Jabronies and Buffets

 Just a few weeks after declaring I was done running around for awhile, I once again found myself running around with an opportunity too good to pass up last week. This time I traveled out to San Fran. to see some good friends and ski at Heavenly in Lake Tahoe for a travel writing assignment.

A lot of our trip though was spent off the slopes given the unfortunate ski season (the worst in probably 100 years) and more of the action centered on the après-ski. One of the perks of our journalist hook up was a $125/day per diem and VIP ("very important" as in didn't pay any cover) access to the Opal night club. Here I flush out two aspects of our experience and a reflection on two *important take-aways from the trip: Jabronies and buffets.

*actually not important

Jabronis (or Jabronie)

I actually started using this word more often a few months back when I was in Africa after my Kiwi roommate told me she didn't know what it was. I always thought a jabroni is a dude who is a A) duche bag B) super bro-like C) condescending jerk D) something that thinks they are really cool but is actually really lame or E) All of the above. Here is how the urban dictionary breaks it down:

juh broh nee 
–noun 
someone who is about to get owned. 

-adjective 
used to decribe a person or action lacking judgment or sense.

-Love is for jabronies. 
-The Rock is about to lay a smack down on that jabronie. 
-You locked your keys in the car? Well that was a jabronie thing to do.

The reason I bring this up is because night clubs are often full of jabronies. I actually sometimes do enjoy night clubs, and often find that if you go with a bunch of friends or can find other cool people who like to dance and also kind of hate the whole night club "scene" it can even be tolerable. The Opal nightclub at Montbleu Casino Resort was somewhat like Atlanta's recent storm, a "wintry" mix. There were some moments of fun, the right crowd level (busy not too jammed), and good music with a decent overall ambiance, but there were enough jabronies to force my early 1:20 am departure.

I found at least 2 or 3 fun groups of girls to dance with only to be pushed out by jabronies each time. Being short, a night club is the type of place that really puts height in perspective, and really I'm guessing any insecurity someone has about themselves. I was actually pushed out of spots and possibly at one point even had one jabronie deliberately put their hand and push off on my face to take my place, obviously no apologies necessary. These same people would often grab the girl's hips they only just saw for the first time and begin grinding whether the girl seemed into it or not. I'm not against grinding or meeting people at clubs but it's this way that it's done that I don't like. Can you read the signs? Maybe take a minute to feel out the situation? Despite the inherent awkwardness of this moment, inhibitions are either low enough because of lots of alcohol or people want "it" that bad they go along with what's been socially conditioned and approved. Or they don't. My guess is the reality is more often that this type of move works like 1 out of 10 times and that's what keeps these jabronies going. I guess I give them some credit for either not caring about rejection or just having huge balls but more likely it has something to do with the way they view and think about woman. Furthermore, most people, whether they admit it or not, probably don't actually like the way clubs work currently but it's not an easy culture to change when there are so many jabronis around.  

Lesson on nightclubs: Go with a girlfriend or change your expectations. If you think about it, nightclubs are weird places to begin with. Some people, like myself, legitimately like to dance, but it seems the majority are trying to get with someone and dancing with someone you usually can't easily have a real conversation is the way to "meet" them. Of course some people don't actually care about the "meeting" part.        

Buffet

We decided to check out the Montbleu (where we were staying) casino/hotel's Friday night seafood buffet. My big take-away (and reminder) from this experience is that buffet's almost always suck and are kind of disgusting. It's kind of like getting too drunk, it's good to do every once and while just to remind yourself why you shouldn't do it. Now I know some people may disagree but even those who do probably end up feeling sick and overeating 90% of the time. It’s hard to not get excited about thinking you can have everything (and as much as you want of it) and you don’t have to make that difficult choice about what you actually want to eat tonight.  

It's not just about finding the right strategy (starving yourself for 8 hours before going, pacing yourself, choosing more carefully, eating in a particular order, I've heard them all), I might argue that most of the time there is no actual winning strategy, just ones that make it not as bad. The problem with the buffet is that you think you get everything when in fact you usually get nothing. This is because even when there are a few actually really good items in a buffet (there usually aren't unless you are paying a crazy amount of money), by the time you find them you are already stuffed. You basically have to try most things at least once to know what's up and the stomach is not necessarily made to eat, or rather compartmentalized for mashed potatoes, crab legs, chicken wings, seaweed salad, and clam chowder. You also get fuller faster than you usually realize and by the time you do realize it’s too late. In the Hunger Game's the elite at the Capital solve this problem by forcing themselves to vomit so they can continue eating. Now that might be a winning strategy!

Lesson on buffets: Unless you truly are starving and/or excited about feeling sick later just stay away.

Buffet Addendum

The truth is that I might be a bit biased when it comes to buffets. It was sometime during my sophomore or perhaps junior year after a Macalester tennis match that this bias originates. I remember it well in part because it was my birthday. We went to old country buffet which is obviously not a very good buffet but potentially not the worst (debatable?). I came in feeling sick that night and asked the waiter if I could just take a little food home in a small instead of eating there. It was told it was against the restaurant policy and not possible. Rather than starve, I tried to force a few bites of a few things from the buffet. Within minutes I was feeling sick. Looking for the closest exit I burst out running through entrance to the restaurant before depositing food everywhere just outside the place. As I started vomiting someone entering the restaurant jokingly asked me “food not so good?” I definitely made a few people worry as they entered OCB that day. My teammate Nick saw the whole thing and ran back inside to yell to the team “Wreck’s yacking” Wreck’s yacking” over and over. And that’s how that story ended.

Going for a bike ride to the Golden Gate Bridge

Snowmageddon

I arrived in Atlanta just two weeks ago now and am getting settled. The road trip was fun as always. Within a few days of arriving in Atlanta we had the now infamous snowpacolopyse or snowmageddon. Lots of people have given it different names and Jon Stewart gave the city a good punch. But everyone agrees it was a mess. I wanted to write about it on my blog as reminder of how I arrived in Atlanta.

When I heard the storm was coming and that there might be two inches of snow, being from Vermont, I had no worries. Two inches is a light dusting and I can still check out that apartment and grab a pizza. Within minutes driving on the road I realize this was a different situation happening in a different place. Intersection were full with scattered cars and any slope (this city actually surprisingly does have a lot of hills) had people paralyzed in fear, starting and stopping, spinning their wheels to get up only to slide down seconds later, breaking while descending only to slam into another car. To be fair the roads were slippery but people were driving like the world was coming to an end. Driving in my honda accord with no winter tires or 4 wheel drive I really was having no problem. I couldn't understand what it was with these cars moving in every which way and really not moving at all. As people abandoned their cars and left them in the middle of the road, I drove around them weaving in every which way really just not understanding. Hasn't anybody heard of D1 and lower gears even in an automatic? After successfully checking out the apartment, picking up the pizza, and not helping anybody (had to keep the pizza warm), I arrived back home with no problems.

When I got home I watched the news and I saw that a serious situation was developing. Every major highway was completely backed up and no car was moving. The scenes from the road were horrifying and unexpected. Beyond the point of Southerners not experiencing snow very much I also learned something about politics in my new State. Democratic blue Atlanta apparently fights quite a bit with the rest of the State's more conservative and tightly fiscally controlled politicians. Letting everyone out of work early at the same time also didn't help.

People were walking everywhere and leaving their cars behind

Atlanta google traffic map during the storm

I'm glad to say that I was not part of the memorableness of this event. It will however serve as a good marker for how I arrived. We are now hearing about "Atlanta snow part deux" or "iceocolypse" and my flight for a trip to San. Fran. tomorrow has already been cancelled. Let's hope it's not a repeat experience.

More pics. here: www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/01/snow-storms-hit-the-south/100671/

(Not so) Upright Citizen's Brigade

People ask what my blog is about and I don't have a good answer as it's not just about travel, the obvious response given the extent of my travels, but I think adventure, humor, story telling (the chronicles of my life and actually remembering it), self deprecation, societal commentary, or any number of other terms could work. Or perhaps, as the blog is entitled "Turning Right on Red," it's about opportunism.

Although I am back in the U.S., away from the excitement of foreign cultures and travels, this dog hasn't yet kicked it's last bone (is that something people say?) What I mean to say is that my adventures continue in the U.S. and hopefully this blog won't get too boring.

Take my recent 1200 mile road trip from Shelburne, VT to Atlanta, GA, I had a Peruvian chicken adventure in NYC, snow storm in Washington D.C. (AKA the apocalypse for people down there not used to driving in the snow), spinning embarrassment in Charlottesville, and an adventure getting lost in Burlington NC and ending up at Papa Jon's (probably a semi-bad place inside of another semi-bad place) at 1 in the morning. That was followed by a horrible night sleep where the pipes froze in my friend's Chapel Hill house (probably rare for weather to be that cold there) as I tried to sleep on a tiny couch with a thin blanket and strange breathing problems. I'll elaborate on two of the potentially more interesting pieces:

1. Peruvian chicken

My friend Dave and I decided to go to the Upright Citizen's Brigade comedy show in NYC last weekend. It's a free show but you have to get there early to score a lottery ticket for the 9:30 evening show. We arrived early enough, around 6:45, but at the 8:15 drawing we fell 3 people short of the first 110 people to get in. This was particularly frustrating considering it was freezing as we waited in line and would have made it if five minutes before the drawing maybe 20 friends of the people waiting in front of us probably showed up and took the spots. This detail about frustration is important for the next part of the story.

Because we were so close we decided to wait in the standby in the hopes that some friend or family member of the cast who had reserved tickets wouldn't show up. This meant another hour and fifteen minutes of waiting in the freezing cold. Cold like you don't want to take your gloves off to text cold. Since we hadn't eaten any dinner Dave went to get some Peruvian chicken nearby and luckily we ended up getting into the show and sneaking our bag of food in with us! Immediately upon entry however we were told there was no eating allowed. We tried to behave but by half time (around 10:30) and having not eaten all night we were just too hungry. I kept nervously darting with my eyes looking out for the staff coming around as Dave cut out small morsels of delicious chicken for us to share.

We forgot just how aromatic this chicken below our seats was as after opening it for a few minutes and putting it away, the pungent smell still filled the air of the small basement-e comedy lounge. When the troupe came out they immediately commented that it smelled liked Mexican food or tacos. "Who's eating tacos in here?" one of them yelled. As we tensed in our seats and tried to look unfazed, the troupe started putting their noses to the ground making hound dog like noises. "Reveal yourself!" Yelled the lead actor. I was very tense and didn't want to get kicked out so we nervously kept quiet wondering whether our neighbors who obviously knew it was us would give us away. In the end we got away with it but we probably should have admitted it. Perhaps we should have placed the chicken on the front of the stage proudly, and given everyone more of a laugh, but these people are very clever and quick and basically jump on anybody who "participate" at the show and make you look stupid. Needless to say it was a really funny show and perhaps as important, a great chicken dinner.

2. Charlottesville spinning

I've never done spinning in my life. It always looked stupid, why go on a stationary bike with a bunch of other jabronis and some silly person directing you on a mic in the front? It's always seem to me like something you do if you live in the suburbs or too far from a mountain. When I showed up Charlottesville and my friend was going to the gym I decided to join since I had been sitting in a car driving all day. I thought the free Zumba class would have been a better thing to try but she convinced me that spinning was actually a great work out and my mantra is always try things once.

I was surprised thirty minutes later to find myself sweating through my shirt being told to imagine a big overlook "at the end of this hill." I regretted leaving my water in the car. As the instructor yelled through her mic (that part was as I had pictured it) "are you lucky?" Who's a lucky guy?" and Rod Stewart's "Some guys have all the luck" 80's tune blared in the background, I got off the bike to get some water. As I walked to the water fountain I actually almost fell down from dizziness. The corners of my vision started getting blurry and I snuck out through the back door to go fall down outside the classroom on a bench. I tried to get up twice and had to wait. It was ridiculous and embarrassing as I didn't feel like I was that tired. I realized the dehydration got to me. I got back to the class for the last ten minutes and I don't know if people noticed.

I think I could be an honorary member of the not-so upright citizen's brigade.

Looking Back On a Year of Travel

Coming back home has been interesting process. A lot of people express jealousy about my travels and I think it's funny because the prerequisites for travel are having a little money, time, and perhaps most importantly, the willingness to make it happen. Doesn't seem that hard.

As my travels come to an end I have two main thoughts. 1) Everybody who dreams of quitting their job and traveling for awhile and seeing new things might not be wrong and 2) Traveling for an extended period of time is difficult. I think about the economic diminishing law of returns which suggests that the more you have of something the less good it is. Unfortunately, I did feel like I should have appreciated everything more than I did but after you've seen 5 great waterfalls the 6th isn't normally as good. Similarly, anyone who's visited Asia probably experiences "temple fatigue" and the parallel example of safari fatigue in Africa. Each non-cheetah or other rare animal, like a boring old zebra or baboon for example, became less interesting. Then there's the plain old tourism fatigue. While I enjoyed Thailand overall for example, certain parts of the "tourist" atmosphere also got me- always being around people with cameras, being attacked by hawkers with random trinkets, always trying to avoid being ripped off, avoiding big crowds, feeling like what you're seeing is not that unique, the list goes on.

Then there's just the general annoyance of moving around all the time and figuring out logistics for each country. For example, while Thailand hardly looked at my passport when I entered the country, China gave me a hard time about their new 72 hour transit free visa program (which even their own Embassy in London couldn't tell me about and their call help line had no way to get in a queue for). I also was held up at the airport in China when leaving for not having registered my presence at a local police station while I was there, that was scary that they figured it out. These type of travel annoyances though are really kind of silly when you think about the fact of how lucky you are to even be traveling internationally.

My first year at Equal Exchange I remember having 15 days off, and those few vacation days were precious -even if it just meant staying in Boston. Now I have months of international travel behind me and being in one place sounds kind of good. I know how much I will kill for even a weekend at a tropical beach somewhere in a few months time when I'm back sitting behind a desk. But honestly, two weeks in Thailand was nothing compared to the ridiculous number of backpackers I met traveling for 2-6 months or even longer. Of course hardly any of these people were American, poor America, we just don't take off our chains so easily.

I met probably three Dutch people for every American (a population of about 17 million compared to our roughly 317 million). But I also think if I was alone for that amount of time traveling like so many of these people are, I would go crazy. Sure you can meet people on your trips as I did in Thailand. This is of course an important part of travel but not the same as traveling with a girlfriend or best friend from home with whom you share a unique experience. Chris McCandless from Into the Wild in his last living hours writes in his journal "happiness only real when shared" and I couldn't agree more.

Looks like a different person in this photo

Washed out and ruined passport, there were no open spaces left anyways 

Accomplishments

11 years after my study abroad year in Belgium, I returned last week to celebrate Christmas with my old host family. The cold that I predicted after Thailand was/is not nearly as bad as I thought it would be (although cold rain sucks, and there's been a lot of that - Belgium has the worst weather). As predicted, I forgot about some of the names of people I knew and even about trips to Amsterdam and other events. I have a horrible memory, but that's why it's good to go back.

I celebrated (as in struggled to not fall asleep before midnight) New Years in Grenoble, France with friends.  We decided to look back on the year and make resolutions, something I usually don't always do. But 2013 was a pretty massive year for me. I once peed into a volcano in Guatemala. I once peed into both the Mississippi and the Potamac River in the same day (a one day field trip in College to Washington D.C. from Minnesota). I can now add peeing on the Alps and more impressive in my opinion, peeing off of the Great Wall of China (see pic. below, no not of me peeing, but of me at the Great Wall of China).

Maybe it's more of an accomplishment though that I've somehow now gone almost 5 weeks without a phone ever since it was stolen during that dubious end of Uganda time. I've gotten used to living without Google Maps, Whatsapp, and email at my fingertips every moment. It is refreshing and while it is a pain meeting up with friends especially, it's not as bad as I would have thought. Being home I am sure it will be somewhat different.

London was my last stop. I am now finally off to the States, leaving tomorrow. It's a bittersweet moment but hopefully new adventures await me back in the US of A. What am I looking forward to most about being back?
*Being able to cook at home in a real kitchen again and not eating out all of the time as I have been doing for several months
*Driving my car (didn't think I would really miss it but I do)
*Playing music (piano)
*Fast and reliable internet
*Being in one place and having a real home again
*Good filtered or manual brew coffee. Basically anything but espresso (not that I don't like espresso it's just that it seems like it's only the US where getting a non-espresso coffee is so easy)
*Not having to use a power adapter anymore, OK this one's weak, I know

Getting to the gondola that transfers us to the slopes in the Alps with friends

Natural History Museum of London Aviation exhibit

Confucious' Temple, Beijing, China

Former Belgian host mom Dominique with new(ish) grandson Loue

Thailand continued

Besides all the foreigners going to party and do things like drink mushroom shakes in Thailand, I found Thailand annoying for all of the people trying to scam me and take my money. But when I heard from others who traveled to Vietnam and Camboda, I realized Thailand was tame (just perhaps worse than East Africa). Apparently one common Visa scam in Cambodia involves taxis bringing unsuspecting tourists to totally fake government houses where people pay a lot of money for fake paperwork that gets them nowhere. This is elaborate and goes further than anything I encountered in Thailand or elsewhere. Thailand is definitely more set up for tourism, I encountered a fair amount of dishonesty, manipulation, and flat out lies that surprised me. For example, there was a tuk-tuk driver who told me the famous Grand Palace was closed because monks had gone to pray (I knew this wasn't true). Of course for a small fee they would take me to another great nearby site and back just in time for when I knew the Grand Palace would be closed. Another lie involved a "tourist information center" where we were promised cheaper train tickets (not usually a believable promise). The woman there tried to convince us to take the more expensive VIP bus because the protests in Bangkok meant everyone was "panicking" and trying to leave the city so the train would be full. Since I was at the protests I knew this was a lie.

Happy ending massages are another part of Thailand people know about. While I didn't experience this personally there I was proposed a "special message" for a slight $30 increase to my $10 hour long masage. I wondered how negotiating prices works in this case and how awkward that would be.

I had a quick 60 or so hours in China, visited my bro, and after considering a few different touristy options (the Forbidden City, the Lama Temple, Tianamen Sq., etc.) I decided to do a hike with Beijing Hikers on the Great Wall as this would be a more unique experience. The wall where we were was more authentic, not really together in many places, and we got a bonus of learning how to make dumplings afterwards followed by a dumpling making competition (needless to say my recent accomplishments did not  winning this).

Beijing reminded me in a strong way that it's actually winter time now. It will be a long time before it's warm again...damn.

New friends traveling in Southern Thailand

Traveling Monkeys!

On the way to Ko Lanta

Turning it around in Thailand

Temples like this are everywhere here

Khao Sok National Park hotel

During the time which I had no money I checked out the protests happening in Bangkok which appeared, and were in fact, mostly peaceful. After getting pushed into the crowd and offered a free dinner and a bottle of water, a crucial moment I'd say in my recent turnaround, it was very difficult to leave. The crowd was truly massive. It's very difficult to understand any Thai but it seemed like people were pretty happy to have a White guy on their "side." I guess I now joined a side, but I won't go into the politics (or pretend to know anything about them) here.

I also had a night out with 8 Chinese girls that me and another travelor met in Chinatown Bangkok where we ironically shared a Thai dinner. Super friendly and constantly giggling as you would picture a group like this to be, we had a fun time. We tried Bird's Nest for desert -is that actually a bird's nest?

After doing quite a bit of what I like to call "urban hiking" I met some cool people to travel with from a hostel and got to know Bangkok a little. The way locals use the water taxi system is unique. The city is huge and there's a lot happening. There are so many Buddhist temples (and it just seems to be part of their culture) that your shoes constantly come on and off. They also have toilet paper at all of their restaurants here instead of napkins in the holder, this is a bit strange but apparently not embaressing.

Coming from Africa I have a bit of a unique perspective on relative poverty and 3rd World cities. The bad traffic here seemed normal, the dirtiness seemed relatively clean, the air pollution chokingly similar, the roads good, and the prices only kind of cheap. Relactively speaking with the infrastructure and style of life here it feels less poor than where I'm coming from.

A Hedon's Paradise

It seems you can find anything you want in Thailand. The place is really set up for tourism and endulging in vices is no problem if that's what you are looking for. Your morality is questioned here and because you are in such an "exotic" location there's a bit of an anything goes attitude it seems.

There's also this phenomenon of of always looking for something better. That white sand beach that's just a little bit whiter (or the "whitest"), the best Thai food, the best massage, the best "full moon party." Speaking of which, why are full moon parties such a big thing here? Who cares if the moon is full? Obviously it's an excuse to party but has it become such a big thing here? I doubt it has anything to do with traditional Thai culture, probably one country just doing a really good job of marketing and extracting people from very far away places like the U.S.

The massages here are ridiculously cheap (usually between $5-$10 for an hour) and good; afterall this is where Thai massage comes from. It's cool that local people are all about it too - it's part of their living for "pleasure" philosophy I think. A 50 something woman told me she'd been practicing for about 30 years and her small hands did some serious damage to my poor back. I wondered actually if the pain is supposed to be good for you or if I should say something? It's kind of embaressing to say something and it's potential insulting to the masseuse so I just sat there and took it like a man. This stands in real contrast to the Rwandan massages where it felt like I was a dog being pet. Even the oil massage (Swedish massage done Thai style) involves a fair amount of pressure here.

Besides the crazy amount of tourists (there's more than your fair share of super obnoxious young white people only here to party - don't go to Phuket), "ping pong" shows and happy endings being offered to you constantly, there is the food that stands out.

Thai Food

It's everything you heard and better. I knew it would be good but not this good and perhaps not this cheap ($1.5-$4/dish). I usually have no idea what I'm eating and I just have to point at what someone else has since the English is not very good here. It doesn't matter. It's all amazing, even if there are occassionally baby octopus or things you don't recognize in the soup.

Unlike the food in Africa which constantly makes you wonder how long it's been sitting, most of the food in Thailand is cooked fresh. They use fresh ingredients (I think), a whole lot more vegetables, and combinations of spices that give you the "there's a party in my mouth and everyone's invited" type vibe. Sweet and sour, salty and savoury, the right bitter and spicy, it's so much more interesting and delicious than African food. Unlike in Africa where people laugh at the white guy who eats the local food, everybody eats the local food in Thailand. There's crazy seafood, real nicec soups and curries, and the varieties of what they eat are surpringsly wide. Unlike in Africa where most items on the menu are not actually available, here there are items not on the menu available that you didn't even know existed. There's also a unique quality to the food - a lot of places I go I see something new and the food is just so different from the food in the West. It's all quite refreshing, exciting, and fulfillling one of the reasons why I came here. It may be my favorite part of Thailand so far.

You know your food is good when even the free food being handed out at the protest or the food on the normal trains is still decent.

I'd like to say I played some part in my own turnaround and return to glory but the reality is that I think it's hard to go wrong in Thailand. The North, which I will miss this trip, is supposed to be beautiful with a lot of cool outdoor activities. The South has some legendary beaches party's, diving, or whatever you're in to. My true accomplishment here is that I was born into a good family, a life of white (and male) privilege where even someone unemployed with no future job plan or real savings from past jobs, is able to travel to sweet places like this.

My new Moroccan friend Nabil and me heading to the beach