Category: travel

I just booked my flight for the end of next month. I’m going to San Diego, and I’ll be staying at the fashionable Chez Pedro Hotel^*. Mikey is flying out as well, which will aid greatly in spreading mayhem and doom.

I flew out to Seattle at the very last minute over my birthday last year (the interval between deciding to go and touching down was about 10 hours), so I figured, why not make this an annual event? I’m hoping that next year we’ll all be able to meet somewhere, rather than just crashing at each other’s apartments for a few days. Europe would be fun, assuming the US$ is more valuable than toilet paper by then.

We really don’t know what we’re doing yet, but we have a few ideas:

• Dune buggy rentals! (Oh fuck yes.)
• Skydiving (Maybe. Pedro isn’t sure if he can bring himself to jump. I’m not sure I can either.)
• The Air and Space Museum (Hey, we need something to do on the days we’re too hungover for anything else.)
• Drinking (Duh.)
• The Comedy Store (Maybe, I can’t find any info on who’s performing)
• Tijuana
• General drunken debauchery

I’m excited. This is going to be fun.

^*I’ll be sleeping on the floor at Pedro’s place. Probably in the garage.

I’m currently vacationing in the vast frozen wastelands of Canadia. Megan and I left Sunday morning, and after about 16 hours of traveling, we made it to the suburbs of Toronto. Along the way, I learned a few things:

• For the love of god, go around Chicago. Our path took us south out of Wisconsin, through Chicago, Indiana, and then into Canada through Michigan. Going through Chicago on the interstate was ridiculous–I think we spent nearly four hours going through a section of road that should have taken one and a half.
• They don’t stamp your passport at the border. I’d heard this from a friend, but I was hoping the agent would do it if I asked. I forgot. My passport only has two stamps in it, one from entering England in January 2001, and the other from re-entering it in April 2001. They’re a little lonely, and I had been hoping to get them some company.
• The metric system confuses me. I’ve been looking at the weather on Canadian web pages, and everything is in Celsius. If you give the temperature in Celsius, you may as well have given it to me in Kelvins. The numbers would make exactly as much sense. I put 33 liters of gas in my car, and drove at 100 kilometers per hour to get here from that gas station. I think that means I put in 84 gallons, and was driving at 90% the speed of light.
• Nothing is open late in Canada, at least by American standards. When we finally got to our hotel, it was close to 1:00am and I was ravenous. In Madison, this would be no problem, since virtually every pizza place is open until 3:00am. McDonald’s and Taco Bell are open so late they may as well never close. Not so much here. After calling every pizza place within a ten mile (kilometer?) radius and receiving no answers, I desperately looked out the window and saw a Burger King sign in the distance. I got in the car and drove there, only to find it was closed. I eventually resigned myself to purchasing microwavable gas station sandwiches–the sort that no one buys unless they’re completely out of better options.
• My iPhone kicks amazing amounts of ass. Yes, I joined the white-earbudded horde. (Joooooinnn usssss…..) Being able to wirelessly pull up maps while on the road, check and send email, and take pictures with my phone is awesome. I love this device. It worked in Canada as soon as we crossed the border with no problems at all, wireless internet included. (What kind of roaming charges I’ll get are yet to be determined…) Since I couldn’t find my camera as we were leaving, I’m going to take all my pictures with my iPhone. Considering the phone is actually a higher megapixel than my camera, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.