My Feet Don't Hardly Touch the Ground...

It looks like I'll be joining the local ball hockey league this spring, and everybody points out that it's really intense so today I began my Spring Training with a nice Rocky run. Last summer I ran to work nearly everyday and even on the bad days I don't remember this much pain. The first five minutes weren't so bad and then I hit a hill... well, more of an upward incline, and I knew I was going to be in trouble.

Fortunately, I was sticking to the sidewalk for today, so it was mostly level, but after 30 minutes I had a cramp that felt like my kidney was trying to break free so it could die on the side of the road. So it doesn't look good for my next couple weeks. I'm trying to design a run that will end near Tim Hortons so I can relax for a bit after, but I'm not sure how good caffeine is after an hour long run. Well, we'll call it a 15 minute run spaced out with 4o minutes of walking and 5 minutes of hanging onto street sign so as not to fall over in front of all the actual joggers.

I've never gotten a grasp of pacing myself, so I end up picking up speed until I'm exhausted and then trying to keep it up until I'm around the corner, away from any observers so it'll look like I can keep that speed up for the entire run. It also helps to pretend to check your pulse even if you have no clue how to do that, it makes you look pretty pro. And running is all about appearances.

As I get closer to home and sweet rest, I have to pass by a small gym, a gym with large windows and treadmills facing out. Not being a slouch about appearances I turned on the jets to try and impress all the lamers who do their running inside. I turned the corner and the wind picked up every piece of dust and gravel on the road and flung it in my face. Instead of cruising by the windows with a nice breeze in my face, I had to fight my way almost horizontally leaning into the wind, completely blind from all the grit in my eyes. But I managed to not break stride, so I think I showed them how real men run. 

Lesson of the day: Appearance isn't everything. Especially if you don't have it.

Life Lessons with Matt… #1. How To Save A Blog

I’m here again.

Life can get pretty routine when you aren’t dashing around Europe on mad adventures as homeschool backpacker, for which I am very sorry to all of you. Anyways, I am going to attempt to revive this blog, mostly for selfish reasons and partly so the loyal reader can get deeper inside to my personal life. The selfish reason is that if I can spend more time writing for Sans Contente, my dangerous level of TV watching will hopefully be cutback. Sadly, there’s a lot of junk on TV and I’m getting bored of channel surfing.

Now on to more interesting subjects: Reviving a blog from a pretty comatose state is a pretty intimidating task. I’ve lost all flow, so I have no history to fall back on… nothing that’s remotely connected to what I was doing last year. I don’t a weekly post schedule, or on-going storyline. My trip is long done… I’ll get you guys photos… soon…. promise. 

Of course, because there hasn’t been a post in so long, natural tendency is to either make a really short “welcome back” post, or a really long catch-up post, but both of these are potential pitfalls. Too short and I have nothing to build on, so I end up spiraling into another year long hiatus. When I created Sans Contente I promised myself that I would not fall into one sentence posts about what I had for dinner that evening. You don’t want to read about that, and I don’t want you to know how often I eat frozen pizza. Too long an opening post and I exhaust all my ideas and have nothing to write about = dead blog.

I’m not entirely sure what sort of subject matter I want to pursue, so already I’m breaking a major blog-revival rule which is to have direction. Travel was a pretty easy subject to follow, and I’m finding that normal life is definitely a bit harder to make post-worthy. It seems most established blogs have some gimmick that they can fall back on if nothing super exciting is happening, so I’ll be gimmick-searching this week.

Now, in the effort to somewhat get you up to speed, I got back from Europe some 10 months ago and got a job. Now I am living the wage slave life Mon. – Fri. and playing video games on weekends. You are now up to speed. My goals for the near future are to post again sometime before the Winter Olympics, and to get my Roll-Up win ratio back up to 50 %. 

So… I think this is long enough to fit into a medium size post category… peace out.

PS, I'm trying to figure out MS Word's blog function... it's very complex, but might help with posting regularly.

So Close You Can Almost Taste It

My days in Europe are numbered. And that number is now 3. If you count today it's actually 4, but I'll be travelling for most of today, so I'm not sure if it's worthy of full day status. Of course, I'm travelling and it's a travel day, so maybe it's the only day that really counts. I'm getting off track.

I'm headed back up to Belfast to spend my last couple nights there. I intend to spend a day going to the Giant's Causeway since I never got to on my first visit to Northern Ireland, and then a day taking photos of Belfast, if I have any room left, since I never really felt brave enough during my first stay. And then I fly home, bringing this whole adventure to a close. It's actually almost bringing a tear to my eye, if I wasn't such a toughened old man I would surely weep.

I won't hide the fact that I've really yearned to be home for the last couple days, but now that I am on the brink of return, I'm going to allow myself of couple days to look back at all I have done, and the stuff that I will miss when I go back to life as it was before.

Early plans had me stopping in Dublin for a day, maybe, but now that I am a wise and experienced traveller... as well as travel-exhausted... I will probably just head straight to Belfast, so I can slow it all down and enjoy what I have left. No need to be a hero, Dublin will still be here when I am old and can afford another journey. Which will definitely be when I am old and not much sooner.

It's been a great ride, and I've got stories and photos to show when I get back. Lots and lots of them. Despite much effort and meditation, still not sure if I found myself, so all that was a load of bunk. Of course, the effort was more often put towards finding a room for the night, and the meditation on the differing values of granola bars, so maybe I just wasn't looking hard enough. And Europe is a large place, so I'm not really surprised I didn't find me.

The Rockband videos that the gang at home have been putting out have been a great inspiration in the of a good bass player. Sorry, Bono, the power stance just isn't working. Of course, the concept of a room to myself and plentiful food is also appealing. As well as conversation with people who speak my native accent, with no heavy accent.

I'll try and get another post in just before I leave, but if I don't I'll see most of you in a few. The prodigal son is returning...

Quick Update

On the hostel monitor there is a big "Try Me" sticker that points to a button labelled "Splendid". I have no idea what it does, but it's becoming very tempting. Just after I check out tomorrow I will have to push it, just in case something bad happens. Usually 'push me' buttons lead to bad endings.

After today I go back to my old style of a new town every day or two as I start climbing northward toward Belfast. I'm not looking forward to it getting colder the further I travel, but it should be warming up in Canada by now.

For those of you keeping track, 11 more days in Europe for me. I can feel the end closing in, with a little spot of light at the end that is home. It's been a great ride, and I've seen more stuff than I ever expected to. Definitely worth every penny I won't have when I get home. I've been able to see the traditional tourist spots, the European getaway spots and the not so filled up spots, so I would consider it a well rounded trip.

In other news, I've got a wisdom tooth coming in or something, so I've got a lot of pain in my jaw as teeth fight for space. Kind of hurts to open my mouth extra wide, which I need to do to eat the extra big slices of flan. So I'll see about getting some Tylenol or something, and then try and ignore it till it goes away.

About this time...

Sans Contente is now one year old, just had to point that out. This will also pad my post count and probably be the shortest post I ever make.

Happy Birthday, Sans Contente!

Happy Birthday to me.

How does one celebrate one's own b-day when one is so far away from home? This is the question I will attempt to answer today. So far it has involved getting all my clothes washed so that I can not be a complete hobo for the last stages of my trip, and spending a lot of time on the internet. Because, as of today, I am in the last third of my stay in Europe. And this is the crazy part. I probably won't be able to post much in the coming weeks, unless a hostel I stay at has free internet to be abused. I will try and keep up on Facebook and emails, but it takes me a while to read blogs and post so that is usually optional.

I'll make up for the lack of posts with loads when I get back home and start going through my photos. Last rough count had me over 3500, and I'm into the red zone, with only 450-worth of data stick left. That will either be plenty, or not even close enough, depending on how it goes. Somedays I take photos of everything I come across, and sometimes I just let it slide and focus more on enjoying everything. Because, as much as I hate to bring it up, the photos are mostly for you guys, and myself in my old age, and most of the time I want to enjoy the fact that I'm here and drink it all in, which constantly fiddling with my camera gets in the way of to some extent.

In two weeks I will be on a plane, whisking my way back to Canada and a bed that doesn't squeak when I turn over, a room where nobody snores and prices that are decent. Haha, that makes it sound like I haven't enjoyed Europe, which is not true, but it has been a long 37 days up to this point and a nice place to relax sounds really good right now. I never would have thought that I would need to relax after this "vacation".

The next two weeks have me spending a couple days on the Southern French coast, than dashing northwards with a short stay in mid-France or possibly Switzerland, before crossing over the Channel, quickly going across England, over to Ireland and then up to Belfast. Should be suitably hectic. Along the way I will have to collect all manner of cheap trinkets so I look decently touristy when I get back.

Back to my birthday plans. When I left Canada I had no idea just how social eating and drinking and that stuff really are to me. Lately I have given up eating at restaurants and the like because there really isn't much need for it. I can do just as well (and more cheaply) by running down to the local supermarket each evening, and picking up whatever strikes my fancy. At the beginning of the trip I tried to eat out and enjoy the pubs and all that, but without other people involved it seemed quite hollow.

So, for the most part, I'm putting my birthday on hold for now. When I get back I do something crazy, but mostly just enjoy all the stuff I've missed since I left Canada. I'll stop by a bakery this evening and pick up a little cake or something, and the guy at the laundry sang happy birthday when I told him what day it was today, and the hostel is having a free pasta night so I'll indulge. Haha, mostly, I mean, I'm in Rome, what better birthday present can I get myself?

Other than those Lord of the Rings TCG boosters I picked up the other day... Tim, if you're out there... Isildur's Bane... oh yeah...

Happy Birthday to me...

My Lessons So Far

Now that I've made it about 2/3rds of the way through my whole Europe experience, I thought I should take a moment to reflect over what I've learned. I went into this trip with some expectations that I would grow as a person, and other crap like that. The whole 'finding of myself' some would say.

Mostly I found out that I'm still pretty much exactly the same guy who left Canada. Only more so. I'm still apt to panic if things start to fall apart, but now I know that even if they fall apart, and even when I panic, I can usually stay just in control enough to find somewhere to sleep in the middle of the night that has a lock on the door.

I found that I can be a lot more social than I had expected, because when you're a month out of home and you are in the middle of a country that doesn't always speak English, you really enjoy talking to people who understand you. You can make do with talking to people who don't understand you but it's not quite the same. I've found that stories and experiences are a great way to meet people, and like Behn had told me before I left, you learn to pick out a Canadian accent in the crowd and home in on it.

My independance... is going along. I'm not sure if I'm more independant or not, but travelling solo you sort of have to learn to survive on your own. And now I'm starting to learn responsible independance so it's really working out. Last night I ate some salad, and this morning I ate some fiber cereal. Hopefully that keeps up after I get home.

I've also learned that thumbnail photos cannot prepare you for some of the sights that you will see. The paintings are really big, and the churches are really tall. And gold is really shiny. That being said, the Europeans are not different from all other enterprising people and they know how you milk every possible euro out of you to get into these places.

I'm pretty happy that I still have one more data card left, so that leaves me around 800 photos for the rest of the trip, which should be good, as I'm really slowing down on the photos. Both because I'm not as shutter-happy as I first was when I landed, and also that the Italians are pretty particular about not taking photos in most of their impressive locations. But I have some sweet shots of the exteriors, taking mostly out of spite.

Yesterday was Pisa, today Siena, tomorrow Rome.