Obamicon Me

From Obamicon.me via TigerHawk.

Feb 7 evening

Lots of stomping and yelling and tattoos. My waist size expanded by 3.3%. Or so says Chunlin. Songs and ceremonies -- yelling and spinning spears, ugly faces are beautiful. Stick out your tongue! Show the whites of your eyes! Face tattoos: on women, just the owl on the chin; on men, bat on the forehead (bat was the only mammal when the Maori arrived -- they consider it a bird), parrot on the nose, owl, and kiwi on the cheeks. Ocean on the upper legs/lower body. Strength & speed. The birds are for knowledge, speaking, caring, and spiritual kiwis -- connection to mother earth -- protecting the trees by eating the bugs. Mother earth, father sky. ... Mucho food -- lamb, potatoes, chicken, rice, chocolate cake, pudding, etc etc etc. ... It all tasted lovely. But then again, perhaps that's because they starved us for a couple hours before feeding us.

Feb 5 afternoon

We're on the big ferry boat in Picton harbour, after just polishing off a big fish & chips (and yoghurt). Good fish. Okay chips. We had better last night. Then again, those were "buffalo wedges" which had zero of the kick of buffalo sauce proper. Oof. I'm full. No more potatoes, okay?

We watched the second quarter of the Super Bowl. Indy is only ahead of the Bears by two, but sure looked stronger a lot. Outside, Alaska is turning into Greece.

Out into the Cook Strait. Goodbye, South Island. Naptime for Chunlin. ... Hydrangeas growning wild on the West Coast. A penguin-crossing sign on the West Coast. A tidal flooding sign in the Catlins that wasn't just a temporary warning, but a permanent fixture of the road. Terribly narrow and curvy road going out the Otago Peninsula. There was barely enough room for the car in the lane. And if a bus was coming the other direction, it's white-knuckle time. No guardrail, either. Just the bay ten feet down. Lots of one-lane bridges. One direction is always marked with the right-of-way. Blue skies all over the place despite reports of rain and clouds. Oh, well, sure. It rained on us on the Kepler Track, but it got sunny that day, too. Locals with thick accents who don't slow down when you don't understand the first time. Chunlin doesn't like the Kiwi accent. Too harsh for her ears. ... 2.5 megameters so far. And we didn't even drive yesterday.

Feb 5 morning

Another beautiful day in Kaiteri. Time to leave! We fell asleep shortly after dinner last night. Too much potatoes & wine for me, potatoes and beer for Chunlin. And some good venison sausages. What was that you said about a diet? Fruit and instant noodles for breakfast in the lodge's kitchen, then we shall be on our way.

The cathedral in Nelson was good, too. That one had a neato organ, wood and tall, with only four columns supporting it, so you can walk underneath. The seat's across the nave aisle.

(Chunlin's photo above)


(Chunlin's photo above)

"Scenic" is codeword for "slow and curvy." As in: That's a "scenic" road. Sure, the views are nice, but it always seems to be accompanied by a road that requires constant attention. Plenty of bushes on the downhill side so you can't see out, most of the time. Nice viewpoints, though. I am, by the way, refering to Queen Charlotte Drive.

New Hobby

I just had a great idea. You know how people sometimes use the strangest search words to find my/your blog? Wouldn't it be fun to do searches for random phrases and then click on the links to the blogs that have nothing to do with those phrases?

F'rinstance, at blogger.com, I did a search for "potatoes of death," except I didn't put the phrase in quotes, so it pulled up every recent blog post with "potato" and "death" even though they aren't together in the same phrase.

So if one of those bloggers is perusing his or her site meter, he or she will have a head-scratcher at why anybody could possibly be searching for potatoes of death. Cool, huh?

The only problem now, though, is that this very post will now be tops for "potatoes of death"!

Yankovic as Dylan

Bob

I, man, am regal - a German am I
Never odd or even
If I had a hi-fi

Madam, I'm Adam
Too hot to hoot
No lemons, no melon
Too bad I hid a boot

Lisa Bonet ate no basil
Warsaw was raw
Was it a car or a cat I saw?


Rise to vote, sir
Do geese see god?
"Do nine men interpret?" "Nine men," I nod

Rats live on no evil star
Won't lovers revolt now?
Race fast, safe car

Pa's a sap
Ma is as selfless as I am
May a moody baby doom a yam


Ah, Satan sees Natasha
No devil lived on
Lonely Tylenol
Not a banana baton

No "x" in "Nixon"
O, stone, be not so
O Geronimo, no minor ego

"Naomi," I moan
A Toyota's a Toyota
A dog, a panic in a pagoda


Oh no! Don Ho!
Nurse, I spy gypsies - run!
Senile felines
Now I see bees I won

UFO tofu
We panic in a pew
Oozy rat in a sanitary zoo

God! A red nugget! A fat egg under a dog!
Go hang a salami. I'm a lasagna hog

RAAAAAAAAACE!

The bestest ever tv show starts again tonight. The Amazing Race, CBS, 9/8 central. Watch it!

On an unrelated note, do you think the guy at the teriyaki place really asked if I wanted "chocolate yam sauce" on my yakisoba? I said "what?" the first time, and it still sounded the same, so I said "yeah." I don't taste chocolate or yam, so I probably heard wrong.

Potato

I've come across a neato site of comics and drawings. . .



It's called Nedroid.com. That's his cartoon. Apparently I think potatoes are very funny. . .

Happy Turkey Day!

Do Canadians eat turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy and cranberry sauce on their Thanksgiving Day? They should. Actually, according to some people, everybody should have turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy and cranberry sauce once a month. Or was it once a week?

Anyway. . . I have lots of turkey and mashed potatos and gravy leftovers to eat today. Only a couple bites of leftover apple pie remaining, though. That was breakfast.

Day 13 - Ioannina

This city of Ioannina has about 60,000 people and about 120,000 cars, by my count. Most of them are parked. The internet cafes here are huge and cheap, with spanking-new computers with great big screens so everybody can play their favorite shoot-em-up games. It's the fastest connection I've had, and just about the cheapest price. Go figure.

Anyway, yesterday after I blogged, I discovered I had a few hours before the next bus to Ioannina. (The 13:30 bus listed on the website did not exist, so I had to wait until 15:30). I started walking around town and stumbled across a barbershop. I needed a haircut.



Those are the two barbers. Brothers, I believe. They gave me their address and made me promise to mail them the picture. (I doubt they have email.)

Then came lunch. Greek salada, frites, and Mythos "Hellanic lager" (Since 1997!).



That's a big slab of feta cheese on a pile of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and olives, all slathered in olive oil. Pretty tasty.

So then a bus ride through the mountains to Ioannina, where I set about renting a car. All the companies were together on one street, but half of them were closed (it was 18:30, after all). One of the open ones didn't have an automatic, but knew that the Hertz at the airport did. So I talked with Hertz on the phone (55 euros/day), took a taxi to the airport, and was on my way. One drive on the highway and mountain roads as the sun set later, I was at the town of Monodendri.

This morning, after breakfast (hard-boiled egg, bread, coffee), I was hiking. If you haven't gotten enough of precariously-perched monasteries, here's another:



This is the Vikos Gorge, which at its best is deeper than it is wide (just over a klick deep and just under a klick from rim to rim). The trail dives down into the canyon, follows the river down (but the trail does a lot of up and down, actually), and then you can take the trail up to the town of Vikos, back on the rim. At a guess, I'd say that it's about 8 miles with 2000' gain and 3000' loss, Monodendri to Vikos (switch the gain and loss for the opposite direction).



Some parts of the trail were like walking in a park, a lot of the trail was on paving stones (uneven), some parts were scrambling hand over foot, and in one place there was a metal staircase to get down a ten-foot cliff.



They said that it would take six hours to get from Monodendri to the town of Vikos. I thus assumed that I could do it in three hours. I was right. Here's the final hill.



I see that someone has already looked at these photos on Flickr! Whoever you are, fess up. (-;

Here's a shot of Vikos's main square. That's the church.



Unlike most of Greece, which have white stucco walls and red tile roofs, the mountain towns have plain stone walls and stone roofs, with framing of wood or concrete.

I was able to get a modest lunch (and two 1.5-liter bottles of water) at the cafe, even though they had to open it for me. The taverna wouldn't be open until 14:00 (I arrived at noon). I had thought that it was nicer to be somewhere where the locals didn't speak English. I should rephrase that: It's nicer to be somewhere where the locals only speak a little English. I had quite a bit of communication difficulties talking to the townspeople (my few pages of phrases got a workout!).

Here's a picture of the only wildlife that sat still for a photo (black squirrels and little birds didn't).



Halfway back to Monodendri, it started drizzling, but only enough to get all the stones wet. After all that hiking, up and down along the gorge, I let out a cry of joy when I realized I was at the bottom of the final big hill and thus wouldn't have to do any more of that annoying up and down! But that hill was a bugger. Even *I* was dragging on that guy, taking rest breaks every switchback it seemed. But I made it. Three hours to Vikos (including a couple dead-ends trying to get to another town of Papingo), one hour for lunch, and three hours back.

I ate a huge dinner, sitting on the taverna's patio so my stench didn't disturb the other patrons. Had a shower, laid down for a while, and then drove back to Ioannina just to say Hi to y'all. Hi.