funny stuff.

i was wrong. england is, indeed, a third world country. i am finally connected to the internets in my flat. but. it's dial-up. these are flats owned by the university as a part of their international and grad student housing offerings.

dude. dial-up. seriously. my flickr is absolutely hating life. i haven't heard a dial-tone since 1932. that, for the record, is before the modern computer was put into use.

we went for a walk around downtown hull today but, being a horrible tourist, i was caught off guard before the tour and neglected to bring my camera! but, being a great tourist, as we were walking about with our student-leaders i was keeping my eye out for decent shopping. there are a lot of clothing stores here in hull. this isn't any different than the US (we even have an H&M in our town centre [eeeee!]) but it feels especially strange when you can walk from Burton Suit and Men's Fashion labels to the King's Ale House (more on this to come shortly) to the Holy Trinity Church, england's largest catholic church. the latter is a beautiful building with as many flying buttresses and spires as one would expect from a chapel built in the 1200s. but, back to the matter at hand, for as many superficially appealing clothing retailers, they all have product that is somewhere between American Eagle, H&M and Urban Outfitters. i.e. the denim is soulcrushingly pre-distressed and sold in horrid light washes. the shoes, sweaters, scarfs and selected t-shirts are pretty cool, however. that's alright, though, i hold hope for cool stuff in York.

i finally ticked off a big "to-do-before-i-die" today, though. after the 30 minute tour we were all unleashed to go our seperate ways. i made my way to Hull Old Towne and enjoyed a couple pints of Deuchars IPA (3.8%) at www.yeoldewhiteharte.co.uk/">Ye Olde White Harte, a pub i've had my eye on for quite some time. it's rumoured to be one of the oldest in the UK, therefore probably one of the oldest in the world. it is a great little place, dark, low and sans pretense. accessed through an unassuming alley shoehorned in between a giant HSBC and other more modern businesses. it's a wonderfully quiet place with a lovely little beer garden and old ass stained glass windows.

following this i enjoyed lunch at the King's Ale House across from the Trinity Church. as recommended by tradition, my brother Tim and a strangely insatiable appetite for the terminally unhealthy, ordered the pub's fish and chips. for 4.95 i ended up receiving a plate that resembled a hub cap (in sheer size) piled high with homemade chips, hot mashed peas, lettuce & cucumber and, i am shitting you not!, a whole deep fried fish.

...

ah, i think to myself, there must be some mistake. the cook must take things very literal or something. when they saw "fish and chips" it had not occurred that fish might be plural and not, indeed, an entire fish. but no, my cod had been pulled fresh from the fryer and placed on my large smooth, white, porcelain hub cap for my enjoyment. enjoy, indeed.

also. i have a sink the size of a large watermelon in my room. and a little mirror above it. it's way cuter than it sounds.

you'll think i'm an ass and a lier. but guinness is best from english taps.

-e

ps. my dial-up just hung up on me because "The Other Side is not Responding." after several failed attempts a notice came up with the helpful note that "Authentication Failed". i've had the internet in my room, officially, for about 40 minutes. fuck England.

pps. i didn't mean that last bit.

ppps. here’s a funny ass picture morgan sent to me. i will not bother with the image’s background as I am plenty sleepy but instead i leave it to you to interpret the many levels of composition along with the play of the light and shadow on the emotions of the protagonist’s anguished look that underlies the greater message of suffering in any given place in the world. in short, take a look at what bigfoot must look like when we’re not filming him (crude alert. follow link in photo for "large" one. har!):

pics n' things!

damp n' shit.

this marks a special occassion. i am making my first blog post from england. this means that i have just spent my first day in england. just because it was the sorriest excuse for a "day" that i could possibly have mustered, it still counts.

flight time: 13 total hours, ~10,000 miles. my current calculations show that i haven't had more than 5 total hours of sleep in the last 36. put some interesting jet lag, swollen tonsils and lymph nodes, dehydration, and two stiff pints of guinness upon landing (i promised two peoples i would drink honorary english pints) on top of that and you get the witch's brew that is my brain right now.

today, other than the long ass flight times, has been a little interesting. there was only one "hitch" and that was i didn't have a housing assignment the second i rolled into the university of hull's international office to check in. for 15 minutes i was homeless with a bike box and two large checked bags. for 30 minutes after that i was going to be in temporary housing that was going to be so temporary that it would've made sense to just sleep in my clothes. for 10 minutes after that i was in regular temporary housing with a couple guys from australia and, finally, the housing office found that i had indeed(!) filled out my housing application in june. i am now in my permanent digs for the next 4 to 5 months and it's a little bigger than the dorm i had my first year at evergreen. the room is quite a bit wider and, fortunately, fully furnished. the verdict is still out on the merit of the mattress, sheets and pillow they've supplied me. yikes.

i have yet to tell somebody that "we saved your ass in world war II" but i also haven't been exposed to the types of people whom might find the humour in such a tasteless comment.

a few observations:
-shops on street level and flats on the second level. all stores are small and have apartments above them and they exist in block long chunks of brick and mortar resulting in a really strange uniqueness despite the total homogeneity of the streetfronts.
-the dutch and the english seem to be plenty friendly. i have not run into the "ugly american" stereotype except for when i brought it up in conversation.
-one should know when to let dead horses lay.
-you could plug a washer or dryer into any standard wall outlet here, apparently.
-hull appears, so far, to be a rusted-out-but-rebuilding centre of industry in the middle of mudflat river plains and hedgerow countryside (to the north, beautiful).
-despite non-smoking signs to the nth degree placed on Airbus A330 intercontinental planes, they have friendly little ashtrays in the bathrooms. really, this is psycho and drove me kind of crackers. they're so all about not smoking on the fucking aircraft that you start believing that maybe they're pumping pure ether into the cabin rather than oxygen and if somebody so much as farted the explosion might shift earth's orbit 3 feet to the left. they even tell you, outloud to your face during flight prep, to not smoke in the fucking bathroom or so help them god they will throw your smokes out the door and toss you into the spinning turbine and then not send a hey-we're-super-cereal-sorry-about-that-little-mishap-check to your next of kin just to make a point.
-there are a lot of get-food-fast type shops. they all sell pizza, burgers, kebabs, falafel, and meat pies and are all "______'s Continental Takeaway". yeah, nothing quite so continental as a bunch of foods that america butchered and then pretended to have primogeniture on.

morgan asked if i had been asked, so far, to explain the US. i have not been asked to explain the actions of the states or the country as a concept rather than god's lazily planned experiment. the closest i have come to this was a briefly discussing the election with a nice gentleman from holland on the flight from amsterdam to humberside. i couldn't decipher him because he was very thoughful but was on a work trip for Total oil company.

okay, enough. sleep tonight and tomorrow begins five days of orientation. i'm holding my breath hoping it's more than icebreaker games.

big ups to spencer for driving me in to seattle at ungodly hours of the morning.

xo.

-e

photos to come, folks. we'll head out on a little walking tour of kingston upon hull soon.
pics n' things!

airport stop #1

though they are presented as friendly hubs of commerce and travel, airports are liars.

they are intended for the terminally wishful.
they are, alternatively, mainly utilized by the type of person who stands on the wrong side of the moving sidewalk.

hopeless, in other words.
amuzing, in yet other other words.

i'm in seattle and waiting for my 12:50 flight to amsterdam.

-e


pics n' things!

sickness

no, really, thanks god. i wanted strep before hopping on a 12 hr flight abroad.

what up, penicillin?

-e
pics n' things!

Bicycle

last week i invested in a new road bike through discover bicycles, my shop in hood river, oregon. the 2009 Giant TCR Alliance is half-carbon, half-aluminum, half-inexpensive and all fast. with a longer top tube than any other road bike i've owned or ridden it stretches the shoulders way out over the front. it makes even the slowest rider, me, feel like the most aggressive.



i'm taking this bike to england next monday and, hopefully, i'll have some decent riding tales to post. also, assuming england isn't a third world country with shit wi-fi, i'll be posting more consistently.

here's to leaving in 6 days.

-e
pics n' things!