The Unauthorized Biography of Jack Bauer

3610 kilometers later I am back from Poland. The trip had a little of everything which will probably (not) be written down in later posts, at least that's what I'll say for now.

Highlights
-packing completely wasted
-travelling on one hour of sleep in two days
- sleeping on a sloop just outside of Nowhere, Poland
- Sailing for three days on two boats named, Szpunk and Gimli.
- eating immense quantities of meatballs and perogies, bbq's, wild duck...etc.
- Vodka!
- seeing Soviet era architecture first hand while driving on roads that the Nazis build to invade the USSR.
- almost willfully running down Pilgrims at a one of the five most important Catholic sanctuaries in the world...almost
- going shot for shot with a room full of Polish musicians and not collapsing, while concurrently teaching them the words to various Police songs...meaning they now know my personal version of 'Englishman in New York'.
- Auschwitz
- Hiking in the Tatry Mountains on the Poland, Slovakia border
- driving from Poland to Venice in one go...through a vicious thunderstorm in the Alps, in a Golf...awesome.
- finally using my SLR camera.
- Cannes...dahlings. La. La. La.
- Wine tasting in southern France at a vineyard 165 years older than the US.

3610 kilometers, 2243 miles. All in a Gold Golf across the continent. Pretty cool way to cap my time in Europe I think.

Ever since Joe, Al, Susie and I took a bus from Sevilla to the tiny beach town of Matalascañas in 2002 Joe, Al and I have been in love with Spanish beaches. It was the first time, for me at least, that I had been to a topless beach except it was Spain so it was just a beach. It was also early March and since most Spanish people don't even consider the beach as a possiblilty until June we had the sand to ourselves. That is, until two glorious Spanish women sat down about 20 yards from us, relieved themselves of their tops and left Joe, Al and I to try to drool as inconspicously as possible and Susie to roll her eyes and be generally exasperated for the rest of the afternoon.

La Malvarossa, the city beach in Valencia, is Matalascañas times whatever you want. So whenever I go down to the beach the first thing I do is a cursory recon of the population and pick a spot that doesn't have too many people around it or at the very least, that they're not too cumbersome to the view. Last week I met Nico and sat down near a group of Argentinians and I think there were some Italians to our left. There was one girl who came afterwards though who could have walked out of a Bond film, or a Streets video for 'Fit but you know it'. Because she was, and she did. She got there shortly after Nico and everything she did when she wasn't just lying down was conscious of the fact that every male pair of eyes within range were trained on her. The girl was a vision, but completely aloof, content to walk amongst the mortals but loathe to acknowlege us.

A little while later Nico and I were hitting a ball back and forth with some paddles and she came walking by to get a bottle of water from the beach hut behind us. She passed us with a slight flick of her hair as her only recognition of our presence. I quickly formulated a plan to snatch this girl out of the clouds and bring her back to the world of the living. I intended to 'mishit' the ball when she came back past us and maybe just put it near her so that she could toss it back to Nico, I could nod and say 'perdon' and we could both see if she was human and smile or speak. So just as she passed behind Nico I hit the ball so that it would land a few feet in front of her so she could easily stop and return it to us.

The little blue rubber ball left my paddle in a soft graceful arc, dissappeared into the sky, drifted to the left of Nico perfectly just out of his reach, and plunked dead center in the middle of her forehead. It was the consummate shot.

She straightened up, completely startled because while she knew we were there, hitting a ball back and forth, she was too ensconced in her aura of perfection to notice the ball coming for her head. It didn't hurt her because it was a soft ball and I really couldn't have hit it more accurately or gently. When she realized what had happened her nose crinkled up and she looked like she wanted to burn holes through Nico with her eyes. It was adorable. I raised my hand and said, 'Sorry 'bout that' (Lo siento, eh?), trying as hard as I could to hold back the laughter. She bent down to pick up the ball, tossed it back to Nico and walked back to her blanket with both feet now firmly on the ground and the slightest beginnings of an indignant grin on her face. As soon as her back was to us I collapsed on the ground laughing, amazed at the luck of that shot. It was hilarious to replay the sequence in my head and imagine what she was thinking, 'I'm cool, I'm cool, I'm cool, PLUNK, what the fuck!?, hmph...hehe, no..hmph...'

We continued playing for a while and our girl packed up and decided to leave. She came past us and Nico made a point of putting the ball under the paddle on the sand and I tucked mine under my arm. He couldn't really hold his laughter and nodded to her and turned his head. I waved and smiled. She gave me a grin and kept walking, no longer aloof and all the prettier for it.

I don't often write to my congressman because his name is Virgil Goode and he's a rank and file Republican so there's not really much point. If I had a Democratic representative I would probably be writing to him/her once a month because he'd would surely be caving into minority pressure and voting for something to take away civil liberties or some kind of oversight, because that's what Democrats seem to do these days.

Well, lacking a Democrat to chastise I figured I'd give ol' Virgil a email that surely won't even get to a computer in his building, much less his office. Because what the house just passed is really just a disgrace to democracy.

here it is...

Dear Representative Goode,


The Congress' recent 'yes' vote to pass the new FISA legislation stripping that office of its oversight powers is deeply troubling. I do not believe that freedom and security are a zero-sum game; a belief the White House and the Republican party seem to espouse wholeheartedly. Constitutional checks and balances should not be seen as an impediment to the stablilty and security of our nation, rather, they are the foundation of our way of life. Every step we take away from civil liberties is a step we take towards the victory of those who wish to do us harm for it is our way of life they seek to destroy, not our lives themselves. I urge you vote to repeal this action when it comes back up for a vote in six months. It is far easier to give up freedoms in times of fear than it is to regain them in times of regret.

Yours Sincerely,

Ian C. Nicoll

There has been a lot happening lately...not in Valencia because it's August and nothing happens in Valencia in August, but with me personally. I'm now able to count my time left in Spain in weeks. As in, I'm here this week, next week until Friday when I go to Poland and then a little less than a week when I get back. I've moved out of the only neighborhood I've ever called home in Spain and out of the apartment that I've been in for two years now. We named it la Cueva lovingly at first then despairingly towards the end. Like any place, it took on the mood of its occupants. When everybody was getting along it was a great place to be but when there was tension the lack of natural light and well, space was just a little bit soul-crushing. In other words it could be home or it could be Martin Sheen's hotel room from Apocalypse Now.

For all intents and purposes I'm also finished working until I find a job in the US. My August workload consists of one hour a day until the 15th and is more of a way to force myself to get up and do something with my day rather than dick around in my friend's apartment in my underwear waiting for my iPod to finish charging. July was much busier and I was working an almost full schedule coming out to about 35 teaching hours a week. The first part of the day was 6 and 7 year olds who were a lot more fun than I expected them to be. I got them to make weather machines to learn cloudy, rainy, snowy, sunny, out of construction paper. We finished and a kid in the back by the window pointed his outside and expectantly pushed the 'snowy' button. Obviously, nothing happened. So he turns around and tells me that his doesn't work to which the girl sitting next to him replies, 'Well, yeah...it's paper'. Another girl who comes from an Opus Dei family of 7! accused me of committing a mortal sin when I suggested that we include bug's blood on the menu for the restaurant unit as a drink option. Her morning snack one day was a olive oil and salt sandwich. Summer vacations with that family must be fan-TAS-tic.

With the end of summer school also came the end of my tenure at the English House and that means I no longer work for Mark who would be the strangest boss I've ever had only if Lester didn't exist. I said goodbye to a lot of private students who I got to know so well I 'almost' felt bad about taking their money to sit down and have an enjoyable conversation in English. They all said really nice things to me and thanked me profusely for the classes. It's good to know that once I've gotten pretty good at this job I'm tired of it and want to do something else.

The other thing (and I'm sorry for this rambling post, but when it's been so long since I've sat down and written anything it's hard to keep it focused) is that while I'm almost heartbroken to be leaving Valencia the fact that I just can't stay makes it easier to be sure I've made the right decision. Three years of ESL teaching seems to be about the point of no return. Teachers who decide to stay on and extend their professional limbo will be in it for life and while I'd love to stay in Valencia I refuse to do it as teacher trapped in the profession by lack of work papers. I've gotten to the point that I've got almost as many good friends here as I have back in the US but they're all moving along with their lives and have started new non-teaching jobs or are getting their masters in something related. It's one thing to be an ESL grunt with a support group of other ESL grunts but quite another to be in it more or less on your own.

The second aspect of why I don't have a choice about coming home is family. I´m at least 600 euros away from the east coast at all times here. The grandparents are getting along into their eighties and even though it's completely shitty to have to think about it this way, I want to spend as much time with them as I can...while I can.

The third and finalish aspect is Sara. We broke up at the end of January but worked on things until mid-April. Seven months might seem like I should have just moved along by now and if it had happened in the US I probably would have by now. It's a little different when you're in the country you moved to to be with the girl. When it first happened I had bought my plane ticket home in my head and was on my way back to a traditional support group of friends an family and distance. I don't think anyone would have blamed me if I had taken that path but I couldn't do it that way. I couldn't let that be what Spain was for me. Sara was a huge part of my experience here, the biggest part without a doubt, but I was forced to redefine what this country means to me. So I decided to stay and focus on acheiving goals of my own. I sat the DELE spanish exam, the results of which I should find out by the end of the week. I got to know my friends here again and was blown away by the quality they showed towards me. I moved past the anger, self-doubt, pain and dissapointment that comes along with this experience in large part due to their help and I think that I can walk away from her now with respect for myself and for Sara. That's something that has taken a long time to be able to say and because I can say it I know that it's sorta time for me to go.

Go here to see it though....http://icoopern.vox.com


It's 75% certain to be worth your time.

Hey, I'm going to phase out my livejournal, like I hadn't pretty much done that already in the past month. I'm switching over to Vox.com because it has an RSS feed option and you can post pictures and music and the like for free. It looks like an overall better page. So I'll post notes from there to my facebook page and if you want to subscribe to my Vox page please do. I've cross posted my last one from here over there as well.

Adios livejournal!! (unless no one comes over to look at my new page then I'll probably be back)

The new page IS http://icoopern.vox.com pretty simple huh?

In between trying to figure out where I'm going to stay for the first two weeks of August, how I'm going to pay for my plane tickets back to the US in September, how I'm going to get all of my stuff across the Atlantic and what my schedule is going to look like for July, I've been surprisingly not busy. Of course that means that all of this stuff that I have "to do" remains so and the ample cushion of time I had at the beginning of June is quickly slipping away into July which is dangerously close to August and being out of time.

So what am I doing instead of taking care of pressing business? (and we can add, research places to apply for jobs in the US to that list) I'm trying to enjoy the rest of my time in Spain. That time will be two and a half months come tomorrow, Friday the 15th. Later this month is the festival of San Juan, mercifully falling on a Saturday this year. San Juan is the biggest beach party this side of Rio or Daytona and involves, unsurprisingly, fires on the beach and jumping over waves at midnight. The rest of the time is spent drinking, watching people jump over or into their fires and trying to avoid doing the same thing yourself. I have the last week of June off as a break between regular academy and summer school. Fellow MWC alum, DANA, a real teacher, is coming to Spain in July so hopefully and we're going to meet up either here or in Madrid. Then August will be hot and humid and full of packing and deciding what comes back with me and what goes to the dumpsters for the hippies to scavenge and put in their filthy apartments.

Then, on August 17th, I fly to Warsaw and somehow get up to the north of Poland to stay a week with my friend Tomek at his summer house there. The last week of August will be spent driving his newly purchased vehicle back through Europe to Valencia by way of Auschwitz, Austria, northern Italy, Monaco, France and back into Spain via Barcelona. Then I'm here for another three days or so in which I have to somehow figure out a way to say goodbye to Sara that won't leave me a quivering mess on the floor and get on a plane to go home to the US for good. At least until I get the US ambassadorship to Spain.

I've never been a big proponent of living on past glories, I just don't think it's a healthy way to live and it's a great way to get stuck in a rut and never make any real progress in your life again, see Billy Ray Cyrus.  It's always struck me a little strange when you see someone's old room in their parent's house that's been made into a little shrine to their childhood.  I guess it's nice for some grown-up kids to come back home and have their old room sort of vacuum packed for them but I just don't see the appeal.  It's not their room anymore and keeping someone else's stuff in a place that they no longer are just makes it impossible for anyone to really feel at home there.  I get a little weirded out when I stay in someone's 'guest' room packed with little league trophies or 4-H 3rd place and honorable mention ribbons.  I came home from my second year of college and my room had been converted into my dad's home office, which was fine until he started waking me up at 730am to come in and print something or write some pre-breakfast emails.  I like it now though because when I come home (which isn't that often) I'm not immersed in my old high-school self.  My image of my room at home for the past three years has been boxes in the corner, my Mary Washington diploma on the wall and my old alarm clock on the nightstand, and an open suitcase on the floor.  It's enough.  I remember what I did in high school, I think my parents do too.  All the important certificates and things are in a scrapbook somewhere so there's no point in forcing nostalgia on everyone who walks into the place.

This brings me to the point of this entry.  Forced nostalgia and living completely and totally in the past.  Wrapping yourself in a cocoon of old memorabilia and photos, putting furniture in the corner that probably used to be yours 20 years ago like an astro-turf chair, and slowly driving yourself insane because of it.  Well because of that and an immense amount of drugs.  I'm talking about the proprietor of a bar here in Valencia that we call Olga's because I think the lady that owns it is named Olga.  The sign on the door is a Russian word that's about 15 letters long and probably unpronouncable.  It's the strangest bar I've ever been to.  I'm trying to think of something that would start to come close to the flat out oddness of that place..............and I can't.  People only go there because it's open until the early hours of the morning and is right around the corner from El Carmen (a really popular nightspot).  We walked up to the place and the bars were drawn across the door but not locked so I knocked, "Estas abierto?"

"Siiiiiiiiiiii".  Until then I didn't know it was possible to say "si" with a Russian accent...but it is.  We squeezed past the bars and I closed the door behind me, and instantly fell into Olga's good graces as she spent about five minutes going on about how polite I was and how no one has any manners anymore which might have been kind of nice to hear had it not been coming from a 60 year old lunatic dressed in a WWII paratrooper's jumpsuit, complete with helmet and goggles.  One hundred and ten percent batshit insane this lady is. 

Now I didn't realize this at first because she doesn't look like a ballerina anymore, not in the jumpsuit anyway, but when I was sitting on my astroturf covered couch sipping my beer at 5am I started to look around at the photographs and drawings covering every inch of wallspace in the bar.  THEY'RE ALL OF HER.  Every single one.  There's even a hand drawn caricature of her as tweety bird.  It's bizarre and exceedingly unsettling.  I sort of whispered to my friend Minal to confirm this because the place is small enough that you have to whisper if you don't want anyone else anywhere in the bar to hear you.  Two more people walked in and didn't close the door behind them.  I saw Olga yell at them and point at me a few times, apparently as an example of someone who knows how to close a door. 

She's a mean person.  There were only four other people there and she spent the entire night drinking a glass of vodka and insulting this poor Spanish guy who, for reasons that until the end of time will remain between him and God, was trying to pick her up.  Minal and I decided to call it a night when she broke into song, in Russian, with some old dance steps interspersed then demanded that we applaud with one hand.  My head can only handle so much nonsense in one night and that just pirouetted right past my limit.  So when I went up to pay for the four miniature beers we'd ordered and the bartender said, "20 euros", all I could do was laugh, give him my money, and get out of there with the remnants of my sanity.  I'm going to have to come back just once more to take a picture so people will believe me when I tell this story again.  Until then though....

Riddle me this;

Ever wondered what happens when you dump a quarter gallon of white latex paint into a pond full of fish? Neither had I, until this precise situation presented itself to me at one day at work landscaping while emptying the boathouse. In fact that very question presided over my entire being shortly after I handed a gallon of white latex paint to Ben (co-worker), who passed it to Ryan (co-worker 2)...who put two hands firmly on both sides of the can.

Or so it seemed...

…until the can pivoted over an invisible fulcrum and plunged to the planks below. Ok, maaaybe it didn't help that we were tossing the cans instead of handing them to each other. The point is, as any self respecting sport playing male or female should know, that if you can get two hands on a ball/frisbee/gymnastics bar/can of paint, you should damn well be able to catch it. Ryan couldn't or maybe he just didn't, (no he couldn’t). Either way there was white paint glugging out of the can all over the dock, seeping through the slats into the water below.

Well, fuck.

Instincts kicked in, first get rid of the evidence. We poured water over the still wet paint, which didn't do a thing. I found paint thinner and doused the mess with it, combined with scrubbing and rinsing we started to get the paint off of the dock. Then we ran into an entirely foreseeable but altogether unforeseen predicament. Murky white clouds started to diffuse into the pond from both ends of the boathouse and dock. Bright hopes for escaping this mistake blame free began to dim like a Baghdad power grid. Naturally, I washed my hands of all responsibility and blamed Ryan (who can't go a full week without breaking something or someone). After all, it was his fault. Nevermind the fact that emptying a boathouse by tossing cans of paint, not all the same weight, 1920’s fire brigade style was bound to end up badly. Add the point that misleading warnings preceded each toss, "this one's really light!" or "full can coming!" almost always signaling the opposite reality. Yep, it was Ryan's fault...he had two hands on the can.

Now, to answer the query I posed earlier in this post. When you dump a quarter gallon of white latex paint into a relatively small pond filled with fish, it spreads; right on the surface too, coating everything like we had Exxon-Valdez written across our shirts. After about 30 minutes the paint slick had spread out to cover about a quarter of the pond. A quarter gallon of paint for a quarter pond...sounds about right. The pond is not large by any means but it isn't exactly small either. It covers a little less than an acre of land. The unfortunate thing about this pond is that the Gillenwater's house has a big bay window in the back with a crystal clear view of it. Mrs. Gillenwater was home, and we had recently cleared trees at the bottom of the hill as if to give her a better view of our (Ryan's) mess. By an amazing stroke of luck she had puttered out of the house and taken her turquoise Ford Windstar into town to run some errands before the paint spread out to cover a third of the pond and really get obvious. By an even more amazing turn, Mr. Gillenwater was in Baltimore.

By morning on Friday the paint had diffused through the entire pond, which may have been a slightly lighter shade of green, about the same color as Mrs. Gillenwater’s van now that I think about it. No one noticed water’s new hue and I guess the paint gradually sunk to the bottom over time. Even Lester seemed oblivious and this is a man who can tell if someone has driven into the gravel parking lot in between the time he leaves in the afternoon and arrives in the morning. No fish were floating at the surface, including the rare albino catfish that lives in pond. Although I have a feeling that the pond's new rarity may be finding a non-albino catfish.

This was in the Washington Post today...I disagreed and sent an email to the author. I've included it after the lj cut. Really a whole lot of nonsense from this lady I think.



Mother Of All Blunders

By Kathleen Parker
hareSaturday, April 7, 2007; Page A13

On any given day, one isn't likely to find common cause with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He's a dangerous, lying, Holocaust- denying, Jew-hating cutthroat thug -- not to put too fine a point on it.

But he was dead-on when he wondered why a once-great power such as Britain sends mothers of toddlers to fight its battles.






Ms. Parker,


I was watching Ahmadinejad's speech and that quote struck a chord
with me as well. It angered me to see that young mother sitting in
Iranian custody being forced to apologize for her actions, actions
that she was forced to take under orders in the British Army.
However, I have a different take on the matter than you. I have a
problem with the way you have framed this issue in your editorial.
You seem to suggest that the west, as a society, sends its women to
war and has lost the will to protect them, that it has gotten to such
a point that a male soldier would listen to the screams of rape and
torture inflicted upon a female soldier with ambivalence. I
understand that your broader point is that you disagree with women in
the army and think that it reflects an unhealthy trend in society to
blur or even erase the line between the sexes.

Ahmadinejad berated the West for putting their women in harm's way and
tearing them away from their children at home. This ignores two huge
points, the first being that Britain runs an all-volunteer military,
as does the United States. Conscription hasn't existed in Britain in
any form since 1960 and "Even today, volunteer members of the armed
forces have a right to claim discharge on the grounds of a
conscientious objection developed since enlistment".
(http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/infodocs/st_conscription_l.html)
Seaman Turney was no more forced to fight for Britain or to be put
into harm's way than you were forced to type and submit your editorial
for publication.

Secondly, it is the height of hypocrisy for Iran to lecture the west
on their treatment of women. You brush over this in your article by
saying, "Just because we may not "feel" humiliated doesn't mean we're
not. In the eyes of Iran and other Muslim nations, we're wimps. While
the West puts mothers in boats with rough men, Muslim men "rescue"
women and drape them in floral hijabs. We can debate whether they're
right until all our boys wear aprons, but it won't change the way
we're perceived", but it is a point that is central to this argument.
For Ahmadinejad to stand with his back to a society that denies
education to women and where honor killings are a part of daily life
and look at Britain and wag his finger would be laughable if it wasn't
so sad.

There is a gulf between the two shores of thought on which Britain and
Iran stand. This event isn't going to bring them any closer together
nor will it push them any further apart than they already are. It's
just another example of the distance between the thinking of our
relatively free society and fantasy world Ahmadinejad inhabits where
he thinks that capturing the mother of a three year-old and
humiliating her on a world stage will teach anyone a lesson in gender
equality. I didn't think anyone would listen to him. It appears,
however, that you did.

Sincerely,

Ian Nicoll



PS... I don't know what kind of individual pressure these hostages
were under but I couldn't believe they had opened themselves up to be
used as such a tool for propoganda as they did. My grandfather was a
prisoner of war in Germany from 1944-1945 and I don't remember him
writing any letters of apology for incursions into German territory.
The standard instructions to soldiers upon capture is to give no
information about yourself but "name, rank and serial number". If
these sailors had simply stated their names, ranks and serial numbers
then they would have lost all propaganda value to Ahmadinejad. It is
very difficult to portray a soldier as an unwilling pawn of an
imperial nation when they follow the protocol set by that nation. It
is unfair to blame the sailors because we just don't know the pressure
Iran put on them.

    A Ghillie suit is not something that one would normally employ for everyday use when running a nursery and to be fair it wasn’t used every day, only once in fact. That’s not to say that if the matter were left up to Lester that it wouldn’t have been used at least once a week. For those of you who need brushing up on your standard issue U.S. Army fatigues, I’ll fill you in. The Ghillie suit has been used by snipers since before the First World War. Snipers use these suits to blend into their environment, recognizing concealment as an equally effective way of avoiding fire as running for cover. The suit is a jacket and pants covered in strips of old rags, burlap, leaves and whatever else will help make its wearer indistinguishable from his surroundings. Lester used to be in the Army. Let me point out that the last sentence was in past tense, signifying a finished action or state, as in NOT in the Army anymore.

He runs a nursery now, for plants, and he’s a big enough guy that he really has no cause to hide from anyone so he usually uses the suit for hunting. Imagine the surprise a deer must feel when it gets shot by an usually large clump of moss. Well, occasionally this suit is used for less lethal purposes and to far more hilarious effect. I can imagine Lester squatting for hours next to his mailbox just so he could inspire a minor coronary in the mailman by having the bush thank him for the day’s delivery. Farfetched? You don’t know Lester.

Over the years Ryan worked for Lester up at the Gillenwater’s he started arriving later and later each year until he just stopped showing up altogether instead of quitting at the end of his time there. This incident took place a year or two before Ryan’s exit so he would have been arriving to work a good half hour late on average. Lester’s a fair enough guy but that kind of chronic tardiness would start to get on any boss’s nerves. In fact, at any other job he would have been shown the door a long, long time ago. We all would have I think. Lester deals with problems in a more roundabout manner ranging from passive aggressive comments, docking minute amounts of pay from your check every once in a while and very occasionally; by scaring the ever-loving shit out you.

Lester always shows up early to work. I guess he likes to have some time to himself when we aren’t up there and he doesn’t have to be anyone’s boss. On the day of this story he showed up before us as usual. I think Ryan was the only regular employee at that time, I was in Spain and everyone else had moved on or was away at school. It must have been wintery or autumnish because there were lots of leaves and dead matted-down grass in the woods. Lester took his Ghillie suit out into one of the fields of half-dead rhododendrons and nestled himself into the brush next to a tree. His son, Matt leaned a rake against the tree and drove the Polaris back to the parking lot to wait for Ryan. His red El Camino eventually arrived and Matt told Ryan to get into the Polaris because they had work to do on the fence out by the rhododendron field. This was normal. So Ryan, plastic coffee mug in hand and halfheartedly shrugging off a hangover, got up into the passenger seat of the Polaris. Squinty eyed and bushy haired Ryan and Matt bounced along the trail out towards where the fence was. Matt stopped the buggy, as the six-wheel drive work vehicle was referred to up there, short of their destination and pointed Ryan towards the red-handled rake leaning against the tree a hundred feet or so down the hill.

“Dad said to pick up that rake you left down there”, Matt said.
“Mmrmph”, Ryan said, and drowsily shuffled down the hill towards the bright red rake leaning quietly against the tree. He got to the tree and was already turned to move back up the hill to the Polaris before his hand fully grasped the handle of the rake. His fingers closed around the red fiberglass and started to pull it away from the tree when the brush next to the tree reached out and snatched the rake out of his completely unsuspecting hand.

“Don’t TOUCH my rake!”, barked the pile of wet grass and leaves next to the tree, barely shifting form yet still clutching the rake in its unseen hand.

“Holymotherfuckinggodjesuschristgoddamnhell! Son of a bitch!” Ryan screamed as he practically jumped out of his boots, socks and skin all at once.

Lester pulled back the hood of the Ghillie suit to reveal his big smiling red and white bearded face in striking contrast to Ryan’s pallid grey visage, twisted into every imaginable expression of shock at the same time. As Ryan’s heart slowed from a gallop to a trot Matt lost it and almost rolled himself out of the buggy with laughter. Lester stood up, giving the bush a human form and started walking back up the hill. He paused and turned to Ryan, “If you’d start getting here when you’re supposed to I wouldn’t have time to set this kind of shit up”. Ryan’s system, still trying to process exactly what had just happened to it, managed a nod and started to move itself back up the hill.

My local bar here...St. Pat's, is one of the most expensive bars in Valencia unfortunately.  And it's only local because the bus that runs by my house also stops at its front door.  I tolerate four euro pints because you can walk in on any saturday or sunday and be guaranteed to have an Arsenal match on, or any of the big four teams really.  The people who are usually there have gotten cooler too.  There were two guys last year who made me embarrassed to root for my own (adopted) team.  They are both from London and theoretically that gives them more of a right to support Arsenal than me and until this year I almost felt bad about it.  Could I really have fallen in love with a team whose local supporters are such complete douchebags???  It would be like someone from Europe rooting for the Eagles for years then arriving in the US and seeing what Eagles fans are really like. 

Well, I never thought of not liking Arsenal but I became very willing to accept the groans I got from people when I told them I was a fan.  This was because from what little I'd seen of Arsenal fans, specifically the two douches in St. Pats, I hated Arsenal fans too.  This year however, I've gotten to know some of the other supporters who aren't always screaming and calling everyone not named Henry a wanker.  Recently tweedle douche and tweedle dum have stopped coming too, so that's good. 

Sunday night I went down to watch the Super Bowl and was pleased to find some of the guys there to watch some American, REAL football.  It was especially gratifying to hear my friend Jon talking about soccer and have to clarify it as "European football".  I impressed them by making two very accurate and very easy predictions about the game.  I said, Devin Hester is fast as balls, watch him.  And Rex Grossman is the worst quarterback in the NFL and will do something to lose the game.  I was also sitting with a guy from northern Va who knew a little about the game and had obviously done some reading on it beforehand but had been out of the US for 10 years so took my word on the finer points.  Although, being a Skins fan he would've needed help anyway.  There were a few American study abroad students there too who were Bears fans for the night; one on the premise that he was a Jets fan so he had to root for the NFC because the Jets weren't in the final.  I've never really thought of conference loyalty in the NFL before but I guess when you're a Jets fan you've got to hold onto something.  After Peyton threw his interception and Rex threw his TD the Jets guy leaned back to me and smiled. 

I just smiled back and said...patience.  So the Colts won, I had a hot dog as part of the pub's "America" themed super bowl promotion and drank real Budweiser, no not Bud heavy, the Czech one that's been around for 700 years and actually tastes like something.  The thing I like about watching the Super Bowl here are that you don't have to deal with any of the media hype in the US.  What sucks is that it finishes at 4am and there are no wings to be had. 

"When the cross came in I said to myself `shall I hit it?' but then I thought I have no right to hit that." - Thierry Henry

I can only imagine Henry standing in a club, possibly shrugging his shoulders or doing his little post-goal samba dance with Sir Alex Ferguson's wife saying to himself, "Shall I hit it?" But this is where the scenario breaks down though because Thierry obviously has every right to hit that.

No, this was what he said about adding his touch to Arsenal's equaliser ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie8sHe3zPb4 ) against Man Utd on Sunday. He continued, "So I just tried to flick it to the back post. To be honest I got lucky. I just wanted to keep the ball alive and then Robin arrived at the back post to score." 

If any other player had said that in the second, and I'm being generous with time here, that it takes for the ball to leave Rosicky's boot and get to Henry in the middle of the box he actually had time to think, 'Shall I hit it?  No, I have no right to hit that', I would resoundingly proclaim, "THAT good sir, is BOLLOCKS!"  But it wasn't any other player, it was Thierry Henry and he most certainly DID think that to himself before gingerly excecuting a mid-air tap with the sole of his right boot to nudge the ball a little further to the post and, luckily, onto the path of RVP as he will be known from here on out in this Livejournal.    These are the kind of thoughts that run through the mind of the best striker in the world.  I would imagine a similar, goofier thought would run through Ronaldinho's head in that situation, albeit in Portugese whereas Wayne Rooney could  probably only muster a neolithic grunt.  Or, possibly call the ball a cunt.

When the next cross came to Henry's head in the 93rd minute of the match I assume that he asked himself the same question again only this time followed by, "Just like I'm going to hit your missus tonight Sir Alex!"  He of course got the game winner, went home, and ravished Fergie's missus.

Strength and Henry indeed.

Big Scott is a guy I used to work with at the Gillenwater's landscaping gig in Charlottesville. The nickname's not ironic. He's the kinda guy who would touch both sides of the doorway at 7-11 but not be tall enough to register on the tape measure. He has to use the steering wheel of his truck to pull himself in because his legs are so short. What I'm saying is that he's about 5'8 and 300+ . He's big! Big Scott is big and I think that's sufficient explanation.

I feel like his grandpa or at least his uncle must have been a black bear. If he got down on all fours and growled at you it wouldn't take much imagination. He usually sports a big thick black beard that runs down his neck and connects under the ear with the hair on his neck and down onto his back. From there I can only assume that it's more of the same. He's a man who once accused me of being stupid because I wasn't sweating as much as him. If you hit him with a broom then he will spit on it to avoid bad luck as a matter of superstition. A co-worker wanted to see how far he'd go on that one. He whacked Big Scott with a broom and then took it out to the balcony of the greenhouse and chucked it as far as he could down the hill. That's a long way because it's a pretty damn steep hill. Later that day Big Scott was driving up the hill, stopped in the middle of something, walked into the woods to get the broom and spat on it. Bad luck averted.

He once threw a deer testicle at my brother. He's almost completely deaf from an adolesence and adulthood of running power tools, lawnmowers, chainsaws, weed-eaters without any form of ear protection. He's on the grounds maintainence crew at Monticello but still pronounces it Montisella. I lost 10 bucks to him last year because the Redskins had a better record than the Packers. He doesn't trust bagels and if you complain about ANYTHING to him you'll get told to suck it up, take it like man.

He got gout once. He slaughters pigs when there are pigs to be slaughtered and helps load hay bales when there are hay bales to be loaded. He also holds the title of Big Scott, the Biggest of all Scotts.

He wants his tombstone to read: It wasn't the liquor that took his breath. It was the fly that crawled up his butt and tickled him to death.

And that's what I know about Big Scott.

I'm posting for the first time in a month not just to keep my blog more active than Bryan's or Vik's ... which it would be even if never posted again ... but to announce that I've ripped off another of Joe P. Frick's ideas and created a top Flickr photos set. His is top 10 from this year whereas mine consists of my favorite pics that are on there. Take a look soon because it might shuffle around a little when I post the picture of Joe smashed with cigar in mouth and middle finger directed at camera.

Enjoy http://www.flickr.com/photos/icoopern/

I've got new pictures up from Peniscola. You'll just have to look at them to find out what that is.

www.flickr.com/photos/icoopern

I was about to put on my shoes and walk to the bus station to buy a ticket to Madrid for the 23rd. I'm flying out of Madrid, via London, to go home for xmas. It would have cost me about 25-30 euros but the bus website was giving me trouble, saying that they didn't go from Valencia to Madrid. Nonsense, of course. I've done it twice with that company. The only problem is that it's a pain in the ass 4 hours+ trip and I'd have to leave at like 430am. And the bus station is a little sketchy at that time. So on a whim I checked for flights. I found one that gets me to madrid 3 hours before my flight to London for 35 euros! HA. hahahaha.

wonderful.

These are the two emails I just sent to the United customer service center. The first to the complaints box and the second to the complements box. When I hit "send" to the complements inbox I swear, that even though it was email, I could hear my letter hit the empty bottom...

To whom to may concern,

I am writing to complain about the customer service and the general lack organization at your Washington-Dulles desks. There were three parts to this problem.
1- Check in
On Wednesday, November 15th I was confirmed on an 18:04 flight to Munich. I arrived at the airport at 15:00, three hours early, and was in line by 15:30. The United website says to arrive 2 hours early for international flights at Washington-Dulles. I waited for two and a half hours to check in and by the time I made it to the desk my flight had closed. I simply do not understand why United does not prioritize the check-in process by flight times. There were people ahead of me with later flight times and people behind me with earlier flight times. The result of this was a significant number of people needlessly missed their planes.

2 -Additional Services- I was told to re-book my flight at additional services. I waited for another two hours in that line. The lack of customer service here was incredible. No one came to apologize for the situation at check-in, to offer the elderly people in line places to sit or offer anyone a drink. The employees I talked to in this line were patronizing and wholly unsympathetic to our complaints.

3-Customer Service- After re-booking my flight for 20:15, November 16th (the next available flight to Munich) United employee Isabella Pica told me that the fact that I missed my flight was MY fault. She said that despite the fact that the UNITED website says to arrive 2 hours early that I should have arrived five to six hours early. She informed me that United would not be providing a hotel room for my forced overnight stay and that "lots of people sleep in the airport every night." I cannot stretch my imagination far enough to see how a passenger who arrives 3 hours early and does not even get to check in to his flight can be at fault.

I and at least 6 other customers had to wait 3 more hours to speak to a supervisor. We were told that the supervisor was in a meeting, then he was on his way. He was "on his way" for 2 hours. Alpha Diallo finally arrived at 21:30 that evening. I don't think I have to explain any further how absurd it is to wait that long. Mr. Diallo eventually agreed to pay for our hotel room and I accepted a system-wide upgrade for a future flight. I only received an apology from him after eliciting one.

I'm not writing to ask for any more compensation and I apologize for taking up so much of your time with this lengthy email. However, the time it will take you to read this, and I hope you have read it, is a fraction of the seven and a half hours I waited at IAD for United to resolve my flight issues. United employees were unhelpful overall and I found Isabella Pica to be particularly uninterested and frankly, rude.

I will close on a positive note. One United employee was sincere and very helpful. I cannot say enough about Mr. Larry Bell. He was the ONLY one who offered an apology and an explanation. His customer relations skills are exemplary and he deserves commendation for his work. I will be writing another email to your complements inbox about Mr. Bell. I sincerly hope he receives some sort of recognition as his service was the lone positive area for United Airlines.

Sincerely,

Ian Nicoll



-------------------------------------------------------------------------
And the complement!

To whom it may concern,

The complements box is a dubious destination for the email I am about to write. To not mistake this as a complement to the United Airlines organization. I am writing to alert you to the quality of United employee, Mr. Larry Bell. On November 15th I missed my flight due to a two and a half hour wait at check-in, I waited two more hours to re-book my flight and three more hours to speak to a supervisor.

Mr. Bell was working at the additional services desk and was the only person in the seven and a half hours who offered me an apology of his own volition. He was sincere, genuine and honest with me and my travel companions. Mr. Bell made an extraordinary effort to help resolve my flight issues and to make amends for the wait. I strongly commend Mr. Bell for his exemplary customer service. If he is being paid the same amount as his co-workers then one of two situations is present. They are being paid far too much or, more likely, he is being paid far too little. He is the only reason I, and at least two other customers with me, did not walk away with a 100% negative image of United Airlines and will even consider flying with United again.

I hope this message is passed to Mr. Bell.

Sincerely,

Ian Nicoll


I'll post United 3, The Vengeance, when I get a response.

...In line, forever. I have stared into the abyss my friends. I have looked into the eyes of the beast and witnessed the nadir of logic. The number of the beast is gate 40-88. That abyss, that beast has a name. United Airlines.

What began as a routine trip to Dulles to fly back to Spain ended with grown men crying in desperation, foreigners struggling through their English only to be stranded for three days in Washington, a Pakistani woman in a wheelchair decrying the inhumanity of her treatment at the hands of tyrants and a young British man calling an Alpha male a dick to his face. It didn't have to be like that. It wasn't like that anywhere that didn't have United signs in the area. Like I explained to Isabella Pica, a dour looking woman with all the charisma of a rotten pumpkin; (names have NOT been changed to protect the identities of those involved) This was not my fault. When Sara and I were re booking my flight to Munich for 8:15pm THURSDAY she told me that it was not United's fault that I had missed my plane and therefore they would have no part in booking or paying for a hotel room that night. She went on to explain that "people sleep in the airport all the time". Well, maybe they do. I, while not having been thrilled at the idea of spending 8 hours trying to sleep in coach, would have still ranked that above sleeping in any public space in Washington. United took that option away from me by making me wait 2 and a half hours in their line to check in. So a night in Dulles? On the no shops/no food side of security? No thanks.

It took two and a half hours to check in for a couple of reasons. United doesn't prioritize their check-in process. People flying at 8pm are in the same line with people flying at 530pm who are in the same line as people waiting to check in because they missed their flights the day before. They also separate people with e-tickets from people with paper tickets, sticking all the slower people in one line and making it much more likely that they miss their flights. Not that people ever really choose a paper ticket over the "e" variety, that decision is usually made for them so go ahead...punish them. To complicate the process they have mangled partnerships with other airlines such as Lufthansa which produces situations where passengers might have a Lufthansa flight code and a paper ticket that doesn't have United's name printed anywhere on it. The only reason I ever found out that I wasn't flying with Lufthansa was because an astute employee of the German airline asked to see our tickets and pointed us in the right direction. When I got to the paper-ticket international flights gate the line was over 100 meters long. Or at least 60. I left Sara in line with the bags and went to hunt down a United employee to maybe get expressed up to the front. I was told that there were people who had earlier flights in front of me who needed to get checked in first. Ok, that's fine. But the thing was THEY HAD ALREADY MISSED THEIR FLIGHTS. They had already missed their flights they had goddamn already missed their freaking flights. If everyone there had an international flight, all of which close 45 mins beforehand then there was no way anyone with an earlier flight could have made it. Sara and I still had a chance and I told this to the man who smirked through his goatee and pointed back to the line. Seems that when the logic train left the station United Airlines was stuck in the moon bounce of incompetence. Their synapses must be missing their connections and the signal leaving one node gets diverted through the ear before reaching it's final destination and completing the thought, "GodDAMN I'm a stupid prick!" which produces a motion in the hand writing out the layout of their check-in process.

Isabella invited me to wait and speak to a supervisor who were supposedly all in a meeting. Sara and I waited at the desk next to Isabella Pica's with a British guy who, when asked to step aside and wait, refused, "As soon as I leave this desk you ARE going to forget about me". I joined his movement and we camped out at Larry Bell's desk. Larry Bell is a good man surrounded by a circus of idiots. The Colin Powell of United Airlines. He didn't complain about us occupying his station for three hours while we were waiting for the supervisor. He didn't blame us for not accepting the measly $100 travel vouchers they tried to get rid of us with and he let me use the desk phone to call Spain. He was the only person who told us that they were shorthanded that day and trying out a new computer system, which true or not, was 100% more explanation than anyone else had given us. As the last displaced passenger got to the front of the line it became more apparent that there were some diehards out there willing to sit as long as we had to for our face time with someone in charge. There was a flurry of activity and the ticketing agents came out of the staff room en masse and started tickity tappeting in an orgasm of effort that culminated in their finding 5 hotel rooms in the Dulles area. Possibly the area with the highest concentration of hotels per square mile in Virginia. Five rooms.

Alpha Diallo (real name, I swear) emerged shortly aftewards, three hours after I first met Isabella Pica. The man from the perpetual meeting explained that he had come across three runways just to see us, like that was an accomplishment in three hours. Ed, the British guy, was first up and after demanding to sit down at a table with a glass of water and discuss the problem like civilized people he settled for a seat on the grate that runs the length of the front hallway of Dulles. I had a hunch they were separating us so that they could give us different deals based on how pissed off we were so when Ed came back I asked him what he got out of Alpha. It was what we eventually ended up taking, a night in the Hyatt (a suite!), breakfast and lunch and a business class upgrade. I think the total cost of all that (the upgrade alone is worth over 1000) cost United money on my ticket so I was fundamentally satisfied. Ed sealed it up nicely when he leaned over the desk to Alpha and stated, "Every single employee back there except Larry Bell should be fired, including YOU Alpha. You're a dick."

Mind the Gap in London, Proxima parada...Benimaclet in Valenica, and the escalator is broken at Roslyn Station in DC. I don't remember what they say in the Paris metro...ribit perhaps, but I've been there too.