What's that smell?

Why it smells like India! and Naan.

It took about 31 hours to get here (a new personal record) and I'm exhausted so I'll just start rambling now.

So. I don't have Malaria. Yet. I'm workin' on it.

There are dogs everywhere on the streets. Also Cows. Also Monkeys. Also Snakes. I charmed one.

First stop was New Delhi, which is also old Delhi... I don't quite understand either.

The term "public restroom" has a whole new meaning for me. Think a wall with a drain.

The soundtrack of life in India is car horns, constantly blasting in the background of everything.

Schoolchildren love to be in your photos. All of them. I feel like I need a spray for the kids instead of the mosquitoes.

I got to wear a snake. Two snakes actually. The first was your garden variety "give this to a tourist" kind of snake, which I would like to think I handled quite well while it explored my arm. The second one was the kind of snakes they make movies about and staffs for disney villains. It lunged at me. I jumped. Snake #1 was not a fan of the jumping. It was a vicious circle to say the least.

They're not police cars here, they're "Mobile Police Posts" and they have curtains in the windows.

I definitely did NOT oversleep this morning almost getting left behind.

I'm going to fall asleep on my keyboard now so I will talk to you all soon, hopefully with select arts-y photographs.

Cheers,
The Wayward Hoover

Nah We Got Plenty of Time...

So. Funny story.

A good friend of mine and fellow traveler was flown home from Malta recently by good old Tulare County to testify against the guys who kidnapped her and stole her car last December. But that's another story.

The point is the county offered to pay for my gas if I'd pick her up from SFO, and seeing how I love San Francisco I told them "Well I guess I could..."

So I left Fresno last Friday with one of her best friends to pick her up from the airport at 8.

I knew we were in for an adventure when I inadvertently took the wrong freeway west across the valley. I'm not sure who decided to randomly include a freeway exit in the left lane but obviously I was not consulted.

Lucky for my passenger and I everything eventually meets up with the I-5 here in California, and I do mean everything, so all was not lost.

Just north of the junction with the 5 there is a massive facility of some kind surrounded by gigantic, 25-30 ft fence.... except for the north side of the complex.

I'm just as curious as you are.

Pushing onwards me and my compatriot got to SF without much further incident, if you don't count the ridiculous construction before the San Mateo bridge that is. Concrete barriers on each side of the lane and a 25 mph corkscrew of an on-ramp.

I felt like a hotwheels car.

In fact, as we got to the SFO exit on the 101 I noticed the clock on my dashboard reported we had made killer time, hour and a half to spare killer time.

With all that time on our hand we did what anyone would do, we hit the city.

Of course, we weren't entirely sure what we wanted to see, and we also seemed to be using Jack Sparrow's compass. If I was sure something was to our left then she was just as sure it was in the dead opposite direction.

So we wandered around the city like that until our bladders got the best of us and we parked near a Burger King to take care of business.

The Burger King on Market street has a bathroom guard. He's little and angry and holds the keys to relief. Not a good combination. Not a good combination at all.

Even after proving that we were indeed paying customers and had permission to use the restroom he had to be talked into it, and if you got that far he would still grumble about how much he hates letting people use it.

After solving all of the bathroom troll's riddles we returned to the car where I realized I had missed a phone call from south SF sometime during our wanderings.

Things I forgot to do:

1. Adjust my dashboard clock for daylight savings time.

Yup.

People whose flight got in early:

1. My friend.

Yup.

All told she waited about an hour in the airport while her deadbeat friends escaped from the city as fast as they could. Naturally we decided not to tell her why we had been late.

Naturally I was sold out as soon as we got to the curb.

The drive home was less eventful, we paid a visit to Donut Nation in Los Banos where the king requires a $5 minimum purchase if you wanna use a card and to Robertito's where they teach you how to fish your food out of a pool of delicious grease.

Finally rolled back home around 2 in AM and nobody even got kidnapped, so I deem the trip a success.

Cheers till next time,

The Wayward Hoover

VROOM!

Well it looks like being a travel intern isn't such a pipe dream after all, so I've decided to dust off the old blog-o-rooni here and fire her up for new visitors and new adventures!!

To start things off I think I'll talk about my latest adventure, which actually turns out to be applying for the STA World Traveler Internship (that's a lot to type so from now on it's just going to be STA. Or intern. Or whatever I feel like calling it at the time)! I'm going to take you back.... baaack.... to a time loooooong agooooooo.... like last Tuesday.

Specifically, the Tuesday 3 days before the STA submission deadline.

I was deeply engrossed in my studies (read: goofing off on the internet) when my sister sent me a link to the STA intern homepage and informed me that if I didn't apply she would hate me.

Now me and dear ol' sis have had our differences ever since the Great Noogie Incident of '92 but I'm not down for hate, so I hit the link and was immediately hooked.

What followed was a marathon even in video production. I spent the rest of the day brainstorming ideas, studying the competition and writing. by 10 in the PM I had a working script and was scrambling to find a femme fatale for my opening sequence.

After a delightfully hilarious/awkward conversation I had an actress and a location and started filming 11 PM. 4 hours of giggling and hip wiggling later I had my footage and started the editing.

Editing (in all of its riveting detail) went on from 3am until 9pm with a short break to go to work at the trusty library (also riveting). and by 10 Wednesday night I had a video and an application up and ready to be voted on.

Ah voting. It took me all of 20 minutes to get banned from Facebook Chat for spamming my friends.

I think that deserves an award.

By the numbers I directly contacted over 600 friends, over 2,500 guests of the "Help Andrew Hoover" event, over 6,700 fans of a recently cancelled radio show and unknown thousands of hapless MCJ students via the campus listserve (thank you prof. Hayes!). After about 24 hours I had broken into the top 50 with a meager 2400 votes.

Then I did a stupid thing.

I went and told all of those people that if I could break 15,000 votes by the submission deadline, I would shave my head.

I picked 15,000 because it was obviously unattainable.

I am a fool.

Over the course of 9 hours, my vote count skyrocketed to hit over 18,000 votes before finally slowing down, by midnight I was squarely in the 20,000s. So fast that it prompted some to even to pose as STA administration and accuse me of cheating.

Which was hurtful.

But no matter.

I made it to the top 50! Which is awesome in at least 7 different ways.

and on that happy note I'm off to check out the Fresno Rogue Festival

In the mean time, go vote for me on my intern page!!

http://worldtravelerinternship.com/member/andrew-hoover/

Cheers,

The Wayward Hoover

Encore!!!

So I have a little time and a little prepaid internet left so we are going to take a quick journey through whatever happens to pop into my head before my time runs out.

Nobody has been able to accurately recreate a good hotdog, no matter how "American" the stand claims to be.

Weirdest thing I've seen in a second story window: Bulldozer

I got to play on stage at the world renowned Bennet's Jazz Club as a guest artist for the Melbourne International Jazz Festival.

You will never see cops in a group of less than 5 on the streets of Melbourne

The best way to learn a public transportation system is to get hopelessly lost on one

At any given time, New Zealand Pop culture is 8 to 10 years behind ours. Australia sits at about 5

They decided to build their mall around an old shot making factory, with-out tearing it down, so you walk out of Diesel or FCUK or Donut King and smack into the brick wall of a 5 story metalurgy factory just kind of hanging out in the middle of everything.

Some guy in a suit thought I was his son and followed me for 4 blocks before he realized his mistake.

Today I saw an Aboriginal man who had dyed his sideburns (massive sideburns) silver, the hair immediately around his ears pinkish purple and the hair around his bald spot bleach-blonde. The rest of his hair was black.

Combination shops are a big deal here, for instance Haircuts and Pet Grooming, or Pizza and Kebabs.

Sure, why not?

All over town there are tiny tile mosaic space invaders (from the game) about 20 ft up and just chillin' on the wall. I've counted almost 30, each one by itself.

Almost every single bar or restaurant in this town serves pizza for really cheap, and it makes me happy.

There is a donut shop that sells Cactus Cooler. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, there is no explaining the awesomeness it entails.

The Boat That Rocked, Rocks

Australians are very punny

They have a very weird version of football here, I understand it less then Cricket.

In the middle of the Museum of Melbourne, there is a forest. With snakes and fish and everything

Welp, out of time, hope you enjoyed this last minute encore

Until next time,

Cheers,
The Wayward Hoover

Kangaroos Are Dirty, also last international post.....for now

Greetings from Melbourne!! Since I left you last I have visited Flinn's Reef, Milnn Reef, Sydney, Tourqay, Geelong, Lorne, Port Fairy, The 12 Apostles, Tommy's Lookout, Hall's Gap, Rose's Gap, the Grampians National Park, and Loch Ard Gorge. Not to mention about half of the nooks and crannies spread thickly across Melbourne city center

*Inhales*

It's been a busy to say the least.


I really have no idea where I should start and which stories are worth including so I'll just start with the diving. Hard to go wrong with a wonder of the world right?

In Cairns there are three types of buildings; empty ones, restaurants and dive shops.

My kind of town.

After repacking my stuff in the dark into a bag for home and a bag for travel, a van stole me away from my hostel and shuttled me to the docks where I was given milk and a slice of cake and told to wait while they took all of my stuff and put it in my cabin and fluffed my pillow for me

The cake was delicious.

Much to my delight the cake was a constant fixture in life on the dive boat, our schedule started at 6 in the am and went something like this:

Dive cake dive breakfast dive cake dive cake and lunch dive cake dive dinner and cake dive dive

...cake.

It was wonderful.

For all you fish freaks out there I saw so many fish I couldn't even begin to try and list them all here......what's that?? You want me to try anyways?? Well if you insist.

I saw Anemone Fish, Maorie Wrasse*, Bumphead Parrot fish*, Parrot Fish, Butterflyfish, Butterfly Fish (there's a difference), Angel Fish, Black spotted puffer, Yellow Spotted Puffer, Orange and Black Puffer, Brown Puffer, Grey Pipefish*, Yellow Pipefish*, Lionfish, Grey Reef Shark*, White Tip Reef Shark*, Black Reef Shark*, Mako Shark*, Common Hermit Crab, Silver Fish, Common Coral Trout, Black Banded Triple Fin*, Common Reef Lobster, Red Sea Bass, Round Ray, Shovel Nose Guitar Fish, Greenback Turtle, Various Trigger Fish, Surgeon Fish, Forcep Fish, Reef Eel, Cardinal Fish, Little Blue Annoying Fish, Big Blue Annoying Fish, Spiny Sea Cucumber*, Hairy Sea Cucumber, Totally Gross Sea Cucumber, Giant Clams*, Less Than Giant Clams, Panicked New SCUBA Diver, and of course the Goofy American Fish.

* = something that was bigger and/or longer than me

That is maybe a quarter of what I saw, but it's all I can remember.

For those of you playing the home game and who are slightly less interested in the specific names of all the fish, I saw the entire cast of Finding Nemo.

Got there autographs.

Went out to lunch and pitched ideas for their next movie and how I will direct it.

(Minus Bruce)

If we weren't underwater than we were on the top deck eating cake or dancing or running face-first off the edge and falling to the water 25 feet below us.

I saw a crocodile. It was a baby, but it coulda ate my toes.

The city of Melbourne was built to order just for me, I am convinced of it. The layout was originally designed with wide streets for moving large carts of goods, which the citizens promptly ignored and created their own intricate system of alleyways and tunnels to get around the town.

This city is alive, and when you cut it bleeds adventure.

I have been here for about a week and a half and have been exploring from sunrise to sunrise and have maybe worked my way over half of this city.

Maybe.

Big Maybe.

There are two sets of doors here, the ones that are open during the day, and the ones that are open at night... With that in mind let's say I've only seen a quarter of the city.

Most stores don't have signs, the good ones are only accessible through the back of another store and the best ones are in the back, around a corner and down a flight of stairs. And you have to knock.

I pet (petted?) a Kangaroo. It was dirty.

There is a massive open air market here that sells all sorts of discount wares and fresh foods and fried foods and fried discount wares.....and a homeless man having a butterfly painted on his face.

I get on an airplane for the states tomorrow and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

The Melbourne International Jazz Festival runs from April 26th to May 2nd.

Excuse me while I wipe the drool from my face

*wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiipe*

The festival and its events however were hidden from view, to the uninitiated you would never know that jazz talent and appreciators from all over the world were converging on the city to share and experience alike the new flavors and old recipes being traded in back alleys and on performance hall stages.

Walk down any given empty alley and knock on the right door, it would be opened to reveal a packed house, stretching to point an ear towards the corner stage where the likes of Jim Black, Charlie Haden, Marc Hannaford, Katie Noonan and countless others were letting the music do the talking for them.

It was unreal. If the city bleeds adventure then it certainly Screams, swoons and cries jazz

Now there is a certain matter which is most unfortunate but we all must address together.

My trip is ending, and soon (Tomorrow Soon). However my adventures will not be ending, if I have anything to do about it. I will be rumbling around the central valley for about a month before heading off again to work as Ranger Director on Catalina island, and then after that, who knows??

I should mention that I lived in a van for a week in the Grampians National Park. Also google the 12 Apostles on the Great Ocean Road, they were awesome.

The question is, should I keep tip-tapping at my keyboard to share my experiences, accidents, ravings and discoveries? Or should I leave it as a tribute to the epic journey that these last 4 or 5 months have been?

I will definitely return to at least share some pictures that I feel represent the various highlights of the trip, as I know you are all just tripping over yourselves to see exactly what I have been rambling about.

But before that, I have one more night to try and trick this City into showing me what she's hiding, so until then

Cheers,
The Wayward Hoover

Neener-Neener!!

Hello faithful readers, friends, family, random visitor from India that I keep getting.

I am currently traveling in Australia, and have nowhere near enough time to write a full post right now as I am waiting on a van to pick me up and take me to a very large boat, on which I will be living for the next 3 days and from which I will be jumping as often as possible into the Pacific decked out in SCUBA gear.

For the win.

I Definitely only told you so that you could be jealous (neener-neener!)

Also this marks the end of my semester!!

No more tests, homework, random geology side trips, lectures in beautiful places, rests in less than beautiful places. From here on out its just me and my wandering compass needle until May, which is when I will be returning to the beloved U. S. of A.

Allegedly.

Who knows? I might miss my flight.

Needless to say this will lead to an epic increase in tomfoolery, mischief and your all around good fun shenanigans.

Only about half of which I can tell you about.

Because my mother reads this blog that's why.

Well, my van is here, so until next time...

Oh ya, I'm in Cairns for all you Google Earth fans. Since Queenstown I have also been to Dunedin and then back to Christchurch before flying north to Cairns.

Cheers,
The Wayward Hoover

Bees, Trees and Kiwis

So.

New Zealand.

Its pretty fantastic. True story.

Things are well under way here and, Geology homework aside, everything is great! The weather, more or less, refuses to dip below 70 and when it's hot the wind keeps things cool.

About that wind. It never stops. Ever. The windows in our rooms are designed to only open part way which is great for all sorts of reasons but nothing gets you out of bed like a good gust of wind slamming it shut come 3 in the AM. Going down the harbor you see people riding bikes at 45 degree angles leaning into the wind (this gets absolutely hilarious between gusts).

I've been spending more and more time in libraries lately: city libraries, university libraries, research libraries, quiet libraries, loud libraries, libraries that serve drinks. The on-campus library at University of Victoria is currently my favorite for one reason alone; they have so many books that they simply started lining them up on the floor. At first I just thought it was messy, but when I saw bookends on either side I knew that this library and I were going to be great friends. Every row, between shelves on the floor there are little lines of books when they run out of room on a shelf, labeled and organized. It just goes to show what I've been telling my parents all along:

The floor is the biggest shelf in the house...err..library.


Directly up the hill from our dorm building is the Wellington Botanic Gardens, go ahead, Google it. You know you want to. It is absolutely gorgeous on 6 or 7 different levels. The upper parts of the garden are all natural foliage just left to grow with oodles of noodling paths running through it. In a week of going at least once a day I haven't taken the same route twice, which is wonderful. Anyways at the top of the garden is a tree, a magical tree.

Imagine, if you will, wandering along a quiet path with some friends when you happen upon a tree. As you walk past this tree, you notice it has been manicured and trimmed to form a perfect cylinder and then just before you turn away it does something really weird.

It says, "Hello."

If that doesn't make you re-read the labels on your medication I don't know what will. Turns out that this tree has grown together at the top to form a very sturdy web of branches that you can walk across, sit on and view the whole city from. It really is pretty magnificent. Of course, there are a few holes in the web, most of which I promptly found (and fell through). It has turned into the premier place to meet people. So far we've encountered just about every variety of south pacific culture there is and scared even more varieties of tourists.

Speaking of tourists (I am not one). (Really). We've become something of a tourist attraction ourselves. Be it a game of good old fashion American football or just throwing a baseball around, we manage to gather an audience. My favorite is playing catch under a near by cable car and watching everyone scrambling in the windows to pull out their cameras. Kiwis love baseball.

They love cricket too. Cricket is something that I don't understand. At all. I spend a good 2 hours trying to watch a game and all I got out of it was that there is a very specific way to wipe the ball off on your pants. I will admit that it is probably the best dressed sport out there; all collared shirts and khaki pants and trendy hats and whatnot.

I actually have nothing to say about bees in this post, it just rhymed with kiwi and tree.

I do have something to say about birds. Today I saw a bird going after a grasshopper and I wasn't sure which one I was supposed to root for. Comments? Suggestions? Theories on the social paradigm represented in the struggle for food?

Speaking of food.

Curry. So much curry you wonder what the plural for curry is. Wellington (which is where I am) is one of the stops where the group is fortunate enough to have some sort of dining facility to prepare meals. However, this means we do not get to control the menu which apparently means that we are to eat our bodyweight in curry. All varieties of curry: lamb curry, rice with curry sauce, vegetables with sauce and more lamb curry. Our chef is Welsh.

I don't get it either.

I miss Mexican food. A lot.

A kiwi introduced me to an interesting new dip for your potato chips: cheese & bacon. Weird, right? The taste isn't all that interesting one way or the other but the texture reminds me of old jello.

I cannot for the life of me get over how many things are free here. There are free concerts every night in the Garden, and they're really good and they're packed every night. All of the museums are free, the cable car service is dirt cheap and so are the taxis. Four bucks American can get you anywhere in the city in a taxi. Even the auto insurance is free (my parents would love it). There was a free reggae festival serving free food; free delicious food, mind you. They had watermelons cut in half and filled with assorted fruit, like a fruit salad in a bowl you could eat.


Pictures are taking me longer than I thought. This has nothing to do with my being unable to locate my connector cord for my camera. Nothing at all.


Well I think this is a sufficiently aimless and long winded post for now so stay tuned for more kiwi adventures! Coming next time: Kiwi slang!!

Cheers!

The Wayward Hoover

P.S.
I am missing the Superbowl and this makes me sad.

Edit ::
This is a really long post, should I make them shorter? Should I post more? Should I just please, for the love of all that is good, stop rambling?

Leavin' On A Jet Plane

So this will be my last post from the United States! I am stoked to say the least. I really am too restless to write anything of value so I'm just going to ramble for a little while.

Yeah I got nothing.


Next time you hear from me I'll be in New Zealand!

Hi, I've Got an Appointment with Mr. Ullman...

Living in Fresno is weird with everyone gone, kind of like my own personal version of the shining, hold the blood. I'm taking a crash course in Art History and I was unaware how intense art can be, but I'm not sure it's intense enough for the 8-5 time slot it fills three days a week.
Weak.
Cabin fever has started to settle in a little. I figure this is how old rich people must feel, hundreds of rooms and living space but nothing to do with it all. For the moment people seem to be sifting in and out of the building enough to keep me occupied, but it's still eerily quiet.
On the upside, this gives me lots of time to noodle on the old ukulele, catch up on some good movies and eat sinful amounts of Jimmy Dean Breakfast Croissants (which are delicious in case you didn't know).

I'm also getting pretty good at Rockband and there's nothing wrong with that.


11 DAYS!!!!!

My Very First Blogspot

So my friend Taylor told me that she liked this template so this is going to be it. On January 21st I leave for New Zealand, which is the main reason for the creation of this here blogg-y diary-y thing...y. I've never actually had a blog before and am a notoriously neglectful pen pal so we're just going to cross our fingers and hope I can keep it current.