The Adventures of Curious George

I just drove a motorcycle from one house to another with a truck... [edit: because I don't know how to ride a motorcycle yet, but like I told Alex, I know how to drive a stickshift vehicle and how to ride a bike, so isn't a motorcycle just a stickshift bike?] And none of the truck, the motorcycle, or either house is mine. Welcome, I'm George and I do strange things. So do you, but they're probably not strange in the context within which you live... maybe they'd be strange to an Egyptian microbus driver? Or to an East Bay programmer? Or to a conservative Texan rancher? I like all of these people, so I've come to terms with the fact that I do strange things. Anyway, Alex and Connor just gave me a motorcycle (to borrow and learn on and look after), a book ( Long Way Down , which looks awesome), a bunch of tips about where Alex used to live in Oakland including Rico's Diner which is within walking distance and serves everything necessary to make your own t...

Which is not to imply that Cairo is not nice. I liked Cairo quite a lot. It was a lot comfier home for me than New York or Boston ever could be... but at least so far, Oakland is nicer than Cairo :) For one thing, it's bikable! Yay bikes! And public transit takes me into (and back out of) San Francisco for under $2, with my bike! I'm living with Molly and Ransom these days, which is marvelous. A couple days ago, I dug up the bathroom floor at their new house in West Oakland. Hypothetically tomorrow I will replace some pipes? Maybe the plumber will do it. We'll see how confident I feel in the morning. Right now I'm listening to Call of Ktulu by Metallica. How and why, you ask? Let's trace this tangent... - I started by looking for a Mad Max-esque aviator cap with a gas mask thingy (for Burning Man) - Found Steam Punk Tribune who mentions some weird Seattle band called Abney Park has one - Abney Park rocks steampunk-style and have silly lyrics about dirig...

I'm on the road again! Today has been incredible. I arrived by train late last night, picked up from the train station by a random last-minute Denver CouchSurfer whose profile I had not yet seen. She turned out to be a *phenomenal* host. A social worker who teaches developmentally disabled children, she also knows how to have fun and has wonderfully open-minded and yet seriously down-to-earth friends. I spent the morning hanging out with Beau, a fellow hitchhiker. He made it from Dallas to Denver in 15 hours, a feat I don't think I could manage. He has learned tips and tricks from a guy named Aaron Bell, who organized a hitchhiking *race* recently, from Dallas to... somewhere. Carolinas, maybe? Anyway, the teams were of 3 people, and Bell and friends tied for first at 16 hours. Beau was only a couple *days* behind. Bell says two lanes maximum, as the risk-takers (presumably who pick up hitchhikers) will be in the fast lane and won't want to merge more than a lane o...

Yesterday exuded wonderfulness. I hung out under a library overhang with some bums who told me all about local spots, biked all around Boulder, CO to a couple different parks and through downtown, ate some amazing spicy green chili (leftover) mexican food, biked around with old friends (Hafford, Maslowski, and Tsai) and hiked a quick mountain trail with same, ate Nepalese for dinner (mmm... dal bhat...), hung out at Lauren's talking and eating pumpkin muffins with brown sugar and butter on top, and came back to Janet's for a personal yoga lesson! Now I have an appreciation for Yoga (as Janet is an amazing teacher), but I don't know if I'd learn much in a large class setting. Maybe, but if not, I'll have to find a way to get some more of that. Now I head back to Denver, checking out the SAME cafe , going to a CouchSurfing meeting, and then crashing before hitting the road nice and early tomorrow. Hopefully I'll have time to stop and visit Cagle, if only for an...

I met some of the heads and national coordinators of the ECF while in Bruxelles and learned all sorts of stuff from them in the 15 minutes between their lunch and a meeting, including how the EuroVelo routes were planned and what the current status of the EV5 project is. Really exciting for me. I have been fixing bicycles, doing some dishes, eating really tasty dumpster-dived food, attending art exhibits (a couple dancing strangely, inspired by projections on one wall of their enclosed space, while the viewing windows are opened and closed remotely by ropes... by members of the audience. Also, a projection of an open door onto a closed door, with a beach scene projected around it. After staring at the open door on the beach for a while, it's strange to see someone walk through the real door, or to step out into the ocean yourself.), talking with friends, checking out squats that offer various types of free/cheap services, learning linuxy things, biking around Amsterdam on 20-50 ...

For the last two years there have been European Hitchhiking Gatherings (Paris and then Odessa, Ukraine). The next one is coming up in August, but we're hoping to organize one in the States, too. Maybe Colorado. I don't think anything has been officially announced yet, but check out this video from last year's European Hitch Gathering. http://casarobino.org/2010/03/789-hitchhiking-festival-video

[Update 2010-03-11 10:03 - Conspiracy theorists will love to believe Groupon got caught with their hand in the cookie jar (by accidentally purchasing too many votes? because I my tweets about the purchased origins of their votes showed up on their twitter-feed?). Others might think they decided that the purchased tweet-votes (purchased by someone else?) were a no-no. In any case, Groupon has removed Robert's video from their site after just a day or so of the 15,000+ votes in question being up (video link below changed to original posting on youtube)] I'm curious about this " Live Off Groupon " challenge. $100,000 to give up money for a year and live off of pre-paid vouchers. To skip to the intrigue part, scroll down to highly curious below. I spent quite a bit of time on my video submissions for the competition: Introducing myself to Groupon A conversation with a local business Judging by the winning finalists, I didn't show off my zany side enough. Oh well...