Eye Scream

Time for Change

2008-11-04T10:21:00.002-06:00

While most people are using that phrase to refer to voting and whatnot, I am going to take the high-road and use it to refer to my new project.

I started this blog over three years ago as a way to communicate to my friends and family when i was living in China. Over the past year, it's begun to show it's age, mostly due to the 'blogspot' interface & me being to slow in the head to figure out something cool and new to do with it.

So, over the past month or so, i've been working diligently in the 'lab' on my new website & while it's not perfect, it's mine and i just couldnt wait any longer to launch the poor thing.

Anyway, stop by my all new Photoblog & say hi. I will post a picture a day for an unknown period of time, hopefully not just one day...

Without further ado, i present to you:

http://lucashutmacher.com/
or the RSS feed for all you techie types....
http://lucashutmacher.com/feed/

See ya on the other side!

Shameless Self Promotion III: Present Magazine

2008-10-31T09:26:00.002-05:00

Me and some of my pictures and some of my photoshoppin' skills are being featured in Kansas City's Present Magazine this week.

You can see some of it here:

Present Magazine: Take Your Shot: Lucas Hutmacher

Obama-infomercial

2008-10-30T09:55:00.000-05:00

KC Zombie Walk

2008-10-27T12:31:00.002-05:00

Some things i learned yesterday at the 2008 KC Zombie Walk:
1. Zombies still take care of their kids
2. Zombies often enjoy a cigarette.
3. Zombies follow traffic signals
4. Zombies can laugh
5. Zombies are forbidden to touch anyone.

Here's some pics to prove some of the above.

Sam's Pictures

2008-10-19T19:57:00.004-05:00

What's the worst thing that could happen when you hand over your camera to a 'going-on-11' year-old? Most people would say that he would drop it and break it. Most photographers would laugh and say that he'd teach you how to take pictures with it.

Next time, just break the thing Sam.

Obama

2008-10-19T03:32:00.002-05:00

It's not often that the probable-next-president speaks three blocks from your house for free. Here's a couple pictures from the day. More to come when I get my 'photo'legs back under me...

Side Note: If Obama is a 'fag lover' does that make him gay? I would think 'fag sympathizer' may be what you guys are trying say. Awful lot of syllables to chant/spell/fit on a sign.

Observations From the Court of Lilliput

2008-10-16T08:15:00.002-05:00

At 6'5", I'm probably considered 'tall' by many people's standards. In fact, I only have one friend that is taller than me and he plays basketball. So, in a large bellow'y answer to all of your questions about "what's it like up there?", I decided to create a series of Lucas-based perspective pictures.

So now, little people, climb aboard, join me up here, and try not to get dizzy.

My ReadyMade Article

2008-10-14T08:58:00.002-05:00

8-Track Plant Bench

Clean out your parent’s station wagon.
by Lucas Hutmacher

When you’re a music fan who likes to create things, it’s difficult to find ‘experimental’ mediums, meaning mediums that can be destroyed and broken apart. If you do things with records, you’re likely to risk a yard-full of hipster protesters. If you choose CDs, you may end up spending more money and losing any retro type look you may want. Lucky for us, the world has not only lost interest in 8-track tapes, but they have actually started to despise them. For no other reason than the price, I picked up about 2500 of these little beauties at an auction for $1. Now I had to figure out what to do with them. I present, how to make a plant bench out of 8-Track tapes.

INGREDIENTS:

· Gorilla Glue
One sheet plywood

· One 2x4, cut to the same length as plywood
Stacks of 8-Track Tapes

· Black spray-paint

· Wood screws

TOOLS:

· Tape measure

· Saw of some sort for cuttin’ wood

· Screwdriver

MAKE IT:

Carefully measure out the top dimensions of the bench. While feet and inches is important, I would recommend measuring to the nearest ‘8-Track width’, with a little underlap.
Cut yo’ plywood to match yo’ dimensions.
Cut yo’ 2x4 to match the length of the plywood. This will provide some support to the bench for heavy plants or people who think they should stand on it during ‘king of the mountain’.
Spray paint the wood. It doesn’t need to be a perfect paint job. The paint is basically to keep people from asking you why there is plywood between the corners of the 8-Tracks.
Measure (in ‘8-Track height’) the height of your bench. This will tell you the number of tapes to stick together to create the legs of the bench.
The nicest and most little known thing about 8-Tracks is that they have grooves along the top and bottom. This allows for them to be stacked and prevents them from rolling around in the back seat of your camaro. That said, we will use these grooves to our advantage. Begin stacking and gluing the 8-Tracks together for the legs of your bench. Remember, tables and tablesque items generally require a minimum of three legs. If the bench is longer than four feet, I would recommend a minimum of six legs. Be sure to stack them all facing the same direction. I recommend stacking them up against a wall or something flat and vertical to ensure some straightness. Allow these to dry overnight, Gorilla Glue is like cement and will expand like a sponge, so avoid over-gluing.
Screw the 2x4 into the bottom of the plywood. Make sure the screws are flush. There’s going to be tapes glued onto the top of the sucker in a bit.
Place the plywood face-down and glue the legs onto the bottom. Let this dry overnight, and let it dry good.
Flip the sucker over and begin gluing your 8-Tracks onto the top.

{ TIPs}

· When measuring stuff out, make sure you get a total number of tapes required. You’ve already looted your dad’s car, it’d be a shame to go after your uncle’s car as well.

· Pre-plan any patterns and see how it looks.

· Glue the tapes in a way that has the ‘tape’ side pointing inwards.

· You can always add new legs to the middle if you feel that it isn’t sturdy enough

· Experiment with gluing a short ‘backrest’ along the back or an overhanging lip around the front to clean it up.

· If you’re a slob, like my mother thinks I am, consider getting a piece of glass cut to cover the top, this makes cleanup easy.

Here’s a few pictures of the finished-ish product along with some of the stars of the show.

Also, among the plants on the bench:
- Six growing Papaya trees (grown from a gutted-papaya)
- Two jalepeno peppers
- Two serrano peppers
- Bamboo
- One plant 'rescued' from Marsh's Apple Mart
- One plant 'rescued' from Home Depot.

Ten For September

2008-10-03T08:51:00.002-05:00

Welcome October. You've got your work cut out for you. September was a lion. Here's ten pictures for you to cook on while you lace up your shoes. They dont even have Octoberfest in October anymore.

Best of luck to you.

- Luke

Quilting Ideas

2008-09-22T07:25:00.004-05:00

So I was walking through the masses at the Plaza Art Fair on Saturday with my camera. No different than usual and no different than about 40% of the other people. I was following this old lady with a really big hat. She was standing in front of a quilt display and as soon as she moved in front of one of the most hideous quilts in all the land, I started to pull the camera up to get a funny shot, when the quilter grabbed my arm and told me not to take pictures of her quilts.

It's cool lady, I promise, I'm not bitin' your style. I will however, blog about this conversation and post pictures.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the picture. But I did get to spend some quality time with me Pappy, talking about pictures, photoshop and classical Latin guitar.

Good times.

Health and Longevity by JG Richardson, MD

2008-09-14T20:46:00.005-05:00

I've had this old medical hygiene book around for several years. It's called 'Health and Longevity' by Joseph G. Richardson, Professor of Hygiene at the University of Pennsylvania. It was published in 1911 and is long. Long to the tune of about 1500 pages. The book is in shambles. The cover and binding has been ripped completely off. Pages have been falling out for years and it's just a general eyesore. Why have I kept it? Because it's a goldmine of comedy.

This weekend, among other things, I went through and pulled the color plates out of it. I figure I may be able to come up with something cool to do with them eventually, but in the short term, I decided to scan in a few of the more interesting ones, depicting the extremely wide variety of topics covered in the book as well as the wide variety of remedies and treatment methods used in the 'good ol days' as well as some much-needed insight into what the real problems of the day were. Here's a couple snippets:

Pollution, Big Red & The Olympics

2008-08-25T15:27:00.004-05:00

Now that the Olympics are over (I think, I didnt actually watch any of them), I can respond to all the emails I got over the past year about China.
1. Yes, I pretty much ate everything in that 'gross stuff that passes as food' email that was floating around.
2. Yes, they did totally destroy neighborhoods and uproot (or up-cardboard box) entire communities for the Olympics. I used to stay in a hotel a couple blocks from the 'Birds Nest' and it looked nothing like that when I was there.
3. Yes it's dirty. Very dirty there. Here's a clip I ran across today about a place that is not too far from where I used to live.
4. Yes, I used to be bigger than I am now. Much bigger.

Just to show that it wasnt much better in Langfang, here's a couple pics from my trip, showing nearly each of the above points:

Picture 1: My Peeps! Cute little fellas huh?
Picture 2: From my hotel deck (15th floor) pointing down in the morning.
Picture 3: The Promenade in Langfang, actually it's the sidewalk in front of my hotel
Picture 4: From the Shitty Celebrity International Hotel in Beijing. This whole neighborhood is gone now (Olympics)
Picture 5: Chubby across from Tienanmen Squared
Picture 6: Apartments in Langfang from the 7th floor of my hotel/apartment
Picture 7: Construction. See, over there, that's a crane.
Picture 8: Peope at Tienanmen Square waiting to see The Chairman's body. Sickos. (note 'The Chairman' is Mao, not to be confused with 'The Chairman of the Board', which is Sinatra)

Hobo Village @ 50mm

2008-08-20T07:10:00.002-05:00

My last set of pictures from San Diego. All of these pictures were taken along the Seaport Village boardwalk, the same place where you can sign up for a tour of a pirate ship or to take a boat around the harbor, the same place people jog in spandex and sports bras, the same place that everyone says 'this is the most beautiful place in the world'.

Summer

2008-08-17T14:39:00.004-05:00

Throughout my life, I've had my entire CD collection stolen twice. Luckily, by the second time (Junction City, KS), I was smart enough to backup my collection. Since then, I've amassed a fairly large music collection. Now I've got two sets of information competing for space on my computer, several tons of music and a rapidly growing collection of pictures.

Now that the summer is winding down(ish), I've put together a mixtape of music that makes me happy for summer. Some make me want to dance, others make me want to be driven around town with the windows down and my eyes closed others remind me of better, or worse, summers. You can check it out here:
Summer Songs To Smile By

You can also check out more pictures from San Diego here:

A Great Video

2008-08-13T20:56:00.000-05:00

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

My First Non-Food or Bathroom Related Race

2008-08-13T10:47:00.003-05:00

So, people do crazy stuff when they've been drinking. Some get tattoos, some get married, some drive their cars very fast towards immovable trees. I accidentally signed up for a 5k race in San Diego. My first 'race' ever.

The morning of the race, I woke up three hours after getting home and headed out to find the starting gate. So, picture this - over 300 racers standing around in all states of stretching and warming up. People in head-to-toe spandex, others wearing the little shorts with the slit up the side, bony collarbones and veiny legs all surrounding one guy, sitting on a curb, all by himself. This poor soul does not fit in. He's wearing an extremely worn out pair of Nikes with black tube-socks, gray basketball shorts and a plain white T-shirt, the one he wore the night before, with a small wine stain just above the belly. He's also got a blue headband on his grape, headphones in his ears, is sucking back a coffee and staring blankly at the ground. Maybe you feel sorry for this guy, maybe you think he's a hobo.

Nope, that's me.

By the time it was said and done, I ran a 22 minute 5k, something just above a 6-minute mile. I finished 10th in my age group, 63rd overall out of a stack of 320 GIS nerds. In my defense, if they had taken blood alcohol content or cigar frequency into account, I probably would have won.

Anyway, here's a few more pictures from San Diego.

First Ten From The West Side

2008-08-11T18:58:00.002-05:00

So, after a long-slash-short seven days in San Diego, enjoying the sun and all that stuff, I've finally started going through all my pictures. I spent some time here last year but didnt have a camera with me, so I made up for lost time on this trip, in more ways than one. There's really too many to toss up at once, so I'm doing the phased approach.

So here I am, kicking it Eastern style, realizing that I've spent time in all four of the mainland timezones in the past two weeks, and wanting to reflect on the past, but I cant. It's just not worth it, life is too short. There's already enough people out there who blame todays gray skies on last week's rain. I know how you roll.

Enjoy the pics. There'll be more to come when I find myself back at the wood and brick house for more than 32 hours. There's nowhere to go but down from these I'm sure.
Peace.
-L

A Good Time Of Year.....

2008-08-03T19:25:00.004-05:00

...to get out of KC for a few days. First week in August, a mere 94 degrees back home. My poor soul is in San Diego, where it's currently 77 degrees with sub-50% humidity. What to do, what to do....

Like eat fish tacos.
And take pictures.
Of fish tacos.

peace

Your 5-day forcast:

15 For Kansas City in July

2008-07-29T07:20:00.001-05:00

Skippy On The Interwebs

2008-07-17T08:15:00.004-05:00

Yesterday was me pappy's birthday & my sisters, stepmother, grandparents and I pooled our collective resources (which amounted to a piece of string with some gum stuck on the end, $1 Canadian dollar, and a speeding ticket) to get him, what I think, is a pretty cool gift for a photographer (without spending the fat-Leica-bucks on a lens..).

Ladies, gentlemen, perverts of the world, I present to you:

http://www.skippysanchez.com/

Happy birthday pop. Everyone else, stay tuned for more.

Get to work people, you spend too much time online!

2008-07-14T11:41:00.002-05:00

This blog thingy has been a semi-hobby of mine for a while now & I just noticed that I’ve hit the 10,000 hit mark, which means that either one person shows up here very regularly or 10,000 people have been here once. My mother mostly quit reading my blog when I posted something about my birthday present in China, most of my friends cant read, and my coworkers here me babble enough in emails around the office to pay attention to me, so your guess is as good as mine as to who’s reading this junk.

At any rate, it may be fun to see some of the random things that have been searched for that have brought people to my site. Feel free to make random comments. As per the last one, that’s just brutal. I hope it was just wishful thinking from someone.

• thug diet
• booty wine
• beijing hilton girls
• bladder shutdown
• goodnight the naughty way
• happy ending massage + westport, mo
• beautiful women booty oiled pictures
• black girl booty wine
• calories cankles
• china juice booty
• examination room cold when i go for my complete male physical
• keeping your thighs together when shitting
• langfang pudding
• meat wenke's
• pillsbury sandwiches with Doritos
• six sigma in the lumber and timber industry
• slippery punanni
• lucas hutmacher gay

I notice a lot of references to 'booty', I believe that's because of this post: Booty Wine Party Time. The rest, I have no idea. Honestly.

#97, You really want that Kwame poster for $45?

2008-07-12T21:08:00.004-05:00

On a scale of 1-10, Saturday was a flawed Six, with wild fluctuations from midnight to midnight, due mostly to a heavy grape head, compliments of First Fridays and JP Wine Bar. However, continuing along my misunderstood path of filling my house the most random grouping of weird stuff, today I headed out to the West Bottoms for the Music Exchange 'swag' auction, where they 'sold everything including the fixtures'. Some of the things littering my living room?

- Owner Ron Rooks' first turntable.
- The biggest bottle of Cholula I've ever seen
- Five boxes of 8-tracks, something like 2000 of them. No, I do not have a 8-track player, but I definitely have plans for them.
- A Ralph Steadman poster.
- A Miles Davis 'Kind of Blue' felt print.

Here are some pictures of the show. My nemesis, #60, got the box of clown-T-Shirts I wanted. Curses.

Music Video Of The Week

2008-07-09T08:25:00.002-05:00

A great video by Philip Glass and Godfrey Reggio ('Koyaanisqatsi' composer/director). It all comes together at the end.

Stay Off The Sidewalks

2008-07-07T08:14:00.004-05:00

I've driven the same '97 Nissan Pathfinder for about the last seven years, slowly watching the gas mileage dwindle to a number too embarrassing to even mention. I still love the ride, it's comfy, it's got all the right stickers in all the right places (Hunter S. Thompson's double thumbed fist, Pomeroy, White Chocolate, Obey Giant, etc), my broken iPod works in it, it's leather, which means I could just wipe off the seats (if i were so inclined). Either way, I just wasn't ready to get rid of it, but the fact that it costs me $65 to fill the tank up, something that had to be done every week, was just killing me.

So a couple weeks I took matters into my own hands and headed out to Rolling Wheels for the four-day Premium Riders Course to get my motorcycle license. I figured that the process of getting the license would help me figure out if I even liked riding a bike. It did. I do.

Within 24 hours of finishing the class, I had my license.

Within 24 hours of getting my license, I've got my new work ride. Say hello to my new Honda Shadow Aero.

Watch out for motorcycles, they're all over the place apparently....

Birthdays at the K

2008-06-25T13:28:00.003-05:00

Last Sunday, after staying up until 4:00 am pretending to be 23 years old, a bunch of us blew the cobwebs out of our eyes, ears and lungs by spending a day at Kaufman stadium celebrating Guppy's 30th birthday. I took a bunch of pictures and got a killer two-inning nap before heading back to the casa for a Gate's Presidents Choice platter of BBQ for ten.

- Kirk's kid is going to have the dopest name in the world
- I still cant figure out who decided to take some ribs to the bathroom
- Guppy can move a mean desk, but cant reassemble-a-door-his-way-out-of-a-paper-bag
- Caution: People you meet in a parking lot of the Embassy Suites in the middle of the night may look different when passing by at the morning continental breakfast.
- And they have more children than they initially claimed.
- Most heard story #1: Public display of patio affection at Baja 600
- Most heard story #2: 8 hours of drinking for $250.
- I was not present for either (at least not 8 hours of it).

Lick yo fingas before touching the screen folks....

Dear Shipley's

2008-06-24T15:17:00.002-05:00

Jeez, I’m not really sure how to do this.
I guess I’m just going to come right out and say it, I’ve met another donut shop.
I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry. I never meant for it to happen this way. I just don’t think it’s going to work out with us anymore. You live in Houston, I live in Kansas City and I just need a change.

What? No, it’s not ‘that whore Daylight’, you’ve probably never met this one before, it’s kind of foreign.

No, nothing European or anything. I mean, really, does it matter? I just wanted to tell you. I still come to Houston from time to time, but for now, I think that it’s best that we just go our separate ways.

Of course! I still want to be friends, but nothing more than a glazed donut or maybe the occasional coffee.

What? Why do you keep boning me for information on this new place? I really just don’t want to dwell on this, this is already very difficult for me.

Yes, yes, I know it’s difficult for you too, we did have a good thing going. Like that one time, when I ate the crème-filled long john backwards on accident and the crème got all over my shorts. You laughed so hard I thought batter was going to come out your nose. You know how I was always a sucker for the different ways you could fill a donut.

Ok ok, since you insist, but it’s just going to make it worse in the long run. The new place is called Tim Hortons.

NO I’M NOT GAY! That’s just the name of the store. It’s from Canada, you know, they’re all a little ‘off’ in certain things.

What was it? Well, I was in Calgary for a week and was actually on my way to the airport at 4:00 am and really needed some coffee. I stopped and ordered a coffee and a muffin.

I know, I know, I’m not really much of a muffin person “muffins are donuts that have lost their soul”, right? Well, I just needed something kind of lite, so I went the muffin route. I didn’t even get my normal ‘chocolate/chocolate chip’ muffin, I went out on a limb and got one that was called ‘Fruit Explosion’. Yeah, yeah, I bought into the propaganda. See, that’s what did it. I was in the car and bit into the muffin and realized that Tim Horton’s had figured out that they could fill muffins as well! I nearly slammed my rental Mazda 6 into a police cheque point!

Yeah, I know, I know, I’m sure you could do it too, but I don’t want you to change just for me and it just wouldn’t be the same, next thing you’d be doing was selling cheesecake bites and espresso smoothies, and we would both know that’s not who you really are.

Really, I’ve been awake all night thinking about this and I just think it’s for the best. Let’s just have a clean break of it. Stay positive honey, you really are a special donut shop, and don’t let anyone tell you any different.

One last hug? Mmmkay pumpkin…. Let it out, let it out….

Ehh hoser?

2008-06-23T10:34:00.002-05:00

I had a great time in Calgary last week & have pictures to prove it. It was my first trip to Canada, so I went armed to the teeth.

I had a Perunion with Sharon and her great dane-mastodon mixed dogs, got to use a DOPE fisheye lens for a day, hit the zoo, went to the top of the world, and saw a bunch of cowboy hats. I hung out in a cool candy store, saw more mountains, ate wild boar fondu and ate dinner with a great family.

Even with all that i'm still #2 in the Hutmacher-family-who's-in-the-coolest-place contest. Keep your camera under wraps.

Respect.

Much Love From Calgary

2008-06-19T15:51:00.002-05:00

Artless First Fridays

2008-06-09T07:44:00.002-05:00

Before heading out of town for the week, I wanted to toss up some pictures from the weekend. We headed down to First Fridays on Friday only to get distracted by plentiful wine and cool people at Shannon & Adam's new loft in Stuart Hall.

Good times, from what I remember

Boom! Like Gas Shotgun Yo!

2008-06-04T09:16:00.003-05:00

Last night a Magellan Gas tank blew up by the downtown airport and the sucker burned all night. Of course, I didnt really know anything about it until i got into the office and looked out the window to see a bunch of smoke and other stinky goodness.

Anyway, this morning I climbed the roof of the ol' Penn Tower to snap some pics & here's a few of them (mostly unedited and all that jazz, but hey, what's a fella to do right?)

BURN!!!!

Simple Impossiblities

2008-06-02T21:18:00.003-05:00

Lima Peru is very scary and very amazing at the same time. I spent about two days there recently & delved into some shadowy places with my camera and my gringo smile.

I've tried for years to put into words how I feel about other places of this world, how great and strange they are, and have come to the conclusion that it is a simple impossibility, like describing the form of an average cloud, so pictures will have to suffice.

Monday is for KC in 3D

2008-05-27T07:58:00.002-05:00

Here's a few pics I took from around the city over the past few weeks. Instead of just posting them in my normal boring way, i decided to post them in a new boring 3D way! That's right, the Wide Angle is implementing cheap tricks and bribery to get attention.

So, how do you see these suckers? Kind of like those pictures that were popular for about 10 minutes back in the 90's (the ones with all the dots on them and when you screwed up your eyes you could see a bad sailboat), these work the same way.

Sit straight in front of the picture & start to look at it/them. Then cross your eyes until you see a third image in the middle. At some point, your eyes will kind of 'grab onto' this image & there it is.

Take a look. Cheap parlor tricks aside, happy Memorial Day & dont get a headache.
- L

Silueta Peru

2008-05-20T19:08:00.005-05:00

Now that the Otras Americas exhibit is winding down, I've been cleaning up space on my computer, a large part of which includes pictures from the past year. I took a lot of pictures down there. I really mean a lot. I purposely held back most of my favorites because of the show and various other reasons ranging from laziness and personal selfishness. While I'm still going to hold off on the pictures from the show, most likely permanently, I still want to post a few of my other favorites.

After I got back from the trip and started reviewing the pics, I noticed several recurring themes. None of these 'themes' were planned, but when you take over a thousand pictures (waaaay over a thousand pictures), commonalities are bound to show by chance alone. It was Louis Pasteur that said 'Chance favors the prepared mind.' and 'Does this milk taste funny?'

This first set is one that I thought was kind of cool. Most of the pictures are perfect examples of 'poor exposure' for anyone considering teaching, but I just like how they look when put together. They're not scenic, there are no faces to speak of, a couple of them are out of focus, they're just pieces of time.

Here's twenty or so pictures from Silueta Peru.

KC Literature Festival

2008-05-18T20:22:00.004-05:00

Saturday was the Kansas City Literature Festival and I headed down to get the skinny on it. Being a huge book fan, I probably had much higher expectations than I really should have and it was a bit of a letdown. I pictured rows upon rows of used books and beatniks smoking long cigarettes all over the place. What I got was kiosk after kiosk of local book groups with very little content. Only the Rainy Day Books tent was worth spending any time at. I'll stick with BookMooch, Amazon.Used and Half Priced Books I suppose.

At any rate, I'm a big fan o' readin' (not so much lately, but se la vie) and I decided to put together a quick list of the books I've been reading over the past few months and a simple (*) rating from my worthless opinion. Some people write about movies, some about how much they hate their job or whatever. I write about books and take bad pictures with my new camera....

Here's what's been going on around my bookshelves lately in between taking care of my massive house, going to garage sales and planning my next journey into the unknown:

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (*****) - a great book
Companions of Jehu by Alexandre Dumas (*****)- a great book by my favorite author
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon (****) - this took a bit to get into, but ended up being really good.
The Big Over Easy: A Nursery Crime by Jasper Fforde(*****) - a new 'favorite' author
Better Than Sex by Hunter S. Thompson(***) - kind of long book without any real direction, even by HST standards.
The 13 ½ Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers(*****) - unbelievably entertaining. Kind of felt like a kids book, but that's how i roll.
The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman(****) - very sad/happy book about a WWII zoo that was used to hide refugees in the Warsaw ghettos in Poland.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs(****)- classic book. Everyone should read it.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (**) - you either love this book or hate it. I wasn't feeling this book the way I normally feel Dickens.

Ohh, and here's some pictures:

Muchas Madres

2008-05-12T17:02:00.005-05:00

This weekend was so hectic that it went by in a flash. A good flash, but a flash none the less. Thanks to my cousin getting hitched in KC, we were able to have a somewhat impromptu family reunion. The big red house was bursting at the seams, sleeping 11 people. The kitchen was used and abused by my mother who managed to cook breakfast for 17 people on Saturday morning and i learned that this was not an appropriate statement:

"Happy Mother's Day mom! Why dont you show off those mad dishwashing skills that make you so great? If you could start with the wine glasses, that would be swell!"

This was the first time in quite a while that the whole Hutmacher clan was under one roof, and this time we added one. Abby & John's new baby girl, Madison, who is so new she still has the plastic protective covering over her eyes and a washing-instruction tag on her heel.

Masked Jr. Hipsters Invade 39th Street

2008-05-12T07:58:00.003-05:00

I was headed down through Westport Saturday and ran across some ruckus and naturally decided to stop and take some pictures. A bunch o' folks were out protesting Scientology, which, in case you dont know it, is the 'religion' that was created by a science fiction writer who was rumored to say once: "The way to make a million dollars is to start a religion."

Then he did what 99% of the world doesn't do when they come across an idea, he actually did it. By drugging John Travolta when he was still high on Pulp Fiction fumes, he got him to sign up to do Battlefield Earth, which we can only assume was Tom Cruises favorite movie ever, and the rest is history. Now, the business is hoes in every area code and their stacks of loot roll thick, mainly because they claim to be a religion and therefore get massive tax breaks.

Anyway, here are some pictures. However, my dad couldn't help ask me, if they really want to protest, wouldn't it say more if they we rent doing it anomalously?

Fotografías de la Exposición Otras Américas

2008-05-07T07:38:00.003-05:00

I want to thank everyone that made it out to the Otras Americas artists reception last weekend. The turnout was great & it was just a really fun night. Here are a few pictures of the show, believe me the pictures in the show are much better than these.

The show will be running for about two more weeks, so if you're in the 'hood, feel free to stop in. Tell them Luke sent you. That wont get you anything of course, but it may make you feel better.

Enjoy!!

Shameless Self-Promotion III: Otras Americas Tonight!

2008-05-02T08:53:00.002-05:00

Tonight is the artist's reception for the Otras Americas exhibit at City Arts in Wichita. If you're out & about in the air capital, stop by and steal something off the wall.

Hope to see you there!

Headshots Vol 2: Wayside Waifs

2008-05-01T07:02:00.002-05:00

I had the chance to break away from the bustle of airports and confusing databases the other evening and decided to hit Wayside Waifs for another round of pictures. These poor souls are up for adoption right now and if you adopt any of them, let me know & i'll get you a nice and cool print of one of their pictures.

On a side note: We had a jailbreak this week with Turbo. He managed to, not only escape his pen, but open a door and run off. It took us 10 minutes to realize that he even got outside, then we had to hit the big red Ghostbusters "ESCAPE" button & the whole joint went on lockdown like an episode of OZ until we found him. It was great!

Enjoy!!!

Islands In The Stream

2008-04-29T08:07:00.003-05:00

I spent some time on the beach last week in Florida. My thoughts? The men's hair mostly looked liked Hemingway and the women's skin mostly looked like catchers mitts. The sand felt good on my feet and the sun on my back. I'll still choose the mountains over the beach. I was very disappointed to find out that Cocoa Beach had absolutely no cocoa on it. At any rate, here's a couple pictures

Yes, Yes, YES!

2008-04-27T14:10:00.005-05:00

If you were to go to stupid Sunfresh hoping to get some of this, then you will be disappointed. Some idiot recently purchased their entire stock (of three..)

Why do i like CoolWhip so much? Here's why:

That means if you ate the WHOLE THING, you would take in the following:
Calories: 625
Carbs: 50g
Fat: 37.5

You could get the similar nutritional havoc by consuming the following quantities of other food:

Calorie-wise:
about 4 spoons of peanut butter
1 1/2 hamburger patties (patty alone)
2 doughnut (unglazed)

Carb-wise:
1 Cup of plain yogurt (about 1.3 servings)
2 servings of jell-o
1 serving of Banana pudding (6.5 oz)
1.5 doughnuts (unglazed)

Fat-wise:
60 Almonds
3/4 of full hamburger (w/ bun)
2 servings of breakfast sausage (8 links)

Is it degrading to buy and consume that much CoolWhip? Probably
Should I be embarrassed? Most likely
Mondays are for making fun of me. But whatever, I probably consume two containers of it every week and still love it.

Happy Monday

Troost Festival

2008-04-21T09:19:00.002-05:00

It's not everyday that I can sit in the middle of the street on 31st and Troost with a camera and not be considered weird. Saturday was the Something'th Annual Troost Festival & a beautiful day to boot. I now have my first semi-sunburn of the season, but I've also got some pictures to show for it. Ch-ch-check em out:

Shameless Self-Promotion II: You're Invited

2008-04-14T09:48:00.002-05:00

Here's the 'official' invite for the Otras Americas exhibit. Print it off and show it at the door for your choice of a high-five, a hug or a stiff drink (in the parking lot).

A Conversation With The Fire Department

2008-04-08T07:39:00.004-05:00

Boom! Snap! POP!

Those were the sounds that I heard this morning across the street from my office at 7:00 am this morning (yeah, i was at work at 7:00). A transformer had exploded and sent sparks all over the place, igniting the power pole. Awesome! I started dialing 911 and grabbing my camera. The conversation went kind of like this:

Recording: "Thank you for calling 911. Your call is important to us. All operators are busy, do not hang up. Hanging up could delay response time."
Elevator music. Click -
Operator: "Hello. 911. How may I help you?"
Me: "Good morning! I work at 31st & Broadway and one block east of me, a transformer blew up and it looks like there's a pretty good fire going over there."
Operator: "Ok, what's your address?"
Me: "3100 Broadway, but the fire is one block east of me. I dont know the street name, but it's the one with the fire in the middle of the block. You cant miss it."
Operator: "Ok, let me transfer you to the fire department."
Me: "Okie dokie."
Fire Dept Operator: "Hello, how may I help you?"
Me: "Good morning! I work at 31st & Broadway and one block east of me, a transformer blew up and it looks like there's a pretty good fire going over there."
Fire Dept Operator: "Well sir, if it is an electrical fire, we can not put water on it."
Me: "Well, whatever, I really could care less, I'm seven stories up and over a block away, I'm in no danger. But you are the fire department, so naturally when I saw an unauthorized fire blazing, you were the first people I though of. I dont care if you decide to put it out with ice cream or let the sucker burn the city down, I'm well insured."
Fire Dept Operator: sigh...."ok, we'll send someone to check it out."
Me: "Great! Have a good day, hope I didnt interrupt anything up there!"
Click
Click

Headshots Vol 1: Wayside Waifs

2008-04-07T07:37:00.003-05:00

I spent a few hours Saturday at Wayside Waifs helping them catch up on kitty and puppy glamor shots for their website. These little hobo animals are CUTE folks!

Check them out here: (Note that no animals were harmed during the making of this slideshow)

Shameless Self-Promotion Part I: Otras Americas

2008-04-02T07:55:00.003-05:00

As someone who loves to travel and has been fortunate enough to visit several places around the world, my favorite part of the world has to remain Central and South America. It’s hard to describe the beauty and wonder of that part of the world and I’ve nearly given up trying, you just have to see it to believe it. You have to live it to believe it.

That said, one thing that has happened to me once or twice, and to practically all of my traveling companions is a conversation roughly like this:

“Hey, where are you from?”

“I’m from America.”

“You don’t say, we’re in America right now.”

“This is Peru.” Or “This is Mexico.” Or “This is ”

“Well, that’s part of America too. It’s called ‘South America.’”

And that’s when you see it hit home for the second person in the conversation. It’s a subtle correction that non-USA’ians assert, and correctly so. Everyone, worldwide, has some level of ethnocentric attitude, but in the United States, it’s much more. We expect people from other parts of the world to bend to our whims, so speak English, to drive on the same side of the road, and in the hustle and bustle of it all, we tend to forget that we are only 300 million people in a world with a population of over 4 billion, that English is not the most-spoken language in the world (third, behind Chinese and Spanish).

I think the problem arises with the fact that most citizens of the United States have never traveled to another country. Somewhere upwards of 95% of the population here do not even have a passport. If you compare that to Europe, it’s quite the opposite. We are a geographically large country, which means our borders are separated by thousands of miles of plains. We’re boxed in by two oceans on the east and the west and Canada and Mexico to the north and the south, and those borders have a relatively small population. Additionally, we spend countless dollars and man-hours trying to figure out how to keep Mexicans out of the country and how to get oil rigs into Canada, all in the name of ‘our fragile economy.’

Without building a stage out of a soapbox, I think it’s fairly easy to see how the citizens of this country have been bred to see themselves as a people alone in the world. We ignore Darfur, we ignored Tibet until it threatened the Olympics, we are baffled by the violence in Iraq and the Middle East, and back home the leading story is the price of gas followed by an interview with a no-nonsense Sheriff in Arizona that is trying to legalize hunting of illegal immigrants. That’s basically the limits of the worldliness of ‘the people of the States’.

Getting to the point, as I mentioned earlier, you have to see it to believe it. I am happy, no… that’s not the right word… I’m proud to have the opportunity to take part in a photography exhibit in Wichita, KS during the month of May entitled Otras Americas, or ‘The Other Americas’ that will attempt to dispel the vicious rumor that we’re the only nationality in the world.

The concept of ‘Otras Americas’ is that there are Americas other than the U.S. of A, it’s just that we were the only ones uncreative enough to put it in the name of our country. North America, Central America and South America contain a vast number of countries and diversity of people and that we are united by the geography of our lands. While we share the "American" surname with Latin Americans most honkies really don't know much about "other" American cultures in general or the differences and nuances between them. Most gringos tend to think of the Latino culture as essentially Mexican - whether out of racism or out of ignorance.

Curated by my father, Skippy Sanchez, the exhibit will feature photographers from around the world showing pictures from around Central and South America (we could have included Canadians, too, but we all know they're not as photogenic), including:

Johnny Sutton- Guatamala

Georgia Sutton- Costa Rica, Cuba

Dale Strattman- Ecuador, Galapagos

Bill Pearce - Buenos Aires and Uruguay

Skippy Sanchez- Mexico, Honduras

Jaime Oppenheimer- Brazil

Luke Hutmacher- Peru

Ken Engquist- Mexico

Neil Marcus- Caribbean

Michael Pointer- Mexico

Gino Salerno- Haiti, Peru

This is my first ‘art’ exhibit and I’m scared stinkless at the moment. Mucho props to my dad for, first of all, seeing something in my work and inviting me to join, and second of all, helping me through the thing by basically doing everything for me from printing to framing to telling me that pictures of me riding an alpaca are probably not appropriate for a photography exhibit.

Here are some more details:

Where: City Arts, Wichita KS www.wichitaarts.com

When: Artists Reception May 2, 2008

Why: There may be some booze.

Featuring an oral presentation and discussion by Sonja Bontrager, assistant professor of Spanish and foreign language chair at Newman University.

So please, if you’re in the area, why not stop by and say ‘I could do that’ to a couple of my pictures, like I’ve done to countless other pictures and paintings in my life and see some works (yeah, I’m callin’ them ‘works’ now) that I decided not to put online.

Kansas City Skate Plaza

2008-03-31T07:51:00.001-05:00

When you're shy about taking pictures of people, I recommend going to a skate park. Especially when you've got a new camera that you dont really know how to use. The Penn Valley skatepark, aka the Kansas City Skate Plaza, is located by my office on 31st & Broadway, right behind the BMA building. Here's a few pictures from the cement.

From me, to me

2008-03-27T07:17:00.000-05:00

I decided it was hard to take pictures of my camera with only one camera and no decent mirrors around, so I remedied the situation.

Good lawd this thing rocks!

Me Pappy

2008-03-23T10:58:00.000-05:00

My youngest sister, Abby, just had her first baby and my dad decided to go visit her last week out in Redlands, CA. Rather than flying like most people do, he decided to take the train and take some pictures and stuff for a little photo-journal.

For those of you wondering what real photography is like, you can see some here: I'll Take The Train, by Skippy Sanchez

Hedwig

2008-03-22T14:28:00.000-05:00

Those of you who missed Hedwig at the Off Center Theater should be kicking yourselves. First of all, the theater is GREAT, nice and small and the show was simply great. If you’ve never seen the movie or heard of Hedwig, it’s most definitely worth checking out, especially if you like musicals about botched up sex change operations in

East Germany

It’s running until March 22^nd, so you have about six hours to get off the computer and quit blogging about how bad your life is or surfing YouTube for videos of Obama’s speech and get down there to check it out.

Totally worth it, I promise.
Note: Grandma, you would probably not like it as there are homosexuals in the show and most likely in the audience, but they will not bite unless threatened.

Neighborhood Businesses Part I: Wild Woody’s Happy Foods

2008-03-20T08:42:00.000-05:00

My neighborhood is packed with businesses in various states of operation. Normally, I do my grocery shopping as Sunfresh, which sucks. They’re overpriced and pretty much generally assholes. Monday I bought grapefruits and they charged me over double the advertised price, when I challenged them, the cashier told me “These are the 4257s, you’re thinking of the 4450s.” Whatever lady, they’re all in the same bin, under the same sign. Needless to say, I didn’t win the battle, so I walked.

I’ve been desperate for a non-Sunfresh grocery store for months now & have tried several places. Last night was Wild Woody’s Happy Foods on 31^st and Jackson. Not a great neighborhood, but worth the try.

The place was crazy. All the signs in the place were hand drawn and super sized. Stuff was stacked to the ceiling, bulk style; an eight-foot stack of baked beans, three-foot long tubes of frozen ground beef, ten pound sacks of ribs. It was great. Very very few name brands, mostly Sure-Safe and Value Save stuff. There was a whole isle dedicated to hot sauce and bbq sauce. The ‘birdcage’ was surrounded by glass that was covered with signs of all sorts, notices, threats, wanted signs and there was a long line of people waiting for the lotto tickets to be spit out at them.

Naturally, I had my camera in my pocket and snapped a few pictures, but it was making people quite nervous (big cracka taking pictures of hot sauce and tripe..). At some point, I realized that I was being tailed by an older white guy and two security guards that looked like they boxed gorillas for fun.

Long story short, I got bounced out of the place by the manager, but not before I got the stuff I needed (Cool Whip, grapefruits and hot sauce, non-related).

This was the first time I’ve been confronted for taking pictures and because I wasn’t in a public place, I kinda just had to take it with a smile and bow out graciously. For what it’s worth though, it was worth the trip and I’ll still probably go back, at least they didn’t try to steal from me like Sunfresh.

View Larger Map

Big Red’s Green Footprint

2008-03-18T07:25:00.000-05:00

I was totally unprepared for the shock of my first gas bill. I shouldn’t have been, for the past three months everyone I showed the house to said “I bet this house is a BITCH to heat.”

Well, apparently they know much more than I do about heating 3,500 square feet of hardwood floors and my first gas bill was high enough to make me sit up and take notice. So I decided to hit the drawing boards to find ways to decrease my energy consumption and reducing my ‘carbon footprint’ in general.

Here’s a brief summary of what I thought may help:

Move my bedroom from the 3^rd floor apartment to a more traditional bedroom on the 2^nd This enabled me to turn my 2^nd heating system down to a chilly forty degree setting and lock the place up for the winter. floor.
Installed a new idiot-proof programmable thermostat. Installation was not idiot proof, but I did get it after breaking the first one (luckily, Home Depot has taken the Army’s stance on asking questions).
Changed nearly all of the lights in the house from regular ol’ bulbs to CFL’s. While not effecting the gas bill, it would effect the electric bill and just seemed like the right thing to do.
Made a full-on attack of my basement situation. My basement, which doesn’t count to the square footage of the house because it’s not finished, consists of over 1000 square feet of open cold air, with pipes and ducts running around like Frankenstein’s lab. First, I insulated my hot water heater and my hot/cold water pipes. Secondly, I spent about two weeks insulating a massive duct that went from the heater, across the basement and up into the second floor. What a pain in the ass, but the effects were immediate. My whole house seemed to warm up & I was able to readjust my thermostat again.
My doorless laundry room was freezing cold, due to the fixture that the dryer vent used to go outside. This coldness was basically making my refrigerator redundant in the kitchen. I attempted to seal it up with no success, so I opted to buy a heavy duty curtain to put over the doorway. The kitchen was warmer within minutes, and looking a lot nicer to boot.
Got a recycle bin. This process was actually done by my neighbor, Alice (more on her when I’ve got time), but long story short, before I knew it, I had three of the suckers in my living room. Since getting the bins, I’ve averaged less than one bag of trash a week.
Adjusted my shower situation. I was showering on the 3^rd floor, which meant that the water had to run for nearly 5 minutes before warming up. Rather than moving the show down to the 2^nd or 1^st floor, I’ve made a concerted effort to shower at the gym as much as possible, which is disgusting. Sometimes I’m not sure if I’m really any cleaner after leaving. Either way, I typically shower there Monday-Friday after making myself sick on the treadmill before going to work. I used to use the ‘house’ soap, but I think it was just colored corn oil or something. This is probably the change that I’m least happy about.
Built a WORM BIN!!! This may sound disgusting, but if you put a bunch of redworms in a Rubbermaid container under your sink in the kitchen, they’ll eat your veggie-type waste. This means, little to nothing goes down my drain any more and in return for saving the little pricks from the pointy end of a fishing pole, they give me potting soil.
What good is potting soil without plants? In the past couple months, I’ve gotten several plants, big and small. A couple were purchased out of pure pity (I’m the Oskar Schindler of grocery store botany), but all are doing fine.

Today I got my gas bill & I was happy to see that my work paid dividends in the form of $100 lower bill, nearly a 30% decrease in one month, of course the amount I spent on insulation, plants, light bulbs and worms is significantly higher than $100, I feel good that it will pay itself off soon enough. If not, there’s a school nearby and I’ve got plenty of room to grow weed in the basement.

to who ever sales anything!!!!!!!!!

2008-03-14T15:56:00.000-05:00

I love craigslist. A direct copy/paste:

to who ever sales anything!!!!!!!!!

Reply to: sale-606371024@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-03-14, 3:49PM CDT

I was on my way from Olathe Kansas to Kansas city mo.
To pick up a bed set from a man.
I told him that I was on my way to pick it up and he turned around and sold it to someone else.
I had two kids in the back seat that where crying we had made to Belton when he called.
Thanks so much Darrell:(
Please people if you say you will sale something to one person give them time to get there and don't sale it to someone else.

This item has been posted by-owner.
it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 606371024

Awesome Things That I Used To Eat: How To Secure Heart Disease And Obesity

2008-03-12T08:31:00.000-05:00

Everyone thinks about their past in different ways, I’m no different. Not in the ‘got to change and get my zen back’ way, but in the ‘holy shit, I used to do what?!’ sort of way. The more and more I thought about the ways I used to punish my body, the more and more disgusted I’ve gotten. In keeping with my MO of providing people with fodder to make fun of me, I decided to write a brief story about what life was like for me back in college and my first couple years out of school.

During my second junior year of college (oh yeah, it was like that…), my roommate began doing web design for a local company. Anyone who went to college the proper way (ie, paid for it themselves) knows the amazing intricacies of the barter system. What did I have that could get me what I need? Namely, where did I work that could provide people with stuff. Cost me nothing; cost them nothing.

I worked third shift at a convenience store for a year on the corner of a major intersection in Hays, KS. The other three corners consisted of a Burger King, a Subway and a Pizza Hut. I got to know people that worked at all three and every night I would trade smokes for whoppers, pizza or subs. It was a great way to overcome my poor grocery situation on $6 an hour.

Roomie was (and still is) a web designer. The barter system that he introduced us to was one to be reckoned with. In exchange for designing a bass guitar website for a guy we knew, this guy gave us food. Not just any food. Cliff was the maintenance man for Arby’s. After the first rollout of his website, Cliff brought over, to my house, six boxes of frozen Arby’s food. SIX BOXES!

This turned my house into an immediate food-lust-carnival. On any given night (or day, or morning for that matter) there would be two to five of us dumping piles of food into the Fry Daddy.

Everything was cooked in the Fry Daddy, grilled chicken breasts, chicken fingers, French fries, mozzarella sticks, BBQ pork, roast beef my the fistful, even apple turnovers. We never used the oven or the microwave. When we changed the grease once every five weeks, it had to be chipped out of the bottom with a fork.

After a few weeks, the linoleum in my kitchen was scarred and sticky beyond repair. My face was oily and I had gained some serious weight, though I didn’t know it at the time (or choose to ignore it). We started getting creative, mostly with condiments. I had a set of seven small bowls that we would line up and dump various dipping items into. Ranch (plain), Ranch with Tabasco, ketchup, horseradish sauce, bbq sauce, sour cream (yeah, we tuned sour cream into a condiment), Italian dressing, salsa, it really didn’t matter.

This gravy train lasted nearly six months. Every time our freezer started to go low, Brant would update Cliff’s website & within days, the fridge would refill itself as if through some sort of magic. Six months of only shopping in the salad dressing isle at the grocery store. The damage done to my arteries is scary to fathom.

That was an example of ‘group debauchery’ but I feel like punishing and embarrassing myself publicly a bit more by detailing some of the things I used to eat on a regular basis.

Three El Monterrey Chimichangas buried in cheese, sour cream and salsa. Twice a day.

Three toasted peanut butter & jelly sandwiches with Doritos in the middle.

Three grilled cheese with four slices of cheese, dipped in Italian dressing.

One whole can of Bushes Baked Beans when I felt like eating ‘lite’ (straight out of the can like a hobo).

One whole package of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls, with extra butter, straight off the pan they were cooked on.

Two crème filled chocolate johns, two apple fritters and four ‘plain’ donuts from Daylight Donuts.

For three years my Saturday work-day lunch at Adronics was three double cheeseburgers & an extra large French fries from Burger King.

One loaf of bread, microwaved with butter and KC Masterpiece.

Two beef and bean burritos and a sack of churros from Taco Bell. This was lunch for six months straight and was actually the only part of our freshman year dorm meal plan that I could stomach.

Two boxes of Mac n’ Cheese with pepper & Tabasco sauce, slightly undercooked.

A 1 lb. triple cheese burger, extra large fries and a cookie from Fuddruckers.

Up to two whole Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food ice cream in a single night of work.

Two Hardees sourdough thickburgers & one Monster Thickburger & curly fries.

I once at a whole cheesecake during the first quarter of a football game (I think watching football is probably worse than the cheesecake).

A snack at work for a while was a pack of zingers, a king sized Butterfinger and a diet Pepsi (the beginning of my health-phase).

Is it any wonder that when I weighed myself in 2003, for the first time in about five years, I tipped the poor, poor, innocent scale at 315? I had to start thinking of my body as a credit card; anything you do to your body needs to be accounted for at some point.

I weighed in this morning after doing 7.5 miles on the Stairmaster at 195.

Uncomfortable Fictional Conversations Part 1, Scene 1

2008-03-11T07:20:00.000-05:00

Open of act, lights up in the middle of a conversation between four people sitting at lunch in a restaurant, possibly three coworkers and a consultant. Two eating lunch steaks (one with ketsup), one eating a fat burger, one eating a salad with lots of Tabasco.

Steak & Ketsup: "….as for the other side, I just don't know what the hell to think."

Steak: "It's definitely a tough situation, I'm glad I don't have to choose."

Fat Burger: "Well, they're so messed up, I'm not going to worry about it."

Steak & Ketsup: "I just have a feeling that if either of them wins, there will be an assassination."

Tabasco Salad: "What the hell?!"

Steak & Ketsup: "Well not me….I mean…not me…. They'd never come to Oklahoma…. and I'm not that kind of a person…."

Fat Burger: "Steak & Ketsup, would you care to elaborate?"

Steak & Ketsup: "Well, I just don't think our country is ready for either of those situations."

Tabasco Salad: "What exactly do you mean by 'either' of those situations?."

Steak & Ketsup: "Well, you know… one's a …. woman... the other's a …. negro… and I just don't think we could cope with that."

Jump to Tabasco Salad's inner monologue:

"First of all, you're obviously that kind of a person, except maybe a bit too chicken to ever act on anything. Second of all, I doubt you ever call a black person a 'negro'. In fact, I doubt you ever even call them 'black people' behind closed doors. And thirdly, when you say 'we', it infers that I'm a part of 'we' and I don't appreciate it. I think everyone knows that when you say 'we' in that sentence, you mean 'I'. Plus, you are sweating profusely while talking about this 'situation', which makes me think that you may find it actually arousing to think about. Yummy"

Tabasco Salad (out loud): "Can someone pass some more Tabasco."

Scene End

Culture KC-style

2008-03-09T16:25:00.001-05:00

Me Pappy and Me Step-Mudda came to town from sunny downtown Wichita for the weekend and the three of us got into some serious trouble, Kansas City style. We started out with a trip to Casa Mesa for good stuff that’s hecho en Mexico, headed to Original Juan to find stuff to burn our tongues and headed to the Nelson-Atkins for a great new photography exhibit called In The Public Eye. I have to say, I love art galleries, but there’s nothing that can compare to looking at pictures from famous photographers with a pro in tow. On my own, I tend to make comments like

“I could do that.”

“You can almost see nipples.”

“Enough landscapes.”

“That’s not even in focus.”

“Wow.”

My dad knows stuff people. Not just embarrassing-slash-incriminating stuff about my past, but real stuff about real things in the world and it was great to hear him dress me down about some photography. Kind of like a quick sax lesson from Coltrane, though not musical and not on drugs and fairly white.

I do have one negative-ish thing to say about the Atkins. CHANGE SOME OF YOUR OTHER ART AROUND! I get it, you have a fairly lifelike statue/sculpture of a guard. Grandma showed me that when I was five years old, all that’s happened to it in the following 25 years is that it moved to a new wing.

Enough.

We rounded off the evening by going to the Music Hall to see the State Symphony of Mexico which was totally amazing. There’s something about seeing a section of violin bows flowing like water then, in the next minute, bouncing like soldiers marching with guns pointed to the sky that just sends you to another world.

I should also give props to downtown KC for Saturday night. There was shit going on down there folks. Sprint Center had the Big 12 basketball tournament going on, though I thought Garth must have been back because there were some serious cowboy hats swaggerin’ towards the doors. The car show was going on at the convention center. The Municipal Auditorium was either getting ready for or recovering from the nations 25 women’s college basketball fans in the Women’s Big 12 Tourney (I couldn’t tell). Throw in the symphony and downtown was buzzing. It was nice to see so much action, and so many sports and auto fans in such a close proximity (ie, away from my house…)

All in all, great weekend.

Because I’m lame and lazy, rather than linking stuff in the body, I’ll just put a bunch of related links below as well as a few pictures from the weekend. Sorry to disappoint, but they’re from me rather than the old man.

Enjoy!

http://www.harriman-jewell.org/Events/ssmexico.htm

http://www.kansascityautoshow.com/

http://www.kcconvention.com/

http://www.big12sports.com/sports/w-baskbl/spec-rel/big12-w-baskbl-championship.html

http://www.nelson-atkins.org/

Excuses Part I: Home Repairs Part I

2008-03-04T22:35:00.001-06:00

I have written very little lately and that’s mostly due to a very hectic travel schedule and the fact that I’ve been keeping myself quite busy at home. I recently got my very first gas bill and after I recovered from the shock, I came to the realization that my house is 97 years old and holds heat like a butterfly net with a rip in it.

This has lead most of my most recent home-based activities to be centered on my basement, what I have decided is the central problem to my heating issues. Mainly the fact that I’ve got literally hundreds of feet of ducts running to and fro with no insulation around them, specifically one that goes diagonally across the whole basement and up to the second floor. Rather than filling the basement up entirely with spray-foam and just sealing the whole mofo off, I decided to try my hand at wrappin’ ducts, which shouldn’t be confused with rapping ducks, which would be much cooler and probably cheaper.

So, over the past couple weeks, I’ve learned (the hard way) how to seal holes, wrap insulation and secure it into place. While my swearing has probably increased a bit, my overall satisfaction at doing something good to lower my bills and lower my carbon footprint a bit is equal to that of getting to dress up like this (purely for safety purposes of course).

Goosebumps....

2008-02-14T09:45:00.000-06:00

A funny story officer....

2008-02-13T09:56:00.000-06:00

As I was moving into my new house, my neighbor was in the process of donating his house to the bank via foreclosure. As sad as that may sound, I wouldn’t feel too bad for the guy. He bought the house seven years ago as a project house and time and money just intersected at poor places over the years and he was able to work on it less and less, so the house had basically been storage for several years.

On his front porch was, amongst all the other junk, an A-frame porch swing that looked beatup, but very comfortable and I was going to offer to buy it from him, so here’s how the conversation went:

“Hey, that swing is pretty cool.”
“You want it? You can have the fucker.”
“Woo-hoo!”

It was chained up to the house via a chain attached to a metal hook sunk into the stone of the house and he didn’t have the key with him. He said that if he found it, he’d unlock it.

That was several weeks ago and he hasn’t come back to the house since, leaving the yard in a tornado-like state of distress with tires, trash, broken glass, pots, pans and all sorts of other junk laying around. I can only imagine what the inside of the house is like. Honestly, whoever buys the house will have to get a dumpster to get rid of all the rest of the junk there.

I still wanted that porch swing, which, in my opinion, was now mine, as he had given it to me. Of course it was also still securely attached to the house. What to do, what to do…

So, one evening, feeling the confidence kick of two glasses of wine, I decided to go over and investigate the situation further. The lock and chain was solid, however, the screw in the house was, while not lose, could be turned with pliers, just not far enough to get it out of the house.

Resting against the porch, wondering what to do, an idea hit me. Amongst the scattered debris was a log about the size of my thigh.

It was semi-dark, I was dressed in a black jacket, black stocking hat and gloves and, now, holding a potential weapon wondering if I should do it. Wondering for about ½ of a second.

I smacked the metal loop that was connecting the swing, my swing, to the wall with a guilty ‘thump’ and immediately looked around me to see if there was a cop in the vicinity. There wasn’t, but I still felt the need to work fast. After hitting the thing and looking over my shoulder three more times, the piece of metal gave way with a ‘clink’ and the swing gasped free of the house.

Now that the thing was free of it’s leg irons, I had to figure out how to get the beast over to my house. Something I hadn’t thought of while attacking the chain with a stump. It was just too large for one person to deal with, but I was able to take it apart into two barely-manageable pieces, which was only true because I’m quite tall. It’s hard to take a 6 foot tall swing through one yard into the next yard and into the back yard while maintaining a look of innocence. Two pieces, two trips. Success.

While moving the chunks of rusty pink metal over to my back porch, I mulled over the story in my head, and honestly it didn’t sound very convincing.

“You see, officer….Johnson is it? Well, the previous owner of the house…”
….
“no I don’t know his name actually, the previous owner was foreclosed on. Right before he left, he told me I could have the swing, but he didn’t have the key.”
…
“No, I haven’t seen him for quite sometime, he said he didn’t actually live in the house, but he owned it.”
…
“Yes sir, I can imagine that you’ve heard similar stories before in this neighborhood, but I can assure you, it’s the truth.”
…”
No sir, I don’t think I’m funny.”
…
Yes sir, here’s my identification…”

At any rate, I decided to try my hand at repainting the thing, thus beginning my long uphill battle of becoming ‘handy’. Two weeks later, fourteen days after realizing that spray painting in the same room as the thumping machine that pumps warm/sprayypainty air through the house is probably not a good idea, I pulled the beast up from the basement, signed, sealed and delivered and put it together in my living room (because it’s huge, empty, mine, and it’s still freezing outside).

This thing is comfortable! I still haven’t put the canopy back on, but check out a couple pictures of the before and after of my new backyard swing slash potential criminal activity, depending on the jury and my ability to tell a story convincingly. When it warms up, feel free to come over and lounge on it for a couple hours. Mint juleps on me.

Bullet points from last night.

2008-02-08T22:43:00.000-06:00

I cant even begin to think about formulating complete sentences, so consider this a peek into phase one of how I write anything, using bullet points, which were invented by the Incas I think.

Thursday morning, 10 wine glasses
Friday morning, 4
I’m pumped to join a scooter gang
Was everyone here a photographer?
Do I really know that many people within a ten block radius?
Daniel needs to be put in a giant hamster ball or have bubble wrap taped around his hands.
The pig! The poor poor pig.
Costco hummus is amazing (and cheap) (and goes well on hamburgers) (and on spoons)
The orange couch was intimidating for about three hours, then was filled to capacity for the following two hours.
I think that someone brought empty beer bottles and placed throughout my house because there is no way all that fit into my fridge.
I know, “That would be a perfect place for a hot tub.” Just leave me a billing address and I’ll have it in pronto.
My lack of mattresses in the three guest rooms is getting downright embarrassing.
I cant believe I took less than 50 pictures, like 35 less than 50.
I can believe that these are the only ones that are in focus(ish)

Creepy Video of the Week

2008-02-07T09:29:00.000-06:00

Aphex Twin - Rubber Johnny

Always fun to watch late week creepiness.

soediV sdrawkcaB taerG

2008-02-03T12:22:00.000-06:00

My favorite backwards music videos.

God Lives Underwater – From Your Mouth

Cibo Matto – Sugar Water

The Pharcyde – Drop

Mute Math – Typical

Animals are like kryptonite with slobber

2008-01-31T18:01:00.001-06:00

Renee and I spent last Friday afternoon honing our mad puppy-cuddling skills while volunteering at Wayside Waifs in their doggy quarantine area. I could write about it, but honestly, it’s too depressing. There have been times where one dog has been sick, gotten the rest of the animals sick in the room, and they’ve had to put the whole room to sleep. There’s one mama dog who had a whole litter put to sleep simply because they were pit bull puppies. There are a couple dogs who run to the corners when you walk by, or shit themselves out of fear because they’ve lead such a jacked up life. But there’s also animals who flip out with some real deal lottery-winning elation when you open the cage and sit with them. I’d like to say it all evens out, but I’m not sure that’s the case. At any rate, Wayside is a great place doing great things with great animals and you should go out there today and take one of these guys with home with you. Below are some pictures (mostly out of focus cause those suckers are quick). - Lucas

Créditos Finales

2008-01-30T12:15:00.000-06:00

Rather than sum up my trip in any other way, I decided to copy and paste the last three paragraphs from my journal as an epilogue, which I had lost until recently. See below for cast and credits. - Lucas

The rest of the trip was spent in a daze. We hung out in Cusco for a day, said goodbye to Sharon. Then there were six. Left for Lima, where we said goodbye to Elard. Then there were five. Spent a day hanging around Lima & I goodbye to the four Goatcheeses. Now there’s one, me. I’m sitting in a hotel room, the last man standing at party with scattered memories, reading through the pages and pages of my journal like it was someone else’s.

It feels cheap to talk about an expensive celebratory dinner on the waters of the Pacific. I feel guilty to look at my watch or to think about Christmas. I feel stupid for feeling angry for something as small as losing pictures on a memory card. I feel embarrassed that I was upset at a delayed flight or a messed up order at a restaurant.

My shoes are wet from a late night trip to the ocean, my clothes are dirty from alpaca shit, spilt wine, and saltwater. My heart is full of love and computer full of pictures. I leave at midnight tonight, get home Sunday night, go back to work Monday and move into my new house on Friday. That’s not really what I want to do. All I want to do is smell the air in this city, in Peru, in South America, in the world. All I want to do is think about the people I’ve been around. All I want to do is think about the places I’ve been. All I want to do is understand the things in the air that give direction and motivation in my life. I don’t want to forget, I want to learn to remember and be free of the past at the same time. All I want to do is write. There’s so many things that I want to do, all I want to do is do them. I think I will.

Maurice and his Peruvian. Theif.

Christine and empty wine glasses. Lush.

Emma and her gang signs. Whitebread thug.

Chanelle and her roasted guinea pig. Savage.

Sharon, aka 'Rooms', with her constant smile. Sicko.

Elard, with his favorite bathroom. Exhibitionist.

Silver, with his 5,000 kg backpack. Showoff.

Fearless author, shameless photographer, with his alpaca flokati hat. Clown.

Machu Picchu

2008-01-29T07:38:00.000-06:00

No words, they feel cheap. Only pictures, but if a picture is worth a thousand words, then I beg a thousand pardons for not being able to do this experience justice. I present, Machu Picchu....

'Rooms' mugging for the locals

Hutmacher mugging for the locals

Hola, Adios.

It's Orange

2008-01-26T20:44:00.000-06:00

It's a sectional. It's vintage. It's shaped like an 'S'. Or a question mark. And it's in one of my living rooms.

Mecca Picchu

2008-01-25T11:02:00.000-06:00

Mecca Picchu

The Shepard: The stakes are driven deep in the ground, nothing can move them, the ropes are new and made of strong grasses; the cows will never break them now. And you, sky, can rain as much as you please!

Buddha: Like the dog that has broken his chain, like the elephant that has broken his shackles, never again will I enter a womb. And you, sky, can rain as much as you please!

This has got to stop. How long can a person go on thinking he has reached some sort of meaningful conclusion, or how long can a person go on thinking he has seen the greatest sight in the universe, or how long can a person think that the feelings he felt were the strongest, most powerful feelings ever felt, only to have them shattered the next instant, the next day, by something greater or more powerful?

Yesterday was tough, today would be long. It’s been one of the other for two weeks though and my compass for judging time or space or distance or personal well-being is all out of whack. Yesterday we went straight up for three hours then straight down for three hours. Today we would go up and down three times, each time being a lesser pass then the previous, but all in all, today was going to be our longest day. We did have something to look forward to at the end, and that’s a shower and a proper toilet. I’ve only had one shower in six days, and that was three days ago and I’ve gone on gastrointestinal lockdown for the last three days. Nothing in or out. But that’s an unsustainable situation. I just don’t like pooping in buckets.

Our guide, Silver, who has done the trail over 100 times and knows the ins and outs of the whole ordeal, decided that we should be up and on our way early, to beat the shower-crowds. Our goal was to be into camp by about 1:00. We would leave at 4:30 in the morning, hike for three hours, stop for breakfast and then finish the day with a five or six hour hike to camp, to showers, to toilets, but most importantly, to the footsteps of Machu Picchu.

This was my favorite morning so far and I’ll tell you why. Silver said we would leave at 5:00am, ready or not, and when the clock struck 5, I was the only one ready and we just took off, leaving everyone behind, doing whatever they do every morning without coffee, cable, toilets, showers and electricity. That’s the way to do it Silver, mucho props my friend.

The mornings hike was great. Because we left before most of the camp, we walked mostly in silence, I say mostly because Maurice talked pretty much the whole way. For someone who was having altitude issues, his lungs sure seemed strong to me. It wasn’t a big deal really, he’s an entertaining guy and I was soon out in front of the group far enough to drown out all extracurricular noise.

I started out wearing my long pants, long sleeve shirt and gloves, but within an hour, I didn’t need any of them. I still kept the long sleeve shirt on just to keep the sun damage down, which is wicked in the mountains and changed into shorts in a moment of nude bliss in the Andes. That’s when I realized that the layers of clothes were very effective against the odors that our bodies had been bubblin’ on for the last couple days.

We ambled up to the first of three passes for the day, Abra de Runkuracay (pass of the pile of ruins, I believe), which was the second highest of the entire trip, but seemed like a mere foothill compared to the day before. The landscape had changed drastically today, rather than a barren mountain highland, we descended into a cloud forest that was amazing. We walked in and out of the clouds; the clouds approached us, engulfed us and passed us on, like we weren’t there. The horizon would go from a visibility of twenty feet to ten thousand feet in the matter of minutes. Its times like these that I wish I could describe the passing landscapes like Hemingway. Say what you will about the drunken womanizer, but he could write the fuck outta some landscapes.

The trail down turned away from the dirt path that we had been walking on for most of the trip to actual Inca-laid roadway, an intricate construction of rocks and stones that was worth marveling at. It’s a good thing too, because if you didn’t look at the ground while you walked, your ass would have fallen off the edge.

By breakfast, we had worked up a devilish appetite and devoured anything that was placed in front of us; I accidentally took a bite out of a porters hand because I thought it was a overcooked biscuit.

By the time we sat out after breakfast, our bellies were rocked with food and we were fired up to tackle the rest of the day. It was only 8:00 am. People put too much stock in sleeping in. I prefer to be awake and seeing the world in the mornings. Too much of life passes people by when they’re sleeping and the difference between morning and night in any given area is the difference between…ummm…. night and day.

The next several hours were a beautiful walk, up and downhill, but nothing too difficult and near noon, we got to camp where showers, bathrooms, and beer awaited us.

Because we were the first people into the camp, there was no line at the showers, which meant that we could take our time, really get our $1 worth. Let me tell you, that roach infested, moldy floored, lukewarm water’d shower was like the Hilton to us and we felt like a million bucks by the end.

Another thing that was at this base camp was a bar. It wasn’t much, but there was beer and before we knew it, we were all getting a little tipsy. I spent the evening chatting with other hikers that I’d seen up and down the trail for the previous days and it was quite nice. Apparently, a while back, they decided that it was necessary to close the bar at 9:00 pm, otherwise people would stay up all night drinking, then try to hike to Machu Picchu in the morning, drunk, through the mountains. Which is not advisable. Looking at some of the people, all I could think was if you cant be a good example, be a horrible warning.

Because tomorrow would be very quickly moving, getting out of camp, we said our goodbyes to the porters and handed out fistfuls of tip money. I was nominated to speak to everyone because, apparently, I can be entertaining from time to time. They earned every penny of their money, these guys were amazing.

At some point, Silver briefed us on tomorrow mornings activities. He said the porters would wake us up at 4:00 am and we would be on our way at 5:00, ready or not. We would have a ‘short three hour’ hike and then we would get to Machu Picchu (remember Machu Picchu? It’s kind of why I took this hike in the first place.) Silver would give us a two hour tour and Elard would meet us at some point in the morning, then we’d have the rest of the day to chill and explore on our own. Sounds great, lets get it on. Wait, how the hell am I supposed to be able to sleep tonight with that in front of me tomorrow? Especially because just outside of my tent was Machu Picchu mountain. Staring up at me. Yes, staring up.

The silly conversation between the Shepard and Buddha has started to sink in, finally, after climbing my fingers to the bone for three days and it’s too simple to spend much time on.

Be Buddha, not the Shepard.

It’s not in being prepared for difficulties, it’s in being prepared for life and taking everything as it comes. It’s not what you have defining who you are, it’s who you are defining what you have.

Be Buddha. Is he Incan? Guess I’ll find out tomorrow.

From my tent - Machu Picchu. I hope Buddha's home.

Macho Picchu

2008-01-22T07:20:00.000-06:00

The Shepherd: I have oxen, I have cows. I have my father's meadows and a bull who covers my cows. And you, sky, can rain as much as you please!

Buddha: I have neither oxen, nor cows, I have no meadows. I have nothing. I fear nothing. And you, sky, can rain as much as you please!

This was the closest I’ve slept to the ground in about fifteen years. Oddly enough, it was the highest I’ve slept above the sea in my entire life. An interesting dichotomy. I could smell the ground and at the same time, I could look down on birds flying, not thirty feet from my tent. The view from the campsite was breathtaking and once I got away from everyone and sat down, it felt good. The porters were quietly clinking pots and dishes in the background and as the sun rose, it awoke the entire campsite and the entire universe, our universe, with it. I know I wasn’t the only one to recognize this; the surrounding silence was proof of that. I could sit here all day. Unfortunately, fortunately, I couldn’t. Today was going to be real. It was going to be the test. It’s the day that has been on my mind for months.

Dead Woman’s Pass.

Over the course of about 4 miles, we would ascend from 3000 meters to 4250 meters (9,800 feet to 14,000 feet). Basically climbing up one mile and out four miles. The fact that we’re starting out at nearly 2 miles above sea level is sure to complicate things. Stairmaster day.

From our camp, we hiked uphill for about four hours at a leisurely pace, the kind of thing where I would get twenty minutes ahead of the group, sit down and whip out more cocoa leaves to chew on and write in my journal for a while waiting for everyone to catch up. Most of the time I was thinking, “Well, so far, this isn’t so bad. What’s all the hubbub?”

Then after lunch, almost like it only appeared when you were properly fed, the mountain appeared in front of me. Being from Kansas, it doesn’t take much of an incline to impress me, I’ve actually taken pictures of speed bumps, but this mofo was HUGE. From our vantage point, it appeared to be about twenty feet in front of us, but to go straight up for considerably more than twenty feet.

Our guide, Silver, said, “It’s time to head out, rest for another twenty minutes or so if you’d like. It will take you two to three hours to reach the top and everyone will go at their own pace. This meeting will reconvene at the top, I will go take a nap and meet you there.”

And he disappeared.

Sharon decided it was in her best interest to leave and get a head start. The rest of us decided it was in our best interest to rest a little more and after another thirty minutes, porters and other travelers long gone, we gathered up and tackled the newest challenge.

I didn’t know how much time had passed until much later, but it felt like days and it worked like this:

Go up uneven and often unstable steps for five to eight minutes at a time, the time is meaningless, but that was roughly the amount of time it took your heart and lungs to scream loud enough to get your legs to stop. Catch your breath, rinse and repeat.

Step, step, step, stop, breathe, start.

Five to eight minutes may not sound like much, but when you’re at an elevation of over two miles, it doesn’t take much lack of oxygen to make a fella wheeze.

It wasn’t the ‘step, step, step’ part of the cycle that made me realize how in shape I was, it wasn’t really even the ‘breathe’ part. What really made me realize that I was in great shape was the comma between breathe and start. The recovery time. I didn’t really understand it for a while. We would all kind of get winded at the same time, all stop, all breathe. But when it was time to start up, I was always the first to get up and get ready to move. The others were huffing and puffing like chain smokers still and I was whistling and singing ‘Redemption Song’ to myself.

We started as a group of five. Within the first ten minutes or so, it was a group of three. Within twenty minutes, I was alone. Within another five minutes, I began to catch other hikers. Within another fifteen minutes, I had caught Sharon, who had a 30-minute head start.

My legs were feeling good and my calves were rock-hard from the work. My lungs were getting a stretch like they never had before. My heart was thumping so loud that I could feel it in the tips of my fingers and hear it in my ears. I felt amazing. I’ve never actually felt ‘good’ while exercising, but this time, this time…. Shit, I couldn’t believe it. It was like I had done it. I had worked myself into a condition that I had never been in for my entire life. I was out here with other hikers and I was stomping past them like they were knuckles-and-bun-old-women drivers. I was going to the top, I had a goal that was more than a stop watch or a distance. I could see it and it was rapidly approaching.

Within another ten minutes, I had lost sight of Sharon behind me.

About a half mile from the top is when I started hearing the voices from the people at the top. At first I could only hear periodic cheering, but as I crept up closer to the summit, my jaw set and my eyes glaring at step after step, I started hearing shouts. Then regular voices. Then I came into visual range and I could make out masses of people, then individual people, then faces, then I could read shirts and see what brands of shoes they were wearing. Then I got a high-five from a stranger and heard the clapping, popping right in my ears.

Clapping for me.

I made it.

When you walk uphill for such a long time, it’s an amazing feeling to look back and not even be able to see the start point, or even the mid point, and it was great. The mountains rose up all around me and I was at the top. I wanted to yell. I wanted to laugh. It was one of those feelings that I just wanted to flex all my muscles and drop to the ground in success, like the end of a horrible movie.

The Incas used to make sacrifices on top of mountains all around the area and this was a special pass because it was the only mountain in the region that was named after a woman. Rather than slaughtering a hippie, I opted for the newer tradition and that was stacking a rock on top of another pile of rocks. The custom is that you make a sacrifice and make a wish, but that sounds too cheap. Instead of wishing for anything, I crawled away from the group and sat down on the lichen covered stones and spent about fifteen minutes in some sort of trance-like reflection. I basically let go of my mind and just felt the world around me. The pulsing of the world was in my temples and I was muttering thanks beneath my breath. Thanks to no one in particular, thanks for nothing in particular, but just thanks.

The top of the pass seemed to me to be very significant. The road up to the top, the top and the road down the other side. The past. The present. The future. The sun, the rain, the wind. It started raining, not hard, just big warm drops from below my head. Though it wasn’t rain, they were tears and it confused me to have this sort of experience through nothing in particular. How do you explain a time when you’re emotions are obviously mixed? I was hurting and I was healing. I have come so far, but at what cost?

The rest of the day was a blur. Eventually everyone got to the top and they hunted me down for some pictures. Silver said he woke up and saw me with his binoculars. He said that I made it to the top in roughly one hour, which is quite good, even for a porter. We went downhill for a few hours and it felt good to actually run down stairs, even though I was more like a zombie to those around me, the thump thump thumping on my feet rattling through my jaw were merely background noise to me and I recall very little of it, my mind demanding all possible resources, trying to sort out what happened to me at the top.

By nightfall we were at camp and everyone was suffering from various degrees of exhaustion. Sharon was sore from her ears to her toes. Christine was sunburned. Emma and Chanelle were tired of not having an iPod. Maurice’s lungs were revolting from the altitude. My soul was scorched from feelings unknown. It was torn into the past and the future, but for once I realized that they were working together to help me understand the present.

I sighed, knowing that things would be fine, and I fell asleep with a strange sort of contentment that no one would understand.

Mass o' Porters

Dead Womans Pass

Gang o' Suckas

Not a bad view from the tent huh?

Sunset From The Campsite

Mucho Picchu

2008-01-11T07:14:00.000-06:00

The Conversation between Buddha and the Shepard part one.

The Shepherd: My meal is ready, I have milked my ewes. The door of my hut is bolted, my fire is alight. And you, sky, can rain as much as you please!

Buddha: I no longer need food or milk. The winds are my shelter, my fire is out. And you, sky, can rain as much as you please.

Forty five kilometers in four days. That’s basically a marathon, which has been ran in about three hours. Of course marathons are typically ran on semi-level and extremely-stable paved roads and I highly doubted that this would be either of the above. There would be ups and downs, as is typical for hiking through the mountains, as opposed to hiking through Kansas. Another difference is that if you hike through Kansas for four days, it is still relatively unlikely that you will end up at Machu Picchu. For the past six months, I had been exercising regularly, very regularly. Like twice a day. True it was mostly out of boredom, but the side effects were pretty good. I’m weighing the lightest I’ve weighed since I was in high school. I haven’t been hating mirrors nearly as much as I had in the past. I can actually buy shirts in the fabled ‘Size Large-land’. My face is down to one chin. I can run three miles without even breathing very heavy or feeling the need to vomit at any point during said run. I could follow that up with an additional three miles on the Stairmaster and that’s tall cotton folks, ‘cause that mofo will cripple real athletes. All in all, I’m in good shape. I admit it. And from the looks of my companions, while not the only one in good shape, I’m probably the fittest out of our group. And definitely the funniest. And tallest.

All mountains that need climbing require one thing above all – to take the first step. Once that step is taken, it’s momentum can get you nearly 75% of the way to the second step. Right left. Right left. Could it possibly be that way for most things in life? You can’t tackle the project in one swing of your fist. You cant transplant a heart without starting somewhere. Changing your life requires patience. That’s why most people get stuck in ruts. They spend their whole time focusing on the goal that they forget that it takes many steps to reach the goal and trip out of the gate. Kids haven’t failed enough to deal with life that way, that’s why they learn languages and musical instruments so much better than adults do. Kids are task oriented, adults are goal oriented. Kids are the idea, adults are the reality, in between sits the area where the two shadows collide. Striving to stay in the shadows.

In this case, the first step was over a swinging bridge with barbed wire on each side. Kilometer post 82. The first day was going to be relatively easy, rolling hills for about 12 kilometers. Lunch somewhere in the middle, dinner towards the end, sleep after eat, many lefts and rights in between, many lefts and rights after.

The logistics of the trip were interesting. Each group of tourists had a group of porters that did the trail as well. There were two porters for every hiker plus two cooks and a guide. So for our group (six people) there were actually 21 people. A small village to look after six crackers. The government only allows 500 people to start the trail per day, counting porters. With everyone starting and stopping at roughly the same places, the whole thing seemed a bit crowded at times.

The job of the porters was to carry the tents, food, sleeping bags and other stuff. They loaded up about 65 lbs of stuff on their backs and basically sprinted up the trail. I was carrying a bag that may have weighed 10 lbs and these guys were straight up beatin the trail past me. They would get to our lunch spot, cook lunch and have it ready for us, then we would eat and take off. They would pack up and sprint to the night campsite. They probably left 30 minutes after we did and beat us to the camp with enough time to set up all our tents and cook dinner. Maybe I’m not the man after all.

Because of my long legs, I was quickly able to separate myself from the pack and get ahead in front of the noise for brief times. I would sit and wait and, more importantly, watch. Listen. Smell.

There is a lot of animal feces on this trail.

The mountains surrounding the Sacred Valley are unbelievable. You should probably get used to me using words to describe awe, because so far, they’re necessary to the fullest. The terraced hillsides show like enormous washboards where the Incas would farm different crops based on the elevation. One terraced field could hold as many as twenty different crops, all planted at an elevation that would benefit them the most for precipitation, sunlight, temperature and runoff. Distance up is more important than distance out. Elevation trumps latitude.

The eucalyptus trees grow like wildfire, stretching well over a hundred feet into the air, growing leaves and branches on one side only because of the strong valley winds. They’re an introduced species, brought in by the Spaniards because they grow quickly and can be used for everything from building houses to space travel. In a way, it’s a shame that the mountains themselves are so large because they can easily take attention away from other, smaller, things in this place. A mile looks like ten feet. Ten miles, eleven feet. A boulder looks like a teardrop. Bromeliads, several feet across are mere freckles in the distance that can be appreciated for their sheer numbers from afar and their amazing beauty close up.

By the end of the day, I found myself laying in my tent, looking out over the Sacred Valley. Not a bad way to spend the night. We were fortunate enough not to have any casualties for our first day, which is good I suppose. I’ve been beating around the Buddha conversation in my head all day, like a song that won’t go away. Tomorrow will be a big day, the biggest of the trip actually. But for now I must sleep, if I can, but I’ve had quite a bit to think tonight, and may not have much success.

No pictures and a moment of silence please.

In Loving Memory of SanDisk SD Card SDSDH-2048-901.

May you rest in peace with my 200 pictures from Day 1.

Ccaccaccollo

2008-01-03T07:34:00.000-06:00

The bus ride took us about 45 minutes outside of Cusco. The road went dirt within ten minutes and was mostly switchbacks upon switchbacks and hills upon hills. On my side of the van was a sheer cliff, on the other side of the van was a sheer drop. There is no telling how far we actually went; it may have been forty miles, it may have been two. Around here, distance is meaningless, it's just 'go there' or 'don't go there'. Distance "up" is more important than distance "out".

At some point, we began to see small buildings. Not buildings like one would expect; more like shacks. Even by South American standards they looked dangerous. They appeared to be closer to carved mud than any normal building and it wasn't until I saw a mother and child sitting in front of one that I realized that they were houses.

After a couple minutes of houses and narrowing road, which was already barely the width of the bus, we ambled to a stop in the middle of a large flat dirt area, a sort of multi-use flat land that had soccer goals at both ends, an under-construction building on one side, and houses rising up from all sides, like seats in a stadium. I immediately began to search the ground for trap doors that may have chained beasts within. This was the city square. The 'Plaza Mayor.' In Cusco, the Plaza Mayor was a beautiful garden with a large fountain in the middle, surrounded by enormous Catholic cathedrals. Here it was dirt. Dirt and alpaca. Dirt, alpacas and, as we stepped out of the bus, staring eyes.

The village was Ccaccaccollo. The staring eyes were the owners of the houses that would be our homes for the next two days. Here it is, the second part of my trip. Cultural immersion.

I'm packed like someone who may need to flee the scene at any moment. My backpack, which has my camera, a jacket, a pen and paper, and some gum (for some reason) and a duffle bag that I've managed to squeeze three pair of underwear, one extra pair of pants, two shirts and two pairs of socks in. No more computer, there's barely any electricity here, I didn't even have room for my book. I brought a toothbrush, but no soap or shampoo as I knew I had just taken my last shower for the next six days.

We were divided up into three groups of two, like animals on the Ark; me with Elard (our tour leader), Emma with her mother Christine, Channelle with her dad, Maurice and marched off to different abodes throughout the village.

My mother was 43 years old, but didn't look a day over 70. Her feet had practically grown around her sandals and her gums had rejected all but about four teeth. Her name was Isadora and she had five children. The house was like a small complex, four different and separate houses, each with their own purpose and each smaller than the previous. The largest contained the dining room on the ground floor ('ground' in all possible senses of the word) and the bedroom that I would share with Elard on the second floor. The stairs and all doors were on the outsides of the buildings. The stairs and doors were the scariest and smallest things I've ever tried to use in my life. I smashed the shit out of my head on my way into my room on the second floor. The doorway was easily less than five feet tall and when I hit my head, in nearly blacked out. I'm used to hitting my head on stuff, but this was totally unexpected. It was like my mind just couldn't accept a door this small and tried to just walk through it, full bore. With blood running down the back of my neck, I sat down on the floor and tried to smile, but it came out as a pained grimace and I'm sure made a lovely impression.

Across the small dirt courtyard from the main building was the kitchen. It was made completely out of mud. I mean completely. The oven was a dried mud structure with a mud shelf to cook the food in the corner. The walls were totally blackened, like it had tried to destroy itself from the inside multiple times. A hole the size of a dinner plate above the oven acted as both a smoke vent and the only source of light in the room. Isadora sat quietly in the corner cutting potatoes. She didn't speak any Spanish, so that made communication even more difficult that normal, but she handed me a bowl of snap peas and I spent the next thirty minutes peeling them and tossing them into a rusty pot which would later have brown water thrown in to become part of our dinner.

As strange as it may sound, the whole thing was quite relaxing. It was like distilling my life down to its most simple elements; food, nature, quiet. I seemed to feel my senses opening up in a way that only happens with unfamiliar contentment. I began to hear sounds from across the courtyard; donkeys, chickens, a dog, a cat, kids shouting. I began to smell the simmering dish on the stove, flavored by years of spilled soup and meat drippings. My eyes began to adjust to the light and I could see the care that went into this kitchen, the pride that Isadora took in her life, her family. You cant see that in a picture, or smell it from a hotel room, or feel it from a tour bus.

Then Isadora handed me a hoe.

Fast forward about two minutes. I was shaking donkey feces from my hand after placing it squarely in the middle of a warm one while climbing around a blind-corner of dirt steps carved out of the side of the hill to the family potato patch. The garden was about the size of a small bus, and I was hoe in hand, totally destroying potato plants, all in the name of 'volunteer'. The ground was mixed with animal shit and rocks and it was an amazing feat of nature and mankind that food was actually grown here. It was actually a blessing when she left Elard and I, it took the pressure off my hoein' skills. We were supposed to be 'redrawing' the lines that the plants are planted on, whatever the hell they're called. The problem was that it appeared that the plants were arranged in a total random order. If the garden was a painting, it would most definitely be an abstract, and a bad one at that. Eventually we decided we had done enough damage to the family's garden and slinked off to the bedroom to rest and give me a chance to pick the dried blood from my hair.

Dinner was eerily quiet. I was introduced to Miriam, Isadora's 20 year-old daughter. After seventh grade, she left school to work at home with her mother. Taking care of the family is big business around here. The men are put to work as soon as possible and return for meals and sleep. This means that the women wake up, cook breakfast, clean up after breakfast and begin cooking lunch and the afternoon is basically the same. By the time dinner is over, it's usually close to 8:00 pm, which is bedtime.

This was Miriam's life for the past five years and it would be her life until she got married, at that point she will alter her routine by adding childbirth periodically. That's about it. There is no high school in the village and parents wanting to send their children to high school must be able to afford it, both for the cost of the school and the cost of having one less person around the mud kitchen. It is often unclear which price is higher.

It may sound like either a rough life or a horribly wasted life, but that's not the impression I get here. I would probably call it 'simple', extremely simple. The people spend their time preparing for whatever comes next. They don't seem to worry about the thing after that or the thing after that. They seem to be living life the way I'm trying to spend my time here, by simply being a part of the moment. Whether that is completely true or not, I may never know.

The next day was spent in the school. I sang, danced and spoke a mixture of English and Spanish for the whole day. Well most of the day, a good portion of my time was spent being embarrassed for various cultural snafus that I wont go into here.

Sometime after lunch I was sitting with a bunch of kids, hanging out, sucking on a juice box and tossing back crackers, when I started to think about the difference between Ccaccaccollo and the school in Cusco. Technically they were both considered 'volunteer' work by the people of the travel company, but in the flesh they were as different as night and day. Compared to living in North America, they would probably both seem quite similar, but after disconnecting myself for a week, the difference between the two activities is like the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing one.

The kids in Cusco really needed help. For them, getting help (whether it be from me or someone with some sort of qualifications) was the difference between life and death. Of freedom and jail. Of getting a good night's rest or having nightmare ridden sleep. I've had times in my life where I felt this way and the difference between the two is often as simple as following my heart or following my mind. But the truth is, the devil may not be as obvious as you may think.

The people in Ccaccaccollo are not fighting for their lives or their souls. They're just living. This is the way it's been for hundreds of years and I'm being blessed with the opportunity to see life in its most simple form and realizing that it's not life or death and that it's not a matter of constant struggle. The people here smile and laugh. They play and sing. And after I find a place to buy some beer, they're sure as hell going to drink and be merry.

Now I'm sitting on the bed of my room, leaning back, looking up at the five-foot ceilings wondering what the hell is making all the noise in the walls and writing stuff. I've been getting chased around by kids and donkeys all day, eating guinea pigs and trout at meals, drinking cold beer that has never seen a refrigerator and just enjoying myself. Miriam has asked me not to leave for unknown reasons of blind love of white guys and tomorrow I begin the final phase of my journey, which is only half finished.

I need sleep, which probably won't come very soon. I need life, which abounds between the snore and the sigh. I need to get the words straight, which cloud my mind.

You need pictures, but they are nearly as meaningless as my words because even the combination of the two is a mere toss of a bullet at a high speed train.

It's a Scarf Party

2007-12-29T19:45:00.001-06:00

Mi Casa es su Casa

2007-12-26T07:36:00.000-06:00

.......Pero trae su propia silla y el vino....

Casa de los Hombres del Sol

2007-12-19T09:03:00.000-06:00

When I met Guillermo, I was struggling to color inside the lines of a leather bookmark that I had made. He came and sat down next to me with a shoe box, a dirty cup of glue paste and a stack of bits and pieces of wrapping paper. It appeared that he had collected the wrapping paper over who knows how long. There were pieces of birthday paper, Christmas, Easter, even some that were just colorful ads from the local newspaper.

He sat down and, chewing on his bottom lip, began to fold and piece the bits together into a quilt-like sheet, but never cutting the paper. I could tell that he did not want to cut any off, just in case he needed the paper when it was all done. Once he had the basic layout finished, he began to lather on the sticky and rapidly drying glue onto the back and then to carefully place it onto the top of the shoebox. Then the sides, then the bottom. The whole time he was talking to us, but I couldn’t tell what he was saying. None of us could. Guillermo couldn’t speak English, and he wasn’t speaking Spanish. He was speaking Quechua, which sounded like a mix between Chinese and Spanish. Every now and then he would shout out “HO HO HO!” It was, after all, the middle of December. You tend to forget that when you’re in Cusco, where it’s in the mid-70s every day and sunny. You tend to forget a lot about the rest of the world when you are sitting in the Inti Runakunaq Wasin, or the House of the People of the Sun.

This is a school ran by volunteer teachers that is meant to help street children or other kids with problems, which means about 95% of the kids in Peru would qualify. This school has between 30 and 50 kids at any given time. They don’t actually have classes, most of the kids go to school, but they help them with their homework and teach them other skills that they will likely need in the future.

Most of these kids are of Incan descent, which in Peru means a lifelong uphill struggle. It’s a slippery slope. The parents have children, but they don’t have enough money to provide for the family, so they have to put the kids to work, which keeps them from going to school, which keeps them from moving up in this world. In the meantime, the pressures of survival are constant and strong, which leads to temptation and often crime. It’s a hard life in Peru for many people, many children. It’s a hard life in South America for many people, many children. It’s a hard life in the entire world for many people, many children. It’s good to see people that recognize that and act upon it.

The little things that we take for granted are enormous here. If Guillermo had a full roll of wrapping paper, he would have been the happiest kid in the school for the day. If you give a kid a new pencil or an eraser, they hold it with pride and are looked upon with envy from their classmates, a potentially dangerous situation. Clean water, clean clothes. Safe food, safe streets. Art, music, books. Nope, nope, nope; work, struggle, money, live as long as you can.

Guillermo is mentally handicapped, it’s fairly obvious. He is about 14 years old and no taller than a trash can. His voice is deep and resounding, like Luther Vandross and his vocabulary is limited. If I had to guess, I would say he has a mixture of Attention Deficit Disorder and Autism. But he’s never lacking a smile and, even though I have no idea what he’s saying, we have plenty to talk about. He shows me his box, wonders what he can put in it. He’s interested in my watch and fascinated by the stubble on my face. He awes at the size of my feet. I ask him about the soccer shirt he’s wearing. It’s both relaxing and disturbing. Of all my companions, I’m the loudest and the one most willing to totally butcher the Spanish language to try and learn, thus I get quite a lot of attention and laughs from people.

The whole time he’s been pasting pieces of wrapping paper on his box, I’ve been attempting to create a bookmark. Something simple I would assume. My bookmarks are typically business cards that I find laying around my office or the receipt that was in the book when I bought it. Not the case here. These kids don’t own any books; the bookmarks are made to be sold. Straps of leather are cut then, using a hammer on a metal carved awl, impressions are made of local touristy locations on a tree stump out behind the school. Awls in the form of Machu Picchu, the name CUSCO, the Nassau lines, an alpaca, a cactus are smacked repeatedly onto the battered leather then colored and painted by hand. A kid can make anywhere from five to twenty of these a day. They’re sold on the street to gringos for one or two Soles (33 to 66 cents), the proceeds are used to buy more materials and leftovers are kept by the kids. It’s not a sweatshop, it’s more like a home economics class combined with a business school.

While I am totally destroying this poor piece of cow skin, around the corner, some of my traveling companions are doing similar damage to a beaded necklace and others are ruining weeks of work on a cross-stitched blanket.

Not much of a volunteer work huh? That’s pretty much what I thought. However, after a while I notice something. These kids that were kind of shy when we got there are actually sticking their noses into our business and laughing, pointing, but more importantly, helping. All the sudden it hits me, whether it was the intention of the trip or not, our lack of coordination is building confidence in these kids. It’s like a third class, home economics, business, and finally people skills. It’s important for them to realize that they actually do have skills that are not common, which helps them realize that they are not common and if there’s one thing that I’m good at, it’s not doing things right and letting people laugh at me. Holding a hammer and a piece of leather, I had no free hand to carry my pride around with me. It’s like I was made for this kind of work.

The school is somewhat frightening in appearance. Like most buildings in this part of the city, you don’t even know it’s there until you are inside. You have to knock on a wooden door until they unlock it from the inside and you walk into an inner-courtyard that is overgrown with unknown plants and trash. Most of the windows are either broken (inside windows) or have bars on them (outside windows). The roof leaks, due to the fact that the mud and straw mortar that was used to build it has been soaked by the heavy rains and dried by the intense sun on almost a daily basis for all of eternity. What paint there is is chipped and cracked, uneven and muddy. There is a single water line that feeds the bathrooms, the kitchen and the outdoor washing sink.

After a couple hours, I couldn’t remember who was teaching who. The teachers are teaching the kids Spanish and math and how to make jewelry. The kids. Man, they’re teaching the serious stuff. Patience, understanding, forgiveness. What am I doing here? I’m not teaching. I’m a student of this place and everyone is my teacher.

There’s a Dutch girl running around, standing out worse than me. She’s tall, well over six foot. Bright red hair flowing down her back. White as a sheet. Speaking flawless Spanish and I assume her Quechua is probably coming along nicely. She’s been volunteering here for several months now and is so busy she can barely stand still. You just don’t expect to see North Americans/European types here for such a long time. As soon as the front door closes, it’s like being shot into the most remote place on the planet.

By the second day we began the painting. It wasn’t much, but it was something we could do unsupervised, or at least initially. After about an hour, the kids had decided to come out and help us in full force. We started by cleaning off the surfaces that we would paint. It was mostly futile, as most of the walls were made of mud and were caked with multiple layers of paint over the year. The more you cleaned, the thinner the walls got. I bet that’s how Jesus felt; the more he did, the less we became. But yet he did it. Yet we did it.

Guillermo had taken a broom and dustpan and began sweeping the dirt into a trash can. It wasn’t long before he was shoveling the dirt from the gutters and then the dirt from the dirt road that ran along side of the school.

Once we had cleaned the dirt appropriately, we broke out the paint. The chosen colors were white, light blue and pink and we all got into the act. As the tallest person in the entire city, I was lucky enough to be in charge of all overhead painting projects, which translated to me getting drenched in paint for about seven hours straight.

About halfway through the project, the kids were released to go home and I was the lone witness to something that reminded me of how precarious of a situation we were dealing with. One of the kids decided to bully one of the others for some money. They were all outside of the school and I was the only adult around (aldut-ish).

Hector was about 16 years old and built like a dark brown brick. He was about as tall as a shopping cart and about as wide as one too. He had absolutely no teeth and eyes that were like steel. Out of all the kids, this is only one that honestly frightened me. Not that I thought that he would do anything to me, but when he was around, I kept one eye on him at all times. A couple times I caught him trying to sneak over to where one of the two girls were painting with their backs turned to him. He was not moving over there with wonder or cheer, it was like watching a shark move and the kid had street smarts. I shudder to think what he could have done to one of the girls, but I would always choose that time to walk over and talk to the girls and he would slink away into the shadows when I got there, staring me down with some form of hatred that I doubt he even understood.

When I was watching him move on the kid outside I knew that even if I stopped him here, he would just re-approach the boy when they moved out of sight. He stared the kid down in front of everyone and moved to within inches of his face, not blinking, not smiling; perfectly straight faced and perfectly knowing what he wanted. The smaller boy handed over the money and Hector kneed him in the side and moved away.

Whether it was my place or not, I stepped in and took the money back and gave it back to the boy. Now, where I come from, if someone steps up to defend you, that was your death warrant, but I had been picked on enough when I was young that I couldn’t let it happen.

I didn’t tell anyone about it and hesitated to even write about it, but I did for a reason. I have to call it like I see it. Sometimes I am just too weary to offer my opinion and this is one of those times. Maybe seeing a bully hit too close to home. Maybe seeing that kid made me feel the hopelessness of these poor lives. Maybe it made me lose faith in helping. Maybe the baby blue and pink colors that we slathered across the wall were there as a way to dull the pain; a way of poking fun at it. Maybe it was more for the teachers than the kids. I just don’t know.

But it’s there and it’s happening. So if you’re driving around the ghetto of Cusco, the area not five blocks away from the Irish Pub that the white people spend thousands of dollars a day at and two blocks away from the market that North Americans barter for scarves that are already practically free; and you see a building that has about as much pink and blue on the sidewalk as it does on the mud walls, just give pause for a moment. The murderer, the victim, the witness; we all think we’re playing the lead role, but that just means you’re not paying attention to the play.

El presente es un regalo

2007-12-15T20:56:00.000-06:00

Day 1 – Lima, Elevation 10 ft.

The smells are the first thing that hit you when you arrive. They’re what remind you that you’re somewhere foreign. It’s not just Lima, it’s not even South Amercia, it’s just not-North America. The combination of the massive amount of diesel-based pollution held into place by poverty, desperation and love. It assaulted my nose and it made me feel….real. It’s not that I love the smell, but it always reminds me of where I’m at and what I’m doing. The smell makes me realize that I’m one of the lucky ones, one of the people who desire to get out, to see the world for what it really is and realize that there is not way to describe it to people who have not been there.

This is the first day of my two week trip. This is the first page of my new journal. Lima, Peru. Elevation 0 feet, 0 meters. Sea level. Not that it matters today, but at some point it may. If your country has a border that touches an ocean, t

hen it has at least one spot with an elevation of zero, that place is about six blocks from where I’m sitting now. It doesn’t matter if there’s mountains, you must start at zero. That’s what I’m trying to do. Start at zero. The real zero. Empty my mind. Zero. Empty my head, my heart, my inhibitions. Zero. Zero. Zero.

So now I’m sitting in my hotel room in Miraflores, Lima, Peru, sitting on a small bed, typing on my computer which is resting

on a chair and listening to SonyTV in the background wondering how the next couple weeks will play out. I have a horrible sore throat from the flight and it is the middle of the night. I am attempting to take the Common route and just Be. Be here, mind, body and soul. There are too many distractions waiting for me back home at the moment and I will not let them pull any part of my being away from this experience. Louis Pasteur is famous for his work with milk, but in the scientific world, his discovery is of secondary importance to the quote that all biologists learn on the first day of class – “Chance favors the prepared mind.” Mind, body, soul. Be here. Be.

Day 2

I’m in a small hotel in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima. My throat was hurting this morning, even worse than last night, but other than that I feel fine. I forced myself to sleep in until 7:30 even though the anxiety is killing me. I’ve got the whole day to myself, until about 2:00 when I meet my traveling companions. According posting on the bulletin board downstairs, there will be six of us. Myself and another guy and four girls.

Breakfasts in South America are great. Ever since becoming more and more active, my appetite has been voracious. If I don’t eat at least four or five times a day, it’s Bad Newsville. Dressed in my Sean John’s and Puma slippers, I crept downstairs with my Jules Verne book and ate a plate of various cheeses and breakfast meats with several cups of Nescafe instant coffee. It always takes a day or two to get used to the coffee and I can never understand how these countries that make the best coffee can serve such shit. It must all go to North America.

Because I had the day, I decided to venture down to the Lima Plaza Mayor to haunt and take pictures for the morning. Here’s a free tip to traveling in a place where you don’t know the language: Always keep a business card for your hotel in your pocket, no matter what. Show it to a taxi driver & he’ll get you home, safe, sound and properly price gouged.

The weather here is great; mid-70’s, sunny and happy. I took, what seemed like, several hundred pictures before heading back to the hotel to rest and meet my cohorts. When I got back to the room, I had a brief heart attack when I couldn’t find my camera charger, but it was buried in the bottom of my Kelty. That would have been bad.

For some reason, I was in the mood to drink, not get drunk, but to have some alcohol in my system, relax me a bit. Over lunch, I had three glasses of wine and felt great, despite my sore throat.

At 2:00 pm, I had the chance to meet the tour leader and the people who will be accompanying me on my trip. I really didn’t know what to expect and in fact, I really didn’t know all the details of the trip. I’m trying something new and unlike me on this trip, and that is to let go of control. I’m not going to worry about what day of the week it is, or where I’ll be tomorrow. I just want to let the people handle the details whose job it is.

Elard is our tour leader and we chatted while we waited on the others to finish eating lunch. He’s 25 and has been w/ the company for 2 years and seems pretty cool. His English is good and we probably have a lot in common.

Four of the six of us consist of a family; mom, dad and two sisters. Maurice (dad), Christine (mom), Emma (15 year old daughter) and Channel (12 year old daughter) are from around Toronto, Canada. This is the beginning of a 2+ month vacation for them that will end in Costa Rica in February.

Our sixth companion, Sharon, wasn’t around as her flight wasn’t due to get into Lima until the middle of the night.

After discussing the details of the trip and toasting with a round of pisco sours, we arranged to meet in the morning at 7:00 am, when we would eat breakfast and head to the airport to catch our flight to Cusco, where the remainder of our trip will be based out of.

After firing off a couple emails and looking at my pictures from the day, I decided to catch a taxi to Larcomar. My previous trip to Peru was centered around the area and I wanted to see it again, plus if you’re within a mile of the beach, you really must see it.

It was strange, I ate dinner at the same restaurant, walked by the same club and picked up a taxi at the same place I kissed Gisella before leaving the city and it was just…comfortable. Tomorrow is really the beginning of the trip, and it felt good to find some sort of familiarity in the area before jumping off the cliff into the unknown. I just feel peaceful, no need to talk, no need to frown, no reason to worry. Relax my muscles, my mind and smile.

Not a bad...

2007-12-12T21:49:00.000-06:00

....way to watch the sun rise.

Still alive, cold and way up in the air, both physically, mentally and spiritually.
- L

Estoy Vivo

2007-12-02T14:59:00.000-06:00

Greetings from the very dirty and beautiful south. I just wanted to put a quick note up to let everyone know that I am alive and all that fun stuff. So...yeah, alive....

Ciao - Hooty

Here's a couple pics from my day around Lima, more later when I have more time:

This was the first car I ever owned. I had no idea I had to go to a car show in Lima to see it again. Ol' Bou'

Eating Despairagus Makes Your Heart Smell Funny

2007-11-29T07:45:00.000-06:00

I started this whole blog thingy about three years ago. The original function of it was simple enough - I was moving to China for a year and thought that it would be a good way to communicate to the filthy democratic capitalists that are my friends and family. I was going to use it as a place to post my musings about life in another country and maybe a picture or two from time to time. Nothing big, just something that said, ‘Hey guys, I’m alive. Here’s me with short people’.

Well, about three weeks into the trip I noticed that my 'simple musings' had taken on a life of their own. I slowly began to write with more and more confidence and more and more enjoyment came to me from this newly discovered outlet. I began to get excited when I read my own writings with the realization that I could be witty and funny in the same sentence that I was being dangerously honest and emotional. Of course, all I had for comparison was Chinese restaurant menus, so naturally I thought I was the next Dickens. Everyone else may beg to differ.

Fast forward a year or so. Post-China. I would sit down at my desk saying “Ok, today we write!” But there was nothing. Why, all the sudden did it become so difficult to write? Where did the magic go? I couldn’t figure it out. I would sit in front of my computer or a pad of paper and just stare. I just couldn’t get back in the groove. I couldn’t capture and formulate things the way I had that prior year. Things in my life were pretty good. I was in a relationship with a great girl, I was at a new job that wasn’t too bad, I was exercising and eating right. What the heck? I couldn’t figure it out.

Fast forward another 6 months. All the sudden, I can write again. Not only write, but I was really bringing the noise this time. Very little of this writing ever made it out to the public, for slightly selfish reasons, but I was writing, and it was great. What happened? The thing I first noticed was that, even though I was writing, I wasn’t very happy about it. In fact, I was downright miserable in my life. Things had taken drastic turns around me left and right and life was dishing it out on a rusty platter. I jacked up my relationship, I was miserable and sweaty in my city and my job had turned into Lamesville Inc.

That's when the realization hit. The secret sauce of creativity.

That realization?

Happiness can really throw a monkey wrench your creativity. Especially if you're not in a 'self-inspiring' situation, like on the moon or something.

I’m not alone in this one, Hemmingway shot himself in the face, F. Scott Fitzgerald was an alcoholic and suffered two heart attacks (the second of which did him in, however it was just a race between his weak heart and Zelda showing up with a sharpened butter knife), Hunter S. Thompson – shotgun blast to the face, Jack Kerouac – internal bleeding form cirrhosis of the liver onset by severe alcoholism, I could go on and on. My point is that it seems like words form on the tips of your fingertips the best when life sucks. It’s only when you’re sick and broken hearted that your attitude shifts from the comforts of life to the reality of life and things begin to focus to a dangerously sharp level. It’s happened to me many times over the years, yet every time I think I’ve experienced it for the last time, I inevitably take a wrong step, or wrong steps, and find myself in familiar territory.

This last time was a doozy. Not only was I writing more, I began to take pictures more, and any one of the links on the side of this page can show you how good or bad that’s turned out. Either way, I was back. Back in the creative saddle, and quite honestly, as good as the creativity feels, I think that I preferred happiness. At any rate, here I am. In one way or another. Fighting desperately to maintain creativity without despair. I’m back home and today I’m here to drop the bomb on my next little adventure. To be inspired alone is only a small step up from meaningless. It’s what you do with your inspiration that shows you what kind of a person you are, how thick you roll, how much spank you’re packing. Inspiration into creativity, water into wine, love into a voice.

The scoop? I gotta get out of here, if only for a short time. In the past two weeks, I’ve been to Tulsa, Wichita, Kansas City, Omaha and Chicago, but that’s just not good enough. I need farther. I need more. I need to be tested and possibly hurt. I need…someplace…foreign. So, I’ve decided to dust off my passport and hit the skies, the water and, more importantly, the world. Rather than being inspired by spite or sadness, I'm going to actively seek inspiration.

Saturday morning, I’ll begin testing my stair climbing abilities by climbing the steps of an airplane that will drop me off in the one country that I miss more than any other - Peru.

This has nothing to do with my previous (totally awesome) trip; this trip is of a personal nature. It’s my chance to revitalize my heart by volunteering my time in the city of Cuzco for a week. Pulling teeth, building houses, teaching people the differences between suede Pumas and leather adidas, helping them write dope hip-hop lyrics, you know, the regular stuff.

The flip side of the trip will be physical. I've been exercising relentlessly for well over a year and I have decided to do something with it, other than to look good. So on the second leg of my trip, I will hit the trail and make the 45km hike up the Inca Trail to visit Machu Picchu. It's really not the horizontal distance that I'm concerned about, it's the three 13,000+ foot passes that are on the trip, hence the introduction of the Stairmaster into my daily routine. That wretched machine has turned my legs to jelly every morning for months now and I'm about to reward them by doing the 'outdoor Stairmaster'.

So there it is, my garbled description of what goes on inside my head when I try and write as well as a little nugget about my upcoming weeks. Hopefully I'll be able to do Cuzco, Lima and Machu Picchu better descriptive justice than the above when I return.

I’m out. Back in a flash.

Here’s something to keep you occupied, it’s by Pablo Neruda, probably the greatest Chilean poet ever to live, a much better writer than I will ever be:

Canto XII from The Heights of Macchu Picchu
Arise to birth with me, my brother.
Give me your hand out of the depths
sown by your sorrows.
You will not return from these stone fastnesses.
You will not emerge from subterranean time.
Your rasping voice will not come back,
nor your pierced eyes rise from their sockets.

Look at me from the depths of the earth,
tiller of fields, weaver, reticent shepherd,
groom of totemic guanacos,
mason high on your treacherous scaffolding,
iceman of Andean tears,
jeweler with crushed fingers,
farmer anxious among his seedlings,
potter wasted among his clays--
bring to the cup of this new life
your ancient buried sorrows.
Show me your blood and your furrow;
say to me: here I was scourged
because a gem was dull or because the earth
failed to give up in time its tithe of corn or stone.
Point out to me the rock on which you stumbled,
the wood they used to crucify your body.
Strike the old flints
to kindle ancient lamps, light up the whips
glued to your wounds throughout the centuries
and light the axes gleaming with your blood.

I come to speak for your dead mouths.

Throughout the earth
let dead lips congregate,
out of the depths spin this long night to me
as if I rode at anchor here with you.

And tell me everything, tell chain by chain,
and link by link, and step by step;
sharpen the knives you kept hidden away,
thrust them into my breast, into my hands,
like a torrent of sunbursts,
an Amazon of buried jaguars,
and leave me cry: hours, days and years,
blind ages, stellar centuries.

And give me silence, give me water, hope.
Give me the struggle, the iron, the volcanoes.
Let bodies cling like magnets to my body.
Come quickly to my veins and to my mouth.
Speak through my speech, and through my blood.

Omaha: Where catsup is called 'spicy sauce'

2007-11-28T06:54:00.000-06:00

Have you ever had a really good weekend? I have. I especially like it when it falls around a holiday, so that the 'weekend' is actually four or five days long. That's basically how my Thanksgiving was. It was busy to be sure, but it was totally awesome. It started with a drive to Wichita to kick it Cheney-style followed by a night of hanging with Pomeroy and a bunch of other people that I dont see often enough and was capped off with a totally awesome trip to Omaha, to do one of my favoritest things in the world - go to a zoo.

A few people know that I did two summers at the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, splitting my time between taking care of snakes and thawing out frozen rats in the herpetarium and riding a bike-slash-giving boat rides for Visitor Services, which I was WAY to immature to do. I love all things animal; holding them, feeding them, cleaning up their poop, thawing them out to feed to others, eating them, actually about everything except hunting them.

For years, I've been warned that the Omaha zoo is the toppermost of the poppermost (vague Beatles reference) and over the weekend I finally got to see it for myself. Of course it was cold as hell, but it didnt matter, as the cool stuff was inside. It was followed up (and actually preceded) with wine. I really love wine. Antiques, which I also love and several hours of driving while trying not to laugh a drop of pee out.

So here I am, sitting in Chicago, thumbing through pictures, thinking back on a great weekend and realizing that I'm one of the lucky ones that was fortunate enough to have a good one land on a 5-dayer.

The zoo was sweet, the company was awesome, the vino was great and the pictures are in focus-ish. All in all, it was a great break from adulthood and the rather mundane routines of maturity. Ch-ch-check them out.

How many people does it take to open up a flash memory card?

Now kids, what have I told you about being alone with uncle Daniel?

Susan kept sneaking off to pray all weekend.

One of the few meals of my life where both coffee and wine was involved.

Holidaze Part II: Remember That One Time...

2007-11-26T12:34:00.000-06:00

....that I went to the Beaumont and didnt get drunk? Yeah, that was great. However, I think I was about the only person that wasnt doing much drinking and here is some proof from Friday's Pomeroy show.

Ciao - Luke

PS: Apparently low-light photography is not my specialty, but it is what it is. Practice, practice, practice. Love, love, love. Look, see, hear.

...Insert Funny Holiday Title Here...

2007-11-23T14:01:00.000-06:00

First of all, I feel that I should apologize to anyone who accidentally got in front of me yesterday during the dining hours of 10am and 8:30pm. If I bit off one of your fingers or slopped any pecan pie debris on you, please accept my deepest apologies. Anyone that I didnt physically offend, then I apologize for any emotional damage done by witnessing 'that skinny relative' eat his way through several pounds of food and bottles of wine. I was in the zone and remember very little. Lucky for all of us, my camera was there and was able to capture fragments of the day. Please help me put them together into a meaningful manner so that my food-fueled rampage makes more sense than Naked Lunch.

To anyone who was not there, consider yourself lucky. Look at your own risk.

Lee's Summit to the West Bottoms

2007-11-21T09:10:00.000-06:00

Having nothing whatsoever to do with the holidays, I decided to clean off some more pictures from my computer today & have put together some from the past couple weeks snapped around Kansas City. Hope you enjoy, this post has about as much to do with the holidays as my next post will, if I ever finish writing it, but it's going to be a doozy for sure.

Happy turkey day everyone, I've been doing doing nearly seven miles a day on the treadmill/river run plus another four on the stairmaster, all in preparation for the Romanesque gluttony debacle that is my grandparents house on Thanksgiving.

Politickin' KC Style

2007-11-18T20:10:00.001-06:00

Today I had the pleasure of eating lunch with Mayor Funkhouser and I have to say, it was quite an experience. I haven't really had much experience in my life of hobnobbin' with officials or royalty or even local celebs, so I'm basing all this on nothing. It sure does seem like I spend a lot of time explaining 'why I don't know anything about ' because, I really don't know much about much, and local politics are no exception. I feel that this may be somewhat justified in this case, due to the fact that for the past year I lived in Houston and the year before that I lived in Beijing and the seven years before that I was hopelessly drunk on cheap bourbon and cheaper beer.
Since returning to this city, I have felt that it is time for me to, at an absolute minimum, pay attention to local happenings, if not take it a step further and get involved on some level. More on that later. Back to lunch.
Without getting into the whole deal, I just have to say, this guy is one of the easiest guys to listen to I have ever met. I'm sure he's said his share of bonehead quotes and stepped in shit plenty of times, but the fact is, he was the city auditor for like 250 years and no one could possibly understand the total chaos of the city’s financial situation and that probably makes him pretty stinkin’ qualified to step into the UFC arena that is Kansas City politics. Combine that with his level and logical manner of speaking and you've got yourself a mayor who cares about educating those around him as much as getting people to agree with him. Now, talking politics with my friends is a dangerous game as they are all smarter than me, they all follow them more than me and they are, generally, better people than me, and when it comes to supporting certain people over others they can be downright mean, so I'm going out on a thin branch here held firmly in place by my ignorance and the knowledge I gleaned over about an hour discussion over chicken breast linguini and a salad.
Basically, Kansas City, MO politics revolve around two things: money and Kansas.
Where are we going to get the money to do . The big one right now is the Light Rail. That has gotten so much press that no one could possibly follow the web of taxes and routes and funding and blah blah. The city is being puppeted by a guy that lives in Virginia and no one knows that the hell is going on. The second big financial issue is basically 'how can the Power and Light District possibly ever make money'. Unless Garth wants to play nightly for the next ten years, the area's going to have it's problems here in about, ohh, two years.
Secondly, the Kansas issue will always be there. How can the two states cooperate better for 'the good of the area'? Missouri has the big sports teams ('bigish') and Kansas has the money, though if you've driven through Olathe in the past couple years, you'd begin to question that. In the meantime, people are moving out of the 'urban core' and into North Kansas City, which further stresses city tax dollars because it's expensive to expand the infrastructure.
At any rate, inspiration takes many forms, even if it's just inspiration to pay attention and honestly, it's nice to be inspired by something positive than the normal spite or jealousy induced inspiration that fills our lives on a daily basis and we all need some good positive inspiration in our lives from time to time. Love him or hate him, at least listen to him.

Vote Quimby.

Happy Birthday Kid

2007-11-14T07:42:00.000-06:00

Ahh, birthday season. Actually, it’s always birthday season, but it seems that this time of the year is always chalk full of the suckers. The pathetic thing is, I am horrible about remembering them. My mother’s, my father’s; they are forgotten nearly every year. My two sister’s birthdays, I usually know them down to the month. I am a squatter in my grandma’s basement and only know her birthday because it is a key component in bypassing the Guggenheim-like security systems here. I only have one or two friends, and their birthdays are as foreign to me as a three-minute mile. Every now and then, something happens with someone and for some reason or another, I will remember their birthday. Beau’s is on tax day. Wenke’s is close to Super Bowl Sunday. Candace’s birthday has something to do with the square of four. My point is, these mystical and memorial days occupy my memory like a collage of newspaper articles and pictures, and after this many years, it will probably be like that for the rest of my life.

So here’s the key – if you want me to remember your birthday, our options are really limited. Firstly, if something really memorable happens on that day. Do you think that anyone whose birthday is September 11^th ever has any problem with people remembering their day? Secondly, if it rolls off the tongue or is a weird mathematical phenomena. That crap will stick in my mind like peanut butter on a cracker.

Another way, though not my favorite, is to make me cry or piss me off. I always remember birthdays from people who hurt me. I’m not sure why, I promise that I don’t remember just so I can do some voodoo stuff or wish any ill on you. If something bad happens on your birthday, don’t blame me; blame your own karma or something. Believe me, bad stuff has happened to me on my birthday; I had to put my cat Coltrane to sleep on my 30^th birthday.

This brings me back around to the original topic, because there is one birthday that I do not ever forget. I may not remember it until the day before, but I always remember it. That is my birthday.

I’m getting old.

I feel it more and more every day.

My skin is getting loose around my chin and my hair is growing slower.

I no longer make decisions based on a type of alcohol or the opening band, rather based on how late I will be awake versus how early I must wake up or how interesting of a story I may be able to make of it.

I care about colors and art, wine and wine glasses, black and white or sepia, NPR or Philip Glass, eating right and exercise. Quite frankly, it’s disgusting.

I rarely receive gifts any more, which is fine with me; with gifts come guilt, because I know that more often than not I will not remember the giver’s birthday.

One thing that has changed is that I now can give gifts to myself. Which, as everyone knows are the best gifts, which brings me to the long drawn out topic of my gift from me to me this year. I’ll give you a hint: it’s a house….

No big deal, just a house. I saw it, gasped at the price and nearly immediately made an offer on it, written on a piece of paper and handed over to the agent with shaking hands and a drop of sweat in the corner and three weeks ago, on my birthday, my offer was accepted. Probably not because it was my birthday, but it didn’t hurt.

So here it is, November 14^th, nearly a month after my birthday and I’m finally letting the cat out of the bag. Why wait so long? Karma McJinxy-Me kept me from saying much. Inspection, loan application, appraisal, figuring out if I could really afford this behemoth and other things that cause me to fret daily, nightly, and ever so rightly. So at long last here it is and rather than bore everyone with specifics about when it was built (a long long time ago) or how big it is (huge) or what neighborhood it’s in (a really cool one) or when I’ll actually be moving in (unfortunately, not for several weeks), I’ll just put some pictures up and cross my fingers and pray that by outing myself for being a homo…wner I’m not jinxing myself further.

Happy birthday me. Wont you come and play?

How Long Is A Chinese Blog?

2007-11-12T07:51:00.000-06:00

Very long apparently. I found a bunch of mostly-out of focus pictures of signs and whatnot around Big Red. Some are funny, some are very serious apparently, some are just colorful cool. At some point, you people will believe me that I actually went there!!

- L

Chubby's Chinese Tourism Adventure

2007-11-09T07:40:00.000-06:00

More pics from Big Red. These pictures are mostly around various tourist spots around the joint, ohh, and a picture of urine, just to add some class to the gig.

Enjoy

People and Places

2007-11-06T13:14:00.000-06:00

Here's some more China pictures. Like the last ones, these are mostly either out of focus or in some sort of super-focus that allows you to see sweat beads. Look closely and you'll see papi in his 'larger' days.

Ciao ciao - Hooty

Old School Saturns Revenge

2007-11-04T16:26:00.000-06:00

After realizing how many thousands of pictures I have on my computer, I decided to organize a few from my time in China. Of course, there's way to many for just one post, so I'm just going to post 'a few' at a time. All these pics were taken with the worst camera in the world and if I ever see anyone with a Sony DSC camera I will immediately dash it to the ground with extreme prejudice.

Anyway, these pictures are mostly from 2005-2006 when I was living in Langfang China. At the time, most of my energy was spent writing about getting my life together instead of picturin', as becomes obvious when you see the pictures.

Zai Jian - 卢卡斯

Goulet, Goulet, Goulet

2007-10-31T18:01:00.000-05:00

RIP Sr. Goulet....

Too Many Pictures

2007-10-30T19:19:00.001-05:00

cover2-1 Mosaic, originally uploaded by Hutmacher 2.0.

Something to do when you have way to many pictures on your computer - turn them into a rendition of Andre the Giant. OBEY!!

Top o' The World

2007-10-25T08:25:00.000-05:00

I got to visit the roof of our building, Penn Tower, the other day and took some so-so pictures of the amazing view we have. If a picture is worth a thousand words, seeing it in person has to be worth at least 1500. Either way, I beg a thousand pardons for being a dork.

Ciao ciao - L

Sun with red filter.

Dont Cross

There's nothing like a trip to the St. Joe Zombie Night At The Drive in to make you happy to be home in the fall.

It's fall, and it's Charleston

2007-10-23T07:13:00.000-05:00

Here's some pictures from a trip to beautiful Charleston WV last week. What a great part of the country.

Fat Cats, Birthdays and Slow-Synch Flashes

2007-10-15T09:38:00.000-05:00

Chris and Adam Wilson are camera whores. I just had to get that out of the way. Below are probably way too many pictures from Olivia's Birthday Extravaganza this weekend. Olivia, happy birthday, you have the singing voice of a modem and I love it.

I apologize for the large size and long load time below, I estimate it takes one minute for every pound of this cat, who did not enjoy getting it's picture taken.

Feel free to holler at me if anyone would like any of the full-sized pictures or to see any of the others from the night.

- Luke

A Complete Scavenger Hunt In One Room

2007-10-13T11:16:00.000-05:00

A few random pictures from the basement of Grandma's house. It's kind of creepy, kind of funny and, apparently, extremely boozy.

What house is complete without stuffed animals? This one has no eyes, yet it still stares at me.

Grandpa was a Shriner, this is a Shriner camel. If you pull it's head off, bourbon spills out into your sippy cup. It is still about half full. Does booze have an expiration date?

If your camel runs dry, you can always drink from the tailpipe of the phaeton.

I especially like 'THE DUKE' that's stamped into the side, a sort of reminder of who you're starin at. I like to think of him as grandpa's booze guardian.

What Does Papa Do Anyway?

2007-10-11T09:22:00.001-05:00

I’ve basically had the same job for the last seven years. One would think that my friends and family would know what it is that I do. That apparently not the case. It is not because my friends and family are not intelligent, they are all smarter than me (except for one person, and you should be ashamed of yourself idiot), rather it is because I’m horrible at explaining it.

Last week, I got the opportunity to go out ‘into the field’ as they say in the biz. My company is doing the engineering work for a pipeline project near Odessa, MO. This project probably sounds simple: There is a pipeline that goes under I-70 that is getting worn out. This pipeline needs to be replaced. However, rather than just digging the other one up, thus destroying the busiest highway in Missouri for an unknown amount of time, the more viable option is to drill a new pipe under the road and leave the other one in place.

‘The engineering work’ means that we were responsible for drawing up the plans for this project and other stuff that is beyond my feeble mind. One of my bosses (for I have one for every day of the week) is the Head Cheese for this project and took us out into the field (which is the way pipeline folks say ‘going outside’).

Below are some pictures and my attempts at explaining what is going on in them, with the stretch goal of helping the masses gain a better understanding of the size and amount of work that goes into these projects.

First of all, some rough facts. They are replacing about 3300 feet of pipe. The pipe is 20 inches in diameter. The total project costs about $5 million beans and involves 11 different companies on site at once. This is the first actual pipeline I’ve seen in seven years. Lets get started.

First of all, I got to dress up in a sweet outfit. If the guys in the field heard me call it an ‘outfit’, I would have gotten an atomic wedgie, but who cares right? With getting cool new clothes, it is necessary to dress up and drop some Beastie Boy poses in my office for no less than one hour before departing.

Ok, enough of that. This picture proves that I actually made it outside. This picture was taken at the drilling side of the highway. The trees waaaay over on the horizon is where the end of the project is. That is a long way. I also look cool. The Snap-On truck was locked.

This is an overview of the outlet side of the project. Those worm looking things are the pieces of pipe. The thing about pipe is that it is…metal…and hollow… and only comes in 40 foot long segments. Why only 40' long? How the hell you gonna move the stuff? It took me three years to figure that out, I always pictured some giant Play-Doh Pipeline Playset that would just do it on the fly, but that is not the case. In fact, it's ridiculous. Anyway, they move all of the pipe over on trucks, dump it off into the grass and start welding it together. It is kind of like making a super-straw at McDonalds out of many other straws, but with fire and steel and safety goggles. Remember, the pipe is 22” in diameter and this chunk of I-70 is probably the longest stretch of highway without strip club signs on it until you get to western Kansas. The poor field guys, not a lot of eye-candy out in the boonies.

Back on the drilling side. This is the drill. It’s basically just like the movie Armageddon without Ben Afflack. The drill pieces are about 40 foot sections of metal that is threaded on both sides (wonder why it’s 40’). The chunk of metal that actually bores/digs/whatever is screwed in between two pieces and reamed through the hole. Every 40 feet, they add a new piece of drill on to keep it getting pushed through. So the drill itself is basically a long extensor with one little piece in the middle somewhere doing all the work. Little math quiz: 1200 feet of hole, 40 foot segments. How many drill pieces do they need?

This is the mud pool. It looks like cement, but it is actually the lubricant that they pump through the hole to keep it from overheating and keep things moving. As it comes out, it fills up this pool and is siphoned off and ‘disposed of’. It is the fiber and prune juice of the pipeline industry.

This is one of the drill bits. Nasty looking sucker. The way the drilling works is like this. They push forward for the first hole, called the pilot hole. This creates the initial hole and is something like 6” wide. After the pilot hole is drilled, the hole will have the drill bit in it until the hole is complete, kind of the same reason you dont like having your drawstring come out of your kickass veleur Puma pants, cause it's a bitch to fix. However, you cant put a 20” piece of pipe through a 6" hole, no matter what they try in all the adult movies, so they go through several widening passess through the hole. The difference now is that, rather than push the drill through, they PULL it through (it has to do with torque and other fun mathy stuff). For this project they will make 2 or 3 passes (10, 24 and 36 inches), each time widening the hole. This is not a quick process, it can take several days for just one pass because you're drilling through dirt, rock, indian coffins etc, so there is plenty of overtime, smoking and coffee around while this is going on, except that on one end three guys are constantly adding new drill bits on and on the other end, three guys are constantly taking bits off.

Once the hole is created, you have to figure out a way to get the pipe in. I talked earlier how they weld all the suckers together, this picture shows the whole shebang. This is the pipe that will eventually go under the highway.

At every weld, they have to coat it with some brown snot and then check it to make sure that the snot is on correctly, otherwise the pipe will rust and oil will go everywhere, much like the Clampet’s back yard.

Here is another picture of the pipe from farther away. It’s remarkably bendable once welded together correctly.

So how do you get a 2000-foot long, thousand-plus ton of metal through a hole that is not straight? If David Blaine is not available, you have to weld this piece onto the end. Then you can hook up some bailing wire to it and pull it through. Of course this bailing wire is powered by a diesel engine. This was the most amazing thing to me that they just pull the whole mofo through. If that weld breaks and the pipe comes apart on the inside of the hole, it is bad. Really bad, and not even David Blaine can help you.

Once the pipe is through, they weld it to both sides and bury the evidence and move on. Our company has 40 of these projects through 2008. Our office currently has 15 people in it, one of them being myself, and you saw what I did when presented a pair of overalls, I called it an outfit and took pictures of myself….

Remember, safety is important.

This is a truck, it moves stuff. Probably milk or burbon.

These are three of my bosses. They were responsible for keeping me off the equipment and from laying down in front of trucks to take pictures.

So, there it is. Of course, I dont actually do any of the outside stuff, but there are people who keep track of all sorts of details about the pipe, size/diameter/thickness of metal etc, plus where it's crossing under the roads and all that stuff. These field crews send the data to me and I fumble around with it for weeks until I create a map of it. This map and associated database go back to the company that owns the pipeline and they use it for various purposes; submit to the guv'ment for tax purposes, so they know where to dig when the sucker explodes, so that they can finish their nation-wide hamster tube.

Anyway, that's a little more about what papa does for a living. Hope you enjoyed or laughed a bit, but I get paid for it. - Hooty