Last month I took the Motorcycle Safety Foundation's Basic RiderCourse. It's a two-day course aimed at teaching absolute beginners how to ride a motorcycle. It runs a Saturday and a Sunday, and you spend about 9 hours each day in a parking lot and in a classroom, learning not only how to stay upright on a bike but how to handle emergency situations — they teach you to swerve at 20 mph, how to perform a quick stop in a turn, etc. It went well, and while I certainly didn't take to motorcycling like Mozart to music, I did feel pretty comfortable and made good progress (unlike some of the other students, unfortunately). We were unlucky (or lucky?) enough to have our course take place on a weekend where the weather was rainy, so we got to perform some of our exercises (and, indeed, the test itself at the end of the second day) in the rain.

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For Christmas, Andrés, Amy, and I flew to Phoenix to spend the holiday with my extended family. One of the highlights of the trip was when we drove up to Sedona, rented ATVs, and went offroading amidst a Grand Canyon-like landscape.

I took the opportunity to strap on all of my bulky large-format camera equipment and take some 4x5" Velvia slides in the environment that was practically made for them. And I had a realization. I've had the large format camera for a few years, but I've barely ever used it, mostly because it's so big and heavy that I've been pretty much limited to the kinds of places I can reach with a car, which are seldom worth photographing. I'm not trying to make undue comparisons, but I remember reading Ansel Adams talking about having the same problem. He had a platform on the roof of his car from which he did a lot of his photography — for his longer jaunts into the wilderness, he packed most of his gear on a burro.

I realized that an ATV can be my version of a burro. I've always been interested in offroading, but when I realized that an ATV would both let me enjoy crawling over rough terrain plus let me strap down all my bulky large-format camera equipment and take pictures from places that I couldn't otherwise reach, it did me in — I had to have an ATV.

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And I've been fluttering all over the damn place.

Since my lease on my apartment in New Orleans was almost up and I planned to move rather than renew it, last month I set off on an 1800-mile roadtrip to check out the various places I was considering moving to. I decided on Knoxville, TN, for several reasons. I've really been wanting to live somewhere mountainous, and Knoxville is certainly satisfying in that respect. Andrés and Amy had just moved there for grad school and plan to be there for at least two years. Geographically it's within a few hours' drive of lots of the places where I have friends — Atlanta, Clemson, Raleigh. There is a healthy aviation scene in Knoxville — there are at least three good flying clubs with great rates, and there's a large commercial airport and a smaller regional airport and lots of private grass strips all over. It's a small city, so I have access to all the stores and resources I want, without having to deal with city blocks and traffic and nowhere to park.

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With my impending move, I've been trying to figure out how I'm going to move both of my cars. I plan to rent a U-Haul truck to move my stuff, so I can tow a car behind it, but getting the second car there would be trickier — I'd either have to drive the truck with one car in tow, then fly back to Covington to drive the other one, or I'd need to pay a friend to drive my other car alongside the U-Haul and then fly them back home or something. Neither option is very appealing.

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When I moved to New Orleans last year, I knew I wouldn't be staying there long-term. I thought of it as a sort of foothold back onto the mainland — I'd stay there for a year and then move to somewhere that more closely matches my wishlist: Most importantly, I want to live near friends. Aside from that, I want to live in or near the mountains (New Orleans is basically the exact opposite of that), away from a city (roughly the level of rurality of Clemson), and somewhere in the generally southeast part of the country; ideally towards the more northerly parts of the southeast, like North Carolina or Virginia.

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I'm about to fly up to Boston for the weekend for my brother's graduation. He now becomes a real psychologist and can now continue to make no money. Congratulations!

A few weeks ago Amy called and told me that Andrés' spring break was coming up at the beginning of March, and suggested that I fly up to Boston to spend it with them. All it takes for me is an invitation, so I soon bought my plane ticket and made my plans to fly up.

The departure didn't go quite as planned — the flight left at 1:30pm, so I aimed to be there two hours before that. We made good time crossing the lake, so Bryan and Cat actually dropped me off at the airport at around 11 am. I figured I could certainly stand waiting an extra half hour.

Of course, when I checked in I learned that the incoming flight had been delayed due to weather, so my flight was rescheduled to leave at 4:30pm. I called Bryan and Cat and delivered the news, and they offered to come back and pick me up so I wouldn't have to sit at the airport for hours. We did a little thrift store shopping and ate at Denny's, then returned to the airport at 3 pm. I thanked them for helping me pass the time and headed in.

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Paul Van Dyk played here in Puerto Rico again last night, but this time I opted not to go. Several of our friends (Michelle, Isa) were going, so Andrés went as well, but I remembered my experience last time, where I found myself bored and wanting to go home from nearly the moment we arrived. With such loud music, it doesn't really matter how many friends you've got around you, because you can't talk with them — you're stuck with nothing to do but bob your head to the music for seven hours.

I knew I'd be bored at home too, so it wasn't a clear-cut decision, but in the end I opted for the choice that involved less effort and not spending $30. I didn't really regret it — I enjoy spending time by myself sometimes too, and when Andrés got home later that night he confirmed that there was a lot of just standing around.

I kind of felt bad that I had missed out on so much time hanging out with him on his last night here, but we did get to hang out for a bit after he got home around 4am. We prepared a feast (consisting of veggie burgers, veggie corn dogs, and veggie buffalo wings), watched Scrubs, played some more PS2, and then headed for bed around 630am. He had to get up again two hours later to pack and get ready to leave for the airport. I slept two hours longer than him, getting up just in time to ride to the airport with the family and see him off. Then, of course, it was back home for a few more hours of sleep.

I flew down to PR a few days ago for Christmas, and I've really been enjoying being home. I was introduced to Natalia's new puppy, Lena, who is adorable. She's eager and affectionate, even with strangers, and full of the energy and exuberance puppies are so known for. She's awesome.

Andrés is here too, and we've been spending time with some cool people. One day we hung out on the back patio, drank wine, and got in the pool with Jóse and Lorena. Another day we cooked food and watched Family Guy with Marc, and today Andrés, Michelle, Billy, Natalia, and I went to the beach. Going to the beach on Christmas Eve: OK, so maybe there are a few good things about this island.

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At Andrés' repeated urging, I bought a road bike last week. All my previous bikes have been mountain bikes, so this one has taken some getting used to. It took a few rides before I was able to turn without feeling like those tiny tires were going to lose traction and I was going to fall in a tumbling heap of Dan parts.

What's more, this is a single speed fixed-gear bike, which presents its own set of novelties. The first time I took it out for a ride, I got up to speed and then reflexively stopped pedaling, expecting to coast. The bike politely informed me that it wanted me to keep pedaling, and I was nearly launched out of my seat.

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On Monday I returned from a week in South Carolina — I drove to Clemson on Friday, hung out there until Wednesday, then drove with Jeff to his parents' house in Aiken for Thanksgiving. Andrés and Amy also flew down from Boston for the holiday. It was really cool getting to see so many of my favorite people, although most of my friends in Clemson were busy with schoolwork and so I actually didn't get to spend very much time with anyone. Still, it was a satisfying trip.

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I haven't been spending any time on the computer lately, so I thought I'd make a short post explaining what I've been up to. Andrés and my cousin Mia flew down last week for a visit, and then I had my last day of work on Sunday night. Since then I've been packing up my stuff, trying to sell my car, and spending time with Andrés and Mia. We've hung out with Michelle, Andrea, Isa, and Jose. Today I went back to "The Spot" with Andrés, Mia, and Michelle. The water was much higher and rougher, and there were two other guys there this time, so it wasn't the placid, relaxed, isolated experience that the first visit was. Still, it was a good time, and many pictures were taken.

Andrés and Mia leave on Sunday and Monday, respectively, and then I'll have two days to feverishly get the last of my stuff shipped up to New Orleans before I fly up myself on Thursday.

I took Andrés and Amy to the airport today. I was sad to see them go, but we made the best of this past week, and had a great time, so at least it doesn't feel like, "WTF, you're leaving already?" On past visits, we've had a tendency to waste the time by sitting around watching TV and movies. And that's certainly fun, but there's enough cool things to do out on the island that it's a shame to let those opportunities go to waste.

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I picked up the Evo from the body shop a week after dropping it off. They did a good job. It's so nice to have the car whole again.

Amy graduated last week, so on Monday night she and Andrés planned to fly down to PR for a two-week visit before going up to Boston to find a place to live. However, their flight out of Chicago was cancelled due to bad weather, and the next flight didn't leave until the next morning, so they had to spend the night there. And apparently, the airline won't give you a hotel room for the night if the flight was cancelled due to weather, so they had to find and pay for one themselves. Fair or unfair? (All) Unfair!

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I got back from Clemson a few hours ago. I took two days off from work and flew up for Meg's birthday, and Andrés drove down from Orangeburg where he's interning. As expected, it was a really fun weekend. I've just finished posting all the digital photos I took, but I actually used the Holga much more than the digital camera, and I've still got five rolls and two sheets of film to develop. Those will be posted over the coming days.

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It's looking like Andrés will be borrowing my Civic (apparently featured in a popular yet surprisingly unfunny video on streetfire.net) for the six months or so he's going to be in South Carolina. Heh heh, sure, everyone makes fun of me for owning so many cars, but when someone needs something to drive, it's a different story, huh? :)

Last week Marc, Andrés, and I went over to Michelle's house to see the four short films she made last semester at NYU. These were her introduction to shooting on film — all her projects so far have been shot on video. This semester she was allocated eight rolls of black & white 16mm reversal film to be used over the course of the semester. All of her films were really good, but I especially liked the one she made for her final project. She really has a lot of talent and great creativity. I'm constantly impressed with the ideas she comes up with for her movies.

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Sunday night was quite an adventure. After a failed attempt to go ice skating with the family, Michelle brought her boyfriend Billy, her cousin Kyle, and her friend Johnathan over. After some brief hanging out at our place, Billy wanted to go to bed and Michelle wanted to play pool, so we dropped Billy off and then headed out to San Juan.

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Yesterday they delivered the new furniture for my room, and it finally feels like a living space again. What's more, it finally feels like my living space (sorry Andrés for evicting you). Soon after I got home from work around 7am, the Rooms To Go truck showed up bearing wonderfulness.

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Today I had restless sleep, and that often seems to lead to interesting dreams. Or perhaps it's just the waking up at odd hours that lets me remember them. I'd be kind of concerned to discover that these kinds of things are going on in my unconscious mind every night and I'm just not aware of them. Although it'd explain a lot.

This time I dreamt that I was wandering around some kind of university or apartment complex somewhere in the US, and I realized I was close to the apartment where Tony and his girlfriend lived (My awake self doesn't recognize who his girlfriend was, though apparently in the dream I was friends with her).

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I read about myheritage.com, a site that uses facial recognition software to tell you what celebrities you resemble. I tried uploading a few photos of myself, and here's the results.

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The pictures I took at the Botanical Gardens with Andrés and Amy were among the files that were lost when my external hard drive was stolen during a party at The Compound. I've still got the web-sized versions here on BinRock, of course, but those are no good for printing. I've always mourned the loss of those photos; even moreso now that I have a nice photo printer. But then yesterday I realized — those were scanned from film. The original negatives and prints should still be around somewhere; most likely in one of the many boxes I shipped down here when I moved back to PR.

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Dublin was fun, though not as enjoyable for me as the countryside. The high point for me, of course, was the Guinness Storehouse. But that came last.

We got up this morning at 7am (OK, it became more like 8:15am) to eat a quick breakfast and catch the "hop-on, hop-off" tour bus that stopped at our hotel at 9. We got off at the first stop, near the General Post Office where the IRA siezed the building in 1916 and declared independence from Ireland (and were subsequently shelled into submission). It also happened to be the location of the 400' Metal Spike Of Annihilation, to my glee.

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Yesterday Andrés got up and went to class while I worked on processing the pictures from the roadtrip on Sunday. At 3pm he had a one-hour break between classes, so I headed out to meet him at a park on campus. We had some coffee and I went with him to his Scottish Ethnology lecture, where they had a guest speaker giving a demonstration of Appalachian folk songs, showing how they had evolved from European folk songs as they were carried across the sea by immigrants. She accompanied her songs with a dulcimer, which sounded incredible. The sound was reminiscent of one I've enjoyed in some of Joe Satriani's songs, and I always wondered how he got his guitar to sound so soft and melodic. I know he experiments with different instruments, and has a banjo/guitar hybrid, so it wouldn't surprise me if he used a dulcimer or similar instrument on those songs.

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Yesterday was incredible. Gary (Irish), Greg (German), Andrés, and I rented a car and took a roadtrip up to the highlands. It couldn't have gone better, especially considering it was relatively unplanned. The weather even cooperated — yesterday was the only clear, blue, sunny day I've seen since I arrived.

We had planned to spend Saturday, the day before our excursion, making the preparations for the trip; determining a route, making the reservation for the car, etc. We did decide on a basic, flexible game plan, but the car reservation part kind of evolved into "making one phone call that didn't accomplish much."

Update: Greg prepared a map indicating the route we took, and marked all of our stops sequentially with numbers. Very cool of him. Here's the map.

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My first evening in Scotland was an appropriate one. One of Andrés' roommates, Gary (from Ireland), had a friend named David visiting, and it was his last night here. It was a given, then, that we go out to a few pubs. Over our first few pint, Andrés' Scottish roommate, Tony, taught me a few unintelligible Scottish phrases (for example, "See, you! Geddi dinye!" which can be loosely translated as, "Excuse me, sir. Pardon my intrusion, but it appears you aren't consuming your beverage quickly enough."), and I put them to great use throughout the evening.

Over the course of the night, I experienced loud, messy drinking games, a polite ejection from a pub, pissing in an alley in view of pedestrians, yelling my newfound unintelligible phrases at said pedestrians, and passing out on the floor. Ah, I belong here.

So hectic. I'm finishing up packing and getting ready to leave for the airport for Scotland. I head off around 2pm, and my flight leaves at 4:14pm.

We had a bit of a complication as far as the trip — as my parents were getting their things together a few days ago, they realized that my mom's and my sister's passports were expired. Ouch.

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Lately I've had a growing interest in experimenting with filmmaking. I'm familiar with the basic editing techniques, so I think I should be able to figure that part out with little trouble. The part that sounds more fun is the shooting itself. The problem, of course, is that unlike photography, filmmaking is more often fictional. You come up with a story and then interpret it for the camera. Photography can more often be about capturing what already exists.

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I had the most wonderful experience last night. Andrés and I stopped by Michelle's house to see her before she returns to NYU. While we were sitting in the living room talking, we could hear her younger sister Gina and her friends shrieking in youthful glee upstairs. Her mom explained that it was Gina's 16th birthday and she had some friends over to spend the night.

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A few weeks ago I was talking with Henry and he brought up the interesting fact that we'd seen each other once every calendar year since we met. I was surprised, because it feels like we see each other so infrequently, but he listed each visit and he was right. I agreed that the streak could not be broken, and Henry and I made plans for him to come down to PR to visit. Once he had his plane ticket and I mentioned to my parents that he was coming, they reminded me of the fact that the house would be somewhat disassembled at the time. I said "Oops," but Henry said, "That's OK, it will be like camping."

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The weekend with Courtney was great. Although I only took two days off (Friday and Monday nights), it felt like a more substantial vacation. The weather was uncooperative though, so I didn't get to show her many of the cool things available here.

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When Andrés got down here last Monday, he finally convinced me to start running, and we've gone running around the neighborhood nearly every day since he arrived. There is a one-mile-long loop around my block, so for now we've just been doing one lap of that each day. I'm already noticing a difference; the first day, I ended up walking most of the way, and it took us something like 15-20 minutes to make it around the block. Yesterday, we jogged nearly all of it, stopping only twice to walk and catch our breaths, and it only took about 9 minutes. It's a challenge to overcome my aversion every day and force myself to go running, but it feels good later to know that you've done something worthwhile, and it's satisfying to see the improvement in ability. It has helped a lot to have Andrés pushing me each day when I resist, and by now I think I've got the momentum required, so it should be no problem to keep it up once he leaves on Friday. Perhaps I should wire something up so that you can give me an electric shock by clicking a button on my website, so people can punish me if I start to slack off in the future :)

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I have yet to have an easy, straightforward oil changing experience with my dealer. A previous entry discusses my last attempt to get my oil changed, requiring a total of three visits before they finally accepted my car. It seems each time you go, they give you one more small bit of information, and little by little you try to piece together all the clues that theoretically should eventually enable you to achieve a straightforward transaction. There is always such a rift between theory and practice, though.

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Last night I had made plans to hang out with Michelle, but my parents needed me to watch Natalia for a few hours, so we looked for ideas for things we could both do. Natalia mentioned that she still wanted to see Hitchiker's Guide, which I wholeheartedly support. However, the website was out of date, and it turned out that the only theater listed that was supposedly still showing it in fact wasn't. Instead, Natalia suggested we go to the little amusement park next to Montehiedra (shows who is really in charge of the evening). Michelle was all for the idea, so she came over and we headed off.

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I'm currently enjoying the free wireless internet access available in the Ft. Lauderdale airport on my way up to Cedar Point in Cleveland, OH to ride insanely fast roller coasters with Cat and Bryan. On the plane today I was pondering filmmaking, and considering experimenting with it. I have the equipment and software needed and know how to do basic editing. When I started considering what I might make, I realized a big difference between filmmaking and photography that's probably obvious to everyone else; filmmaking is often fictional, where you create a story and have the actors interpretit. In contrast, photography (or at least, the kind that I tend to engage in) tends to be nonfiction; finding pretty things and capturing them. I might pose the person I'm shooting with, but the photo is still meant to be a photo of the person, not a character. One of the few times I actually came up with a concept and asked people to act it out was the My Arms, Your Hearse shoot. And those are some of the few photos of mine that I actually really like.

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The week with Meg and Amy was awesome. I didn't get to write about it until a while later, because I immediately left for the Cedar Point trip, so details are kind of sketchy in my memory now, but I wanted to get something down about it.

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We had sushi for lunch today, and I discovered that apparently, Philadelphia Rolls do have meat. I thought it was just avocado and cream cheese, but apparently it has tuna as well. Damn nondescriptive names! This left me with a dilemma. It's not hard to poke out the tuna and eat the rest, but I couldn't decide whether or not I wanted to.

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Last week, I decided to try vegetarianism again, and to take it seriously this time. Ironically, it's not having Andrés and Amy here that swayed me, but rather the Simpsons (I try to base all my life-altering decisions on cartoons. It makes things interesting). Lisa became a singer and Homer was her manager, but his ways were brusque. She asked him to stop beating people up to get things done for her, and he chided, "Oh, you eat sausages, but you don't like seeing them made." To which Lisa replied, "I don't eat sausages!"

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Man, I've been getting behind in documenting my life. Spending too much time living it. OK, so Liz came to visit a few weeks ago, and it was an awesome week. Andres, Liz and I went to El Yunque and hiked down to the waterfall, although Liz didn't dare to jump down the first waterfall. Ah well, it was really scary my first time as well. On the way down, we stopped and ate awesome Puerto Rican food as is tradition, and then, exhausted and sated, drove down the mountain with the windows down and Sigur Rós enveloping us.

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I've been growing closer to Chelsea lately, mostly since I've stopped ignoring her existence altogether. It's really nice how she is always at the door waiting for me to get home from work now. One more little nice thing about working day shift.

Last night I had a dream where my subconscious apparently took that growing closeness to an extreme. In my dream, I realized I could communicate with her at a basic level. I sat down and asked her, out of curiosity, if she could catch me a mouse. She got up and started to walk off, apparently to do it. I stopped her and said that's OK, I don't actually want her to. She lied back down, but then started singing a song about mice.

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You know those roads that are marked with an unrealistically low speed limit, and everyone sort of ignores? Like the section of Hwy. 76 that passes through Clemson, which is marked 35mph but is basically a highway deserving of something like 55mph. Or Kennedy Expressway in PR, marked 45mph but is a long, straight road with no exits or on-ramps. I usually drive 65mph on Kennedy and it feels completely comfortable.

Tonight on the way home from dropping Liz off at her hotel in San Juan, I was making my way back on Kennedy at 2:30am. The only other car on the road was a cop car with lights blazing, as they always are here. Naturally, I matched his speed, but the lights were pretty much blinding me, so I nudged forward until I was just in front of him. He then got on the loudspeaker and said, "You're going faster than 40, you know."

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Liz arrives today, and will be visiting for a week. Andrés arrives tomorrow, and he will be here for two and a half weeks. I've accumulated four vacation days from working weekend shifts over the last month or two, so I'm taking Thursday, Friday, Monday, and Tuesday off. That means today is effectively my Friday, which is awesome.

After Liz regrettably leaves, Andrés and I are going to see if we can make a weekend trip to St. Thomas to visit Rose. A few weeks after that, I'm going to Cedar Point with Bryan and Cat. Around then, Michelle and Andrea get down here for the summer, and they'll be here for 4 months. So for the next few months, at least, my solitude seems to be in a temporary reprieve.

Liz's plane gets in around 6pm, so the plan is to call her when I get off work at 8. Just have to make it until then and I'm home free.

Some bands or albums are inextricably linked to places, and usually cars, in my memory. Bad Religion - Stranger Than Fiction is driving in the Bonneville with Andrés and Bryan. NOFX - Punk In Drublic is hanging out with Bryan and Andrés when we were living in Estancias (particularly, all of us harmonizing along with Linoleum in the Bonneville while leaving the neighborhood). Goldfinger is driving around in PR in the Camry when I was in high school (particularly, passing by that no-name pizza place on Esmeralda). Snake River Conspiracy is driving around in Clemson in the Camry (particularly, looking for parking in the Calhoun Courts parking lot). Hole is pulling into the CVS parking lot in Ohio with Cat. OSI is walking along the waterway between my host family's house and the subway station in Japan. Cafe Tacuba is riding the subway in Japan on my way to class. The Cranberries is driving to El Yunque in Papi's Lexus with Andrés, Meg, and Amy last Christmas. Godspeed, Rachel's, and Thornley all bring to mind working at Xapiens, but we'll have to let them settle a while to see if they will become distilled down to a singular image like the rest.

Am I the only one who has such specific memories associated with music?

In a fit of nostalgia, I was watching old home videos and rediscovered one Andrés and I recorded around 1997 of ourselves playing music. We were tasked with watching Natalia, who was about 2 years old at the time. So she was walking around the room, apparently diaperless, and occasionally yelling out her babytalk backup vocals. However, our playing was interrupted by this event (5mb Xvid video). Babies are so lovably not in control of their body parts.

Yeah, so she's going to hate me. We mentioned the existence of this video to her a few months ago on our trip to DisneyWorld, and her embarassment was obvious; she demanded I destroy the tape. I tried to console her by explaining that we all have our embarassing moments; Andy ate poop, for example. She was not mollified. Oh well, hopefully by the time she is old enough to use the internet, this will have been posted so long ago that I can say, "it was a different time then!" as I shakily fend off her attacks with my cane.

Ugh, this has been a difficult week. Andy, Donny, and Violet are down here for the week for their spring break, and as usual, I'm spending my nights working and my days hanging out with them, and carefully ignoring the missing third component, sleep. However, I've never been very good at this, so it just means that sleep encroaches upon all the other activities of my day like wine soaking through a tablecloth.

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