Bay to Blazers

Hi everybody,

Last weekend was the annual Bay to Breakers, which this year was unofficially renamed in honor of my brother. For those of you who don't know, this is a 7 mile "race" across San Francisco from the bay to the ocean. Maybe the first 3% or so is an actual race... the rest is, to quote Nedermeyer from Animal House, "individual acts of perversion so profound and disgusting that decorum prohibits listing them here."

I tried not to get any pictures of old naked guys, but I can't promise anything if they're somewhere in the corner of the frame or something. Actually, the number of old naked guys was down this year for some reason. Don't worry, they made up for their lack of numbers by wearing green fluorescent hats so if you saw them out of the corner of your eye you couldn't help but look in their direction. Nudists are very enterprising.

Pictures are here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/oVvFFZ5yQ92ZJYkV7

Take 'er easy

Valentine's Day Pillow Fight

Because nothing says "I love you" like beating the shit out of strangers in a public square.

The pictures will speak for themselves...

https://photos.app.goo.gl/K91a3xZoR21U19fE7

All I've Got Are These Damn Nepalese Coins

I actually did bring back some coins from Nepal. I'm going to try that line next time I'm at the laundromat.

Anyhow, The most important thing to do when you get to a new country is get acquainted with its booze. Nepal is home to Everest beer, which has a picture of the famous sherpa Tenzing Norgay on the label and tastes like it contains one of his urine samples. Or you can try Tongba, a hot, alcoholic, millet-based beverage. Yes, I know what you're thinking, after drinking Tongba I am also surprised that the millet craze has not swept across the western world. But you need some booze in you to try and absorb the chaos that is Kathmandu. There's pretty much no order to the traffic, cars look like they're about to plow into each other, people are walking in the middle of the streets, it's a free-for-all. Most of the buildings look as though a bomb went off in them, and there are beggars and touts everywhere, especially in the tourist district. There's garbage in the streets, and, if you're lucky, cow shit. Lots of it.

Traveling to Nepal made me very much appreciate what I have. It's a very, very poor country. There are a lot of people living in squalor, without clean water or electricity. Many of the dwellings that you see are made of cinder blocks cemented together, with corrugated tin roofs that have rocks on top of them to keep them from flying off during high winds. People bathe in the cold water outside if they bathe at all. The main river that runs through Kathmandu is overrun with garbage. You walk through parts of the town and you feel like you're walking through the set of some post-apocalyptic movie. I felt like a kind of voyeur. It's weird to walk through there and think that pretty much anytime you could take off and go back to your world but that all the Nepalis have to deal with it every day of their lives. What can you do though? Give to Oxfam I guess, volunteer when you can, vote your conscience, and try to be a responsible consumer. Or, ignore it and just be happy that beer is cheap and your room only costs $2 per night. We went with option B. We stayed in Kathmandu for a couple of days because the airlines lost my luggage, but after that it was off to Pokhara which is the launching point for treks into the Annapurna conservation area.

You have to be in top physical and mental shape to attempt a trek to Annapurna base camp (ABC) at 4280 meters (over 14,000 feet). I... am neither. That probably explains why I spent most of the time trying to figure out how I could throw myself into a canyon without doing too much harm, just enough to warrant a helicopter rescue. I should've done more research on what "trek" exactly means. But I knew one thing for sure, that no matter how bad a shape I was in or how much I was struggling, Rich would be worse. I found comfort in that. Plus I was looking forward to growing a mountain beard. Of course, any positivity was erased on the first day when Rich and I encountered our first set of Nepali steps. And, since the trek was his idea, everything was Mark's fault. He was itching to try it again since he tried to get to ABC 9 years ago but couldn't make it because he hurt his back.

I don't know if I need to get into detail about what the trek was like, you can look at the pictures, but if I was keeping a journal it would go something like this:
Day 1: Fuck you Mark.
Days 2-5: See Day 1.
Day 6: Nice mountains. P.S. Fuck you Mark.
Days 7-9: I can't believe it's taking me three days to walk back.
Someone needs to send some civil engineers over to Nepal. Apparently, if you want to go up 200 meters, you can't just go up 200 meters. You have to go up 400, then come down 300, then go up 200 more, and come down 100. It's bullshit. We had to hike 6-7 hours a day in these conditions, with a pack. I kept thinking that I could've been on a beach somewhere. Cold showers? Check! Plus, let me tell you something about squat toilets. When you're up at altitude... water freezes! Hey! What do you know? That means if you don't properly flush your poop down the squat toilet, it leaves a frozen surprise for the next person who comes in. Just a heads-up to those of you that might not know. Through it all, Rich and I tried to keep our spirits up by coming up with different ways to kill Mark. At first they were fairly mundane, but as we got colder and as the air got thinner they got more complicated. I think the last one we came up with is that we'd kill him and then slice him open so we could sleep inside him when it was cold, like at the beginning of Empire Strikes Back. Yeah, I know it's gruesome. We were bitter.

I'm not telling you that it wasn't beautiful, or that we didn't have any fun. I mean, I got to climb to the top of Poon Hill! It's a misnomer, by the way, all you can see from there are a bunch of mountains. I looked through the conservation area map and found a Titi Lake and a Nymphu Monastery, but unfortunately they weren't on our route. In Tadapani, Rich was threatened with a dull knife by a 12-year-old girl. On the trek we met a Dutch girl named Karin who traveled most of the way with us, although she did bring our beard factor down. I got to dance with a bunch of Nepali porters. I got to see a monkey steal a lady's bag. We met up with some Buddhist monks on the trek that taught us some card tricks. By the way, being a Buddhist monk seems like a sweet gig. They didn't have to pay for anything at the lodge, they were walking around with iPods and digital SLR cameras, and they were getting all the food they could eat for free. You should see these guys at breakfast. Disciplined my ass.

We did have some excitement on the trip. Mark finally made it to Annapurna base camp this time, but only stayed about an hour because he got altitude sickness. For those of you who don't know, altitude sickness occurs when you ascend too quickly without acclimatizing, and severe altitude sickness can kill you. He got a really bad headache and then started puking up his masala tea, at which point the Nepalis said he had to descend immediately to a lower altitude. So he had to go down to another village... in the middle of a blizzard. Santos, his porter, led him down. As any good friends would do, Rich and I stayed at base camp. Hey, we wanted to see the sunrise over the Annapurnas. Besides... blizzards are cold.

Anyhow, without further ado, pictures are here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/vzHZn2FRaNZ1KG3U9

Dave

The Tube of Caulk

In case anybody was wondering what life is like with Jimmy in Bend, Oregon in January...


-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Bresci
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 2:42 PM
To:
Subject: RE: Frozen pecker

Well it goes a little something like this....

Back in October we were replacing the shingles on Jimmy's roof (side note: we never finished. There are about 6 stacks of shingles still up there). As you may or may not know, you need to use roofing caulk to seal up the edges around the roof under the shingles. So Jimmy's up there working and he has this tube of caulk that keeps rolling down the roof and getting in his way. Jimmy gets pissed off pretty easily, so he fires a few f-bombs and sticks the tube of caulk in the closest convenient location he can think of... On top of an air vent. He later explained to me that he was under the impression that the vent would be at least a quarter inch narrower than the diameter of the tube of caulk. Apparently, it's a quarter inch larger. Jimmy, by the way, is a licensed contractor.

So... Fooom! The tube of caulk goes shooting down this air vent into who knows where. At this point Jimmy unleashes a stream of epithets reminiscent of the dad in "A Christmas Story." Anyway, after regrouping we decide that we need to resolve this issue ASAP. This is where the combined clever genius of Dave and Jimmy comes into play. The first thing we tried was lowering a string line attached to a weighted film canister with crazy glue on the bottom, letting it rest on the tube of caulk (which was about 12-15 feet down) and letting the glue dry so we could pull it out. Needless to say, this didn't work. We tried the same thing except substituted the crazy glue with Liquid Nails, which is some bad-ass shit. Negative. At this point one of our neighbors, Jay, comes by, sees us on the roof and asks what we're up to. Jimmy tells him what happened, and after Jay stops laughing he offers to help. He works for the power company, he's on his lunch break, and he has a big truck full of bad-ass tools. So he and his partner climb up on the roof with this giant spool of what looks like copper wiring, maybe about an eighth of an inch thick. He cuts off about 15 feet of it, winds one end so it looks like a corkscrew, and proceeds to spend the next 20 minutes trying to screw his way through the bottom of the tube of caulk with this copper wire. Unsuccessfully, of course.

That night we discover what the air vent was used for, which was for intake to the bathroom sink and the laundry room. At this point we have no running water in either spot.

The next day I had this genius idea that I would attach a screwdriver with duct tape to the end of a 20 foot section of PVC, then try to puncture the bottom of the tube of caulk in order to then twist and pull it up. I still think this might've worked if maybe I'd used a bit more duct tape. As it happened, I punched my makeshift PVC spear down into the abyss only to have it come back up without the screwdriver. Time for drastic measures. We rip the sink and the vanity out of the bathroom so we can get to the wall which cointains said air vent. We saw through the drywall until we have access to the pipes, then saw through what looks like the correct pipe. We were right, it's the pipe with the stuck tube. Unfortunately, the tube seems to be about a foot below floor level as best we can tell since we can't really see. Turns out I probably shoved it down another few feet with my PVC contraption.

Anyhow, we got busy with work and didn't get around to calling Roto-Rooter until about a week after the original incident. The guy comes out and looks at this hole in the wall with a section cut out of an air vent, then goes back to his truck to get one of those cameras they have. He pokes around in there for about five minutes, then tells me that there's nothing he can do because it looks like the tube opened up and the caulk dried inside the tube. He says the only thing we can do at this point is bust through the concrete floor, dig out to the bottom of the pipe and replace it where the problem resides. It's not as hard as it sounds, he says. Then he charged me 85 bucks.

The next day I go to an equipment rental place to get a concrete saw, which is a bad ass piece of equipment if you've never seen one. We cover the entrance to the bathroom with plastic and Jimmy jury-rigs a sort of a ventilator using a shop-vac and some PVC because the bathroom has no windows and, therefore, no ventilation. We split the duties this way: he does the cutting and I stay in the hallway to make sure the plastic covering stays sealed so cement dust doesn't go flying everywhere. So Jimmy gets geared up with goggles and a big ventilator mask and goes in to make his first cut. He's gonna cut out a big rectangle and cutting through concrete is fairly slow. After about five minutes he comes out of the bathroom covered in sweat and dust and says he made the first cut. He rests for a few minutes then goes back in there for the second cut. The same thing again for the third cut. When he's in there for the fourth cut he seems to be taking a little longer than usual. He finally comes out, pouring sweat, and stumbles down the hallway through the living room out to the front yard. Now, all I can see from the hall is the doorway, so I see him go to the left of the door, then stumble across the doorway off to the right, then come back in the house an plop down on the recliner. I go up to him and see that he is soaking with sweat and that his eyelids are twitching, so I start asking him "Are you ok? Are you ok?" He doesn't say anything and his breathing starts to turn to snoring and it looks to me like he's passed out. I grab the cordless phone and yell at him, "Dude I’m going to call 911!" He opens his eyes halfway and slurs "What for?" I lift him up with one arm over my shoulder and take him out to the front yard where he lies for about fifteen minutes in a semi-catatonic state, occasionally reviving himself for a drink of water. I went back into the bathroom and discovered that I couldn't see two inches in front of me from the cement dust and that it was about 120 degrees in there. So he either had poisoning from the dust or he overheated or both.

After the dust settles I decide to take a sledgehammer and try to crack through the cut floor. After about 15 minutes of sporadic hammering, I've probably got about 4 square inches cracked off the slab. Jimmy's in no shape to take over, so we decide to return the saw and rent a jackhammer. It takes about half an hour but I finally break up the 2x3 foot section under which we're going to dig. By the way, using a jackhammer is not as cool as it sounds. It's fun for about two minutes until your arms start to get sore. Then it just really sucks.

After we cut through the wiring (because lucky for us it was reinforced concrete) we decided to call it a day. We didn't get around to digging out the dirt for another couple of weeks, and by that time I'd gotten used to doing everything in the kitchen sink. Anyhow, I dug through the dirt to get to the pipe and when we cut it out we found the fucking screwdriver was sticking through the bottom of the pipe.

So that's how a tube of caulk cost Jimmy about 500 bucks. And we still don't have a sink in the bathroom.



-----Original Message-----
From:
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 12:50 PM
To: Dave Bresci
Subject: RE: Frozen pecker

Nice, a poopcicle. I hadn't heard about the caulk incident, what's that all about.

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Bresci
Sent: Friday, January 12, 2007 12:43 PM
To:
Subject: Frozen pecker

So Jimmy just finished painting the bathroom the other day and gets a wild hair up his ass about tiling the floor. As you probably know, we've been without a sink in the bathroom for three months because of the tube of caulk incident, so he'd have to tile the floor anyway before we put a new sink in.
Of course, in order to tile the floor we have to remove the toilet, which was done last night. So the tiling goes pretty smoothly, after which we both realize that it's going to take at least twelve hours for the mortar to dry before we can replace the toilet. Last night the temperature in Bend was 1, with a wind chill factor of -12. Needless to say, I've been taking a leak in a one gallon water bottle for the last day. Dropping a deuce presented a slightly larger problem... I drove to Costco this morning to use their can. Jimmy, on the other hand, in his words "went from Defcon 1 to Defcon 5 in about three minutes" and ended up taking a dump in the garage in the 5 gallon bucket he used to mix the mortar yesterday. He said he couldn't believe the amount of steam coming out of that bucket after he took it outside.

I love this place.

The World Cup and the Running of the Bulls

Chaos. Mayhem. Madness. Booze. And it was only day two in Koln...

That's pretty much how it went down for the entire three weeks in Germany. Bouncing from one Fan Fest to another in our beat-up Volvo station wagon, we sampled many beers and experienced the unique smells that can only develop when you're camping with three other guys and only showering every few days. Mmm... musky. There's nothing else quite like the world cup experience, though. The way that fans are whipped into a frenzy for their national teams is hard to describe, yet it never really managed to erupt into anything violent. Well, except that one night where we were chased by riot police, and that was mostly because Max and I were curious as to what it's like to be part of a mob of English hooligans. Other than that, all the fans were very civil toward each other, and even when the English eventually lost in Gelsenkirchen the worst thing I saw were some overturned porta-potties.

I'm not sure how participating in the running of the bulls can be a let-down, but that's what happens when you're in Pamplona where nobody gives a crap about soccer and the rest of the world is watching the final between Italy and France. I was told that in Viareggio, my home town and where Italy's manager Lippi is from, there were close to 200,000 people watching the match in the main piazza. I was watching it at the only bar we could find in Pamplona that didn't have its television tuned into a bullfight on a microscopic, static-filled television surrounded by French people. After that, I pretty much had to run with the bulls. I mean, I didn't want to go all the way to Pamplona for nothing. I learned two things from that experience: Bulls are really, really big, and don't count on Max waiting up for you if you're in the middle of a stampede.

Overall, much beer was drunk, many miles were logged, and there were many times when we wanted to kill each other. Other than that, it was great.

Check out the pictures:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/2m2TVgLr6sqDmeSu6

and

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Wjn64Lq2Spyzk7Fe9


Take 'er easy,
Dave

A Final Word

Hey everybody,

I'm cold. I haven't worn long pants or shoes in several months so my perspective is somewhat skewed.

Anyhow, my last few weeks in Thailand were pretty mellow... exactly what I was looking for. I went through some mixed emotions when I stopped working, I felt a bit guilty quitting while the work wasn't quite finished but I knew that if I didn't take some time off then I wouldn't have a chance to do anything fun before I came home. It was tough... I'd put so much into that project that I didn't know what to do with myself once it was over. It was like my reason for being there was finished so I wasn't sure what to do or where to go. I decided to treat myself to a 4-day liveaboard scuba trip, which turned out to be fantastic. The Similan Islands in the Andaman Sea are supposed to be some of the best dive sites in the world and the sea life I saw was spectacular. I have three words for you... Wall of Fish. It just has to be seen. Of course, I came back with swollen ear canals, I must've been somewhat congested because equalizing underwater was extremely painful, so I was laid up for about four days with throbbing inside my ears, which was fun.

I then took off for the other side of Thailand, the gulf, and met up with my old roommate Jimmy on Ko Tao where he and his brother were finishing their open-water dive course. We spent about a week on Ko Tao and Ko Phangan lounging on some tropical beaches and then I came back to Khao Lak to spend my last few days in Thailand. Last Friday they held a party on Koh Kho Khao to commemorate the end of the volunteer work... the houses are finished except for a few details that the contractors need to work on, but villagers have already started moving in. It was exciting and gratifying to see the houses in finished condition, many of the villagers showed up to the party which was my first opportunity to meet most of them. Jimmy was there as well, which in a way made it more real for me because it was a link to home. He took some great pictures, one of which I've attached to give you some idea of what the houses we've built look like. Then it was a 14-hour bus ride to Bangkok and 19 hours of flight+layover and I was home.

So, what do I think after 6 months in Thailand? It's an interesting country. Selling porn is illegal, but selling a girl named Porn is okay. There are two worlds living in parallel, the first and third world. Where else are you going to see a satellite dish outside a corrugated tin shack? There are more pickup trucks in Thailand than in any other country in the world. Everyone has a cell phone, almost no one has a flush toilet or hot water. Many towns don't even have water pipes, each family has to have their own well or cistern. Stray cats and dogs are everywhere.

There's an incredible amount of natural beauty in this country, especially on the beaches and in the jungle, but if you want to see it I suggest you go now.
Thailand is whoring itself out to tourism and it doesn't seem like there are many controls on how it's being done. Air, water, and noise pollution don't seem to be of much concern to the general population. There are plenty of areas designated as national parks, but these are slowly being sold off to the highest bidder, usually a resort. In 10 years' time it's going to be a completely different country, for better or worse.

I'm going to miss a lot of things about it, though. Thai people are incredibly welcoming and friendly... everyone smiles at you when you walk down the street, kids will wave at you from the school buses, people will try to randomly start up conversations with you whether or not you speak the same language... just being back home one day reminds me how different that is from the US, at least California. I'm going to miss seeing a family of 5 piled on one moped or 25 laborers in the back of one pickup truck. I'm going to miss papaya salad. I'm going to miss the relaxed attitude toward just about everything. I'm going to miss the crazy driving. I won't miss Thai pop music.

Well, that's just about it. Sorry I didn't have any more ass stories for ya, but the opportunity didn't present itself. I did moon a guy when I was scuba diving, but he didn't see it so I guess that really doesn't count.

Well there are a few final pictures:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/isDpxXSiYyaExW4t6

Take 'er easy everybody. As always, the dude abides,
Dave

Khao Lak Asstravaganza

Pictures are here:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/mcEuLpDZmuiLy3UP6

Greetings from Thailand, where if one more Thai guy calls out to me "Zidane!" I'm going to punch him in the face then shave my head,

Well, the last few weeks have been mostly focused on finishing the work on the island. We've reached the stage where all the heavy labor is done and the detail work like paint, ceiling tiles, and debris cleanup are all that's left. Strangely enough, I think this may actually have been my most dangerous month. Why? Two
words: Thai scaffolding. I think when they put the scaffolding up they expect the houses to be painted by circus monkeys. Balancing on a 3-inch wide beam 20 feet in the air while painting some eaves under a roof usually involves strategic placement of the ass cheeks, as I've found out. The only thing worse is when we try to build our own scaffolding. Oh... yeah, that's top notch stuff, I'm sure up to the highest OSHA standards. If you're ever in charge of a volunteer construction site, there's nothing better to keep annoying old guys occupied than to put them in charge of scaffolding construction. They'll use up about 3/4 of all the wood on your site, and by the time they're finished you would probably have painted about 4 houses, but it's worth it to keep from standing over your shoulder saying "That's not how I would've done it" or "Why do they do it this way" or "Why don't we have a [insert random tool name that is impossibly expensive or impractical in Thailand here]?"

On the plus side, the houses are rounding nicely into shape and from the exterior a lot of them look almost finished. We're having to move a lot of supplies and equipment around, so the last couple of weeks I've been able to drive the dump truck. That's right... dump truck. You know when you're a kid and you get one of those Tonka trucks and zoom it around your backyard. Yeah, I get to drive a real one of those. Oh baby, you wouldn't believe the turning radius on one of those things! I could probably parallel park it on Lombard St. Okay, maybe not. Still, the point is we're at the stage of construction where a lot of the ceilings and electrical are done, so we just have to finish floors and painting for many of the houses to be in move-in condition.

Actually, we've gotten so much done that a couple of weeks ago they told us volunteers to take a week off from the island so the contractors could catch up. We ended up becoming volunteer mercenaries, kind of like the A-team, working a couple of days each at different projects. We did some beach cleanup, which basically involves waiting for low tide and going out into the water to pick up chunks of concrete and other debris. Man, there are entire houses out there. We had to break an electrical pole into bits and dig it out of the sand underneath a couple of feet of water. It's pretty incredible to think that this stuff was planted into the ground somewhere inland, and that it's been over a year and it's still there. We also worked a day at Thap Tawan moving sand (about as fun as it sounds) and a couple of days at Nam Kem digging septic holes. That is so damn satisfying... knee deep in mud or clay, cursing at a future shithole because the walls are caving in on you, finally getting the concrete rings into place... that's a day's work, baby! Actually, we've gotten pretty good at it... the Nam Kem team asked us if we could come back and dig more but there was work back on the island for us.

It's been hard to keep up morale and keep people motivated the last month since we've mostly been painting, especially the long-termers who know what it's like to do much more satisfying concrete and digging work, so I've been doing my best to try to keep things interesting. In late December, we began to wage a campaign against all the other teams involving serial mooning, or b.a. as it's also known. We started off small... shoving a pair of ass cheeks out of the only functioning window on the shark while two others were pressed against the glass as we passed by Thap Tawan. But then, as the regular moonings became too banal, we tried to raise the stakes. One fateful morning, the planets aligned so that we were able to moon five (5) TVC vehicles on the way to work: 3 from Thap Tawan, the Thaikea truck and the environmental restoration truck. I thought that was the pinnacle, but I was wrong. Soon thereafter we strafed the crew from the Pakarang boatyard. The cool thing about that is that we had just helped them load up a boat on the trailer behind Scott's truck, and the entire boatyard crew was sitting on the boat with nowhere to hide or shield their eyes. It was magical. I may have been overzealous in my pantsing that day because one of the boat crew later claimed he could see my boys, but that is just part of the legend. The next day, on the way back from working at Thap Tawan, we had the first all-female mooning (thank you Bec and Tammy) on one of their trucks, which we later discovered was full of Australian christians and being driven by a pastor.

Then, last week, Dean took the two station wagons in for servicing and gave me the songtaw to drive around. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's basically a pickup truck with an enclosure welded to the truck bed and benches lining the bed so it becomes a passenger vehicle. What it really becomes is the perfect mooning vehicle. There was only one group left to moon, Nam Kem, and I really wanted to come up with something special for them. Then, as if in a vision, it came to me... the Ass Pyramid. One fateful Thursday morning the opportunity presented itself, and we did not let it slip by. With Richard behind the wheel driving like Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity, Luke, Tammy and I formed the first known Ass Pyramid in the Khao Lak area. Luke and I were on the bottom and Tammy climbed on our backs while we passed the first Nam Kem truck and pulled directly in front of them. What the hapless drivers were treated to was a triangular formation of slapping asses for approximately 30 seconds until we sped away. But that was only the appetizer. The main course was when we finally caught up to the big Nam Kem truck. We got at least a good 45 seconds of ass on them. I really don't think they appreciated the coordination and dexterity it took to balance three people on the back of a truck bed while pantsless and using one hand for slapping. Anyway, about a minute after we stopped laughing I got a phone call from Tilo at the TVC office and the first thing he says is "Did you just moon the Nam Kem vehicle?" Apparently, one of the people in the front seat of the truck was one of the Thai bigshots at the TVC and he didn't think it was so funny, so I got an earful about that one and ended up going to Nam Kem's worksite to apologize to him personally. It's not the first time I've made an insincere apology, and I'm sure it won't be the last. I mean, how can you not appreciate the planning and execution that goes into an ass pyramid out of the back of a moving truck?

Undeterred by my slight setback, I set about strategizing on one final magnum opus of mooning which I could pull off while I still had the songtaw. The perfect opportunity presented itself at last Friday night's TVC costume party held at an outdoor restaurant on the main strip. It was a couple of volunteers' birthdays so they thought it would be fun to throw a dress-up party where everyone had to show up dressed like a character from a movie. I didn't really feel like finding an outfit, so I jokingly said one night at dinner that I was just going to show up in my underwear and say I was King Kong. Well, after I thought about it a couple days it didn't seem like such a bad idea, but I thought I should probably do something more than just go in my underwear. So the day of the party I completely smeared myself in Vaseline, which was cool, and then put on a layer of shoe polish to make me more dark and ape-like, or at least that's what I was thinking. Turns out I looked more like "Just crawled out of the sewer man" or "charred corpse man" than King Kong, but it was already done so I went to the party. Anyway, back to the ass. So the party kicks off full swing, probably about a hundred people drinking and sporting some really creative outfits considering resources are limited, when me and seven other people sneak off to pick up the songtaw which was strategically parked only a couple of blocks away. I'm proud to say that we performed the first-ever recorded two-level songtaw seven-ass mooning, with four asses sticking out of the bottom row and three of us (Luke, Tammy and I) on the roof. Rich was driving and basically stopped directly in front of the restaurant honking the horn while we slapped away. I can only describe it as sheer poetry, a crowning achievement of human spirit and vision, really possibly the eighth wonder of the world. I'm not kidding, it was that good. I have it on video.

Anyhow, we went back to the party afterward and I wasn't in trouble, which was cool. Unfortunately, it was at this point that my "outfit" began to cause me some discomfort. First off, no one would come within three feet of me for fear of getting some kind of black greasy concoction on their clothing. Hey, it's not my fault about half the party was wearing white. Secondly, I smelled like shoe polish. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, my skin was starting to feel a slight tingle that at some point began to turn into a burn. At that point I decided it might be a good time to go home and take a shower, which turned into a 45-minute scrubbing epic to which I sacrificed an entire bar of soap and a formerly light blue towel, now slightly blackened. I can't imagine how I could've gotten that shit off if I didn't have the vaseline on.

I had a plan this week to moon the new volunteer orientation, but unfortunately it was foiled when they decided not to come to the island. I really don't care whether or not I get kicked out of the TVC at this point because I've given them my notice... Friday the 17th will be my last day on the island. I think it has a nice symmetry to it, I started on September 17th. I'm probably going to relax for a few weeks, get a lot of sleep, and then come back to the island for the official dedication ceremony on March 10th. After that, I'll be homeward bound I reckon.

Hope you're all doing well and I'll see some of you fairly soon.

As always, the Dude abides,
Dave