To the Orchard!

I know that I have added a couple of followers to this blog since last I checked and I am so glad! If you know me, and have seen me over the past 6 months, you are aware that I haven't been wandering around any sewers lately, but have been buried in my books and sheets of paper, slightly depressed and staring at a computer screen. But ha HA! No more. At least for now.

If you enjoyed this stuff, you should check out my new blog called "Of the Orchard". It is an allusion to my last name, which happens to signify that I come from the orchard. I might let you in on the tale of what my name has come to represent, but it will be on my new blog. To be honest, the writing that I did in Poland was some of the best that I have ever done, and I would like to cordon it off from general thoughts, even though my new blog will be along the very same lines as this one. Still a wandering Pole, still out for adventure and mystery.

So get on it. Follow me on tumblr. As they say: you will laugh, you will cry; you might even give up bagels.

This is my Virtual Assistant writing

"The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul."
G. K. Chesterton

Short of making New Year's resolutions, which are in my opinion a failed idea, since very rarely do people follow up the resolutions with action items, I've decided to take a bit more proactive approach to lifestyle design this year. This past semester was incredibly stressful for various reasons: I created a host of distractions that kept me from having 2 or 3 key conversations which could have eliminated about half of my worries for an entire five months; I let myself get caught up in a dying relationship; I wrecked myself physically, and as a result was unable to run causing my caloric intake to catch up to me. And on top of that, I was still in school and finding ways to put off my lab reports until they we only a week away from the due date. That won't do at all for a new decade, will it? I wouldn't say never again, because I am human, and I may find myself from time to time caught in situations where I begin to worry, but I plan to design this coming year, and indeed my life to come, a bit differently, and hopefully find the way to keep me excited with life for the rest of my life.

About a month ago, I began what I am calling the Great Experiment, the penultimate collection of data for my life. It is a simple red binder, which is becoming more and more full as the days go on, that contains my observations, experiments, conclusions, and tips on life broken down into four general categories; physical, mental, spiritual, and general (I realize that each of these distinctions is really arbitrary; everything should go in general, but for my own benefit, I broke it down a bit). Papers full of interesting stuff have ended up in this binder, and experiments that I ran on myself in the past were written up and included. There's stuff in there from what excessive soy protein consumption (about 1.5 lbs per day) did to me in what I identify as the worst 5 months of my life, to my thoughts on methods of sexual actualization. Everything is covered and, for my own eyes, nothing is too shameful. As I progress through this year, my plan is to reveal the ongoing development of the Master Manual of Garik Cruise Sadovy and hopefully anyone willing to hang on with me will benefit from my self destruction and pleasure. I credit the discovery of Tim Ferriss (Author of The Four Hour Work Week http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/) and his own self experimentation with the inspiration I mustered to enact this. I find his work blindingly intriguing and similar to what I plan to do, but the two of us are fundamentally different, and thus what lies in store for me is not a simple duplication of his ideas, but my perspective on lifestyle development. It is my hope to invest myself as thoroughly he has in improving the quality of life.

That said, here are a few of my intentions for the next twelve months:

1) Triathletics and Ultramarathon: A friend of mine convinced me last semester to do a half ironman, and right now, I'm not pissing myself. I have been able to do the running and swimming components for a while now, though I have never done them back to back, but the real critical link in the clustercuss is road cycling; I've been on a road bike for a total of ten minutes. In my entire life. But no matter, as my friend has finally lent me a road bike and the collegiate road season is fast approaching. Trial by fire, and according to the twenty e-mails I get every day from the other members of the road team, both my ass and my soul are in for an experience that will challenge the very concept of what it means to die. In addition to the preparation for the tri, I have recently been dazzled by another form of what others have deemed questionable suicide: the ultramarathon. After reading Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, my perceptions of how humans should behave relative to exercise, running in particular, has been completely changed. And my running distances have been changed to reflect that. Over the next semester, I will be attempting to run everywhere, from classes to grocery shopping, and all in fashion, with Raramuri Hurache running sandals, with a smile on my face and excitement in my heart. That's right; I'm making running fun, and you're all invited to join in. If you live within running distance of NC State's campus, I'm always looking for people to run with, or else you can just feel lazy as a grinning blur sails by on your left.

2)Diet: Those of you who know me are aware of my extensive experimentation with diet, but over the next year, I plan to take it to a whole new level. I dropped my college meal plan, and after my parents stopped shouting about how I'm going to waste away, I began to think of how I am going to approach diet this year. I've been working with a few concepts of late: veganism, fish diets, the 10% caloric protein factor, vegetarianism, amino acid balance, energizing foods, naturally occuring superfoods, and eating like a poor person. I want to continue implementing these concepts, and I just don't have control with the dining hall. Plus it was burning a hole in my pocket and promoting the habit of overeating that led to a 10lb weight gain in a single week after I injured my hip. So I had a 25lb sack of pinto beans sent to my dorm along with some bulk chia seed. I'm planning to be at the farmer's market oft, most likely running, to get my fresh veg in. And I will probably be doing some experimental cooking to keep the food interesting. Maybe I'll write a book called "The Healthy Homeless Diet." Actually, there would be excellent demand for that. Wow; sometimes I just come up with some good ideas. Go Garik.

3) Virtual Assistants (VA): This was brought on directly by Tim Ferriss who gave me a host of case studies from which to garner inspiration to place my own personal call to Your Man In India, a company that provides personal assistants for anyone, capable of accomplishing almost anything with a simple e-mail. It was only today that I started to consider how a personal assistant would be helpful and how economical it would be, given that I am a college student and not necessarily a typical 9 to 5 employee or self styled entrepreneur (though I also plan to change this, as you will read). But this is the beauty of the Great Experiment. Tim has a host of information about businessmen using assistants, but I will be a college student experimenting with using a VA, and thus will have a host of unique experiences. It will be interesting, as my current position in my lab is an hourly paid job, but my hope is that I will be much more effective by delegating all of the menial research I have to do, allowing me to streamline the development of my ideas and not having to spend hours sifting through articles on PubMed. I'll set myself the arbitrary deadline of acquiring a VA by February. This also brings me to a new outlook on my job...

4) Expectations from my lab work: If you've been reading my post from over the summer, you know that I have been chasing the golden dream of an undergraduate hoping to apply for national STEM grants: Scholarly Publication. And you may also have noted that no matter how close it has seemed, I always seem to miss it. I'll not sit for that (as a matter of fact, I'm not sitting much any more after reading the little case study at the end of Steven Levitt's Freakonomics). It is thus my goal, in the spirit of elimination, delegation, and allocation of my time to only the most important tasks, to define only goals which are on track to get some kind of publishable material out of my research. It dawned on me that Papers are more important to me than money, and why in hell should I be doing anything in the spirit of an hourly job, even if that is how I'm being paid?

5) Invention: I'm an inventor; Myers Briggs said so. And it holds true, as I come up with a lot of crazy stuff that, after a bit of refining, could represent marketable ideas. I've got a couple of ideas in the air right now, and over the next year, one of my studies will be the methods of successful inventors and what kind of options are out there for marketing your ideas. I really don't know the first thing about copyrighting or the patent process, or even how much you actually have to invent before you can own and market an idea. Thus I shall study, mainly through asking people who have done it, which brings me to...

6) Important and Unreachable people: Last year, I wanted to do this kind of personal dining series where I would have meals with people that would be of benefit to talk to. I did it a few times, but it was haphazard at most. This next year, I'm putting the test on my comfort with approaching people who could buy and sell me by not only reimplementing the dine with Garik series, but also my weekly challenge of contacting someone generally considered unreachable, such as a famous athlete, a political star, a prolific researcher, Hollywood celebrity, or revolutionary artist. And this is not necessarily with the idea that I would like these people personally, but more to build up a standard in which nothing is unreachable, not even the self made elite. And also to have a ridiculous network. I mean, wouldn't it be cool to tell people that you were on first name basis with the Presydent of Poland? Or had just offered your opinion on healthcare to Lil' Wayne?

7) Travel Writing: Once again, I'm making it my plan to find myself in potentially dangerous, sometimes explosive, and always enthralling situations in another country for a time this summer, and I'm actually going to write about it. One of the five things on my "to be" list for the next twelve months is to become a published travel author, and there's a lot to that; the wirting and traveling itself, marketing, public opinion, venues, publishers, and so on. I'll have to have my VAs do some research on college students that were able to capture the attention of large publications or publishing houses and have them become part of my contact list. People have just told me too many times that I tell some boss stories to let this go any longer.

8) Web Based Business: Once again in the spirit of Tim Ferriss's challenges, I am going to attempt to design a source of automated income to fuel my pension for excitement (Wing-suits and powerbocks cost a pretty penny, I can tell you that). I have been pestered to sell my "Whales Spy For Sweden" shirts online for a while now, and I am finally getting to that. I figure I'll purchase a web platform where I can get those shirts moving, play around with options on design, and start to understand how web businesses are really run and how they can be completely automated. I expect to do a lot of reading on the subject in my spare time. Or perhaps I'll just outsource the reading the reading and get a VA to give me the shortcuts. There you go, my boy!

And many more... but right now, I have overstepped my curfew, so you will have to be content with this glimpse into the next year of the Great experiment. I will continue to make blog postings on this site as I do things, and the prospect of failing my 8 readers will keep me committed to pursuit of the ultimate goal; Alexander's "Glorious Life". Eventually, I hope to set up my own website where, much like Ferriss, I can play around with more options than blogspot allows, but I shall make you aware when that is on the way. Expect my future posts to be more like my previous ones too; informative, witty, pandering... and generally guilty pleasures. I'm still waiting to hear suggestions for the Nat Geo Young Explorer's Grant that Brian Parham and I are undertaking; I had the cool idea of finding an African tribe that still practices the persistence hunt and running with them to kill kudu's with our bare hands and feet. These suggestions are welcome at garik@barefooted.com.

Cheers mates!

Scotland Rocks; so does cellulose, and Bear Grylls

Travel writing is a gas, but I haven't been abroad in a while and I feel like pulling back from the Memoria (name of a Russian novel sitting on my shelf at home that I've never read but bought because it looks ancient and I thought it would lend an humbling tone to my literary collection to have a grim tome of the steppes) and talking a bit about life in general, with perhaps a few asides here and there to the adventures I didn't mention from the UK. So, we really must press on...

Exam season has fallen upon North Carolina State University like it wasn't even exam season. I'm not afraid of my classes; I'm afraid of my research. I can't tell whether it was a mistake to join a $25 million grant project doing computational modeling of cellulose spinning transmembrane proteins because it seems that whenever I hit some roadblock trying to convince our modeling program that it should do something other than fill me with the intense desire to leap from Dr. Irving's tiny window or headbutt a couple of vertical pencils, some kind of breakthrough will occur, and fill me with an orgasmic satisfaction. Then, it happens all over again. Is that what stress is? Mood swings like Kirby in Supersmash bros.? I really screwed myself over taking it for credit though; it puts me on a deadline that isn't fixed but lives in an evil flux that just makes me want to do the work less. I should be getting paid, but I'm afraid to demand anything while a grade hangs by a poorly tied noose. I need to go see my chem professor from last year; wonderful guy, world traveler. Also, does all of his theoretical work by hand; no joke, he writes everything out. It's nuts, and I want to be able to do that. I need to either do something experimental with human tissue engineering, which would be choice, or get on hand written work. If anyone knows someone who is calculating protein folding on paper, let me know.

One thing that I do have to benefit form working with my current mentor is the possibility of a position in a Denmark lab over the end of the summer doing DNA films again. This work was mildly interesting and they say Denmark is pleasant, but more importantly, it puts me close to Scotland for a few weeks after summer school and before the programs starts, which is where I am planning my next, potentially disastrous adventure.

You see, I have this friend who is also a lover of the outdoors and we made a pact in the Park Scholar lounge (A pact that thus can't be broken) to apply for a National Geographic Young Explorer's Grant before we both turn 25 and then become such iconic adventurers that Nat Geo can't help but offer us a TV show. The best chance I think that I have of winning one of these is to apply under the exploration category for "Adventures of an Epic Nature," which means that I have to start building my explorer's resume. That's where Scotland comes in. I love everything there is to mention about this country, from the sheep to the haggis, from the sunrises off Arthur's Seat to the free shows on the strip (I tipped in Kuna), and I want to go back. I saw a Man vs. Wild episode where Bear Grylls stranded himself in the Scottish highlands where weather can go from foggy to blizzard to monsoon within the space of twenty minutes and the terrain is filled with Mordor-like rock formations and unforgiving sinkholes. Obviously, I cannot pass up this opportunity. I'm thinking about having my cousins direct me to a pilot who can drop me off in the middle of nowhere with my pack and a video camera, with the sole intent of making it to Glasgow before my luck runs out. If I make it back, I will have an epic chronicle of dedicated research in one of the world's most hostile environments that I feel would add some weight to my resume.

If anyone has some other suggestions as to how to augment my resume, I'm welcome to your ideas. Open cage diving with the Great Whites of Cape Hope? A trek along the old grizzly trails in Alaska? Trying to island hop the pacific rim in a kayak? All the while taking notes and filming of course. Whatever; throw it out there.

It's eleven O'clock. Bedtime. Go Scotland. You rock.

The Iron Fist of the Machine!

A week ago, I was running in the morning, and I was hit by a car. I had not been wearing my contacts and I came up to a guy that was pulling out of an intersecting road with the road I was abutting. I could have sworn that he had given me the conformatory glance and that I would be safe in doing my little jig in front of his beamer, but to my surprise, he began to pull out as I got in front of him. I slammed my fist on the front of his hood as I was thrown out into the street, and I could tell, after I got up, from his blurry expression that he was unnerved in the extreme; I felt bad. So, in strange form I mouthed an apology and kept on running albiet a bit slower as my legs had gotten kind of beat up. I will say though, there is nothing like getting hit by a car to pump you up for a 10 mile run before you've eaten breakfast.



There is a point to this. Getting hit by cars reminded me of the daily experiences of Polish drivers over the summer. While I was in Poznan, I was hit twice by vehicles, one going about 5 mph and the other probably about 15. At crosswalks. This flabbergasted me; I mean seriously? I'm crossing the street, and a car just straight up hits me? The crosswalk is clearly marked, there's no ambiguity here, and the driver felt his time was more important than my life. I was fairly pissed, but this seemed plausible in a country where everyone peels out, whether you are going a mile or 5 feet, in every kind of car you can imagine. One morning, I saw a minivan full of kids take off like a bullet out of a back alley, nearly hitting 12 pedestrians on the sidewalk, all of whom reacted to the sudden appearance of a fast moving 2 ton piece of metal full of screaming children with stoic indifference.



The ridiculousness of Polish driving left me in terible confusion, but I had the whole situation elucidated when I met my man Boris in Zadar. He told me that this kind of behavior on the road is a product of the post communist mentality that pervades eastern Europe. You see, when you are a human crossing the road, you are just an individual; you are essentially nothing. But as soon as you get behind the wheel of the car, you are part of something greater. From behind the turning cranks and blasting valves, seated at the controls of the gleaming, steel machine, you become a god. Who is anyone to cross in front of you when you are so much more powerful? Any fool unwise enough to cross in the crosswalk deserves to have his pitiful form tossed aside.

And perhaps this can represent one of the facets of my enthusiasm with being an American. I step into the road with abandon, for I know that, here, cars must stop. There are many things that Americans take for granted, but I feel like the individual's safety when crossing the street in a designated crossing area is something that everyone deserves. Perhaps it would serve our current administration well to concentrate on this aspect of Foreign relations. Maybe we could be more sucessful in improving our foreign image if America is touted as the land of right-of-way. Chortle.

Heady Brews

I was asked a couple of weeks back, "If you were a drink, what kind would you be?" If I was a drink, I would be a mix of blended frozen peaches, Croatian red wine, and virgin's tears.


While in Croatia, I drank the wine; it's their thing, and it really is rude to refuse. I came into my hosts town the first night and we were sitting on the stoop watching people go past. He offered me a glass of wine and, reluctant but not wanting to offend my host, I accepted. I must have drank about a sixth of the glass, maybe 25mLs when it started to affect me. Apparently, this is common; Croatian wine is unusually strong and native Hrvatskans take great pride in the local wines. My host had seen many people pass through, and the only ones that could keep up with his wine intake were the Irish.

He was getting hungry so we went to get him a pizza and as soon as I stood up, I was nearly knocked off my feet. Somehow we made it to a hotel where he ordered himself a pizza and a big jug of woda gazowana, which he made fun of me for saying. My host lived an interesting life as far as monetary systems go. Almost all of the interactions we had where money would usually have been exchanged were handled through an invisible tab that he explained to me as, "I help him, and he is my friend. Later, he sees that I need help, and he helps me. We are friends." I thought this was wonderful; I've had success with this in the states as far as becoming everyone's friend, but I have seen little coming back my way. That's ok. I like having friends. In any case, I was apparently gesturing wildly and exhuberently explaining the details of my research while he sat there and ate his pizza. I passed out that night after drinking about 6 liters of water and slept for 11 hours. When I woke up, my host told me that I had been stretched out on the floor like Superman and that it was the funniest reaction anyone has had to the heady fruit of the Croatian vine in his entire life.

I had a lot of misgivings about alcohol this summer, as I don't drink in the states on the principle that I want to have control over my body, but, as I mentioned before, there is a serious rudeness factor that one incurrs simply by refusing an offered alcoholic beverage. And I feel that, because I was young, it was even more expected of me. I refused drinks as much as I could, but there were times when I knew that in order to save myself from cultural suicide, I needed to imbibe. And this process brought me closer to understanding just what the phrase "drinking culture" means and how the stigma that has become associated with alcohol in America is relatively nonexistant in the span of my travels. It is simply what people do as habit, but it is nothing like saying habit in the context of an American. In a social drinking situation, it seems like we tend to rely on the drink as the stress reliever, while the social interactions can be demanding and dramatic. In Croatia, Poland, and especially Scotland, the drink provides background while the social interaction is the prime reason for gathering. Where a Scotsman would say that a football match is a chance to get together with friends and get pissed, an American would say that a football game is an excuse to get wasted with friends. Drink becomes the main focus of the event; people tend to take what and how much they drink more seriously.

And I recognize that my perspective here is that of a college student, and to be honest, I can't imagine that it is very representative of American drinkers as a whole. All I will say is that, where I was comfortable having a beer with my cousins in Scotland, it just feels strange to me when I hear stories from friends about parties they have been to. The first thing they will tell me is how wasted they were, as if there was something they had to prove. Eastern Europeans do drink a lot, don't get me wrong, but there is never anything to prove. It's just something they do.

If you were wondering, the peaches would be something light and delicious, the Croatian wine would be something profoundly affecting, and the virgin tears would be, I don't know, eccentric?Satchel next time. Get stoked.

The only word I recognized from Harry Potter und der Halb-Blut Prinz was Gluck!

There have only been a few times in my life where the danger that I had exposed myself to was, as judged by a random selection of the people I know, more than enough to leave me dead; perhaps, when there was a 90% or greater chance that I would not make it out alive. Thrice did this happen over my summer adventures, and thrice did I escape my end through great propensity for luck. It's funny; this reminds me of how Harry Potter described fighting dark wizards (I listen to the books on tape to help me get to sleep; I can quote from Rowling without effort. Geeky, I know, but Jim Dale, the narrator, gave me the ability to employ a British accent at will). He says, essentially, that preparation can only get you so far; in the end, it is simply a matter of luck. I don't disagree with this, but I would say that one's will to live is the driving force behind whatever domain in which God chooses to place luck.

I will tell you about one of these instances; the others, those are for me, but the event that I lived through on the morning of August 4th is too proposterous to keep to myself. I may go back and talk about previous adventures in Croatia at some point, but for now, I'll give the basic situation. At that point, I hd been in Croatia for nearly two weeks; I'd done a fair amount of shepherding, traveled to Mostar with two fellow couchsurfers, got off a bus in Sarajevo with no idea what I was doing and spent the two subsequent days smoking hookah with a Sweed and a Canadian on a balcony overlooking the old town, done more shepherding in Dubrovnik, climbed some mountains, and played to my heart's content in the ocean. Now, it was not all fun and games; I had lined up a guy in a small town to couchsurf with while I was in Poland, and had secured a place to sleep at his home for most of the three weeks. Or so I thought; through vrious changes that his life took quite rapidly on him, it transpired that I became a bit of a burden very quickly. After returing to his home from Dubrovnik to find him upset, I had to quickly devise a way to get out of his hair. I had planned on camping along the coast before I got there, and it seemed like the perfect time to get out of that tiny town where everyone knew what was up. My host drove me to a popular place to camp and chill about 20 km south of the town, and I told him that I would be there for about a week, and that I would come through the town and stay with him one more night before I left for the north. I don't think he was even paying attention to that; he drove off and I was left on my own.

After some exploration, I found a small island about a sixth of a mile off land, and was able to bundle up my pack in a convienently discarded tarp and float all of my gear out to the island where I set up my home for the next week. I spent 5 days living off what I could find and catch, most of which consisted of squids and sea urchins. I would not reccommend eating sea urchins; not good for one's health. In my physical journal, I believe that I wrote, "Never, in the history of mankind, has anyone subjected themselves to the appaling sanitary conditions to which I have now sunk." It is because of this that I will never eat squids again. It is also because of this that I have had such little regard for the sanitary protocol of the majority of Americans; things like washing one's hands before eating and using a spoon to get raisins out of a shared bag in order to prevent the spread of swine flu are still taking time for me to get used to. I'm living under the assumption that if I did not die from some horrible disease whilst on the island, there is no germ, virus, or fungus that will ever be able to harm me again.

And so it came to the morning of that 6th day of seclusion, and I woke to a desperate hunger. I had discovered a sun cherry tree on the other side of the island a couple of days back, and was contemplating heding over and grabbing some breakfast. There was also the option of getting into the blackberries, but I had learned fairly quickly that wild blackberries are the most powerful laxitive in existance (I could discribe how I discovered this. Be thankful I am not). I unzipped my tent and stepped out into the little patch of small rocks that I had designated as my cooking area. I did my best to try to shoo away the yellow jackets that had been hanging around since my first meal at the beginning of the week. They got there before the sun rose every morning, and at first I was worried about getting stung, then I was worried about them crawling on my food, then I was worried that I might accidentally eat one that had gotten itself stuck to a piece of food. Then I just didn't worry. The air was crisp and the flies had not yet come, so all I could hear was the crashing of the waves in the bay behind me. (Swich to present tense for dramatic emphasis). I face the sun to the east and let the rays wash over my face so as to ensure that I come back from Croatia with some kind of tan. It feels good to have warmth on my body again; it's incrediblly relaxing after sleeping in a tent pitched over a bed of reeds that is supposed to serve as a rudimentary thermarest. I drink in the glory of a beautiful sunny Croatian day for a few more seconds, and then turn to the West to see a gigantic cyclone heading straight for me.

What followed was almost entirely mechanical. I had no fly on my tent, so my first thought was to stormproof the situation. I attached the goretex material to the half of my tent that was mesh and shifted four 70 pound boulders so that they sat on the corners of my rather flimsy looking shelter. I gathered all of my belongings and spread them out over the floor, adding several more boulders for good measure. After taking one more look towards appoaching doom, I got into the tent, zipped up and layed spread eagle across the pile. There was easily a good 250 lbs in that tent, but when the storm hit a few minutes later, I was nearly blown straight into the ocean. After about 30 minutes of desperately trying to keep the tent from going airborne, the gale winds and hammering rain broke almost instantly, and the sun popped out as if astonished that I wasn't out enjoying it's warmth. I was fairly pissed; my stuff was soaked from rain that had been blown straight under the fly and into the bottom of the tent, and all of the contraptions that I had set up to make life easier were either destroyed or gone. A couple of trees had fallen over, and that scared me. If I had been hit by a tree, I could have been stuck out there with no help and no one who knew where I was. My host knew that I was in the area, but I don't think he cared much about me at that point; I was on my own. I considered myself incredibly lucky to have survived the storm with everything intact, but I did not find out just how lucky I actually was until my return to my hosts town the next day.

After a 20km attempt to hitchhike back (To be fair, a pair of really nice Russians showed up with 1 km left to go), I came back into town to find that nerly everyone was gone. I asked where everyone was and found that they had all gon to insurance claims adjusters. I passed through, I noticed that several homes had large holes, missing windows, and a few that had caved in sections. Cars had plastic over the windows and all of the roofs were peppered with the exact same pattern of stippled dents. It was like I had left a normal town and come back to a war zone.

As it transpired, the cyclone had not hit the bay I was staying in directly, but it had hit my host's town, which was only 2 km north of where I was in costal distance. And this funnel of death wasn't just carrying water; it brought a rain of grapefruit sized ice that had completely destroyed the town; cars, homes, all windows, all destroyed. A guy had gone out to grab something and his arm had been broken by a chunk of ice nearly as large as some of the rocks I had used to weight down my tent. Needless to say, if the cyclone had hit shore even 1 more km south, the ice would have caught me completely unprepared, would have destroyed my tent, and most likely left me paralyzed and beyond the help of anyone. It was Croatia's worst storm in 33 years; 30 minutes of hell on earth.

If you do not have a sense of surprise that I can still count myself among the living, than you have lost touch with life and I would reccommend trying my Croatian Scampi sauce (I'll credit Boris with teaching me how to make that). My own experience was quite scary and frought with enough danger to be lethal, but by some magical stroke of luck, I once again avoided a disaster that would have been certain death. Just to clarify, I did not intentionally put myself in harm's way, but I was really asking for it. And thus, since I am allowed to delude myself into thinking my opinion matters, there are a few lessons here: 1) Be prepared for anything, even a tempest of ice bricks falling from the sky, 2) Make sure someone who cares about you knows where you are, otherwise no one will ever find your humorous journal entries, and 3) Sheep are simple; never leave their sides.

The next day I got on a bus and used my iPod for the first time in a month as I headed north. It was like citric acid was being poured into my crainial cavity; I was amped. By the time I hit Split, I was ready for my mext quest: The Search for the Satch (European Manpurse) of DOOM!

A little Appeteaser of Adventure: ZOMBIES!

Well, well, well... thought you'd never hear from me again, did you? Thought that I might succeed in getting myself imprisoned on some minor offense in an obscure region that doesn't appear on google maps? Convinced I might end up eaten by a Great White at the bottom of the world? Believed that I would never leave the fruit groves? Well, you were mistaken. This Time. I still have plenty of life to live.

The last time you heard from me, I was making my way from Poznan towards Croatia, or Hrvatska as they say it, for some mad couchsurfing and spectacular shepherding. Now, I am back in the states, back in school, and back in the same dorm, the same room, same RA, and living with the same roommate. It's like everything around me is shifiting in a constant state of flux, but a small bubble floats from my frame, eternally preserving what works. Thinking back, I could not have possibly predicted the meanderings that my 4 or so weeks on my own forced me to take, and I've told the stories (Though only a few of them; my faithful readers will be treated to much more revealing versions) to many who felt that they would have been unblievable if told by anyone else. Even I don't quite believe all of the things that happened, but, in the words of someone I came across while reading Neil Gaiman, "Always trust the story, never the storyteller."

I think the way I'll handle this is to publish small bits of my adventure, both the ups and the downs, at intermittent intervals in order to keep you all wanting more (and possibly buying my book; you know, the one I'm going to write). I'll start with Germany.

I only spent two days in the land of Wienersnichzel (I have no idea how to spell that), but Frankfurt was so chill and pleasant, for the most part, that even with all the crap that befell my stay, I wish I could have stayed there longer. I parted from JP and Jonathan in the airport after some complex manuvering to get all of Jonathan's weighty baggage home (a move that resulted in them missing their flights) and proceeded to use the S Bhan with a syste of guess and check. Granted, it wasn't very hard to deduce where I was going to; I'm good at figuring out stuff like that and I love the band Rammstein, so I wasn't completely thrown by the Greman language. The advert for the hostel I was staying at mentioned that the location was culturally interesting, but stepping out of the station with a gigantic backpack and finding myself smack in the middle of Frankfurt's red light district was a bit disconcerting. It took me a while to find the street in question and even longer to convince the Russian bouncers that I wasn't interested in a lap dance, but I found my way to the best hostel I think I've ever stayed in. Wish I remembered the name, but I wouldn't really reccommend it simply due to the nature of the surrounding alleyways.

After unpacking, I stepped through the front door of my hostel with the plan to walk along the wide river with some pleasant mood music. I walked right into a hoarde of zombies. A parade of the undead was filing slowly through the streets of Frankfurt, drawing with them a string of tourists with their cameras, wildly snapping photos. Every once in a while, one of the zombies would savage one of them, and the rest would all run excitedly to capture the photo op. At one point, a small group of dead females attempted to "rough me up", but I managed to escape with my life and wallet intact.

I stuck with the parade for a while and split off at the mall to explore, but really, a mall in Germany is just like a mall in the US; just more tourist crap with "Germany" and "Bier" featured prominently. I left the establishment to try to find grocery store to get some eats, but they were few and far between in that part of town. Stumbing into a theatre, I ended up purchasing a ticket for Harry Potter und der Halb Blut Prinz, which I was only able to follow because I had the name of the incantations and potions memorized from my extensive listening to the books on CD, as read by that most magical of vocalist actors, Jim Dale. I retired to my room around 1:00, and you can imagine what I faced trying to get through the local "shops" to my hostel. I was quite pleased to be in a bed that night.

The next day was fairly uneventful. Actually, a very scary thing happened, but I am going to leave that out. Maybe one day. But for the most part, I did what I thought I was going to do earlier, and took a long walk by the riverside. Frankfurt really is a beautiful city, and my Dad tells me that it pales in comparison with the rest of the country. The people are friendly, there are plenty of open air theatres showing alien movies from the 60s, the dark bread is thick and cheap, I assume the bier is good (I didn't actually have any beer in Germany! What a jest!), the smells and sounds of juicy, stomach-vicing saussage pervades the air, and the Chinese resturants are open until 12:00.

I love Ryanair for the prices; I flew for 20 euro, or something like that. But the locations of their airports leave much to be desired. I took a 6:00 bus to the airport that is not actually in Frankfurt, but 2 hours away in a small town famous for it's proximity to something toxic. I really did get what I paid for.

But at least I made it on the plane, and that is where I leave you for now, salivating to hear what happened once I touched down in Zadar, in one of the few airports in the world that actually uses the highway as a taxi surface for the planes. By the way, I really appreciate everyone reading this. It gives me a sense of fulfillment that my chronicles are passing through more than just my own head. Cheers.