partially due to my sleep deprived state and possibly more due to the sheer amount of stuff i wanted to write about, i excluded various items of interest from my last post. (i'll pretend that i did it specially for gazza so he didn't have to read so much. yeah, that's it...)
i was thirlled to step on to the scales back here in cardiff and discover that i was still under ten and a half stone. wobbling from restaurant to restaurant across america, we felt the vast portions slowly mount up beneath our skin. at each meal we tried to order more realistic portions, yet time and time again we were presented with enough food to sink the new zealand navy fleet. (yes yes, i know, it wouldn't take much to sink a dinghy and three kayaks, but just shush up and listen to the rest of the story.) at a pizza restaurant in florida we each ordered a pizza. strange that. i conservatively opted for the twelve inch size, while the others decided that fourteen inches of traditional thin crust pizza was more to their liking. john, however, decided that a half serving of a sicilian deep pan would be more on par with his appetite. oh how he was mistaken. weighing in at several kilos, the fourteen by seven by three inch high pizza was slapped down on the table before him, almost resulting in his fainting at the sight of it. i'm proud to say, i was the only one to finish my pizza, albeit at four in the morning for breakfast. mmmmmm jalepeno breakfast.
alas, my time is short, but there is much still to tell. i will have to resume some time later.
news is at hand though - i've booked the first of my tickets in my european adventure. tuesday morning at six forty, i fly out from london stansted to...
all will be revealed in the next post... any ideas though? ten points to the correct guess...! ooooooohhhhh aaaaaaahhhhh i hear you say.
psssssssst... don't tell the others, but we're on a beach... in florida... and we're spreading the sand with rakes.
and indeed we were. twas our day off, and there we were on jacksonville beach under a scorching hot sun, raking the sand. were it anyone else, you'd think it peculiar. but this is glen, with peanut butter for brains. but to be honest - can you think of anything you'd rather be doing ona florida beach than raking huge geometric patterns into the sand? no, didn't think so.
feels like yesterday was a week from thursday
i've never had to adjust the time on my watch so many times in so few days before. honestly, it was getting to be beyond a joke. we lost all concept of time; the names of the days lost all meaning. insufficient sleep and dehydration from the sun didn't do our jetlag any favours, but we soaked it all up with ample quantities of alcohol.
the path went a little something like this: (maybe you'd care to carefully follow my journey on a map with your finger... go on, try it, you won't be dissapointed...)
cardiff > london > heathrow > washington d.c. > jacksonville, florida > little talbot island, fl. > chicago, illinois > los angeles, california > corona, ca. > west hollywood, ca. > chicago, il. > crystal lakes, il. > chicago, il. > heathrow > london > cardiff.
splendid fun. in fact, the first night was so much fun (possibly partly due to the eight double vodkas i was served up in one glass (with more vodka than lemonade) by the waitress that "usually only serves beers. we have over five hundred." (she said it like i cared)) that it resulted in my writing various words and phrases on everyones shirts with a spare roll of high visibility pink duct tape. it was quite the laugh and a great way to kick off the trip. we made two florida sand formations - one intended design, and one impromtu you-know-didn't-really-have-much-else-to-do-so-lets-grab-the-rakes-and-look-like-freaks-among-everyone-else-with-their-surfbaords-and-stuff type of design.
you may, if you watch a little bit of cricket as i once or twice did for some odd reason, be ware of that umpire guy who waves around and dances like the proverbial dancing umpire guy when he's doing his signals and indicators and associated movements (woah, i just fell asleep at the keyboard, in the middle of cardiff public library. teeeheeeheeeeee). i think his name is billy. well anyways - we found a guy who trumps billy. oh yes. driving aboard the little talbot island car ferry we were quite magnificently directed to a suitable parking space by the dancing ferry guy. he obviously had peanutbutter for brains, or maybe guacamole, whatever allows you to create a more picturesque image in your mind. he'd start to quiver as you approached, and then his legs would start to rotate and swing and the whole action wasn't unlike a weird vertical mexican wave as it progressed up his body and out to the very tips of his limbs, visually articulating through dance, precisely the message he was trying for. he made our day.
we cautiously changed the location of the sand formation, not knowing what the tides were going to do, not knowing even how long of a window we were working within. but we found a great spot on the tip of the peninsula where there was a vast smooth area for working on. the sand was so white and delicate; when wet, it crumpled in your fingers like half-set sugary fudge. (oops, just woke up again... i hope no one is watching me... sheesh.) so we pulled the formation together quite rapidly, the helicopter came in and got the required footage and stills and away we went back to the cruisy atmosphere of the surfside motel.
we weren't so lucky in california unfortunately. arriving at the feild at seven in the morning, we found it drenched in a dense mist. it wasn't till some hours later that the grass was dry enough to paint on, and even then we still had another few hours of surveying to do. the centre of this formation was really detailed and precision was paramount. we spent hours trying to ensure it was perfect. i think you'll find that we did rather well. i don't mean to gloat, but my almost entirely all freehand surveyed number four was exceptionally pleasing on the eye. no, really, it was. you should see it. dark cornered us in eventually and not even my headlamp or the car headlights could save us; a second day was required.
our third item on the formation agenda was not overly unlike the second, though a little more simplistic in nature. the paint, sprayed on with large compressor things, applied substantially faster than anything previously, thus the entire formation, including cleaning, was completed in about eight or nine hours. much more realistic.
all said, all done - so as a sort of quassi celebration, we drove into downtown chicago. now, maybe it's just me, but chicago rates as one of my all time least favourite cities in the world. too big, too tall, too impersonal, too concrete. with each new building trying to outstretch the last you result in an erily lit, mostly dark, frigidly cold metropolis. maybe we were lost.
the dynamic of this group was entirely different to the last two i've worked with. beer and stodgy food ranked higher on the priority list than my own personal liking, but alas - immeasurable fun was had in very difficult circumstances as we whisked our way across america, bouncing in the sunlight and giggling at the american accents... ...and abel.
hey, guys, come over here for a second. i want to introduce you to my personal audio hell... "zoom zoom zoom..."
i just wanted to say that i'm sitting in an internet cafe in hollywood. i have six minutes left. we've made two of the three formations already. just need to touch up todays one in the morning. we worked twelve hours on it and couldn't quite perfect it at the end due to lack of light. eeeek. i'm really sick of aeroplanes. dum dee dooooo, that's all.
just updating for the sake of saying i'm still alive. there isn't anything much to post about. i bought some cards the other day so we've been playing canasta a bit at night. pretty exciting stuff huh? ooooo dear.
i'll update again maybe while i'm in usa, otherwise it'll be about the 23rd of september. nice.
he obviously hadn't washed for days, his hair was matted, face unshaven and unclean. his dark black immensely oversized sunglasses were mounted upon his face complete with a chunk of ripped cardboard that attempted to cover his reddened nose. he came bustling over to us, then stood, carefully, some metres back from the red and white striped boundary tape. "is it radioactive?" he asked. "is it cordoned off because it's radioactive?" he was clearly mad. somewhat bemused, we stood for a moment wondering just what was an appropriate answer. he stood there, staring, mouth agape. "what is it?" he asked finally. without hesitation, wil raised his head and said, "we're building a time machine," smiled, and walked away. i nodded, as if in agreement; you could sense the mans eyes light up in awe and a devious smile crept on to his face. "no, actually," will started, "we're making an ad for 02. it says 118 500 save it. forget it. and then over there it has the 02 logo." quite before wil had finished, the man started up again, "yes, yes i see that. it's magnificent. look, see that five, it's spectacular. this, yes, this is graphic art in it's highest form." the man was a blatant lunatic, he, along with most everything else on the beach at blackpool smelled of candyfloss and urine, but, despite all that, we liked what he had to say and we continued our work with warmed hearts.
yes, you heard me, blackpool smells. it's ugly, and cheap. it appears to be the holding-hands capital of the world, and it's most prominent landmark, the blackpool tower, looming above the seafront, appears as a half-finished icon of the industrial age. aptly hideous, we decided it was beautiful in it's own special way. quite frankly, i was glad to escape blackpool alive, having stayed a daunting twenty one hours there; twenty one hours too long. thanks to british telephone for selecting such a glorious site for the formation. cheers.
cardiff however, i'm quite enjoying. i returned to centre from blackpool for my last three days of work. friday morning i packed everything and left for cardiff on a train. it was rushed, there was stress, there were tears and my last meal there was bland and unfortunate. splendid.
i arrived in cardiff a little before nine on friday night. (cheers to wessex trains for a pleasant journey.) scott was waiting in the station. by ten thirty we were out in a bar. a little before four, we arrived home again. a little before eight i woke up. ugh. a little after two we were out again, joining some fifty thousand others at the cardiff mardi gras. much merriment was had, before returning home around ten, changing, and going out clubbing. a little after four i was dancing in club-x when i realised my hand was covered in blood. that's a peculiar thing to happen. it seems somehow i'd cut my finger on something fairly seriously. yippee. the club security people doctored it up a little bit and before long i was back on the dancefloor, albeit looking like somewhat of an invalid. a little after five we decided to head for home. then there was sleep. sunday saw more going out, home by a more respecatable one, and then sleep. the weekend has been somewhat of a blur, a fun blur... i just long for more sleep.
i'll stick around here for a little bit, and in twelve days i'm leaving for the US for a couple of weeks to do a little more circle work. ah, we love it...
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