estimated the repair bill to cost somewhere in the neighborhood a few G's.

WOW, that was an interesting moment. i think i was seeing stars.

after about 14 hours of scrambling i got the situation sorted and i took that van right back to the owner and somehow managed to get my money back.

fine, dandy, sweet, super story--- but christ, now i had this damn check engine light on.

4 weeks ago i nearly sold my soul to the local mechanic for him to look over my truck. he did everything under the sun to it fixing joints and harnesses and hubs and sprockets and doing things with fluids-- of which i was clueless in the purpose of. i was reasonably sure, based on the work performed that this vehicle of mine was in it to win it.

and there i sat with the check engine light on.

step 1: owners manual. consult the owners manual. read. brad was feverishly rifling through the pages trying to find news on the issue.

step 2: sweat. sweat a lot. i am sweating under my finger nails at this point.

step 2.5: sweat some more because this is what i do in situations that involve engine lights and long haul trips.

step 3: resolution. after a bit of scholarly analysis, we deemed the vehicle road-worthy and concluded that we had filled the tank with a bad batch of fuel. stupid vehicle emissions.

turns out we were right.

check engine no more 3 days later.

now thats how car mechanics should work: issue comes up, sweat it out, read a bit, let it sit, car re-calibrates and issue resolved.

awesome.

it should be noted that this is auto fix number two on the road (recall the blown fuse fiasco)-- i am considering something of a career in what i like to call informed auto therapy.

so now that the wheels were good as gold, we moved onwards.

we showed up in yellowstone with complete fur trapping guidebooks, binoculars, plant specimen digests and a full-on crisis plan in the event that we would actually spot a grizzly.

"hey brad, when i was in alaska they told us that if you spot a bear you lay down and act dead or you just crouch real low cause bears cant see you at that height. it changes for black and brown bears though. i think you crouch for black bears and act dead for brown bears."

"right. as i understand it, our best bet is to band together and start screaming as loud as possible. i will have my camera handy if this actually happens."

awesome, so we totally had a plan. if we saw a bear we were either screaming, acting dead or crouching on the ground-- three completely opposite activities and we would do one of them in the event that we spotted a big fury creature.

that was the crisis plan. sweet.

well, it turns out yellowstone was closed.

awesome.

we shoved off after a casual walk through the park (you can hike or bike in the park just cars cannot pass through). this casual walk yielded no bear sightings, however. this was mildly devastating to both brad and i given our level of preparedness.

driving from west yellowstone in to montana was an absolute sweetheart of a drive. i can wholeheartedly proclaim that it was my favorite stretch of road we have happened upon thus far. the terrain is mountainous-- picture jagged peaks with ample amounts of vegetation to cover them, streams and rivers are abundant, evergreens all the hell over, clear skies and crisp fresh air-- absolute beauty. montana clearly walks the walk-- this place is gorgeous. i would venture to say that i will be coming back to this great state at some point.

bozeman, montana!

arrival time was 5:22pm and it was already dark. this time change bologna and cheese is seriously making me loopy. now, pulling in to a cowboy town in the darkness at an early evening hour calls for one thing, and one thing only:

shopping trip.

CORRAL WESTERNWEAR. you betcha.

holy shit, that place was just amazing. everything a cowboy like myself could ever want. i took a long time looking at the cowboy boots. equally as impressive was the time i spent marvelling at the western style button down shirts. the intricate designs on both items was something of small miracle. now, a cowboy like myself enjoys good denim and i will tell you something-- i heard those same doves and wizards singing beautiful sounds when i stepped in front of the wrangler denim stand.

oh you bet. you wanna talk about falling for someone? love at first sight? oh, right there when my pupils calibrated to the sight that was in front of me.

i am extremely pleased to announce that i am the proud owner of an official rodeo novelty: wrangler denim jeans. and these arent your everyday run of the mill trousers-- they are the real deal. cowboys wear these things.

trust me, i fit right in that night at the bar.

we happened upon the crystal bar on main street in bozeman and met an interesting cast of characters. i am very pleased that people of bozeman are of the nicest variety. this was refreshing.

we havent been going out all that often because bar tabs add up, waking up hungover in the back of a pickup truck is not that fun and to be completely honest, some of the places we have gone had bars that were frightening.

we played some pool and i enjoyed a local montanian beer-- of which i couldnt even attempt to remember the title of. montana state university is just down the street so there was a decent contingency of young people drinking that night. turns out wednesday is the best goddamn night for drinking according to a couple of our newly-acquired friends. it also turns that at the next bar you could get any variety of whisky for a nominal fee of $2.

ummmm, yeah.

this place was the downtown zebra. and although it most closely resembled a cold-war era subterranean prison it was probably the best thing that could have happened to me that night. we met some cool folks and had a hell of a time.

no night on the town is complete without a bedtime snack and this night would be no different. i got in to someone's backyard to plug in our water-boiler-extraoirdinaire and voila! ramen was produced. eating those delectable noodles on the tailgate before the evening sleep was a fitting conclusion for COWBOYS LIKE US.

(cue the song. and play)

par-king

the art of picking a parking spot, version 1.o.

trust me, theres something of an art to doing this. its not an easy thing.

for the past 22 days "on the road" - a good half of them have involved mysteriously rolling in to a town that is relatively unknown and finding a place to sleep. this involves parking the car, clearing out the back sleeping quarters, potentially eating a meal and urinating and then having a pleasant rest. this doesnt really seem to present a huge problem or dilemma, right? or does it?

i will try to illustrate my point herein.

there's approximately three types of towns we have traversed-- what i like to categorize in one of three ways:

a sleepy town - you could probably get by sleeping in the parking lot of the local wal-mart if need be.

an adamant town - this is the place with millions of signs littering the city reading "no overnight parking" or "no public camping" or "no parking 2am - 6am." these locales demand creativity.

a city slicker - the lights are always on. these towns seem to have lights all over the place which inherently make it difficult to sleep in the back of a car no matter what the circumstances.

see now, this is an interesting topic worth writing about because you absolutely have to get sleep. there is just no getting around it. you can go without eating hot food for a long time. you can give up television. you can, uncomfortably at times, give up your bed. you can give up time with your friends and family.

sleep on the other hand, well, you gotta have it.

so here lies the dilemma: many nights we roll in to some mysterious town, typically it is past 8 pm and usually very dark. we are usually pretty tired from having had something of a long day on the road. sometimes we are hungry, sometimes we are not. we always need to piss.

there are many considerations to be made:

1) we have two bikes strapped to the front of the car that given some craftsmanship and stealth-like behavior (think ninjas, wizards or smooth operators) could easily be stolen.
2) we need to be able have free and clear urination capability through the night in case of emergency pissing requirements.
3) its nice to have power to cook up some noodles, but this is certainly not a requirement.
4) internet is a plus so that i can slave away writing blogs, but again-- not a requirement.
5) streetlights, parking lot lights, motion sensitive lights, frequent headlights, light from fires, light from the moon or particularly active early morning sun, house lights, flood lights are all deterrants to the sleeping process. cities typically contain some of the aforementioned items and demand creativity.
6) farming behavior or similar activity is typically a no-no in that this will cause disruption and a call to the local police at around 5am when farmer bob goes to tend to his wheat patch.
7) dogs-- no matter what type, size, color, weight or sexual orientation-- will always fuck up a sleeping plan two-fold: they keep you up and they alert their owner that some heathens are trying to crash in the back of their pickup truck outside their street.
8) people, no matter how nice they are, never like the idea of strangers inhabiting their residential street.

these are 8 conditions seen the most but is by no means an exhaustive list.

another wrench in the system is typically the impatience that builds up after trying to find a spot for anything more than 17 minutes. anything longer than this breeds frustration. frustration eventually breeds anger. one must be very careful so as to not let one of the eight conditions outlined above ruin the plan. it becomes very easy after anger sets in to throw your hands up and settle for anything. but this is simply not good enough.

my recommendation as a result of such issues is something like this:

for sleepy towns, dont be foolish and go for the low-hanging fruit at the local wal-mart. you will never get a good night's sleep with the walton's shining their parking lights down on you. those things are stronger than you think. no beanie will block the rays of said lights and curtains wont even be able to shake a stick at them. unfortunately, i left my silk eye cover at home. sleepy towns demand residential street sleeping. you will want to look for each of the following:

i) a neighborhood having houses with at least 32 feet of clearance between each (forget townhomes, condo lots, etc).
ii) as few dogs as possible. these little fellas (like in most situations) will be the demise of any good plan.
iii) given its status as a sleepy-town, watch out for farming activity. (we found ourselves in huntington, utah sleeping next to a horse grazing area. this scared the bejesus out of me as i was brushing my teeth)
iv) as few neighbors as possible-- should they spot you in the morning they will undoubtedly inquire about your existence on their street. this can be an awesome conversation, terribly awkward or just downright miserable based on the police call that will ensue.

that being said, adament towns are typically a similar situation. the authorities are well aware of the fact that they are patrolling a frequently tourist-littered town. this means they have on problem busting your ass and take great pride in being the pisser on your parade. these towns demand serious creativity. its best to sleep near a highway, in the open if possible. when the officer knocks on your window you cite the following, word for word.

"good evening officer. can you tell me the time?"

(he tells you the time and likely acts like an enormous asshole threatening you with a citation and potentially time in the local jail for trespassing)

"i can certainly understand your position, officer. let me just mention a few things. i have been driving here for over 8 hours and to be completely honest with you, i could not keep my eyes open any longer. i didnt want to endanger anyone's life and i pulled over to take a snooze about 45 minutes ago. i will happily move on."

(he will likely shake his head and ask where you are going)

"of course. we are headed to _____." make your destination no less than 45 miles away but absolutely no more than 63 miles.

(with any good luck the officer will take off).

alternatively, you could park at the local dive bar. when the police show up to question you, you will have to wholeheartedly tell them that you drank a little too much and didn't want to drive drunk. i am on the fence as to which plan is better.

now, switching gears slightly to a city slicker. these towns demand creativity. you are going to have to hide, and hide well. hide from light and from people. this takes some skill. a helpful suggestion: sidestreets near hotels shaded by trees are usually good bets. this way you cant be towed for violating the rules of the hotel parking lot, but if authorities or casual bystanders notice a car that is clearly driven by tourists (remember: bikes strapped to the front) it will seem plausible they are parked near the hotel as they are staying there for the night.

i cant really tell you why i am writing this-- could be the fact that i am completely pleased sitting in a jackson hole cofffee house and i dont want to do so much as pick my head up from the activity that my laptop screen offers.

it could be that i have had too much coffee and my fixation on anything that involves typing at extremely high speeds and blinking a lot is great fun.

it could be that picking a spot to sleep last night in jackson hole was something of a feat and when i was writing in my journal today i thought it would be funny to write this overly official manifesto on the art of picking a good parking spot.

it could be that i am feeling rather jovial today and i thought it would be fun to write something that was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek joke.

or it is just all of the above.

i cant even really say that i have had encounters with police at all on the trip, but that seemed like how it would roll out given my experience with law enforcement officials and others stories.

maybe this is just something of a daydream.

los fotografías

i had a sweet little pile of mexican food last night at a place called the red iguana here in the great salt lake city. thats why i now write the titles of these passages in spanish.

lets begin the begin--


crested butte, colorado: see, this is photo evidence as to why i opt out of some of the bike rides that brad insists on. he went for a ride and i went to take some photos. happenstance has it that i stumbled on this little beauty. in the background is the summit for mt. crested butte (as far as i know).


moab, utah: a young observer for the magnificent PUFF the magic (ridiculously loud) pumpkin launcher. the young fella pictured lost his hearing roughly 13 seconds later as a result of the jarring explosion that resulted after the launch. pictured below are two young ladies dancing to the tunes of the band that was playing some country hits. they were eating it up.


arches national park, utah: this would be the double arch as they call it. although it is fairly difficult to see, there is another "O" below the big one that you see as the focal point of the photo. these things are something of a legend to see. it takes thousands and thousands of years for these odd structures to form. its a combination of weather (hot and cold), erosion and composition of the rock that conceive the arch. approximately 19 minutes after taking this photo, brad would be standing on the top of double arch and drop his bike helmet that was dangling off the back of his day pack. yep, helmet got shattered.



canyonlands national park, utah: sunset. easy peasy. those are some sort of desert evergreen trees in the foreground.


dead horse point state park, utah: so this would be the actual dead horse point. pretty breathtaking view. it was cloudy as hell, but one could still manage to get a picture like this. pretty amazing. the rocks on the very bottom of those valley-like structures are over 300 million years. i forget the categorical belonging of such rock, but it is way, way, way before jurassic. pretty sweet.


goblin valley state park, utah: well, lets not lie. this photo was taken minutes before the entrance to goblin valley but it was still technically within the boundary of the park. this was, in my opinion, the ultimate desert photo-- tumbleweeds, dry and cracked soil that sees only 10 inches of rain per year and a sunbeam bursting through in the background. later, we would pee on the soil to give it some nutrients. the urine dissapeared within about 3 seconds. hungry soil!


little wild horse canyon, utah: this, similar to the photo of the desert, is just outside of goblin valley state park. you would call this here crazy rock optical illusion a slot canyon. basically, its an extremely narrow passageway (typically between 4 and 10 feet) between two fairly large mountains of rock. flash floods have ripped through the rocks to create the slot over many, many years. picture the grand canyon on a much smaller scale with only about 6 feet between the two sides of the canyon. as you can imagine, portraying a slot canyon in a photo is extremely difficult because not a lot of light gets in to the little crevice between the rocks. the photo above i thought was cool just because it looks like a vortex with those ripples. this one also had a wider opening which gives you a bit of perspective. there were times, however, when we would have to get through the rocks doing the sideways shuffle. to top all this banter off, i have inserted a photo of me trying to illustrate the the look of these slot canyons that i am talking about (it should be noted that in an effort to create this particular pose, i ripped hole number two in the crotch of my jean shorts. awesome.)

its been quite a pleasure being in salt lake city-- in a real house, with a real cousin providing hordes of hospitality (thanks jeff). its been pretty nice not sleeping in the truck for a bit. i woke up at 10:46am this morning and it felt about as good as vanilla ice cream with apple pie.

we are thinking about jetting off on sunday for jackson hole.