#10 Mildly Stoned

Looking at the title of this post reminds me of a bad joke. What did the green grape say to the purple grape? Breathe, idiot! BREATHE!

Ok, that looks more like needing to take a deuce, but my point is this. I’ve reached my 10th post. It’s a relatively small milestone (get it now? drum roll) but one I’ve been looking forward to. I feel that, after 2 1/2 weeks of tackling this project, I’ve finally found a good stride and that I can take a breath. But it’s only been 2 1/2 weeks! you say. Yeah, it has, but I didn’t truly understand the scope of the undertaking I set myself on until a week ago. I feel now I’m beginning to understand why I’m really doing this and that I’ve found the right process to go about it. Anyways, without further ado…*plop* #10.

The Skillfull Traveler aka Skilsaw

That’s right folks. This is about a machine because I genuinely believe that our evil robot overlords will soon descend upon us and I’m trying to score brownie points before that happens. Just kidding. This be Drew.

Another machine! you say. Actually, this represents Drew very well. Drew is my sister’s beau and I felt it appropriate to bookend the start of the project and this milestone with the 2 of them. Drew and I had a talk recently and I asked him what he thought his core truth is. He told me that at his core is the soul of a builder. To be more precise, the soul of a builder who never actually finishes anything. So, basically, a slacker. Sorry, you set yourself up for that one, brother. Actually, I got to thinking about this and I realized that he’s really a traveler and wanderer.

I find Drew to have an adventurous and wandering mind (as opposed to a wandering eye which I would firmly plant my foot in his ass if he did). He is always travelling around the world and when he isn’t physically moving around he’ll sit with sketch pad in hand and doodle about anything that comes to him. It’s like restless leg syndrome but with brains.

See how his mind wanders? That’s actually him being cheeky, but it works well for a Propecia ad. I think you’ve found your new calling, dude.

So we’re sitting there chatting away and he starts telling me about how back in 2002 he and a few buddies snuck into Cuba. Highly illegal, highly awesome! They started in Portland and made their way into the Bahamas. From there they hopped on a rickety old Russian byplane and got into Cuba. When entering Cuba illegally you’re not supposed to get your passport stamped . Otherwise, you face incarceration on your way back to the states. When Drew got to the immigration officer the guy started stamping away at his passport. Drew nearly shat his pants in panic, but then the officer started laughing and showed him that he was messing with him. He was just stamping a piece of paper on his desk hidden from view. Ha ha, very funny.

While traveling through Cuba, they soon learned what it was like to be in a communist run country. To put it mildly, people there are f-ing poor and live dismally. He remembers finding rooms to stay with local people for 10 US dollars and that the amount would equal to what the family would earn in any given week. They didn’t realize until afterwards that the rooms they were staying in were the rooms of the children and that the parents had shifted their family around to accommodate them. They would go to local restaurants and find that everything on the menu from the fries to the hamburgers were actually just there to help the western capitalist traveller feel at home. If you asked for those items, they wouldn’t actually have them. Instead they would always tell you they had rice, beans, and tomatoes. The 3 essentials to a Flintstones kid (did I just date myself?). Walking around the grocery stores they found that the general population lived off of those oh so yummy rations.

MMMMMM….rations. They did however find a beautiful country underneath the disparity. They even made a nifty video of it with a Super 8 camera.

Those were the kind of crazy adventures he got himself into. This is why I dub Drew “The Skillful Traveler”. Of course it’s also a play on his family name for you in the know