Day of the Dead

The Day of the Dead started off in a horribly appropriate way: See-double-u's magnificent cat, Zoey, was hit by a car sometime in the night. It looks like she left instantly.
Goodbye Zoey, you had it good and now its even better.

See-double-you drove me to the airport and I flew to Hotlanta for the Carnival of the Dead. For the airport I dressed as The Financier because I get kicks out of the way people treat me when I look good. Putty in my hands. Probably why religions require such elaborate costumementation. Arriving at the (literally) busiest airport in the world I begin to wonder if Sleg is going to continue the tradition of airport Mindnappings that we began upon El Capitan (but that's quite another story and will need to be written and then written off on by El Capitan him's elf and maybe even the Spatial Galactician before it can be posted here) by whisking me off the baggage claim curb into oblivion. But no Mindnapping today. On the ride to the dump, uh, no not the dump...to the A-hole I explain to him how my costume of the businessish attire, plus wearing the Mindfold, will dress me as Wall Street. We toss around the idea of him being The Bailout by dressing in upscale all-black attire, but in reality that only happened in our heads because it was too much to explain (and he put this awesome veil-type mask on). We had to leave N at home because she was sick. I gave her some medicine.
Sleg and I fell right back into tradition and laptopped the Glenwood for their awesome selection of beer; our favorite of the night being named Heavy Seas: Small Craft Warning. Its like a Stellas Artois for your pyrate ship. That, we later realized (for one never knows when one is in the midst of Shark Summoning) was our Shark Summoning. Once you see the fins you've gotta either swim for your life (ha, best of luck) or grab onto the fin. We rode shark toward the Carnival of the Dead in some thick style that had been dredged from our pasts and tattooed across the thick breathing leather of these monsters.
At the door we were stamped with skulls and then woah. I will not divulge the inner occurrences of this particular party because there are no words to express it to ones who were not present and there's a reason it was done inside a building and not in public. Just know that if Sara Ashes throws a party, for chrissake, GO!
The next morning we found a Shark Rider's sigil on the side of the truck. It was dashed across the door and became clear when I wiped the top layer away that, indeed, the inhabitants of this truck had Rode Shark last night.
But that was long after this. I woke up on the triplicate of yoga mats that have become my Sleghome. The overcoat I had wrapped my's elf in was spotted with candlewax. But I had lit no candles. The pain started before I even woke, it actually woke me as it were. There is only one way, I have learned, to deal with such pain. Head on. So I did headstands. And jumping jacks. And dry heaves. And tried to meditate. And dry heaves. And had them hit me repeatedly in the skull with a tube of paper. And running in place. And ginger tea. And headstands and more headstands. And then when the landlord's brother came over I did a headstand to confuse him. It worked. I can do mad headstands when I am needing to summon the deepest of energies to combat the tricksy toxins that I have penchants for.

If I am anywhere near Atlanta on The Day of the Dead

This is where I will go...

One of the Ringmistresses, and my dear friend, Sara Ashes, best I can tell, came (back?) from the dead some years ago to tell the rest of us humans why not to fear the Deep Sleep. And by day she works to abolish the death penalty. Go figure.

Mush in my Room

Here is the hike I took from Old Barnesville Road. My most-knowledgeable roommate gave me directions which I almost followed properly except for finding the trailhead. So I ended up bushwacking up a large hill across this stream.
 

To get to this view.
 
 
 
 

In about two weeks the colors here are going to make rainbows frown, oh wait, they already do frown.



Then I followed this rabbit and when I lost his trail this was sitting at my feet:

 
Not seeing any caterpillars nearby, I ganked it and ran.




What better place to bring a mushroom than my new room?! Those are Kiers alongside me, they are sentries for One Second Time Travelers
 


Crash course on Shark Riding!
 

Wait, what was it the caterpillar said again about taking sides?
 


Not remembering which side was which, I could just go for it...
 



Or take the middle road...
 

Stereolab

This is why I love Stereolab and why we are gonna Ride the Sharks into the ATL tomorrow night!!!

Experiences in Buoyancy

The first time in the last decade found me floating freely in the ocean. I still don't float even with the salinity contributing its buoyancy beneath and along my spindly fleshings. I have to wave my legs along the currents, and arms when the swells come for my head. This unsettles me because I picture the afternoon sun and shade splattered across the sea, catching the lights as glitter on its rippled waters, scattering shine all around my silhouetted wafting - lazy along the swells. Even if I don't look tasty, sharks will often take a bite of something, and their amazing in-mouth receptors can analyze the basic nutriment content to determine whether it is worth eating before they even swallow it; hence many people get bit and survive because the sharks don't like what they taste. But it doesn't stop them from tasting.

The sharks never leave the rider's head.

Rising and dropping with the swellings breaking into waves somewhere behind my head direction releases my mind from its grasp on the sharks its inviviating, from the motions to keep my face in the air, lets go of the sunburn, saltburn and burning deep in the heart. Into these spaces wash the full sensation of buoyancy, and here not my heartlove, but the part of the body where it can touch the breeze and love the autumn chill, rises and falls into love with this deep sensation. The mind folds around closing the eyes, releasing that kind of hold on the world. Release.

I've held with many things over the life thus far: hands have held books - first true touch of love - and the eyes held in thrall of such mystery of words handed them to the heart and imagination. I've held music with my ears and my soul; it was my first contact with god and why i'm in this thing deep. I've not been able to set down things such as desire, facts, money, dreams and love all to different ends. So here i am asking the sea to hold me for the subtle thrill of floatingish. The oceanwater laps into my ears whispering of whence the blood of mine came and where i will return it to when its done with me.


Speaking of Blackness, we've tried the Mindfold in the sea, and the waves laughed it off our faces no matter our techniques; also it held saltwater in the eyepockets and that stings (so I am thinking to get a pair of goggles and painting them black).


El Capitan and I are now playing with the waves. Diving into body surfing or diving into the oncoming waves. It makes no difference as we are tossed about no matter which direction we flow. We refine a game which I will refer to as Dancing Foundation, and El Capitan calls Wave Bashing, and so go the techniques, where you must set one foot into the sand -- such a step for me to take thinking of all the creepy crawlies who undoubtedly drift on the fringes of land and sea above, surely a crab will think my foot appetizing -- and the rest of the body is free to move as wanted, but that one foot must stay in that place (pivoting is allowed). We stand on the edge of the invisible chain that jerks back on the waves, causing them to break and tumble over our miniscularity.

In the face of an oncoming wall of water I hear El Capitan holler to charge his ball of energy against the inevitable and as the wave tumbles me around my pivot foot but I hold my toehold in the sand and he's yelling the same when we can get our heads back out of the water, I breathe in the fresh air and the realization there is no way I could have experienced the expansion i've incorporealated in this Ecuadorian Escapade without being guided by a Rogue Therapist (stay tuned for variations on this theme).

Thank you El Capitan for your parts in this!

Piscean

...Beach of Canoa












[As I sit to write all this in my journal, I have put on this George Harrison album, Brainwashed, which I have never tasted, the first song has hooked me:
"If you don't know where you are going
Any road'll take you there"]

I headed into the ocean with my backpack and shirt and sunscreen underneath and stood for ten mental minutes at least, bandanna'd and all; allowing the motions of all other beachgoers to wash away from me as the waters waved across my ankles, slipping the sand out from under the feet and my heels sank into the sand much quicker than the fronts of my feet as I gave my time and legs to the sea. It lapped across my decisive steadfastness, sampled my flesh and footmind; things were whetted and wetted and like sinking into the sand, my mind sinks into my inclinations and past -- into my depths.

[As I am writing this in my journal, George Harrison is singing
"I’m a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul
I’m a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul

And I’ll be swimming until I can find those waters
That’s the one unbounded ocean of bliss
That’s flowing through your parents, sons and daughters
But still an easy thing for us to miss

Sometimes my life it feels like fiction
Some of the days it’s really quite serene
I’m a living proof of all life’s contradictions
One half’s going where the other half’s just been

I’m a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul
I’m a Pisces fish and the river runs through my soul"]

The Ocean wants me Today, Mr. Waits.

I strip down to my swimmies, stow my pack and wade into the shallows. This is the smoothest beach i've been to, so few shells and rocks and things to confound my feet into feeling the old fears; feet, the awarest part of the Piscean body (Pisces signs: Sun, rising, Mercury and Venus...sorry I was late being born mom, but I had to time it right!) I dig deep into the stillness in my depths and see that under the crashing craziness of the uppermost ocean is a deep stillness I can feel with my feet. I lift them from the seabed with bouyancy and armstrokes. I speed the swimming as a wave comes at my face, and I dive down into the realm of Neptune's mysteries. Coming back up beyind the wave shows me an oceanfull of them. I start catching them with my body, kicking quickly to grab something beyond hold -- to be grabbed by the velocities of the waters caught up in the wave -- and am churned and flipped. My bouyancy acting as insitgator of lost upness. Not even the Mindfolding i've done has prepared me for this type of unseeing.

I have swallowed water many times, but this time was to the chagrin of my lungs and I had to take a breather from holding my breath. But, even with a stomach of salty waters I re-commit to riding The Waves with El Capitan coming into the water late in his latest shorts concoction of sewing the legs of his pants up underrolledneath. We fought the waves by standing strong and even punching palmfulls of energyballs into overhead crashing waters that could crush us at wrong angles. We body-surfed the flows, and many times I had to duck out early as I was too far up the crest of the wave for fear of going over with the foam, into the crashings. But this fear is a real, rational fear that I am kinesthetically determining in the moment; not the fear i've been carrying over the last 10 years or so...that of the Deeps as exhibited by me quavering at just the idea of frolicking in rivers and lakes even, let alone Mother Ocean, anywhere I could not see my feet, is the best way I can calssify it; imagining the beasties and creepy crawlie feelings to be snakes, nibbling animals and the most marvelous of all, Sharks. This was the way I both pushed away my Piscean nature and feared for its existence against the jaws of the deep.

I am floating on my back, laughing as a child- receiving flashes of my life's pleasures and committing a re-orientation of mind via this delicious Buoyancy, my body's disengaging from the gravity, even if ever so slightly and the power of the ocean's waves, goodness and my o my...
I have Rode the Shark into the deep beyond. My path is clear (not determined, but open), my self is reunified, my mind has folded and Grace is salty and floats me with immense swells where the sky opens up and drops away suddenly, and I shudder and sometimes there is a crash and I may get upended with sand in my caw; but I am healing in tune to the pulsings of the worldflow.

I felt little difference as the change occurred within me, because it wasn't an immediate flip of a switch, but the culmination of times spent, most recently with El Capitan Rogue Therapizing me into Mindfolding the falls of Mindo, the waves, the spent slick surfaces of bubbles finally making their energies' way to the shore of this beautiful town, to wash my feet, my piscean pleasure and pain of fear of the Ocean's deeps. My deeps getting released from the dam behind which i've trapped some of the more powerful methods of living I could incorporealate. The change completes into my soul. So the simple act of bringing this all into focus with the every of my senses brought my soul back to me. I find surprise in how recognizable this integration feels.


["You've got me between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea" comes on David's ipod. George Harrison is in the room with me. This is beyond me. Even I am at awe at this concretization of thoughticles; and Teilhard de Chardin laughs from the corner of the Noosphere]


When we got back to David sitting by the coconut cart where they will hack a coconut to just the right spot where a straw can be stuck into the milkhole, 50 centavos for the freshest and most nutritious drink on earth, El Capitan saw he had missed a phone call on his cell so he needs to get his computer to the internet.

Later, at a beachfront 'staurant just behind the ramadas, my face burns, though the rest of me seems to have absorbed the sunblock properly. El Capitan is servicing a client in the States from an internet cafe just down the road from this beach. I am staring at this magnificent ocean that I have walked along a thousand times as a thousand different people, and here it is the same ocean as Always.

My's elf & mind & soul all folded together today.

We met in the waters of the Ecuadorian pacific and put the past behind me. For so long now i've proclaimed my greatest fear to be Sharks and the devils of the deep blue sea; in fact many times i've said it is my Only Fear.
So if i've broken through this fear...will others rush in to fill me?
Am I washed free of fear?
Is my acceptance of the world's deep an increase of the complexity of integration into the psychic matrix of Being nearering my soul to the centrality of eternal Love and heartRending bliss through the immersion in the fires of my own fear?
Will this meta-fear, into which I've poured all my urgings away-from-harm, burst open as a pinata and scatter all the little fearlings of my soul into the world again?

I care not as I am with the Sea again.


[a note on the usage of the word Psyche (and its derivatives such as Psychic or other words I makeupify using it as the root)
"The dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends."--CG Jung
"The deeper 'layers' of the psyche lose their individual uniqueness as they retreat further and further into darkness. . . . they become increasingly collective until they are universalized and extinguished in the body's materiality. . . . Hence 'at bottom' the psyche is simply 'world.'"--CG Jung
Just so you know I'm not talking about mind-reading...more like Mindfulliving]

Manta in the Morning

[Insert gratuitous awesome photo of self El Capitan took in Quito at the International Phenomenon called Shooters.]

El Capitan and I are on the bus to Bahia waiting for it to leave the gate. We've been here for 1/2 hour between buses and i'm strung out from riding the sharkbus all night without even knowing we had gotten on it.

It all started at the Quito station when I was concerned my big bag would not make it into the luggage storage so I kept pestering the employees for to stow my luggage. It was finally time and as retribution for me being a worried gringo making their midnight shift that much more buggy, they had me carry my own bag from where they had set it down earlier and stow it myself. Fine, so long as it is on the same bus as I am.

We all clamored on the bus and organized into assigned seats. El Capitan is saying "this is the nicest bus i've been on in Ecuador, i feel funny," as he is maneuvering his carry-on bag so the juice in one mesh pocket and the vodka in the other side's mesh pocket won't slide out over the 9 hour ride. I got the window this time, and since we are driving all night, its not for the scenery, but to lean up against while sleeping; we try the seats reclining and they lie almost completely flat, so sleeping appears it will be much easier to achieve than i had first feared.
[I am in a place called the Surf Shack, where i can get both coffee & whiskey and internet along with breakfast. There are a couple townies working the place, cooking my sausage and eggs, and smoking and singing with the Beatles; one gringo just walked in with a waterproof ipod and grabbed his surf board that was sitting against the wall behind me. Almost unplugged my laptop with one of the fins. He turned to apologize and saw my face below the bandanna and realized that I was pretty easygoing. His smile turned to a laugh as he saw the half-finished whiskey shot yet to be poured into the coffee. Pretty neat town. Let's get back on the bus...]

I get to situating ipod, in the left pocket, thread the phones under the warming shirt and up to the ear holes, bandanna off-gulp-because the knot presses into the back of my head so i can't lay back, Mindfold onto the forehead, 2.5mg of Melatonin sublingual under the tongue and curl up El Capitan's sweater into a tube to be my neck pillow so the head doesn't roll with every bump and turn, I slip my earplugs into my right pocket, next to the change purse, for ease of access if the ipod doesn't work its minimagic.

Selecting the pre-made Chill playlist of Eno's smoothest, The Habibiyya, Moby's Ambient and the like, I find that the most relaxing of these sounds have no way to drown out the roar of the bus engine which, even though these windows don't open, roars and rumbles into my ears past the phones and garbling the fragile ambient musics of my favorites. So I crank up the volume, which is a paradox to the floaty sounds drifting among my ears.

This is working for the first short while until we pass the city toll booth and exit Quito, where the television comes on and without lifting my fold I determine it is some sort of Knight Riderish action flick that contains untold thrilling car chase scenes judging by the routine tire squeals and minimal dialogue I can't make out, or truly, don't want to pay any attention to; focusing the slivers of my mind that are still awake towards the magic album "If Man but Knew" which I have moved onto infinite looping. The mideastern acoustic has enough waves of sound to pierce thru the surrounding rumbles enough to make it followable thru the night's churning sonic juttings from the beast's engine, brakes and televised inanity. I settle into the slow groove they are digging out of the communal psyche's malleable thoughtstuff; I let my eyes weigh heavier and heavier.

But the action flick is stunning me at intermittent blasts and I am forced to turn the tunes up again. El Capitan is back from trying to take the empty pair of seats behind us when we stop outside of town for the last batch of riders. So we're back to bumping elbows and knees. I can tell we leave the paved road when the bus - heavier than my last mental image of God - is hopping along the riveted road as if we were on the moguled slopes of the Andes, not the muddy roads. Its all downhill from Quito's 9500' to the port city. The momentum behind us makes the curves around the mountain sides full with gravitation. With the switchbacks hidden from us riders by the driver's cabwall, the movements occur as sudden jerks and we are all swaying in our varieties of sleep. I am teetering with a feather's smoothness on the edge of dreamdom so i don't want to tense to fight the convoluted spirals we take around these mountainsides. I suggest to the mind awake that we are on a roller coaster and letting my body go limp around the center of my being is the interest gathered from all the Chi work i've invested into me.

The melatonin is kicking in and my brain thinks my brain is telling my brain its time for my brain's thoughtwaves to settle into sleep sinking synchronization into the spaces of time being taken to arrive each swerve of the bus at its condition of physicality, the feelings become less and thicker, slower. Adjusting the ipod brought a second trickle of sense into curve with the bus' swervature helping to line mind with the body's predicament.

Walking the line between waking and sleep for 7 clock hours means i have been absorbing the Habibiyya's one album something like ten times through. A fleeting connection between this notion and the time mother walked in on her teenage son lying asleepish on his bedroom floor with White Rabbit on repeat, and her illustrating confusion at my preferences and my confusion from being roused by the outside world from my inner respite merged into that oddness where one can't follow another into Life -- swings the line i'm walking like a tightrope into awareness. Sensations come rushing in to fill the higher crest of brainwareness amplitude with swimming, swaying sensations, but overall the total darkness held deeper sway. Changing from The Habibiyya to Songs of Green Pheasant (as introduced to me by the Illuminated Mar-Mar), though it lasted only a single listen through after the sweet sublimation of drone of the lasting night that Man almost Knew settled the curves into the brain's creases. I needed an album that was entrancing enough to drift sleep along this rocky road but sharp enough to cut through the myriad of busship noises as we rolled thru the moon's night. The answer came from the Deep Forest. First of the glorious albums of my musical youth. My original Morpheus.

Awakening in a foreign town after an entire night of off-road bussing up and down the Andes just short of the ocean was one of the least noticeable most extreme experiences i've had.

Antihystemeticos

We have rode the shark into the JW Marriot, where El Capitan and I are posing as guests to try to get him some anti-histematicos for his ankles and elbows are swelling in massive quadrants of bug bites which are itching a great many times more than mine from the same flying ant/fly that literally slices open your skin and latches onto the large drop of blood that swells out of this invasive technique.

We came in with the plan of walking past the front desk and him asking "so i'll just see you in the room?" to me and me acknowledging that and heading for the room. But once we got to the door and the doorman was straight out of Cinderella, with the coattails and all, I feared they might require some sort of clearance for the elevators, so I just said "yeah i'll see you up there, but i'm gonna make a call" because I saw the phone sign.

I stood in the booth for what seemed to be 5 minutes talking to myself about a deal gone south and how I was going to have to stay an extra day or two to take the clients out to a meeting and no i'm not seeing anyone on the side how could you even think that? I'm in the hotel right now, and so on. Once I figured he had the time he needed, I ventured out into the vast open air lobby and was hoping he had not gone through with the plan of meeting me on the 6th floor somewhere. He came trotting up and said "they sent me to the gift shop but they didn't have any. The front desk is looking for something now."

We are a few days past laundry day without having properly observed laundry day. I have the patched up pants (mother did a fine job, i'm just saying), my journal sticking out of the back pocket and the bright yellow bandanna dangling long all pirate style over my redneck and the Mindfold strapped on the forehead just because, well two reasons, you never know when you need the Mindfolded and let's be honest, it looks good on the bright colored bandannas on my handsom head (See Dr. Mindlab post for a good illustration of what I mean) and I haven't shaved in a month.


El Capitan is still wearing Frankenpants and his badass leather jacket and even though its 11pm on a Sunday night and all the pharmacies are closed which is why we are trying to swindle the JW Marriot out of allergy medication, he's got his flight shades on his head. So we are chilling with me writing this feet up on the coffee table wishing i had my ipod, and El Capitan is fiddling with his phone which is ringing. In my journal I am writing that he is faking a call that is all business-like so that as we sit in the lobby and he paces Frankenpants up and down the tile floor saying things like "I'll call him at 6am tomorrow, sir," and "oh of course, I know what is wrong its the (made-up sounding computer part name) underheating" I really did think he was just keeping the shark ridden, but upon further clarification it was in fact an actual business call beyond perfecto in its uncanny timing. But that's just how El Capitan rolls.

I am trying to look intent on intently writing all this down as he comes and taps me on the shoulder. I get up and he nods over his shoulder to the concierge who is following us to the door. I see that the VIP treatment is occurring so I adjust the Mindfold straight on my head and slip this book back in my pocket -- its my very first page in this new journal that is a size smaller moleskine than the previous batch which means it fits in my back pocket i never should have left it in the first place bigger is not always better -- and we head to the revolving doors, but the concierge steps in front of us to Cinderella's charioteer who leans his head much too far over for the top hat to stay on without adhesives and is nodding to the man's words to boot. That was when I knew this whole thing was a farce and I needed to keep my guard up. A bit too smooth. El Capitan is both listening to what is being said and translating it to me.
"He will send a car to pick up the goods from an open pharmacy or I can ride there. Then in Spanish "I'm just gonna ride there because I will want to meet my friend out after that."
And before we know it we are being usered towards a car that has been magically appearancized in the roundabout that nobody ever drives their own cars thru, but is only driven in by drivers. I take one look at the SUV and think of my thrilling experiences in Ecuadorian pharmacies and opt for trying to call the folks one more time (mom it was busy the three times I called on Sunday) before getting to that drink that we passed up for hopeful pharmacy journies earlier. I tell El Capitan this in as few as words as possible so as to not hinder his swift ride and I have to admit, a churkle which is a manly giggle, slipped out of my throat so I hurried away from the overcivilization and towards Shooters. But something got a hold of my idea machine and it came back with 'wait and wave to him as he's being driven to the pharmacia to get one last laugh.' So the car came around the circle and out of the hotel to pass me on the corner sidewalk waving with both hands and even kind of hopping like a fool to make sure he sees me. Which made the car stop. Whoops. I'm on my way crossing the street on the hopes that I don't get wrangled back into such a translatable drama, 'cause I sure don't want to get in that car.

So I am yelling over my shoulder "just wanted to get one last laugh in I didn't mean for you to stop."
"No no no," he's yelling back "it was perfect what you did. I was going to get him to stop at some point."
"But why didn't you just let him take you there?"
"Because he'll do it for a lot cheaper" and the taxi he had hailed as we were crossing the street stopped at his feet.

Divinity amidst pearls

El Capitan gave this tale in his summary storytelling style over a dinner of beans rice and pork/chicken and fried plantains; if I recall correctly he was trying to entice me into visiting the Amazon rainforests:
"So I paid this guy $45 to take me down the Amazon river where he left me off at a trailhead where he told me that if I followed it I would come upon a village where a bus routinely came through carrying canoes back upriver, then he bid me goodbye. I followed the trail to the village alright, which was empty except for an malnourished parrot. But fortunately the bar had some crackers and a bottle of rum which the parrot and i shared for two days until someone came by and i was able to get a ride upriver. I got back to the guy who left me off at that town and told him he was wrong. I hate backtracking."

While he was talking a man came in with a traditional harp and set it up on one of the restaurant's chairs, which prompted this story:
"I made a laser harp out of two way mirrors set in a top and bottom plank of wood. It was set up so that any one laser, there were three, could be interrupted with your finger and that would produce a particular note. Stroking through multiple lasers at the same time or in quick conjunction would produce the appropriate sounds. I only made it with three notes, but it is only limited by the number of two-way mirrors."
What? WHAT?! Where is this instrument?!?!?!?! Se la via de El Capitan.

Quito is a big city; we took the bus which El Capitan mentioned was actually progressing in that it had maps of the routes in the terminals and turnstiles you had to pay to go thru. Then on the busses themselves, there were digital signs telling the next stop. Which is just about when he turned to me and said "there goes the store we are looking for..." Walking from the bus stop back gave me a good taste of the traffic, literally, my throat started burning and as if I wasn't having enough trouble breathing the thin air my lungs felt even more stuffy and clogged.

Another interesting thing is that ATMs give out $20 bills but there is both a large counterfeiting issue and El Capitan has actually received some fakes from the ATMs; generally storekeepers just tear them right in half. Also most places don't accept 20's. I used two $10s at different places and both times they had to scrape for change. And he says that once we get out of Quito into the smaller towns $5 might not even be accepted, so we are storing away all our $1 and Sacajawea dollar coins, judging by their ubiquity seem to have been shipped en masse from the states; which makes cents because the front of the coin resembles the native Ecuadorians.

Ecuador

So, El Capitan y mi have made the leap. We Mindfolded (I am suggesting the Spanish term for this to be "Plegarmente" but anyone with more knowledge than me should help me refine this; my best translation for that made up word is: To Convolute the Mind) the first class flight where El Capitan actually ate a 5 course meal with a folded mind!!! Super Rock. The stewardesses asked after our escapades in the psychologiscape and we definitely made at least one convert. ROGUE THERAPY.

Then El Capitan performed a bit of Rogue Therapy on me when he had to talk his way into the country as a previous deportation showed up on the Immagration computers. It was a graceful performance combining straight face, fake lack of knowledge of Espanol and me posing as the helpless amigo. To round it off, once we got in, he thanked the lady by saying "Arrigato." Priceless.

So I was not able to take advantage of the privileged drinking in the Business Class cabin as I feared the altitude of Quito (its pretty near Breckenridge where I required a tank of oxygen delivered after altitude sickness demanded an excruciating toll on my lowlands southern body). But the second day here we found a Shark in a casino and Rode it all the way to this morning's retribution. For those of you who don't know (and Sleg, will you please forward this to our Rockford Connection?) Shark Riding is the extreme of urban adventuring; because, as everyone knows, when you encounter a shark, the only option is to grab a hold and not get eaten.

We had a routine set up at the blackjack table where we each went in with US$20 and took the US$2 minimum table by storm. We would rotate hands sitting out so that we could maximize our time and 'free' food and drinks. We lasted more than 3 hours (with El Capitan giving me a late boost of cash-winnings-inflow so we could keep playing until our last round of drinks came around the table). The pit bosses made weird clicking noises every once in a while and I could not discern the meanings, if anyone knows what they are all about please let me know. We intend on returning and playing a hand mindfolded. I know, I know.

Alright so moving on from that, the spanish language is slowly falling back into the front of my thinking, but its very humbling to not have a clue what people are talking about. We are in a hostel in Quito that is named after Harley-Davidson motorcycles and are hanging out at Shooters somewhere in the New town section of Ecuador. I have yet to get a decent map in my mind of the city.

The altitude has interesting effects on the climate (at least I am hypothesizing it is the altitude and its thin air that leaves the temperature at the mercy of the sun in the sky or lacking such....) where the days are hot and the nights cold. We are stocking up on supplies and settling into the culture before moving from Quito into the rest of Ecuador. I stil have to find a cord for the camera that Robbiedog lent me before I can start downloading pics, but swing by again in a bit and you can see what I am talking about.