#a lot of the conversation on the golden land seemed ludicrous to me. the golden land itself is a ludicrous place so

[kushanna]

why does ange not being trapped in the past and having the will to build a future for herself have to include her taking responsibility for things that were never her fault to begin with. honey, you didn't "abandon" your warm memories. you were six. i barely have memories from when i was six. and for the love of god. ange never needed to call eva her mother (!), that was never a necessity, she didn't need to display a single ounce of affection towards eva when she was a child in order to not have been abused. whether it would have made their relationship easier or whatever, that's almost irrelevant since it's simply not a responsibility that you get to put on her anyway, you don't get to even imply that she's somehow responsible for the abuse she suffered, and it's bizarre that i'm having to say this obvious thing AAAAHHHH i feel like i'm losing my whole mind lmao it's completely possible to look at their life post-1986 and have empathy for eva as well (which is what i had been doing since episode 4?), though that doesn't include all the whitewashing and glossing over and needless over sentimentality episode 8 is doing. i do have so much affection for eva and it's hilarious that i'm having to come here and call nonsense for what it is cause the story is failing at the bare minimum this late into the game

[bestwishes1986]

Part 5 : Deception (WIP)

Reckless, impulsive, loyal, those were words that Kingston “King” McTavish would assign to Valiant Teague. Standing on the front step of a suburban hamlet in the middle of the afternoon had surprised even him. At 350 years of age it was hard to surprise him, but as he waited for someone to answer the door he was surprised. His opal blue curls and straight lines of hair were caught in a breeze that made them sway. He had had the underside of his head shaved all around with a thick beard not the same blue surrounding his face like a mane. His darker than vanilla skin tone from the mixed heritage of his father and mother and facial features made him appear handsome with more than a hint of African descent. His blue eyes watched the door, trying to be patient.

Any call to the castle was recorded and before heading out on his motorcycle he had the call played back over and over. Listening for any signs of immediate emergency, danger, or signs of a struggle. All he had heard was emotional rawness and that had been enough for him to cancel any plans he had made for the day and leave. His prisoner Tobin had just been brought back his second escape attempt and he needed distance from that man anyway.

The door opened and instead of his weapons specialist for the Kingsguard he commanded, there was a little girl looking disappointed to see him. Before he could speak she ran back into the house crying. King’s blue eyebrows drew together in concern. A stranger came to the door, beautiful with gray eyes and wild dark hair that could use a brush.

“Sorry about Abigail, we tried to stop her but she got ahead of us…you are?” Donovan asked holding out a hand.

“King, Sovereign of the United Kingdom. I was summoned here by Val, why isn’t he receiving me?” King asked, his light voice suspicious of this stranger. His Lycan, a blue wolf that lived inside his soul stirred from sleep. The bright golden eyes looking at the creature before King through their metaphysical bond. King took the man’s hand in a fierce grip and was surprised when Donavan gripped his hand just as strong.

“Donavan Roe, an acquaintance of Val’s. He’s in right state presently, come on in.” Donovan said keeping his face as passive as possible even though the death grip King had on his wrist made him wonder if bones would break if he applied any more pressure. King released his hand and walked past him, never taking his eyes off Donavan until he had to turn his head forward. Even then he didn’t like Donavan behind him. Using his Lycan senses he smelled the house. Three strong scents, one faint almost gone entirely.

He glanced at the furniture, most of it years old seemed in good condition. No signs of any fighting occurred.

“What exactly is happening here?” King asked looking back at Donavan.

“Short version. I witnessed the murder of Val’s wife and we just saw her in the crowd at the Mercy Hospital Bombing. So Val is trying to not have a breakdown right now. He’s in the guest room down that way.” Donavan surmised as he pointed down the hallway.

“You’re leaving something out.” King said he had listened to this man’s pulse the entire time, noting it’s rhythm changes as he spoke.

“Go see him first.” Donavan said ducking his head.

“You do know what Sovereign means, you don’t give me orders.” King said a bit of a growl coming into his words as if to show Donavan who was in control of things.

“He needs you now, this whose cock is bigger bullshite can wait. I will be trying to get his daughter to stop crying. If that’s alright, my Lord,” Donavan said with a tone beyond annoyed and King almost said something rude but his ears picked up the sounds of things being torn apart from the second story.

“Go, she’s tearing something apart right now and in that state I imagine it’s something important to her.” King said before he walked down the hallway without waiting for a response. Donavan turned and moved to the stairs, he felt out of his depth. So much had happened in such a short amount of time. He asked himself why he was still even here, he had done what he had come to do. He had told Val everything he knew about the man. But as he moved up the stairs he knew the reason, hated himself for the reason but as he came to door with pony stickers. He knew it was all beyond his control, he cared what happened to these people.

Donavan stood in the doorway, watching as the five year old tore a painting to ribbons. His eyes were wide with surprise but he didn’t stop her. Her tears were gone, her face red with anger as she pulled more of the once large painting apart. A part of him knew he should tell her to stop, but he didn’t. If he had learned one thing in his life, it was to trust his instincts. Finally when the painting was just small pieces of paper strewn about the room, and Abigail breathing hard with the exertion he knocked on the doorframe.

He kept his face calm and neutral of any emotion and just waited. Children were unpredictable, as an incubus he could feel emotions the way people felt a breeze before rain. Hers were a mess of anger, sadness and above all confusion. It made his heart hurt, that surprised him. He had only known of her existence for only one morning and already he felt he would hurt anyone who harmed her. But he didn’t have time to be perplexed as she launched herself at him and he had just enough time to crouch before she was hugging him tight and sobbing.

Donavan’s eyes were wide, this was the second Teague to do this and he just wasn’t sure what about him screamed “Port in a storm”. But he hugged her back all the same. Abigail was young but she wasn’t stupid. The concept of telling her everything would be alright seemed ludicrous, he wasn’t sure anything would be alright ever again. So he simply let her cry it out on his shoulder.

Downstairs was a different matter entirely. King had leaned against the closed door and listened to his subordinate’s retelling of recent events. He had resisted the urge to interrupt. Making mental notes as he did. He wasn’t angry at being kept in the dark about Val’s investigation, he knew if he had learned before now who the victims were he would have pulled him from investigation.

“We tried to keep Abigail back but she threw a fit and I retreated back here and let Donavan handle it. I just wanted to compose myself before you fired me from your employ,” Val concluded somberly and King’s eyes went wide but he said nothing for a moment.

“You’ve been using that word a lot today. “We” I mean. Have you noticed that,” King asked as he folded his arms over his long green wool sweater and waited for a reply. As predicted it took Val a moment to retrace the conversation and with a deep frown King knew it had finally registered with the man.

“I have no reason to sack you Valiant, but I will say you’re too goddamn smart to go it alone. Let alone too smart to take things at face value. So disappointed would be how I’m currently feeling. But above that, I’m sorry Mate. Losing a wife is hard, ye but getting on top of another bloke right after. That’s a bit of a stretch even for you yah?” King spoke with a bit of incredulous shock to his voice.

“I haven’t done anything with Donavan, besides he’s been a friend this day. As well as a witness to her death, I just want time to find out what he knows.” Val said and King nodded his brow creased in thought. King had heard Donavan approaching but said nothing. He had also heard the lie in Val’s voice but said nothing just watched him. This was going to be interesting.

The door burst open and King barely had time to move before Donavan came bursting in, his face red with anger.

“Is that it?! That’s all you want from me right! Information. Alright here,” Donavan shouted King watched him, listening to any underlying emotion or held back secret.

“The man is a Vampire. He has fangs instead of teeth and talks with a French accent. He’s tall like me, but muscular like a Football player. His skin is brown like an African but pale like a corpse. He wears fine clothes like a royal snob would. I never remember where we go because he has mental magic or some such shit. I used to think it was drugs but I didn’t eat or drink before the later takings so it can’t be. The rooms he takes me to are hotel rooms, like the one Tegan was in. Cheap places you pay by the day. He always paid with cash. There was a black briefcase that had an ornate set of operating tools in it. He would bleed me first, then rape me, feed me just enough to replinish blood then do it again.” Val rose to stop him but Donavan kept going.

“He forced me to watch. Used compulsion on me so my eyes wouldn’t close. I tried to move, to free myself but could only cry while he took his time. Savoring the meal he said. Is that enough, you get what you needed,” Donavan looked at King then. King’s blue eyes were shrewd, he nodded. Donavan nodded back, before looking at Val.

“See, that’s honesty. Not your dirty tacs, using your body and whatever I felt was happening to lure me in to a false sense of security. That’s on par with him and his money. Never, see me again.” With that Donavan ran. Val was too shell shocked to move. King slipped his phone out and made a call. Val felt his life breaking in ways he couldn’t imagine. The information from Donavan had felt like nails being driven into his skin, piercing muscle and shattering bone.

“I want eyes on him all day and night. This is the only lead we have to get to him.” King concluded as he hung up the phone. He was seized by Val who slammed him against a wall.

“What are you playing at King!? Eh, you set me up?” Val shouts. King looked back at him, cold blue eyes.

“I knew Donavan was listening. But I had no idea you would throw yourself on top of an emotional land mine. That was all you. Lying to me, what’s more you’re lying to yourself. I will give you two hours to be ready to roll out with the guard. Bring your daughter to the castle, she’ll be safe there.” King said. The words causing Val to release him as his arms dropped to his sides.

“Donavan didn’t tell you because he knew you weren’t ready to hear it. That’s how Incubuses work, they sense the person’s emotions and act accordingly. He would have told you when he felt you were ready. Now I have to go, my men are tailing Donavan but if I’m right. Someone else has been waiting for you to make the sort of blundering mistakes you have.” King concluded turning to leave.

“You don’t mean…?” Val whispered unable to believe the implication.

“Whatever entity stood in front of television cameras allowing you to see it. Yes, that creature. It most likely wanted to separate you and Donavan for the real threat to collect him without my intervention or yours. And you with your lies have made it that much fucking easier. I would suggest you try the honest approach going forward Mate,” King said and continued on. The door to the house opened and closed. A guttural sound of the motocycle engine came next. Val dropped to his knees, the full weight of all his situations and mistakes bringing him low.

Somewhere out there, a creature with his wife’s face knew about him. Somewhere out there Donavan was being lured to a trap. What was he going to do?

[thebibliomancer]

Shadows of the Dark Crystal liveblog pt 11

Shadows of the Dark Crystal by J. M. Lee because I want Naia and Kylan to have a relaxing chapter.

Last times on book: Naia is on a journey to Ha’rar to defend her brother against accusations of treason. She is joined by the Song Teller Kylan who is on his way to Stone-in-the-Wood and wants to prove that the Hunter is real. Kylan and Naia fall down a hole, find that the vein of darkened crystals has spread to Spriton lands, and narrowly escape from a darkened ruffnaw.

Chapter 13

Kylan and Naia find a bridge out so the only option is to go through the Spooky Woods at night. Wait, really? The only option??

The next day after the cave adventure, Naia learns that not all mountains are the same mountains and in fact many are geographically different. Then she punches Kylan for laughing at her about it.

Friendship!

Otherwise she’s very excited about getting to the river. Finally, some actual moisture!

I-I think Naia doesn’t know what sand is?

Naia was ever thankful for the shoes Maudra Mera had given her. As the grasses gave way to drier weeds and shrubs, the earth became salty and golden. Walking it barefoot, or even in her first set of bark sandals, would have made the journey near impossible.

She’s never seen sand!

Kylan: “There used to be dozens of [Podling] communities, all throughout the area. But their numbers have been dwindling, and many families end up living with Spriton communities when their colonies become too few. Some say it’s poor crops.”

But Naia and Kylan look around the the bountiful land and think ‘doubt’

Kylan blames the Hunter which seems likely actually if he just kills random Gelfling in their homes at night. But this is also the point where the darkening starts affecting crops, right?

Could be a combination of failing crops and a dude going around killing people at random. Both could lead to smaller comunities congregating together to pool resources and for protection.

Apparently Kylan is like a noble goat because he takes to climbing the ridge on the way to the river even more nimbly than Naia.

They reach eyeshot of the river just as the Great Sun is setting.

“The Black River,” [Naia] said. A smile came over her face. “We’re so close! We’ll build a raft and ride it all the way to Ha’rar. Are there any falls?”

“Ha! How would I know?” Kylan asked. “This is new to me too!”

“No songs about Jarra-Jen and the Black RIver?” Naia was teasing, but when he shook his head, she felt some disappointment.

See, now you wish he had a song for every occasion.

When the two reach the ravine they find that the bridge has been broken. And there’s no way across the ravine without it. Naia is disappointed because she really wanted to make it to the river and stick her feet in it.

“Naia kicked a pebble over the side of the cliff and tugged at her locs. If only she had wings! Yet there was nothing at her back but soreness and a heavy traveling pack that would probably weigh her down too much to make the crossing, even if she had been able to fly.”

There’s a lot of Naia angsting over not having her wings yet in this book which makes me think that its got to either end with her getting them or deciding that she doesn’t need to hurry to grow up. And I dunno, I don’t think wings just come in like FWOOP so I think acceptance is more likely?

How does that even work though? Do they just push through the skin? Do the Gelfling... molt? I wanna know!

On their way backtracking down the cliff, Kylan stops at a boulder to do some dream-etching. Because he can just lay on hands and write on a boulder. So cool.

Because he’s the good best boy, Kylan wrote a warning to other travelers about the bridge being out. Naia doesn’t point out that most Gelfling couldn’t read.

They can’t?!

No, I guess the Skeksis wouldn’t encourage literacy programs. They prefer the Gelfling dumb.

Since they had to detour, now Kylan and Naia are traveling in the dark. Naia feeds Neech the shoulder eel some glow moss and he starts glowing after only a few moments!

That’s cool! And a remarkably quick metabolism!

Kylan be like ‘i gotta write this down later’ ha

Apparently the detour is taking them through the Dark Wood, which Tavra specifically warned Naia not to go through and which Naia is now pointedly ignoring in favor of making up for lost time.

Kylan is nervous and thinks it would be better to wait for daylight. Naia tells him WWJJD? What Would Jarra-Jen Do?

“I don’t know if you were listening, but the Dark Wood at night is when Jarra-Jen met the Hunter and was chased until he had to leap off a cliff into the Black River,” Kylan retorted.

Heh.

But Naia points out that Jarra-Jen was alone and they aren’t. And Kylan concedes that if he avoids ever seeing the Hunter, he’ll never be able to confront him.

As a Drenchen and a Spriton, and of course as Gelfling, neither Naia nor her friend were unfamiliar with forests.

They get mad racial bonuses. Simply ludicrous.

But the Dark Forest is a thing unto itself.

The strong pillars of ebony bark and dark turquoise leaves were interrupted only by thick brush, shrubs, spiny rocks, and flowering land corals with huge white night blossoms. The earth was padded with layers and layers of leaves and moss, rippling over the forms of the ever-present roots that sometimes arched from the land in swooping forms that created hoops and arches under which they walked.

Naia asks Kylan if his bard-brain knows the name of a vine root and he suggests she just ask. The vine. And brings back up the conversation re: her dreamfasting with not-Gelfling.

She tells him that it never happened until recently but she’s sometimes had trouble controlling her dreamfasting. Gasp! Possible protagonist power! All along she thought she was bad at control but really she had a secret gift!

Also, is this related to how Kira formed an angry mob of animals and had them swarm the Scientist? I thought that she just learned Beastmaster.

Also also, she wasn’t touching any of them so, no, probably unrelated.

The two Gelfling hear a low eerie moan in the forest which spooks the glowy flowers until they close up. Naia hides Neech so his glowy doesn’t give them away.

In the darkness, something huge and serpentine pushes through the forest.

Kylan backed up against Naia and they stood together, breathing in sync. When Kylan’s fingers snaked around Naia’s wrist, she tried to brush him away.

“Don’t grab me now. I need to be able to move.”

Kylan jumped, moving away from her, though the warm grasp on her wrist only tightened. Voice piqued with surprise, he said, “I’m not...”

Oooooooooooo what a spooky! This chapter and the last I missed out not reading on Halloween!

What really grabbed Naia was a cluster of tendrils which yanks her into the air and tosses her through the forest from tree to tree, separating her from Kylan

=O

And then they just drop her. Rude.

No sooner had she regained her footing than she heard something rushing toward her. She ran as roots and branches lunged for her, scratching her arms and legs in their attempt to catch hold of her once more. Her ears burned as a flock of hollerbats burst from within a knotted old tree trunk, screeching and flapping their clawed wings as they thrashed past, but she couldn’t stop to curse them. She knew she was running deeper and deeper into the wood, but she had no other choice. If she stopped, she would be caught, devoured by the Dark Wood.

She’s getting the full Night in a Spooky Wood experience and I am here for it. And here for feeling bad for her. Geez. Poor Naia.

Hopelessly separated from Kylan she decides to head towards the Black River in hopes that he’ll think the same thing and they can meet up there.

But as she walks, she sense the presence of something lying in wait at the center of the Dark Wood. Something... off.

Yes, the Dark Wood sang the song of Thra, but notes were off-key, as if it had forgotten parts, or was too distracted -- too disturbed -- to fall back into tune.

Very evocative! Very unnerving...

Then someone calls her name.

The voice paralyzed her, a wisp of cold air tickling the backs of her arms. She turned toward it, wary in disbelief but unable to deny what all her senses were telling her. A Gelfling boy stepped out of the tree cover, exactly her age, with matching clay-colored skin marked with Drenchen spots and speckles. his locs hung at his shoulders, and he wore a beautifully embroidered black-and-violet soldier’s uniform. Naia’s breath was stuck in her throat, her heart leaping.

It was Gurjin.

??????????

[justanotherloveaffair]

All That You Can’t Leave Behind [Part 8/14]

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader, T’Challa x Reader

Warnings: None for this one.

Word Count: 1,644

Summary: Reader and T’Challa have a flight to catch in the morning.

Author’s Note:  It’s an inbetweener kind of chapter.

See Masterlist for Parts 1-7

Your name: Submit (what is this?) 

Taglist:  @nah-imjustfeelinit, @tchallaholla, @a-heretic-child

You normally were the type of sleeper to wake up at least two or three times but your first night next to T’Challa was peaceful and deep.

In fact it was so deep you somehow missed whatever alarm had woken him up to get partially dressed and apparently order room service because you woke up to the tinking sound of a steel closh hitting a water glass. Your eyes blinked awake in an instant to see T’Challa looking apologetic as his careful surprise had been spoiled by one wrong movement.

You sat up from the warm stack of pillows around you and breathed in a deep, exaggerated breath. “Oh man, do I smell bacon?” T’Challa revealed two identical plates of waffles, bacon, sausage links, scrambled eggs and toast. Even more importantly there was a glass, not a shitty ceramic cup like in the hotels you were used to, of cappuccino with an artful design. 

“Yes, it’s important you eat, it is going to be a big day.” Seeing you start to struggle to get upright he fussed, waving his hands, “No, stay there, let me bring it to you.” He placed the serving tray on your lap and kissed your forehead.

It was so thoughtful and romantic and just one of already so many attentive gestures he’d shown you. He clearly enjoyed to spoil his women. You wondered about the others who had been lucky enough to experience it, but you didn’t get too hung up on the thought because you were here now and they weren’t, and that was the beginning and end of any jealous feelings.

You got through two pieces of bacon and half of your waffle when you suddenly dropped your fork that clattered down on the plate. “Shit, what time is it? When are we leaving?”

“It’s 7:00, and we can leave whenever you are ready, although the ship will be here for us at 8:00.”

“Oh my GOD I forgot to pack!” you realized with horror. The suitcase was sitting in your apartment, empty. “Shit!” you cursed and started moving the plate to leave when T’Challa grabbed your arm.

“Hey, look at me.” You obeyed and looked into his warm brown eyes. “I have everything at my disposal at the palace. I’ve told you this Y/N, you will have everything you need. What is it you think you can’t live without?”

When you finally put your mind to it, it seemed silly the things you wanted to take like your favourite sweat pants, your makeup essentials, electronics you couldn’t do without. You murmured your answer listing off these few things and predictably T’Challa scoffed.

 “First of all, I’m not going to allow sweat pants in my bedroom – you won’t last seconds in them.” His tone was firm and serious, but you responded with a cheeky “promise?” anyway. He returned right back to his impassioned speech. “Makeup you will have no problem finding, the palace is full of women who have all kinds and finally, we are the most technologically advanced civilization in the world. You will find ten devices better than anything you have in the first day.” 

He was so focused on banishing these concerns of yours that you gave in, and your shoulders fell as you exhaled, mentally saying goodbye to the few comfort items you’d hoped to take along. “Okay, T’Challa. I believe you. I just want to do one thing before we go.”

His eyebrows lifted and you explained, “I need to message Steve.”

T’Challa smiled, cool as can be and said, “No need to, Steve will be joining us.”

~ 

T’Challa was holding your hand in a mostly empty, out-of-the-way parking lot that your driver had brought you to. It was 7:54. Even with the new comfort you had found with T’Challa, you still craned your neck around for Steve who was that touch of New York you already felt you needed close by going to such a different place.

“Hey!” Came a deep booming voice from Steve who was walking through the parking lot towards you in beige pants, a white V-neck and a brown jacket. As he came closer you admired again the beard he was growing and how it gave him such a different look, not that you didn’t enjoy that clean cut, all-American face.

Steve wrapped you both in a hug, first T’Challa and then you. You were being engulfed by his giant arms when the sound of an aircraft cut through the skies and suddenly appeared near you.

T’Challa looked up. “Ah, right on time.” His black robes and vibrantly coloured scarf were blowing slightly in the wind but not as much as one would expect from a ship much larger than a helicopter landing about twenty feet from you. 

It was military-tech looking but strangely shaped, invoking an animal design. While you were marveling at it, an opening appeared and down a staircase and towards you walked three of the most beautifully fierce women you had ever seen.

They carried shining spears and their red, gold and silver armour was straight out of fantasy or even science fiction. You had never seen women look so fearless and your impression of Wakanda skyrocketed tenfold. The woman leading the three stopped a foot from you, her followers stopped too and all three tapped their spears to the ground in unison.

“Okoye,” T’Challa crossed his arms against his chest firmly, pressing his fists in a quick pump and she mimicked his motion. 

“My King.” She responded, and looked behind him at Steve and you, not unkindly.

 “These are my guests, you already know Steve,” Steve tipped his fingers in a light salute, “and this is Y/N, the programmer who will be graciously helping us.”

You had never felt so intimidated in your life nor more unsure of what to do or say. Okoye was so visually striking and beautiful you were dumb for words. You settled for a meek “Nice to meet you.”  

“Y/N, Steve.” She looked between both of you, and then spoke to T’Challa in her accented voice. “Everything is ready.” As she turned back to the ship, T’Challa smiled and beckoned you to follow. 

Steve caught up to you as you walked and bent down so that he could say in your ear, “Relax honey. I can tell you’re intimidated, but there’s no need.”

You flushed at knowing your nerves were so easily read. “I’ll try,” you affirmed back and he winked. 

The ship’s interior was big enough for you to all be comfortably seated, with some benches for passenger seats. Okoye sat down in front of the large window at the front. You were taking everything in but your eyes kept coming back to T’Challa. You were already starting to wonder how you would be welcomed in his presence now that he was returning to his duties as King. A twinge of fear and insecurity gnawed at the edge of your thoughts. It seemed ludicrous you’d only known him for two days and were already starting to fear the loss of someone you’d only just begun to have.

Steve seated himself first and you slid up next to him, watching as Okoye seemed to summon the ship upwards with only her hands. The ship responded to the haptic motion smoothly and within moments the ship was lighter than air. You watched through the large window as the island of Manhattan became smaller and smaller until finally it was obscured by white clouds. 

T’Challa settled down in the seat to your right. He hadn’t said much since you arrived on the ship except a few words to Okoye. You couldn’t be sure, but you felt a bit of tension that seemed to stem from you. It was just a guess, but you imagined T’Challa hadn’t figured out how to handle your recently blossoming interest in each other now that you were among his people; his hand that had rarely left yours in the last 48 hours now felt so far away in his lap. You recalled his comments about being kept naked in his bedroom and hoped that future was still in the cards, whether it was a well-kept secret or not.

Steve, who had a fine-tuned Y/N-meter and could always tell when something was up, brushed your arm with his fingers. “You okay?” he mouthed quietly so that nobody else could hear, although you saw how T’Challa shifted slightly and knew he was paying very close attention. You nodded in response to Steve’s concerned expression. He made it clear he wasn’t convinced but sensed you weren’t telling all at the moment for a reason.

Time passed with some conversation between Steve and T’Challa about their experiences with the Avengers and later on, the two friends started telling you stories about each other, and others in the group that got you laughing pretty hard. In quiet moments between conversation your eyes wandered back and forth from the hypnotic view out the window to the stoic and quiet T’Challa. He noticed your gaze a few times and returned it with a smile that looked more for your benefit than his.

~

You’d crossed continents and oceans in what seemed like a very short time and as the aircraft began descending through the clouds, your heart started beating harder as T’Challa stood and beckoned you and Steve over in front of the cockpit window.

“Oh, my,” you gasped as a mountainous, lush world appeared in front of you, an untouched corner of nature’s bounty rich with waterfalls, trees and all backed by the golden light of the African sun.

T’Challa’s pinky finger linked around yours, drawing your eyes from the breathtaking sight to his. “This is nothing. Watch.”

In front of you, you appeared to be heading down into the side of a mountain and you yelped and went to cover your eyes when an invisible shimmering fabric in the air reacted to the ship. As it passed through the field, a shining urban city glinted into existence, nestled majestically amongst a twisting river and nearby mountains, full of skyscrapers and city life in such an unexpected place.

Your hand involuntarily squeezed T’Challa’s in shock and surprise as your jaw fell open.

He squeezed back, smiling at the look on your face and said, “Welcome to Wakanda.”

[williamexchange]

Three reasons PPC campaigns fail that nobody seems to care about

Don’t worry, they’ll tell you. It’s “quick and easy”. Use these “rapid growth hacks”. Here are some “tricks”. Here’s how to copy the best-converting PPC campaigns.

And, honestly, I get it. I’m not criticizing fellow writers for doing their jobs. These posts are great for SEO. Google wants you to put out quality content that answers people’s questions as quickly as possible. Writers are going to do that.

Perhaps these guides will help you, perhaps they won’t. But I’ll tell you this for free: they are selling you a dangerous lie.

Here’s the truth: optimizing your PPC campaigns is not easy. Sometimes it’s not even that quick! But it’s incredibly powerful if you do it right.

“Be first, be smarter or cheat”

In the brilliant 2011 film Margin Call, bigshot investment banker John Tuld says: “There are three ways to make a living in this business; be first, be smarter or cheat.”

Copying your competitors is cheating. Following “ten tips” guides – even if you see some success – is cheating too. It could work – but it probably won’t work that well. And what if it doesn’t? What do you do next?

It’s why understanding and deploying what comes next is essential. There are no lies here: my way is harder, and it might take longer. But it’s smarter. It gives you the mindset you need for success.

Reason one: don’t follow the herd, be a wolf

I’ve been helping businesses run PPC campaigns for a long time. Generally, businesses are run by busy people who don’t have enough hours in the day. This time pressure forces them to rush. They scramble around looking for best practices to apply.

But here’s the problem: general best practices aren’t specific enough for your business.

See, what works for Shoe Salesman might not work for High High Heels. And “10 quick PPC ad hacks for any business” are unlikely to work well for either business.

It’s why free tools like the Adzooma Performance Score Report are much more valuable than generic lists. They look at data that’s specific to your business and provide actionable feedback.

But even when you’re armed with that information, you’ve still got to think strategically. You’ve got to think big picture.

Cut it down to this: what’s the key to success in marketing?

Know your audience. Understand what drives them.

Data, customer, act

So, how do you figure out what your audience wants? Ask them.

No, really.

One of the most successful PPC campaigns I ever ran came from some pretty banal data.

Picture this. My client was selling board games. They were spending tons of money on online advertising but it was performing poorly. When I dug into their data, I found something I didn’t expect.

Generally, people spend more money online on a Monday and it tails off as the week goes on. But for this client, the trend was even stronger. People were going into their working week and spending big early on Monday – especially the Monday after that month’s payday.

We spent money on an incentivized survey to analyze this.

Collating the responses, we found that people needed a “pick me up” at work. They wanted a game delivered for their game night which was typically Thursday, Friday or Saturday – hence the purchase on Monday.

To help make their purchasing decision, customers were also watching “how to play” videos of the board games they were interested in.

Here’s what we did:

Added “how to play” YouTube videos to our sales pages

Diverted a huge chunk of our budget to Monday mornings and afternoons

Reworked the copy of our ads to emphasize the “learn to play” video element

It was an explosive success that came from thinking strategically.

We used our data, we asked our customers, we acted.

Reason two: winning the battle and losing the war

Not enough people who run PPC advertising truly consider the customer journey. They pour over their data, they tweak a word here or there, they fiddle with audiences and budgets and timeframes.

They cheer at a 10% increase in conversion rates one week; they cry at a 10% decrease the next. They look for marginal gains to cost per click, cost per acquisition, etc.

They think tactically, not strategically. Short term, not long term.

Sure, thinking strategically with PPC campaigns is not as easy, but it’s much more useful. And it’s much more likely to be successful.

Pathfinding and the customer journey

Let me show you: get a piece of paper and write “What’s the action I want my customer to take?”

Keep it somewhere close. It’s the golden rule for PPC.

Too many people answer this question with “click on my ad”. And, sorry, but that’s just plain wrong.

It’s actually best to start at the end.

Head to the page people will land on when they click your ad. Look for the action you want people to take. Is it signing up for a newsletter? Is it buying a dress? Is it signing up for a free trial of your software?

Now, work backward from there. What are the steps your visitors must take before they can do what you want them to do?

Now you’re thinking strategically.

Seventeen steps to complete failure

One of the biggest impacts I ever had on a company came from using this “pathfinding” process. It came from seeing the bigger picture.

The client’s PPC campaigns were failing because they had thought tactically, not strategically.

Sure, I changed a few words in their ad copy and tweaked their target audience – but whoever had come before me had done a stellar job with that in the first place.

What was wrong? There were seventeen steps in the customer journey.

Seventeen!

It took seventeen steps for a customer to go from clicking the ad to having their holiday booked.

That’s insane.  A thousand blessings to the few customers who endured that process!

Map out your customer journey. Go to Amazon or other ludicrously successful sites and map out their customer journeys. Check out your competitors, too.

The journey should be short and simple. Cut out anything unnecessary. Consider having more streamlined (and personalized) journeys for specific campaigns. One lander for this campaign, and another for that one.

You want scalpel-sharp focus with PPC. Always and forever.

Reason three: not testing your ad copy correctly

With your customer journey in mind, you can start to write better ad copy too.

See, overworked PPC managers often hunt through their company’s marketing materials to borrow text. They look at competitors. They hit up Google Trends.

But they don’t look at the lander. They don’t think about the customer journey.

A colleague of mine presented the team I work on with the following ad:

“Can you do better?” he asked.

We were worried. See, this was his “champion ad” and my colleague is extremely good at his job. The ad’s numbers were pretty damn good.

Well, we improved them. The “winning” ad from our alternate set is here:

Why’s it doing better?

Remember that golden rule above all else: focus on the action you want your customers to take.

See, this was a brand campaign. What are the goals for that? Here are three: build trust, reassure the user, get them to take an action.

Compare that with a “how to improve your online advertising” search. In that case, the searcher wants something educational. Consider how different the ad copy for that would be.

The new PPC ad and its landing page won because it built trust, reassured the user and led them to sign up for our free trial.

Of course, it’s harder than it sounds. There’s lots of text to play around within a modern PPC ad. You’re tempted to write about the benefits of working with your company, the features of your products, etc.

Instead, think of it like this:

What’s the action you want them to take? What are the benefits to the user of taking that specific action? Keep it tight, keep it focused and keep testing your message. There are Best SEO services in Frisco from where you can find out all the services related to SEO and digital marketing which will help you to enhance your business online and generate more and more customers.

[forkanna]

[AO3 LINK] [EF LINK]

This is it! Wow, I can't believe I've been posting this fanfic for... wow, I started edging close to two years. Not the longest it's taken me to complete one but not the shortest, either. Thanks to all of you who stuck with my little yarn of Oztopian romance, especially given how infrequently it was updated. This one was one of my more ambitious attempts, to be sure. 

I thought a nice little flash forward would tie this story up nicely, and I hope most of you (if not all) agree. 

Until we meet again, Jessica X

                                                  ~ EPILOGUE ~

"Melena?"

The cupboards were all silent as the boy picked his way through them, listening for any small noise. A pin dropping. A cough. Anything. He squirmed, beginning to worry. Where had everyone gone? They had only been playing for a few minutes, so he had been sure that they wouldn't get far. It was completely unacceptable for them to have vanished.

So he tried the pantry. Nobody there, either. This was getting frustrating. If he kept poking around, one of the kitchen staff would get onto him for being underfoot. Growling under his breath, he ran out of the kitchen-

And found himself running face-first into a wall of golden fur.

"OOF!"

"Slooow down," said the Lion as he smiled down at the boy, who jumped back in fear. Even if nobody else felt any kind of fear around the great beast, he always had; only a little, but more than nothing. "Where do you need to be so soon?"

Ignoring the question, he said, "Have you seen Melena?"

"No, I haven't. Not in an hour or so. Sorry, my boy."

"Thanks! I'm gonna keep looking!" Without waiting for a response, he ran off.

But he quickly tired of the game. When playing it together, it was fun, but long periods of searching without finding anyone just made him feel bored and lonely. So he made his way back to the suite that he normally called home.

When he pushed open the door, he saw a sight that had become so common for him that it was mundane. Dorothy Gale and Ozma Tippetarius, Princesses of Oz and something like aunts to him, were sharing a kiss. The sight made him gag, but he had learned long ago that if he gagged aloud and made a fuss, he would get admonished by all the women nearby, so he kept the noise to himself. The long, elegant brown braid down Dorothy's back was quite pretty, but secretly he always wanted to try swinging from Dorothy's braid. That would get him shouted at even worse, he was sure.

"Oh, hello," said Ozma as they parted, freckle-decorated cheeks bunching with her smile. Sometimes, they called her the "Daddy" instead of the "Queen", which made him confused. Girls couldn't be daddies; it was a rule. "Where did you come from?"

"Noplace."

"And what did we tell you 'bout knocking?" Dorothy said gently. She was always the nicest when it came to scolding him; he almost didn't mind it when she did it.

"To," he muttered. Then he piped up, "Have you seen Melena?"

"Not recently. Go on and wash up, though; it's time for supper soon."

Kicking at the ground, he muttered, "Don't wanna."

"Imagine your mother is here, telling you to wash up," Ozma said reasonably, one russet eyebrow raised above a glittering green eye. "What if she told you to wash up? Because she will if she catches you coming to the dining hall looking that grubby."

"Which mother?" he stalled, already knowing it wouldn't work.

"Either one."

Sighing, he turned and left them alone, trying to ignore their giggles at his expense. He was still annoyed with the others for not hiding anywhere that he could find them. After a while, he did pop into the washroom and got himself cleaned as well as he cared to and scampered along to the dining hall. If he didn't, they would hunt him down, and Auntie Ozma always seemed to be able to find anyone in the whole Land of Oz. He didn't know how, only that it was true.

When he burst into the dining hall, he paused just inside, staring in surprise. Then he stomped over to the table and said, "Hey, no fair!"

"Nyehhh!" Melena sneered, sticking out her tongue at him. Her dark eyes only seemed to sparkle when contrasted against her pale skin, but she was always smirking like that. Too clever.

"Mom!" he complained loudly. "Melena's making fun of me!"

Both Elphaba and Glinda Throppland looked up from their place settings, which they were adjusting in anticipation of the food. After a glance at each other, Glinda was the one to stand and cast a stern look at him. "Liir?"

"Yes?"

"What did we tell you about tattling? If you have a problem with Melena, talk to her about it."

"Melena, quit it!"

"Make me!" The girl started when she felt a rap on her knuckles. "OW!"

Nessarose returned the spoon to her place setting and barely batted an eyelid toward her. "Don't be a pest. You know Liir is sensitive, so I don't understand why you pester him so badly."

"He's a boy, Mama," she said, as if that explained everything.

"And boys are people, too. Technically." Ignoring the snort from Elphaba, she pointed to the seat. "Stop standing in your chair and get ready to eat. You sit, too, Liir."

He looked like he might protest for a moment. But with all three women staring him down, he knew he didn't want to get yelled at again like Melena was, so he took his usual seat and settled into it as best he could. The water glass was already there, so he tried to pretend he was very interested in drinking from it to give himself something to do.

"You alright?" Glinda asked him more gently now.

"No."

"Why not? Come on, out with it, grumpypants."

"My pants are not grumpy."

"Liir…"

Sighing, he set the glass down again, poking at a bead of water that had fallen onto the tablecloth. It vanished into the fabric, and he felt annoyance and disappointment. "Dumb Melena and dumb Scraps wouldn't play the dumb game right."

"They aren't dumb," she corrected. "And what did we tell you about calling her 'Scraps'? That isn't nice."

"Grownups ask you what they told you a lot," he observed.

"That's because you need to learn things." Her hand came up and began to comb through his hair affectionately, which annoyed him most of the time, too. But sometimes it was alright.

As a member of the royal kitchen staff brought out some fried tamornas for them to begin munching on, Ozma and Dorothy joined them. Another girl, just a bit taller than either himself or Melena, skipped over and perched on her chair as if she couldn't possibly have done anything else. Her dress was the most alarming network of mismatched patches that could be made into clothing; even though they could afford any band new, pretty dress, she could always be seen sporting something that ludicrous. Each one was a completely different colour, and some were patterns while some were solid. At least it matched the vividness of her brilliantly red hair, made yet more vivid by being pulled into multiple little braids, each tied off with a different coloured bow in proper rainbow order.

"Frances Angeline," Dorothy sighed.

"Huh?"

"Manners…?"

The girl's red head tilted very slightly in thought. Then she squeaked, "Oh! Good evening, Miss Elphaba, Miss Glinda, Miss Nessa."

"Good evening, Frances," Elphaba told her with a slight bow of her head in her direction. Glinda merely waved with a bright smile. "How are you this evening?"

Opening her mouth, she piped up, "Fine as fine can be, is the state of me! I'm really so fine, that if I had nine, I might have six more than three!"

Immediately, Liir and Melena groaned and rolled their eyes. Then they seemed to remember they were mad at each other, glared at the other for having the same reaction, and turned away with a harrumph and a grimace. The adults always somehow found the way Scraps spouted such weird things to be endearing, even though it was obviously an attention-seeking behaviour that should be stopped at any cost.

"Very good!" said Glinda, clapping for the girl. Her pleased expression was as genuine as the one on Dorothy's face as she gazed own at her daughter. "But don't make up any more rhymes while we're eating dinner, okay?"

"Okay," she agreed without protest. At least she wasn't going to do it anymore.

The first true course came out shortly thereafter: a thick soup that didn't make Liir want to keep eating it. So after a few spoonfuls, he went back to sulking and watching his parents chattering in quiet voices, and Nessa wiping Melena's chin. A member of the royal staff came in to talk to Ozma, and she stepped away from the table for a moment to see to whatever queenly matter had come up.

Finally, when he hadn't smiled or laughed, or even tried to join in conversation throughout the entire meal, Glinda got up from the table. She was a bit rounder than Dorothy or Nessa, even though they had all had children, but still very lovely, to hear his other mother talk. She walked along the table until she could crouch down next to her son.

"Alright, buddy, old pal," she murmured into his ear. "What's going on? What's this, what's happening?" Her finger poked at his frown, and he tried to shrug her off but she did it again, and then he laughed. "There's my boy."

"Don't. I'm mad."

"Why are you mad?"

"Because… they didn't wanna play the game right. And I had to play it by myself, and you can't play hide-and-seek by yourself."

Her frown was a little exaggerated as she cooed, "Awww, my poor baby."

"I'm not a baby."

"My poor grandpa."

"Not a grandpa, either, Mom!" She laughed at him, which made him feel even more sullen. "Don't."

"I know," she sighed, tousling his hair. Which he also hated. "But they can't help it; they're young girls, and all they want to do is run around and be free. You're not like them, are you?"

"I like to run around," he hedged.

"Not as much as them."

Shrugging, he picked at the tablecloth as he said, "If they say they wanna play, they should play."

"Crybaby!" Melena piped up. Another little "ow!" could be heard a moment later.

"You're right, Liir. A person should always honour their commitments. But little girls and boys sometimes forget to do that. And that's okay!" Sliding her arm around behind his shoulders, she jostled him just a little. "Don't be so mad about nothing. Because if you do, when you have to be mad about something, you'll be all out of mad. And that's bad."

"No mad is bad!" Scraps added with a big grin.

"Shut up!" he snapped, and she blinked at him in surprise.

"I told you to be nice to her," Glinda warned him. "Frances is a very special girl, and it's not nice to be mean to someone who isn't being mean to you. You don't want a time out, do you?"

"No…" Sighing, he looked back down at his plate. "Fine, I'll be nice."

"Good. Let's finish dinner and then I'll tell you a story, alright? Or I can read you one at bedtime if you want to go back to playing."

So Liir Oscar Throppland ate, and he thought about things. He thought about how he never got to do anything fun outside the Royal Palace, like his parents did. About how it always felt like Scraps and Melena could do whatever they wanted and it would be fine, and he was always in trouble. On the other hand, Nessarose did smack Melena across the knuckles, and that had been funny. He also tried to think about what it meant that Scraps was "very special", but he never could figure that part out; he only knew that she was always acting strange, and sometimes he thought it was funny but other times it was annoying. Of course he did love his half-sisters. That didn't mean he had to like them much, but they were family and you had to love family. It was a rule.

Once dinner was over, he hopped out of his chair and went to his mothers. "Story?"

"You really want one?" Glinda asked, smiling at him.

"Story, story! A glory of a story!"

"Quiet, Scraps," he snapped, not that she minded he had. "What story?"

Shaking her head, she pulled him up into her lap and lashed an arm across his belly to hold hiim in place. "Did I ever tell you the one about the Lion, and the Hungry Tiger and the Lavender Bear?"

"Oh my," breathed Dorothy in her usual gentle tones. "Before bedtime? Maybe you'd better save that story for later, Miss Glinda."

"It's not that close to bed," Melena protested crabbily. Liir wanted to kick her, even though he agreed.

"Fine, fine. What if I told you about how Nessa, and Elphie and I first met?" The children all shared a look of uncertainty. "No? Didn't I tell you before?"

"I'm not very familiar with that one, either," Ozma said easily as she slid back into her seat, accepting it readily when Frances popped into her lap as if she had been waiting all along for that very thing. "If you would, Glinda…?"

"Oh, very well. So! Our paths first crossed at school. But you must understand, this was a long time ago, and we were both very young…"

"Dear old Shiz," Elphaba reminisced in a soft voice. Her wife had paused, probably trying to think of how to best phrase the next part of the tale. Liir looked at his other mother, at how much adoration was in her eyes every time she looked across at her wife.

"Mom?"

Glinda looked down at him. "Yes, sweetie?"

"Was Mother always so smart? With spells and stuff."

"Definitely, she was! Saved all of Oz from old Horrible Morrible, as she was known then. And she flew us away from her and the Wizard, and helped your Auntie Nessa to walk, and a lot of other things. She's a powerful witch and a true hero!"

Of course, Elphaba couldn't let that claim stand, cheeks flushed to forest green as the talk had made them. "I did have a little help from good friends."

"Bright as a silver shoe," Nessarose confided, causing her sister to roll her eyes and wave a hand, the way she always did at any fuss being made over her. Ozma and Dorothy managed to suppress their laughter into warm grins of bemusement.

"That's right," Glinda Throppland told her son, even though her eyes were only for Elphaba at that moment. "Positively phosphorescent. That's my Elphie."

                                                  HAPPILY EVER AFTER

[jonathanbelloblog]

The Book of Acts: The Tale of the World-Record-Setting Koenigsegg Agera RS Speed Run

Everyone worries about the wind. They cast their glances out the open garage doors and into the early morning black toward the sound as it whips its way across the Nevada desert, a thin moon and a scattering of stars the only light to be seen. It’s quiet inside. Christian von Koenigsegg, owner, founder, and CEO of Koenigsegg, pries his eyes from those dark gusts and gets back to conferring with his driver, Niklas Lilja. The two aim to put their mark on history at dawn by claiming a record that’s stood for nearly 80 years: the fastest speed over a flying kilometer on a public road.

It’s easy to dismiss cars like the Agera RS as elements of obscene fantasy, machines that exist entirely in the theoretical, their capabilities relegated to spreadsheets and simulations. Rare is the moment when they make that breach into reality.

“It’s something we’ve been dreaming of doing for many years,” von Koenigsegg says, “but we’ve just not found a venue long enough to stretch our legs. We basically gave up two years ago.”

“I’m most worried about the tires,” Niklas LILJA says, “because they are the most critical part of the car. It’s the only thing connecting you to the road.”

That was when the Agera RS made its debut at the Geneva Motor Show. The car borrowed heavily from the company’s One:1, a track-focused model with a ludicrous 1:1 power-to-weight ratio courtesy of an in-house twin-turbo 5.0-liter V-8 good for 1,341 horsepower and 1,011 lb-ft of torque. Koenigsegg only built seven examples of the One:1, all sold by the time the car made its debut. The company wanted to offer buyers a softer, more approachable version. The result was the RS.

The Agera RS is the fastest production car in the world. Christian von Koenigsegg and a few of his customers found out by heading to the Nevada desert near Pahrump.

“It’s an everyday kind of hypermegacar,” von Koenigsegg says.

The standard engine produces 1,160 horsepower, though an optional package upgrades that to One:1 spec. With less downforce and the same muscle, von Koenigsegg realized the Agera RS was likely the fastest car the company had ever built. It could be the fastest production vehicle in the world.

The scene inside the garage at Spring Mountain Motor Resort in Pahrump is dizzying. There are only 25 Agera RS mo-dels in the world, each with a price tag in excess of $2 million, and four of them sit here under fluorescent lights. These cars are timepieces. They are detailed in ways that would make a Ferrari 488 GTB seem common by comparison. The wheels are hand-laid carbon fiber, their spokes and hub hollow to save weight. The doors hinge upward in a ludicrous and perfect salute, revealing wide carbon-fiber sills. It’s hard to comprehend just how tidy these things are until you’re standing next to one with the roof at hip height.

Of all the cars here, only one will make the sprint, and it isn’t some company prototype. Agera RS 143 belongs to Mark Stidham, and he saw it for the first time yesterday. He’s soft-spoken and quick to smile, with white hair and a goatee to match. He’s more approachable than you’d guess for someone who’s about to gamble $2 million on a maybe. He says the idea to ante his car began like so many other perfect notions.

“It started as one of those late-night conversations: ‘You know what would be cool?’” he reveals. “That was probably a year ago, and now here we are.”

Stidham makes it sound easy. It wasn’t. Those conversations spurred a blizzard of activity from a coalition of supporters and the strong Southern California Koenigsegg owner contingent. Of the nine Agera RS examples headed to the U.S., seven call the Golden State home. First, they had to find a venue. The Bonneville Salt Flats is a logical location, but von Koenigsegg knew the car would have required too many modifications to safely run on the dry lake bed.

More than a stunt: Koenigsegg will use data from the high-speed runs to develop new settings for active aero components.

“A rear-wheel-drive car with 345 [tire width], basic-ally at 250 mph you spin around,” he says. “So, OK, you can put on narrow tires, you can put weight in the front, but that is not the car [we make].”

The solution came in the form of a stretch of Nevada’s State Route 160. Just outside of Pahrump, the four-lane pours out onto the plain between the Nopah Range across the California border to the southwest and the hills around Charleston Peak to the northeast. For 16 miles, the pavement does nothing but run dead straight—if not perfectly flat.

Jeffrey Cheng was the first Koenigsegg owner in California, and he has been a Spring Mountain member for almost eight years. “It’s always been one of those things where I thought it’d be great to take one of these cars to top speed on this road,” he offers. “It’s always been in the back of my mind. … Obviously, we could try to go bootleg it at 5:30 or 6 on a Sunday morning, but it would be cooler if we could officially have the blessing of the necessary parties.”

“We put a lot of hours in to find the best setup to punch through the air. It’s not about horsepower, it’s not about weight. … It’s about pushing through the air. That’s the most difficult part of the car.”

There was a mountain of paperwork and plans to submit. Permits from a half dozen Nevada regulatory and law-enforcement agencies including the Nevada Department of Transportation, Bureau of Land Management, the state’s Division of Forestry, and the Nevada Highway Patrol. It took months of wading through meetings and letters volleyed between attorneys, but along the way the idea gained the support of the governor’s office. That helped, and when it was done, Stidham, Cheng, and their friends had legal access to 11 miles of public pavement.

Meanwhile, as the owners battled America’s unique form of bureaucracy, von Koenigsegg and Lilja focused on readying the car for its run. “We put a lot of hours into simulators, tweaking everything to find the best setup to punch through the air,” Lilja says. “It’s not about horsepower, it’s not about weight. … It’s about pushing through the air. That’s the most difficult part of the car.”

The company kept the changes minimal, including an optional louver on the rear lid borrowed from the One:1. “It’s creating downforce, but we also see that we get more clean air in the rear of the car, and we’re not filling up the engine bay with a lot of air,” Lilja explains. “It’s something we’ve seen driving the car over 370 kph.” There’s an optional, bolt-in safety cage inside, along with a different driver’s seat that accommodates a race harness. Otherwise, the car’s the same as the other Agera RS examples roaming the globe.

But for all the simulations, Lilja and the car face an ocean of variables. There’s that damned wind, for one. And the fact Route 160 runs into a bowl, gaining or losing some 300 feet in elevation over 11 miles depending on your direction. There’s the road surface, too. It’s not some iron-flat test track. It’s run-of-the-mill American tarmac. When we ask Lilja what he’s worried about, he doesn’t hesitate.

“I’m most worried about the tires,” he says, “because they are the most critical part of the car. It’s the only thing con-necting you to the road.”

He says that at top speed, the tire-pressure monitoring sensor in each wheel experiences 30,000 g. The force causes the 30- to 35-gram part to weigh the equivalent of 150 kilograms, or 330 pounds. “Everything,” he says, “is pushed to the extreme.”

He’s right to worry. The Agera RS wears Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires, 265/35R-19s up front and 345/30R-20s in the rear. They’re off-the-shelf consumer rubber, the same ones you can order online from the comfort of your desk chair. This set has been to 250 mph a few times already, but it’s a wide gulf from 250 to the record of 268 mph and beyond.

“Anything beyond that is brand-new territory,” Stidham says as Lilja fires the Agera RS and rolls out of the garage. “Man wasn’t meant to go 276 mph. We’re built to run. The idea that we have this much influence over our environment is kind of cool to me. That’s what drives me. What can we do when we apply our intellect and our resources? This is the result of that. To me, it’s a thing of beauty.”

The car sounds unlike anything you’ve heard as it moves through the paddock and onto the Spring Mountain road course. Lilja takes a few laps in the darkness, shaking the thing out, dusting himself off for later. The exhaust snaps and snarls, lighting the asphalt with brief flashes of off-throttle fire, the sound of so much air getting sucked through those exotic lungs echoing off the buildings behind us.

The temperature hangs in the lower 50s by the time we make our way to Tecopa Road, the staging area for Lilja’s run. The sun is barely up, lighting the swirled stone hills to our northeast. There’s nothing out here, just sand and scrub and telephone poles like gallows strung straight for miles.

Traffic’s been rerouted onto the northbound lane, but the highway patrol stops drivers on both ends while Lilja makes his attempts. Street sweepers have scoured the pavement since daybreak, attempting to clean the surface as best they can. Lilja and Stidham take a recon run, heading south while the cameramen clean their lenses and check their batteries. Watching them go off into the distance, nothing about the car seems dramatic. It’s speed on the geological scale. When they return, someone asks Stidham how it went. He says it was a pretty good test run. They hit 220 mph.

The idea was for Lilja to slowly build up speed. Take a stab at 160 mph, then 180, then keep jumping up, run after run until he beats the record. But the man has no patience for that. It’s like he doesn’t want to spend too much time near that teetering edge.

“I’m relieved. This is dangerous stuff, you know? We’d never driven faster than 250 anywhere. We’re pushing the boundaries.”

The wind never settles, but on his first official run Lilja heads uphill into the sporadic gusts and rips off an average speed of 271.2 mph over the flying kilometer. He leaves the helicopters filming the event well behind. It’s stunning, almost unbelievable to be there to witness the thing. When Lilja gets out of the car and removes his helmet, someone tells him his speed. He nods. “Then I will try for 300.”

Later, he’ll say the headwind gusts had the car drifting a few meters left and right as he approached his top speed.

The day warms up. Lilja heads for the requisite return run over the same distance, and when the car finally appears over a swell in the pavement, a crowd gathers as he opens the door, and a tech pulls the Vbox data. There’s a snow-day excitement. A flurry of hushed numbers whispered among the crowd before the official word comes down. He’s averaged 284.6 mph this time for a combined speed of 277.9 mph. It isn’t just the fastest anyone’s ever officially gone on a public road. It’s the fastest anyone’s gone in a production car, period.

The Department of Transportation permit is good for all day, and Lilja’s keen to make the most of it. Earlier this year, Koenigsegg set another record, beating the Bugatti Chiron’s previous benchmark in the 0-400-0-kph test on a broken concrete WWII runway. With all this perfect pavement on hand, Lilja can’t help but take another run at that feat. Someone asks if they should consider changing tires. The driver eyes the fronts. “We don’t need to change the tires,” he says, “because we’re not going that fast.”

For the record, 400 kph is around 250 mph.

There is some drama this time. The traction-control system overheats, and on his first run Lilja loops the from Performance Junk Blogger Feed 4 http://ift.tt/2DImLRV via IFTTT

[jesusvasser]

The Book of Acts: The Tale of the World-Record-Setting Koenigsegg Agera RS Speed Run

Everyone worries about the wind. They cast their glances out the open garage doors and into the early morning black toward the sound as it whips its way across the Nevada desert, a thin moon and a scattering of stars the only light to be seen. It’s quiet inside. Christian von Koenigsegg, owner, founder, and CEO of Koenigsegg, pries his eyes from those dark gusts and gets back to conferring with his driver, Niklas Lilja. The two aim to put their mark on history at dawn by claiming a record that’s stood for nearly 80 years: the fastest speed over a flying kilometer on a public road.

It’s easy to dismiss cars like the Agera RS as elements of obscene fantasy, machines that exist entirely in the theoretical, their capabilities relegated to spreadsheets and simulations. Rare is the moment when they make that breach into reality.

“It’s something we’ve been dreaming of doing for many years,” von Koenigsegg says, “but we’ve just not found a venue long enough to stretch our legs. We basically gave up two years ago.”

“I’m most worried about the tires,” Niklas LILJA says, “because they are the most critical part of the car. It’s the only thing connecting you to the road.”

That was when the Agera RS made its debut at the Geneva Motor Show. The car borrowed heavily from the company’s One:1, a track-focused model with a ludicrous 1:1 power-to-weight ratio courtesy of an in-house twin-turbo 5.0-liter V-8 good for 1,341 horsepower and 1,011 lb-ft of torque. Koenigsegg only built seven examples of the One:1, all sold by the time the car made its debut. The company wanted to offer buyers a softer, more approachable version. The result was the RS.

The Agera RS is the fastest production car in the world. Christian von Koenigsegg and a few of his customers found out by heading to the Nevada desert near Pahrump.

“It’s an everyday kind of hypermegacar,” von Koenigsegg says.

The standard engine produces 1,160 horsepower, though an optional package upgrades that to One:1 spec. With less downforce and the same muscle, von Koenigsegg realized the Agera RS was likely the fastest car the company had ever built. It could be the fastest production vehicle in the world.

The scene inside the garage at Spring Mountain Motor Resort in Pahrump is dizzying. There are only 25 Agera RS mo-dels in the world, each with a price tag in excess of $2 million, and four of them sit here under fluorescent lights. These cars are timepieces. They are detailed in ways that would make a Ferrari 488 GTB seem common by comparison. The wheels are hand-laid carbon fiber, their spokes and hub hollow to save weight. The doors hinge upward in a ludicrous and perfect salute, revealing wide carbon-fiber sills. It’s hard to comprehend just how tidy these things are until you’re standing next to one with the roof at hip height.

Of all the cars here, only one will make the sprint, and it isn’t some company prototype. Agera RS 143 belongs to Mark Stidham, and he saw it for the first time yesterday. He’s soft-spoken and quick to smile, with white hair and a goatee to match. He’s more approachable than you’d guess for someone who’s about to gamble $2 million on a maybe. He says the idea to ante his car began like so many other perfect notions.

“It started as one of those late-night conversations: ‘You know what would be cool?’” he reveals. “That was probably a year ago, and now here we are.”

Stidham makes it sound easy. It wasn’t. Those conversations spurred a blizzard of activity from a coalition of supporters and the strong Southern California Koenigsegg owner contingent. Of the nine Agera RS examples headed to the U.S., seven call the Golden State home. First, they had to find a venue. The Bonneville Salt Flats is a logical location, but von Koenigsegg knew the car would have required too many modifications to safely run on the dry lake bed.

More than a stunt: Koenigsegg will use data from the high-speed runs to develop new settings for active aero components.

“A rear-wheel-drive car with 345 [tire width], basic-ally at 250 mph you spin around,” he says. “So, OK, you can put on narrow tires, you can put weight in the front, but that is not the car [we make].”

The solution came in the form of a stretch of Nevada’s State Route 160. Just outside of Pahrump, the four-lane pours out onto the plain between the Nopah Range across the California border to the southwest and the hills around Charleston Peak to the northeast. For 16 miles, the pavement does nothing but run dead straight—if not perfectly flat.

Jeffrey Cheng was the first Koenigsegg owner in California, and he has been a Spring Mountain member for almost eight years. “It’s always been one of those things where I thought it’d be great to take one of these cars to top speed on this road,” he offers. “It’s always been in the back of my mind. … Obviously, we could try to go bootleg it at 5:30 or 6 on a Sunday morning, but it would be cooler if we could officially have the blessing of the necessary parties.”

“We put a lot of hours in to find the best setup to punch through the air. It’s not about horsepower, it’s not about weight. … It’s about pushing through the air. That’s the most difficult part of the car.”

There was a mountain of paperwork and plans to submit. Permits from a half dozen Nevada regulatory and law-enforcement agencies including the Nevada Department of Transportation, Bureau of Land Management, the state’s Division of Forestry, and the Nevada Highway Patrol. It took months of wading through meetings and letters volleyed between attorneys, but along the way the idea gained the support of the governor’s office. That helped, and when it was done, Stidham, Cheng, and their friends had legal access to 11 miles of public pavement.

Meanwhile, as the owners battled America’s unique form of bureaucracy, von Koenigsegg and Lilja focused on readying the car for its run. “We put a lot of hours into simulators, tweaking everything to find the best setup to punch through the air,” Lilja says. “It’s not about horsepower, it’s not about weight. … It’s about pushing through the air. That’s the most difficult part of the car.”

The company kept the changes minimal, including an optional louver on the rear lid borrowed from the One:1. “It’s creating downforce, but we also see that we get more clean air in the rear of the car, and we’re not filling up the engine bay with a lot of air,” Lilja explains. “It’s something we’ve seen driving the car over 370 kph.” There’s an optional, bolt-in safety cage inside, along with a different driver’s seat that accommodates a race harness. Otherwise, the car’s the same as the other Agera RS examples roaming the globe.

But for all the simulations, Lilja and the car face an ocean of variables. There’s that damned wind, for one. And the fact Route 160 runs into a bowl, gaining or losing some 300 feet in elevation over 11 miles depending on your direction. There’s the road surface, too. It’s not some iron-flat test track. It’s run-of-the-mill American tarmac. When we ask Lilja what he’s worried about, he doesn’t hesitate.

“I’m most worried about the tires,” he says, “because they are the most critical part of the car. It’s the only thing con-necting you to the road.”

He says that at top speed, the tire-pressure monitoring sensor in each wheel experiences 30,000 g. The force causes the 30- to 35-gram part to weigh the equivalent of 150 kilograms, or 330 pounds. “Everything,” he says, “is pushed to the extreme.”

He’s right to worry. The Agera RS wears Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires, 265/35R-19s up front and 345/30R-20s in the rear. They’re off-the-shelf consumer rubber, the same ones you can order online from the comfort of your desk chair. This set has been to 250 mph a few times already, but it’s a wide gulf from 250 to the record of 268 mph and beyond.

“Anything beyond that is brand-new territory,” Stidham says as Lilja fires the Agera RS and rolls out of the garage. “Man wasn’t meant to go 276 mph. We’re built to run. The idea that we have this much influence over our environment is kind of cool to me. That’s what drives me. What can we do when we apply our intellect and our resources? This is the result of that. To me, it’s a thing of beauty.”

The car sounds unlike anything you’ve heard as it moves through the paddock and onto the Spring Mountain road course. Lilja takes a few laps in the darkness, shaking the thing out, dusting himself off for later. The exhaust snaps and snarls, lighting the asphalt with brief flashes of off-throttle fire, the sound of so much air getting sucked through those exotic lungs echoing off the buildings behind us.

The temperature hangs in the lower 50s by the time we make our way to Tecopa Road, the staging area for Lilja’s run. The sun is barely up, lighting the swirled stone hills to our northeast. There’s nothing out here, just sand and scrub and telephone poles like gallows strung straight for miles.

Traffic’s been rerouted onto the northbound lane, but the highway patrol stops drivers on both ends while Lilja makes his attempts. Street sweepers have scoured the pavement since daybreak, attempting to clean the surface as best they can. Lilja and Stidham take a recon run, heading south while the cameramen clean their lenses and check their batteries. Watching them go off into the distance, nothing about the car seems dramatic. It’s speed on the geological scale. When they return, someone asks Stidham how it went. He says it was a pretty good test run. They hit 220 mph.

The idea was for Lilja to slowly build up speed. Take a stab at 160 mph, then 180, then keep jumping up, run after run until he beats the record. But the man has no patience for that. It’s like he doesn’t want to spend too much time near that teetering edge.

“I’m relieved. This is dangerous stuff, you know? We’d never driven faster than 250 anywhere. We’re pushing the boundaries.”

The wind never settles, but on his first official run Lilja heads uphill into the sporadic gusts and rips off an average speed of 271.2 mph over the flying kilometer. He leaves the helicopters filming the event well behind. It’s stunning, almost unbelievable to be there to witness the thing. When Lilja gets out of the car and removes his helmet, someone tells him his speed. He nods. “Then I will try for 300.”

Later, he’ll say the headwind gusts had the car drifting a few meters left and right as he approached his top speed.

The day warms up. Lilja heads for the requisite return run over the same distance, and when the car finally appears over a swell in the pavement, a crowd gathers as he opens the door, and a tech pulls the Vbox data. There’s a snow-day excitement. A flurry of hushed numbers whispered among the crowd before the official word comes down. He’s averaged 284.6 mph this time for a combined speed of 277.9 mph. It isn’t just the fastest anyone’s ever officially gone on a public road. It’s the fastest anyone’s gone in a production car, period.

The Department of Transportation permit is good for all day, and Lilja’s keen to make the most of it. Earlier this year, Koenigsegg set another record, beating the Bugatti Chiron’s previous benchmark in the 0-400-0-kph test on a broken concrete WWII runway. With all this perfect pavement on hand, Lilja can’t help but take another run at that feat. Someone asks if they should consider changing tires. The driver eyes the fronts. “We don’t need to change the tires,” he says, “because we’re not going that fast.”

For the record, 400 kph is around 250 mph.

There is some drama this time. The traction-control system overheats, and on his first run Lilja loops the from Performance Junk WP Feed 4 http://ift.tt/2DImLRV via IFTTT

[adventurejack-go-blog]

April 15th, Post Quake

(suggested listening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3iYU-15yoA) 

On the trek back from the Joumonsugi I was treated to the sight of two wild monkeys roughhousing near the trail. The rest of the walk was uneventful however, and I made good time. Jumping out the jungle, I found my trusty bike where I had left her, tucked away from the cars and buses of the parking lot. Next to my bike was a motorcycle with a large sign attached to the rear proclaiming, “Traveling all Japan!!”. It seems I was not the only one on this kind of adventure, a reassuring fact that kept popping up later on in my travels. I didn’t realize this until after I took the photo, but the license plate shows that, by an amazing coincidence, this fellow originated from a city (Ichikawa-shi) a few towns over from where I used to live in Chiba prefecture.

(All Japan or Bust!) When I kicked off, it felt good to be back in the saddle. It had been about a full day since my feet touched the pedals. The ride down the mountain was a thrilling, nonstop-coast at high speeds, and my lack of a helmet made the experience all the more of an adrenaline rush. The weather continued to be marvelous and I could see the azure shades of the harbor at the foot of the mountain. Leaning into the curves, I cut the tight corners, or “toge” as they are called in Japanese, which wound around the mountain. In no time the small streets of the harbor town Miyanoura (and Anbo port) greeted my wheels; the 15 minute decent was a stark difference from the three hours it took to hike up. 

Before the climb I had deposited the majority of my baggage in a locker at a tourist center near the foot of the mountain. When I dismounted and checked my phone, a rush of messages started pouring in. The mountain was an absolute dead-zone, but to receive over 100 messages in one day?! I’m not usually this popular...What was going on? I read through the urgent tones expressed by those close to me and learned that a massive earthquake had hit Kumamoto City just the night before. I quickly replied to everyone explaining my silence and reassured them I was safe. Experiencing earthquakes becomes a trifle after living in Japan for a few years, so I was not too worried at the time and it wasn’t until later I realized the gravity of the situation. The sun had begun to set by this point, and despite the unfortunate news I was in high spirits after the long downhill ride. I decided to swing by the local super market overlooking the harbor to pick up some sustenance for the ferry ride back. The time was approximately 18:15. While waiting In the checkout line my eyes gazed lazily out the large front windows of the store. I could almost see the ferry terminal. The small town streets were mostly empty at this point. With the sun setting and the island folk taking their time with the last few errands of the day before turning in for the evening, their actions moved to the slow beat of island life.   There was a suspicious lack of activity around the terminal when I finally rolled up. You guessed it. Closed! The last ferry left around 17:00 it would seem. After sending Muro a short message letting him know I wouldn’t be seeing him until tomorrow, I sat staring out onto the bay. The evening was calm and pleasant, so I really couldn’t complain about staying one more night in this magnificent place.   

There seemed to be two choices in front of me. Scout out a park or secluded beach to set up camp, or try my luck with finding a local hostel for short money. Having spent the last two days traipsing around in the wilderness, I was rather in need of a bath, so I turned to the power of Google hoping an affordable room was not far off. Being able to conduct research at the flick a finger with an iPhone makes traveling by the seat of your pants almost too easy. I got a hit. Yakushima Youth Hostel was listed at about $30 a night. It seemed reasonable enough, so now the problem was finding it. Google maps revealed that it was not far off, only a quick ride down the street. In fact, I could see it across the small harbor from where I had my dinner. What luck! Upon my arrival the hostel staff were friendly and I was pretty lucky to get a bed, as it was almost a full house already. I would be sharing a room with a British-Japanese fellow about my age. First things first, I went off to clean up and after planned to join the growing number of voices coming from the common room.

Hostels are an often misunderstood beast. They seem to catch quite a bit of flack in popular media as being crowded, dingy, and potentially dangerous. My personal experiences with hotels have been nothing short of lovely however. The concept seems rather romantic to me, evoking images of old-world inns from days gone by, places to meet and converse with travelers from far and wide. Whether your reason is monetary, or you simply prefer a hostel for the camaraderie (for me it's a mix of both), I’ve found them to be a great to place to interact with like minded individuals, in an atmosphere comfortable and nostalgic. “Nostalgic, you say? How so?” Well, I’m glad you asked dear hypothetical reader. And with your permission, I’d like to delve into my own international background. 

For those of you internet strangers who have stumbled across this blog, you may be asking yourself, “So just who is this Jack Xavier fellow anyway?"Well, I'll try to keep things as concise as possible. Let’s begin at a relevant point in history for this particular narrative. My alma mater, Josai International University, is mysteriously located in rural Japan, exactly where you would not expect a young American high school graduate to be. The campus, with its near-skyscraper buildings, is quite striking in contrast to the surrounding rice fields, and set the stage for my various intercultural adventures. From the age of 19, I found myself in this foreign land interacting not only with the natives, but also a constant influx of both European and neighboring Asian comrades. New students full of excitement, thirsty to drink from the well of foreign knowledge, appeared, were befriended by yours truly, and shipped back home, some for good, others to return for a second tour. It's amazing how motivated people are to live life to the fullest when they know their opportunity has an expiration date. We never passed up the chance to bike to the beach and throw a Thai style full moon party around a bonfire, or stay out all night in Tokyo exploring the neon streets and ludicrously themed restaurants, only taking the first bus home to the countryside when caffeine could no longer keep our eyes open. After two years, I took on the role of the veteran who had seen the sights and run the gauntlet of adapting to Japan-life. I managed to find vicarious pleasure in living the world through the double lens of my own repeated experience (delving deeper into certain realms of Japan’s culture and history) and through the fresh eyes of whoever my company was at the time. By paying attention to others' personal experiences, I came to a better understanding of each country’s unique national character. For example, the pure and simple joy of Filipinos playing in the snow for the first time is a fond memory, but one not my own. While this was my college life, the study abroad program for them was an experience with a definite start and end, and eventually, those few months would escape us. Farewells were said and promises exchanged to stay in touch and journey to each other’s native soil. These golden opportunities either fulfilled or neglected, would lead to a bond in the face of distance and time, or would be left to taper out. Some of my more cherished friendships are those I was not certain would last, but surprised me year after year by a flame that refused to die in the form of a message or a short visit. Fleeting friendships, forged and tempered quickly, will be a familiar to any expat. Nights spent talking of our varied home cultures while seated on the floor of sparsely furnished apartments, places lacking the worldly accoutrements gathered in our familial homes. These empty shells of personal space become filled with memories rather than belongings. The shared struggle of living far-flung from friends and family allows for an empathy more rare among folks who can always wait until tomorrow to become intimate with one another. Abroad, one find themselves stripped and vulnerable, forced to humility, and urged to accept one's own ignorance in the face of a mysterious language which leaves you stuttering, attempting to form phrases with childlike syntax. However, this struggle can allow for a kind of rebirth, a chance of multiple lives, and though one may feel like a child again, the accelerated growth you experience as an ignorant foreigner gives a greater appreciation for the little things. Just being able to go to the post office and fill out a shipping form can seem like a huge victory. So, a few days spent at a hostel, a land without boarders, feels like a chance to dive back into this microcosm of humanity and swim in the warm waters of my youth. In truth, there seems to be an acute cultural friction whenever I am back in the US. Perhaps this is the curse of a Third culture child, to be forever adrift in society, searching for those small pockets of space one can truly feel comfortable, wonderers of the human condition. Let’s move on to the characters I encountered that evening. 

The common room was split into two sides, a raised platform with Japanese tatami mat floor seating and an adjacent table and chairs A seat had my name on it on the tatami side of the room, mostly as no one else but the British Japanese fellow was sitting there. It seemed the others preferred the conventional western style of seating. During my conversation with him early in the room I learned the Brit was also on a long journey, traveling across Asia, and now adventuring and retracing his youth in Japan, excavating childhood memories. As it turns out, this fellow attended university in my hometown of Boston for a few years. He was agreeable and friendly, and I was happy to be sharing lodging with him.   

Next to us around the table were seated a middle aged French woman who was visiting Japan before starting her PHD in film. She was developing an equation for quantifying…something in film. Deliberately vague and guarded about the details, she kept her intellectual properties on a tight leash. It’s a shame that people are so scared of others stealing their ideas. It seems apparent that if your idea is sound and the research yet to be done, what difference does it make describing it to a room of strangers. If it’s truly your speciality, than no-one but yourself should be able to breath life into the concept. Everything in life is a remix anyway (http://everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/).

She seemed to enjoy her short time spent traveling around in Japan and spoke passionately about the country. Across from the French woman sat a young Canadian, aspiring (?), successful (?) (It was hard to tell) actor deep into the world art house and film festivals. When the conversation inevitably turned to film, as the two aforementioned individuals were both in that field, the Canadian began using loads of argot and making obscure references. Obviously he knew his stuff, but it's always bothered me when people in a field of specialty refuse to explain argotique words that are obviously unknown to their audience. I gather they are trying to seem smart, but they just come off as disconnected with the rest of the room. 

Next around the table was a bearded German fellow. He was reserved in his commentary but would occasionally flash a knowing smile at jokes and offer insight at times. 

At the far end of the room was a Swedish couple in Japan for holidays. These two were quiet and slipped in and out of the common room with little words. I’ve found that Northern Europeans tend to be reserved upon first encounters. There is stereotype that, "they are cold, like their countries", however the great number of Norwegian friends and acquaintances I have gained over the years have taught me once you break the ice (see what I did there) they are very warm and friendly people, who really know who to drink and party. These sons and daughters of Odin bring the good spirit of Valhalla with them wherever they go, with the aid of some alcohol anyway. Aside from the Brit, none of my companions had spent more that a few weeks at most in Japan. They spoke of the country with vigor and praise, but any previous temptations to one up each other with their knowledge of Japan ended abruptly when I mentioned I’d been here for nine years.   

The repercussions of the earthquake dominated the early conversation, with talk of last minute plane tickets being bought and the re-routing of paths. There is nothing like a common threat to bring people closer together. I recall hearing that people who live through natural disasters, even those on the periphery who were completely unfazed, feel physiologically stronger afterwards, having "survived" the threat. It was certainly a point to bring us all a bit closer and fueled the conversation. After the speak of doom and gloom faded, the conversation turned to the passions of the larger personalities the room, art house film. Admittedly, I stoked this fire with investigative questioning, and in truth it was quiet interesting and a world I knew little about. Anyone who speaks with passion about their life or work is worth listening to I reckon. Eventually, we all shuffled back to our rooms and settled in for the night. 

Sleeping in a real bed felt amazing after laying my head upon wood planks the night before. This compounded by the strenuous activity of the past few days brought sleep quickly. A gloriously sunny morning greeted me on the fourth day of my trip. Last night’s talk of travels all over Japan re-ignited my wanderlust, and I was absolutely itching at the prospect of getting back on my bike. It occurred to me that the voyage had really only just begun. This island stop was more like a small vacation, and life on the road was still very new to me. 

I took my breakfast in the common room and saw some of the faces from the night before. We bid our farewells and parted with encouraging words. When spotting the Swedish couple again in the ferry terminal, we exchanged "the nod” and were on our way back to the mainland. 

(The common room)  

 (Yakushima Youth Hostel)

(The return high-speed ferry) 

And so ends the first chapter of 'Adventure and Beyond!'. There would be two more bastions before I returned to Japan’s main island of Honshu, and the true struggle was yet to come. Kyushu, that southern island of Japan, would play host to some of the greater highs and lows of my journey. Constant rain, sleeping next to a graveyard, visiting JAXA (the NASA of Japan), and touring the Hells of Beppu were all in written in the stars.

I’ll leave you with a quip from Orson Welles. "That's how I started, I began at the top and have been working my way down ever since."

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Back from the dead! Sort of... I missed posting this at the one year anniversary of my trip by about a month. Shucks! For those of you who have been asking me over the last year “What happened to your blog??” I apologize. Getting caught up in life and whatnot. Excuses, excuses. I spent a lot more time on this entry than the ones before it and changed things up a little bit, hopefully the wait wasn’t too disappointing. Ultimately, I suppose I want this this blog to be way for me to gain some writing experience, so your comments and feedback are more than welcome (seriously, leave a comment or private message me would ya!?) If my track record is any indicator, I should be done with the next entry in 2019?? I've got a few other projects I'm working on at the moment, but I really want to dedicate more time to writing, so we will see.