How To Live Like a Rockstar When You are Not One...
ACDC nee Axl/DC in London At 15:00 I rushed out the door to meet Karel at the Ritzy in Brixton and from there we headed for the London event of the night…AC/DC nee Axl/DC nee Axl/AC/DC! I have twice before watched ACDC during the ‘Rock and Roll Train’ tour in 2009. Their show was totally amazing both nights, but I felt like I have been there and done that when the upcoming European tour was announced. Then news hit that...
Convincing a 20 year old to get out of bed at 10:30 is no easy feat…
It turns out that playing Slayer really loud at 10:45 will make the transition happen! Now you know…
May 1 I had flown across two continents for it, just to be a part of this night… England. London. Camden. The Monarch. Metalworks. It would be old bag of tricks in a new shirt. *In retrospect, I can say for sure from the evening that my lifestyle does not permit me to own a white shirt. I met Mike just after 18:00 and we went to a small establishment called Spiritual Bar to drink beer and catch up. Justin...
April 29 I woke up at 11:00. I did not want to get up then, but sleeping is no excuse for wasting the only day I have in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I talked to the guy at the front desk of Global Hotel and asked him how to get around the city. He told me outrageous taxi prices. I asked him if there is a local convi-taxi. He said there was. I told him, “I have been in Africa for...
April 10 Lala woke me up at 08:00 because she had prepared breakfast for me. Julia, right behind her, had a nice morning shine and sat with me for breakfast. Today would turn out to be Opposite Day! Awesome Opposite Day. Play this while you read. I heard this today. It has been years since I heard this song. Somehow I forgot how great the Bellamy Brothers were. This is a beautiful song… Well, today went down like this… I...
Victoria Falls Gorge Swing: Wild Horizons Adventures Wild Horizons – Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe Telephone +263 (13) – 42313/42314 Email – info@wildhorizons.co.zw Facebook Wild Horizons March 13 I decided to tackle the morning at about 09:00. I wanted to start it earlier, but it was important to have a fresh of a mind for the day so I stole a little extra sleep. I was at Wild Horizons at 10:00. Today was certain to be a great day. [su_note note_color=”#b0b1b6″ text_color=”#030303″ radius=”6″]If you...
Zambezi Horse Trails Victoria Falls Zambezi Horse Trails Email: info@vicfallshorsetrails.com Skype: alisonhorses Tel: +263 13 42847 Facebook Zambezi Horse Trails March 12 I had a morning, but my day really began at 15:30 when a man named Joseph arrived at Shoestring Lodge Backpackers Hostel to pick me up and take me to Zambezi Horse Trails. We stopped to pick up a Gail and Faye, a really nice American mother and daughter team, and then pulled into the Zambezi Horse Trails, one...
Whitewater Rafting the Nile River. Feb 21 – Kampala, Uganda. My telephone rang at 05:51. It was my Ronald from Nalubale Rafting. He was looking for the hotel in Kampala where I was staying. Ronald arrived at the hotel at 06:10. 06:10! They had told me last night that he would be there at 06:15. Five minutes early? In Africa? Wow! A professionalism seldom experienced on this continent…! Ronald helped me to get my backpack in the car and we drove...
Feb 18, 2016 Uganda Elections. Kampala, Uganda. Today is a big day for Uganda. One of the biggest in recent history. Holy! I just looked up at the television showing elections taking place as I started writing this and across the screen it says, “Besigye Arrested.” Kizza Besigye is the opposition leader to the current president Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. President Museveni, has been in office from January 1986 to now. Actually, I just looked the dates up on Wikipedia...
Today was a special day where I went to spend an hour with a silverback gorilla family in the mountains of Rwanda. It was a $750 US price tag for such an experience. But what I got for that hour today was pretty freaking amazing!
Kigali: African Nations Championship (CHAN). Jan 30 [su_quote]Well, that sure escalated and got out of hand… I ended up getting college frat boy wasted, but it sure was fun….[/su_quote] I checked out of my guesthouse and moved to Panafrican, which is the sports bar where I was last night and made friends with Joseph, the owner. He told me they also had rooms for around $10, which is half of the price I have paid for the previous two. I...
Kigali Genocide Memorial Center. Jan 29 Today was a dark day and it made me teary eyed. I spent the afternoon at the Kigali Memorial Center of the genocide of 1994. It was free to enter as it is a place of mourning for the locals. This is what I learned this afternoon. There will be some horrible information and graphic photos here… *All points in “quotation marks” are direct quotations taken from the memorial. Kigali Genocide Memorial Center The...
Walking on Eggshells Bery’s Place – The Sexual Abuse Recovery Home of 43 Ugandan Girls Sometimes one ends up in situations they could never expect. Actually, it seems to be a daily part of my existence as a man on the road trying to avoid the mainstream. Gifts of people and of life just sort of fall at my feet. Maybe that is part of being as open as possible to everything around me… My local friend and I were...
East Africa Visa Battle: Tanzania to Uganda Jan 23 It was a crazy and stressful morning, but I really did not care that much and knew life would find a way to work itself out somehow… My friend Jasmine and I arrived at the bus terminal in Bukoba, Tanzania by 6:20 via motorcycle taxi. She had to pay for my motorcycle because I only had $0.40 worth of Tanzanian money left in my pocket. We climbed onto our Greyhound-sized bus...
Dec 12 I was tired, but I got up in time for the guesthouse breakfast in Nungwi, Zanzibar. It is a free meal, and I need to think about money more than sleep. As I was eating, James, my Tanzanian friend, came to find me to tell me that he had been at the fish-market this morning and he talked with one of his friends who said that they would take me out on the fishing boat to work with...
(from a man who has been in more jets than taxi cabs…)
1) Wear your most loose and comfortable pair of underwear. You are likely going to be seated for at least the next 4 hours, maybe more. If you have not thought of this before, you will every time from this moment forward.
Country Music Hillbilly to London Rock and Roller I wish I had learned two languages growing up…. I am not talking spoken word. I am talking music.… It would be difficult for me to have come from a cooler life and cooler place in the world. I am super proud to be from Big Beaver, Saskatchewan, Canada, population 55. It made me. It is so unconventional in comparison to anyone else I have met in my travels that it makes...
The If I Knew Then What I Know Now B.S. Spiel The If I Knew Then What I Know Now and the If I Was Your Age guy is filling you full of bullshit, even though he may not know it. I have encountered the ‘If I…’ man many times in life and normally take heed of what he has to say. However, I recently spent three months in a sort of time reversal to have an ‘I know what I...
Vimy Ridge in France is where the Canadian Corps won in a battle against the German Sixth Army on the 12th of April 1917 of the First World War. The ridge had been under German control since October 1914. Our guide Grégory, a man who possibly knows more about war history than any other human alive, broke down the events that took place and explained the battle to us. I am not much of a nationalist, but I felt a...
Reverse Roles Damage Control Xavier told me that running a hostel in Marrakech brings up hostel-cultural issues in the Muslim country that do not apply in most of the rest of the western world. For example, hostels often have mixed dorm rooms, but in Morocco, it is illegal to have a Moroccan male and a Moroccan female sharing the same room. A different set of rules applies to the locals. But, being that it is a hostel, crazy things happen...
Magic Mushroom Girls My friend Mick used to manage a hostel in Amsterdam. He told me that one evening he was at reception when two cute girls came down to the desk, completely naked. He said he could see by their eyes that they were really high on something and guessed that it was mushrooms. They were asking him questions about the hostel or Amsterdam and he pretended like they were not naked and tried to have a normal discussion...
The Thong Alessio had been working in the hostel in Valencia for a while. He told me that they had an older Colombian cleaning lady who had a great body. He said she always wore thong-underwear that stuck out above her pants when she was bent over. One day she was cleaning the bathroom and when she shut off the vacuum cleaner, she could hear a sound coming from one of the stalls that sounded like someone was masturbating. Eventually...
Storage Room Hostel Sex. My friend Kate has been managing hostels for years. I asked her for her best story. She told me this: “There were three girls lined up at the reception desk to check-in. I can not remember what time it was, but people had not checked-out of the rooms from the night before yet, so I guess it was before 11:00am. Behind the three girls were three guys, and the three girls and the three guys kind of...
Skydive Interlaken in the Swiss Alps ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and a ‘Skydive’ seem to reflect opposite directions, but for me they will now be forever linked… I was showered, up for breakfast, packed and ready for my hang-gliding adventure when I arrived with my backpack at the front desk of Balmer’s Herberge in Interlaken, Switzerland. The wonderful staff told me they had bad news and that my hang-gliding experience had been cancelled. They tried to get me a spot paragliding. ...
Porn Is Killing Sex I was a young child in the 1980’s that grew into my teen years in the 1990’s. It was an era where having a quality VCR (Video Cassette Recorder) showed status. The VCR our family eventually bought to keep up with the neighbours and society was a thing of luxury at the time. It was in 1990, and it had a feature on it called ‘Timer Record’ that would actually record your TV shows for you...
The Camden Monarch The Camden Monarch is musical art. Unfortunately, not enough of this art is created anymore. The potential loss of this culture and rock and roll is a sad future. Sunday in Camden, London, England, is the most consistent best night of the week…in the world. Now, that is a very strong and opinionated statement, but it certainly holds a lot of accuracy. If you are looking for a good time, any and every Sunday of the year,...
The Power of an Old Crush. I had not seen her in about 10 years. I used to have a massive crush on her 19 years ago when I was growing up. I have been away for nearly a decade and recently returned for a spell. We became friends on Facebook. Then, two days ago I received this message from her: ‘Umm…Just FYI, Your Facebook pages tell me that you might be the coolest. person. ever. 🙂 Just want I...
Magic Mushrooms, a Potential Quadriplegic Orgy, and a Pink Floyd Tribute Band It was the night before the concert. He was at work in a factory but I was in his hot-rod garage hanging out when he sent me this message; ‘Should we eat magic mushrooms for the Pink Floyd tribute band?’ Holy…. I was not ready for that. I wrote back; ‘Whoa. I have not done something like that in about five years. I am not sure if I...
A Strange Twist of Dates Feb 3 Life is just so freaking strange sometimes. It is just a strange twist of dates… Right now in my life, I am at the farm in Big Beaver, and I am trying to get all of my journals moved from paper books that they are and typed out on my laptop. I have 17 journals that I have written every single day for the past 10 years, and it takes me about four...
My father was hanging out with me in the basement, and then he began getting his band equipment together to haul upstairs to load into the car. He told me that he had a gig to play at the senior citizens’ home in Coronach, the next town over. My father is a very youthful 78-years-of-age. I asked him if he needed a roadie for making music. He was happy to have another set of hands to carry equipment, so I decided that I would join him for his performance. Once we got everything into the car, we had a quick sandwich in the house. As we were about to run out the door one of my brothers called. I knew we were short on time but my dad was too polite to say so and he talked to my brother as I watched the anxiousness build up in him as time was ticking by. Eventually, dad got off the phone and we jumped in the car to race the ordinary 15 minute drive from the ranch to town.
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August 3, 2008 Bangkok, Thailand -Sex Show [su_dropcap]I[/su_dropcap]t was early August and my German girlfriend and I had just left Australia on a cheap flight to squeaky…
February 7, 2016 Today was a special day where I went to spend an hour with a silverback gorilla family in the mountains of Rwanda. It was…
January 10, 2017 Anyone ever heard of a band called Electric Eel Shock? There is a reason why you haven’t. The reason why you haven’t heard of…
May 4, 2014 Breakfast was at 8:30am, and I was the last to arrive. I was still feeling effects of the chicha, the local corn-moonshine we had…
July 26, 2014 I wish I could say that we were inside of a pristine shiny and sterile cocaine lab that I had pictured in my mind…
June 3, 2016 Convincing a 20 year old to get out of bed at 10:30 is no easy feat… It turns out that playing Slayer really loud…
March 15, 2014 We were up early to meet a group of three other gringos at Central station at 10am. We were early. We were tired. We…
January 30, 2015 My father was hanging out with me in the basement, and then he began getting his band equipment together to haul upstairs to load…
March 18, 2013 Want the recipe for a fascinating day? This one serves three: Step One – Get Ingredients and Heat up the Oven It started when…
January 7, 2007 Phuket, Thailand Sex Show 7 January 2007. Well, my buddy Mike and I made it to Phuket, Thailand. It was evening when we arrived…