Archive for January, 2005
So Chloe is the cutiest cat in the entire world, I know I know, your cat is cuter than mine (as if!) anyways, Chloe has a nasty habit of getting into some sticky sticky plants and whatnot. She has long hair, so much so that she can’t even begin to clean herself. So occassionally I’ll have to cut out the dreads that ensue. She’s not lazy, she’s just a really active long haired predator. what’s a girl to do?
I’ve gotten Chloe groomed twice since in her lifetime. I have her shaved like a little Lioness. She usually hates it for the first few days and then it grows in a little and she thanks me for saving her tons of wasted time, cleaning all the crap out of her fur. The last time I got her hair cut, it was here in Bucerias and the pet place did an awful job, so like the idiot I am, I decided to do it myself this time.
I bought a pair of clippers from Sam’s Club, tied her up and went to work cutting away the massive dreads that had been attached all over her.
Chloe yelled and screamed. two hours later and a few knicks here and there, she was done. I had hair all over me and she looked like a very skiiny rat. well at least she won’t get the sticky plant all over her, for a little while.
Kids, do not try this at home. You can hurt your cat. your cat can hurt you. you do not want this. please proceed to a trained professional. if there are none, tuff luck.
ps. I am allergic to cat hair. yay me!
Ahhh, Sunday mornings. spent in bed. sleeping til 12:00. well, not us. Marcia and I got up at 8:00am and headed up to Sayulita to catch some waves of the current swell. and to spend a lazy sunday in Sayulita. the tide was high and the waves were muy nice.
After an hour or so, we schlepped up to the world famous Choco Banana for some breakfast. I had the waffles (with banana instead of assorted fruit) and Marcia had the Breakfast Bite (an egg sandwich with cheese) both were super bien. good coffee too. always a pleasure to get a good cup of coffee.
This is the roll-down door for a funky little store, called Pacha-Mama, owned by a family of four incredibly beautiful french gypsy women with long flowing blondish hair, each one more gorgeous then the next. They could easily be Manu Chao’s soul sisters. The store is just off the beach. I hear they are opening up a small boutique hotel above the store front. I can’t wait to see what creativeness they come up with.
Nothing like sitting on the beach watching three cute little mexican kids playing in the surf when along comes a cowboy on a horse, giving a ride to a beautiful surfer chick. only in Sayulita. you can see a surfer in the background. very good day for surfing.
this is the roll-down door for a store called “El Cocodrillo”. beautiful logo, right?! wakes up the sleeping graphic designer in me.
All is all a nice day at the beach. I love coming up to Sayulita, grabbing a few chairs under a palapa and spending the day watching the surfers and catching a wave or two myself. now only if Marcia will learn how to surf, the world will be as right as rain…
As we sit here in bed, Marcia is reading The DaVinci Code* and I am on the powerbook, reading the blogs on my Bloglines list. I may be hiding out in mexico, the magical enchanted land of agricultural peasant uprisings and the birthplace of “Carne en Su Jugo”, but I still manage to keep semi-current on all things design, tech, photo, code, architecture, music, silliness/seriousness, fashion, macrumors, good/badplasticsurgery, politix, entertainment and wonderful things related.
I’m not sleeping. I’m crouching and hidden.
You can take the boy out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of the boy. in this case: the concrete jungle.
I had my 3rd lesson in Kite Boarding yesterday and this is a shot of me trying to get up on the board. It’s kinda like playing the drums. You have to fly the kite, watch the board and avoid getting pounded by the 2 foot waves. I got up on the board for brief moments but couldn’t harness the power of the kite long enough to keep me standing. It was a great start though and next time, i’ll be up and running.
Marcia learned how to fly the training kite. a smaller kite that is used to understand the dynamics of flying the kite. Larger kites can literally pull you 20 feet off the ground. Marcia did a great job and despite her inital hesitance, really enjoyed it. Jorge says she’ll be in the water, next lesson. How cool is that?!
Each town in Mexico has their own patron saint or virgin that looks after the town. In Bucerias, we have a week long festival that culminates with the day of “Nuestra Señora de La Paz”, a day dedicated to the our town’s virgin. 5 days of partying and fun in the town square complete with vending stalls, bands, fireworks, food, food and more food.
Marcia and i went to the festival on 3 nights, 2 of which are captured here.
enjoy!
a simple door, i came across in downtown Vallarta. i love the light blue, white and black composition.
Whadayaknow! I got pinched again, last night, by the man. this time for running a red light. It wasn’t quite my fault since I was just following the guy in front of me and it happened to turn red while i was going through the intersection. Marcia, Dad and I were talking about where to grab a cappucino and dessert, after having arrived too late for a showing of CLOSER. Finding good coffee and dessert in Vallarta is like searching for the holy grail. ok, back to the red light. yeah, if we are talking technicalities here, yes, i ran the red light. But that doesn’t mean the policia had to pull me over, but they did. This time I pretended that I’ve only been here for a month and that I didn’t know very much spanish. He talked to me about the infraction and that he’d have to take my license and then I’d have to go down on monday to pay the fine and get the card back. I pretended not to understand what he was saying. He then asked who was with me and when I told him Marcia was from Guadalajara, he asked to have her come speak with him. So I walked back to the truck, asked Marcia to come speak with the cop and I quickly told her about the white lie of having only been here for a month. Luckily the cop was not paying attention, that would never have been possible in the states. Anyways, the cop basically told her the same thing he told me and then she motioned to me to try to see if there was “anything we can do to keep the license” this is code talk for “can we slip you a mickey and let’s just forget about this little meeting”. the cop instantly complied and asked that we get back into the car, before we slip him the dinero. We got in the truck, slipped him 200 pesos (20 bucks), he gave the license back and we were on our way.
This time I’m not really sure if he was doing me a favor or not. I really think he took the opportunity to squeeze me, just because he could. If my California license plated truck had been a Jalisco plated car, he probably wouldn’t have even bothered. So in that respect it pissed me off. But assuming that I had made the error, legitimately, he did do me (and him) a favor by accepting the dough. Yes, he didn’t really have to pull me over, but I did run the light. So in the states that would have been a healthy fine, but here the cop takes your license and then you have to come down to the station on another day to get your license back and pay 40 dollar fine. So technically, the cop saved me time and money and he saved himself some paperwork and got some good spending money out of it.
This is my house in Los Angeles. It sits atop a 60 step pathway, overlooking the busiest intersection of Hollywood. It was architected and built in 1935 by RM Schindler.
the view from my house on a bright spring day
I’ve been living in Mexico for about 5 months now. and it’s been a magical, wonderful experience. Sometimes I miss my friends back home in Los Angeles. This photo was taken on a hike in the Ojai mountains with my good friends Ryan and Zeke.
I miss these guys very much.
a photo taken in the wonderful area of Guadalajara called Tlaquepaque. we found this nice little hacienda courtyard.
Saturday, Jan 22nd, 2005
Categories: surfing
Ok, so it’s been “pumping” (more surfer talk) for the last three days. The ocean is alive like I haven’t seen it since I’ve been here. These are seriously the largest waves I’ve seen/ridden yet and I notice that Burros, the place where I surf, has been attracting the attention of the locals from Vallarta to Sayulita and beyond. Burros has been the perfect spot to enjoy the current swell.
Yesterday I turned a page in my apprenticeship of surfing. I learned how to use the short board to carve and weave like the pros (or at least the intermediates). The secret? I learned how to use the kick plate or whatever you call the foot pad that is attached to the back of the board. It makes turning and slowing down much easier. It’s sort of like the control stick for the board.
I am very proud of myself. and this big swell gave me some serious learning time. I finally feel like I can surf with the big boys. Before, I was kinda riding the short board like one would ride a long board, long flowing lines, all style, but very little technical maneuvering. Now I can cut and weave and carve, like I own the wave. I feel as if I have graduated another level in the school of surfing.
How good it feels!
Thursday, Jan 20th, 2005
Categories: surfing
So the waves have been literally dead here for at least three weeks. I mean dead. dead. dead. dead. And so today we have been getting the first of a large swell coming through, that will peak tomorrow (friday) and stay large for the weekend.
It’s about freakin’ time, right?!
Today, I went out at like 4:30pm and the waves were 3 and 4 feet with some sets as high as 5 and 6 feet. It was, in surfer speak, “GOING OFF!!!” It was great. I caught some really nice waves and got a chance to really try my hand at carving with my 6′2“ Channel Islands board. I had basically put it away for the past month since the waves have been some small (longer boards are easier to catch waves). It was really nice to get out there with the short board and tear it up, or at least pretend like I know how to tear it up. I got dumped hard once or twice and my adrenaline was constantly pumping but it was all worth it. I wish I had a nice camera with a good long range lens so Marcia could grab photos for all my peoples to see this big hairy white gringo monkey in action!
Tomorrow the waves should be a foot or two higher, possibly more. and I’m really looking forward to getting back in to surfing larger waves. Oh when mother nature calls, you just gotta listen to her. yanahmean!
Surf’s up kids!
file this photo under: “getting your crappy little point-n-shoot to do things it wasn’t meant to do”
Marcia and I, fooling around at the mall. In Guadalajara I spent a lot of time at various malls. 3 to be exact. not that we shopped a lot or even enjoyed the mall, we just seemed to end up there for one reason or another. Interesting places though and always interesting to see American Corporate Social Dominationâ?¢ at work in a humble sweet country like Mexico.
… They play my favorite tv show “Freaks and Geeks” on mexican tv. and it’s dubbed in spanish, which is even cooler. That means that someone liked it so much, they went through the painstaking process of dubbing it. bonus!
FnG had a terrible run in the states and was cancelled promptly. but it’s freakin’ brilliant. and they just released the entire season on DVD. so go buy it. and be re-born.
Hands down, the best beer on the planet. and so totally not available in Vallarta. Luckily I spent the entire time in Guadalajara downing massive amounts of Victoria (well, maybe like one or two). I was like the dog in those bugs bunny cartoons that fills up on all the meat and then asks bugs where the gravy is, and then bugs bunny finds a way to tie the dog up and feed him gravy until he explodes.
I heart Victoria.
I met Marcia’s dad, recently, and after shaking my hand, he strapped me into his patented Truth Chair™ where I proceeded to tell him every dirty secret I have in my little mind. Well, actually, we were just trying out his new anti-gravity device that helps you reverse the effects of gravity on your spine. It works great and it was wonderful to meet Francisco Vara.
Marcia took me to a market called “San Juan de Dios” in Guadalajara, where you can get all sorts of stuff like sneakers, clothing, food and most importantly everything you ever needed to look like a mexican cowboy.
I’ve been lost in mexico for the past 5 days without internet. no email. no websites. no digital communication.
Marcia and I headed to Guadalajara to take care of some things and to meet her father among others. It was a great trip and worthy of a proper write-up in the next few days. I met some of her close friends and ate some awesome food. all was documented, as usual, in photos. update to come soon…
Mexico has me in her firm grip and day by day I see mexico as more of a solid home then a temporary getaway.
Marcia invited me to a wedding of a childhood friend of hers. This was my first mexican wedding (or “boda” in spanish). Typically, mexican weddings start at around 8pm with a traditional catholic ceremony and mass in a church and then the reception starts around 10 or so and the peoples party until around 6am. In these respects it was most certainly an average mexican wedding. but in most other respects it was not!
This boda turned out to be the most bling-bling non-traditional mexican wedding either of us had ever been to. There was absolutely no spared expense, from the Absolut vodka to the above average 20 minute barrage of fireworks. From the giant white sand castle looking palace to the london milk bar club on the beach vibe, we most definitely enjoyed ourselves. We’re still not sure if the price that was payed for such a wedding was worth it considering the money most likely could have afforded a sizable down payment on a new house, but if you’re gonna go bling-bling whoever the wedding planner was on this one, sure did a great job.
enjoy the pictures
It just occurred to me that I went through the entire holiday season without calling any of my friends in Los Angeles (or my family on the east coast for that matter!). I AM A TERRIBLE FRIEND. There, I said it. ok, I’m not gonna go and make a new year’s resolution, especially since I’ve said previously that I will do no such thing, but if I were to make a resolution, it would be to call my friends more often. one can not live on the beautiful jugo (juice) of new found love alone. friendship is important.
Friends: be expecting my call, answer the phone, pretty please.
Monday, Jan 3rd, 2005
Categories: surfing
Would someone please put a quarter in the wave machine? i’m dying over here. there hasn’t been a decent swell in ages and today I worked my ass off. it would have been rather nice to grab a wave or two during a twilight session. are the gods angry? please do a little dance for all us surfers. waves be the sangre of our souls.
August 23rd, 2004 marked a critical junction where I chose to up-root my previously very structured and safe life and moved to mexico to work and live with my parents. The first three months were filled with new and foreign experiences both external and internal. For the first time in my life I did not know what the next day would bring. I worked hard and surfed every minute the work clock was stopped. Through those three months the one thing that I felt that I was lacking was someone to share my experiences with, a co-pilot, a partner in crime. On December 1st I met the most amazing girl and slowly but surely my experiences in mexico became subtly deeper, as if I had been experiencing mexico with training wheels on. Marcia opened up a whole new mexico to me and for this I will always be thankful to her. For 2005 I look forward to continuing the good things that were started in 2004 and keeping fresh eyes open for the new experiences that are waiting down the road. May all good things come my way and yours.
and now for some pics from last night: [ Link to photo set ]
Today, Jan. 1st not only marks a new year that will most certainly be full of new and interesting experiences, it also marks the 1 month anniversary that Marcia and I have been dating. and such a wonderful month it has been. this chick drives me bananas in every good way. She is just as beautiful on the inside as she is on the outside. I am one lucky gringo to have such a cute, intelligent, sexy, funny, subtle, caring, witty (the list goes on and on) lady in my life. whoa.
