Bangalore, India

Well I'm finally here in Bangalore, India. I don't have much to say since I'm all spaced out and feel a little funky. The plane rides themselves weren't so bad. It is an 8 hour flight from Atlanta to Gatwick. Once in the UK we had to switch planes. It was nice and convienent that the next plane we had to board was at an entirely different airport. After an hour bus ride we arrived at Heathrow which is basically a mall filled with stuff that's over priced. (When did airports turn from airports to shopping plazas?)

I think I was the luckiest person in the airport that day. While we were waiting for our next flight, we went and sat back on these benches and I had the best foot massage of my life. It was great, I had a pillow, one of those eye cover up things and Ash was working her magic. It really really was amazing and much needed. I know sometimes people wonder if dating a massage therapist is all it's cracked up to be. I suppose it all depends on which one you hang with. As for me, it's incredible.

After our short six hour layover we prepared ourselves for the final 10 hour flight to India. With my own television set and a couple meals, the flight went by pretty fast. Although the television set and the food had nothing to do with the airspeed. The fuel made the flight fast, the movies made it tolerable. We arrived at the airport at some dreadfully early hour, passed customs, changed money, got a cab and headed to our prebooked hotel.

Nothing beats arriving t your hotel in a foriegn country and having them tell you that they are all booked up. Fortunately with some talking they found some space and finally stopped moving.

With all this moving around, my body is basically clueless. I don't really know what day it is or what time it should be. I'm hungry, but don't really feel like eating, I'm tired but don't feel like sleeping. I'm not sure what I'll do today. Tomorrow we are taking a train down to Kerala to hang for a month. That'll be fantastic since I haven't been in one place for a month since summer.

I'll post some pictures once I take them. Until then, just use your imagination.

What's more lame?

The fact that someone takes time from doing something cool or useful and spends it writing about something they just did, or the fact that other people spend time reading what the first person just did when they could have been doing something cool or useful to begin with.Regardless of the answer, I wasn't sure if I wanted to be part of this circle of nonsense. Yet here I am.

What eventually made me chose to join the ranks of such honorable men as bloggers, was the consistent interest in the stories on the website. People actually read the stories posted on there. So I was like, 'wow check that out, maybe I'll post more.'With my current situation of being out of the country for a few months, I'll have to let my family know I'm alive and doing fine. What better, more personal, intimate way, then with a website available to anyone with a comptuer and a bank account.

Now my family knows what's going on and there's clicks on the site. So read on stranger. If you see my Mom before she reads this, tell her I'm doing fine.

Bang Bang Bang

It's not often that I have the opportunity to go hunting, so when the opportunity arose, I figured I'd take full advantage of it. When it Rome, do as the Romans. When in south Georgia, shoot things.

I wasn't sure what to expect since I'm sorta of a nature nerd who likes being outside and likes animals and all that. It's not my usual routine to go disrupting the peace with explosives, but it ended up being a great experience.

In the olden days, quail hunting might have been a little different, but today it's very Americanized. So Americanized that we actually had to go out and buy the birds, throw 'em out in the woods and then shoot them. Buy, spend, destroy. That could describe our day hunting, or it could describe the philosophy of most governments.

It ended being a great day, but anytime one is out in nature surrounded by good friends and family things will turn out ok. Unless of course there's an idiot in the group who shoots someone else in the face.

It was a little trickier then I first thought. My first time out, the safety was on. Next round, the birds were too close to the dogs. Other times, the birds were close to the people. Sometimes the dogs got to the birds first. Sometimes the people got to the birds first. It seemed like I was destined not to get one.

Some people were like, just shoot them on the ground before they fly up. That way you can say you got one. The problem with that is, I would rather say that I didn't get a bird, then to say I shot it on the ground before it even had a chance.

In the end, I nailed one with a brutal shot to the head. The bird fell to the ground admist a flutter of feathers. I picked it up and carried it for a bit. It was very warm, like it was still alive. Little drops of blood poured from it's eye sockets that were closed as if resting. I looked at it for a bit, and philosophized silently about life. Then I chucked it in the back of the cart and went to shoot some more.

After the day was done, the pleasure of cleaning the birds came next. I figured if I shot one, I should clean it too. At first, it was a little gross, but once I set my beer down things went smoothly. It's not good to combine the acts of ingesting food with the act of cutting off limbs and ripping off skin. The two just don't go together.

Fall is Freezing

Summer is over and fall is here. Fall up in the mountains tend to be a bit more winter-like then most other fall places. Wind storms and light snow flurries makes the days exciting. Of course all this good fun and excitement is only nice if you can stay warm. Unfortunately for me, I wasn't able to stay warm.

The problem started on my last backpacking trip when I hiked from Mammoth Lakes over to Yomsemite. The hike was beautiful, it was just Ashlee and I out for a nice four day jaunt. I tend to keep a pretty healthy pace when I hike, but Ashlee has no problem keeping up. One the third day of our hike, we decided to hike only few miles and have a nice relaxing day.

Poor Ashlee didn't realize that on this particular rest day that we would actually be working harder then if we were hiking. My forever working brain decided to create a huge spiral in this dry lake bed up around 11,000 feet. Hours and hours and hours were spent lifting heavy rocks, moving huge boulders and creating art. After a day and a half of this nonsense and we're done and we head down to Yosemite just in time for the end of the year International Dinner extravaganza.

"Excuse me Kevin.... what does this have to do with fall being cold?"

Well, during the exhaustive work on that spiral, I happened to remove my coat to get a little cooler. I placed it down and continued to work. When I got up the next morning and finished the project, I totally forgot about my coat. You see, it was warm during the day and the thought didn't even cross my mind. That's the disadvantage to living in the moment all the time - a serious lack of prethought and foresight.

So now I'm up in the aspen groves painting leaves and freezing my bum off without a coat. I figure it's time to return to the high country and retreive that which is rightfully mine. I'm fortunate enough to recruit a friend for this exhausting hike. The closest way to get to the spiral is to hike up a few thousand feet, over the Kuna Cresrt, down a thousand feet and over this plateau to the art site. It's probably a twenty plus mile hike, but with the elevation gain and loss it seemed twice as long.

We arrived at the site, retreived my coat which was just sitting right where I left, and headed back down to arrive at the car just before headlamp time. Which was quite fortunate since I didn't bring a headlamp along in the first place.

Painting

It's cold, out. I'm painting inside.