It's Time to Feed the Mojo Wire.

So the words I promised all so long ago. What can I say I am just lazy, well that is not accurate, lacking my muse has been the main problem coupled by a case of U.M.S. (ugly mood swings) that I have seem to have turn a corner on, thus the words.

So this is going to be as close to straight from the noodle as possible, I find it is just easier to write this way. The trip to america was a great time to say the least. martin, joe and i had a super time traveling the east coast on the 15 day tour. that is a good a place as any to start.
we land in newark on labor day the 7th of sept. in the afternoon. my brother tim had a town car waiting for us to drive us to my dad's house. (much love to Spaz for that and the many other things he takes care of for me on that side of the atlantic. dude i do appreciate it.)

grammar and other rules have been thrown out the window for this one, i will try and correct the major spelling errors but other than that forget it, just let it go, the english language is changing so fast that the style i now write in will someday be looked at as old fashioned. it will be sad i admit but it will happen, back to the story

fuck my clock needs a battery, hold on, wait oh that is why, never mind. it has no battery for a reason, (yes jake, it is right where you would expect it to be) the new flat is fucking with me some. more on that later but i need a few seconds to contemplate the clock and its significance in my life. i am not just speaking about time in a general sense but more in the is it only man made sense. thus the overlapping hands.

OK that was time well spent even while i listen to the brazilian bubble gum beauty sing her truth, yes i can admit i dig shakira, she's my debbie gibson of the new millennium. my mac keeps fixing my spelling mistakes for me thus making life that much easier

so we hung out in NJ with my dad and Janet in Chester for the evening. we woke up on tuesday morning and started the drive to virginia, with a quick stop at abbess of maines so joey and martina could buy a new camera for the trip. we then drove the 5.5 hours and arrived in richmond in the early afternoon. we hung out for a while with my mom and steve, we then headed into town to show them the west end, (sarcasm on) i have never been so proud (sarcasm off) just to make it totally clear to people why i do not live in america anymore, the west end of richmond, hey guys rome is burning. I was waiting for it to rain frogs when i was there, while i am not a religious man by any stretch of the imagination but that place is going to be the first place god decides to blot out first, is smitten the word i am looking for? as my english skills continue to decline with age and lack of proper use. so anyway we went to the most authentic restaurant i could think of was Mexico in Innsbrook, i know it is like going to the heart of the beast and dinning on the earthly delights of the the the word i cant think of place that represents everything that makes me understand how ignorant i once was and how much i still have to learn. do you have any idea how long it takes to deprogram yourself from all the bullshit you have been feed since birth? welcome to my world, a no stop questioning of everyone of my motives and actions, not always in real time but always reviewed, thus the insomnia. but the food was great. We then went home for an early night as the jet lag was still messing with us. we awoke the next morning, late, if i remember correctly and we went into richmond to show them carytown, VCU (and may i just say, what the fuck VCU, what happened to that part of the Fan? it was I nice place that people lived in, that felt open and welcoming, now i feel so boxed in and the lack of the old neighborhood feel is long gone, way to go, you get smitten third, NOVA is second, you fucks deserve it and you know it. nova= northern virgin, for those who don't know) yes my proclivity to use the work fuck today is also a bit of a surprise to me as well but the slovak bad words i would like to use are hard to translate sometimes and fuck covers most of it with little fanfare and even less need for long winded explanations like this one about fuck, this negating my previous hypothesis. basically fuck you VCU administration. I may not speak for the masses but there are many of us VCU dropouts who hate to see what is happen to the school that accepted just about anyone.) we had lunch with my friend carol ann at Dot's Back Inn, in the north side of richmond for what i now consider the best place I know to get a cheeseburger, google it and go. (extremely smoker friendly), we hung out some with carol ann the we then spent wednesday evening at my sister jennifer house with her husband and there 4 kids, my brother kevin his wife and his 4 kids, my brother macro his wife and their 3 kids my sister betsy and her 2 kids my mom and my step dad for a typical family meal. It was a great time and the kids loved playing with joey. we then spent that evening hanging out with Jason at his house before coming home. We did some more exploring of richmond on thursday morning before having an early dinner with some family and we headed to DC to visit my friend Kelly for a few days.

DC was cool and it was great to have Kelly's place to crash in. we got up and started to do the typical touristy things one does in DC. We started at the White House, my first visit, and got lucky and saw the presidential motorcade returning to the white house, the amount of support vehicles was amazing, at least 20 others in the motorcade. we then headed to the WW II memorial then down the reflecting pool to the lincoln memorial, over the the Vietnam memorial, a quick cab ride to the capital, worth the 10 bucks for the 6 min ride, it beats an hour walk. then we went to the museum of native america which was really lacking in north american native american history. If i want to know about south american native americans i will go to south america, enough said. we then had dinner with kelly at a local restaurant that was very good then back to her house for an early evening in chatting. The next morning we awoke to drive out to Dulles airport and the new Air and Space Museum, (so worth the trip, it was the highlight of my trip to DC and Joe and Martina both loved it. If you have kids take them, get there early and plan on a whole day and even then you will feel you wished you had more time. they close at 5pm.) i am going to cook a pizza, not that you would need to know that but sometimes the fingers just keep going an the brain says fuck it you are typing at a speed not known to you before run with it pony boy run with it, natures first green is gold, stay golden pony boy, i am going to get feed.

we headed to NJ and the beach house in Bay Head saturday night as we where going to the Gaints / Redskins game the next day. Know i have to tell you when we were in richmond at the short pump mall Joe saw a shop called Redskins, now keep in mind when Joe thinks redskin he thinks native americans and this is a shop with native american goods he can buy. I was unable to keep him from going in, it was too late, the hook was set and from that point on Joey and Martina became redskins fans, even me telling them over and over again that the redskins suck but this did not deter him as a matter of fact he take much pride in his redskins tshirt he found. but they still suck no matter how much he likes them, dan synder has to go then the can be good again. so the four of us, kely is also a die hard deadskins fan so I was looking forward to all three of them dealing with the loss that was about to beset them. it was a 4pm game and we got to the stadium before 2 so we could tailgate, we got a great spot on the grass right next to the entrance / exit. both joe and martina were surprised by the tailgating but i explained that that was sometimes more fun then the game. the giants won, of course and I enjoyed that for what it was worth. the four of us stayed at the Sheraton next to the stadium. I also drove in to Hoboken that night with kelly to go visit a friend of mine Ben who is a Stevens Institute as some kind of biochemical genetic engineer or so other next generation shit that is way over my head. put it this way, the kid is wicked smart and crazy talented. I got a view of manhattan at night I had never experienced and wished I had brought my camera with me, and if was not so late when I returned to the hotel I would have gone bcd that night but knew we had a long drive ahead of us in the morning and needed to get some much needed rest.

week 2 begins on monday morning as we leave the stadium complex and head north towards camp. The NY throughway south of albany is fairly bland but once you get a bit north on the northway and you skirt the western edges of the adirondack state park past lake george and we went up to the Blue Ridge rd, rt. 2, so worth the drive but it is better to go west to east from long lake for this drive, east to west is not as scenic. we then came past long lake to blue mountain lake, my favorite of all the lakes i have been to in the park, which is quite a lot. we then made it to camp in the late afternoon where we meet up with T, John and Dave and had dinner at Dakkers. It was great to catch up with them an hear all the stories about camp this year. i do feel bad for mike who did the driving this summer with all the problems with airport runs. I hope next summer when I return everything will run like clockwork, we shall, as always, see. the next day I packed up a few things I wanted to bring with me, mainly my nintendo ii. I have missed it these last two years. we then headed to bethel NY, the site of Woodstock, as Joe was very keen to see it. I was also interested to see if the field was small like I thought it would be, in my brain after seeing the movie it feels like a great expanse but haven worked with wide angle lens for sometime now I have learned how to resize wide angle images in my head. it field is in fact much smaller than you would think. the photos kind of give you an idea as I tried to give you a true to life view of the place and shot at 50mm, the closest to the human eye. we then continued south and drove to Newton to show them the dealerships and have diner with the last of the family martina and joey had yet to meet, tim, aka Spaz, and his wife and 3 kids. we then headed back to the beach in NJ for the rest of the trip.

just to let you know this is 3 hours of writing so far. it would be so much quicker to tell you on video but i would want to write it first anyway instead of off the cuff which i would skip from place to place leaving you with half processed ramblings of an addled brain but enough of that back to the beach.

this was now tuesday night and we settled in for the next 6 nights before flying out the next monday. to be honest the next few days tend to blend together so instead of when, which is not really important i will just tell you you the what. we, well me, i dragged them along to best buy as i loaded up on electronics i wanted to get before returning to the very expensive E.U. I picked up a tom-tom gps which i love having here and a video projector, for both future teaching uses, it now serves as my 8 ft wide TV and computer monitor. Once I get internet in the flat, more on this later I will post photos. it was also a great purchase that i got a great deal on. we did some more shopping for them and got the gifts they wanted to get. we then spent the next few crappy weather days doing much of the same, shopping, eating out at local places for the atmosphere and playing the Wii, Sean White snowboarding with the balance board is way cool and joe says feels very realistic to actual snowboarding. part of me has been wanting to play for the last hour but i need to get this shit out of my head and off of my plate as I have other things that are demanding that brain space. a promise is a promise and jake is jonesen' like a mother fucker for words, the stats don't lie. but i need to finish this up in the next 30 minutes or else i am ea.ting in to sleep time before a early and long day tomorrow. we then drove in to see ben again and get photos of the manhattan skyline at night but i forgot the camera mount for my tripod at the house like an idiot so my photos did not even come close to what i wanted or hoped for. but it is the first place i am going when i return. for that matter i want to return to ireland to visit santa in the off season, (are you lost, look at my ireland slideshow for the man with 3 dog, then you will understand.) and amsterdam while I am thinking about it, so anybody who wants to go, tell me when and i will meet you there, 30 hours notice is plenty for me, ask my friend matt, thats all i needed for my last trip in july. time sean, time, focus.

so we hung out in Bay Head hoping for good weather and hanging out with my friend sophia. (in my world she is a pure blue, and blues are hard to find let alone a pure blue, she is special, you figure that out about her as soon as she smiles at you. hard for me to explain colors to you guys but everyone i know has a color, some change but most are what you are, me, i am a yellow, but enough of that.) we had a super time even though it was cold and raining most of the time, we made the best of it and it was also nice to slow down after the 8 days we had just had.

we flew out on monday night returning to vienna on tuesday morning. I got my car from my friend Vrbo's flat and if I remember correctly I drove them back to Zlate Morvace that afternoon. I then return to bratislava and my flat in the middle of no where for bratislava standards, it is a long bus ride to get anywhere except the VW plant a few miles down the road. I was happy to have my car. but getting the car into my name was not going to happen no matter what i wanted so I decided to just have it put into joe's name which is just as good. But a few days later my starter shit the bed as noted before. it took me a week until i could get someone I trusted would not rob me blind like the porsche dealer in bratislava wanted to do. it limited my driving as I had to make sure i parked in a location that allowed me to roll down hill to jump start it or at worst a open flat area for me to push it, which after 3 tries always started when i was alone. in the end 130 bucks for a fixed starter new oil and other minor issues resolved, i am happy i have a local guy i can trust to fix it, the guy is like rainman with cars. i don't question it, just enjoy the fact i have him to take it to for any future issues. I spent these next 2 weeks getting back on european time and finding a new flat in Zlate Moravce, which i was able to do with joe and martinas help. it is nothing special but it is big and cheap compared to what i was paying in BA. I am having some problems getting internet here but they are problems which i created so I am dealing with it the best i can. every two days i go to intro, the big city 25 minutes away and to the big new mall which has free high speed net. in about 1.5 hours i can download a few hours of the latest tav shows i like, grab some food, check email and then head home to watch what i downloaded. I also have internet over my cell phone now but it is at best 5k - think dial up, so gmail takes 2 minutes to load but i can at least check it now.

shit 10 minutes to my deadline

i drive the hour and 45 mites to BA on tuesdays and thursdays to teach, i am finished by 2 pm both days and on tuesday I finish at 1:30 and am only 45 min back to ZM. the drive can be a pain with traffic some mornings but i enjoy the drive and have really missed not having a car for 2 years. I am listen to stuff on my ipod i forgot i had, a lot of zeppelin, which is nice.

As for the cottage i am trying to buy, i am waiting on a judge to put a stamp on the paper and i can pay the man and it will be mine, i also want this off my plate as the reconstruction in the spring will need the space. I will update you as soon as i know something. if for some strange reason it does not go through and I can't buy the place then I will know what the universe is telling me but until then the signs are still unclear on the path ahead of me, the only thing i know is this, it's mine to enjoy the view, it is my job to give you the best description as i can, here i feel i have failed but the photos should make up for it, now go look at the slideshow again.

3 minutes to spare,
i am done, much love