hot sass

we get to new orleans after a wicked day of transport. we essentially do not eat for the entire day, stupid i know, but after traveling for a bit and making sure you are catching buses and carrying giant backpacks and what not it becomes less important. also, you can no longer count on that cup of tomato juice and miniature bag of pretzels on the airplane to tide you over. damn economy.

so with stomachs agrowl we land in new orleans. we procure our bags and wits and find the downtown express bus, and after a bit of a ride, find our stop and walk a few blocks to the hostel.

we checked in, dropped our stuff and set ourselves to the task of procuring immediate nourishment. we first go to a coffee shop, but find they only serve food until 2 p.m. i only mention this detour since the proprietor of the coffee shop sounded exactly like the bruceor the performance artist character from family guy. (i looked his name up). http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/54740/

so the next restaurant we come across in mandina's, (http://www.mandinasrestaurant.com/) and apparently it is pretty well-known.

from our experience at this restaurant i learned two things:

1. new orleans food is awesome.

2. new orleans food is not meant for vegetarians.

ang ordered vegetable soup, normally a safe bet for vegetarians, but at mandina's it contained a good amount of beef. a few days later, knowing better this time, prior to ordering we inquired if red beans and rice contains meat. it does.

i ordered this:stuffed bell pepper with shrimp and meat, baked macaroni, and lima beans.

there was roughly nine kilos of shrimp and meat inside the pepper. the macaroni helping was generous, and pretty much awesome. in actuality, it was mostacoli noodles, but i won't complain. the beans were also good, and they too contained meat.

and hot sass. it goes with everything.

beers

i enjoy drinking beers. they're my buddy. traveling to florida i was a bit concerned i wouldn't be able to find many tasty beers, but there have been moments.  i am not picky when it comes to beer, i'll drink it as long as it's wet, but i certainly do enjoy trying new beers. overall, i'm a fan of hoppy beers, pale ales and what have you.

in south beach i was afraid i was destined to be with bottled budweiser, but thanks to the internet i found a bar called abbey brewing company. i tried their immaculate ipa. it was quite good, not much on the foam side but pretty in color and overally pretty smooth. we also went to a very hip bar called the room, which served only wine and beer. it was probably one of the coolest bars i've been in. i felt like a cool kid from new york or something. pricey, but delicious beer. i tried big hoppy monster from atlanta georgia. i didn't find it all that hoppy, but it had good winey overtones and wasn't too heavy on the pallette. 

i drank some beer called prestige also, got it from a convenience store in florida city. it is a lager from haiti, and comes in bottles like red stripe. a good beer.

i also tried an ipa from some brewery in northern florida, i forget the name. it was a typical, watery microbrew.

now in new orleans, the local beer on tap is abita. went to a hole in the wall last night and tried their amber and bock, both definitley good beers for a bar to have on tap. it was like being back in milwaukee, beer wise. incidentally, at a sushi restaurant in hollywood i tried abita at random from the menu, thinking it was a japanese beer. no, it's from louisiana.  

now, this little blog will probably bore most if not all. regardless, i felt compelled to document my beer experience. i really enjoy the fact that there are so many beers in the world, and in the u.s., and they come from all over the country. 

if you like beer, try looking at beeradvocate.com. it's pretty extensive.

below is a list of 

south florida

shirt i should have bought.

squiggly alligators

we headed down to florida city from miami, the last stop before the keys. we stayed at a place called everglades hostel. very cool place, very much a hostel. outside is a bungalow with a hookah, the kitchen is full compartments and food with masking tape and people's names on them. they always have pancake mix on hand to make yourself pancakes in the morning. it's great. there are cats and a dog, picnic tables and a tv room. the tv is one of those old big screens with a faded picture that is only visible from one specific vantage point--straight on, about eight feet back. the ideal position on the couch is permanently occupied by a skinny old white haired, long white bearded man who smells a bit and wears a sort of hood slumped over his forehead (to block glare presumably). he didn't vacate the spot for the two days we were there, moving only his hand to the remote which was rubberbanded to the armrest. i know he watched jurassic park 3 at least twice.

we went to an alligator farm and went on an airboat ride in the everglades. touristy, but good fun. 

squiggly hemmingway cat. note his opposable thumb.

my faith was renewed in humanity and hostels by having good conversations with a carpenter from kentucky, a public health worker from france, and a myriad of american college students and new zealand travellers. 

we made it down to the keys via public transport. throw transport down the well. (borat reference). but really, the u.s. was not intended to be traveled by any way save personal vehicle. public buses are cheap, but slow slow slow. on the plus side, i finally finished lolita, which took me about a year of reading a half a page a night in bed and then falling asleep. sadly, i didn't read much fiction or anything that i really wanted to over the last year and a half. instead, i went to grad school and read god knows what about libraries and information sciences and stared at computer screens under flourescent lighting for just enough hours a day to get a chronicly stiff neck and an excellent tension headache each night by 7 pm. regardless, it was hard for me to focus on nabokov's ornate language when it was so much easier to watch family guy or pbs. lolita is great though, disturbing, profound, and filled with lines so great that it makes me pissed i am not a better writer.  maybe i'll go back and write down some of the descriptions he uses.

so we made it to key west. it was good fun. had several drinks of such diverse natures as to give me a pleasent rotting and or bleeding stomach feeling in the morning. we went to hemingway's house which was great. i took a number of photos of the six-toed cats and just kind looked around in awe, with a warm fuzzy feeling and the desire to start writing seriously. i felt it fitting to drink a little wine while i toured the estate, in a sun also rises kind of homage and spent fifty-one cents to have a penny with hemmingway's mug (old man and the sea era) stamped on it. it's my lucky penny now.

today we headed back up to miami via profuse day of public transit (nine hours, six of actual travel on bus and rail). we're staying at the cheap hostel we spent our first night, the other one was full. incidentally, as i'm writing this the drunken slob i referenced in the last blog (douchebag from cleveland, or so i assumed aas he was wearing a cleveland jersey last time) just stumbled in, literally, with his motions slow and lumbering, his eyes mere slits, saying, in an overly loud voice since no one was listening, "ohhhhhheeyyyyyy" to no one in particular.

headed to new orleans tomorrow. 

miami

have to do a bit of back-tracking, as i'm often too lazy to type down my oh-so-important thoughts. 

we moved on to miami and have been staying in hostels. i have a good amount of experience with hostels, having stayed at them extensively in europe and central/south america. hostels in the u.s. however, are new to me. for the most part, hostels are hostels, but some certainly are more hostelly than others.

when preparing to do a bit of travelling taking a quick look at the hostels i'll be staying at online usually helps to get me geared up and excited. i like to travel with little or no plans and it works well as long as you know how to get to the next hostel. there you can meet people and figure out what you want to do for the day. you unload your backpack and create a miniature catastrophe of your belongings on the floor, next to all the other traveler's little catastrophes under the dorm beds. you share a room with 6, 8, 10, 12 people and share a bathroom, probably don't sleep well but don't care.

so with this mindset ang and i get to a hostel in south beach and i start to feel old. oh no! feeling old! let me preface this by saying, i do not typically feel old, nor am i particularly worried about age. i'm not currently in the middle of a quarter-life crisis or concerned with where i should be in my life at this point. i'm too old for that. 

the only thing  is, i look like i'm 27. it's clear that i'm not 19. or at least it's clear to those who are 19 that i'm not 19. but being around a bunch of raucous college aged kids isn't what made me feel old. it's that i was just not interested in any of the people at the hostel, young or old. i may be a bit jaded by travels, but simply being from denmark is no longer enough to make me interested. and certainly the fact that you like drinking natural light, shouting, saying "fuckin'" during every sentence and passing out in the lobby does not interest me, even if you are from cleveland. 

ok, so i'm being an old man. but even the pain of feeling old can't make me act like a douchebag.

so that was pretty much the hostel scene in south beach: party time. this isn't to say i don't like party time. i certainly do. but i'm glad the word douchebag is in the vernacular so as to specify the party scene i do not appreciate. 

we did move to another hostel though, and even with construction and remodeling going on all day, starting at 8, it was more peaceful, with less douchbaggery. 

miami though is pretty cool. you can walk around and there is a good, lively feeling wherever you go. there is a lot of spanglish going on, which i think is great. it''s funny to witness a conversation that actually has alternating sentences between english and spanish by the same person, and have it move along seamlessly. 

 

i'll post some photos later.

hollywood, florida

presently in florida. warm, sunny, on the ocean. it's florida, that's what it's known for--good weather and old people and disney world. but is there anything else? 

being from wisconsin it's hard to believe that people actually live here, that everyone just isn't on vacation. i suppose it's a stereotype of places where the sun always shines and the ocean's scent is always blowing in, reminding you it is big, blue, and salty.  

the boardwalk along the ocean is a bustling place. there are a good amount of old persons walking shirtless with varying amounts of tan, speckled, drooping sagging skin. there is a bike lane along the walkway where beach pros peddle with an out of date boombox bungeed on the back, playing the radio just loud enough for one to recognize a tune before they pass. restaurants line the west side, advertising large pizza and pitcher of beer specials for $14.95, $15.95, $16.95, and then the best breakfast on the beach, and Hagen Daz, Edy's, and flip flops, towels, and sunglasses.

it is a beach. 

colorado 2

dumb giant orange piece of art in downtown denver, much like the dumb giant orange thing in downtown milwaukee

from breckenridge we headed south to my friend ryan's aunt's house. they live about 200 miles southwest of denver, in the mountains, middle of nowhere. the ride was scenic, very much like a model railroad set. the green of the evergreens and the white caps of the mountains start to turn brown and tan and the roads twist down canyons.

home made sign south of cotopaxi

ryan's aunt and uncle live with four children on their own plot of land of granite ridges and cacti, with a view of the sangre de cristo mountain range to the west. they live off the grid, and use solar panels for their electricity. they have a greenhouse and root cellar and are frugal with their water, which comes from a well. the children are home-schooled and the father is a conservative libertarian, sceptical of most things related to government.

it was definitley an interesting trip. the family certainly lives outside of what is considered normal by most people, but i found them all to be very kind, intelligent, and welcoming. they fed us well and couldn't have been more hospitable. i certainly admire the ability to be self-sufficient and to live free of most societal restraints, but i doubt i would enjoy the extended periods of isolation. i'd be happy with just a nice garden.

the next day we headed back up to denver and stayed in a hostel that looked like the hotel from the shining. we ate some buffalo and drank some beers and with full bellies retired to the prison like dorm room and went to sleep. i only woke up a few times, due mainly to ryan's night terrors and the police sirens and screaming usually heard outside of hostels.

hostel in denver

the following morning we went to the denver museum of modern art, a pretty good museum in an interesting space. the western art exhibit was great, but after six more levels of all the the art of the rest of the world i was a bit "arted" out. there are only so many pre colombian pieces of pottery i can look at.

yes, this is in the denver art museum

overall i found denver to be a very clean and modern city. they have a light rail line and no garbage in the streets. but we only really spent a day in the city so i can't really form that great of an opinion. maybe next time i'll stay up all night running from jazz joint to jazz joint with dean moriarity.

colorado

breckenridge

2009 begins in breckenridge. it is a picturesque resort town in the mountains, known worldwide for its skiiing and snowboarding. having neither skiied nor snowboarded in my life i was bit intimidated by the steep mountains and hordes of tourists walking around with skis and snowboards and goggles and boots like they knew what they were doing. being of a temperate disposition when it comes to risk taking or simply going faster than my own feet can take me, i was none too excited to hurl myself down a slope. regardless, i rented some skis and went up the mountain. during the brief periods when i was able to stay upright i greatly enjoyed myself.

view from a generally dirty house

the house i'm staying at is an old bed and breakfast now inhabitated by a friend of mine, and at least eight other people and three dogs. it has four bedrooms, a hot tub, and is overall quite filthy in a college house kind of way. it is crowded and hectic and i think indicative of most houses in breckenridge. we met a group of south africans and kiwis living together. there were 18 currently in the same house. there are a lot of young people here not from the area. everyone works either at a bar, restaurant, oxygen bar, or at a ski rental shop. it is how i would imagine l.a., but instead of acting everyone skis or snowboards.

out the car window shot

overally extensive mining hall of fame

mining donkey

we took a trip to a town called leadville and went to the national mining hall of fame and museum. it was a very extensive museum and i imagine the authority on all things related to the mining industry. afterwards we stopped at a few thrift shops and went to see the new tom cruise vehicle, valkyrie. not a bad movie, but it was hard for me to get past the fact that tom cruise spoke neither in german nor with a german accent. in fact, everyone seemed to have a different accent in the movie.