The House

The driveway. Looked bigger as a child. The swing. Truly reflects the loss of youthful innocence...yea, I know that sounded pretentious. The greenier along the Escarpment. A birds-eye view. A rock face on the escarpment. The view from the escarpment with Grandma's home a speck below.

Washington, DC

The Washington Monument from across the Tidal Basin that flows off of the Potomac River The 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Martin Luther King Jr. looking out over the Tidal Basin The White House. Peter Sellers, Daniel Day-Lewis, Bill Pullman, Henry Fonda, Bill Murray, Morgan Freeman, Harrison Ford, and David Morse walked those halls...or the men they played did, at least. A closer look at the seat of power in the United States. The Reflector Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Daniel Day-Lewis The Arlington Memorial Bridge

The Similarities Are Striking

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/03/11/generation-y-workplace-jobs-quitting_n_2828150.html?utm_hp_ref=business&ir=Business

Florida Keys photo gallery

My GPS location as I pull over onto the Keys. Pigeon Key A neat house with some funny signage. A beuaty shot from the point I THOUGHT was the Southernmost point. Also a shot my friend Jason Bailer would call 'artsy'. This is the Southernmost mansion. Almost every night there were parties going on here with some seriously ballin' people. Lots of money. A number of President's have stayed there. A fun note: on the SW corner of the island, virtually everything is branded as the 'Southernmost' whatever it is. In other words, if it's a house, it's got a sign called 'The Southernmost House'. My feet on the southernmost point. Alas, it is sadly a misnomer. The Southernmost point of Key West is not in fact the southernmost point of the USA. Hawaii has a number of places that are more south geographically. However, Key West is the Southernmost point of continental USA. Whatever. The Southernmost private residence in continental USA. It's actually someone's home. What a badass. My trusty Glidecycle. A view of the island from a pier near my hostel. The greenish hue is the sand, which is only four or five feet deep in those spots. Nothing else to be said. How hilarious is that? A view from sunset point. Unfortunately, it was cloudy. Again, not much needs to be said. The closest cross-streets from my hostel. Key West may as well have been home. The home that Ernest Hemingway owned and lived in. He got stuck in Key West waiting on a car (hate when that happens) and ended up staying for like, five years. The old traintracks that are no longer used. The clouds moving in over the Key Largo bridge on the drive out.

Miami - Day 1

I arrived in Miami where I was to stay at the Best Miami Hotel in South Miami. It didn't start out that great. Apparently, there are TWO 71st Streets in Miami. One near the tip of South Beach and the other in South Miami, which — despite the concurring names — do not both reside in the south of Miami. South Beach should really be called East Beach cause it's as far East of the city you can go and ain't so much in the south of Miami that it should be called South Beach. South Miami is a 20 min freeway drive south of South Beach. So I was in the north of South Beach which is in the East of Miami which is 20 min north of South Miami where I was staying at the Best Miami Hotel. Confused? I was. I booked the room on Hotels.com and got a good rate. I thought, 'Wicked! A decent hotel for a decent price. Can't beat that.' I parked outside and went inside to check in. The concierge was an Alex Rodriguez-looking dude — and I'm not stereotyping Latino's in Miami, this dude was a doppleganger. I even asked him to hit me a few dingers; he declined. The lobby was beautiful at a glance: marble floors and walls. Very nice. Naturally, that all went to hell within five seconds. I was told I would be charged an extra two bucks per night for a safe in my room. I said I wouldn't use the safe. He said it didn't matter. He admitted it was stupid. I thought, '...then don't charge me. Stupid is as stupid does. Stupid.' Then he asked if I would be parking. Yes, of course, I said. He says, 'That'll be seven bucks a night.' I thought about finding A'Rod's baseball bat and cracking it over the desk instead of asking him to hit a few dingers, but thought better of it. I paid up. I really had no choice. Then, feeling hungry after wasting a good hour driving in the wrong direction then back (through traffic, no less) I went for a walk to find a meal. I wasn't too keen to spend away, so I settled on a microwave dinner at a grocery store which I took back to the Best Hotel Ever In South Miami and nuked the the thing, where I ate in my room. I also bought chocolate milk, which is less like chocolate milk in the USA and more like Chalkolate Milk. The meal was saved by a bag of cherry jelly beans which were amaaaaaazing. I went down to the Greatest Hotel Of Miami for my included contintental breakfast the next day to find it the lamest continental breakfast I ever saw. Hell, the continental breakfast at the shitetown Mesa Inn in Grand Rapid, Colorado where I froze to death was better. This was a joke. I thought about hitting my safe on a linedrive off of A-Rod's head, but thought better of it. Looking to explore the town, I asked the other concierge how to get to where I wanted to go. His thick Latin accent nearly killed me, so I nodded a bunch and took the words I understood, being 'Government Center' and 'Flager Street' and left the Grandest Miami Marigold Hotel to explore. Destination: the aforementioned South Beach in East Miami. I bought a day transit pass (the only good thing that happened all day) and commuted downtown to the Government Center. Took me a few minutes of following signs, retracing my steps back to signs and following a new sign to find the train station on Flagler Street to go to South Beach. I took the 120 bus and got off on Washington. South Beach is chaos. I mean, popular chaos...except it's just a beach. A really long, really busy beach. See for yourself: Oceanside Drive which borders it is nothing but a really long, really busy street of restaurants. If you walk on that side of the street, you're barraged every 12 feet by a new staffer asking, 'Would you like to sit down for a meal?' or some variation of that. I think one person said, 'You're cute. Want a burger?' I thought, 'You're obnoxious. Want more botox?' One fantastic addition to South Beach is a series of open workout areas with odd devices for public use. Imagine a playground for juicemonkeys and gay guys. So it's like, a playground for the fabulously vain. And make no mistake: it was all guys. I kid you not. I would have snapped a picture if not for fear of my head getting crushed or my fashion sense being criticized. After a series of other events — which included witnessing a slack liner (yeeeea, Dovnah!) doing some badass work along the beach and a ritzy outdoor mall — I decieded to head back to the Wonderful Miami Emporium Hotel on the 120. I should have learned my lesson years ago from the 72 circle rout ein Calgary, but clearly I'm not that on the ball. I hopped on the 120 after an icecream vendor told me it was a circle route and I figured, screw it, if it is a long circle route I'll just get to see the city. Except, no, it isn't a circle route. It took me to the north of Miami then went out of service. I had to figure out another bus to get me back to the Government Center. Son of a... The stress of the day was offset by some Pollo Tropical, a fast food chain that serves Caribbean chicken and wings. We're talking big portions. For 8 bucks. While satisfying, it made me start extrapolating in my head the amount that people must eat there and how much goes uneaten. You've got massively obese people in America and massively starving people elsewhere. Pretty unpleasant excess. I hate Miami.

Keys: The Finale

It's been exactly a week since I left the Florida Keys. The time since then has not ceased to slow down. My last day in the Keys was Wednesday, Feb. 20. I spent the morning hanging out with a hostelite I had met down there. A quick note: want to know why I hesitate around people who ask for favors? Cause of guys like this. The dude was staying at the hostel and was going to be kicked out cause he couldn't pay for any more nights, but another hostelite with a kind heart lent him money so he could stay. Nice enough. Well, I befriended the two of them and eventually hung out with this guy a few times. On my last day, literally that morning, he broached the topic out of the blue of me lending him money. Now, here's the thing. He spent days telling his sob story about why he was there and broke. The kind of story one would feel sympathetic towards. I did. Family troubles, crazy ex-wife, took the kids, etc. As we hung out, he dropped what now feels like strategically placed stories about getting his taxes back that Friday and having to keep them from his ex-wife. He mentioned how he would pay back the other hostelite three-fold for her gesture. He even pulled out his smartphone (yea, a smartphone...oh, he also had an electronic cigarette...nice way to divvy up those finances) and showed me his tax receipt as, 'I don't like people to think I'm a bullshitter.' It was an awkward moment. After that, I felt enough that I needed to get away from him for a bit to think and to write a tad, so I excused myself, told him to meet back at the hostel and went to a pier. While on the pier, I ran across this sight: Some asshole had caught a baby hammerhead shark and left it for dead on the pier. Kind of a jerk move, unfortunately to my benefit as I got this photo. After the pier I went back to the hostel. I had promised a ride to the other nice hostelite that day on my way to Miami, so I waited for my roadie pal. The other guy was there waiting. Thinking it shameless of me to not at least help the guy out considering his circumstance, I lent him $35. Not a lot, but that would feed a frugal person for a solid four or five days. He was grateful. Told me he'd pay me back when he got his taxes. I wasn't expecting it, but he said the words, so I was like, hey man, whatever you feel is necessary. Needless to say, I haven't heard a word from the guy since nor has the other hostelite. Friday came and asked her if she'd heard form him, 'Nope.' She didn't know, but he had told me he was going to pay her back. She had told him not to. SO when she said she hadn't heard, I knew right away something was up. His story felt too good. *sigh* I hope I'm not just being an asshole. Maybe something came up. Maybe it didn't. Either way, experience is the best teacher and I've experienced a disproportionate number of money-lending that resulted in my feeling the fool.

Rewind: JFK, Lee Harvey and me

As I passed through Dallas, I made sure to catch the scene of the crime. Here it is, for all to see: The Dealey Plaza display of how the entire assassination went down. A total artsy shot of a tattered American flag overlooking the plaza. The mysterious man in the grassy knoll...so wonderfully coincidental that someone was standing there when i got this shot. The window from where Lee Harvey fired on JFK. This guy may have done it... A view from the bridge which would have been looking down on the scene, gives a great vantage of the size and scale of the entire scene. The view from the knoll. Pretty crazy how close it is.