The Greatest Snow On Earth





And we're back! I realize I've probably lost pretty much anyone who may be reading this, but I've enjoyed my little vacation at home. For those of you who haven't been following the news in the great northwest, we're currently enjoying the wettest month in the Seattle's history. We're up to like 16 inches of rain and counting, with rain forecast for the remainder of the month. Of course, all this rain means that we've got a lot of snow, too. The mountains opened last Thursday and I was able to kick off my second consecutive winter up at Mt. Baker last Friday.

Which brings me to the second season of my endless winter. Starting December 11th I'll be a snowboard instructor at the Park City Mountain Resort in Park City, Utah. I've never been to Utah before, but I'll be spending the next five months enjoying the self-proclaimed "greatest snow on Earth." I've really enjoyed relaxing in Seattle, but now that snow is falling, I can't wait to get out to Utah. And one reason I can't wait to get out there is because you will be out there too. Yes, you. I'm going to have a one bedroom apartment to myself for the next five months, and I'm more than happy to offer up a place to crash, entertainment, and free snowboard lessons to anyone who is interested. Park City is only 45 minutes from Salt Lake City, so I'll even play the role of chauffeur. So you let me know what I need to do to get you out to Utah and I'll make it happen. Deal?

My journey actually starts early tomorrow morning with a 12 hour drive down to San Francisco. I'll be hanging out down there for a week or so before continuing with another 12 hours over to Utah. Should be a lot of fun, or -- failing that -- a lot of driving. And now that I'm back in "travel mode" I'll try to keep this area a little more active.

Until then, happy Thanksgiving!

Birthday Bungy!





My sister really enjoyed my bungy videos from New Zealand and was convinced that she would do it some day, too. I decided that "some day" would be sooner than she expected and, as a birthday present, told her it was time for her to put her money where her mouth was. We gathered up six fellow victims and headed down to southern Washington to jump off the "highest bungy bridge in America."

Being the birthday girl, Kelsey was nominated as the first jumper. It's set up so you do two jumps in a row. You dive off the first time, get pulled back up, and then you immediately jump off backwards for your second jump. I was a little concerned when they started strapping my sister in, she didn't look like she really wanted to do this. And I was even more concerned when they pulled her up after the first jump, it looked like she was to start crying. Thanksfully, she was very happy afterwards and is already ready to go again.

Note: if you watch the video of her jumping, you'll her a lot of screaming. Kelsey is responsible for the first, short, high-pitched scream you hear. After that everything is drowned out by the two girls who were standing next to me. There were absolutely terrified for Kelsey. I really should have panned over to them instead of trying to follow Kelsey, they were quite a site. I think one of them (I won't name any names) might have peed a little during that jump. Good times all around.

There are a few more pictures online, but nothing too special. We've got some professional pictures being sent over, they should be much better.

Oh, and of course my sister videoed my jumps as well. Since I was the "seasoned veteran," I was nominated to go last. I managed to keep things in control for the most part. The first jump was great, but the second jump (jumping backwards) scared the hell out of me. If you listen to the two videos (below) carefully, you'll notice a subtle, but distinct, change in scream. The scream in my first jump is a "I'm the man, this is awesome!" scream. Jump two starts off the same way but quickly changes to an "Oh my god I'm going to die!" scream. I think you can hear the jump master making fun of me on that one as well.

Seattle: metronatural





The city of Seattle just unveiled a new tourism slogan, "metronatural." After stomaching the initial shocking stats (16 months in development and with a $200,000 budget) and trying to figure out exactly why metronatural sounds so... well just wrong, I've decided that while the slogan is horrible, it was really close to be good. I don't know what good is, but Seattle really is a city in touch with nature. How many cities do you know have this view? And it was definitely time to replace the old slogan, which looked something like: @L (that's supposed to be an eyeball before the @ symbol).

And speaking of Costa Rica, I've decided I don't really want to sit around and write about it. Always look forward, never backward. And I got to tell my favorite story already, everything else is the same old beautiful wildlife and exotic animals. I should have some new trips lined up soon. In the mean time I'll see how much fun I can stumble into during my break back up in the northwest. For example, I'm taking my sister bungy jumping this weekend! That will certainly be interesting...

Seattle: On Vacation





Now that I'm "home" everyone keeps asking, "what's been your most favorite place to visit so far?" My standard answer has been New Zealand, which was truly beautiful. I keep telling everyone how much it reminds me of Washington: green, mountainous, lush forests... All that good stuff. But being back in Seattle (after being away for over two years) I realize that yes, New Zealand is beautiful, but it's got nothing on Seattle. I've always loved Seattle (as everyone from California already knows, I act as an unofficial Seattle ambassador down there), but had forgotten about the small details that make this area special. Like today, an unexpectedly warm, sunny day with clear blue skies in the middle of October. Sadly my vocabulary won't do it justice, it's really something you need to experience first hand.

So Seattle and New Zealand are now running neck and neck for the "#1 place I've been in the last three months." Of course, if anyone asks me I'll still say New Zealand. If nothing else, it's a better conversation started. And now back to Costa Rica.

¿Habla Inglés?

Having just spent two months in New Zealand and Australia, I felt pretty confident that I'd be able to handle a short trip to Costa Rica with ease. Landing in San Jose, Costa Rica I (belatedly) realized there was one detail I had completely overlooked: I don't speak Spanish. I'm obviously not the first person to run into this problem, but after two months of traveling I was expecting to feel like I was back in my element. But it's been a long since I've been surrounded by an entirely foreign language. Fortunately Costa Rica is tourist friendly and it's pretty easy to get around with just a couple key phrases.

After a few days in the country I found myself picking things up a little more quickly. It's strange how much you can glean from a conversation even if you can't understand the language. Based on where people are standing, who they're talking to, body language, and the occasional familiar sounding word I was able to get a good idea of what other people were talking about.

Unfortunately that understanding didn't translate so well when it came time to respond. As soon as someone started speaking at me, my brain would immediately freeze up. Sometimes I would understand their question, but wouldn't be able to formulate a coherent response (even if that response involved correctly choosing between "si" or "gracias"). Other times each word sounded familiar, but the question didn't quite add up for some reason. The vocal highlight came late one night on our way back from a turtle beach walk (more on that later). Everyone was saying thanks and good night to each other. Happy to blend into the chorus I called out "buonas nachos!" It's so close to "buonas noches", and yet oh so far away. I had already started walking away as I was speaking, so I really didn't have time to correct myself. I keep telling myself that no one else heard me, but I've got a feeling that I was on the receiving end of many, many jokes later that night.

Home (Again)!

Well I've successfully survived another vacation. Costa Rica was beautiful and, as promised, I didn't have any time (or desire) to write any stories while I was down there. But I'm back with a few good stories and a few pictures. Actually a "few" pictures seems generous, I didn't really use my camera at all. If you take a look through my measly collection I'm sure you'll agree I should have been a little more trigger happy. But I was too busy enjoying my vacation to try and take pictures of it. Anyway, I said I've got a few stories to tell, so I'll get on with that.

Perma-Vacation!





So when does returning home actually feel like a vacation? When "home" is a temporary stop between two other vacations. :) I've just spent a week in Seattle and, although I've been busy, it's been vacation-busy, not a back-home-busy. Hanging out with friends, playing golf and tennis, and generally unwinding is not how I'm usually greeted after a vacation. I mean the only reason I even ended up unpacking was so that I could start packing back up for Costa Rica (and I use "unpacking" in a very loose sense here -- everything is in a heap in my room).

But as much as I've enjoyed Seattle, it's time to get back on a plane. I'm spending a little over a week down in Costa Rica and it's going to be busy. If things go according to plan I'll be seeing San Jose, the Arenal Volcano, the Monteverde Cloud Forest, and the Osa peninsula, a remote location on the Pacific coast. It's the middle of the green season so it's going to be wet, hot and humid, but I can't wait. Plus I've got my sister's handy Costa Rican Spanish phrase book from her trip here a few years ago so I should pretty much just blend in with the locals. :)

I have no idea if I'll be able to upload pictures and stories while I'm down there. I won't have as much leisure time as I did in New Zealand and I don't want to waste it on the Internet (well maybe just a little bit...). But fun will be had, pictures will be taken, and legends will be born (in my mind at least). And it'll all make it's way back up here at some point.

Next stop: San Jose, Costa Rica!

Bungy!









Like the sky diving video, I think these are much more entertaining with a running commentary. But that's not going to happen, so here's a quick run down of each jump. The Kawarau Bridge is the oldest permanent bungy site in the world (the bridge was built just for bungy jumping). It's 141 foot (43 meter) drop, with an optional "splash landing" in the river. I opted to just get my hands wet. I wish I had done more, but I was too freaked out to think correctly. The second jump is the Nevis Highwire. At 440 feet (134 meters), it's one of the highest jumps in the world. It's about 8.5 seconds of freefall which, as you can see, translates to a long time on the first trip down.

Embrace The Fear





Up next is my sky diving adventure with NZone, complete with cheesy camera work and bad sound track. It's not a total loss, though. If you looked at the pictures you may have noticed that my face gets a little funky as I first fall out of the plane. But they don't capture the moment the same way that a slo-mo camera in my face does. It's hard to tell if I'm having fun or trying not to throw up. In reality I guess it was a little of both.

Under the Sea!





In case you haven't heard, Disney has unlocked the vault and is re-releasing The Little Mermaid in all its two disk splendor. To celebrate the occasion I too am opening up the DVD vaults, starting with stunning video of me slowly chasing a sting ray along the bottom of the ocean. It's not much to look at, but you get to hear me breath like Darth Vader.

On Tap

You may have noticed that this blog is titled the "binarynoise.net travel blog." You may also notice that I'm not really traveling right now, which might imply that this blog will slowly die. Fortunately, I've found a solution: keep traveling! If there's one thing I've learned about my trip to New Zealand it's that traveling is awesome. I'm hanging out in San Francisco right now and I'm heading up to Seattle tomorrow. I personally consider that traveling, but it's not too exciting. To make up for it I'll be visiting Costa Rica for a week, starting October 6th! Yes, it's the middle of the "green" season (a tourist-friendly term for rainy season), but it's gonna be a great trip. I've already got San Jose, an active volcano, a cloud forest, and jungle peninsula lined up. That'll get me through the middle of October and who knows what's after that.

So what else do you do when you're hanging around the Internet capital of the world without much to do? You organize your photo collection! I uploaded my last set of pictures, which include some more Sydney pictures, day trips in Cairns, and Auckland. I also tagged all the pictures so you can check out a group of pictures without wading through the rest of the collection. You can take a look here. There's some pictures from Africa mixed in there too, but I think you'll figure out which pictures belong where pretty quickly.

Sour Taste In My Craw

Well I made it home safely. Well not "home" exactly, but I'm the US. Auckland was a great two day trip. Strangely enough, my favorite thing in Auckland was the hotel. It wasn't anything special, but it was the first time in two months that I (a) slept in a bed that I actually fit on, (b) slept in a room without 1 - 5 roommates, and (c) enjoyed a real shower, not a trickling stream of variable temperature water. I had one night in Auckland and, instead of looking for night life, I curled up in bed with junk food and watched New Zealand TV. It was a great night.

My trip home was fairly uneventful. Sadly, I had forgot about our country's fantastic security measures and lost a rare souvenir in the process. I don't feel like retelling the story, I think it'll just get me fired up again. But this whole "no liquids in your carry-on" seems a little ridiculous. It reminded me of the different routines we get to go through over here, and made me miss New Zealand before I left.

So what else did I learn in Auckland? Oh yeah, even a sleepy country like New Zealand can get suspicious if you don't have the right answers for a customs officer. In this case the wrong answer is a single, young, male traveling to Auckland for just two days with no idea where he's going to stay for the night. They really didn't like that last part. I thought it was kind of fun to land in Auckland with no idea where I was going to go for the day, but the customs agent wanted to know something a little more specific than "Auckland" as my destination address. They eventually let me through, but it would have been a lot easier if I had just picked a hotel at random and gone with that.

I also passed my last test in Auckland, driving a rental car on the wrong side of the road. Things actually went pretty smoothly. The only hiccup was about 20 minutes into my inaugural trip. I was sitting at a light, trying to figure out where I was and where I was going, when I looked up and saw a police officer behind me. I didn't necessarily panic, but I forgot everything I was thinking about and concentrated 100% on not breaking any laws. I survived the ordeal but ended up completely lost and turned around. Sadly, it wasn't the last time I'd get completely lost driving around Auckland, but fortunately I really liked driving so I didn't mind.

Travel Tip #135 (September 24th, 2006)

Don't wait until the last night of a six week vacation to do all of your souvenir shopping, especially if that last night is a Sunday night. You might think, "Hey I'm in a tourist-powered city, of course everything will be open on a Sunday night." But it won't. And you'll be left with nothing to show your friends and family when you get home, not even a cheap boomerang.

On the subject of unsolicited advice, I finally watched An Inconvenient Truth a few nights ago. I feel like the message got diluted a little bit by his back story, but I'm glad I saw it, even though it was a little depressing. But as Gore mentions, a lot of people go straight from ignorance to despair, skipping the "let's do something about this" phase. I'm attempting to do my part by encouraging everyone to watch the movie. If you can't (or don't want to) see it, you can wander over to www.climatecrisis.net and see what you can do to help solve the problem.

If I've only learned one thing this trip it's that every part of this world is beautiful and completely unique. I'd like to help keep it that way so my kids can see it some day too.

Finding Nemo (September 23rd, 2006)







Finally got some more pictures up! As promised, the diving pictures aren't all that spectacular. But I got a couple good pictures of Nemo (the clownfish), so I didn't come out empty handed.

Tonight is my last night in Australia. I've got one more day trip tomorrow and then I slowly start heading home with an 11:50pm flight down to Auckland, where I get a day to relax before flying back to San Francisco.

I've been keeping myself busy the last couple of days. Instead of sitting in town for my last three days I set up three day trips. Two days ago I went river rafting on the Russell River. What was fun was that instead of the large 8 to 10 person rafts we had a fleet of small, two person rafts. So basically the guide would tell us a good path to take through the next set of rapids and send us on our way. Good fun all around, but I'm not sure about their river categories down here. The Russell River is listed as a level 4 rapid, and although there was one 5 foot waterfall (which was great fun!) you could pretty much walk through most of the river, if you had to. I wanted to fear for my life at least once. :)

Today was a slower paced trip up to the Atherton Tablelands. It's amazing how lush Australia is along the coast, it feels like I'm in central America or something. Spending the day in a 4x4 truck bouncing around the jungle and outback isn't the absolute greatest way to spend a day, but you get to see a lot of terrain that way. It was so relaxing up there that I wish I could have pulled over and slept in the sun next to a lake for a few hours instead of plunging forward in the 4x4. Next trip, I suppose.

Another big problem with these trips is that everyone keeps asking "So how long are you here for?" This is usually fine, "6 weeks" is a pretty solid answer. But today I had to start saying, "Actually I leave tomorrow night." And this leads to a whole discussion about going home, which isn't something I'm really ready to think about yet, let alone discuss. In fact, I'm not ready to think about it now, so I'm going to go have a beer and watch rugby game instead.

A Day At The Beach (September 15th, 2006)







[Note: I wrote this up last week but have been waiting for the pictures to get online before posting it. Sorry for the strange ordering...] It looks like I made a good choice of hostels. The WakeUp! hostel has been great to me so far. On Thursday they offered a half-day walking tour of Sydney followed by a free BBQ and half price drinks for everyone in the tour. Today they had another free walking trip, a tour of five Sydney beaches, from Koogee to Bondi (one of Sydney's most famous beaches).

Yesterday's tour of downtown was a great way to see most of Sydney's major points. We stopped by some water fountains at Darling Harbor, saw the Sydney tower a couple of times, and (of course) checked out the Opera house and harbor bridge. The bridge had people climbing all over it and climbing it looks like a pretty fun trek. But then I learned that it's $189 Australian dollars for the BridgeClimb. I don't think it looks like that much fun.

Sydney is full of parks, though, and we were able to take in some of the local wildlife (I don't think feeding the cockatoos is technically permitted, but it made for some fun pictures).

Today we took a 15 minute bus ride out to Koogee beach and from there walked a few miles along the coast up to Bondi beach. Bondi beach is home to Australia's oldest surf lifesaving club (not sure why they're so particular about the name, but they are). The water didn't look too treacherous, but -- as if to prove that it is -- the lifeguards were pulling someone out as we arrived. There was an ambulance, lifeguard truck, the whole shebang, but no one seemed to care too much. I guess it happens a lot at Bondi.

And although Sydney feels a bit like most big cities, there are always subtle differences that make you realize you're not home. For example, there is no "Jack in the Box" chain, but there is something very similar. And for some reason I really liked this sign in the bus, reminding senior citizens not to fall asleep while on the bus. Oh yeah, and everything really is backwards down here. Not only do cars drive on the wrong side of the road, but horse races run clockwise. I was watching some sport highlights last night and was shocked to see horses sprinting backwards down the track. Even the escalators run backwards. I know that doesn't make much sense, but imagine you're standing at the bottom of two sets of escalators. The one on the right would be going up, right? Not in Australia! I've almost walked onto the wrong escalator a couple of times in the last two months now.

Tomorrow I'm heading out of Sydney for a day trip to the Blue Mountains. There are two types of tours, the "hardcore" trip that includes a 3 hour hike through the bush and the "tourist" trip that includes a stop at a wildlife park to feed kangaroos and koalas. I like to think that I'm pretty hardcore, but after 8 hours of walking in the last two days I'm ready to a let a bus do the transporting for me. Plus I want to pet a kangaroo. :)

An American Birthday Present (September 21st, 2006)

I've got 10 minutes left, so one more quick story for the day. The year is 1988, Sydney is celebrating it's bicentennial anniversary. America, in a nice gesture, gives Australia a birthday present. So what does it give? A gallery celebrating joint Australia - American connections. In theory I think that sounds okay. But as you walk into the Australian Nation Maritime Museum in Sydney you're greeted with a huge section titled the "USA Gallery" and currently dedicated to the American Navy. A quick look at the plaque says that this was given to Australia by the US to celebrate Australia's 200 year anniversary. Great, so it looks like America gave a memorial of itself to Australia for Australia's birthday. I think things like this don't help America's self-absorbed public image.

The Locals (September 21st, 2006)

I recently realized that I've complained a fair bit about local accents and curious word choice, without giving proper due to the great phrases non-Americans are contributing to the English language.

My favorite, by far, is the New Zealander's "sweet as!" line of sayings. Did something work out well? "Sweet as!" Sweet as what, exactly? It doesn't really matter, it's just sweet as. And it's not just limited to sweet, either. "Cool as", "cold as", and "funny as" were all used frequently. As far as I can tell you can throw "as" after any adjective and it'll work. Definitely fun.

Another great word is "knackered." This seems to be more of a British thing, but that's okay. The way they say "I was absolutely knackered" is so passionate, you can almost feel the knackered-ness just from talking to them. Knackered is almost always intensified with "absolutely" and everyone uses the same passionate emphasis. It always makes me smile.

What else? Oh yeah, one of my favorite words of all time, "queue." Dunno why, but I've always liked that word. And people down here use it! All the time. I don't really have any funny stories for queue, either. I'm just happy to see it getting some use down here.

Watch Out, Jacques Cousteau (September 21st, 2006)

Still working on getting my land legs sorted out, but I've successfully added two more certifications to my trip: Open Water Diver and Adventure Diver! The three day trip out to the Great Barrier Reef was amazing. Not necessarily relaxing, but it certainly wasn't short on adventure. It's been very windy in Cairns for the last week (and continued during our trip), which makes the water very choppy, especially on the way out to the reef. Day 1 started with a 3.5 hour ride out and at least 60% of our group (about 35 divers) made a personal contribution to the ocean. The rest of us sat still in the back of the boat, grim faced, doing anything possible to help keep our stomaches where they belong and to avoid hearing the constant sounds of the less fortunate or see the parade of sea-sick bags dropping from the second level into the sea. Not exactly the highlight of the trip.

Once we set up at the reef, though, the waves were much more manageable. And the diving was beautiful. Our first two dives were open water certification dives so we'd drop down to 10 - 14 meters and do drills like taking our mask off and on, removing our regulator, and getting our buoyancy correct in the water. Everything went pretty smoothly except during a mask clearing exercise (getting sea water out of your mask) when one guy accidentally spit his regulator out (which is okay) but instead of reaching for his secondary air suplly he grabbed his snorkel mouthpiece. Obviously the snorkel isn't going to do much good at 13 meters, but fortunately our instructor was right next to him and got the regulator back in before the guy attempted breathing through his snorkel.

It was at that point that I realized how stressful being a diver instructor actually is. Diving the Great Barrier Reef 3 - 5 days a week sounds like a pretty fun job, but when you're in the middle of the ocean, 30 feet below the surface, in charge of 8 to 10 people who've never dived before, "relaxing" can turn to "panicking" in a split second, at any split second. Our instructor was a lot of fun, but you could tell that he was keeping a close eye on us the entire time we were under the water. His job was definitely not as relaxing as I had imagined.

Anyway, we were officially certified as open water divers on the second morning and were able to do our first dive without an instructor shortly after that. I felt like I had joined a club at that point, as the "real" divers (the ones who weren't doing the certification course) actually started talking to us at that point. All of a sudden we were real people in their eyes; they even helped us pull our wetsuits on and everything. :) It was a little strange being out there with just your buddy, but you quickly forget about it as you drift around the coral, staring at the hundreds of different fish (who are just as curiously staring at you). I came back from my first real dive as happy as could be.

"We saw two turtles!" I happily tell another diver.
"Cool!" he respondes, "did you see the white-tip coral shark?"
"Woah, no. That would have been great!" I tell him.
"Yeah, what about the octopus, catch a glimpse of that?"
"Oh... no, didn't see that either." I'm still happy, but not as peppy as I was 30 seconds ago.
Another diver walks over, "Did you guys see the school of 15 barracudas?"
"No..." I trail off. But then I realize, "Hey, but I saw two turtles and it was great!"
"A dive is only as much fun as the diver makes it." They smile and head upstairs. I think that was a compliment...

After our free dive we did a night dive, which is one of the strangest things I've ever done. It's absolutely surreal standing on the back of the boat when it's pitch black out, realizing that you're about to jump in with just a small flashlight (or torch, as they say down here) to light your way. I jumped in, looked down and saw a huge fish hanging out just below me (where "huge" is say 1.5 feet long). Fortunately he was as freaked out as I was and he took off. After the initial shock of basically 0 visibility, things settled down. And once under water everything was fine. It's probably the closest I'll come to space exploration, and that's just what it felt like to me. Slowly spinning around, seeing things appear from nowhere and disappear back again was strange, but fun. We didn't see too much at night, but did find a huge green turtle and we all followed it for a while. They're really graceful in the water and at night, with flashlights providing the only light in front of a pitch black stage, our turtle was mesmerizing and we floated along with him for a good 5 minutes.

The last day started with a deep dive down to 26 meters (about 85 feet) to see if anyone would get nitrogen narcosis. Going down to 26 meters doesn't really feel any different from 15, except when you look up you realize that the surface is a long, long ways away. We also brought some fun toys down to see the effects of the additional pressure and loss of color (everything starts turning to shades of blue the deeper you get). In the end no one suffered from narcosis and things went pretty smoothly. Sadly, it appears that I'm some sort of oxygen Hoover; I was going through my tank faster than anyone on all the dives. On the deep dive I ended up low enough that I needed share air on the trip back to the surface with my buddy. It wasn't stressful though, and I guess it was a good experience to actually go through a low on air experience.

Whew, I feel like I could write about this forever. I took one roll of pictures down on the reef and got maybe 2 or 3 good pictures. I'll get them up soon, along with my Sydney photos. But for now, I'm going to veg for a bit.

Crikey! (September 17th, 2006)

It's been a whirl-wind four days here in Sydney. I've been so busy walking, hiking, shopping and enjoying the sun that I really haven't had much time reflect on the city. This morning I walked up to the Rocks, an upscale part of Sydney next to the harbor bridge. Simone, one of my new friends from the snowboarding course was working there for the weekend and promised there'd be some free food if I found my way up there. The free food won me over and I spent a very relaxing morning at a French cafe. In my blissful daze I hear an older British couple discussing the meal they just ate. The woman summed it up with very British, very stodgy, "Well that was rather pleasant." It was funnier if you actually heard her say it. But as I was chuckling to myself I realized that she pretty much summed up my stay in Sydney. Rather pleasant, indeed!

So next stop: Cairns, Australia. Talking to the backpackers in Sydney I'm a little less excited about Cairns that I was a week ago. It sounds like the city isn't all that great and the surfing is basically non-existent (the barrier reef kills pretty much any wave activity and the pleasant box jelly fish hang out along the coast). But I can't wait to go diving. I'm heading out on a three day diving trip bright and early tomorrow morning.

I've got a bunch of pictures and some stories from Sydney that I'd love to share, provided I can find some free. After the dive trip I'll see if I can get my act together. :)

I'm Lovin' It (September 15th, 2006)





I've finally found a reason to visit McDonald's. I can't even remember the last time I've been in one, it's been a while. But McDonald's offers wireless Internet and I have some pictures I want to upload. I stopped by the enticing named "Internet Everywhere" first, but sadly, they don't offer wireless. They do, however, offer a surprisingly complicated pricing scheme. Their pricing info reads something like: "Spend 50 cents or more and you'll only pay $3 an hour; spend at least 3 dollars or more and you'll only pay $2 an hour; spend at least 5 dollars and you'll only pay $1 an hour!" I'm still not sure how much an hour costs.

Ah, but as I'm sitting here uploading pictures (or attempting to upload, I guess), McDonald's is doing what it does best: delivering poor quality content. My 30 minutes for $8 was a little steep, but would have been worth it to get my pictures uploaded. However, I've got about 10 minutes left and I've only successfully uploaded 1 picture. I'm lovin' it!