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April 4, 2006
I shoulda biked 
About this awful picture: it appears there is a fort, or a porch, or something, on top of a roof, right off Alberta! I gotta know more!
It's gorgeous outside—beautiful, sunny. I thought about bicycling, but then, I didn't. It was a matter of time: tires needing inflation, locks needing to be gathered, etc.
I met up with Jessica of Andiamo! this morning at the neighborhood coffee place, which is conveniently located by her new job at the BootsNAll World Headquarters. I've been following BNA since the beginning of time (which, I think means since about 1999 or 2000), when they were just three guys in a shared house in Eugene who had this blossoming, exploding travel web site. And it is so totally cool, so great, to see something so personal, so human, so what the web should be, paying for itself.
Anyways, I joke that BNA might be my dream job. But maybe I'm not joking.
It was great to meet Jessie, chat about travel and work and cats (the cat yesterday, by the way, was Fup. Store Cat. at Powells)—a tremendously humane way to start the morning.
Oh, and she gave me a DVD of the last day of the Tour de France, so I can see Lance's speech. Is that sweet or what? Wow!
Also, she has gorgeous hair.
...
So, I took the bus in, which was unexpectedly interesting. There was a couple, nodding off. This might not have caught my attention if not for the fact that there was gator@de all over the floor of the bus when I got on. A stop or two later, one of the passengers at the front of the bus began putting down paper towels and giving meaningful glances to the woman who had spilled the gator@de. It was only after watching the gator@de spilling woman (GSW) that I realized that she was, in fact, nodding off.
Her gestures, towards herself, and her seatmate, were clumsy. Sweeping back her hair meant using her hand like it was a piece of wood, totally foreign to her. She'd remain upright, but the hand holding the bottle would start to tip, or loosen. She'd fall into her seatmate, who would poke at her like you might a classmate who's snoring beside you, except his hands aren't working right either.
At one point when the gator@de holding hand started to fail, the woman who had put down the towels started saying, "Miss, Miss, your drink..." to no recognition. So the man behind her jabbed her and said, "Your drink is spilling". GSW initially looked pissed, like Courtney Love pissed, like I'm gonna beat up as soon as I can figure out how to stand up.
But then, she started thanking people for telling her. When they clumsily, slowly lurched off the bus, she thanked everyone again.
This totally made the normal looking guy who was having a conversation about celebrity women with himself seem, well, commonplace.
...
I had another bad night's sleep punctuated by waking up and thinking about the guide. Jessie was talking about how the BNA big cheese bounds outta bed super early charged by the new ideas he's excited about... I wish that was me. Instead, I wake up in the night thinking, I gotta figure out x or I gotta do y, and I just lay there, trying to will myself back to sleep.
I think this is just my body saying, VJ, you better get out there and get some more exercise.
I've been intrigued by the idea of getting up earlier. Brett of Walking Portland has been talking about rising at 5am, and Hollie of Cheesepuppet mentioned this article about how to be an early riser. Essentially, it just comes down to getting up earlier. No whining, no but I'm tireds. Just set the alarm and do it.
...
Part of this might be about the fact that, for the first time in a couple months, I don't have a collection of entries waiting to be posted on the guide. Usually, I have at least a couple in waiting, and a couple partially written.
I've been so caught up in upgrading, and in working on an alternate version. I need to keep the big picture in mind!
Posted at April 4, 2006
Comments
I think it's so funny you were into BootsnAll way back when. So was I! I went to Europe in 2000, and started following the guys then. One of them (Tony, but we were supposed to call him Ant I think) stayed with us at our cohousing in Portland.
The Gatorade woman sounds like she was high on something. Probably not the Gatorade.
Posted by: cheesepuppet at April 4, 2006 9:17 PM
VJ, that's so sweet... And you didn't even see me on a good hair day!! ;) It was great to meet you, too!
Posted by: Jessie at April 5, 2006 5:50 PM
good morning. getting up early is great and all and i did it for 1 week straight. the second week was difficult and this, the monday of the third week, i have already slept in an hour later than i wanted. it does take discipline and motivation. for me, the motivation needs to be that i will accomplish something. when i arise and it's pouring down rain, all i can think about is - i can't garden, let's go back to bed. what i don't think about is - hey, since it's raining, why not do laundry instead. before morning coffee, it's hard to rationalize sometimes.
not sure if you see a correlation, but i got my 5am idea from Steve P. he has good stuff out there on the interwebs.
enjoy the week.
Posted by: dieselboi at April 10, 2006 6:47 AM