Holy mole poblano in Puebla!

Posted on by October 23, 2012

     Surreal moment of the weekend in Puebla: a freakishly aggressive local bus driver with a compilation of Bee Gees’ love songs playing in the background like a mocking soundtrack. He cut people off (“…how deep is your love, I really mean to learn…”), honked like a madman (“…how can you mend a broken heart…”), and voiced an epithet or two to his fellow drivers (“…you don’t know what it’s like to love somebody the way I love you…”)
     Puebla is 120km ESE from Mexico City and a big city of over two million people, but the historic center is nice and low-rise. It reminded me of Sucre, Bolivia. Puebla is arguably most famous for mole poblano (“poblano” meaning “of Puebla”). Mole (pronounced “moh-lay”) is a complicated sauce that has everything but the kitchen sink: chocolate, banana, garlic, tomato, several different kinds of chile, plus dozens more ingredients and dozens more variations.
     In America I’m not crazy about mole because I find it to be too hit or miss. It never tastes the same way twice, which is OK, but usually it has a bitter chocolate aftertaste or the balance simply isn’t pleasing to my tongue. Puebla and Oaxaca are the two ancestral homes of mole in Mexico and I will be experimenting to the point that I expect to become a blowhard foodie, so look forward to that.

     The mole poblano torta (sandwich) from the Salon Familiar Corona on Avenida Reforma. 27 pesos. (12.5 pesos = US$1) This was fantastic: complexly rich like a barbecue with a nice hint of chocolate, a suggestion of fruit and a light slap of chili.


     This mole over chicken with tortillas, clear potato soup and a pitcher of horchata was 35 pesos at a tiny place near the university. It was good, not great.



     Hey, who’s in town next Saturday? There is a winnable hamburger eating contest. It is only one hamburger: 500g of beef plus everything else that adds up to 1.2kg. You pay what the “bomba” normally costs, 98 pesos, and then if you eat it the fastest, you get 500 pesos. The guys behind the grill said that 6 minutes 20 seconds is the present record. That sounds very beatable.
     I would do it but I won’t be in town not to mention I don’t have a gall bladder and can’t get into competitive eating—unless we are talking about mole poblano tortas. On the other hand, if they gave the winner a huge championship belt like they do for boxing and I can return to defend my title, then I might reconsider.
     Just another free money-making idea from The Dromomaniac! I am so selfless.

     Excellent little weekend flea market in Plazuela de los Sapos a few blocks from the zocalo (main square). Few people in Mexico have a kind word to say about their postal system, and I’m not traveling around Mexico with a pile of old license plates and 45rpm records, so I could only look. Shame.


     I met these two German guys who are studying in Puebla. We were just hanging out, talking, and a stream of women began to come by to take a photo with them. Well, they asked to take a picture of ‘us’, but on this day ‘us’ meant, ‘Hey Gringo, take a photo of me with the cute blond boys.’ I asked one girl why she wanted a photo and she gushed, ‘They’re handsome!’ I can’t judge, but if you happen to be a lonely blond-haired guy, I’ve got a place for you.


     A melange of Puebla street performers

Video of the Month
     By now has everyone seen this viral 1970’s Turkish movie clip of the worst death scene ever? If not, it is definitely worth 65 seconds of your life. In fact, it might be the best-spent 65 seconds of your life.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrlIK_ArzeM
A pinch of practical information:
     Mexico City-Puebla by bus is about 114 pesos. I offend Mexicans when I rave about the airport and the two main bus stations in Mexico City. They don’t say it, but they want to say, “Thanks, but why wouldn’t we have a nice airport and bus stations?” Given the amount of hustle on the streets, at the bus stations I expect a free-for-all where twenty touts forcefully try to guide you to their bus, but it is as boring as checking in for a flight.
     Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS or subscribe to an email feed.

A near-death bread experience flying to Mexico City

Posted on by December 16, 2012

     I love this. Pan de muerto means ‘death bread’. It is in honor of Day of the Dead celebrations in two weeks. Would death bread catch on in America? Someone needs to introduce it to the masses so we can say things like, ‘Give me a roast beef and swiss on death’ and ‘Honey, can you run down to the store and get some death bread? Your mother is visiting.’


     I had never had this happen to me on a plane. It is 2am in Los Angeles. I am sitting on my $105 flight to Mexico City with Alaska Airlines. We are all in the plane, ready to pull back from the terminal when the pilot, in that practiced, breezy tone they all have, says that a volcano near Mexico City has spewed enough ash to make it a safety hazard to fly.
     Oh.
     I had nowhere to sleep that night, nor the next day, but I was given the option of trying my luck and flying to Mexico City on Aeromexico at 7:15am, five hours later. I asked how a volcano’s ash can diminish so quickly that Aeromexico would fly, but I had dozens of exhausted people behind me wanting to change their tickets and didn’t press it.
     The staff at Aeromexico didn’t even know about the volcano and my concerns were pooh-poohed. No one else seemed to mind either. Another guy who was transferred with me shrugged his shoulders and said at worst they might take us to Guadalajara. As I boarded the plane I saw what looked like comedian Tom Arnold in first class, which calmed me—he’s not suicidal, right?—so I tried to get some sleep.
     When we approached Mexico City, the sky looked awfully white with haze and our approach seemed unnecessarily low and fast, but that’s just how Aeromexico rolls. There was no fiery crash into the terminal. I’m sorry to report. And it was Tom Arnold. We had a little Twitter moment about it, total BFF now.

     Just plain old Mexico City main post office. Ho-hum.


     Mexico City! I have two travel fetishes: the first is to visit 100 countries, which I think I have done. and the second is to visit the 25 largest cities in the world. On both counts it’s hard to get people to agree on what comprises the lists, but by most population measures I am missing only Lagos, Nigeria and Karachi, Pakistan.
     This is my second time to Mexico City, which is undeniably enormous. Thankfully, it has a pretty impressive metro system, but it is an assault on the senses. Only once have I been three stops without someone getting on and loudly trying to pitch something over the roar of the train. Most in your face are the guys with backpacks as big as mine that hide equally big speakers and blast music to entice you to buy a CD. There is footloose commerce like this all over town, people on the move trying to survive by selling what they can, giving the city a relentless energy.

     View of Temple of the Sun from Temple of the Moon in Teotihuacan, the pyramids north of town. By the way, on the bus ride there, we passed literally hundreds of men at a demonstration wearing nothing but their underwear. Tom Arnold would have a clever quip here, but I’m still too tired to think of one.


     Side view of the Temple of the Sun


     Look, I don’t always have an explanation for everything, OK? This is in La Nuclear Pulqueria with my CouchSurfing host at a ‘meeting’ and I am very, very tired. That’s all I know.


Practical information:
     By far the cheapest way from the airport to town is the metro. From Terminal 1 it is a short walk. From Terminal 2 it’s about half a mile to the nearest metro station, Pantitlan, something I wouldn’t recommend if you arrive at night and it’s your first time here. A ticket for the metro with unlimited transfers is three pesos. (12.5 pesos = $1.) There are buses to Puebla and other destinations from Terminal 2 itself if you wanted to save Mexico City for later.
     It costs 57 pesos to visit the pyramids of Teotihuacan (and most major museums in Mexico City). The bus from Terminal de Norte is 38 pesos. If visiting the pyramids, bring a lunch with you as food is quite a distance away and what better picnic setting is there? Bring at least a liter of water, too. Even if the temperature is the same as in the city, it feels hotter from the heat-reflecting stones and lack of shade—and it is at a high elevation. If The Great Traveler had any sense, he would have also brought sunscreen and lip balm.
     Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS or subscribe to an email feed.

The pre-cheap flight to Mexico contest

Posted on by October 16, 2012

     Pop quiz!
     A tough one: in the photo below of a street crosswalk what is the third language and in which city is this? Here’s a hint: Kim Kardashian. The first person to answer correctly whom I have never met in person AND I have never sent a postcard to AND will add me to their RSS feed OR “like” my Facebook page OR will help a little old lady cross the street today will get a postcard from Mexico.
     A postcard isn’t much of a prize? Have you noticed I don’t have advertising on my site? No paid links? No strategic alliances with womenbehindbars.com? The cost for me to buy and mail a postcard to you should be about four street tacos, so I am taking food out of my mouth to try and please you. I can hear you now: “I’d rather have four tacos instead!” Well, then come on down and let me buy you some tacos!

     Yes, I am going to Mexico. Tonight I am flying from Los Angeles to Mexico City on Alaska Airlines for only $105 one way including taxes (and one free checked bag). That includes a $50 discount for signing up for Alaska Airlines’ frequent flyer program, but I am using the miles from the trip to go to my American Airlines frequent flyer account for two main reasons: it keeps my account active and I want to consolidate my miles as much as possible in one airline within the program alliance. (More tips on managing miles can be found on the frequent flyer miles page of my website.)
     I’ve been to Mexico about a dozen times but have really traveled around Mexico maybe four times. Last time I started a trip through Central America in Cozumel off the coast of Cancun. A trip through Central America is the answer to the eternal question of where someone from North America can go on an easy, interesting, affordable journey. You can fly into Cancun, Mexico and fly out of Panama City, Panama cheaply, and there are a ton of things to do in between. Food is good, hitchhiking is pretty easy, people are great—what more do you want?
     That said, I’m a wee bit nervous about going to Mexico. Mexicans might tell me I am being manipulated by the media, that the security issue is overblown, but in how many other world capitals are there gunfights at the airport? Only four months ago in Mexico City policemen were firing on other policemen!
     We’ll see what happens.

     Got my absentee ballot for the US election, voted, and sent it back. Citizen of the Year.


     Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS or subscribe to an email feed.

The United States Diversity Immigrant Visa program (aka the Green Card Lottery) is now open. Come live in America!

Posted on by October 15, 2012

     The United States Diversity Immigrant Visa Program is here! Commonly known as the Green Card Lottery, this is the best, easiest and maybe cheapest way to live and work legally in USA for a while. It’s not bogus. I know several people who have won it. Applications are being taken until Nov 3, but don’t wait until the end to try. It is quick and easy to fill out the form. The only thing that takes time is submitting the right photo, but there is a photo validator to ensure it is OK.
     It is free to apply. When I travel in developing countries during the annual application period, businesses sprout up everywhere to scam people into believing there is a fee to enter and that they have secrets to getting accepted, but it’s all rubbish.
     Many foreigners come to USA working on an H1B visa, but the big advantage this visa has over an H1B is that the H1B visa is tied to your job. If you leave or get fired from your job, you are suddenly without a visa. With a green card you can work anywhere at any job for any amount of time. In short, this way you can work Kent Foster-style and have a different job every week if you wanted.

     A dog in a sidecar in Seattle, Washington, United States of America. See what you are missing?


Are there jobs in USA?
     Even the most casual observer knows that the American economy is bad now and unemployment is high, but there are two things to remember:
     1–This visa doesn’t kick in until mid-2014. A lot can happen between now and then. It could be perfect timing. By that time TheDromomaniac.com will be a blood-sucking corporation and I will hire anyone who subscribes to my RSS feed as “consultants”.
     2–There are lots of oddball jobs. Check craigslist.org for the “ETC” jobs to see all kinds of crazy, interesting possibilities even now in this supposedly tight job market. How about an “Ice Cream focus group for women 25-59” $100 for two hours(!) in San Francisco or “Someone with nice HANDWRITTING to write addreses on envelops” (sic) in Beverly Hills or “Take 100 pictures in a supermarket” in Las Vegas? America is the undisputed world leader in wacky jobs, trust me.

The fine print
     It is free to apply, as I said, but it isn’t exactly free if you win, and it isn’t a sure thing if you do win. There is an interview where they ask if you are a terrorist (I know, I know. Just lie.) You need to pay for the visa which isn’t cheap plus there’s a very extensive medical checkup, many documents need to be submitted, etc. I don’t know all the aspects of the program so check it out carefully.
     You can’t apply if you are from these countries because apparently we have too many of these: BANGLADESH, BRAZIL (Can we ever have too many Brazilians? I say no.), CANADA, CHINA (mainland-born), COLOMBIA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, ECUADOR, EL SALVADOR, HAITI, INDIA, JAMAICA, MEXICO, PAKISTAN, PERU, PHILIPPINES, SOUTH KOREA, UNITED KINGDOM (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and VIETNAM.
     Here are the instructions and if your English is shaky, translations are available in these languages: Albanian (all my Albanian readers, take note), Arabic, Armenian, French, Japanese, Latvian, Nepali, Polish, Romanian, Ukrainian and Uzbek.
     An oddity is that no single country may receive more than seven percent of the available visas in any one year, so if you are from a country with a small population, your chances are even better.
     Go for it! In the meantime, practice your handwriting, your photo taking and your ice cream eating.

     Canada has better looking money, but still, come to America!


     Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS or subscribe to an email feed.

What I know about Canada (postlude)

Posted on by October 14, 2012

     Wait, where am I again? I could have sworn I left California two weeks ago.


     I can sense my Canadian friends tensing up. Oh, so this American comes here for ten days and now he’s an expert? No, but I do feel some things are different up here beyond hearing two 17-year-old girls discussing hockey. I might be basing this on misleading experiences and Canadians might disagree, but I believe there is a pragmatism and progressiveness in Canada that is lacking in USA. For example:
     —The drinking age is 19.
     —There are working visas for Latin American farm workers.
     —They’ve stopped minting the penny.
     That’s it. That’s all I got. Pretty deep, eh?
     I had some ideas of going to the province of Alberta, but I stayed in British Columbia. I’m told B.C. also means “bring cash”, which did put a crimp in my plans. Canada is more expensive than USA. I ask Canadians what is cheaper in Canada than in USA and they are stumped. Because of regulations and quotas, there is some weird smuggling going on across the border in both directions, exemplified by cheese going north and toilets going south. Maple syrup is a very hot commodity.

     My first time with poutine, which is french fries, gravy and cheese curds, possibly not a diet dish. Not a big fan. The guy who sold this said cheese curd is new, fresh cheese that squeaks when you rub it.


     In the top 10 of the Saddest Photos of the Year




Practical information:
     If you are looking for a CouchSurfing host in Vancouver, do NOT do a search for “Vancouver”, as it will severely limit your options. This is a problem with CS; you can’t search for the city and its suburbs at the same time. Many people who live in Vancouver actually live in separate cities that are nearby suburbs such as Richmond, Burnaby and Surrey. Look at a map of Vancouver to learn of others and search in those places.
     To travel between Vancouver and Seattle there are the old, expensive standbys, Greyhound bus and Amtrak train, but there is now BoltBus, a much cheaper alternative, cheaper and more reliable than good old Craigslist rideshare. BoltBus also has the advantage of a priority lane at the border so it’s quite efficient when it’s congested.
     At the border to come back to USA I realized I was wearing a t-shirt with “CUBA” written in big letters and a jacket with a Red Cross Cuba patch, both of which I hid to not arouse immigration. It was dicey enough going across the border the other way ten days ago. I still got asked lots of rapid-fire questions. I need to start thinking about this and conjuring up better answers.
     My next blog post is about the USA green card lottery, which I am a big fan of. The application period just opened and it is better to apply sooner than later. If you want to get a jump on it, this is the link.
     Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS or subscribe to an email feed.

Rescued by an Indian; hitchhiking and couchsurfing in Canada

Posted on by October 7, 2012

     Maybe my sign was part of the problem. It wasn’t my best work. My brushstrokes were too aggressive. The black/white contrast was too strong. I should have gone for a comic sans font. It couldn’t have been the flag. Everyone loves Americans, right? Right? Hello?


     Since Google, Hitchwiki, and anything else I looked for couldn’t give me good information about how to hitchhike out of Vancouver (which should have been an alarm bell) I decided to try for a rideshare to get a bit out of town. I also decided to be proactive and make my own Craigslist ad. Being proactive is always a good strategy, and a guy who had never used Craigslist for rideshare responded to my ad. He was a financial planner who was going as far as Merritt, only 80km before Kamloops.

     I paid $25 to go about 3.5 hours with his dog.


     When we said goodbye he said these fateful words: “I bet you’ll get a ride to Kamloops in ten minutes!” dooming me to an eternal wait. Oy vey. I waited and waited and waited. Three and a half hours I waited. There weren’t very many cars, but enough. Nobody knows better than I do that this is the nature of hitchhiking, the bad days along with when beautiful blonde girls in convertibles pick me up. It’s why I always always always carry water, food, toilet paper and a loaded gun with a suicide note—kidding!
     Hitchhiking in British Columbia has an infamous history. Eighteen women have disappeared on one stretch of highway in the northwest of the province, dubbed the Highway of Tears. There are plenty of signs on the highway telling drivers not to pickup hitchhikers. This doesn’t apply to hitchhikers like me standing on the onramps, but this distinction might be too subtle for most people with images of homicidal maniacs in their heads.

     An Indian picked me up. That’s what he called himself. “Indian” is a loaded word, much more than “eskimo,” and I asked him about it. In USA “Native American” is the nom du jour. Here it is “First Nations.” He wasn’t bothered by what he should be called except that he didn’t like the word “aboriginal”, explaining, “Normal, abnormal…original, aboriginal…see? Someone made a mistake there.”
     But that wasn’t the first thing he said. The first thing he said when I got in the car was, “Do you like snakes.” Snakes? He pointed to a plastic container in the back seat with a boa in it, and asked if I minded if the snake rode between us so it won’t be lonely or agitated or I don’t remember what. I was so happy to have a ride I would have enthusiastically agreed to have a few vipers around my neck.
     After the snake was made comfortable we blew down the highway in his little Honda at 150kmh (90mph). He broke a period of silence to say, “I’m kind of a spiritual guy” and then pushed it to 190kmh (115mph). I didn’t know what to make of this. Does he believe in reincarnation and he doesn’t care if we crash?

     My driver with his relaxed snake


     Vancouver was great, but it is a big, international city. Finally, (and after many months of traveling to the same places) I am in the real British Columbia, the interior, the Lower Mainland, the city of Kamloops.
     My CouchSurfing host, A native Englishwoman living in Canada for the last 20 years, picked me up and we went straight to the vet to pick up her dog’s ashes. OK! That’s how it is with CouchSurfing; you never know what you are in for, but it’s almost always great. As I write ad nauseum on my website, you just need to be open to anything with CouchSurfing, go with the flow, and find a way to fit in. I’m staying with a host and her two teenage kids, and there’s another CS host down the street who comes by, so it feels like I have two hosts. I tried to make myself semi-useful. I fixed a door lock, mowed the lawn, washed the dishes, and insisted that my host change her profile to mention that she now has only one dog, not two. Greatest guest ever.
     I wouldn’t have joked like this if she didn’t have a British sense of humor, and she gave it back to me, asking, “Do you have qualifications of any sort?” unable to finish the sentence without exploding into laughter.

     I begged my CouchSurfing host to put this photo of her teenage daughter’s room on her profile and say this is the couch.


     Kamloops! Kamloops is an ancient Shuswap Indian word meaning, ‘good thrift stores.’ It is incredibly spread out for a town of only 80,000.

     Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS or subscribe to an email feed.

Bottom feeding in Vancouver, Canada

Posted on by October 2, 2012

     Mr. Lee of Lee’s Donuts making a rare, brief appearance in his shop on Granville Island. He implored me to try a still-warm, honey dip glazed donut that you see in the foreground. I’d never heard of honey dip donuts before I came to Canada. He whispered to me, away from his wife and staff, that his warm donuts were better than sex. I voraciously devoured it, and he gave me a bad time about eating so fast with another sex allusion, but I told him I wanted to finish quickly so I could have a photo of him before he admitted himself back into the hospital. He didn’t say what ailed him.


     Starbucks USA? Booooring! Starbucks Canada? Stripper poles!



     Are you thinking of visiting Vancouver? A friend sent this Craigslist room for rent listing to me. $45 a day for a room in a great neighborhood. If you stayed at one of the scuzzy hostels in town, you could get away with paying something just under $30, but over $30 is the norm, and that’s for a dorm bed, I need to remind you. $45 a night, shared by two, or more if you are into polyamory, and that’s quite a deal even for bottom feeders who are watching every pence. Of course, southwest Richmond isn’t so convenient to downtown—though it’s perfect for the airport—and the Vancouver transit system can be pricey on a weekday. The point is that you never know what you can find on Craigslist, even for hyper-itinerant travelers like myself.
     A quick tangent on transport. In Los Angeles you pay $1.25 to take a bus or metro for any length without a transfer at any time of day. In Seattle it costs $2.50 or $2.25 for off-peak. In Vancouver it is $2.50 for a trip within your zone but $5.00 from somewhere like Surrey or Delta and $9.00 for a day pass, only coins accepted. It’s a little more complicated than that, but I think a tip of the cap is in order to much-maligned Los Angeles public transit, though I’ve got a beef with LA because, unlike a bus, you can’t simply buy a metro ticket from the always-unmanned stations that use machines. You must pay a dollar to buy a nonrefundable transit card for some anti-traveler reason. (Am I the only mass transit geek here? I guess so. Let’s just move on.)
     I appreciate that people took some time and gave food recommendations for Vancouver, thank you. I didn’t get a chance to check everything out, and one reader pointed out the some things I think to be quintessentially Canadian are really more Quebecois, like pancakes and maple syrup. Can that be true?
     It’s a shame I will be leaving town and missing out on a special CouchSurfing get-together, a dumpster diving potluck where people forage for what they can in dumpsters and then make a banquet out of it. I’m curious to see the results.

     No thank you!

     As you can see in the lower middle of the photo, it was formerly called Happy Hair Cut.


     Vancouver’s alleys are frightening even in daytime.


     I never ever travel with an umbrella, but these are unusual circumstances—the Pacific Northwest! I have an umbrella AND a cheap plastic poncho so I can be wet with sweat instead of wet with rain. On the other hand, I’ve been in the Northwest for over 10 days now and haven’t worn shoes yet—and it’s October. Incredible.

     Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS or subscribe to an email feed.

(Almost not) crossing the USA/Canada border on foot

Posted on by September 30, 2012

     At the border with a woman’s backpack. I intend to get a better pack while on the road, but it hasn’t happened yet. In the men’s bathroom of the immigration office there was no toilet seat liner. It was my first sense of being in Canada. Toilet seat liners are for American wimps. This is Canada!


     It took a full 15 minutes for immigration in Canada to decide to let me in. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they rejected me because although I answered all their questions honestly and without hesitation, they were bad answers to simple questions such as: How long are you staying? (It depends on the weather. Less than a month.) Where are you going? (Vancouver and then the Rockies, possibly) How did you get here? (A friend drove me to the border and I walked across.) How will you go from here? (I don’t know. I read there is no public transport.) Where will you go after Canada? (I don’t know. Maybe back to Seattle.) How much cash do you have on you? (Very little. I need to use an ATM machine.) How much do you have in your bank account? (About $6000.) Can you show me an ATM receipt with the account balance? (No.)
     The immigration officer’s expression hardened and he began to study the many pages of stamps in my passport. I realized I should have made some soothing answers up. I went on the offensive by explaining, “I’m a traveler—”
     “Yes,” he interrupted, shifting in his chair. He exhaled, eyes fixed on my passport, not sure what to do with me.
     “I’ve been to a hundred countries,” I went on, “and I have a travel website.” I wasn’t sure how “travel website” would translate into making it imperative that I visit his country, but I produced this card shown below. He took it and asked me to sit down.

     I wondered if telling him about my website would backfire because he stared at his computer monitor intently. Was he reading my latest blog post about the three unpaid tickets in British Columbia? I studied a display of banned items in Canada, almost all of them from China. There were odd medicines, ivory carvings, and some very cool crocodile-skin shoes that I was admiring when I was rousted by a boisterous “Foster!” barked from across the hall, summoning me to the counter.
     I was expecting anything. If I was turned away, I would only have to inform my CouchSurfing host and go back to friends in Seattle. I might have reveled in being banned in Canada, in fact.
     The immigration officer asked me again how long I would stay and I said less than one month in any case because of the impending cold weather. He might have muttered, “Sissy Californians” under his breath, but out loud he said, “Have a safe journey,” and crisply handed me my passport—sans stamp, so I don’t know how long I could stay if I wanted to.

     My driver.


     I had no choice but to either hitchhike or hustle rides from nearby parking lots, but that’s not my thing, so I stood just after the exit where cars were still going slowly and stuck out my thumb. In about ten or fifteen minutes I got a ride from a jolly local guy who drove me up the road to Cloverdale. It warmed my heart to experience so many Canadian things right away: Bryan Adams played on the radio, my driver took a swipe at Americans, and I saw a not unattractive female construction worker in a tank top. It reminded me of something I’d seen in Canada before: beautiful girls working in highway gas stations in Ontario.
     The strong feeling of Canadianosity extended after I went into a Bank of Montreal to get change to use a payphone, and the teller offered to let me use the phone in the bank. It was a small gesture that floored me. Where else in the world would that happen in a bank?
     There’s a long and glorious tradition in USA to try and use Canadian coins in shops and parking meters and so on, but here no one cares if you do the reverse since the American dollar is now equal to the Canadian dollar. I paid $2.50 to take a bus to northwest Surrey to my CouchSurfing host, TARA MITCHELL. TARA MITCHELL wants me to mention TARA MITCHELL in my blog so TARA MITCHELL’S name will show up in Google’s search results. TARA MITCHELL, unfortunately, hurt TARA MITCHELL’S back the day before I came and TARA MITCHELL is now bed and couch-ridden for the whole weekend, unable to leave the house.
     My plan, as it stands now, is to check out Vancouver this weekend and then go to the town of Kamloops about 350km away on Monday, maybe by hitchhiking.

     Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS or subscribe to an email feed.

One Man, Two Legs in Seattle

Posted on by September 29, 2012

     From Los Angeles, the Restaurant Name of the Year: No Tomatoes.


     Elegant Union Station in Los Angeles


     I flew from Long Beach, California to Seattle, Washington, a distance of exactly 979 miles (1576 km) on JetBlue for $74 including all taxes and one free checked bag. It was a regular flight with a $25 discount that I found on either JLieu’s Travel Deals or frugalasianman.com (Can I get away with calling myself frugalwhitetrash.com?)
     I have been to Seattle four or five times, including a house-sit for one month, all of it a long time ago. I’m in the Northwest to see some old friends I hadn’t seen in eons, so I only had one day in Seattle to go walkabout.
     Seattle used to have a huge, infamous billboard on the edge of downtown advertising a “gentleman’s club” (love that euphemism) that had a bunch of girls lined up in a row with the sexy come-on “50 GIRLS 100 LEGS!!!” but it’s no longer there. What’s special about that, anyway? More eye-catching would have been “50 GIRLS 98 LEGS!!!”
     I checked out the Seattle usuals: Pike Place Market, Pioneer Square, Olympic Sculpture Park, the new Rem Koolhaas-designed library, and when I found myself on the edge of Chinatown I asked a young, white security guard at the metro station if there was an Asian supermarket. He knew where one was but spoke as if it was an impenetrable, mysterious den full of secrets from the Orient both right under his nose and yet worlds away. He had an explanation for its existence: “Those people don’t know how to make steak and eggs, so they have their food brought over for them.”
     Oh.

     Cafe Zum Zum, a Pakistani restaurant in downtown Seattle. Lentils, rice and a chapati/tortilla, $5.


     The Green Bay Packers were in Seattle for a football game. Had to get a photo of a couple of Cheeseheads.


     I can’t figure out if it was deliberate or not, but Seattle named their newest transit line the South Lake Union Trolley, or S.L.U.T. For t-shirt makers it was an early Christmas present.


     Another thing I can’t figure out in Everett, Washington: Drive-thru coffee with “Lingerie sexy baristas”

     Why not stay with me? You can follow along with RSS or subscribe to an email feed.

What I know about Canada (prelude)

Posted on by September 22, 2012

     I’m heading to Vancouver, Canada next week. I’ve been to Canada only twice, both quick and memorable visits. Once I drove with friends from Seattle to Vancouver as a day trip and somehow I managed to get three tickets in six hours. I received two parking tickets in our first two stops and the cherry on top was a speeding ticket on my way back to the U.S. border. Kudos to the policeman who, after handing me the ticket, asked,
     “Do you have any intention to relocate to British Columbia in the next six months?”
     “No, Sir.”
     “Then you can ignore the ticket.”
     Wow! Suddenly I wanted to relocate to British Columbia.
     Another time I went to Toronto just to see a baseball game in old Exhibition Stadium as part of a trip driving around USA with my college roommate. The goal was to visit as many baseball games and stadiums as we could in less than a month. We strong-armed a reporter into writing a story about us in the school newspaper.
     We did this in an old VW Bug. Paranoid about keeping it roadworthy, we religiously changed the oil every 3000 miles. The first time we did this somewhere around London, Ontario, I dumped the pan of used oil into a dumpster (I know, I know) and I managed to throw away the bolt to the oil sump with it. I had to go through all the wet, putrid food mixed in with the black oil until I found it, but we had to get to Chicago quickly for the next game and without a chance to shower I was a smelly mess.

     So I don’t know much about Canada. It’s embarrassing. I’ve been to Europe at least 15 times. I’ve been to Southeast Asia at least 15 times. I’ve been to Canada a total of about 36 hours. Worse, I’ve stopped asking Canadians where in Canada they are from because they all seem to be from Vancouver or Toronto.
     The first thing I want to do in Canada—the first thing I love to do when visiting any new place—is go to the supermarket and see what they sell. The supermarket says everything about a country. In Vancouver I am going to be bummed out if I don’t see at least 25 varieties of maple syrup and pancake mixes EACH. I expect to see mainstream products with names like Ted’s Backcountry Maple Syrup and Aunt Millie’s Gooseberry Pancake Mix.
     Oh, the last thing I know about Canada: I’m not supposed to say the word “eskimo”. Apparently it is like saying “negro”.

     Why don’t you stay with me? You can follow along with RSS or subscribe to an email feed.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...