tonights plans

This made my day

amazing

Too close for comfort...

I was at home last night just going through the usual emails, facebooks and myspaces and I noticed a posting by my friend Matt that a friend of theirs from Atlanta who had recently moved to NYC was hit riding his bike on Tuesday night. Thankfully he was ok but I just couldn't shake the feeling and thoughts that it was very close to the 3-year anniversary to a new friend of mine in the city losing her life while riding her bike home from work. She was killed May 8th 2005 and this is just a month shy of that. I was very grateful to know that their friend was all right .

I have been back and forth lately about getting a bike again. It would be good exercise and it would probably be much cheaper than riding the subway with their ever-increasing prices. My good friend Bri just got a new track bike and I started to think it would be fun to go ride with her and she did make good points that its much faster than having to wait for the subway anytime you want to go anywhere. But I am too scared, and this event probably solidifies my fears. I don’t think I am made to ride in NYC, maybe I’ll look in to a bike when I move out of the city.

Three years later I still get to see Brandie’s Ghost Bike on Ave A and Houston. Even though I only knew her for a short amount of time she and her friends really made me feel welcome in this city.

If you ride a bike, please be careful.

Brooklyn meets Dumbo

So now that i finally have a moment to tell you about our massive adventure in South Africa....


Our day started at 4:30 am, when we were picked up from our Bed and Breakfast by Jenny our game driver in an open truck and whisked away about 30 miles down the road to the game reserve. Let me tell you 4 am, dark outside and an open truck at 55 mph...a wee bit chilly! However, it was awesome to be able to look outside of the truck as we were driving past villages and see the sun rising.
Eventually we arrived at the entrance to the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park located in Zululand, South Africa. It is the oldest game reserve in Africa, where Zulu kings such as Dingiswayo and Shaka hunted and put in place the first conservation laws. Today, Africa's 'Big Five' (lion, elephant, leopard, buffalo and rhinoceros) stalk the flourishing savannah. Game viewing is the principal attraction in the Hluhluwe Umfolozi Game Reserve. (info.) Viewing hides overlook pans and waterholes enabling one to observe the wildlife at close range. And that was what we intended to do, see some animals!

We saw a few impala and almost right as we entered the park came across a lion. He was very far away but with binoculars was amazing to see. I have been to the Lion Park in Johannesburg and been very up close with lions, that was an amazing experience. I vividly remember reading the signs warning people in the park not to get out of the car, its a pretty simple thought process to stay in you ca when you are driving in a fenced area which contains your car and 20 or so Lions....well you would be surprised we were very shocked to learn the week before four Japanese tourists were mauled to death when the got out of the car to take a photo. Honestly all of the animals in Africa are no joke..as we would soon learn first hand.

The views of the Park were absolutely stunning. We drove along from 5 am until about 12pm stopping only for breakfast snacks around 7am [tea/coffee and rusks, they are kinda like biscotti].
We saw a ton of animals. we saw 4 of the Big 5, we didn't see any Leopord. My mom said that even though she has been on a ton of game drives she has never seen one. they are very elusive... but we did get to meet one of the big 5 up close and way to personal.... here we go

(this is the actual elephant that charged us)

The photo above has no zoom, it was taken right before he ran across the street charging towards us... about 3 feet from my mom and me.

The story goes like this. We completed the drive after a quick detour to a restricted area to go see a family of cheetah. Jenny our game driver drove us over to a picnic area and began to cook up some eggs and bacon (well chickpeas for me) and stewed tomatoes for brunch. Our cooking facilities comprised of a gas heated wok that everything went on. As the meal preparations were being made Eric and I decided to walk about 100 yards up the pathway to a gift shop in the camp area. I wanted to get a book on the park. when we were driving Jenny had given us so much info i definitely needed to get something to reread to remember everything there. So we are in the gift shop with my mom poking around and another game driver asks up if we had seen an elephant yet that day. We had but he was fairly far up on a hill... that game driver was telling us that there was an elephant about a 1/4 kilometer down the road (now i am far from knowing much about the metric system so i had no idea how far that was) but we decided against it and to head back for breakfast. We left the shop and turned the corner to see some Impala in the road..."ohhh wilderness" and continued down the path to the picnic area. There was a rustling to the left of us and we turned to see this guy hanging out and eating a tree. Uh oh bad news! now to give you a perspective on how tall he was....when he decided to stop his tusks were just above my head... I am 5' 8". M-F'er was freaking huge! What set him off still hasn't been figured out but we were standing there moving very slowly snapping a picture or two as we slowly made our way towards the site (note: when around massive elephants or any animal for that matter quick movements are not a good idea..it spooks them and they can run after you a hell of a lot faster than you can run away). there was a big white truck just to the right of us that decided to drive away at that moment Mr. elephant decided he was pissed and began to charge us (thankfully it was a mock charge...a real one and I would not be making this entry). Ears flapping and running (no not sauntering..running) across the dirt path this thing is pissed and headed right towards us. My mom grabs my arm and says "don't move" ...ahh sure whatever you say fine not moving, standing riiight here, peeing my pants but not moving. Then he runs up (still pissed, ears still going, trunk ready for action) and stops about right in from of us. At this point i am freaking out, all i can hear in my heart pounding in my ears and all i can think is "dont move, don't move, Jesus, don't move" i have no idea what an elephant does (learned later he knocks you over with his trunk and tramples you to death... that's a nice thought isn't it). At this point he is sniffing us with his trunk and all of a sudden he puts his trunk up to my mom (standing behind me) and blows snot all over her, side steps, and bounces merrily down the road. I don't think i regained feeling in my legs for about 1/2 and hour.


And that was the big adventure on the 3rd day of our trip to South Africa. The next day we went to Cape Vidal a beach on near the St Lucia estuary, which was beautiful but i was extremely weary for two reasons. (1) i knew that the waters around there were home to zambezi sharks.
and (2) after our meet and greet with the ele our game driver told us we were lucky since they had recently had a lot of kills by elephants up on the cape Vidal beaches....and we decided to go there because.... apparently to laugh at death in the face! Luckily no sharks and thank god not an elephant in site. When you are in Africa you really are in Africa and anything can happen.

The Crazy shit you say to your self (or imaginary talking cat)

This is hilarious.

Only slept on this one for 3 years

For the holidays i received a $50 itunes gift card from a photographer that i work with. it has only taken me 4 months to get around to using it. I love love love to listen to them but i think i definitely caught on very late. We'll blame it on being sucked into hardcore at age 14 and being too busy listening to one king down, bad brains, bane, etc trying to keep up on what all the cool kids liked.

I do remember though one time in college wanting to badly to get out of work to see Alkaline Trio play at the Water street Music hall in beautiful downtown Rochester NY and not being able to get my shift covered at the coffee shop I worked at. On my way to campus to work (more than likely i was late, which meant speeding down this back street that connected the side of Henerietta that i lived in to where my college was) i was very disgruntled and maybe not paying the best attention and i hit a deer. I couldn't stop, in my mind Bambi maybe had some aches and a headache from running out in front of my car being hit and propelled back in to my ford explorer v8 going a good 45 mph. The vegetarian in me couldn't stop to make sure, so to this day that deer did just fine. my car on the other hand required $1,800 worth of body work and a good wash to get the fur out of the grill....

So no Alkaline Trio, damaged car, and i still had to work my full shift while calling the police to check out that there wasn't a Bambi holding up traffic on east river drive.

Tell me a lil something about yourself

Mayonnaise was first introduced in Japan in 1925 by Kewpie. Accordingly, it would be no exaggeration to say that the history of mayonnaise in Japan was written by Kewpie. The same is true for salad dressings: Kewpie was the first to succeed with commercial production of salad dressings in Japan.


If you know anything about me you know about my sick sick sick obsession with French fries and mayo. It is bad, its never oh I'll just have one or two...i have to eat them all slathered in mayo...even the gross crispy dried up ones left at the bottom of the basket. Well if you share this sick habit with me then i would like to enable your problem and suggest you try kewpie mayo with your delicious fried potatoes of loveliness. Eric turned me on to the brand, granted it doesn't stay fresh as long as that jar of Helmen's but it is for the most part made up of natural ingredients with out the stabilizers that the usual Miracle Whip might have to elongate its shelf time on your refrigerator shelf. oh it tastes delicious. and if you might have a something else with mayo on it habit...this stuff is the way to go. and who doesn't want to eat their mayo with a little baby doll (or should i say creepy baby doll) printed on the plastic. adds to the wonderful taste if you ask me.

Eric in Africa

[Biltong is a kind of dried meat that originated in South Africa. Many kinds of flesh can be used to make it, ranging from beef through game meats to fillets of ostrich from commercial farms. It is typically made from raw fillets of meat cut into strips following the grain of the muscle, or flat pieces sliced across the grain. It is similar to beef jerky in that they are both spiced, dried meats but differs significantly in typical ingredients, taste and production process. The word biltong is from the Dutch bil ("rump") and tong ("strip" or "tongue")]

Random things

So there are those days when I come across something cool on the web or something that would make a great illustration to a story. I have a folder on my desktop and my goal this week is to make a post using at least one of these photos to refresh this stale and tired blog. Even though it Wednesday we’ll give it a go (you know you have to start out slow as to not over exert oneself)

What we have here is a “borrowed” photo from a flickr account. This is a photo of the bar B61 located on the corner of Columbia and Degraw street in the area which can be referred to as Columbia water front district (even though you can't really see the water front through the fences and the harbor equipment), north red hook (just curious; if this is “north” red hook then honestly where does red hook end and begin) and or carol gardens west (much like “east Williamsburg” don’t kid your self its Bushwick. This is the term applied to this area to make it popular for people to move since Carroll Gardens and the BACOCA area [BA –what-a ? yea exactly]). Well whatever it be named I called it home for the first 2 –3 years I inhabited New York and its borough named Brooklyn.

B61 is located beneath the restaurant Alma, tasty enough not my most favorite spot in the neighborhood. It is the place that I signed my lease and wrote the biggest check in my life so far and handed it over to the “real estate agent” whom I could barely understand and was convinced he has just stepped off the boat from Ireland. B61 was kind of an unwind place that wasn’t my apartment..small cramped…sometimes hostile. B61 is where we made friends with the owners and some of the constant patrons, it is that part of our neighborhood that gave Brooklyn a neighborhood feeling and made it a "my neighborhood" instead of feeling tossed my the Big-ness of the city. You met people that owned the local businesses, ran the water barge museum at the end of red hook, worked on the boats that came into and out of red hook, and awesome bar tenders. It was a place that you could kind of go and see nice people or meet someone new. It was also the bar that 2 1/2 years ago I met Eric.

We both knew the bar tender separately and he had mentioned to me that day his friend had gotten mugged. That friend was Eric. In a bizarre way I think it was almost worth the $16 and stolen disk man or who knows if we would have met.

Its going to be a place that is going to stick with me as long as I am in Brooklyn. In the summer they open up the windows (and as long as they are not cleaning the slaughter house across the street) its beautiful and makes you feel like you are sitting out on a summer night enjoying the people around you.

As much as the neighborhood changes I hope that B61 is always a staple.