#Enterprise gave me two days off the rental | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

olivia-anderson-fanfic · 3 years ago

Text

Into The Unknown, Part 6

First

Marinette woke up because of a whack to the face. So that was fun.

She blinked her eyes open and was met with a scowling, squirming baby.

She sighed and considered letting the baby squirm for a little so she could get another few minutes of sleep…

Oh. Right. He cried in the morning. An unfortunate thing to forget about.

She grumbled a quiet “fuck” as Damian started screaming.

“Tim, your turn.”

Tim grumbled incoherently and attempted to disappear in the plush mattress.

She considered kicking him to wake him up but decided against it. She was feeling nice that morning.

(Also, she figured that kicking a half-awake vigilante might end badly for her.)

She shrugged Tim’s arm off and then tumbled out of bed, baby securely wrapped in her arms. She laid flat on the ground, baby raised in the air above her like a less cute version of That One Scene from The Lion King. She squinted up at the screaming child, struggling to get her brain to function, and then sighed.

“Right, let’s get you all changed, huh? Clean diaper? Pretty new clothes? Will that calm you down?”

She really didn’t know why she was talking to him, she doubted the kid really understood what she was saying, but his wailing was starting to die down a little. She hoped it was because she was using her nice voice and not because he was straining his vocal cords.

She smoothed out his hair and then pushed herself to her feet.

After she had changed the kid’s diaper, she spread all of his clothes out on the floor in a loose circle (it kind of looked like an egg, but at least an attempt was made).

She set the baby down in the middle of the egg and stepped back.

He looked up at her, confused.

She motioned to the clothes. “Go ahead. Yakhtar.”

There was a few minutes where the baby continued looking at her, clearly expecting something but she had no clue what.

Then, finally, he looked around at the clothes.

He crawled over to a yellow shirt with a cartoon bee on it that she had paired with some black and white striped leggings and slapped it a few times. He babbled angrily at her.

… did that mean he wanted it or that it was out of the running?

… she was going to assume that he wanted it.

She picked up him with one arm and the outfit with the other -- something made very difficult by the fact that Damian was now slapping his little fists against her shoulder in an attempt to be let down -- and then started the process of getting the kid into the clothes.

“You know, he probably would have been fine with anything you picked.”

She glanced up from where she was trying to shove Damian’s pudgy little baby arm into a sleeve. Tim was sitting up in bed, legs crossed criss-cross applesauce and head propped on his hand. An amused smile played at his lips.

She rolled her eyes and looked back down at Damian so she could complete her grueling task. “Probably. But I’d just keep dressing him up in red and black and, apparently, he doesn’t want that.”

“Don’t know why. Red and black are objectively the best colors.”

“Totally,” she said.

Damian babbled angrily some more and attempted to punch her arm. She tried not to show on her face just how much it had hurt.

“I guess yellow is pretty okay,” Tim said, grinning.

“Eh. Yellow is like… the fifth best color. Green is where it’s at.”

Tim made a face. “Ew. Green?”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re not allowed to talk about what looks good. You had a completely brown suit for ages. Terrible, isn’t that right, Dami?”

Damian clearly had no idea what was going on, he was busy trying to help Marinette pull his pants up (he was accidentally pushing them down but it was the thought that counts… she was pretty sure, at least), but he nodded decisively.

Marinette turned her head away from Tim and Damian, lips pressed together thinly to keep her laughter under control, before she turned back and finished the kid’s outfit.

“See, Tim, even the baby agrees.”

Tim scoffed. “He agrees with everything you say.”

“Because I’m always right.” She leaned forward to nuzzle her nose against Damian’s with a bright smile. “I can already tell you’re going to be the best kid. Isn’t that right?”

Damian giggled.

Tim held the baby as they checked out at 10:55. Usually, he would try to be earlier, but… baby.

Yeah. That was all he needed to say about that.

(If you want to know: Damian had finally managed to succeed in his attempts to fall from a high place, effectively scaring the shit out of both of the teens who were taking care of him. They’d checked him over for any injuries -- it was more difficult than usual, they couldn’t tell him to clench and unclench his fists to make sure they weren’t broken. When they were sure he was okay they took a few moments to hug him and assure themselves that it was fine and that babies were flexible for this exact reason… unfortunately, this ended with the kid learning that falling from high places=hugs and was now, somehow, even more determined to do it.)

Marinette turned to him with a smile.

“Do you want to get the car or do you want to get the baby’s carseat?”

Tim thought for a minute before sighing. “Would you make fun of me if I picked out a stupid-looking carseat?”

“Absolutely.”

He rolled his eyes and handed off the baby like he was a baton in a very weird relay race. “No thanks. I’ll get the car.”

She grinned. “Probably a good idea. Right, see you.”

“Get some baby formula while you’re out.”

Marinette looked down at the kid, eyes wide. “Still?” Then she shrugged. “Sure, I guess.”

He tossed the bag of diapers and stuff to her and, with that, they started off in separate directions.

He picked up a rental car from Enterprise. They offered the ability to pay a little extra to leave the car at another location. He doubted that that was in place for things like moving across the country but he wasn’t about to complain.

But, when he picked up Marinette and Damian outside the door and caught sight of the carseat she’d gotten, he absolutely would complain.

“Spiderman?” He said.

“Technically, he’s ArachnidKid, here.”

He raised an unimpressed eyebrow at her.

She had the decency to look a little sheepish. “He screamed every time I tried to choose anything else.”

Tim sighed and knocked his head against the top of the steering wheel a few times before turning around.

“I’ll deal with the kid while you figure out the thing.”

… or, at least, that was the intention. It turns out that baby carseats are… difficult. They’d pulled into a spot and gave Damian his stuffed cow and a phone to distract him and they’d gotten to work. There were two adults and two magical beings trying to figure it out and not a single one of them had any idea what they were doing. The instructions made absolutely no sense, they may as well have been written in Greek -- except they all knew how to speak and read Greek because of magic. But this shit? Illegible. It was like the written version of baby language. No one knows what was going on, he was beginning to think that the people trying to give them instructions didn’t even know. Tikki was puzzling over the instructions despite this, Marinette was having a breakdown, Tim wanted to be back in his world so he could punch someone, Kaalki was in the process of being eaten by Damian. It was chaos.

They were on the road. Marinette lazed in the passenger seat, feet up on the dashboard as she half-listened to the audiobook Tim had put on -- something about a kid who stole lightning or something (she didn’t see the big deal, it wasn’t like it was hard or anything). Tikki and Kaalki were using her headphones to listen to music. Damian had fallen asleep and was now peacefully sucking on one of the horns of the cow plush.

(He’d, apparently, dubbed the plush ‘Cow’. It was a fitting name, she supposed.)

Tim glanced over at her. “If we get in a crash you’re going to fly through the windshield.”

She lifted the cheap heart-shaped sunglasses she’d bought on impulse while waiting for Tim to show up out of boredom. Just so he could see how unimpressed she was.

“Maybe you should drive well so I don’t have to worry.”

He sighed and rolled his eyes. She saw the speedometer drop a bit regardless.

They stopped for food pretty soon after they started on the road. Funny how quickly a day could go by, it was already noon.

They ended up at Carl's Sr., because that was what they had found first.

He bounced Damian on one knee absently. The kid wasn’t thirsty, it seemed, so they were just trying to keep him entertained while they ate. He didn’t know why they bothered, the kid was currently entertaining himself with nothing but a rubber duck.

Marinette nibbled the last of her sandwich. “I wonder if he can have fries.”

“Fy!” Said Damian, who had apparently learned that ‘he’ usually meant him.

“Well, he’s convinced me,” she said.

Tim rolled his eyes. “The book I read said that if you give him regular food he’ll realize ours is better and won’t go back to the baby stuff.”

“Good for him if he stops eating it. I got curious and tried it, it sucks.”

He shrugged a little. “He only needs to keep eating it for, I think, another year…?”

“Two whole years of that stuff? That’s evil. I’m giving him a fry.”

“Fy!” Said Damian again, this time slapping the table to punctuate the word.

Tim sighed and pulled out his phone to check that that was allowed. Apparently, despite the fact that kids can breast feed up to two years (or even longer), they can start with ‘table foods’ around a year. That made exactly zero sense to him but okay.

“... I guess that’s fine,” he said, eventually.

Marinette beamed and tore off a piece of her fry for Damian.

The baby was enlightened.

Despite the fact that they’d originally agreed to split the driving evenly, with long shifts so they could go straight to Gotham without any major setbacks, Marinette ended up doing most of it.

It turns out that Tim got car sick.

She didn’t say anything about it. He seemed embarrassed enough as it was, especially since Marinette and Damian were wholly unaffected.

It was… fine. She used the extra stops to get coffee each time. And, whenever it came time to feed or change Damian, she glared Tim into submission. It may not be entirely his fault that his stomach was protesting the car ride but it inconvenienced her so fuck him.

… she did feel a little bad, though, so she always held his hair out of his face and made sure to give him water so he was fully hydrated.

They arrived in Gotham and collapsed in the hotel bed pretty much the moment they could. They’d done hygiene stuff, of course, neither of them were eager to lay in their filth for the night after an almost day-long drive (there had been a lot of stops)… but once they had bathed and brushed their teeth? And cleaned up Damian? Straight to bed.

Tim had finished up first since his showers were quicker and he rested an arm around Damian to make sure he wouldn’t leave. He needn’t have worried, Damian was apparently just as happy as they were that they were in an actual bed again because he was in dreamland almost the second he’d touched it.

He closed his eyes and relaxed.

The bed dipped a little as Marinette crawled in and he let go of the kid so she could wrap around him per usual.

Tim hesitated here. He’d wrapped an arm around them before, sure, but that was different. That had mostly been a thing he’d done in his sleep.

After a few moments, Marinette sighed and scooted closer, tangling her legs with his.

He flushed red. “Uh?”

“It happens every night anyways, I’m resigned to my fate.”

He didn’t know whether to laugh or frown.

She opened her eyes a little and smiled. “Relax. Chat Noir is super touch starved, I’m used to platonically cuddling with people.”

He relaxed a little and hesitantly rested an arm around the pair.

Marinette nuzzled her face into Damian’s hair and closed her eyes again.

He smiled at the scene and started to close his eyes… but then Kaalki caught his gaze.

He gave a small puff of laughter.

“You know, I just remembered something.”

Marinette hummed to say she was listening.

“My power is the ability to create portals.”

“... god fucking damn it.”

~~~~~

@nathleigh @peachmuses @unoriginalmess @hammalammadamdam @astrynyx @laurcad123 @927roses-and-stuff

#kaalki: i just wanted to see what it was like to drive in a car :(#into the unknown #maribat #timari #timinette #shutterbug #timmari #tim drake #red robin #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug

97 notes · View notes

withabackpackandcamera · 4 years ago

Photo

September 15th, 2020

Day 2: The Alaskan Road Trip Begins!

After a good night’s rest, Cynthia and I woke up for an early start to the day. My task was to get the rental car from Enterprise. Her task was to finish up an interview scheduled at the last minute. I got picked up by the Enterprise people, saving me some time and energy, and before long I had our blue Ford Fusion ready to go. Once Cynthia was completely done with her work and the car was all packed, we dropped by Fred Meyer, the local grocery chain, to buy some goods for the trip. The usual snacks for the car ride, filtered water in case we needed it. Cynthia bought herself some breakfast from Starbucks and a little further down the road, I picked up a breakfast biscuit from McDonald’s. With tummies filled, we were off to start our long 250-mile road trip up to Denali.

The drive out of Anchorage was spectacular. The mountains surrounding the city were something to behold. The clouds were dense and picturesque. The fall colors lined the highway and became prettier as you drove further out. The first stop on our list of stops was Thunderbird Falls, located about 30 minutes outside of the city. Once we got to the parking lot, we parked the car, decided not to pay for the quick visit there, and hiked about a mile in and then a mile out to see Thunderbird Falls at the end of the trail. The hike was very pleasant and very quiet without too many other hikers on the trail. The fall colors were in full force all along the trail, with vibrant greens, yellows, oranges, and even reds. The waterfall itself, however, wasn't too spectacular. From the viewing deck, Thunderbird Falls was pretty far and small, so we spent very little time viewing it before turning back to the car.

The next stop was Reflection Lake, which was located just around the corner (sort of) via a drive from the Thunderbird Falls parking lot. There, we took a short walk to a lake that really reflected all the fall colors surrounding it. We spent a little bit of time there taking photos and appreciating the view before moving onward toward Talkeetna, the next planned stop on the road trip.

And again, the drive was pretty spectacular with all the yellows and oranges surrounding the road. The weather wasn’t the greatest with heavy clouds and some rain throughout the trip. But still, the views were incredible. The drive to Talkeetna from Reflection Lake was about 1.5 hours and required us to take a little detour off of the main road. Once we arrived there, we walked through town, which ended up being a little street of shops and restaurants. Even so, it was still a neat stop. The buildings housing the shops and restaurants there were old school and definitely fit what you would expect from a rural, frontier town.

We walked down and then back up the street, taking photos here and there. By this point, we were pretty hungry and after being on the lookout for food, we ultimately decided on pizza for lunch. The pizza place we tried was called Mountain High Pizza Pie and it was a good choice! The first reason was because we had a yummy small Italian sausage and basil pizza that was just right for us. And secondly, the restaurant had great covered outdoor seating that gave us a little escape from the rain that started to come down while we were eating.

We peeked around town and window shopped for a little bit longer after lunch but as the rain started to fall more steadily, we made our escape and started heading back toward the main highway. Because I had spotted a nice, photograph-worthy view of some fall colors and a float plane on the way in, I decided to take a quick stop on the way out of Talkeetna to get the shot. We stopped by the float plane docking area and I walked around the area, trying my best to get the best photographic angle for a picture of the float plane and the surrounding fall colors. From the easy-access viewpoints, I couldn’t get the right photo. So I kindly asked the folks manning the front building if I could venture down closer to the water to grab a photo and they were extremely nice and said sure. Getting down to the water allowed me to capture some decent shots so I slowly made my way back to Cynthia at the top and we eventually left the area for the main highway.

And it was mostly driving and some stopping from Talkeetna to Denali. We made some quick stops here and there for photo and video ops. We tried stopping at some designated Denali viewpoints along the main highway but only found thick clouds and rain obscuring our views at both viewpoints. No Denali. After what seemed like a forever drive under the clouds and rain, we finally reached Denali National Park. By this time, it was after-hours (i.e. after 5PM when the main visitor center closes) and we didn’t have to pay or anything. So we drove into the park to get a glimpse of what the park was all about before doing a full day in the park tomorrow. We drove as far into the park as we possibly could without a lottery ticket (since you needed to win permission to drive past a certain point) and that was up to the Savage River. After driving all the way in and getting our sneak peek at Denali National Park, we slowly made our way back out of the park toward Healy, where we were planning to get dinner and stay the evening. We didn’t expect too much with this drive into Denali National Park given how late in the evening it was when we arrived. But fortunately, for us, on our drive out, we spotted a car that had stopped in front of us. As we slowly approached, we looked around to see what they were stopping for. And low and behold! A moose on the side of the main road! We sat in our stopped car in awe for a few seconds before pulling out our cameras to capture a photo of the moose from the safety of the car. It was so neat to see a moose! And super lucky given our low expectations for the short trip into the park at the end of the day!

After watching the moose for a few minutes until it vanished from sight, we restarted our short drive into Healy and stopped for dinner at 49th State Brewing Company in Healy. It was a neat brewery and restaurant for sure! A nice outdoor area that I imagine being full of people in the high season and with good weather, a neat inside with cool decor, and pretty good food! I tried their Brut Cider, Grapefruit Lager, and Hoppy Cream Ale. They weren’t bad but I didn’t like them enough to pay more money. So we just ordered the East Fork Flatbread and Gold Star Peak Burger. Both were delicious and we luckily had some food left over to bring back to the lodge.

Once we were done eating, we drove down the road and checked into the White Moose Lodge for the evening. The room was comfy and did the trick. Before calling it a night, I turned on the TV to watch a replay of the Clippers getting embarrassed by the Nuggets in Game 7 of the Western Conference Semis. So embarrassing! Loved ending the night with that! As for the plan for tomorrow? An early start for a long hike.

5 Things I Learned/Observed Today:

1. The main trees that line the highways of Alaska are alders, birches, and aspens. Those form the foundation of Alaska’s roadside fall colors.

2. Growing up, I learned that the largest mountain in North America was called Mount McKinley but during this trip, I realized that this name was no longer used. Denali was the original name for Mount McKinley. In the Athabascan language, it means “The High One.” In 1896, some random gold rush reporter named William Dickey decided on his own to rename Denali after presidential candidate William McKinley to honor him as McKinley was a proponent of Dickey’s favorite issue: the gold standard. The name stuck and then became official in 1901 after McKinley was assassinated. Ever since, people have been trying to revert the name back to its original name (and get rid of that symbol of cultural imperialism) but due to politics and people in Ohio (where McKinley was from), the name change was blocked for nearly a century (and a lot of failures since 1975). Finally, the mountain’s name was changed back to Denali in 2015 with the help of Obama and Co.

3. Mount Denali is the highest peak in North America, standing at 20,320 feet. Denali has two main peaks with the highest being its south peak.

4. When the park shuttle buses stop running after the high season ends in early September, not everyone can drive past the 15-mile point of Denali National Park. Only those who enter and win tickets from the lottery for all-access to the park can do that. You can drive anywhere within the 15 miles if you don’t win the lottery. But you can also walk in as far as your legs can take you if you want. You just can’t drive. And after lottery weekend, where people who won tickets can drive around wherever they want, cars can then drive up to 30 miles into the park, at which point there is no further driving. Too bad we missed that opportunity by a weekend or two.

5. Mount Denali and the mountains of the Alaskan Range are so high that they can significantly affect the weather and climate in the area. They can concentrate and channel air into strong winds that can cause the weather in the area to change quickly. High mountains like these also cause a rain shadow, where wind and moisture are trapped on one side and condense into clouds and rain before reaching the other side (in this case, the northern side of the mountains), causing a rain shadow effect over interior Alaska, where one side (the southern side) is wet and the other side (the northern side) is dry. The weather is also the reason why Denali is so difficult to view (because of clouds) on many days of the year.

2 notes · View notes

oneandonehalf · 8 years ago

Photo

Day 10: Fell a little flat.

#west coast walkabout #waited 4.5 hrs for a tow #Enterprise gave me two days off the rental #small hiccups #travel blog

0 notes

halkbetpromoit · 6 years ago

Text

Web agency

Software that hears a machine failure before it occurs; a program that turns a multitude of data into a story, chips that can simulate brain activity … Technologies are advancing by leaps and bounds and many are the inventions that have sprung up in the Czech or French brains. The French excel in the technology of banking or electromotive, the Czech specialty is found in the field of autonomous vehicles, innovations for mechanical engineering and various other software by web agency California European Commission statistics praise growing performance in innovation in the European Union (5.8% since 2010), but globally Europe will face competition from more and more important. With China we still have a head start, but it is shrinking rapidly because China’s progress in the field of innovation is three times faster than that of the EU. Europe may soon be overtaken by Canada, Japan or the United States. Innovation is responsible for two-thirds of Europe’s economic growth. Europe, which accounts for 7% of the world’s population, accounts for 20% of global investment in research and development. Last year, the Czech Republic invested 1.98% of its gross domestic product in R & D, France 2.27%. Recent Czech discoveries that Lurer In the last few years, several technology companies have presented interesting innovations on the Czech scene. The public discovers them most often on the occasion of the awarding of a prize, the publication of a ranking or the study of a renowned company. Neuron Soundware, a two-year-old Prague start-up, is receiving a lot of attention. She listens to machines running and can predict a failure with accuracy up to 99.6%. Sensors and microphones placed on the machine record, by a thorough analysis, the sound data emitted by the machine in normal mode. The data is transmitted to a computer program capable of evaluating deviations and warning of impending difficulties. Neuron Soundware already has several reputable customers, such as Airbus, Siemens, Volkswagen or E.ON. The company has won several competitions and received more than 16 million crowns from two investors, the Startup Yard and J & T Ventures. This technology is most often tuned to production lines, escalators, railway switches or wind turbines. The title «Cool Vendor» awarded by Garner to small companies that have innovative technologies, a solid business plan or imagination, was also awarded to an expanded analysis platform called Stories. It processes data in time series to form graphical analyzes in operational memory, which is able to analyze millions of combinations and find in these data key factors that can influence different metrics. Huge volumes of data are transformed into stories, stories, within the reach of an ordinary user. Business leaders no longer have to review or produce sharp analyzes, they just need to read a few automatically generated titles, similar to newspaper headlines, that deal with trends in a given issue or business and allow to identify the problems and their causes. Understand a large amount of data or even somehow read your thoughts, this is the business area of Setsquare in Pilsen. Their semantic text analysis algorithm can read millions of times faster than a person and can learn any language. The starting tool is the largest volume of text available, such as customer e-mails or comments on social networks. The keywords naturally flow from the texts according to the subjects most often mentioned by the people. Thus, the company can discover what are the opinions on their product, the trends, the interests of the people or even discover new subjects to which she had not thought. The product is on sale since 2014, but it is the result of 12 years of research conducted by the director of Sentisquare Josef Steinberger. The main customers are T-Mobile, Česká spořitelna, ČSOB or Volkswagen. Three artificial intelligence enthusiasts met during their doctoral studies, and the combination of their ideas gave birth to Rossum, a program that teaches machines to understand documents and more particularly invoices. The technological secret of the company lies in the fact that the computer knows how to distinguish between different bills just as a person would do. It is estimated that only 20% of invoices are automatically read today, the rest must be processed by accountants. The creation of templates for each type of invoice is expensive, which is why the idea of the Rossum Invoice Robots (word game with the RUR robots of the Czech writer Karel Čapek) has aroused the interest of the major auditing companies . The system was built on test data created by a team of annotators acting as accountants, and the machines copied their methods. The goal was to simplify the work of the accountants and give them a free space to do a real job that would not involve copying bills. This job now is done by a neural network. A business model, which has upset the B2B segment of optimization and price management, is proposed by Price f (x). A pricing policy based on current events, competitive prices or seasonality can increase sales and margins by several percent. The problem lies in the complexity and cost of this method. However, a company based in Munich, with a research and development center in the Czech Republic, offers the rental of software that can find the solution. Both the risk of failure and the initial investment are borne by Price f (x), and the price for customers is one-third cheaper than that of the competition. French robots and artificial brains Undoubtedly the biggest French industrial innovator in the Czech Republic is Valeo, which has made massive investments in recent years and opened a research and development center in Prague. Valeo is one of the world’s leading technological innovators and its Czech engineers contribute a lot. In 2004, Citroën was the first to use the «stop & start» system that automatically turns off the engine when the car is stopped, in traffic jams for example. Consumption fell by 6 to 15%, CO2 emissions decreased and the system was then used by all car manufacturers, especially after the introduction of the Euro 5 standard. Competition in this area has meanwhile developed, but the Valeo system is present in a third of cars with this technology. Valeo’s Prague Research Center employs nearly a thousand experts dedicated to the development of sensors and software for parking assistance systems and active safety systems: assistance to stay on track, braking automatic emergency or collision risk warning with a car in a blind spot. Everything is tested directly on site or at the Milovice industrial site. In April, the French company Prophesee presented a microcamera inspired by the human body. The camera captures hundreds of frames per second like the human eye, and software with its algorithms, evaluates these data almost instantly, just like the brain. However, the system does not function as a high frequency camera that would collect data, it only evaluates the differences between the images. It gets information faster and does not have to deal with large volumes of data. Until now, Prophesee products have been used in biology, but now they concern the industry, where they contribute to the acceleration of the production process thanks to ultra-fast control of the situation. A big challenge in today’s mobile age is to introduce as much technology as possible into a tiny chip, which is at the heart of smartphones, autonomous vehicles or data centers. In the global competition, two French companies have managed to stand out. Smart me up, founded in Grenoble in 2012, introduced after three years of research a facial recognition technology, which also assesses the age, sex and emotions of the person in front of the camera. Its services are used by French railways SNCF or by Chinese stores to evaluate the reactions of customers to advertising. In the future, it could be used in smart cities — for safety — or to monitor the fatigue of vehicle drivers. In August 2018, the startup was bought by car subcontractor Magneti Marelli. Still in Grenoble, but 4 years earlier, Joël Monnier founded the company Kalray to produce intelligent processors able to analyze the data that pass through them and make decisions in real time. Last year, the company had 65 employees, a turnover of 875,000 euros, and in June 2018, it raised 43.5 million euros on the occasion of its IPO. The money from this sale is intended for the further development of chips, which will be used mainly in data centers and partly also in autonomous vehicles. The cybersecurity of companies is ensured for example by Sentryo, a company of Lyon, which won in August 2018 the innovation contest of Public Investment Bank Bpifrance. The Kitea project detects anomalies in the Internet of Things (IoT) in the industry to help companies defend themselves against cyber attacks and secure their systems. Active analysis is used to characterize and quantify unknown flows in the enterprise based on available data. The use is planned for smart cities or autonomous vehicles. A large number of innovations in the Czech Republic and France are related to the automotive industry, particularly autonomous vehicles or electromobility. A common theme is also the movement in the air, be it aircraft of different sizes or drones. Interesting projects are growing in business incubators like the Czech Startup Yard or Station F in Paris. New ideas sprout every day in bright brains. We can therefore expect other discoveries in the field of intelligent technologies and their use in industry and daily life.

Apostas online https://www.halkbetpromo.com/pt/

1 note · View note

crimethinc · 6 years ago

Text

Anarchist Relief Efforts for Hurricane Florence: Three On-the-Ground Accounts

When Hurricane Florence hit North Carolina in September, flooding countless towns and temporarily turning the city of Wilmington into an island, anarchists involved with Mutual Aid Disaster Relief and other grassroots projects swung immediately into action. Dozens of anarchists provided resources and relief work to residents of countless cities, towns, and rural settlements in over a dozen counties, spanning a great deal of the eastern part of the state. In the following accounts, participants describe their experiences and the obstacles they encountered along the way. As Hurricane Michael threatens to hit the same areas impacted by Hurricane Florence and climate change catalyzed by global capitalism generates increasingly destructive “natural” disasters, it’s more important than ever to understand disaster response as part of our collective efforts towards liberation.

I. Disaster Is the Status Quo

Anonymous, October 7

Where I live was mostly spared from the immediate effects of Hurricane Florence. While I was safe in my home, reports began to pour in about the increasing damage out east. Dramatic pictures of historic storm surge plastered the headlines alongside reports of people needing immediate rescue. In 2016, Hurricane Matthew taught us that the damage during the hurricane itself is only the beginning. Some parts of North Carolina received six months of rain in two to four days—historic record-breaking quantities of water. As the storm surge receded, the rain from across the whole state made its way east down the river basins to flood the areas that had already been hit hardest by the initial impact of the hurricane.

If we wanted to intervene, we had only a short window of time. In a few days, the floodwaters and the response from the Department of Transportation would block access to the worst-hit areas. It would take time for the disaster relief organizations to establish control of the effort, and the state needed time to cement control via their apparatuses.

Some friends and I had spoken in advance about what we might do to help out. We got back together the morning after the storm made landfall to discuss our options and lay plans. Other comrades were already in eastern NC on their way to Wilmington, where they had secured a space in which to base their operations.

The hurricane hit some of the poorest counties in North Carolina hard. Some of us had deep connections to those places. We decided to visit the more rural areas. It was likely that these counties would receive less attention than the well-known towns. We talked about what the residents’ needs might be and how we could prepare to help.

Eastern North Carolina has a few features that take newcomers by surprise. First, it’s flat for miles upon miles. The coastal plain was once dominated by the long-leaf pine savanna, an awe-inducing and amazingly diverse ecosystem that capitalist development has reduced to about 2% of its historical range via logging and fire suppression (since these ecosystems require wildfires to sustain themselves). Second, a good portion of eastern North Carolina smells like hog waste. There’s a good reason for this: it’s because there is hog waste everywhere. North Carolina has one of the world’s biggest hog industries. Along with massive chicken, turkey, and tobacco farming and similar enterprises, this has reduced one of the most diverse ecosystems on the continent to hundreds of square miles of industrial agriculture.

It’s estimated that there are approximately three times as many hogs as people in North Carolina. The vast majority of them are concentrated in the eastern and southeastern coastal plain. These hogs are shipped around the state to various processing facilities, including the biggest slaughterhouse in the world. Owned by Smithfield and located in Tar Heel, NC, it kills about 32,000 hogs daily—roughly the same number as the student body of UNC Chapel Hill, an affluent university in the center of the state.

The hogs’ waste is stored in gigantic retention ponds. There are approximately 4000 of these. Through complex capitalist acrobatics, the hog farmers are often trapped in rental contracts to the effect that one of the only aspects of their operations that they own is the hog waste. When the ponds threaten to overflow, the farmers often spray waste over their crop fields in order to avoid violations. This literally covers some of the poorest counties in hog waste. Flash floods, hurricanes, and similar events empty these ponds for the farmers, washing untreated waste downriver and causing massive ecological damage. A breach in one of these ponds is often followed by massive marine life die-offs, closures of water access due to toxicity, and well-water contamination, among other long-term consequences.

As we traveled east, the landscape grew more and more ominous. Gloomy skies gave way to heavy winds and intermittent rains. We followed flooded and closed roads around small towns without electrical power. Fallen trees lay across wrecked houses and power lines. Here and there, an abandoned car hinted at a dire story; out-of-place objects were littered around us. In one dramatic scene, we came upon agricultural storage tanks, some thirty feet high, that had been thrown across the road and rolled into adjacent fields.

When we arrived at the coastal town where we were staying, we saw even more damage. The storm surge had inflicted the highest water level in their history. Standing water crept throughout the streets of town; docks were torn apart; pieces of houses littered the streets. Boats were perched sideways atop the docks, perhaps having experienced a better fate than the boats now only slightly above the water.

After removing a fell tree from a house in the town, we drove around the county to see how we could help. Most of the residents hadn’t yet returned from the mandatory evacuation, so the already sparsely populated county felt even more abandoned. We chatted with some people who were just coming back home to their trailer park and passed along some water and food to them. The floodwaters blocked access to many of the regions we attempted to visit, but we also had many comforting interactions with residents of the county who were going around checking on each other, delivering supplies, and providing aid wherever people needed it.

As was widely reported, police and emergency crews from all around America came to eastern North Carolina as part of the larger relief effort. The relief efforts were staged in central locations, often near courthouses and jails. At first, we hoped that the people at these staging areas could help us learn how to plug into local efforts.

We went to a small town center and presented ourselves to the first person we saw—a cop from New York City, as it turned out. He cut short our introduction, warning us that there was a strict curfew in effect and that we needed to be on the watch for looters. He emphasized how dangerous the area was, insisting that these looters posed a serious threat. We gleaned no useful information about the needs of those who had been hit by the storm; our efforts definitely did not feel welcome. To me, it was clear that his role was to orchestrate the relief effort according to a prescribed agenda, so people in need would remain disempowered and criminalized.

Nevertheless, as the day went on, we found ways to help out. We delivered food to farmworkers whose employer had abandoned them without food or any idea as to when work might resume. We checked on people whose loved ones had not heard from them. We cleared trees from roads in the flooded neighborhoods to which people were beginning to return.

Then we stopped by the disaster relief center in New Bern. New Bern was hit particularly hard by the storm surge, which crested at over ten feet. We asked around for information and direction. Someone pointed us to the police sergeant who was overseeing the effort. When we explained what we were doing and asked if he knew where we could plug into relief efforts, his first question was “What kind of people are you trying to help?” We repeated ourselves, emphasizing that we were there to assist anyone who was in need of help as a consequence of the storm.

He knew were we could plug in, he told us. His wife owned a bar downtown that had experienced some flood damage, and he tried to assign us to help her clean it out. We politely declined. Then he sent us to a neighborhood fifteen minutes away that he said had been hit really hard, with instructions to tell anyone who asked that he had sent us in order that we would be perceived as possessing some legitimacy.

He sent us to a country club. It was true: their golf course, private lake, and large front lawns had taken quite a bit of damage from fallen trees. Yet in this neighborhood, there were many companies that specialized in relief work already clearing trees and working on home repairs. When the sergeant told us to go to this neighborhood fifteen minutes away, streets just three blocks from the relief center were blocked by fallen trees and lined with homes with standing water in them. There were no relief teams there to help them, no companies working overtime. People had just begun to come back to their homes; they were searching for a warm meal before picking up the pieces of their lives.

Some of the ways that the damage from natural disasters impacts poor people are obvious. Poorer neighborhoods are often built in areas that are more susceptible to disaster; the homes of the poor often aren’t in good enough condition to withstand a storm. Other ways that natural disasters impact poor people are subtle. For example, when police are positioned as the ones who conduct disaster relief efforts, this empowers them to utilize natural disasters as opportunities to target the marginalized and vulnerable.

We’ve become accustomed to hearing stories about gigantic amounts of food, water, and supplies not reaching the people who need them most. This is no accident. Rather, it is the completely avoidable consequence of an approach to disaster relief that serves capitalism at every turn. If that were the whole story—a cold and calculated approach to maximizing profit during disaster—it would be a horror, but this is not all there is to say about the ethos of the state. In addition to aiming to facilitate exploitation, representatives of the state also utilize disasters to hatefully eliminate unwanted portions of society. Every interaction we had with the police showcased how their role, as representative of the system they serve, was to ensure that undesired persons did not receive the help they desperately needed and to reinforce the systems and myths that have been constructed to block people from solving their problems without the state. In view of this, the amount of money that has traded hands in the weeks following Hurricane Florence is maddening.

Over the following weeks, we heard story after story about insurance money not coming through due to fine print (such as flood damage being covered, but not in case of a hurricane), or the payouts amounting to a fraction of the costs people were dealing with. As we tore molding insulation and ductwork out from under flooded houses, we heard how people were forced to work extra hours to make up the time they had missed due to the hurricane. We patched a damaged roof belonging to a man whose son was a roofer; the son had been making too much money due to the hurricane to come and patch his own father’s leaking home. A group of people who were accused of looting a store in Wilmington were arrested and displayed as trophies by local police even after the store requested that the police not press charges against them. In South Carolina, police drove a van containing two prisoners into rising floodwaters and lost control. They climbed out to await rescue on the roof while their prisoners drowned beneath their feet.

Many farmworkers, subject to precarious conditions in worker camps, endured considerable suffering. Farm owners, who are legally obligated to feed their workers, abandoned hundreds of them behind flooded roads without food or water.

We delivered supplies to some of these people. They told us stories about how they had been treated. Some had been told that if they weren’t present when the owner returned, they would lose their jobs, which would put their legal status in jeopardy. They were in limbo without food, water, or work, with their legal status tied to absent employers. In one case, we gave aid to a large group of women living in an abandoned building owned by their employer, who had cut off the power and left them with no supplies and no assurance of when he would return. These employers put their workers in incredibly dangerous situations without the basic supplies necessary for survival. When we delivered food and water to people who hadn’t had food for many days, they told us that we needed to be careful to visit only when their employers were away, because their employers didn’t want us helping them.

When one river crested days after the initial storm, a building inhabited by some of these workers flooded dramatically. They called 911 and requested a rescue, but no one came. It turned out that the landowner had called and canceled the emergency response, saying that the workers were fine. They stayed on their roof as the floodwaters overtook their housing, continuing to call for help with no response.

While coal ash full of arsenic, untreated wastewater, and hog sewage seeped down the waterways into the ocean, people were trying to get back on their feet. When farm work resumed, the crops were so damaged that in some cases workers could only make a fraction of their previous earnings on the few days of work they were offered. Farmworkers were pulling rotten sweet potatoes out of knee-deep polluted river mud for 40 cents a bucket, or leave their worksites in search of other opportunities. Residents queued up for home repair work that insurance refused to cover. Temperatures reached 90 degrees in an unseasonable warm spell while the insulation and air conditioning in flooded homes grew deadly black mold. Mosquitoes made the front-page news in many counties due to their massive breeding success, thanks to the record-breaking rainfall. People screamed at each other over how resources were distributed. Radicals were pushed out of relief spaces or ordered to pretend to be apolitical volunteers by organizations that aimed to control the relief narrative. Right-wing militants paraded in heavily armed anti-looting patrols to great patriotic fanfare.

All of this was avoidable. The state deals a death sentence to the people and landscapes it exploits. Massive amounts of wealth are centralized via these disasters. As catastrophes create the illusion of a blank slate for capitalists to reinvent reality according to a more profitable blueprint, the people who are attempting to put their lives back together are dealt a volley of hardships. Many people were still in the process of recovering from hurricane Matthew two years prior when Florence destroyed whatever progress they had managed to make.

This continues as supplies rot, guarded out of reach of those who need them most. These disasters will be in effect for years after their initial impact. Like Katrina and every storm before it, the damage Hurricane Florence caused will be quantified as a dollar amount, leaving out all the other forms of harm inflicted on people and animals. When you see the effects of Florence reduced to a billion-dollar price tag, remember—those billions are exactly what made it such a disaster in the first place.

II. The Anarchists Showed up First

Anonymous, September 27

We were sitting in our driveway in Wilmington, NC when a truck with a kayak strapped to the roof pulled up. The power had come back on just a few minutes earlier; it was the Sunday after the hurricane hit. Someone from the truck walked up and asked if [redacted] was here. I introduced myself and they told me that my friend hadn’t heard from me and was worried; they had stopped by on their way to make sure I was OK. The people in the truck introduced themselves as Mutual Aid Disaster Relief; they gave us a box of food and other supplies and asked if we needed anything else.

I was happy to see new faces after days of isolation without electricity, and even more so to meet people who were comrades as well. Before they left, we planned to meet the following day to start organizing a response to the destruction inflicted by Hurricane Florence. Not long after the truck pulled away, my neighbor came running out to flag down a cop car that was flying down our residential street in order to ask for updates. They learned very little. I pointed out that it was the anarchists who showed up first to check on us, whereas they had to flag down the cop, who had no intention of checking on any of us. Later on, some comrades came back to crash with us and plan for the following weeks.

The next day, we split up into crews. Some of us went to the space we were going to be working out of; others went to scout the neighborhoods to see who needed help with repairs, cleanup, tree removal, and the like. Florence had devastated some of the most already marginalized communities: whole bedroom ceilings had collapsed, leaving everything exposed and soaking wet; roofs had been torn off the tops of the trailers as if by a can opener; trees were impaled through houses; there were loose hanging electrical wires and downed telephone poles all over town.

We saw a considerable number of DHS and Border Patrol vehicles driving around. ICE was sure to be around as well. We notified local residents and distributed the number for the legal hotline, as well as cleaning up and starting to make connections with people throughout the city to learn who needed help and who else would be interested in helping. We regrouped afterwards to talk about the next steps. Our staging space was a small school located in the lower-income part of town, owned by the city but run by liberals. It was out of commission due to the hurricane; in the beginning, they welcomed us gladly.

Later on, another crew joined us, driving a box truck to and from the airport to pick up supplies that were being flown in from Virginia and parts of North Carolina that had not been hit by the worst parts of the hurricane. We were the first group of people—before any government agency or NGO—to arrange for supplies to be flown in and air-dropped for distribution to those who survived the hurricane. This aroused the suspicions of some military and police officials, who were perplexed and embarrassed that a bunch of strange-looking people were already responding to the disaster before anyone even knew when to expect FEMA or other state organizations to show up.

We began distributing supplies throughout the community as soon as our space was open. From the beginning, we ran according to the principles of mutual aid and gift economics: take what you need, offer what you can share, volunteer if you’re able. We shared food, water, medical supplies, hygiene products, soap, household cleaning supplies, clothes, blankets, shoes, baby formula, and diapers; trained first responders and EMTs were there to offer medical assistance. We also set up a table offering zines sent to us by Occupied Southwest Distro, covering topics including anarchism, mutual aid, policing, capitalism, prison abolition, feminism, disaster relief, responding to trauma, police violence, consent, and security culture; some recounted previous Mutual Aid Disaster Response experiences from prior emergencies, such as Hurricane Harvey. In addition to all this, there was also a phone charging station and a lounge area.

The first day our space was open, we distributed food throughout the community, sent crews out to other parts of town, and picked up supplies from the airport. We were already meeting people who offered to volunteer alongside us.

The next day, people from the community who’d visited the day before to get supplies showed up to volunteer. The distribution was already essentially self-managed by members of the community. This enabled us to focus more on the logistics of flying in supplies, and reaching out to other communities that were more isolated or located in the city’s blind spots. Every day added 100-200 people to the previous day’s numbers; by the third day, we served 400 or 500 people at the space, plus the crews traveling out to provide aid to people who were unable to get there. We reached many elderly and disabled folks this way, and brought food, water, and other supplies directly to many families who were unable to find transportation to us. We also had been helping with house repairs, providing tarps for roofs that were exposed, and cleaning up debris and fallen trees from homes.

Already the project was growing and thriving, practically running itself. Every day, I would see people come up unsure of who we were and what was going on at this school that had been turned into a space for the community. Often they were visibly upset, in need of help, dragging their feet towards the door, asking us if we had anything to eat. Of course we did—”Come right on in!” They would leave with bags of supplies and smiles on their faces.

Many members of the mostly Black and Latino/Latina communities were also interested in the zine table. I can still see the huge smile that greeted me as I said, “Those are great choices!” to the elderly woman who had selected titles including “Everybody Hates the Police,” “Life Without Law,” and “Learning From Ferguson.” But by the time the zine table was half empty, some of the liberals had also taken notice of the zines, as well. They didn’t read “What Anarchists Have Been Saying for Years, and What Liberals need to start Hearing” or “Accomplices Not Allies”—they just raised their eyebrows at the critiques of police. I soon noticed them passing the zines around to each other and staring at me; I guessed they were making phone calls to their superiors.

Within a few hours, some of the liberals that had been shadowing us and the community members who were taking the literature asked us not to distribute it, describing it as “divisive” and “too political.” We were asked to “keep politics out of it”—they told us that the facility was on good standing with the local police. We pointed out a strange dynamic that was emerging in the space: liberal, white staff members were the ones asking us to keep politics out of it, while Black community members would converse with us about the zines and talk about their experiences with police and city officials. The staff members were not happy with us pointing out this dynamic and stated that they were not racist. No one had accused them of racism.

This was the first sign of trouble, but we continued to bring in supplies, clean up debris and felled trees, and repair houses. We removed the zines to avoid drama, because we felt it was more important to have the space to be there for the community no matter what. But over the following days, people came up to me to ask for more zines, and we began to discuss other projects we could do in the community on a more long-term basis.

Community members warned us of what was to come. Soon, there would be visits from news crews—even Mayor Bill Saffo finally showed up a week and a half later for a photo shoot. We also started to notice an increase in attention from the local police, who would drive their patrol cars around the space periodically throughout the day and night. This was the same police force responsible for murdering two black men and a young white woman with a mental illness—the same police force that had purchased a brand new L-RAD device for “announcements” and introduced training for “peace officers” that thrilled the local liberal career activists.

For two weeks, the community came together to hold it down. We became good friends and met a lot of wonderful people throughout the city. I had people coming up to me after reading our literature saying, “I never knew I was an anarchist.” Intriguing conversations followed about our experiences, our aspirations, our goals. More and more people showed up to volunteer and help.

But what started with the principle of “everything for everyone” soon turned into rationing, as the liberal staff members peering over the shoulders of the community volunteers endeavored to spread paranoia about potential thieves and parasites who were supposedly coming in and taking way too much. In fact, we were continually getting in more and more supplies—why should we begin rationing when every day we ended up with more stuff than we had started with? We were traveling out to other towns and cities in the more rural parts of the state, like Lumberton, where the large indigenous community was hit hard with severe flooding, while still trying to recover from the previous hurricane, Hurricane Matthew.

As more and more volunteers came, more supplies were air dropped in, and comrades from all over came to help out, we all became both exhausted by and excited about the work we were doing. But one day, unexpectedly, we were informed that we would have to vacate the space by the following morning at 8 am so they could open the school as a daycare for children whose parents were out of work as a result of the disaster. We were all sad to have to leave so soon and without warning, especially since the staff had originally agreed that we would receive at least two days’ notice before we needed to pack up. But we understood that it was important for the kids to have a place to go. Besides, they told us, the school would still be open as a space for people to obtain food and supplies, and the outreach crews would still do supply runs and cleanups and repairs; we just had to vacate the back rooms where volunteers from out of state had been staying and holding meetings.

We packed our things and were gone before morning, seeking another space to use for storage and to house volunteers. However, visiting and conversing with some of the new staff members two days later, we discovered that they never intended to use the space for a daycare; they told us that the back rooms were just occupied by the staff that was doing the “managing.” Now the distribution utilized a ticket system and rationed food; we saw a huge news crew outside, and a trailer belonging to a massive non-profit organization offering medical services to fill the vacuum that opened up when we were told to leave. The staff had become increasingly unfriendly and passive-aggressive. It was clear that the real reason we had been told to leave had nothing to do with offering assistance or a space for children. It was about our physical appearance and political beliefs, and the fact that we were building relationships in the community and that the community was coming together for itself, without the help of outside government or NGO assistance—or the liberal staff members.

Although we lost the first space, we’re still operating, while searching for a new space. We’re still here; we will be here doing Mutual Aid Disaster Relief as long as it’s necessary. We’ll continue proving to people that this is possible—that we don’t have to wait for the state to come to our aid—that we are the ones who keep us safe.

We continue to work together to rebuild and strengthen our communities. We’ve already built lots of valuable relationships in the process.

III. Through the Eye of the Storm

An interview with MouseMouse from Blue Ridge Autonomous Defense, working under the umbrella of Mutual Aid Disaster Relief, September 24.

What have you been doing, and where?

We’ve been doing a lot. Wellness checks in flooded areas using kayaks. Supply scheming and pick up and drop offs as a street team. Bringing supplies directly to impacted folks and communities. Basic first aid and harm reduction. Interfacing with community members and discussing disaster politics. Supply distribution center organizing. Hot food delivery.

We were in Washington, NC when Florence hit. We worked out of there for a day. Then we moved through the eye of the storm, through its back wall, into Wilmington. I was in Wilmington for seven days working in North Wilmington neighborhoods such as Love Grove as well as trailer parks near Military Cutoff Road. Then I moved up to Lumberton, NC along with another member of my group to assist in the indigenous-led relief efforts being organized in that community.

Describe your motivation and past experience with this kind of work.

My motivation for doing this work is multi-faceted. Capitalism’s insatiable desire for profit and new markets means that climate change and its associated extreme weather events will not stop, but only increase. So the need for autonomous, anarchist-led efforts will also increase as we struggle to meet the needs of impacted and devastated communities.

In addition, I recognize that there are very few opportunities in which the state will totally vacate territory, and natural disasters are one of them. This gives us unprecedented opportunity to build new methods of community organization in the ruins of the existing order. We can claim space and show that a new world is possible by reaching people in new ways.

And finally, as an anarchist, I want to practice mutual aid. I want to stand in solidarity with those targeted by the state, against the state.

This was the first time I’ve done anything like this. However, my group has a focus on street medic and community defense work using small teams. This disaster tested all of the skills we have been honing. It demonstrated that through praxis, we can shape the theory that guides us.

Can you share any lessons for the future?

One of the biggest lessons I learned from this experience is that regional networks involving organizations, affinity groups, and individuals can be utilized in emergencies to meet the needs of our communities. The logistical and operational push before and following this storm has been mind-blowing. In the first days following the storm, we were able to do things that even the state was unable, or unwilling, to do—and we did that by never separating our politics from our efforts.

The need for realistic planning and continuous preparation was also important. It would be easy to create a situation in which you too become a person in need in the middle of the disaster. Any sort of complacent act or careless planning could put you there.

Having appropriate supplies and vehicles is necessary, as well as being able to make longer-term commitments. Showing up as a group that can only commit a day or two or three to efforts drains resources and does not allow for the necessary long-term interaction and commitment required to build trust and community.

Looking forward, we can use the lessons from this response, along with other disasters, to refine the theory behind disaster relief and mutual aid in the age of extreme weather, resource exploitation, and mass extinction. We can say with confidence that we do truly keep each other safe, and that with a little bravery, the new world we hold in our hearts can take root in this world, as our collective future.

15 notes · View notes

katherinelhughes · 6 years ago

Text

Ireland Impressions

I just returned yesterday from a five-day trip to Ireland with my daughter, Isabelle. She is applying to grad schools, and this last summer I let her know that I had AAdvantage miles that needed to be used. I thought she might use them to travel to interviews, but it turns out that in the world of Biology, the schools pay for prospective students to come interview. I realized yet again that I chose a difficult field--as a free-lance professional violinist, I’ve gotten used to paying to play, so to speak... Anyway, she suggested that we take a trip to Ireland. She works in a lab with someone who had gone there on his honeymoon, and he had very enthusiastically recommended that she go.

Without going into a lot of detail, Isabelle had a run-in with a virulent virus (I know that’s redundant) in September. The virus caused some frightening seizures which resulted in two hospitalizations. We weren’t sure that we would be able to go on our trip, scheduled for the end of November. So when Isabelle got the okay from her doctors, it was excellent news, in many ways.

We had held off making hotel reservations, but fortunately the end of November is off-season in Ireland. Ordinarily I would have done a lot of research to decide where to visit and where to stay, but the last-minute nature of our planning made that impossible. Maybe the more spontaneous approach to this adventure made it more satisfying. Also, thanks to crowd-sourced reviews of everything on the internet, gone are the days of toting guidebooks around. Our last big trip was to Munich and environs--eight years ago--and we definitely did that the old-fashioned way.

Okay, I’ll get on with it. We actually had five full days in Ireland, bookended by two days of travel. The airline travel was unremarkable, which might be remarkable, now that I think of it. Our plan was to spend one night in Dublin, two nights in Galway, one night in Cork, and the last night back in Dublin.

Day One: Dublin

Our hotel was just south of the River Liffey in the City Centre. We took a cab there from the airport and dropped off our suitcases so we could immediately start exploring. On our way to see the library at Trinity College, we ran across a cool exhibit of art books at a gallery. A good start. At the library we learned that only a facsimile of the Book of Kells (the famous medieval manuscript) would be on display that week. Not a big deal, especially since the library itself was awe-inspiring. I overheard someone saying something about Harry Potter, and we learned that they had shot a library scene there. It was also featured in one of the later Star Wars movies. Did that make it more meaningful to me? I’m almost ashamed to admit that it may have... We also visited the Guinness Storehouse in the early evening. It’s described as a “brewery experience”. A bit too theme-parkish for my taste, but I definitely know more about the process of brewing beer in huge quantities! The top floor bar where we had our complimentary pint has a 360 degree view of the city. We had two great meals that day, both at pubs. I have a much different impression of what pub food is now--many vegetarian and even vegan options.

Day Two: Dublin to Galway

A few days before our trip, I literally awoke in a cold sweat about driving on the left side of the road. My colleague Catherine had given this advice, to be used as a mantra: drive on the left and look to the right. We were picking up the rental car, and I would be the only driver--Isabelle isn’t able to drive for six months from the time of the last seizure. The weather was pretty intense--driving rain and wind. I thought it was charming that so many people apologized for the weather. We had escaped just before a big snow in Chicago, so I kept assuring folks that we had seen worse! The driving challenge turned out to be my position on the right side of the car. It took me an entire day of Isabelle saying “Mom, you’re over the line!” to get used to centering the car in my lane. Driving on the left side wasn’t as weird as I had thought it would be. And I think the roundabouts are brilliant. They keep traffic flowing, and cause fewer accidents than traffic lights.

We had breakfast/early lunch at Tyrrellspass Castle, and continued on to another castle at Tullamore--Charleville. Evidently, they have an annual music festival there called Castlepalooza. They were shooting a rock video when we arrived, and we weren’t able to go in, but the drive up to it was downright magical. That was a word that kept popping into my head over and over. The rain and temperate climate cause the vegetation to be green, even in late November. That, along with the mist and ancient trees, conjured up images of fairy tale enchanted forests.

We decided that we would go directly to the Cliffs of Moher since it looked like it would be rainy the following day. The drive up there was pretty harrowing. We were on rural roads that narrowed without much notice, and I was still trying to hone my new driving skills. What a reward when we arrived though! The cliffs at the edge of the Atlantic are ruggedly breathtaking. Because it was off-season and relatively late in the day, there were very few tourists. And there were sheep grazing right next to the trails--even a proverbial black sheep. They are the “Shaun the Sheep” type with the black faces, and both Isabelle and I are big fans. It’s too bad that today I started thinking about the fact that they are livestock and not pets...

When I started the car at the Cliffs, two warning lights came on. We looked them up--Electronic Stabilization Control and Emission Control. I figured we could make it to Galway, but we knew we would have to address the issue the next day. Thankfully, we did get there with no trouble. Our hotel was once again in the City Centre. About a block away was a Christmas market with food stalls and some carnival rides. Before we left home, I had wondered how commercial Christmas would be in Ireland. We learned that decorations generally go up a day after Halloween, so I guess that the US isn’t the only place that extends the holiday to last over two months. But to us, everything looked so quaint suspended over cobblestone streets. There is also an upscale Irish department store, Brown Thomas, that does some wackily inventive holiday windows. In Galway, one featured a male mannequin with an owl’s head. We had another great dinner--excellent farm to table food and a vegan local beer.

Day Three: Galway

We finally had a chance to sleep in! Then, unfortunately, we had to drop the car at an Enterprise-approved car repair facility for diagnosis. It was very close to the City Centre, so we walked to the Fisheries Watchtower (museum) and the Galway Museum. The wind was fierce--equal to anything I’ve experienced in Chicago, but that weather was over by 2 PM or so. At the museum, we learned about the ancient and more recent history of the city, including the Irish uprising against the British. I know through 23andMe that my DNA makeup is 41% British and Irish, the largest percentage in the mix. 23andMe doesn’t specify English, Scottish, Welsh, or Irish--I’m probably all of the above. We're pretty sure that the Hughes name comes from Wales, and our background is pretty thoroughly Protestant. I grew up with the impression that the Reformation was a positive thing, and that the Protestants held the moral high ground. But in this phase of my political thinking, my belief is that religious differences have most often been used to justify` the lust for power and the control of natural resources and goods. I also just finished an amazing book on the trip--”Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire” by Kurt Andersen. The US was founded by some pretty crazy Protestants, and I can’t take much pride in the ways that they behaved. Anyway, the visit to Ireland has led me to wonder what my ancestors’ political roles were in these struggles for independence.

We had savory pie for lunch--mine was kale and wild mushroom, locally sourced again, with spelt flour crust. Isabelle and I agreed that it was our favorite meal of the trip. We had to go back to the car repair place, and they informed us that we needed to get a replacement vehicle. This gave us the opportunity to talk with the lovely young woman from the Enterprise facility in Galway, the longest conversation we had with any local on the trip. The replacement car was newer and better, and they gave us a free day’s rental, so it was a win-win-win situation! We briefly visited the gorgeous Galway Cathedral where a nice man let us in even though they had just officially closed. We also heard some Irish traditional music, and ate at yet another farm to table restaurant. Incidentally, the prices were really reasonable compared to Chicago prices for similar food.

Day Four: Galway to Cork

Isabelle figured that Limerick would be a great place to stop on our way to Cork. We ended up spending much more time there than we had planned. After a great mocha (my first time trying oat milk) and breakfast, we went exploring. There was a mostly ruined castle, King John’s Castle, that had an excellent museum component that inspired more rumination on the conflicts between the different factions in the British Isles. And very nearby was the 850 year old Cathedral of St. Mary. Very impressive to us Americans when we’re inside a building with that kind of history...

We decided to visit Blarney Castle on our way to Cork, and it was much more captivating, and much less touristy than I had imagined. As we approached the castle on foot, we passed signs that read “90 minutes to the Blarney Stone”, “60 minutes to the Blarney Stone” etc. We were once again grateful that we were there in the off-season. Our wait to kiss the Blarney Stone was...0 minutes! Yes, we did it. There are many stories about the Stone, but the most common is that it gives you the gift of gab, and not in a good way. But I figure I can use the gift of gab--everyone always tells me that I’m too quiet and very private. Wow--it may already be working, since I’m writing this long involved post about our vacation! Surrounding the castle is a gorgeous park that is truly a botanical garden, including a poison garden. That traditionally would have had medicinal plants that “will either kill you or cure you.” There were huge redwoods, oversized rhubarb plants, a spectacular fern garden with waterfall--magical, you might say!

We went on to Cork, found our B & B, and went into the City Centre for another excellent meal. We wandered around, figuring out what we wanted to do there the next morning. There was a large courtyard with a light display called “Glow” that was set to open the next day. Also a ferris wheel that seems to be a standard part of a Christmas market--who knew? Our B & B was pretty cool, but the woman who ran it seemed disappointed that we hadn’t opted for the breakfast part of the equation. We had our sights set on a coffee place we had seen on our reconnaissance mission...

Day Five: Cork to Dublin

We did go to the Bean and Leaf, and it was very near to the English Market that we planned to visit. The English Market is a covered food market that houses a huge variety of fresh grocery items. We wondered about the origins of the name, and found out that the English or Protestant Corporation that ran Cork untl the mid 1800′s founded it. It catered to a wealthy clientele while the Irish Market catered to the working class folk. Now, everyone goes there, and they have all of the super-trendy foods that you would find in an upscale grocery store in the states. We bought a few things there, walked around a bit more, and got in the car to head to our last big adventure.

Almost as ubiquitous as the sheep on the hillsides were the rainbows. We saw a few every day that we were driving, including a couple of double rainbows. The conditions were perfect--light rain, followed by the sun breaking through the clouds. Now I understand the whole leprechaun and pot of gold at the end of the rainbow image. They seem so...magical!

I think it was the vinyl record store we checked out in Cork that got us onto the subject of rock operas. On our next car ride we listened to Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”. It was one of the few times we listened to music in the car. Most of the time the British-accented Google Maps lady was telling us where to go--”take the slip-road on the left.” Thank goodness for Google Maps! It would have been difficult to navigate all of those one-way streets with me driving on the left, using an old-fashioned map... Anyway, it was a pretty long stretch on a main road to get us to our next destination: the Wicklow Mountains at Glendalough. The same mountain range extends into Dublin where they’re called the Dublin Mountains. It was astoundingly beautiful there--and the smells were so fresh and fragrant. We hiked a very short trail that took about 50 minutes, but it gave us the flavor of the park. We had lunch at the Glendalough Hotel. And that reminds me--many of our servers, especially in the Dublin area, were young Eastern Europeans. Evidently, Ireland is a very popular place to look for better job opportunities, and a better life in general. We did remark on the fact that we saw very few people of color though. I want to find out why that is the case. It does make me wonder about ethnic and religious homogeneity. Would I have felt such an affinity for Ireland if I weren’t white and culturally Christian?

On the way down the mountain and back to Dublin, we listened to “Thick as a Brick” by Jethro Tull. Isabelle had never heard it before. I thought it had an appropriately Celtic feel, and was loosely in the rock opera genre. We listened to a few Irish artists as we were making our way back into Dublin in Friday evening traffic. We checked into our last hotel, did a bit of last-minute souvenir shopping, and ate at a pub with live music. The two musicians played mostly traditional Irish music, but also included a few American tunes. It was kind of a fitting transition since we would be heading to the airport in the morning.

I am so grateful that Isabelle was well enough that we could make this trip. She was a great traveling companion, and our energy levels were very well matched. We shared a similar idea of the optimum balance between planning and spontaneity. I’m not sure how to wrap this up except to say: Travel with your adult children! Go to Ireland in the off-season! Enjoy the rainbows!

2 notes · View notes

jamagarrison4-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Oakland Faculty University Moving And Storage Company

Oakland Faculty University Shifting And Storage Firm

I've moved many times over the previous 10 years and these are one of the best movers I've ever had. JIM BOB: Anybody wish to see me fly off the counter over there simply just like the plane I saw? When i came out and opened the again of my new SUV to load the groceries, I noticed my backpack was not there. I used to be very impressed and in the event you ever need a reference, please attain out to us. Do Oakland movers want stress relief? Movers and Movers is a high-rated company in Oakland for its nice service and workers. The planning wanted for an workplace transfer, whether for a small or massive company usually entails complicated group and complications for the administrators co-ordinating the relocation service. This was my first experience with a moving company and I would have to say, I was more than happy! If you end up contemplating shopping for and promoting old books for a revenue you might be shifting into ebook buying and selling which is extra of a enterprise than a pastime.

I like books and I actually love the old and rare. Books can become rare in the event that they turn into standard with collectors and the primary printing was small. However we don't have to just accept human authorities as an act of God, we can change course. If requested, they'll present packing containers, additional tape and can of course secure your gadgets with proper protection like shrink wrap and/or blankets. Save on additional services and improve your degree of safety when you bundle choices together. Hire among the finest companies in town in your next transfer. I hired Rob and his crew of two to move from a four-bedroom home in Piedmont to a four-bedroom house in Rockridge. The home we moved out of had an insane amount of stairs and these three dealt with them with velocity, efficiency, and actually positive attitudes. Later the same yr he used the income from the San Francisco pictures to achieve a long time goal and bought the Studio of the Three Arrows in Yosemite.

Ted's Transferring

7 years in the past from Australia

If she or he has to depart when the cellular phone ringshe or she is likely to be married

moving company oakland ca

12090 NW 40th St

7 years ago from Hamilton, Alabama

It was my first time hiring professional movers and I was very proud of the service. House Moving Services in Oakland has several years of experience and the correct supplies to plan an expert transfer smoothly. The transfer took much much less time than they estimated, they usually charged me a lot less than the estimate. Improve your lightning at the same time you’re doing the electrical works. For a similar purpose bank robbers rob banks. SDC Worldwide Shipping makes the method look easy although thanks to our years of expertise. Ideally, an island ought to be unencumbered by equipment, but if you want it to home a dishwasher-sink combo or a cook prime, strive to keep up the light look of a leggy harvest desk. Oakland is filled with some nice eating places you simply have to attempt. I try texting. No answer. Location - Positioned 1 mile off of I-75, situated on the border of Orion, Auburn Hills and Rochester; Premier is by far the best to reach self storage complicated anywhere in the realm.

I then returned the Rental Van to the 8000 San Leandro Avenue Location where the Yard attendant Post Tripped the Van and Checked it for Injury . Listening to baseball trade information sooner or later, I requested our then-13-yr-previous son, Matt, how a baseball participant immediately stops being a member of one workforce, then simply as instantly becomes a member of a competing crew. California has two workplaces in Oakland, one in Concord and one in Fairfield. Generally a e book publisher could print a condensed model or one with a special cover and name it a limited edition. The Lion's Paw Purchase Now What's the Difference Between a primary Version and Limited Edition? The first day in your new home needs to be joyous. Commander moved us from a 2-bd house to our new residence in Dimond. Positioned at our house office, it's staffed each day, clear, geared up with the fashionable and up to date safety methods, freed from pests and rodents, and best of all you set your individual lock on it.

I used to be anxious about how they were going to transport and put together the piano legs since I had simply put in model new floors. They only delivered a piano to my door about five minutes in the past. In San Jose and San Francisco Bay Area we’re among the most reputable shifting companies around. With our locations in San Jose and San Francisco we're in a position to supply our moving providers to more than 7 million local residents. More and more I've come to comprehend the implications of the readiness of young artists like Herb and the Colwells to have interaction in a function that gave relevance and which means to their skills. However I did like it. Only the rich could afford a house like he had in Minnesota, out in Frisco, as he often called town by the bay. We hired Jay's Small Strikes for a transfer from our 1 bedroom residence to a house in Richmond final weekend. The transfer in crew was once more, friendly and environment friendly. As soon as again, great work.

1 note · View note

allisonswrittenwords · 5 years ago

Text

This is the story of the great war that Rikki-Tikki-Tavi fought single-handed, through the bath-rooms of the big bungalow in Segowlee cantonment. Darzee, the tailor-bird, helped him, and Chuchundra, the musk-rat, who never comes out into the middle of the floor, but always creeps round by the wall, gave him advice; but Rikki-Tikki did the real fighting.

So opens the story of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi (the ivory-fanged, the hunter with eyeballs aflame), the eponymous protagonist of a story from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Books. His is the story of a brave mongoose and his bid to protect his young master (and the master’s family) from the cobras that plan to make their home in the garden…but not before doing away with the family whose home the garden surrounds.

I watched Rikki-Tikki-Tavi as a little kid, on a videocassette. I loved it then, and even loved it as a teenager when I showed it in a daycare classroom on a rainy day. What a great, if not slightly scary, story. But of course, It has been nineteen years since I saw it last, and I’ve wondered at points on and off since I found YouTube if I would still enjoy it. I would see the trailer on occasion floating around on home video preview trailers by Family Home Entertainment. I saw it again last week while writing my Family Home Entertainment article.

youtube

Upload via ThePreviewsGuy VHSOpenings (I cued it to where the trailer starts)

Coincidentally, it was a Family Home Entertainment print where I saw it many years ago (and again as a teenager working in a daycare), and I saw the The Velveteen Rabbit as a kid as well.

Probably a sign that I need to see both again. Why don’t we start with the story of the brave Mongoose whose name I used to think was pronounced “Reeky-Teeky-Tavi”?

But first…

Synopsis!

Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is a 1975 animated special, animated by Chuck Jones Enterprises, and based on the story of the same name from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Books. With narration by Orson Welles, the story is about a British family – Mother, Father, and son Teddy, who find a mongoose living on their estate, seemingly washed up from a river. Father takes the mongoose into the home to dry and warm the little guy up, who in turn springs into delightful action.

The family decides to keep him as a pet, despite some hesitation by Mother about the safety of their son (especially since the little creature sleeps with Teddy). But Rikki-Tikki shows his value almost immediately, when he kills the cobra, Nag. Not content to rest on the laurels of protection from just one cobra, Rikki plans to protect the garden from Nagaina, Nag’s wife, who has laid eggs.

With a dart, a dash, and a clickety chatter of his teeth and whiskers, Rikki surveils the garden. But it is at a moment he isn’t minding the family that Nagaina finds her way into the family. She threatens promises of sinking her fangs into Teddy – and his parents – to avenge the death of Nag and have the estate’s garden for her very own.

But it is Rikki – brave Rikki! – who bargains the life of a single egg for that of the family he swears to protect. While distracted by a bird’s singing, Rikki destroys Nagaina’s eggs, and follows Nagaina to her underground nest. And just when you think the worst has happened to the brave mongoose – this is a children’s story after all – Rikki emerges victorious, his speed and bravery have saves the day, and the family.

It is then that Rikki dedicates his life to protecting the garden, where no cobra dares to enter.

The Cartoon

An animated version aired on television in 1975, the work of legendary animator Chuck Jones. The animation style is signature Chuck Jones, and if you’ve seen his work on various Looney Tunes shorts, the Cricket short films (not the talking doll), and any of his contributions to Dr. Seuss animated specials of the time, then you know the animation style, not to mention the voice talent.

The special was one of three Kipling stories to get the Jones animated treatment – Mowlgi’s Brothers and The White Seal were the first two stories. This era of Jones’s career came after his years at Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and done at his own studio, Chuck Jones Enterprises.

My Take

As I said, I saw Rikki-Tikki-Tavis as a kid. I loved it then, I enjoyed it as a teenager, and well, as a big kid, I adore it. It is as good – and at points, as scary – as I remember it! The cobras, Nag and Nagaina, and their demise at the fast wits of Rikki-Tikki could have easily been the most unsettling animation, aside from the glowing red eyes of Rikki when he goes after the cobras. That other scene where the snakes says “I am death” freaked me out a little – I forgot about that third, much smaller snake completely!

However, the violence (especially against Nag and Nagaina) is left off-screen and to the imagination, using the sound and music as a guide.

I love the animation, but I’m partial to the Dr. Seuss specials of the time. And the narration of Orson Welles feels as good as that of Boris Karloff in How The Grinch Stole Christmas – smooth and entertaining. The narration doesn’t detract from the story.

There is some re-used shots of Rikki in action, especially when he is winding himself around the chair. The same clip is used twice, and while you’d think that would take away from what makes this cartoon work…it doesn’t. The clip is used well, and I understand there is a savings if the same clip is repurposed.

The animation style is so good for the 1970s, that the animals look amazing – Rikki is super adorable, but vicious looking when he needs to be (I go back to the red eyes), and the cobras – those cobras! – are so scary!

Chuck Jones always had great-looking animals, it was people that looked strange. I forgot how every person in one of these cartoons looks like a castoff from Whoville. But the animals are amazing – this was around the time where Jones worked to make his animal characters look more realistic.

Pure brilliance.

In all, what startled me as a kid – the cobras, their voices, Rikki’s red eyes – all still have that same impact. This is a great movie, and if you haven’t already seen it (or haven’t seen it in a long time), watch it!

Availability

When I was looking for a print of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, I assumed I was going to find the FHE print I knew growing up. However, it wasn’t on YouTube. The preview is, but even that is only within a set of previews. But on archive.org, there is a cool print that has the Xerox Films logo before the movie, and plenty of indications that this movie was on film and not videocassette.

youtube

I love that – I expected to find the format I saw it on originally, and got something far cooler! Of course, I can’t find any information about Xerox Films, other than it is from the 1970s.

Oh well. Still a cool find!

Of course, if you like physical media, or a clean digital copy, Amazon has the movie for rental, as well as DVD copies with the other two Jones animated Kipling stories. But if you really want to see something special (and who doesn’t?), watch the version on archive.org (Rikki-Tikki-Tavi – Xerox Films print).

I would like to aim to do more of these retro rewatch type articles – find something I haven’t seen in years, and just talk about it. Not a recap, just a synopsis and a quick take. This could either be alot of fun…or totally painful, depending on the find.

I already have something picked out, and I’m going to rack my brain to find some stuff I haven’t seen in years.

Thank goodness for YouTube!

Have a great day!

My reaction to 1975's "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi," about 19 years after I last saw it! This is the story of the great war that Rikki-Tikki-Tavi fought single-handed, through the bath-rooms of the big bungalow in Segowlee cantonment.

#1975 #animated specials #Chuck Jones #Rikki-Tikki-Tavi #Rudyard Kipling #The Jungle Books

0 notes

localmanmurray-blog · 6 years ago

Text

Local Man Vs Progeria

On November 7th 2018 Progeria cut Murray off in traffic. Progeria thought nothing of it she was a hard working single mother who just wanted to get her groceries home so she could make dinner for her kids Osteoporosis and Tetanus. But Murray thought about it, Murray thought it a lot.

Murray began to follow Progeria around covertly for months gathering intel for his revenge. He figured out what stores and ATMs she went to and how often she went to them. He learned her daily routine:

Progeria gets up at 6 to make breakfast for herself and her kids. She leaves for work at 6:45 in her white 2014 Chevy Equinox with roughly 75 thousand miles on it. She arrives at Enterprise car rentals between 7:15 and 7:25 each morning with little variation. She had worked there for 5 years and 4 months when first observed. Between 12:30 and 1:00 She takes her break returning between 1:15 and 1:45 either goes to Dunkin Donuts or Subway for lunch. Leaves work at 3:30 every day and then goes straight home to help her kids with homework except on Wednesdays she goes to the Fairplay and Family Dollar to buy groceries. Returns to her home between 4:15 and 4:30 everyday time varies on Wednesday. Usually makes dinner upon arriving home and then sits down to watch prerecorded NCIS on her DVR. Usually goes to sleep between 9:30 and 10:00. On the weekends she stays in unless she has to drive her kids somewhere or if she goes on a date.

Murray learned all this in the span of a 2 month stakeout and carefully planned when he would strike. Making copies of her car and house keys incase he needed them. Progeria’s work was having a Gala at the local high school in early January. On what should be a joyful night for Progeria is when Murray planned to strike.

The day of the Gala came and Progeria had gone out and bought a beautiful new evening dress for the event and had got her hair done at the salon run by Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. She was very excited for the dance and she planned to walk because the high school was only 3 blocks away. She left her house at 7:45 and started walking to the high school not knowing it would be the last time she walked unassisted for a long time.

When she was a block away Murray stepped out of a dark alleyway wearing a duster and approached Progeria silently from behind brandishing his custom Colt 45. Murray was 3 feet away when he yelled “Turn around you miserable sow!” Progeria turned around quickly and was greeted with a 45 caliber bullet tearing through her stomach and small intestine. She shrieked in pain as blood and stomach acid oozed from her wound. Murray lined up a second shot and fired hitting between the 23rd and 24th vertebrae crippling Progeria. Her legs gave out immediately and she tried to crawl away as her guts continued to make stains on the sidewalk. “Please stop” she pleaded as Murray walked closer and closer. Murray bent down and put the gun against Progeria’s head between her eyes the hot muzzle leaving burns on her forehead. He pulled the trigger and the gun went click and he said “ Your life is mine but I don’t want it yet” and he walked away leaving Progeria to suffer alone with the knowledge the law wouldn’t save her.

Many people looked at what had happened and did nothing for about an hour until Alan Richards owner of The Glitter Puddle called an ambulance. It took 46 hours in the emergency room before Progeria was out of critical condition. 46 hours of constant fear that Murray would return to finish the job. But he did not return and after 3 weeks in the hospital Progeria began the grueling physical therapy to help her walk again.

After three years of Physical and mental therapy, and living in constant fear that Murray would return to finish the job, Progeria regained the ability to walk days before her two kids graduated high school. She was so excited to be able to walk up and hug them after they had received their hard earned diplomas. But unfortunately for her that’s when Murray had planned to strike.

On the day of the graduation Progeria was getting dressed before the ceremony upstairs in her room. She heard her front door unlock thinking “that’s odd the kids should be at the school already” and looked out her door to see Murray standing there with a grin and a gun in hand.

Before she could scream Murray shot out both her kneecaps forcing her to the ground. Then she screamed as tears streamed down her face. “Why are you doing this to me” she cried. Murray just wordlessly plugged another hole in Progeria’s spinal column this time ensuring her arms were useless as well. Hot blood was pooling on the floor as Murray dragged her to the edge of the staircase. Planting one foot on her back and the other on the back of he rode her down the stairs like a surfboard knocking out many of her teeth. As consciousness began to slip from Progeria, Murray finally said “It’s a shame your kids are gonna see an empty seat at graduation” as he pulled a 12 gauge Remington Magnum Express out from his duster. He placed it under her chin and fired exploding her head like an overripe watermelon splattering on the floor and walls and leaving a fine red mist that hung in the air for a minute.

Murray then went and stole a gallon of milk and some microwave mashed potatoes from Progeria’s refrigerator and went home to watch hockey with his buddy Judas. He was happy to know that a score had at long last been settled decisively.

The next day on the morning news a local girl Mandy Wilburston who had suffered from progeria from birth had miraculously recovered and now looked like a real human and not an aborted alien fetus and could now live a fulfilling life. The newspaper headline was Local Man Cures progeria. Progeria’s death was never investigated and Osteoporosis and Tetanus are now homeless living off scraps they find in trash cans and on the side of the road.

#writing #pacifisim #progeria #violence #gun #family #sfw #taylor swift

0 notes

otisdyke · 6 years ago

Text

Top Tips From The Horses Mouth

https://ift.tt/2OyIIsD

Daniel Ramot

The cofounder and CEO of Via Transportation, a carpooling service that has raised almost £300 million in funding, reveals what he has learnt…

“I think who you spend your time with can be more important than what you’re working on. When launching Via, I had a network of the smartest people [from university] I could hire to build our algorithm and technology.”

It’s never too late to change track

“I realised in my third year that academia wasn’t for me. I was reverse engineering when really I wanted to build things. I still finished my degree and my experience working with data has proved very useful.”

Don’t rush

“I didn’t rush to start a business, because, as a graduate student, I was financially unstable, but also none of my ideas were good enough – and I didn’t have the right partner.”

Prove your product

“We thought we could build the technology and that every city in the world and every public transportation authority would want to use it. We soon realised we had to build the product to show them it actually worked.”

Stop talking about it

“We took six months to convince ourselves that our idea would work. But we should have launched right away. You think you’re reducing your risk by doing diligence around your idea, but actually the risk of someone else launching your idea increases.”

Nothing is above your pay grade

“I’ve started to hear the phrase ‘above your pay grade’, which I dislike. I expect people at Via to try to engage with every problem. If you’re ambitious, then your goal should be to engage with problems one or two levels higher than you.”

David Hieatt

The cofounder of Hiut Denim Co, the jeans label worn by everyone from the Arctic Monkeys to Meghan Markle and now with a three-month waiting list for orders, reveals what he has learned…

Put yourself in a corner

“I quit my A-levels and started a sports clothing business. The petrol gauge in my car didn’t work, so I never knew if there was any petrol – the only sure-fire way to make sure I got home was to sell like hell.”

Read up

“I was unemployed for over a year until I read Ogilvy On Advertising, which said you don’t need any qualifications to work in the creative department of an advertising agency.”

It’s about your boss, not your pay packet

“My boss Paul Arden was the Steve Jobs of advertising. He taught me never to compromise for financial reasons. Who cares about your job title? The real question is: who’s your teacher?”

Make a splash

“I wanted to exhibit our T-shirts at a show, but it was £5,000 for a stand. So I just painted two models as if they were wearing the T-shirts. We were banned within 30 minutes, but every single magazine – and the event – ran images of the stunt.”

Tell a story

“A great brand is a great story. For Hiut Denim, our small town in Wales used to make jeans, so we wanted to give 400 people their jobs back. That’s a great story.”

Don’t rush to sell

“Sell your company once you don’t love it any more. If you sell what you love and someone else messes it up, you’re going to feel it. If you’re enjoying the ride, stay on the horse.”

Ryan Prince

The founder and CEO of hotel-style apartment rental chain Uncle, which owns more than 1,200 properties with £500 million worth of assets, reveals what he has learnt…

Beware the shortcut

“I realised I could cram my entire university schedule into two days, leaving a five-day weekend. I ended up regretting never taking advantage of all the great things I could have done. Now I’ve gone 180 degrees the other way.”

Embrace your anxieties

“My father arrived in Canada after the Second World War with his parents, who were Holocaust survivors. He was born in a displaced persons camp. I grew up mindful that I had nothing to fall back on and you never know what’s around the corner. I had to look after myself financially.”

Trust your mid-life crisis

“I had a mid-life crisis at 25. I realised I was much too much of a control freak to passively invest in business and just hope they did well. I needed a more reliable career.”

Reconsider the norm

“You judge hotels according to their brands and reviews, but when renting you have no idea what you’re signing up for. That’s backwards. So I thought, why isn’t there a hotel brand for living? Uncle was born out of that question.”

Track consumer trends

“I realised affordability in cities was going down, renting was growing and its stigma decreasing. It was once a badge of honour to own your car, now people will say why waste money doing that?”

Guy Ivesha

Meet the man behind London’s £40 million co-working members’ club Mortimer House

Delegate to busy people

“I learnt in the army that if you want something done, give it to someone busy. I found that if I gave it to someone with all the time in the world on their hands, they didn’t do it quickly.”

Keep abreast of industry news

“I subscribed to all the hospitality publications and one day learnt an Israeli billionaire [Yitzhak Tshuva] had acquired the Plaza Hotel in New York. Seven months later I managed to get a meeting with him through a mutual friend and he gave me a job.”

Get to the table

“For six months I wasn’t invited to meetings, until one day I saw an empty seat and sat down. I came every week until, months later, I found I was the closest person to the CEO.”

Can not can’t

“My father taught me never to admit you couldn’t do something. You can always find a way, even if you don’t know the answer yet.”

Opposites attract

“It’s wise if each partner brings a different set of competencies and qualities. My business partner doesn’t understand the hospitality world from the inside, but he very much understands property and finance.”

Staffing is a balancing act

“If you bring people onto the payroll too early, it can be heavy on working capital. But if you bring them in too late, then you can’t run the place.”

Will Dean

The cofounder and CEO of Tough Mudder – which hosts endurance events in eleven countries and now turns over more than $100 million a year – on mentors, marketing and the power of a Harvard MBA

Status matters

“Being able to go into a meeting with ‘I’m a Harvard MBA’ means people give you the benefit of the doubt and in certain situations that’s very helpful.”

Punch above your weight

“Aged 16, my schoolfriend Guy Livingstone and I made £20,000 from selling colour-changing nail varnish via Young Enterprise. To seem authoritative to distributors, I’d make them wait on the phone, saying, ‘Please hold while I put you through to Mr Dean.’”

Learn the basics

“I didn’t understand how marketing and advertising were different, so the Mirror helped me articulate a value proposition, keep customers happy and measure customer sentiment.”

Find a mentor

“The CEO of Take-Two [publisher of Grand Theft Auto], Strauss Zelnick, is good at giving me a prescriptive answer.”

Don’t be monomaniacal

“If you bring intense focus to everything you do then you burn through things quite quickly and your ideas won’t seem as exciting. I try to be more balanced now.”

It’s not going to calm down

“Young entrepreneurs think that in six months it calms down. But in six months it will have gone from 10/10 intensity to 9.8. If you do a good job, in two years it’ll be 8/10.”

Ben Silbermann

The CEO and co-founder of Pinterest, the £8.6 billion visual discovery app that ‘pins’ a trillion lifestyle recommendations a year, reveals what he has learnt…

Don’t over-research

“If you can build the product almost as quickly as you can research it, then you should just build the product. It’s better to get it into somebody’s hands.”

Listen and learn

“I learnt to listen very carefully to clients when I was consulting, which meant that at Pinterest our customer service was highly personal. I even gave my email and mobile number to customers.”

Sell and anti-sell

“We’d say to investors, ‘This is what Pinterest could be, but these are the risks.’ People that opt in knowing the risks are the partners you want.”

Don’t separate work and play

“You need to integrate your work and personal life. I don’t think it’s practical any more for people to have this really clean split. You need to develop patterns that work for your family as well as your job. You don’t want to be half on, half off all the time. It’s not a good way to live your life.”

Think laterally

“It was difficult to raise funds for Pinterest because of the financial crisis. So I entered a college business plan contest and the prize was meeting with venture capitalists First Market Capital in New York, which gave us half our money.”

Fabien Riggall

The founder of Secret Cinema – the immersive cinematic experience that has sold more than half a million tickets since 2012 – reveals what he has learned.

Break the rules

“After watching Dead Poets Society, I escaped from school with £5 to start a life in London. I was inspired by the idea of romantic adventure. There was a huge search party and I was found.”

Look up the ladder

“I wanted to direct and produce, but I could see unhappy 50-year-old second-assistant directors with no hope of producing because the climb was so hard. So I started making short films.”

Blag it

“The confidence I got from telephone sales helped me as a producer. I’d get through to CEOs by pretending to be my own assistant and creating an illusion that I was successful.”

Manners maketh man

“We grew the Future Shorts community by sending the audience notes saying, ‘Thank you for coming. We look forward to seeing you again.’ We asked them to let us know their thoughts on the films.”

Dust yourself off

“Our Back To The Future screening was our biggest to date, selling 80,000 tickets. Next year, we went bigger with Star Wars and sold 100,000 tickets.”

Change your scene

“Last week I felt down so I went to Paris, walked around, sat in cafés and wrote. I immediately felt better. Similarly, when I moved to New York, it gave me a sense of optimism and the feeling that anything could happen.”

Ayman Hariri, Vero

Ayman Hariri, founder of the ad-free media-sharing platform Vero, which currently operates across 100 countries, reveals what he has learnt…

Learn from the masters

“I’ve used every single product that Apple has released in the last 15 years. The team and I try to apply Apple’s pursuit of simplicity and usefulness in everything we do with Vero.”

Have the last word

“We had to close Epok because we didn’t design things the right way. We should have taken out more of the decision makers and created something far more centralised.”

Nail the snowball effect

“When we hit one million users, we will start charging membership of the equivalent of a couple of cups of coffee. A million is a good starter for the snowball effect; after that point, the snowball accumulates and rolls down the hill.”

Emails aren’t real work

“Working with massive teams on huge construction projects, I learnt that there’s no replacement for human communication. Saying, ‘I sent them an email’ doesn’t mean you did your job.”

Work remotely

“If you find someone you want to recruit somewhere else in the world, why make them relocate? They are probably amazing because of the culture they live in. Vero has no office, we all work remotely using [team messaging app] Slack.”

Start what you finish

“I don’t understand companies who start their marketing push and say they’ll figure out their monetisation strategy later. Very few businesses have been able to be successful on the advertising model.”

Follow us on Vero for exclusive music content and commentary, all the latest music lifestyle news and insider access into the GQ world, from behind the scenes insight to recommendations from our Editors and high-profile talent.

James Park, Fitbit

The cofounder and CEO of the £6 billion activity tracker company Fitbit, which now has more than 23.6 million active users worldwide, reveals what he has learned.

Don’t rush

“Epesi was not successful – so many things went wrong. I was only 22 at the time, very inexperienced, and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I realised I had some more growing up to do. I needed more time and to meet more people.”

Hire up

“We started Fitbit with only two employees: a monumental task. You don’t want to over-hire before you’ve nailed your product, but a few more hands would have helped.”

Go public or go home

“Going public is good for investors and employees. Ours was the largest consumer electronics IPO in US history.”

Trust your gut

“I dropped out just before finals because I got an internship at Morgan Stanley. As an entrepreneur, you have to take risks. But as an engineer, there’s always a backup.”

Watch and learn (and copy)

“When the Nintendo Wii came out, I was interested in its sensors, as well as how it turned gaming into something friendly and active. This was technology with positive impacts. I wanted to put this magic into something more portable.”

Get enough capital

“In software you can make mistakes and learn from them cheaply; in hardware every mistake is expensive to fix and takes much longer. If I could go back, I’d make sure we were better capitalised to cushion our mistakes and sleep sounder at night!”

Kris Thykier, Archery Pictures and PeaPie Films

The producer responsible for Harry Brown, Riviera and Kick-Ass – and founder of Archery Pictures and PeaPie Films – reveals what he has learned…

Degrees aren’t everything

“I asked to defer because I got a job as a film runner. Then I deferred another year and, two years later, I was already starting to hire people who had degrees. I thought, ‘Well this doesn’t seem to be an issue.’ I never took up my place.”

“Partnering with Matthew Vaughn on MARV Films was interesting. He’s incredibly tough in his deal-making, very involved in the detail. That was a side of producing I hadn’t understood yet. We were a good balancing act. I think I tempered him.”

Move with the times

“I began watching a lot more TV and realised it was as exciting a medium for original storytelling as film. So I raised some money to build a new business, focusing on both.”

Turn your passion into your career

“My aunt was a cineaste and took me to inappropriate films such as Alien when I was very young. If questioned, she said it was incredibly rude to mention my dwarfism.”

Keep your ego in check

“At MARV, we made four films in 18 months and I thought I was born to be a producer and that I was a genius. But then, when I set up PeaPie, nothing worked [initially] and all my projects fell apart. It was a valuable lesson in hubris.”

Taavet Hinrikus, TransferWise

The CEO of money-sending service TransferWise – a unicorn startup on track for revenues of £100 million this year – reveals what he has learned…

Weigh up your options

“I dropped out of university to become the first employee of Skype, because I knew I would learn so much more there. If Skype had gone bust, I could always have returned to university, and I’d still have been a little smarter than before.”

Don’t rush into a job

“I did an MBA because when I left Skype I didn’t have a clear idea of whether I wanted to create or join a company. But you don’t need an MBA to become an entrepreneur.”

You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig

“No amount of PR works if you’ve got a bad product. It has to be better than the competition and that comes down to making sure you do one thing really well.”

Pace yourself

“Building a business is a marathon, not a sprint. I don’t believe it when people tell me they’ve been working 80-hour weeks for five years in a row. I just don’t think that’s possible.”

Look beyond the money

“Doing something that empowers people makes you realise how boring it would be to work for a place where the goal is just to make more money. It’s much easier to get out of bed and look forward to 12 hours of work if you’re making the world a better place.”

Get your pitch right

“A good pitch for funding requires clarity. You need to understand the problem you’re solving, why you’re in a good place to do it and your solution needs to be ten times better than the existing one. It also has to be a big problem.”

Mark Wogan, Homeslice

The co-founder and Creative Director of Homeslice (along with his Executive Chef Ry Jessup and his brother and Homeslice Managing Director Alan Wogan) a former street-food pizza stall that now turns over £4.5 million a year across three permanent London sites, reveals what he has learned.

Don’t underspend

“We thought we’d saved a lot of money when we opened the restaurant for only £200,000, but then we had to shut it three years later to install a new kitchen. What you think is important, like the light switches, isn’t. Instead, ask yourself: does your fridge work?”

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger

“I was working 16-hour days, six days a week and it nearly killed me. I had no personal life. But if you want to work in the hospitality industry, it’s vocational, not something you do on the side.”

Academia isn’t everything

“I was moved on after my headmaster found an empty bottle of vodka and two of his crystal tumblers in my bedside cabinet. I only got three GCSEs. We all make mistakes; the point is not to be defined by them.”

The best part of a pitch is passion

“We did a very poor pitch to our first landlord: a four-page PowerPoint presentation and some pizza. An experienced restaurateur would have said, ‘They don’t have a clue.’ But we were passionate. Starting out, to win a pitch you need to get your passion across.”

Don’t look like a chain (even if you are)

“Aside from the wood-fired oven (hand-built by Ry), the décor in each Homeslice is completely different. Never hand over the creative reins to somebody else. We say exactly what themes, colour and furniture we want.”

Brian Chesky, Airbnb

The CEO and cofounder of Airbnb – the $31 billion home-sharing company that operates across 191 different countries with more than 150 million users – reveals what he has learned…

“At school, my teachers would say, ‘You’re a designer. You could design the world you live in.’ That was very inspiring. But, at 3DID I was designing products that would end up in landfill. I quit my joband left LA with $1,000 in my bank.”

Stop fretting about copycats

“I remember when I started Airbnb, somebody told me, ‘Don’t worry about someone stealing your idea. They will only dismiss it.'”

Go direct to source

“By picking the right source, you can fast-forward learning something new. I’m pretty shameless when asking for help, including from Mark Zuckerberg and Warren Buffett. The circumstances might be different, but you can learn the outlying principles and see if they apply to you.”

Choose failure over regret

“Jeff Bezos’ ‘Regret Minimisation Framework’, advises choosing fewer regrets over fewer failures. Each year, it’s harder to do something new – you have one less year of your life to do it.”

Live with your cofounders

“The turning point for Airbnb was when my two cofounders and I lived and worked together seven days a week. Bouncing ideas around late at night formed some magical moments and that close bond is what builds your company.”

Grip any crises

“We had a PR nightmare after renters trashed a home in San Francisco. I was advised to increase the guarantee for hosts ten-fold. In a crisis, if you move in one direction, you’re usually OK.”

Blaise Belville, Boiler Room

Founder and CEO of Boiler Room, the live club music platform that has streamed over 3.5 billion minutes since launch and made £6.5 million last year, reveals what he has learned…

Get out of your comfort zone

“I started selling makeover vouchers at Oxford Circus for £400 a day. After I gave one to my girlfriend, I realised it was a scam, but it was interesting because I had to go up to people and put myself out there like some awful kind of salesman.”

Don’t get stuck making easy money

“Running a club night was making me £2,000 a week in cash, but upon turning 20 I met a 30-year-old club promoter and thought, ‘I do not want to be that guy.'”

Don’t be so sure of yourself

“Everyone told me not to do it, that it made no sense to refurbish a building I didn’t own. It was, indeed, a disaster. After five years of work, getting vitiligo and tuberculosis from stress, I almost bankrupted myself and those involved. It was a good lesson to be less arrogant.”

Start young

“My parents went bankrupt, so I started a CD-burning business and sold them at school. This developed my confidence that there were ways outside the traditional system to make money.”

Follow your itchy feet

“The magazine became pretty popular and Vice saw us as a competitor. But two and a half years in, I realised it wasn’t really going anywhere. I was 26 and bored of doing all this work and not having enough cash, so I moved on.”

Put the vision first

“When you first go into something creative, it’s a mistake to focus on the money. Do it for the right reasons and it’s more likely to turn into a business than if you try and force it.”

William Shu, Deliveroo

The co-founder and CEO of Deliveroo, the largest UK-based ‘restaurant-to-home’ delivery service, which operates across 12 countries and is now valued at $1 billion, tells us what he’s learned…

Embrace your (stranger) quirks

“When I started, the bank gave me $25 a night for dinner. On the first night I was so excited I ordered 25 burgers to the office from Burger King, as they were 99 cents each. It sounds odd to be so passionate about food delivery, but I never get bored talking about my [current] job.”

Ignore baffled friends

“I’d identified this huge gap in the market [for Deliveroo], but the average Londoner thought it made no sense. No one outside New York understood either, but I went ahead anyway.”

Do it yourself

“I was the first Deliveroo rider, seven days a week for eight months. My flatmate thought I’d lost my mind. I still do it now, once or twice a week. It allows me to see what’s going on.”

Don’t shy away from small jobs

“I was a waiter at a restaurant called Frank’s near campus for three years and it taught me how to be professional towards people. It’s not something you learn at school.”

Right idea, wrong time? Hold fire

“Smartphones and tablets didn’t exist and riders needed them. It wasn’t practical until the tech took off, which coincided with my tenure at business school. I was confident my idea would work eventually – things always change.”

Avoid business for business’ sake

“I met this super-smart guy from business school who was about to launch an online marketplace for handmade pet accessories. When I saw him a year later, he said he’d dropped it. Why? He realised he didn’t like dogs. If your start-up has no emotional resonance, it’s problematic. You’re going to get bored.”

Kayvon Beykpour, Periscope

The CEO and founder of live-streaming app Periscope, which has just celebrated it’s second-year anniversary, reveals what he has learned…

Have some gumption

“I got my biggest break by relentlessly hanging out in the photo studio. Eventually, one of the main photographers was out for lunch when he was meant to be on a shoot, and I got to take his place.”

Life’s too short not to travel

“‘F*** it, go travel'” was a colleague’s advice as I was debating whether to take time off. Travelling helped me build empathy with others.”

Keep your ambition sky high

“When we see Periscope being used in places like Ferguson or the House Of Representatives, in Nepal after the earthquake, or in the Middle East during the migrant crisis… it validates our vision.”

Know when to let go

“At Goodby, and then at Terriblyclever, we moved from project to project very quickly, working for several different big companies without being able to sink our teeth into anything. I didn’t find it satisfying.”

Never idle

“My work ethic was inspired by a scolding I received when I was 12, getting lunch money by cleaning fire extinguishers for hospitals. I was twiddling my thumbs having finished my work and my boss said, ‘If you have nothing to do, sweep the floor. Don’t just sit around.'”

Trust your gut

“We didn’t know if Periscope would work, but we didn’t care. We thought it should exist – that the world deserved a teleportation device.”

Carter Cleveland, Artsy

Carter Cleveland, the founder and CEO of Artsy, which allows buyers to choose from over 500,000 works held by galleries and auction houses, reveals what he has learned…

Listen to your quirks

“I knew my idea for Artsy was an uncontainable passion when during job interviews I would start pitching the idea to employers. It was a completely irrational interview technique.”

Torture thyself

“I joined Princeton’s dance company and before our first big performance, I was vomiting with nerves. Without that experience, it would’ve been harder for me to take the risk of starting my own company.”

Strike while the iron is hot

“Timing was the main reason why Artsy succeeded. A year earlier it would have been too hard a sell for galleries; a year later and we would have been followers, not leaders.”

Don’t adopt your father’s workweek

“We have as few rules as possible. We don’t have mandated vacation, and we don’t have specific working hours. It’s impossible to know what the ‘best way’ is to achieve goals. It’s up to the individual.”

Relinquish control

“Our head of product suggested purple as our brand colour. I hated purple, so drafted an email arguing against it. Then I realised that you don’t hire the best person just to overrule them. I never sent the email.”

Be strict about your bedtime

“I began Artsy working 120 hours a week and staying in the office until 4am. I worked weekends and felt guilty getting more than four hours sleep. In the end, my body shut down and I was unable to type.”

The post Top Tips From The Horses Mouth appeared first on Otis Dyke.

from The Otis Dyke Lifestyle Blog https://www.otisdyke.co.uk/top-tips-from-the-horses-mouth/

#Business #Lifestyle #Things I Want To Do #Things I'm Doing

0 notes

trade-baby-blues · 8 years ago

Text

Cake

Pairing: Jim x Reader

Word Count: 2643

Warnings: Some swearing, fluff

A/N: Wow I definitely didn’t intend for it to be that long. Also, one day I’m gonna get everything together and start making headers for these posts, but that day is not today. Today I’m going to sleep because I’m currently dying from cramps. Hope you guys enjoy, though! Also, there’s a pic of the bike I mention at the bottom of the fic if any of you are curious.

You knocked frantically on Jim’s door. Bones was gonna kill you. A few seconds passed without answer and you pressed your ear to the door, listening for movement. Hearing nothing, you pounded on the door again.

“Jesus Jim answer the goddamn door,” you called.

If Jim could've yanked open the automatic door, you're sure he would've. He was scowling deeply, hair sticking up in all directions - the first time you’d seen it anything less than perfect. His shirtless torso was still perfect, though, and those gray sweats hanging dangerously low on his hips were downright tantalizing.

“What is it, Lieutenant? Did you forget we’re on shore leave?”

You swallowed, closing your eyes and forcing yourself to stop thinking about what you’d like to do to those beautiful muscles. “No, I didn't forget we’re on shore leave,” you said, pushing past Jim into his room, “but you seem to have forgotten what day it is.”

“Yes, Y/N, please come in.” Jim shut the door behind him, taking a moment to admire your ass as you bent down to pick a shirt off the floor. “What day is it exactly?”

You rolled your eyes and threw the shirt in his direction before heading to the coffee maker to brew both of you a cup. “It’s Jo’s birthday. We promised Bones we’d be there and we’re already running late. You know Bones’ll kill us if we leave him alone with all those kids.”

When Jim didn't answer, you peered at him curiously, only to find him sprawled over the counter snoring gently. “Jim,” you huffed, “I’m serious!” Jim only groaned in response.

You sighed and turned back to the coffee, grabbing the cup and walking over to set it in front of Jim. You crossed your arms and leaned over the counter, resting your head so it it was level with Jim’s.

You blew gently on his face. “Jim,” you hummed, blowing again. “Jimmy, it's time to get up.”

When you blew on his face again he groaned and pushed your face away. “Don't wanna go.”

“Infant,” you grumbled. With a sigh, you sat up in your chair and changed tactics, turning on the charm instead. You reached across the counter and ran a hand through Jim’s hair, trying to smooth it out. “It’s a shame you don't wanna get up, Jimmy, because Joanna’s not the only one I’ve got a present for today. But if you don't want it…” You let your hand fall to the counter as your voice trailed off. Jim peeked out from his arms and you winked at him.

“Do I at least get a hint,” he asked.

“Let’s just say you’ll enjoy the ride,” you said with a smirk. “Now put on your shirt and some different pants.”

“What's wrong with my pants?”

You shrugged. “Can't guarantee I won't try to pull them off later. Wouldn't want to scar the children.” Jim choked on his coffee as you walked towards the door, sparing him one last wink before heading outside.

You stood with your eyes closed, face turned up to the Sun as you waited for Jim. As much as you loved the Enterprise, there was nothing like having the ground under your feet and wind in your hair.

Jim’s breath caught when he saw you. He’d seen a lot of beautiful things in his time as Captain, but nothing could compare to the smile on your face while the Sun heated up your cheeks. He could hardly hold it against you for waking him up this early.

“Am I interrupting something,” he said.

You opened your eyes, taking a moment to admire the leather jacket and perfect hair. “Stupid perfect hair,” you thought to yourself. “Stupid perfect hair because he’s your captain and this can't happen.”

You ignored his question, reaching behind you to grab one of two helmets resting on the bike behind you. You held it out to him, beaming.

“No way,” Jim said, smile growing, “Shit, Y/N, this bike’s yours?”

“Rental,” you shrugged, “701 Supermoto. A classic, if you ask me.”

Jim ran his hands over the seat and up the handlebars, groaning softly. You tried not to imagine his hands doing the same to you, but God those noises were downright sinful.

“All right, all right,” you said, grabbing the other helmet, “Sorry to break up your little love fest but we do have a party to get to so hop on. You're driving.”

Jim just laughed, pulling you into a tight one-armed hug before putting his helmet on and throwing a leg over the bike. You hopped on behind him, wrapping your arms around his waist, definitely not thinking about how you could feel his abs through his thin t-shirt.

“Hope you're comfortable back there, babe,” Jim said. You could hear the smirk on his face. “Bastard,” you thought.

--------

The ride breezed by and you and Jim were at the park sooner than you wanted. It felt colder as you unwound your arms from Jim, missing the heat of him. The thought left your mind when you heard Bones’ voice from behind you.

“Where the hell have you two been?” You turned to see him stomping up to you. You had to bite your cheek to keep from laughing at the bows stuck at odd angles in his hair. There was a smear of glitter across his cheek.

“Looks like you’ve been holding them off pretty well,” Jim said with a smirk. Bones shot him a glare.

“Sorry, Bones,” you said, skipping up to give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek, “Someone didn't want to get out of bed” you said, with a pointed look back at Jim.

“So that's how it is,” Jim laughed, “You're just gonna throw me under the bus?”

A shrill voice cut you off before you could reply. “Auntie Y/N! Uncle Jim!”

You hardly saw the little ball of curls before she jumped into your arms. “Jo-bear!” She giggled at the nickname as you swung her around, blowing a raspberry against her neck.

“No, no, stop it Y/N! Uncle Jim save me.” Joanna giggled as you blew another raspberry, this time against her cheek, before Jim pulled her from your arms and threw her over his shoulder. Joanna shrieked again as Jim pretended to drop her. She punched him in the arm. “You're supposed to be saving me!”

Jim laughed, “You’re right. I’m sorry princess. How about an escort back to your banquet?” Jim hoisted Jo onto his shoulders and made his way to the table. You watched him walk away, Joanna rambling on, and couldn’t help but think that Jim would make such a great father.

“You know, lovestruck’s a good look for you,” Bones smirked.

You glared at him. “Well pink glitter isn't a good look for you,” you teased, pulling a bow from his hair and clipping it in your own. Bones pushed you playfully as the two of you made your way over to the picnic table.

You plopped down across from Hikaru and Ben, “How’d you guys get roped into this?”

“We wanted to come,” Ben said, “Thought it would be good for Joanna and Demora to be friends.”

“Mm, of course. Why are you really here,” you said, looking at Hikaru.

He shrugged, “McCoy promised to watch Demora for a few days so Ben and I could have some time alone.”

“Oh Sulu, turning on the romance.” You wiggled your eyebrows at him suggestively and he kicked you under the table.

“Speaking of romance,” Hikaru said, changing the subject, “how are things going with the Captain?” He nodded his head in Jim’s direction and you couldn't help the smile that spread across your face when you saw him running around with Joanna and her friends.

“She really does have it bad,” Ben said.

“Pfft, I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Horseshit,” Bones said, dropping down beside you.

“Okay so maybe I have the hots for the Captain, but who cares? He's the captain, and I’m just an engineer. It's against the rules.” Hikaru and Bones both snorted.

“Because if there's one thing Jim cares about it's the rules,” Bones said.

“Shouldn't you be on grill duty,” you mumbled. Bones cursed under his breath before jumping back up to check on the burgers. Your scowl deepened as you looked at Hikaru. “Don't start again.”

He put his hands up in defense. “I didn't say anything.” You propped your elbows on the tables and groaned into your hands. Ben was right. You did have it bad.

You didn't have long to wallow before Joanna came bounding up to the table again. “Auntie Y/N! Auntie Y/N! Will you braid my hair?”

“‘Course, pumpkin. Hop on up. You swung a leg over the bench to straddle it, so Joanna could sit in front of you.

“You took Daddy’s bow,” she said as she clambered onto the bench and put her back to you.

You ran your fingers through her hair a few times before starting to braid it. “Yeah, I did but to be fair pink isn't his color. It makes that vein in his neck look even more purple.”

“I heard that,” Bones snapped, making Joanna giggle.

The kids came sprinting back to the table when Bones said burgers were served. Jo made quick work of hers, eager to get to the cake and presents portion of the party but, just as Jo was about to dig in, Jim’s comm went off.

He looked at the number and grimaced. “Sorry, sorry. Won't be two seconds.” You shot him a worried glance as he stood from the table but he just smiled and shook his head, trying to tell you not to worry.

Jo pouted, looking forward to opening presents but not wanting to do it without Jim. You tried to keep her preoccupied by asking her about school, but she wouldn't have it.

“Auntie Y/N, will you make Uncle Jim come back so I can open presents?” She looked at you with the same puppy dog eyes as her father and you sighed.

“Of course, sweetheart.” You kissed her on the top of her head and she went back to drawing in the icing of her cake. It gave you a wicked idea.

You grabbed the slice of cake Bones cut for Jim and walked over to him. He was pacing slightly, eyebrows furrowed but the call ended before you could hear anything. Jim dropped his arms his sides, eyes closed, trying to force himself to relax.

“That bad, huh,” you said softly.

He opened those beautiful baby blues and looked at you. The corners of his mouth twitched up in a half-smile. “They want us to cut off shore leave early. A research vessel got stuck in a nearby system and they need us to go out and get it.” Jim sighed, “I promised everyone a full two weeks this time.”

“Hey,” you said, putting a hand on his arm, “we can worry about that later. Right now we’re at Jo’s party, okay? I brought cake.” You held the plate out to him.

“God, you're perfect,” Jim said, reaching for it. You quickly snatched it back and smashed the cake against his face before bolting back to the table, laughter trailing behind you. The entire table of kids erupted into giggles.

Jim stood frozen a moment, hand still outstretched for the cake. Did that really just happen? He dragged a hand down his face, trying to get as much icing off as he could, before popping a finger into his mouth. It was some damn good cake.

You thought your heart was gonna stop watching Jim suck on his fingers like that. It definitely stopped when he caught you staring from the table and winked at you. He sauntered back up as if there wasn't icing all over his face and God what you wouldn't give to be the one to lick it all off.

“Earth to Y/N,” Hikaru said. “In case you didn't notice, he’s headed this way. You might wanna try evasive maneuvers.”

“What,” you said, not able to tear your eyes from Jim. How was his hair still so damn perfect?

Jim stopped in front of you, still grinning like a kid. “You dropped something,” he said before lunging forward and catching your face with his hands, smearing cake and icing across your face.

You squealed as you tried to push him off, but he grabbed another slice of cake from the table and pressed it onto the top of your head.

You grabbed as much of the cake as you could scoop out of your hair and flung it at Jim, hitting him right in the chest, but Jo was ready, handing him a brand new slice of cake, laughing almost as much as the two of you. You looked at her and gasped at the betrayal before bolting away from the table.

Jim caught up with you easily, grabbing your hand and yanking you to a halt. He swung the slice around as you struggled against him, hitting you dead in the chest.

“Jim,” you whined as the icing dripped down into your bra, “Let me go. It feels so gross.” Jim just pulled you closer to him, trapping you in a hug and smearing icing across the front of both of your shirts. “Jiiiim,” you whined again, trying to push him off.”

“You're cute when you’re whiny, you know that,” Jim laughed, pulling back far enough that you could see all of his icing-covered face.

You reached up and dragged your finger through the icing. “I’m cute all the time,” you said, putting your finger in your mouth. You groaned at the taste.

Jim’s grip on your waist tightened and you looked up at him. His eyes were locked on your mouth. You pulled your finger out slowly, letting pop before licking your lips. Jim’s eyes darted back to yours as he leaned a little closer. “You are cute all the time,” he whispered, pressing your hips together. “Makes it real hard to do my job, you know.”

You grinned, sliding an arm around Jim’s neck and rubbing frosting in his hair. “Somehow I think that's not the only thing I make hard.”

Whatever witty response Jim had got lost in the kiss as you pressed your lips against his. He tasted like peppermint and cake and you could feel every ounce of heat coming off of him. He wrapped his arms tighter around you, brushing his tongue against your lips, but you pulled away. You kissed the corner of his mouth and licked a stripe up his cheek, settling your lips against his ear. “I think maybe we outta go home and get cleaned up, Captain.”

Jim shuddered against you, fingertips gripping hard enough to bruise against your hips. A wolf-whistle behind you drew your attention and you saw Hikaru standing at the table clapping. Bones, on the other hand, was stalking toward you looking less than pleased.

You pushed gently on Jim’s shoulder, turning him around to face Bones and then ducking behind him.

“Are you two out of your corn-fed minds? You're supposed to be the adults here.”

Jim’s smile didn't break. He shrugged and rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. “Sorry, Bones, I guess we just got a little carried away.”

“A little carried away. Do you know how long my ma spent baking this cake? And then you just go and throw it all over the damn park! You're acting like-” Bones froze as you chucked a glob of cake straight into his face. You and Jim were laughing so hard you could barely run as Jim pulled you behind him. Oh, Bones was definitely going to kill you.

tags!: @thevalesofanduin @imamotherfuckingstar-lord @outside-the-government @martinawalker

As always, lmk if you want to be tagged or if you want to only be tagged in Jim or Bones fics! Hope you enjoyed reading it!! :)

Here’s the bike I mentioned:

It’s more of a sports bike I think, but I was reading reviews of motorcycles and the guy said that this bike made him feel 12 again and I feel like Jim would jump at that kind of chance.

#star trek imagine #jim kirk imagine #jim x reader #how many times can I type image instead of imagine #also sorry i posted the pic twice but I fixed it!#also sorry i just put a line instead of a read more? but i fixed that too!#can you tell I'm out of it today lol

327 notes · View notes

npegg · 7 years ago

Text

This all really started with a phone call to my friend that works at Enterprise rent a car. He hooked me up with a staff discount on a small Toyota from the Kamloops Airport.

I was originally just driving a bit out of my way to go visit family that I hardly ever see.

Last June I was a part of a cross continent tour speaking each night about my struggle with depression, thoughts of suicide and how you can get help if you also feel this way.

You can check out my work here.

I had two days off and decided to jump out of the van full of greasy un-showered mid twenty year old dudes, and jump into a tiny rental car with my Kiwi brother to go see family who live near whistler.

In my head, as I loaded google maps to check routing, I was just going through some small towns and I’m sure a couple mountains. Knowing that I was in The Rockies I gave it the generic “Well I’m sure it will be beautiful” preparation and didn’t think much of it.

I just wish someone had told me what I was in for.

The road is called The Duffy Lake Road, or HWY 99. We drove from Kamloops up Hwy 1 to Cache Creek where we then turned on to Hwy 99. Basically all you need to do is stay on that road. You will have to follow a few signs in Lilooet to not end up on 12 but just follow the RV’s and you will be ok. Or don’t and have a great time being lost and feeling free. You can take this road all the way to Vancouver, which is likely where you are heading anyways after you spend all your money in Whistler.

This road will take you through every thing you want and more. Crazy cliffs , sharp peaks, Meadows and flats, massive rivers. You can touch snow peaks, and witness that snow turn into waterfalls. It will make you question your cars braking system and wonder how mechanically sound it all is. You will wonder what it’s like to live there and why you’ve never heard of this place.

It really is something.

All of these photo’s were taken in the time span of about 4 hours.

If you can, take a full day to drive the road. You will thank yourself for that. We were late and had to keep moving so it was quite painful to drive by some incredible scenes.

I don’t really know what to say other than, It doesn’t often happen in life that you just stumble into something so incredible that it changes you. It was like, that day, out of the naive and normal decision I made to go visit family, everything went right.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

You should do yourself a favour and plan to drive this road sometime.

Here is a map of the road that we drove.

I shot all of these on a Canon 60D with an 18-55mm kit lens.

Check those camera’s out here: http://amzn.to/2j0wsWN

And edited them in Lightroom

Thank you for reading this.

—

When Everything Goes Right This all really started with a phone call to my friend that works at Enterprise rent a car.

#British Columbia Photography #Canon #canon 60d #Hwy 99 #Nick Pegg #npegg #Photography #The Duffy Lake Road

0 notes

queennicoleinboots · 4 years ago

Text

Chapter 8 of Completely Out of Sync: Too Many Frustrations of the New Millennium – Joebear Saves the Day, or Tries to Anyway

I know I said that I would do anything for Xara, my beautiful wife that I love literally more than the world itself, but I’ll be honest, I didn’t need this shit today. I had a ton of errands to run, but a bunch of random shit stopped me from doing that today. And now my car is too fucked up for me to even process what the fuck just happened to me. Of course, never fails. Whenever I need to do something, random shit fucks up my day for no reason. I went in the apartment to ATTEMPT to find Xara’s credit card, but the putrid smell of cat piss and shit greeted me.

“Ughhh! What the fuck is that?” I asked aloud.

I went to the cat room, and it turns out that there was a MASS cat diarrhea explosion all over the room.

“Garfield, Oreo, Kissy, your asses have exploded. What the fuck did you eat? Oh God, it’s bad,” I said as I laughed in disbelief.

Oreo, senior passed away on December 11, 2018. It was a very sad day. On the same day, Xara and I went to the Humane Society and got Cupid. At first, Cupid was a beautiful fine cat, but she turned out to be a real bitch, so I cloned her before I ate her. I named her clone Kissy because it turns out that Cupid was a match-making demon who ended up making love to his mother. I wasn’t about to name my cat after a demon by mistake again, so this new cat was named Kissy.

Two years later, Kissy needed a friend because Garfield was frankly getting too old to deal with her bullshit. So, I looked on Craigslist and found Miss Oreo, our new black and white kitten. She is a beautiful kitten, but she gets into literally everything. She even knows how to use a computer and a smart phone. She watched Inland Empire with my wife until two hours in. That was too much bullshit even for Miss Oreo. Right now, I feel like I am in a real life version of Inland Empire.

I definitely couldn’t process what happened in the cat litter box room. I gagged before I immediately threw the litter pans in the parking lot. I was certain that a few cat turds hit some of the other cars in the lot, but I didn’t care. I hurled the mats soaked in piss and diarrhea into the lot near another vehicle. I then proceeded to sweep, mop, and wash down the mats and the cat room itself. I mopped the room and washed the walls four times. I turned the fan on in the room before drying the mats and putting them back in the room. I emptied some large plastic containers, put them in the cat room, and poured litter into them.

“Ughh! FUCK THAT!” I screamed as I took a shower. I doused myself in body wash and hot ass water. I then used a hair-dryer to dry myself off. Then, I continued my search for the credit card for five minutes before calling Xara.

“BAE WHUH! I am just not moving. They are full force with this circus parade bullshit,” she responded.

“Ugh. Gotta love Georgia. Uhh! Let’s have a parade in Monday morning traffic. Huh Duh Duh Durr… Durrr! No IQ here,” I went on a rampage.

Xara laughed hysterically. “’Yeah, really, baebae. What do you need?”

“Where did you put the card?” I asked.

“First drawer in my desk,” she answered.

“Thank you,” I said as I found it and put it in my pocket. “Now I can get the fuck out of here.”

“Thank God. Tim Black is fucked up,” she said.

“Yeah. I can’t believe the Veterans Administration is actually holding people hostage over this Coronavirus bullshit. My God, this is getting out of hand,” I said. “Always something.”

“Tell me about it. UGH! I gotta go. Lorraine Black is calling AGAIN. Goddammit! Here we go,” she said before her call disconnected.

I sighed angrily as I headed out of the door. I knew nothing about Lorraine Black other than the fact that she and her husband, Tim Black, argued about everything and anything, including the movie, A Christmas Story. It sounds like they have the same relationship that we had for the first few months after my mother passed away in 2015. It was a rough time for everyone. I have the same questions then as I did now: What the fuck? Why is this happening?

At least my engine started before I drove like a bear out of the littered parking lot. That parking lot was filled with random wires, plastic pieces, bottles, cat litter pans, cat shit, and other random bullshit. Fuck it! No other resident of this apartment complex works. They walk around like duhhh hurr durr. They sway their shoulders back and forth like they’re cool and all of that and a bag of chips. Like, we’re not in high school anymore. Please stop walking like that. No one is going to take you seriously. They can clean this shit up. Fuck ‘em. I pay over $800 in rent, and I am the only person besides Xara who fucking works in this neighborhood. Ugh. I wish these people had hobbies. I have to work and hear their monkey shit outside of my window every single day of my life. Ugh. So over it. I have to drive around these idiots, too. Sometimes, when I drive, the truck in front of me just stops driving. Like, what the fuck? Did your brain explode or something, dude? What the fuck happened? And now two assholes are in two different lanes driving at the same speed. I wish these lower life forms would just fuck off already. I swear they must have come from UNG! University of North Georgia. ‘Where did your graduate from?’ ‘I GRADUATED FROM UNG!’ Fucking morons. Each year I live here, I feel like my IQ goes down about 15 points. Oh God.

I was finally at the Enterprise where I could rent a car that would drive to wherever the fuck Lorraine Black was and to where Tim Black was held hostage. I walked up to the front desk and asked for a cheap vehicle to rent.

“How long will you need it? Do you have a driver’s license and proof of insurance?” the sales person asked.

“For at least two days, please,” I said as I handed him my driver’s license and proof of car insurance.

“What kind of vehicle do you need?” the sales person asked.

“THE CHEAPEST ONE YA GOT,” I said.

“We have a Nissan Versa 2009 for $40.86 per day,” he said.

“Holy Shit, no thanks. That’s highway robbery!” I said as I turned around and walked out.

Fuck that price. I wasn’t about to pay $40 a day for a car when two years ago, I paid $23.99 for a car at the same location. I understand that inflation exists, especially in 2020, but get the fuck out of here. I’m not paying that price. I’m going to try somewhere else. So, I turned on my smartphone and started looking up cheaper alternatives to rental cars.

I looked up Budget Car Rental and found something that would be better. I made my reservation online because I didn’t want to fuck with humanity. For a two-day rental, I only paid $73.98. Yeah, $40 a day is a rip-off. Fuck off with that.

After driving a few more minutes in this fucked-up traffic, I picked up my vehicle from the Budget Car Rental. The dude at the register was actually half-decent.

“I’ll take you to your car, sir,” he said as he led me to the vehicle. I followed him and got in the car.

“Thank you. Have a nice day!” I said as I started to drive away. I added a little laugh because I could.

“You, too, sir. Thank you for business! Come back in two days!” he screamed as I drove away.

Thank God that was over with. I did put my GPS in the rental car, so I put the address that Xara gave me into the GPS to pick up Lorraine Black. I saw that I was going to Statham, which is where the nearest 5G tower is to us. I was starting to get nervous like I always do. I called Xara.

“Yes, bae. I’m almost at work,” Xara said.

“Please tell Lorraine Black that I am on my way,” I commanded of her.

“I will, my love,” she answered.

“Thank you. I’m on my way,” I said.

“I’ll let her know,” she said.

“Oh brother. Here we go, an interesting drive to the 5G tower,” I said as I sighed.

“Sorry, baebae. Thank you, baebae!” she said.

“Welcome. Love you,” I said.

“Love you, too, sweeeeetie!” she said in her typical operatic voice.

I hung up the phone. At least I don’t have to use my own car for this annoying drive. Sigh! I have a life outside of bailing baby boomers out of stupid bullshit, but I do it for my bae. This is a part of being a good Christian. More people stopped driving in front of me. I swear, Georgia is the most ignorant place I have ever seen in my life.

0 notes

bike42 · 4 years ago

Text

To Idaho or Bust. August 6-7, 2020

The only thing that hadn’t been cancelled with this COVID pandemic so far is the Salmon River rafting trip we’d booked last winter. We were at a Music Makes a Difference event, and a favorite duo of ours, Moors and McCumber we’re performing. We’d been introduced to them at a similar event, hosted by my high school pal Bill Zorr a few years before. Not only did we enjoy their performance, we heard about some trips that they a part of with a group of their fans. Bill was supposed to travel to Ireland with them next month for example! But we also learned they were part of a rafting trip deal in Idaho and had two slots left. The dates worked perfectly for our summer plans so we booked it the next day. Combining music with a multi-day River adventure - what’s not to love?

Since our original 2020 plan included climbing Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in September, we were going to spend 10 days this August with our hiking group in Colorado to get some altitude training in. The rafting trip fit perfectly, so we’d planned to drive to Idaho (in our new SUV that hasn’t yet arrived) and then meet the hiking group in Colorado. Since Tanzania has been pushed off until 2021, we also pushed off the Colorado portion of the trip.

The outfitter, Middle Fork River Expeditions, sent assurance of the COVID precautions they’d put into place, so we booked tickets to Boise on Delta Airlines, using the credits from the April trip to Vegas that had been cancelled.

We left Madison for Boise early Thursday morning, with a couple hour stopover in MSP. We hadn’t been there in awhile and walked our usual loops, marveling at the changes in shops and services. Many gates were closed for renovations during this slack time. But it was eerie how empty the place was, knowing how it should have been bustling with travelers on this Thursday morning in August! Jeff looked at me and asked if we were doing the right thing by traveling. Time will tell.

Easy flight to Boise. The plane only seemed to be half full and we got an upgrade to First Class. Picked up our rental Mitsubishi SUV from Enterprise and before I had the Apple Car Play hooked up we were climbing out of Boise. Easy route, but when 120 miles takes 3 hours that tells you we were up and over a few passes on our way to Stanley. Beautiful drive with ok traffic. The scenery reminded me of bicycling through Washington State - dry, with sage brush on one side of the pass, and tall pines on the other. We passed through several large areas that had burned previously. Ugly and scary, yet the rebirth of the forest is beautiful. We arrived in Stanley about 4pm.

I’d checked out Stanley via google map satellite view, and had expected more of a town. We drove right to our hotel, Mountain Village Resort without realizing we’d bypassed the whole town! We checked in, got settled, then headed to the bar/restaurant for dinner. There we found our favorite Deschutes Brewery “Black Butte Porter,” and a yummy looking menu. As has been our experience now in Northern WI and MN, we found the waitstaff are all wearing masks as are most of the clientele except for when they’re eating or drinking. Has become the norm, and I think that’s great.

After dinner, we walked to explore town, and poked around an outfitters shop and scoped out a few different restaurants- looks like some great options. We saw a guy with packs on his bike (Doug), and stopped and chatted with him a bit. He was quite a character- has done a lot of bike touring all over the world. Just a free spirit that kind of goes with the wind, although he is caretaker for his 92 year old father but his brother is on duty this summer.

Town seemed to have more than its share of free spirits, but also several vacationing families, and young and older couples. The summer help seems to be college-aged kids, not necessarily those on the fringe though as most of them are decked out in Lululemon, and other brand name and not cheap sportswear.

There was a band setting up for a street dance, but we were tired so we strolled back to our hotel.

Friday we were up early and dressed to hike, before heading to the Stanley Baking Company in search of breakfast. The morning was cool, but the sun warmed things up quickly. The view of the morning light on the Sawtooth mountains was beautiful, highlighting a few patches of snow remaining in the saddles. The cafe was very popular so it took awhile to order, but we each had an oatmeal pancake, egg and bacon. And it was so yummy! While we waited, we studied the hiking maps we’d collected last night and chose a trail over the 20+ options within a 20 minute drive.

We’d heard Redfish Lake was beautiful, but the number of people recommending it told us it might be crowded, so we opted for the Alice Lake trail. We turned off Highway 75 and drove two miles down a dusty gravel road. We were surprised to find a full campground and jam packed trailhead parking at the end of the road! We found a spot and hit the trail, a little dismayed by the number of people at first. We saw as many hiking out as in ... most with full packs backpacking for multiple days. We walked along the shore of the gorgeous alpine green Pettit Lake. It was as smooth as glass and reflected the surrounding mountain.

We didn’t get started until 10am, and after about two miles, we realized we hadn’t seen anyone in awhile, and although we were following a trail (or trails), we later learned that we’d missed the river crossing ... confirmed when the official trail crossed back and became wide again. Our bivouacking portion was fun, scrambling over boulder fields, climbing over or ducking under fallen trees, but it slowed us down. We started doing the math and realized we didn’t have time to do the whole 12-mile out and back to Alice Lake. We climbed a few switchbacks and reached 7700 ft elevation and had a great view before we turned back. This time we crossed the creek and made much better time on the way back. Beautiful day and we felt great!

Back in the car, we decided to check out Redfish Lake on our way back. It was a zoo! Not much social distancing going on - crowded beach, lots of boats on the lake. Messed with our mojo and we couldn’t get out of there fast enough! We drove back to Stanley and it seemed a little crazy too - August Friday afternoon traffic jam.

Back to our hotel for shower and nap, before walking back to town for dinner. We had an awesome and relaxing meal on the patio of the Stanley Supper Club.

At 8:30pm we drove to the Middle Fork River Expedition warehouse to meet our guide and fellow travelers. Seems like a great group and we’re excited to get going in the morning! They gave us our waterproof bags to pack our gear, so we headed back to do that. Ample space in the bag - should have brought my pillow!

0 notes

jillmckenzie1 · 6 years ago

Text

Please Swipe Responsibly

If you think dating is hard, try dating in a ski town. Population 4,896. The tourist game is so strong in Breckenridge that I can confidently proclaim that I’ve matched with more Texans in Colorado than I ever matched with Texans while actually living in Texas.

For those of you unfamiliar with app dating, I’ll provide a crash course. Bumble gives the woman 24 hours to communicate with the man after a match is made (i.e. two mutual swipe rights). The man then has 24 hours to respond. Each user is given a daily extension, which will open the communication channel for an extra 24 hours. Once a male and female have both commented, the chat log stays open indefinitely. Hinge is slightly more low-key; I liken it to Facebook as users can simply heart photos or comments without a deadline to engage in conversation. Both operate on a geographical radius.

A few weeks ago, a guy in my Bumble queue opted to use his one-time extension (quite flattering, yes). I figured anyone who was willing to take such initiative was worthy of, at the very least, a cordial hello (only, I never lead with a formal salutation because that would immediately classify me as boring, and I am not boring). Lo and behold, he’s at the airport. On his way back to San Diego. California. His words: “I know, I swiped irresponsibly, but you really seemed worth it.”

No shit I’m worth it. But, what’s your play here, stud? Are you going to fall madly in love with me via FaceTime before I transport my Airstream to your driveway? No. Answer is no.

So, we wasted each other’s time for two hours in meaningless conversation that we will never be able to get back. It’s fine. Everything is fine. I didn’t want those two hours anyway (insert eyeroll emoji).

You might be shocked to learn that this irresponsible swiping stuff is a very real thing. I’ve often wondered if I’m simultaneously chatting with two bros from the same bachelor party who are crammed into the hot tub of their ten-person rental pad. Chances are high (and, no, I’m not coming over with my bathing suit).

With that being said, I generally bow out of conversations once I realize that the guy’s home base extends beyond the city limits of Denver. And that’s not because I wouldn’t date someone outside of Colorado. I most certainly would. Ironically, I am actually one of the few people who is easily able to close the mileage gap for the right person. But, to date, my freedom has acted as more of a curse.

Circumstance conditions us to date within our city limits, to find the person that fits into our geographical routines. To be open to anyone living anywhere is an entirely new dimension to dating that most people are not even fully able to comprehend (think black-holes-in-outer-space type stuff).

As you can imagine, it’s rare to find locals in a ski town (who are also my age), and if I do, they are usually working jobs that are not going to prosper into sustainable careers (no judgment, but I undoubtedly need someone who is going to inspire my professional synapses). So, I currently exist between the hopelessness of meeting a real-life human in the wild (not sure people even do this anymore) and the ridiculousness that is our digital dead zone of online dating (in case you were wondering, filters do not exist behind phone screens).

For all of you non-single people, let me enlighten you for a minute. For all of you single people, I’m fully aware that these next few paragraphs will come as no surprise.

In the last two weeks, I’ve been sent two dick pics (completely unsolicited). Both from irresponsible swipers escaping back into their East Coast abodes. One of them even used a shampoo bottle to clearly demonstrate size. A true gentleman in every sense of the word. Mama raised that boy right. Also, it’s worth noting that he used his Bumble profile to define his religious affiliation as “Christian” (insert wide-eyed, blank stare emoji). I do not say that with any predisposition to the fact that a Christian guy should know better or more than a man who labels himself as a non-Christian; it’s simply a nod to the fact that an online dating profile creates a high level of expectations for how a person should be acting based on the viewer’s perceptions of those answers; but really, those perceptions are just that, perceptions. The answers hold zero weight in the grand scheme of deciphering the personality, morals, and intentions of the guy (or girl) on the other side of the screen.

In a surprising turn of events from volunteer nudes, I’ve also been proposed to four times. One included a link to Jagged Edge’s “Let’s Get Married” hit single that had me convinced that we might actually engage in harmonious matrimony (if you know me, then you know that 90’s R&B is the key to my Usher-loving heart). The other three were generally well-timed responses to my signature sarcasm.

The most popular question I get, however, does not involve my ring finger. It is a request for a picture of my backside (I wish I were kidding). I present to you my most recent exchange with a guy from Denver who, on day two of correspondence, asked for a photo of my butt. In his defense, he made this request using the peach emoji (please read that he gets no actual defense for using the peach emoji). When I told him that pictures of my backside were worth the big bucks, he then sent me the money bag emoji (three of them, to be exact) as if I were really insinuating that I needed some form of payment. Of course, he then unmatched me (I’m going to assume that my lack of correspondence proved that he wasn’t going to get what he wanted – even though he had put in his Bumble profile that he was looking for a person with whom to do outdoor things, not a person from whom to receive peach photos).

Finally, my personal favorite, the guy who asked me, “Is there any chance in hell you’d ever allow someone to buy a pair of your socks?” And never has a human been more serious. This dude’s commitment to the previously quoted question puts the marriage proposal men to absolute shame. I proceeded to ask him if he was using Hinge to run some type of sock-smuggling enterprise (think Orange is the New Black and Piper’s prison panty operation). Apparently, that wasn’t funny. At least, not to him. Immediate unmatch. Great. My socks are safe. Bye.

At this point, I realize that matching with anyone online–no matter his ultimate geographic location– opens up the flood gates of potential comedic absurdity. I often question whether or not to persevere for the sake of finding a “normal” one out there or simply throwing in the towel and praying that the real-life guy will mysteriously find me while we reach for the same jar of almond butter at Whole Foods or sit undeniably too close on the same chairlift. If you are a regular to my writing shenanigans, then you know that I recently succumbed to the fact that dating is a game of numbers, so the answer–whether I like it or not–is to do both. To be open to finding someone is to explore every means necessary for a union to take place.

Here. Present. Doing it.

The problem is that it can be just so damn tiring. Like when I had to tell the guy who had just ended it with his live-in girlfriend three days before we went on our first–and only–date that there was no possible way that I could move forward with him based on that information, and he proceeded to text me every day for a week even despite my withdrawal from the conversation (a testament to the fact that even the most direct bluntness can be blinded by the highest levels of emotional instability).

Hint: Get off Bumble. Move out of your apartment. Rebuild your capacity to do life alone so that you can physically and psychologically support yourself before attempting to simultaneously support someone else standing beside you.

Dating fail number…I’ve lost count.

Two weeks ago, I started messaging a guy in Vail (mind you, he’s actually from Michigan). Ironically, he’s on a 30-day snowboard trip in which two of those weeks will exactly mirror the trip I’ve been thinking about taking to Jackson Hole and Sun Valley and then into Utah. I started to like his digital version so much that I found myself not even wanting to meet his real-life version. His point total was so positive that, in order to prepare myself for the typical in-person letdown, I reasoned that his profile pictures were five years old and that he’d be far less entertaining in the flesh.

I wish I could tell you that my self-talk was wrong, but in true Bumble fashion, we both faded into oblivion, our names sitting somewhere in the deep recesses of each other’s iMessage chat logs (if we even gave each other names). We had a solid four days in which I reasoned that the overabundance of snow was due to my dancing abilities. He called me his lucky charm. I made sure to dominate his daily vertical feet of mountain madness (you’re not surprised). And he didn’t send me a dick pic (you are surprised).

All that being said, the answer is that I don’t know. But history suggests that this stimulating digital connection would have made it very difficult for the analog encounter to live up to such inevitably high expectations.

Fact. Our phones have dramatically changed the environment for cultivating romantic relationships.

Let’s revisit the anomaly of real-life encounters. My best friend has put this fantasy inside my head that my Prince Charming is actually not going to manifest himself from behind my phone screen. She is convinced that we are, in fact, going to serendipitously meet as physical people.

She tells me that he is going to be standing in front of me in the singles line of Peak 6, only to find out that Kensho Chair is no longer running because of a high wind advisory. He will turn around, in despair, to be greeted by my slightly annoyed but still smiling google-tanned face, and we’ll both subconsciously register our mutual affinity for camo: his pants, my jacket. He’ll mumble his frustrations about wanting to hike to the summit and based on my recent experience–in which I quite literally almost blew off the side of the mountain–I’ll ensure him that he is missing nothing. He’ll exhale relief before confirming that we are both, in fact, locals. And we’ll strap in side-by-side, surrounded by an equivocal air of attraction.

We’ll race off towards Peak 7, his speed just outside my reach, and yet I’ll still manage to fall just one spot behind him on Independence Chair. At that point, I will try to erase that fuzzy feeling–the one that sends an electric current from the top of your head down into your toes, the one that is assessing whether or not the person within your vicinity is registering that fuzzy feeling, too–because I am coming to terms with the fact that he will be long gone by the time I remove myself from my single seat on that six-person chair.

Except he won’t be gone. He’ll be taking his sweet time to buckle himself in, and as I skate to a spot near him to ultimately do the same, he will do the unprecedented thing, the action that seems so lost in our current state of swiping and sexting: he will ask me my name followed by an open invitation to ride together for the remainder of the day. He will open himself up to my potential to say no.

Except I won’t say no. I will say yes with a confidence that implies that I couldn’t picture the day going any other way, a façade to the fuzzies that I’ll have welcomed back into every major and minor nerve-ending inside my spine. Because I’ll be nervous as hell. I won’t have access to five pictures or a brief bio to make assumptions about him before we embark on this journey (because you know I won’t make any of those afternoon runs easy). And I won’t know if he just wants someone to hike with him to the backside of Peak 9 or if he thinks that I look quasi-cute in my snowboard getup that often has me confused for being a bro. I won’t know his age or his job or his ability to speak sarcasm. I won’t have the faintest idea of his Zodiac Sign or his religious affiliation. There will be no checkbox on his camo pants helping me to understand if he is searching for love or for lust.

So, my best friend, she tells me that it will happen this way. And I will have to ask the questions. And I will have to listen to my intuition. And, in this fantasy that she has created for my life, he is nothing short of sincere. He will have the wherewithal to ask for my number at the end of the day and the balls to text me that evening to ask if I want to spend the next morning together on the mountain. And it will snow seven inches that night, and I’ll wake up early to meet him for first chair, and without hesitation, he’ll show me all the secret stashes in the trees. The powder day will turn into drinks at night, and after two Tito’s and sodas, he’ll admit that the closing of Peak 6 on a random Thursday in January was the best thing that’s happened to him in a very long time. And, I’ll allow his words–that I am kind and pretty and funny–to intoxicate my soul so much deeper than the vodka ever could.

We’ll kiss. And it won’t be fueled by an animal-like intensity to simply rip off each other’s clothes to expose what hides beneath the layers of baggy snowboard gear. He will linger on my bottom lip and run his fingers through my hair that is notoriously flowing from underneath my Broncos beanie. And I won’t be able to decipher the difference between that giddy feeling that I am getting from the snow that continues to blanket my newfound home in Colorado or from the fire that has now been tattooed on my lips.

At that point, I’ll know. His age and his job and his ability to speak sarcasm. I’ll know his Zodiac Sign, even if he barely knows it himself, and his religious affiliation. And while there will be no checkbox on his, now, denim jeans, my intuition will tell me that he is not just looking for lust.

So, we’ll do that whole dating thing. And he’ll hop in the car with me for that aforementioned Idaho road trip. And his real-life version, the one that I met before having to decipher his methods of digital dialogue, will undoubtedly leave me begging for more.

Maybe, just maybe, my best friend will be right about this one (she’s usually right). Meanwhile, if you need me, I’ll be over here dreaming about the singles line on Peak 6 (and turning down more requests for pictures of my backside).

from Blog https://ondenver.com/please-swipe-responsibly/

0 notes