KGBlog

ps i'm moving...

june:
3-10 visiting aunt, uncle, g-pa in indiana whom i havent seen in a few years.
11-16/17 visiting friends as i make my way to slidel, la.
rest of the month relief work in la.

july/aug. ?
at some point making my way to the woodlands, tx. (just outside of houston)
finding a job, etc.

...more info as i figure it out.

Posted in: on Sunday, May 20, 2007 at at 1:22 AM 1 comments  

so here's another blast from the past...not mario, i'll get to that, but another picture/story (though slightly shorter i hope):



When i was a kid, like age 2 all the way through high school, one of my best friends, Roddy, lived just down the road from me. There was a brief few years where we didn't live by each other but in the end both of our families ended up back in the same neighborhood as each other albeit all the way across town from the original neighborhood. I tell you this to preface a story, which is the story i plan on prefacing the post with. that may make sense in a minute.

I'm using paragraphs here per the request of Justin Lewis. So, as children we were always making up stories. Roddy mostly of how he was related to nearly every person of any importance regardless of race or nationality or era of human history. As a matter of rule we would refer to all people, that he could not attach himself to through his wandering bloodlines, as former college roomates. every story about anyone began, "back in 65 when pele and i were roomates at ucla" or something of that nature. i tell this story because i want to begin my story about this picture with, "back in college..." and i want you to know that the ficticious stories of my childhood are gone and i have in fact been to college and finished have had several roomates though not quite as many in my 4 and a half years at wake as i did in 65 alone.

Your welcome Justin. Back in college...(the story begins) i attended a college ministry at first presbyterian church and to this day remain connected with the ministry. As with all minitries there were yearly service trips to various locations in and out of the states and on more than one occasion i found myself in an orphanage in guatemala as well as in our nations capitol. i'll let you guess which location the pic up top is from.

the trip to d.c. falls after the finals of fall semester and before one makes their way home for christmas. i wish it was less obvious why that fact is important for the picture but in fact it is quite obvious and therefore i will say that the temperature in which we apear to be swimming laps in was quite not warm.

durring the d.c. trip one is exposed to quite possibly the earliest mornings a college student will ever face. up before dawn to serve breakfast to the homeless at a breakfast/worship service with rev. green and pastor brown, one of which became a pastor only after having spent most of his early life as a pimp. makes for a great testimony and at the same time no one can ever try the "i'm so bad that jesus can't love me" excuse with him because he has always done more crazy stuff than they have by far. so, anyway thats the morning. singing and listening and eating and it's great. after that you head off to deliver food, or prepare food at some kitchen, or hang out with kids in anacostia (which by the way is the scaries place ever...wiki it). needless to say that all the work and long hours can wear one out and therefore they schedule in a day to rest. for one afternoon we get to go up to the mall and talk to people about homelesness in the city/do a bit of being a tourist and check out some of the monuments and museums. that is the day in the picture. brooks smith, on the right, and myself decided that for some reason we would add the swimming shot to the long list of our antics for the week. we froze, pedestrians looked at us as if were were the dumbest people ever, but we loved it. in fact apart from the pic of the "giant joint" this one is i think my favorite of the ones we took that week.

ok to sum up, i'll clarify the "giant joint", other antics, and mario kart. one night we were dropped in the international district with money to eat wherever we chose. for the unlucky of us we happened upon and ethiopian restraunt with the worst food ever. i was nearly convinced that the hunger situation over there is not a result of not having food but of the sheer inedibility of it. this story deserves a bit more than it will get but in the end we rolled the green mush that we were served up in the round sheet of spongy bread on which it came and had what looked to be a 2 foot joint. we found other ways to amuse ourselves though apart from playing with our food. brooks and i played make out chicken with our leaders and left them with quite possibly the most shocked expresions i have ever seen. amy's jaw dropped in sheer horror and stayed for nearly 2 minutes as we all rolled around laughing on the sidewalk. along with sidewalks we rolled elsewhere. ever time brooks or i crossed an intersection with enough cars to warrant action we would fall and spill as many of our belongings as we could about. it's so funny to watch people try not to laugh at you for falling in an intersection. and, last but not least, if you ever find yourself lying on your back at the base of the washington monument, think rainbow road. once again sorry for not proofreading.

Posted in: on Tuesday, May 08, 2007 at at 9:45 PM 1 comments  

i'm thinking about starting to put some pictures into posts just to give them some color. along with that i'm thinking that a story about the pictures could be fun. so here's the first one:


this picture was taken on a trip to costa rica shortly after graduating from Wake. Taylor Detchon and myself decided a couple months before graduating that a trip was in order. He did all the research and proposed the idea of going to Costa Rica and learning to surf. I said sure. We then waited to see if the thing would come to fruition. One afternoon while i was working at 6th and Vine, a local restaurant, i got a call from Taylor and he relayed to me from his computer screen a remarkably low price on tickets to Costa Rica the day after graduation. My response was of course, "I'm in." So we got the tickets and we were on our way. Now earlier when i said that Tayor did all the research those people who know the two of us got an idea of where the story goes from here. The rest of you can figure it out on the way. We arrived in San Jose with the basic knowledge that we were going toward Mal Pais and that there should be some form of cheap bus/taxi/ferry system to get us there. We had no reservations, no contacts, nothing other that the knowledge that we should be able to get there. We grabbed a taxi from the airport(almost the priciest mistake of the trip, but only $50 or so between the two of us) which took up from San Jose to Puntarenas and dropped us at the ferry station. We made it in time for the last one across to Paquera that night and relaxed while we waited to get on. Once aboard we found some other travelers and struck up conversation about locations and conditions (aparently there was "bone break flu" going around near Montezuma and it was best to avoid it for a week or so...but our friends were ignoring the warning and going for it anyway. i mean who cares if you bones feel like they're breaking. the rumor being that this flu strain literally made you feel like your bones were breaking inside you. we on the other hand were not headed into bone break territory till the end of the trip and by then we would be in the clear.) the ride itself was surreal and we were fairly exhilirated at the thought that merely a day prior we had been receiving our diplomas back in North Carolina and now we were crossing the golfo de nicoya on a ferry with no real destination on the other side other than a beach of some sort out on the peninsula. We chatted with some other passengers about the area into which were were headed and found that there was in fact a small pizeria in mal pais they claimed was one of the best they had ever tried. we made mental note to try and find it at some point and got rough directions to its location. now my story is getting long so you will be glad to know that here is where the abridging comes in. the full story describes the random bits of chance luck that made this entire trip work perfectly and allowed us to have one of the best trips ever without having planed nary a whit of it but we will move on the the end. so, the very last evening as we prepared for our return to Puntarenas from Mal Pais, from whence we would travel on to San Jose the next day and then back to the States, we went in search of the pizeria as our last treat in paradise. I will set the scene of the area for you before we are actually seated. Mal Pais was in fact not the place where we ended up staying, but in a similar town a mile up the coast called Santa Theresa. Both are a part of this isolated surfing supported comunity on the coast of Costa Rica's peninsula accessed only by one dirt road that had been washed out and impasible only weeks before we had arrived and which spat a rented suv off of its muddy surface and into a ditch moments before we ourselves made our way out. (somehow there is a bus that actually travels on the road regularly.) Once your into the area there is one road that runs up the coastline lined with hostels, surf shops, restaurants, and...thats it. there is one market for groceries and the houses of the locals which are well off of the road and then the hotels, shops, and restaurants repeated one after another for at least two miles, then nothing. Oh, and each of the restaurants is either showing surfing videos which make you feel high even when you are not or jean claude van dam movies on repeat which tends to have to same effect. so that is the scene and its the most wonderful setup ever. where the main road come in and T's with the coastal road there is a small tail that extends across to make it a full on intersection though there are only a couple of stores on the other side and it soon runs itself out on the beach. there we find the pizeria. last building on the right. a roof and a kitchen and an eating area with no walls and a floor that is weathered wood raised a few inches off of... the beach. we order a hawaiian pizza (i dont care if you like them, i didnt, but here you like them.) while we waited for it to come we walked out on to the beach to watch the sunset and the result is the above picture. upon returning from our ten foot walk down the beach we sat and recieved one of the best pizzas i have ever tasted along with two squirts to drink and the company of the largest english sheepdog ever to exist at our side. the scene will probably go down forever as the most movie-esq moment of my life. now if you'll excuse me i have to run without proofreading this to deliver oreo's with my roomate to exam ridden college students. hopefully some of them will have an exciting adventure of their own when they finish up.

Posted in: on Thursday, May 03, 2007 at at 9:15 PM 2 comments