feb 2nd part 2

-10:55am
jon eats cereal.

grand slam and the weak bowl

nadal takes his 6th grand slam title and the cardinals suffer a devastating loss - two great games in fact.
however, yesturday we both fell asleep at around 530 in the am, and missed the final 2 sets. this was upsetting.

later in the morning, we short circuited an entire suburban block by taking 3 hot showers in a row.* san jose is modern, but apparently still needs some work.

and,
we're pretty darn connected these days in mat's apartment.. we got satalite tv, internet and all that other fun stuff, so if you like us, maybe we can chat on the interweb soon. colin will be here until the 6th and i will be here until the 9th for a bouncing souls 20th anniversary show. this was one of my favourite bands in highschool, so it's going to be a pleasure to see them down here in the latino americas.


* yesturday's hot shower marks the first since mid october in SF - it was an interesting sensation that i havent felt in a long time.
but,
just for the record, in hot tempertures i would prefer a cold. hot showers are overrated down here.

the festival

we sit and observe the australian open final at 4:29am.
40-15 federer / 4-3 in the second. nadal up one match.

prior to san jose we reserved two seats in a private shuttle. the destination: "a festival." on this night, as planned, we took the shuttle to the festival. it was indeed a festival. similar to the Ex in toronto, the festival had rides, games, food and people. the only significant differences were: more beer, more meat, more clubs (of the dancing sort), and more stilettos. we spent the majority of our time at the bumpercars. i think the cars might be juiced up a little down here because a little girl got knocked out of one and possibly got crushed. she caused a big traffic jam that i couldnt get out of and that really pissed me off (she came out o.k.).

meat sticks were a dollar, so mat and i consumed a number of those.
i also ate: chocolate covered strawberries, 2 pieces of pizza, cotton candy and ice cream.

i really hate it when YMCA comes on, and what i hate more is when people do that dance to it. unnecessary. is that how you spell that?

i dont trust people with gold teeth

so we've been hainging in san juan del sur. you know, living the surfer life, brah.
this place was recommended to us by none other owen wilson (jons hero)...also rayce darlington bigged it up.
its kinda turisty..but good, and not expensive like everyone says. we rented a little room/apartment for 6 dollars a night from a cool ass lady named 'mama sera'..we had a balcony which we sat on a lot and enjoyed the wind. and rum.
the milkshakes were spectacular and cheap. they had real coffee.
or if you want, you can just sit on the beach and watch girls get stung by jellyfish.

for our last night, we went to a bar with live music. while there, we played a danish drinking game with a swedish poker master and some norwegian anarchists. the game was stupid and terrible but it worked.
i ended up playing with crabs and a swedish girl on the beach.
jon ended up talking to a spanish sand artist.

today we endured a 12 hour trip from south nicaragua to san jose, costa rica.
our bus was stopped three times in the first hour, by policia looking for illegal nicaraguans. stupid. as if suddenly nicaraguans are going to appear on the bus after the first check. but when have cops ever been intelligent?

also some motherfucker was farting the whole trip. we think he was at the front of the bus cause you could see effects ripple down the bus. people would successively start covering up and opening the windows as it faded back. so youve got the option of farts in the bus or burining garbage outside. both bad.

we made it here to san jose. paid too much for a cab, but we;re chillin with our boy matt in his apartment.
getting ready for the big match on sunday. our boy nadal is gonna kill it!

*the title of this blog has to do with the fact that down here its very common that people have gold or silver (not real) teeth/fillings whatever.
so whenever people smile at me they have this mouth full of goldish silver. and something about that makes me not trust them or think theyre sneaky bastards.

ps. im coming home on thursday, feb 5th.
need a place to sleep that night.
holla at me.\

food and other things

we accidently set course for san juan del sur due to a financial situation.
during travel and confusion i forgot it was my bday. after confirmation we splurged at the bakery and ate large quantities of cookies.
we gota hella´cheap/rad hotel (shown below) and we´re dippin´in 2 days for san jose to meet up with mat again.

we´re back / this is going to be hard to swallow

a lot has happened in recent days, so i am going to make this snappy...

we are currently situated on that island in the center of the map, isla de ometepe (there are turantulas here!). it´s really f-ing cool, but we didnt bring any money and there´s no ATM so we´re breakn´for costa rica real soon. this island´s got 2 active volcanoes, one of which we climbed yestuday.
there´s a good story behind this but perhaps i will save the extended version for a next post. basically we were way up in a cloud forest with monkeys, knee high in mud. we chilled in the volcano hole with some austrians and had a stretching party in our underwear. anyway..

prior to this we spent two days in grenada with mat. he comped most of our food and drink on his tour company. colin bought a foot long burrito and i bought a white t-shirt and a single one-time-use pack of head and shoulders for $2.25. mat also bought a burrito but fed the whole thing to a dog. his hotel was pimped and i got to use skype with jake for the first time.

the mission to the island was a 3 hour boat ride on the fresh water/shark inhabited lake nicaragua. here, we bought ´second´class tickets to ride along with the working class. 100´s of people packed into the lower deck of the boat. it was like that scene from titanic where kate winslet goes down into the basement with jack and parties for a night with the poor people and has a lot of fun doing it. but in our case there were more nicaraguans and the travelling circus was there. seriously. accordian, balancing acts and acrobatics. it got annoying after awhile because they sucked at what they did.

upon arrival we hitched a ride with 3 unrelated americans. one´s claim to fame was his roll in teenage mutant ninja turtles as a footclan extra. im going to rent this when i get home.

another one was this 75 year old firecracker from boston, henry. he had been travelling by himself with a broken rib and a missing toe cut off by the italians in the 40´s. he was a compelling man with lots to say.

we dined and drank with these three, which led to a lot of tomfoolery. i had to walk henry back to his farmacy-hotel at the end of the night. he was banging on the door, ¨let me in you motha fuckers!¨ he yells in his boston accent. the woman inside sounded abit worried. fastforward, she pointed to the side gate. henry, stumbling into just about everything falls into a ditch and loses a shoe. ¨im going to knock you out when i get in there!¨ of course the woman has no idea what he´s saying and im trying to cool everyone down in broken spanish... you get the idea.

___________________________________

so that was that. but.. news from the frontline.
we hate work´s darkest hour is afoot. the end of the line.
one plane ticket has been purched for early february. someone´s comin´home in the middle of the storm. i dont got the details.

see you next time.
- juan

the wildlife

wesley snipes

RETIRED

fourty-one beds later

moving on to grenada this morning to meet up with mat.
but more importantly, australia open began 2 days ago.
viva rafael nadal!
this guy is my hero.. along with jaimi oliver and Dick Proenneke from alone in the wilderness. check that out.

ok, good.

yay. departed leon to masaya last afternoon. i think colin had a rough travel day again for unknown reasons...

hopefully spontaneity picks up again.

____________________

¨wear comfortable shoes on inaugural day¨
- cnn

uncle binny

jon and colin would like to announce that they second bin laden´s call for a jihad against the israeli aggresion.

thats all for today.

una vida ocupada

so, as you can see, me and jon are getting pretty occupied these days..seriously, we try to do stuff sometimes.
Last night we attended a rock concert. I had seen flyers around town and they had skeletons, so i figured that was a good sign. We showed up relatively early to acoustic music and a room full of older Nicas. We stayed cause litre beers were 2 dollas.
Next, another guy came with more acoustic. He really liked singing songs about Nicaragua or god. Or how Nicaragua was good cause god made it.....yep.
Um, finally a ´rock´group came on. They warmed up playing metal solos ( i think dragonforce would kill it down here)....and there first song was rock..whoo. we found it.
but then the rest of their set was covers...particularly awesome covers>!
in this order....3 doors down, u2, acdc(badly), the doors (amaZING), and of course ending of with the rockinest of all rockers....bon jovi (that song where they go whoaaaa alot)...dope.

anyways, we left early.

after that jon bought pizza off of a girl who wanted to kill him.
you see...mostly people are cool when we interact with them...they are either nice, laugh at us, or dont understand us...or all three.
but a certain amount appear to be absolutey disgusted with us...they just arent having us...and i dont really know why...we´re pretty normal people. i think.

jon- how much is a piece of pizza?
girl starts taking the pizza out to give to him (of course with a hateful look)
then starts to get a bag
jon-no bag please
girls puts the slice in the bag and ties it a lil extra tight

she probably just hates work. so its all good.

real tourists

my adventurous spirit is deteriorating here in leon. it´s 38 degrees and the shower is broke. my matress´s capacity to retain sweat is showing through the underside. i have little reason to leave the house. i eat cookies and icecream for breakfast and dinner. the internet only brings bad news from hamas. sirens wake me in the morning. and mosquitos and owls wake me at night.

at any rate, here are some photos from our day entitled, ¨lets try to be real tourists.¨
we went to a sad, sorry and poorly maintained ´legends´museum, which by the look of it hadn´t seen a tourist since the time of its creation. afterwards, we hung out in between the decayed walls of a historic monument, which doubled as a garbage dump/hobo hide-out. finally, we headed over to a really big church that was closed for the day.
all-in-all we wanted to see some things and do some stuff but failed.

so, without further a due, this is that.

- juan

rainbows, promises, new beginnings

apparently today is the 3 month anniversary...thats what jon tells me anyways
so i felt the obligation to blog..
things are relatively slow down here, we are basically living between meals...which is pretty nice.

At night, usually a few drinks to get to sleep....its pretty hard...i sleep with no covers and almost no clothes, and still im am actualy sweating the majority of the night...meanwhile, mosquitoes are fucking raping my exposed skin while i am helpless. Needless to say sleeping isnt my favourite part of the day.

i hung out with a shoe shiner in the park yesterday. in a cruel act of fate, he was working as a shoe shiner so that he could buy shoes (he had none). he told me that he likes white girls cause they have large breasts and that he listens to christian reggae (?)....also that he attends university for natural science, i think maybe the no shoes thing would be a problem...


anyways, keep hating work, say yes to life, live like a stray dog.

people certainly don´t go on vacation to relax

___________________________________--

we are living in leon and not much is going on.
i´ve been spending the majority of my days in a rocking chair, thinking about lunch and dinner options. im reading mason´s, a history of the sciences, and bukowski´s, dangling in the tournefortia. did you know galileo measured the elevation of the mountains on the moon by looking at their shadows through a telescope he built himself?? isnt that interesting?

last night a drunk homeless man tried reaching into our pockets for change. we let this happen for fun, but it wasnt that, so we left.

this morning i told a child i didn´t speak english in spanish, but he didnt believe me.

so really, that´s what´s goin´ on.

interview with juan

Interview Part Two:

Its time to meet the other half of this dynamic duo, Jon (aka Juan) Lee.
Jon is not just our trip photographer but also has many fascinating thoughts and ideas. Lets see what he has to say.


1) Jon, I´ve noticed you take a lot of naps. I´m wondering if you can explain the importance of this, maybe tell us what kinds of special powers this gives you.
naps are definitely an important part of my daily regiment -namely for the purpose of averting the displeasures of everyday life!

2) You´ve been known to befriend dogs and name them things like Steely Dan or Wesley Snipes. Can you talk about your canine connection. How do you come up with those names?
yes, i have made a number of long lasting and meaningful relationships with dogs in the past. they like me because i keep sausages in my pockets. and they usually whisper their names to me late in the evening.

actually, i remember wesley snipes sleeping under me and having that tax evading look to him. that´s where he got his name.

3) We all know your a bit of a food conniseur. Central America and food. What have you got to say?
i like to compare central american food with thanksgiving. blend it all up and it still tastes the same!

4) What would you rather ride, a horse or a packed Guatemalan shuttle van?
i fear horses. next question.

5) How has Henry Chinaski changed your life?
i know you know, but for the reader i will try to explain. this man has influenced the way we speak. for example, when inquiring about going for a drink, we say, ¨chinaski?¨

6) Can you explain to our readers the t-shirt rotation program?
wear it till it stinks no longer. the life cycle of shirt goes from clean to stinky and back to clean again. it´s a phenomena i can´t explain.

7) What would the world be like without hats?
a puffy hair populous of baseball haters.

8) Name three songs you never want to hear again.
anything by bob marley, summer of 69´ by brian adams, and save a horse ride a cowboy by big and rich.

9) Leo Tolstoy or Leo Dicaprio?
i really enjoy being swept away to 19th century rural russia, but dicaprio stole my heart in growing pains the television series. im going dicaprio because i´v known him a bit longer.

10) What have you learned about religious celebrations in your time down here?
that´s easy. one word: fireworks.

Parting words en español?
no hablar a las personas no te gusta.

pork

spent a few days on the coast. it was really hot and i saw a pig on the beach.
________________________________

a few days back on one particularly hot day, colin and myself went out for some strawberry milkshakes. after a long discussion with the shop owner, we were offered a place to stay in the back for 25$ (15 nights). we accepted and now we´re hanging out for 2 weeks.

¨i am impartial to this happening.¨

mathieu roy

i would like to introduce everyone to mathieu roy. we met in jasper, alberta during the summer of 07´ and till this day remains a good friend of mine. for the last half year or so he´s been living in san jose, costa rica with his girlfriend gabriella. he works as a tour guide and for the next month he will be showing some french people around the country.

for me, it is my top priority to meet up with this man, as he is the world´s friendliest asshole.

mucho amo mi amigo,
see you soon.
- juan

cut short