It’s Just Poison…

Back at the hostel, we ate out food, hung out, and then somewhere around 3am I passed out. That’s 8pm on Friday NYC time. I just pulled a crazy travel in 36 hours that put me in three different continents.
.: Adam

Last weekend was another impromptu weekend travel for me. This time, I convinced a couple friends of mine to join me (Mike, Alison, and Marke). The plan was simple: we meet up at 5:30pm in Chinatown to catch a $10 bus ride to Philadelphia, walk to the tattoo convention, meet friends, sleep, come back. Oh, and to party the entire time =)

That was also the fullest extent of our plans. Who was going to be there, where it was, what was going on, where we were going to sleep, and the how/when we were going to get home was all up in the air. I’m used to this, but I wasn’t sure how well my friends were going to take it. I just kept telling them, “don’t worry, I have it all planned out” Hahahaha!

Mike and I met up ahead of time to hit up J&R (an electronics store) to get some new toys for our cameras. He picked up a lens filter and I grabbed a new speed-flash, lens filter, and a Hi-Fi card. The Hi-Fi card is pretty sweet. It’s an SD RAM card for cameras and the such that has a built in WiFi antenna and firmware, so when you take a photo, it’ll automatically connect to a WiFi network and upload the photo to a computer on the network or the Internet. PIMP! I was pretty eager to try it out, but that’s when it hit me…. FUCK! My point-n-click camera was in my leather jacket that just got stolen! Dammit dammit dammit!

ok… breath…

After hitting up J&R we grabbed some food then headed back to my place. We packed our things then jumped in a cab to Chinatown.

WAIT! I almost forgot the most importat part! FIRST, we filled our flasks with Jager, then did a couple shots to ensure an unsober state, THEN we got in a cab to Chinatown =)

Alison met us at the bus stop about five minutes after we got there. Marke was MIA. I gave him a ring and he said he was running late, so we bought tickets for the 6:30 bus. What an ordeal that was. Two little chinese women were trying to sell us the tickets on the street, both ringing me up for 4 tickets and screaming at me in what I think, THEY thought was english, but sounded more like a cat getting run over slowly. If you ever see two elderly chinese women fight for a sale on the street, it’s quite an entertaining site. Especially when you have absolutly no clue what’s going on.

Somehow, I got the tickets (i think). I got a piece of paper with some letters and numbers on it. She got $40. We’ll find out later if the bus driver likes my piece of paper with letters and numbers! But for now, we have time to kill, so on to the bar! Fontana’s (a kind of rock’n'roll bar) was just down the street. Perfect! We had a couple tasty beverages there until Marke showed up, then headed back to the bus stop and boarded the bus.

I won’t get into all the shenanigans that took place on the bus, but the gist of it is that we now had a gang sign, we video taped most of it (Alison even followed mike to the bathroom at one point), laughed our asses off pretty much the entire way, and irritated probably everyone on the bus…a lot =)

We arrived in Philly sometime around 9ish and then walked a few blocks to the hotel where the convention was being held. We bought our wristbands to get in, and ran almost immediately into a friend of mine running a booth with some third-reich-esqu curtains (inside joke . She let us drop our stuff down there while we ran around (read: went to the bar).

Mike and I did take a little bit of time wondering the convention area taking photos, and saw a lot … seriously … a lot of semi-nekkid girls. I’m not sure if it’s a Philly thing or what, but we weren’t complaining.

For me, the best part about the convention were the shows. Enigma was there with his show, Disgraceland was there tearing it up, and even the Rites of Passage crew were there doing some suspension performances. The two best (in my mind), were the single-hook suspension, and the single-knee suspension. The chicks knee looked like a scene out of Hellraiser. You know, a mangled mess of flesh and steel… put in a situation where your body is confused as to whether or not it’s turned on or repulsed. Good times!

When the convention was over, Murphy’s law came put on a show. Surprise! Apparently they attempted to do a flesh-pull WHILE the show was going on. I didn’t see anything though… I was too busy running around the pit like a crazy man. Ton’s of fun!

We all know what’s next… food! And what do you eat in Philly? Cheesesteaks! We all jumped in a cab and headed to Gino’s cheesesteaks. Marke and I each got two =). I was not so smart in the sense that I thought it would be a good idea to leave my coat back at the convention. So I’m standing around in the snow fall and bitter winds of Philly in a hoodie and sweat. (Somehow, I didn’t get sick either)

We jumped in a cab and headed back to the convention to try and figure out where we were going to sleep. I tried getting ahold of my friends of the freakshow performance, but to no avail. We headed up to my friend Rachel’s room to see who was all there and probably chill with some people. If I know her, she’d probably invited everyone up for after-hours.

And I was right =). Her room was packed with people all lounging around, laughing and having a good time. Looks like we found the place to be! Jimmy from Texas was also there. He saved the evening with some “movies” that seemed to have cleared out the room. Leaving us to crash out. Marke just stayed passed out on the floor, Alison an I passed out in the one bed, Jimmy took the other bed, and mike slept on some cushions on the floor. I don’t think Mike trusted Jimmy too much =)

The next morning, we got up around 11am, and headed downstairs. Marke wanted to get a couple micro-dermals done by Jimmy before we left. The kicker is that none of us wanted to pay the $20 to get back into the convention the next day. So, I did a little smooth-talking / jedi mind tricks to sneak myself past security and meet up with Jimmy at the booth. Turns out, he was out of dermal punches, so he was passing the job off to someone else that could do it with needles. But she wouldn’t be available for a couple hours. Mike, Marke, and Alison all got stopped at the door, so I just told Jimmy that we’d come back later and headed back outside.

To kill time, we all walked to the Mütter Museum. It’s an amazing, one-of-a-kind museum of human medical oddities. I’ve been there before, but I knew that my friends would like it, so we went for a little field trip.

On the way back, we stopped at Jimmy John’s for lunch (mmmmmm….), then continued our walk to the hotel.

When we arrived I though I heard a siren going off. Sure enough, the entire hotel was being evacuated! Perfect timing. We hung around outside with everyone while the firemen cleared out the building and seemed to have determined that it was a false alarm. We all filed back into the building and headed upstairs to the convention area.

This time, I did a little coaching and used some old-school State Theater tricks to sneak everyone (including myself) into the convention =) Boo-yah!

Oh, and there was a huge biker fight. Someone broke a broomstick over another dude. Lots of punching, then what looked like about a hundred cops showed up with batons to end it. Yadda, yadda, yadda…

Back to the booth. Marke got two micro-dermals done (one on his chin, and another on his neck) and I got to see “Penguin” get his wrists / elbows / shoulders scarred. He doesn’t have any arms, so I’m not sure what to technically call that area. The cuts were made to look like stitches, so that he can tell everyone that he was bad as a kid and his parents had his arms cut off and hands reattached to his torso. Hahahaha! Too funny =)

Alison bought a pair of some seriously intricate earrings from Jimmy. Hand-carved skulls with snakes made from wild boar tusk. Check out Demonic Organics. Jimmy makes some of the most amazing jewelry! We then said our goodbyes and our thank-you’s to our friends there and headed back to the bus stop.

We hit up a Wawa (like a 7-11) for some provisions, then boarded the bus.

The trip home was only an hour and a half, so we made it into the city around 6:30pm.

24 hours to the dot, from when we left, we had returned. Alison headed home to get ready to go to work (she bartends at Double Down) and Mike, Marke and I headed the other direction. Down to three.

Mike then jumped in a cab, and headed home. Down to two.

Marke and I then stopped in a bar to visit our friend Ru that was bartending then. We all did a shot (i think about half the bar). Marke wanted to stay and hang out, but I had to head home to pack. I was supposed to be on a flight at 6am out of Newark. Had to get ready… Down to one.

I walked the rest of the way home with a pit-stop at Identity to say wassup to my friend Lawrence, and make sure a certain chick got a message, then walked the rest of the way home.

I dropped my bags and plopped my ass on the couch around 8pm.

The trip was over.

Shizzle.

=)

.: Adam

Day 4. The last day of the Milan Tattoo Convention. I had been sick the past two days, and I really wanted to get over it, so I slept in again. I woke up sometime around 1pm. I felt fine, until I stood up. It’s weird how a change in position can also make you go from “ok” to “death-like”.

I jumped in the shower and just stood there for a while, trying to wake up and gear myself for another day. Out of the shower, I donned some apparel, grabbed my camera, downed a shot of Jager for health, and headed downstairs.

When I first entered the convention center, I though everything was going to be better. It didn’t seem as hot, or as crowded. About ten seconds of time cleared up that misconception =). Amazingly, unlike US conventions, Sunday was the most busy day of the entire weekend, and therefore the hottest inside. It was like a rock concert. Everyone all pressed up against each other, unable to really move, and hard to breath. Just dead air.

That’s when I knew I would only be able to take a brief amount of time of this. First stop, the food court thing in room 3. I needed to get some food. The line there was long, but went rather quickly. I opted for the pasta again. I figure it’s the safe bet =)

I took my food back to the Tribulation book to sit and hang out while I ate my lunch. Jeremiah Barba was getting tattooed today, so his station was available for me to chill at. After I finished my lunch, opted just to stay there. There were too many people and it was too hot to do any walking around. I figured, I would just take peoples photo’s as they walked by.

I’m glad that I did stick around, because [@]Grundstuck[/@] and [@]VenusInFur[/@] showed up with their awesome new shirts that they nabbed from the day before =). It was cool hanging out with them and the couple others there for a while. Nice people =)

About an hour or so later, they announced that they were going to begin the tattoo contests up on the main stage. I didn’t want to miss out on that, because I figured this would be the best way to get shots of a lot of great tattoo work, and not have to hunt all over the convention to get it. (I’m always trying to figure out the best way to do something with as minimal work as possible =)

Let the contests begin!

The first section was for best back piece. There were a lot of great tattoos being shown off. The best part was that I snuck myself on stage and got to be part of the coverage area. This meant that after the judges and audience looked at the tattoo, they would come over to where we were just so that we could take photos of them. That was awesome. I didn’t have to move more than ten feet, and I got the best shots possible of the work.

After the judging and awards, the convention pretty much died. Stations begin wrapping up, and booths were starting to empty out. I helped clean up a couple of my friends stations and then packed up my stuffs and headed to the room to check out my shots from earlier. On my way out of the convention center, I noticed the guy running the Max Signorello Tattoo Supply booth wearing a Skully shirt. I remembered him from the previous conference. His english was about as good as my italian, so we didn’t talk long, but shook hands and traded smiles. Awesome guy!

I only had an hour to check out my stuff before I was to meet everyone downstairs to head out for our final dinner in Milan. Tonight we decided to head out into the city via taxi and go out to a really nice restaurant and splurge with some great wine. The group this evening would be [@]DanMarshall[/@], his wife, [@]Liorcifer[/@], his wife, Ethan Morgan, Robert Hernandez, Jeremiah Barba, his girlfriend, and myself.

The taxis let us off a little ways away from the place because it was along the canals, so we had to walk a ways to get there. It was really cold that night, but the area of the city we were in was beautiful. I snapped a couple photos of the nightlife, and then we all had a great meal.

Enjoying a great authentic meal with friends from all around the world in a foreign country is by far one of my most favorite things ever. There isn’t anything like that feeling. It’s like a family reunion of long lost friends. It just makes everything taste that much better, and the conversations that much more entertaining.

I can’t wait until I get to do this again in Munich at the end of March. If anyone here wants to join in, you’re more than welcome, and I look forward to meeting more of you and having amazing and memorable experiences with you, my friends!

If you want to see more photos of the tattoos that were in the contests, Click here to view this blog on BodyMod.org

.: Adam

I woke up at 9am on the dot and felt a lot better than the night before. I jumped in the shower, sprayed on my deodorant (that’s important to note because I couldn’t find gel anywhere. I’ve never used spray before and I’m not a fan…), through on my leather pants, and added a couple layers to my top. On my way out the door, I received a text from Dan telling me that he was downstairs and had a taxi ready.

Dan, his wife, and I all got in the taxi and headed to a local flea market / vintage clothing store area of Milan. Dan’s wife wanted to do some shopping, so we dropper her off there, then we got into the Metro and headed uptown to the cemetery.

Exiting the metro, we used our natural innate sense of direction (obviously because we’re men =), to guide us to the cemetery. We even used the angle of the sun to determine time and direction. We were like friggin’ boy scouts. Just heavily tattooed, freaky looking, wearing black leather boy scouts =).

We came to the cemetery without a single wrong turn (because it was a straight line =). Again there was a no photography sign outside, but that was slightly ignored. Once stepping foot inside, there was no was not to take photos of these graves. They were the most amazing, over-the-top, massive, and decadent grave sites that I have ever seen. There wasn’t a single regular grave stone. Each one has their own bronze stature, or hand carved granite design. Those were the smaller ones. The more extravagant ones looked like miniature churches getting three or four stories high! Now most of these were family plots, or for couples. But there was one massive churchy-tomb thing that was for just one girl that had recently died. The amount of money people pour into the afterlife is amazing!

A lot of the statues were very depressing, but amazing pieces of art. Others just deserved hoaky commentary. I think we found sky diving jesus, new age jesus, Tim Burton jesus, High-Five Moses, and a few others that were kind of entertaining. There were two that really stuck out as modern pieces of art. They were very mechanical in nature. What made them even cooler was that they were made in the 1960’s. The designs of these rival any modern bio-mechanical art that’s been made in the last 20 years. On top of that, they’re grave markers!

There was one tomb that was just perplexing and gave almost no information to it’s meaning. It was an inclosure about thirty feet high and ten feet deep. It had astrological-like symbols and mathematical signs all over it. They looked more like a new type of math equation, or crop circle than anything I have seen before. There wasn’t even a handle to open the doors, just four finger holes carved into the stone. Wanting more answers, we found a window on the backside of it. Again, making no sense, as the back was surrounded by bushes and trees. No practical use for the window. Peering inside, we could just barely make out some gold text in a ring around the door. It was all in italian, so we didn’t know what it said, but one of the words was “occult”. This was a story I really wanted to know the end of, but will never get. Kind of like a song that’s stuck in your head. WHAT IS IT?!

The last area of the cemetery that we check out was back by the entrance, the burial ground for the Jews. They had their own walled off corner. Very walled off. Somewhere around 20+ feet high and ten feet thick. I wonder who wanted it that way, the christians or the jews? There were some large plots like in the rest of the cemetery, but nothing like what the christians were doing. Instead of mourning mother bronze statues, or granite crucifixes, their statues were all Menorahs. There was one of a Rabbi or something. I’m not too versed in judaism to know for sure.

It was now 1pm and time to grab some lunch then head back to the convention. It opened at 2pm and I wanted to get as much coverage as possible today. I also wanted to give away the rest of my shirts. So after a couple slices of pizza, we jumped back onto the Metro. Dan met back up with his wife to spend the day sight-seeing, and I continued on to the hotel.

First thing’s first, drop off all my crap in the hotel room and put on a tank top. I needed to keep as cool as possible. I was starting to feel *meh* again…

When opened the doors to the convention I was shocked by the amount of people. I didn’t think it was possible, but it looked like there were even more people here today. To make sure all the shirts went, this time I put them up on the table. The crazy pope shirt disappeared almost immediately! I was even getting request for them. Apparently the shirt was a hit with the crowd. Lesson learned, bring more shirts and sell them =)

Almost immediately I ran into [@]Groundstruck[/@] and his friends. We chatted for a minute, but I had to run up to the room real quick, so I told him to come by the Tribulation booth later and we I’ll be available to hang out.

Today I spent trying to cover more of the people that were at the convention than the artists. A lot of the people that came to this convention had great work, and were more than willing to show it off. I also walked around and tried to get a lot of shots of work-in-progress of all the artists. Tim wound up working on a girl from the UK’s chest while I was there, so I grabbed a couple shots of it. The red skull in the center of her chest really screams. Amazing work.

Speaking of works-in-progress and recently finished tattoos, everyone please listen to me. WRAP THAT SHIT UP WHEN YOU’RE DONE! I can’t believe how many people that just finished their tattoo, or were in the middle of one going out for a smoke break were walking around with a completely uncovered blood oozing mess. Not only is that disgusting as all hell, but dangerous to yourself and everyone around you. The same goes for you if you just had your hand tattooed, no, I don’t want to shake your hand. New tattoo = open wound. Treat it like one. Ech!

OK… rant over. Back to the convention. About half way through the day, the first performance took place, it was a couple girls on stage being airbrushed by a few guys. I don’t think there was anyone there that didn’t mind staring at a cute chick on stage in a bikini x2 =).

After a while of watching that, I went around to get some more photos of people at the convention and having a good time with their friends. That’s when I ran into my Slovenian friends from the last convention here in Milan a couple weeks ago! How cool is that? We chatted it up for a while and got to hang out for a bit before they had to go. Turns out, they carpooled and drove here from Slovenia. Took them a little over 5 hours. That didn’t seem too bad to me, but when they put it into perspective for me, it made more sense. To drive from one end of their country to the other it only takes 2 hours. That’s just crazy! To think you can cross a country in a matter of hours is mind-blowing. About six and a half years ago I drove from Colorado to NYC and it took me two days! Attention to all Europeans! This is why most Americans “don’t leave their country”. You guys only have to drive a couple hours, we have to fly across an ocean =).

While I was chilling at the Tribulation booth, Tim finished up a tattoo on a girl that came down to get her chest tattooed. The finished product was amazing. There was some black and grey flora surrounding a very prominent red skull. As amazing as it was, that was nothing to the extremely simplistic tattoo of lettering on the back of her head that read: “SLAYER” !! This has to be one of the coolest girls EVER! Her boyfriend (whom was also there is is as equally cool) is damn lucky =)

A little bit later, the Miss Tattooed Pinup 2009 contest finalist had begun. Turns out that a friend of [@]Groundstruck[/@] was one of the finalists. It was down to the final four contestants and it looked like it was going to be a close close call. There were four judges, one of which was the winner from last year. After a couple presentations by each contestant they began the judging. Please keep in mind that I’m kind of guessing on what was really going on here. I don’t speak too much italian =).

In fourth place, was the girl in the black dress. In third place, was the girl in the white dress. In second place, was the girl i the pink dress. Which leaves, our new Miss Tattooed Pinup 2009 the girl in the blue sailor outfit, Groundstruck’s friend =) Yay!

I wandered around the the rooms some more and checked out a few of the merch stands. I kept coming back to this one both that had some amazing jewelry, Micromutazioni (www.Micromutazioni.com). I bought a bracelet from the during the last convention, and wanted to buy a bunch of other stuff, but alas… i was broke, so I just drooled on the cases for a while =)

I took a few more photos of some interesting people and tattoos around the convention, then headed back up to my room to transfer everything to my computer and to get ready for dinner. I had about ten minutes to meet up everyone in the hotel restaurant. We decided to play it simple tonight.

When I got back downstairs, everyone was already there and was just about to be seated. Tonight dinner was with Tim Kern, Robert Hernandez, Ethan Morgan, Jeremiah Barba, and his girlfriend. We all shared a couple…umm… maybe a few =) bottles of wine and and some appetizers before having to beg to order dinner. Point blank, the service here SUCKED. The food was amazing, and as long as we had wine, we let them keep being dicks. We just made fun of them when they weren’t around =). The choice main course was the Veal Risotto. It was mmmmmmmm….. We all decided that it was best to skip dessert and just head right to the bar to pick up where the wine left off. It was close to midnight when we hit up the bar, and by that point everyone was already having a grand old time. I thankfully got my drink order in before the bartender (if you want to call him that) got his ass handed to him by another guy. I have no idea what the dialog was, but I got my drinks, so I just moseyed on by.

This cold that I’ve been fighting all day seemed to be put on hold from the alcohol, well at least it felt that way. I even got Tim to give me an interview on tape. I’d never “interviewed” anyone and it felt pretty weird. It turned out to be a lot of fun, and a good learning experience for myself. I’m trying to edit and get the thing ready to post that next.

Once the interview was done, I had two options. I could either head back down to the bar and party it up, or be lame and go to sleep and try to overcome this cold. I choose to be lame and pass out early and sleep in late. …. lame!

.: Adam

Friday the 13th, the first day of the tattoo convention.

Tim and I woke up around nine in the morning so that we could hit up the continental breakfast in the hotel. Unlike in American hotels, the continental breakfast in Italy is a full on buffet. I think I had two plates of sausage, eggs, bacon, and fruit. They had a whole other table full of baked goods and other breakfast items, but I was playing it simple and keeping it down to the basics.

Sometime around 10am, we finished up and headed back up to the room. The convention wasn’t to open it’s doors until 2pm, so I had a good four hours to kill and really wanted to go back out and explore the city some more. This time with my good camera. Tim had to work on a drawing for his first customer and prepare the booth so he stayed back.

I grabbed my camera, ipod, sun glasses, my jacket and headed to the metro (subway). It was a little warmer out than the previous day, and not a cloud in the sky. I purchased my ticket and headed back to the city center to re-trace some of my steps from yesterday. I wanted to get a better lock at everything, and get some better photos. The iPhone is nice and all, but will never substitute for a decent camera.

I exited the metro and headed towards the castle. I really didn’t get a good tour of the place, and there were a couple other things around that I wanted to check out that I missed yesterday. This time when I got to the castle I opted to head north a bit first. I cut through the carnival area (yes, there was a traveling carnival surrounding the park next to it), and head to an old arena that is still being used today for races and events. It’s not as big as the colosseum in Rome, but it’s still “ruin” old.

From the arena, I headed back to the castle to check out more inside. Looks like the cops did a fresh sweep of clearing out the irritating panhandling vendors of crap and knockoffs, because I didn’t see a single one this time.

Now that I was more familiar with the city, I knew how to get directly to the Duomo. A couple people told me yesterday that you can get on top of the building and walk around the roof off it, and that the inside was also open for tourists. Man, I hate that word…tourist. To me a tourist is someone that plans out their whole trip down to the hour, carries around a fanny pack, and doesn’t even attempt to think that they’re in someone else’s home. I hate tourists. They have no concept of where they’re going or where they’ve been. I am a traveler. I prefer to show up, strap on my boots, plug in my iPod, and walk around the city until I feel like I can’t walk any more. I want to see what’s down the back alleys. I want to find a local pub and share a pint with the locals. I want to actually experience where I am and appreciate it for what it is to it’s greatest extent.

Sorry… got a little carried away there =).

So, onto the Duomo! On the way there, I took a little detour to see a statue of Leonardo Di Vinci that a friend told me about that was on the way. I thought it was pretty impressive for a city / country to recognize an artist and show such a great tribute to him. Most of the statues I have ever seen are dedicated to war, government, or religion (I guess they’re all synonymous in a way), but to have one dedicated to a man of artistic importance seems times ahead.

After snapping a couple photos of people having their lunch a the feet of this inspiring man, I headed through the mall thing and around the corner to the Duomo. Even though I had already seen it the day before, it was still shocking to come upon it. The marble is such a bright white with the sun shining on it, and all the open space around it just makes it stand out that much more. With all the dull tones surrounding it, the church almost seems to glow.

I took a few photos of the church, then headed towards it to go inside and see if the interior was as impressive as the exterior. As I approached the church, the detail didn’t fade. It actually got even more intricate the closer I got. The massive doors were all cast in solid bronze, and had some of the most ornate detailing that I have ever seen in a piece of that time, or any really. You could put your face right up to the door and see what seemed like an endless amount of detail to each seen being represented in all of the panels that told a story.

There were a couple military men guarding the entrance that gave me a minor pat down and a wave of a metal detector. I’m guessing that it was just a formality, because all the metal I was wear lit that thing up like a christmas tree, and they just waved me past. I guess I don’t look like someone that wants to blow up a church =)

Once I stepped inside, it took my eyes a few minutes to adjust to the dark lighting inside. Once it did, I stood motionless for a minute in awe just taking in the massiveness of the space inside. I should have anticipated that the inside would be equally extravagant, but I was again caught off guard. I mean, this was impressive as all hell given todays technological and architectural advances, but this place was build somewhere around 500 years ago! This place was standing before Columbus even set foot in North America. That kind of thinking just blows my mind. Her I am all impressed that I can build a bar in my basement with the help of power tools and some planks of wood. I wouldn’t even know where to begin on putting something this massive together with the tools they had then. Just awesome!

There was a sign outside that said photo’s weren’t allowed inside, but I figure that as long as I didn’t use a flash, I wouldn’t be bothering anyone. This place was so huge and vast inside, that a flash would have only made my photos look like crap anyway. I love seeing people take pictures with a flash in huge dark areas. Then they wonder why they can’t see anything in the pictures…hehe. Sorry, I digress…

I took a lot of photos of all the different areas of the inside of the Duomo, and wondered towards the back of the church were I saw a stature that was so creepy. It was a statue of a man carrying his skin. Think Hellraiser. Turns out, it was a statue of a martyr / priest that was flayed alive! Man, you gotta leave it to Christianity… zombies, cannibalism, and methods of torture / execution; they’ve created the best!

Just past the flayed priest was a little stairway downstairs. I wasn’t sure if were were allowed down or not, but I figured it was worth checking out. Glad I did. Turns out to be a tomb of a cardinal from the mid 1500’s! There was another room that had a gold chest locked away in a cage, but there wasn’t a sign, and it was too dark to really see anything else. I’ll have to do some research later and figure it out.

Back upstairs I snapped a couple more photos of the ornate stained glass windows and then exited on the side of the building. Right around the corner was an elevator that takes your to the top of the church for eight euros. Totally worth it.

The entire buildings outside is done with hand-carved marble. There was a little pathway that lead you around the edge of the roof, and stairways the would take you up to the higher levels. This building definitely is a work of are through-and-through. Every piece has something special about it. Pieces of the building that probably only a handful of people would ever see have amazing details carved into it. This type of architecture just doesn’t exist anywhere else that I have ever seen, and given all the money flowing around the world, it’s really sad that all the buildings we’re creating are plain boxes with no artistic value in them whatsoever.

While I was taking photos on the roof, I noticed that the switch on my lens that’s supposed to be on for low-light photography was off. Crap! That means all the photos I just took inside, are going to come out blurry as all hell. Crap, crap crap! Not willing to chance this opportunity, I descended the building and went back into the church to retake all my photos. The only place I wasn’t able to get to was the tomb. They had the gate shut and all the lights off. Dang it.

When I left the building it was nearing 2pm, and I had to get back to the hotel. The convention was starting and I wanted to get there before too many people showed up so that I could get some good pre-convention shots.

When I arrived at the hotel, I got in line to get my pass into the convention. I was told earlier to pick up my press pass at the ticket box office where entrance passes were being sold. I grabbed a couple panini from the sandwich guy and walked to the side of the building and got in line. There seemed to be a lot of people already in line, but I assumed that it would move pretty quick. I had some food to tide me over anyway.

When I finished my food, I realized that I hadn’t moved a foot in line. This was just ridiculous. I didn’t want to wait outside any more, so I figured it was best to play my social engineering card to skip to the front and just get in.

I started walking to what I thought was the front of the line (about 200 people or so in front of me). I say “thought” because it turned out to be just the first corner! When I turned, I saw another 500+ people standing in line! Holy hell! I’ve never seen so many people stand in line for a tattoo convention ever! This was amazing. And I obviously severely underestimated what was about to take place here.

When I reached the front of the line I approached the security guards and told them that I was told to come up here to get my press pass. They looked a little confused and initially tried to tell me to wait in line. That was not going to happen. I reaffirmed that I was to be here by showing them my camera and pulled up an email on my phone. That seemed to do the trick. After finding my name on a list, they gave me my wristband and I was in. Huzzah!

Once I was inside, I headed up to my room to drop off my jacket and pick up a couple shirts that I wanted to give away. For the first day, I just gave them to the few friends that I had there. I spent the next four hours wondering through the four different rooms that were being used by the convention, five if you want to count the hallway area that had a bunch of tattoo-related artwork hanging for passersby to see.

I was in shock by how large this convention was. There were easily over 150 artists 30+ vendor booths. The artists were from all around the world and showing off all different types of styles. Black and grey work, old school color, traditional hand-poke, photo-realism, polynesian tribal, and one guy that seemed to be doing some impressive dark wood cutting style designs. No matter what kind of tattoo style you were into, some of the best in the world were here to show it off.

I checked in with my friends Dan Marshall, Liorcifer, Tim Kern, and Jeremiah Barba of Tribulation Tattoo (NYC) and Barba Studios (CA), and used their booth kind of as my home base. My next stop was to say hi to Robert Hernandez and Ethan Morgan who were sharing a booth an aisle over. As more people showed up it started getting really crowded and hot. It took me about 10 minutes to walk 100 feet. When I arrived at their booth, Robert had already started tattooing on a guys arm. But Ethan wasn’t there. I told Robert that I would keep an eye out for him while I was walking around and headed for the beginning of room 1.

As soon as you enter room 1 from outside, you are given a program of events, and a Tattoo Life magazine (really good international tattoo magazine, and you should check it out if you get the chance!).

The first row was split up between vendors and artists. Along the right side were a couple vendors that were selling art pieces and a few tattoo artists planning their day out. If they hadn’t already begun tattooing, you could see them drawing up their designs for pieces they were about to begin. Along the left side were all vendor. First was a cave of clothing. I say that because it was all black clothing, and covered from the ground to the ceiling in items for sale. There was even a little entrance and exit. Next to them was the Suicide Girls booth. They were there to give away stickers and sell shirts. There were also a couple Suicide Girls behind the booth (clothed) to take pictures of. That was exciting for about a second. Past them were a couple more clothing merchants, one of which was a large “Support 81” booth.

Along the back of the room were a couple more tattoo booths, vendor booths selling tattoo equipment, and the improv bar selling beer, wine, and water. One of the girls behind the counter there kept hooking me up with free bottles of water. Never got her name, but it was much appreciated! Thank you mystery water girl!

The middle two aisles were all tattoo artists. Some of the studios included, Tribulation Tattoo, Barba Studios, Daredevil Tattoo, The Leu Family, Robert Hernandez, East Side Ink, Lowrider Tattoo, Smith Street Tattoo Parlour, Iron Age Tattoo, and a bunch others. I snapped a lot of photos of the artists at work (and some just dicking around…i mean, c’mon, it’s a tattoo convention =).

Onto the second room. This room was about half the size of the first room and was split pretty evenly between tattoo artists and vendors. Some of the artists that were in the studios being represented in the second room were Red Rocket Tattoo, Immortal Ink, LTW, and East Tattoo.

One of the artists at Red Rocket Tattoo had some of the most amazing flash that I have ever seen. It was all Star Wars based, and had a perfect touch of humor and irony too it. His collection of tattoo work that is also Star Wars based is also pretty impressive. Thankfully their based out of NYC, so I’m going to make a trip to their studio when I get home to get more info on this awesomeness.

Included in the merch booths were a couple laser removal booths (one was giving free demos), and another was demonstration a new type of tattoo machine (Monello Tattoo). I’m not sure on the specifics, but it looks like an air compressor powered machine. I don’t know enough about the technical aspect to even begin commenting about machines. But if you’re interested, you can find more info at www.monellotattoosupply.com. There was another artist that was in this room that really caught my eye, Tattoo Alien from Poland. Check out his portfolio at www.tattooalien.com. If I was going to get work done there, it would have been by him. I didn’t get a chance to speak with him, because every time I went by there he was working, so hopefully I will run into him at a future conference.

In the third room, it was split up among vendors, artists, and food. The merch here was mainly clothing and catering towards girls with 5 euro shirt bins. I’ve never seen girls get so fierce over clothing before =). Some of the artists that were here included Hunter Spanks, Vatea Tattoo, Tattoo Moon, Human Fly Tattoo, Boucherie, and Maximo Lutz.

To get to the fourth (Quasar) room, you had to go back through to the first room and then through a hallway (the one with all the art on the walls. The entire place was packed to the walls, and was taking forever to get from one place to another. Patience was something that you had to have here. That and a lack of personal space.

I kinda felt bad for the artists in the fourth room because it was a lot hotter (sauna temperatures) and a lot darker. If the artists didn’t have their own lamps, I don’t know how they would have worked. This room had some of the local Italian artists and studios. These included, Morganic Heart, Electric Tat2ing, Mojo Tattoo, and Marco Lari Tattoo.

Marco Lari is another artist that I liked a lot. He tattoos a very similar style to my likings. Dark art and black and grey work. I have a feeling I will be looking him up in the future.

I had to get out of the room, and I wasn’t feeling too hot, so I headed back to the Tribulation Booth to chill out for a while and get some water i me.

On my way back to the booth, I passed by Robert Hernandez’s booth again and found out that Ethan was super sick and sleeping back in the hotel room. Sucks. From there, I passed by Tin Tin’s booth and saw a lot of nothing. There was just a sign on the table that stated, “Sorry, No Tattoos Today. Our Luggage Is Lost.” That really sucks!

When I returned to the Tribulation booth, Tim Kern was working on a Transformers Decepticon chest panel, Liorcifer was tattooing a skull on a guys hand, and Dan Marshall was tattooing a half-sleeve of the Munsters onto a band member of Lacuna Coil.

I chugged some water, and decided that I was just too exhausted from the jet lag, partying, and the few miles of walking earlier that day. The heat was getting to me, and I didn’t want to be around the crowd any more. I figured, it was only 6pm, so I could go take a nap.

I headed upstairs, dumped all the photos off my camera to my computer and set my alarm for 8:30. That should give me an hour and a half of recuperation time, and leave plenty of time to head back down to do some more coverage.

Tim woke me up when he walked in the room at 10:30. Apparently my alarm did squat, and they shut the convention down at 10pm sharp. Dang it. To top things off, I felt like total shit. Awesome. Looks like I got whatever Ethan’s got. I can’t let this happen. I need to be healthy. It’s only the first day, and I *need* to be out there as much as possible. It’s why I’m here! Arg!

Tim asked if I wanted to go get some dinner. He knew of a pizza place around the corner. I was really hungry and knew I needed food. Also, some fresh air wouldn’t hurt. Turns out, the pizza place is only taking reservations because there are so many people trying to get in there. So, we wound up walking to McDonalds again. I wasn’t too thrilled about this, but we didn’t have any other options. Mickey Dee’s it is!

We ran into Robert there, so we all shared our awesome dinner together. I wound up having pretty much the same thing as last night. I couldn’t not get the curly fries (like the use of the double negative there =), and who doesn’t like bacon?! To top it all off, I got an ice cream sunday this time. Nothing makes you feel like you’re 10 again than an ice cream sunday from McDonalds…hehe.

After we ended our feast of pseudo-food, we walked back to the hotel, and I headed straight up to the room. I just wanted to go back to sleep. I had made plans with Dan to go check out a supposedly amazing cemetery the next morning and I had to be up early. Nothing like celebrating being single on Valentines day than running around a cemetery in a foreign country with your friends!

.: Adam

i want you to read this twice because that’s how i lived it, and then in turn experienced it. There are three levels here, but only the first two are apparent. The third, which to me is even more terrifying wasn’t discovered until it was over.

i accomplished a mission. I saw stuff, and I had a completely horrible experience (for the most part).

I was expecting something, but not this. This was… intense.

I took the whole thing this time. The bigger one at that. Everything started out like before. Just laughing my ass off about everything and all around craziness.

i then saw it. And i dont’ mean “saw it”. I read a text message and my phone was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. I started to see prisms in the light. I got a text form someone to meet me at a bar down the road. Quick walk to the place really. Maybe 8 or 9 blocks.

i was on cloud 9 and feeling pretty adventurous! I put on a couple jackets (it’s december) and headed outside. As I was walking to the park I saw the prisms even more, and they were mesmerizing. As if NYC isn’t enough, this was NYC on x-mas. So there were lights everywhere and I was having a blast and laughing my ass off. Good times. It was part, “i’m finally seeing something” and the other, which was more overwhelming, was the sheer experience. You can’t see these things unless your there. There’s no special effect or funny glasses that give you this.

i was in another world, and loving it!

I think i was on 5th and A… maybe 4th. Not sure really. But I was sure that the mural painted on the gates of the closed building was freaking me out. That’s when it hit me…”the fear”. It was a physical entity, not a feeling.

i remember thinking, should i continue on to the bar, or go home. thank god i hailed a cab.

i made the cabbie stop at 6th and C and threw my money at him. i think i paid somewhere around $10 for a $4 cab ride. didn’t matter. The Fear was getting larger, and more surrounding.

i kept telling myself that all i needed to do was get home. i can do this… 3 blocks…. i can do this.

i got to 7th st. and realized i couldn’t make it. What put me over the edge was that i was across the street from a police station and i’m tripping balls with no ID and the that’s when it happened. The Fear had morphed into what I now know of as Pure Evil. And it didn’t morph into a different entity, it became me. I was Pure Evil. It didn’t get to my core, but it had definitely gotten under my skin. It made sure that I wasn’t wearing it, but that I had become it, and it was just getting deeper. It was going for the bone. For the core.

I was convinced that i was going to curl up in a ball on the street and totally loose my shit. I was breathing fear, and harboring evil. Right now I’m pissed of at these words… not what I’m writing, but the actual letters and words. They cannot describe the intensity that I was feeling.

i summoned up all that i had, and new it was my only shot, so i had to make it work. i called my roommate. thank god she picked up the phone. i kept her on the phone and she guided me back to the apartment. our friend Robb also helped out by coming to meet me on the street.

i got inside and Pure Evil took over. I was scared shitless. I have never been so afraid of anything in my life. Death is easier to accept than to take on this… thing. This thing that was on … in me.

i went to my couch, and that’s when it hit me. I’m pretty sure I knew all along, but admitting it made it real. I can cope with real.

i was wearing black leather pants, and a black leather jacket and black shirt. I was hot as hell. The sweat coming out of me was the fear being pushed out by Pure Evil.

i knew what i had to do. i took off my jacket, my pants, and my shirt. (thankfully i was wearing grey boxers).

i needed to strip off the evil… i needed to get it off me so that i could then focus on the evil in side me.

i found a pair of white shorts, and a white shirt.

i honestly think that if i didn’t have them / find them, i would have just sat around in my boxers. but the grey was too close to black, so maybe not.

i’m wearing all white. i feel better. a wave of comfort comes over me. this is what i need. unfortunately i was sitting in my bedroom with a burned out light, so i was sitting in darkness. that comfort was being stripped away quickly.

i had to get out of the room.

i went into the living room. black couch, black floor, black paint. The Pure Evil was gaining strength. I moved farther to the kitchen. My WHITE kitchen. Better. From here out it gets hellishly intense dealing with the Pure Evil that’s taking over my mind and body.

i am a little cowering child, but cannot run away from it. This is me.

i then moved into the bathroom where it was even more white. i have a black shower curtain, but i let it stay. i just don’t look at it. Throughout all this my roommate is with me and telling me everything is ok.

i knew it was lame.

i knew where i was, was my home.

i didn’t give a fuck. i was scared out of my fucking skull. Scared of the evil. Please keep in mind that, although now (and somewhat while this was going on) i had a clue, this isn’t a metaphor for anything. This was exactly what i’m saying. Pure Evil.

I forced myself to vomit. A lot. I vomited until everything was clear. I was literally cleansing my body from the inside of the Evil.

i know it’s easy to see the self-preservation, and animal instinct acting on pure survival, and that this evil I’m referring to are the mushrooms i ate, and my body (not me) is doing what it knows to stay alive. I poisoned myself. My body said, “fuck you asshole” and came up with with great inventive way to get rid of the toxins. I even saw this connection while going through all of it, BUT it didn’t matter. Reality was gone… waaaaaay gone. I had succumb to this Evil, and I had to play along.

i also drank a shit ton of water. i needed to stay cool. i even dropped some onto my feet. i washed me feet at one point too. there was black fuzz from my socks on them, so obviously it had to go.

i also had the thought about my hair. having black hair also freaked me out. Not only that, but for some reason I decided…really just let myself grow a beard (what I can grow anyway). So i now have long black hair, and a beard-ish thing going on. i resolved this by keeping it back, not looking in a mirror, and always looking up. almost as if i was looking for help. i knew i wasn’t going to get anything, but looking up kept me a little bit more relaxed. umm… no. not relaxed… that doesn’t happen. just less terrified. that’s better.

I think looking up also helped with the fact that i have tattoos.

i’m not even going to think what i would have done if i saw them. they did freak me out though… i just pretended they didn’t exist. please keep in mind that my roommate is still with me the whole time. there were a couple instances where she left when we thought i was doing better.

i knew it was “childish” (that word is there for me to remember something else about tonight), but i needed her there to tell me it was ok, and that everything was normal. i think that if i was forced to have gone through this on my own, i may have literally snapped and never come back…

i went through more vomiting, and more water later, i’m starting to feel ok. and now cold.

i decided it was time to brave a lesser white room.

i left for the kitchen. not so bad really. a little disturbing… the Pure Evil was gone, but now The Fear had returned. He liked to remind me what was up.

i kept Him in check and grabbed a red blanket and headed downstairs.

i was doing good.

i was feeling slightly normal again.

i felt the fear… he was winnning.

i went back upstairs and into the bathroom to start the process all over. the red blanket wasn’t cutting it. Thankfully i had a white bathrobe on the door in the bathroom. YES! White AND warm. Perfect!

i hung out for a little while longer and tried my best to overcome The Fear.

i did it.

i left.

i went to the kitchen. heart beat rises slightly, but i reassure myself that it’s ok, and that I’m in control.

i go into the living room and don’t even LOOK into the darkness that is my bedroom.

i could almost hear the Evil that I shed in there screaming…writhing in agony. It wanted me.

i went downstairs.

i overcame The Fear.

i was warm.

i was calm. And a wise “little” woman looked me in the eyes and told me…

i am jesus.

Was watching a new Henry Rollins Spoken Word tour DVD. He started to talk about travel, and he hit it. He described almost to the “T” why and how I travel:

“As I’m working away, I see Christmas looming closer and closer. I want to do something eventful for Christmas, I’m not going to put a tree in my apartment and put lights on it. I’m just too fucking lazy and apathetic. And so I just need to go somewhere for Christmas. I do not believe in going somewhere on a holiday or a vacation just to sit in some place where the skin will damage my poor pale pasty white skin, and I don’t want to live in a hotel doing the same thing when I’m home, watching MacGiver on rerun. I want something that will educate me. I want to out into the world and learn a thing or two. I think we as a species; we need to travel more. All of you need to leave your country on a regular basis. Trust me your country will still be here when you get back. I just think it’s important for people to go to countries where they’re not familiar, where they definitely look like they’re not from there, they need to eat food that they cannot pronounce the name of, listen to music that they can’t understand, and shake the hands of everyone and say crazy things like, “Hey! What’s going on?” I think we need to do this more often, thus we become xenophobic, living a boring, flat-lined, fucked up life. This is why I travel. To get cultured. So where can I go get cultured for Christmas? Well, I don’t want to do it in Florida, or Hawaii to get cultured on a hammock, with a “cervesa” and a laptop burning a design of an apple into my chest. I want to go someplace else.

And so on one evening on my way to the movies, I come up with where I’m going to go for Christmas. I’m like, “ohhh, this is fantastic!” And the idea of it terrifies me, “I could die. I shouldn’t go there. I have to go there!” And I don’t understand this thing with me. This Psych 101 thing. I get this idea to go somewhere, and the next thing I hear is my voice, “If you don’t go, you’re a pussy. If you do not go to this place, you do not deserve to eat. If you do not go, you are fucking worthless.” And it becomes fairly obsessive.

[...]

Next thing I know, I’m in my home away from home, Los Angeles International Airport. I go from Los Angeles to Heathrow International airport, and from Heathrow for my Christmas break…aaahhhh. Inthralling, sparkling, urbanite, cosmopolitan, Islamabad Pakistan! I just figured a guy could learn a thing or two.

[...]

Once I got there, I do what I always do. I dropped my bag, grabbed my water, and started pounding the streets walking around. I have a plan when I do all these trips. The first half is, “I’m Going!” The second half is, “I have no idea, not a fuckin’ clue what happens next.” And that is the difference between being a tourist, and being a traveler. A traveler doesn’t know where he’s going. The tourist doesn’t know where he is.

And so that’s what I like to do. I like to walk through cities, and say crazy things like, “Hi, I’m Henry. I’m from America. I’m really glad to be here.” And see what happens.”

So 8am comes around, and I’m all like, “wassup…”

I walked downstairs and took full advantage of the free breakfast. Had a plate full of ham, toast, rolls, cake, and glasses of freshly squeezed OJ. Mmmm… so good. I always wondered why at pretty much every hostel I go to I get free breakfast of some kind, all for somewhere around $10/night. Yet, when I go to a hotel anywhere in the states and drop $100-$400/night, I get maybe free coffee. I don’t even drink coffee! So lame.

I digress…

While mowing down the food, I was browsing through a book someone left on the table, “Time Out: Rio”. I’m a fan of Time Out New York for things to do, so I checked it out to see if there was anything that would catch my eye to do while in Rio.

Hiking…nah, Fishing… nah, Crazy parties… it’s only 8am, Hang Gliding…BINGO!

I left my dishes in the kitchen and headed to the front desk to see how much hang gliding would be and if they could hook it up. The chick at the counter told me that it’s about R$200 and includes the taxi to and from the place. Sounded like a plan so I agreed.

There was a small hitch… she couldn’t get a hold of the hang gliding guy. Not in any hurry, especially considering how early it was, I headed back up to my room to apply the sun block. I was going to the beach!

I picked up my iPod, a book, and was off! I walked a block up and plopped myself down in the sand. It was the perfect temperature out. Hot, but the breeze from the ocean kept you from sweating like crazy.

Here’s a couple photos of me chillin…

And this was my view for about 2 hours…

It was fairly early still (maybe about 9), so the beach was pretty empty. After a little nap, I decided to head back to the hostel to try and get this hang gliding thing hooked up.

When I arrived, the girl said that she had tried a few more times, but was unable to reach him. I’m used to having to do everything myself, so I just told her to forget about it, and I’ll take care of it. Thanked her for her help, and went up stairs to use the Internets. I found 2 hang gliding groups in Rio, and wrote down their phone numbers. I was planning on using the front desk phone to make the calls, but that would have been too easy. The numbers I wanted to call weren’t reachable by that phone, so I had to use a pay phone. I saw them everywhere, so I wasn’t too concerned. There was a little bodega thing around the corner that I get beverages from, so I headed there to pick up a phone card. I bought a “20″ for R$4.50. More than enough.

What luck, there was a pay phone right next to the stand =). BUT it didn’t work. Well… it said it was working, but none of the phone numbers were going through. So either I was retarded, or the phone was messed. Onto the next phone! I wound up trying 2 other phones before I found one where my number went through. Lucky for me, it was on a busy street, and the speaker was so low I couldn’t hear hardly anything the guy was saying. Mix that up with some Portuguese and bad English and you have a recipe for getting no where.

So, to the next phone I went! It worked, and it was loud! Yes! Feeling pretty proud of myself for getting through all this I tell the guy I want to go hang gliding and where to pick me up. We just had to work out a time and price. Then he tells me that his phone battery is dying and he’ll have to call me right back. Click. FUCK! I’M AT A PAYPHONE! THERE ARE NO CALLBACKS HERE. Dammit.

Ok… I have another guy I can call, so I called them, “Just Fly Rio”. They had a ton of good feedback online. Works for me! Now that I’m at a good phone, and with my phone card, I have Paulo a call. He picked up. We had a friendly chat about hang gliding. I agreed on a price, but I didn’t catch what the reasoning was (bad translations), but he said that we had to go right now, and he was sending a cab to pick me up. He asked for my hostel name, and then I heard it… Beep beep beep. And then nothing… wtf? My call was just disconnected. Oh well, I’ll just call him right back. Well… I would have but my calling card was empty! Apparently the “20″ on the front of the cards has NOTHING to do with the amount of minutes that are on it, considering I talked for maybe 5 minutes total to 2 people. I ran back to the bodega to buy another “20″ … whatever the hell that means … and then ran back to the phone to call back Paulo. I gave him my hostel name and he said the cabbie would be there in 5 minutes with another guy that also going hang gliding, so be ready.

I ran back to the hostel to drop off all unnecessary items, swapped my flip-flops for my boots, and exited the hostel. Marcus, the cabbie, was there waiting for me. In the back was Lucious from Sao Paulo. He was in town for the weekend as well, just to go hang gliding.

On the way to the hang gliding place, we chatted about Rio and pointed out every hot chick we saw on the beach. Good times =)

As we rounded the corner, I saw a bunch of hang gliders in the air circling over the mountain and beach. Soon I was going to be up there. Crazy!

We arrived at the beach and the Marcus took us to meet up with Paulo. We said our good-bye’s and then headed into a little building where we had to sign a waiver (or something). Not sure. It was all in portuguese and it was so packed I couldn’t get anyone to tell me what the hell I was signing. It looked like a waiver…

So I signed it with a false name, and scribbled some fake address here in Rio. I handed it to a guy behind the counter and he handed me a piece of paper with more scribbles on it. I was to take this with me (he made the “put it in your pocket” motion). Now that I feel safer about how legitimate this all is, let’s go jump off a mountain!

Lucious, Paulo and I jumped in his car and took a ride up the mountain. His car was definitely not made for that trip. The incline was so steep that the car kept slipping and sliding backwards. Every so often, he would have to put on the parking break and to a break torque just to get up and around a corner. I had my hand on the handle of the door incase I need to get out in a hurry. You know. Like if the car just happened to slip are the wrong time and start to go over the edge of a cliff =). All in good fun though. We were all laughing about it the whole way up.

When we reached the top, a little brazilian guy grabbed the hang glider bag from the top of the car and ran up about 4 flights of stairs to the edge of the mountain and started to assemble everything.

There were a ton of other hang glider people already up there and ready to jump. Apparently, there was a hang gliding competition going on, and we got there during the 2 hour lunch break. This is why Paulo stressed that we had to go immediately. I guess I was pretty lucky. If I wouldn’t have called at that moment, I would have missed out completely.

While the one guy was putting together the hang glider, I met the guy that I would be flying with “Zero”

He didn’t speak any English really, just added to the thrill of it all. I didn’t really want to have a firm understanding of anything anyway. I just wanted to hope my Portuguese was good enough (I know about 4 or 5 words… I’m fine). With some pointing and watching, I got my body harness on right (I guess…I’m still alive anyway), and popped on a spiffy looking helmet. Not sure what a helmet is going to do if I fall the 1,700 meters straight down into the natural foliage or sand, but hey…why not =)

Now that the harness was on, it was time for a quick photo-op on the wooden platform that we were going to jump off of.

I was supposed to make that “I’m flying” stance, but I figured I already looked retarded enough as it was with my helmet. You do get a good view of the mass of nothing we were about to jump into though. It was a straight-down drop at the end of that thing (didn’t have a chance to look until I actually jumped off though).

After the photo, we walked over to the side and he explained to me in a very detailed manner what we’re going to do…”Run! Don’t Stop!”. After repeating those words a couple more times with a little more Portuguese thrown in there for good measure in case I happened to pick it up while sitting on the wall a minute ago.

After that lengthy discussion, he hooked a giant tent of a hang glider to my back, then hooked himself in. Put my left arm on his back, and my right arm on the red strap. I knew exactly where to put my hands in part by his fluent Portuguese and grabbing my arms and placing them there. The stern look which clearly meant, “don’t let go” was also conveyed. I noticed a wire running between my legs and asked if I should move either myself or the wire. Obviously I needed to improve my translations abilities. I opted to move the wire. I figurer I had a 50/50 shot of either getting split in half after take off, or pulling some sort of safety wire. Meh…

I guess in Brazil, kicking a wire sideways means, “Run like hell off the edge of a mountain, and make sure it’s a surprise to the guy that just kicked the wire.”

At the edge of the platform I hear one last, “Don’t stop” and then there’s no more ground. I was flying! Took a couple seconds for it to sink in, but throughout the whole thing, I was never nervous, just disoriented the whole time. Great technique to get people to jump I guess. Yeah… totally done on purpose. This guy is probably some great Brazilian psychiatrist and I just had some serious mental Judo done on me so I wouldn’t think anything was…off.

Anywhoo… This is me flying! (There was a camera attached to the end of one of the wings).

All in all, I think we were flying around up there for about 15 to 20 minutes. Totally unbelievable, and I would love to do it again! But only with someone I trust, obviously.

After some circling around, and a couple, “Hey look, we’re gunna run right into that mountain / tree / other hang glider / bird, WOAH! Hahahah… jk,” we headed towards the beach for our landing. This was the fun part. To have explained ahead of time that we were about to basically do a free-fall straight down towards the ocean and pull up at the last second and stop abruptly on the sandy beach would have taken all the fun out of it. I enjoy thinking that my hang gliding buddy has just decided to kill himself and take out some gringo in the process while laughing hysterically the whole time. This guy knows how to party!

I grabbed one last quick photo with my arial buddy before jumping back in the cab and heading back to Ipanema.

When I got back to the hostel, I took the CD of photos I just received and emailed them to myself as a backup. I didn’t want to have them lost / stolen / broken. Then it was time to head back to the beach! I stopped by a bakery for a couple Ham and Cheese roll / sandwich things that were buttery delicious and headed to the beach for a stroll.

This was the Rio I heard about. Tons of chicks everywhere (most of which have great bodies), they are all wearing thongs (unfortunately, even the not-so-hot ones were as well) and a lot of them had some pretty big tattoos on their sides or legs. Kind of shocking actually.

About 2 hours of walking around in the sun was about all I could take, so back to the hostel for more chillin in a hammock with a book. My second favorite thing to do in Rio =)

Somewhere around dinner time, the cool Australian chicks asked me to join them for food. I was hungry so I joined up with them and we headed out. We just hit up a local joint around the corner. Good food, chill atmosphere.

Cool Australian Chicks:

(She’s got black-mouth from Acai…hahah)

After dinner we headed to Ipanema beach and walked toward Copacabana just talking about whatever. I mean seriously, do you need a reason to hang out on a beach in Rio? Hell no.

Between the two beaches is a giant rock hill that goes out into the ocean. There was also some crazy waves breaking right next to it. This seemed to attract all the surfers. We chilled on the rocks and watched the surfers / sunset. I managed to take a cool HDR photo of it with my little point-and-shoot camera. I wasn’t sure how well it would come out, but I was happy with it.

( click on this image to see the larger version of it )

Once it started to get dark, we headed back to the hostel. I wanted to do more “chillin-in-the-hammock” =).

I’m not sure when, but I wound up falling asleep. I was woken up by my Australian friends talking with these two dudes from Iceland. One of them said something about hookers. I guess my subconscious was interested enough to wake me up to find out more. Turns out it was a mis-translation for “hooks”. The things in the wall holding up my hammock.

I woke up somewhere around 10. I know this because everyone else had Capadinas (butchered the spelling on that one) in their hands. It’s the drink of brazil. Contains a sugar liquor with lime and other yummy stuff. AND… I just missed getting one. Bar-thing closed at 10. Dang-it.

The chicks were trying to get me to come to Lapa with them, but I really wasn’t in the mood for that style of party, and I wanted to try and check out these supposed metal-bars again. Now that it was getting closer to 11, I knew they would at least be open.

I took a cab again to the first place. This time I didn’t need a map or my little piece of paper with all the addresses on it. Made me look like less of a tourist… hahha, yeah right. I got dropped off about a block away and walked over to the bar that looked pretty cool from the night before. There was a HUGE line out in front (easily 50+ people), the people were all very normal too. Dressed in their snazzy weekender party clothes. The music coming out from the place was NOT metal. This place was lame. Onto the next one!

20 minutes of walking through some back alleys of Rio thinking, “what the hell am I doing here…this is just stupid”, I cam across the next place that was supposed to be a metal bar. AGAIN, same crappy people and same crappy music. Super lame…

There was another bar I could have checked out, but the first two were the highly recommended ones, and the third one was a little bit farther out and I would have had to walk through a favela to get there. I contemplated it. I even stood at the edge of the favela. But the looks from the dude that seemed to be guarding it said, “I don’t think so”. I gave up at this point and walked back to a lit road, then from there to a road with cars. I then followed that one to a main road and hailed a cab to take me back to the hostel. I wonder if I’m retarded, or comfortable putting myself in situations like this. I think the more I travel, the more I feel I can get away with these things. Oh well…

Back at the hostel, I grabbed my book and finished a couple more chapters. Then, to keep my routine, I went to bed. I think it was only around 1am.

So begins another jaunt to the other side of the equator. I’m in a cab now heading to Penn Station. It’s crappy weather out (cold and rainy), and I’m looking forward to the warm clear skies of Rio de Janeiro. It’s going to be a short trip (only 3 days there),but very needed. Got to clear my head and figure some things out. Beaches in foreign countries help out with that a lot.

Now that I know where to go once I get there, I feel a lot more comfortable about going to Rio this time. Also, I’m traveling alone, so I only have to worry about me (which isn’t that difficult).

I think I’m going to attempt to take the bus from the airport to ipanema. It’s only $3 and I arrive in the afternoon.

I scored a pretty good flight. It’s a direct flight from Newark to Sao Paulo and then a short flight to Rio from there. 12 hours in total.

I think the weirdest thing that I’m looking forward to is sleeping. On the beach, in a hammock, hostel bed, or anywhere really. I’ve had a very odd sleep habit since Saturday and I haven’t been able to break it. In the last 5 days I’ve slept a total of 7 hours and it’s been divided up at the strangest times. I would not sleep for 2 days, then crash for 2 hours around 5pm, then stay up until 11 am and then sleep for maybe an hour then maybe another hour at 9. On top of all of this, I’ve been fighting off a cold (I hope). So for the past few days I’ve been in a constant delusional state and unable to think. I just stay busy. Whatever, anything. Just have to keep occupied. If I rest or relax, I think. That’s my downfall. So, it’s time for a strong readjustment. That’s why I cashed in all my miles an converted all my cash left to Reals (Brazilian currency). I feel that it really is that important not to be here this weekend. Just leaving my apt, the city, or even the state wouldn’t have cut it. I need to go where I don’t know anyone an no one knows me (and perferrably warm =).

Rio, here I come!

.: Adam

Yesterday I got the bright idea to bike it to Portland Maine. I figure, everyone else was doing something for labor day weekend, and that I should get the hell out of the city.

Well, according to Google Maps, I could make it to Portland in 5 and a half hours. F that.

After an hour on the road I figured, screw it. I’m just going to ride and see where I wind up =).

I wound up going to Cape Cod, Plymouth, and Boston. While I was in boston I stopped at a fetish party at Machine. It looked like it could have been fun, but I didn’t really feel like hanging out with people.

All-in-all, I was on the road for 13 hours and traveled over 600 miles! I think that was one of the coolest bonding experiences between me an my motorcycle. I’ve also named her now. Yep.. her. Her name is Betty (Black Betty). Also, after all that, I was still eager to go out and ride again today! It’s 320 miles to Portland, 530 miles to Columbus, 600 miles to Detroit, 520 miles to Raleigh, and 500 miles to Toronto. Just to give some perspective =)

It was a great time, and Now I know both my limits and hers. What a great experience. 100% freedom! I’m soar as hell right now, but it was worth it!

Oh, and here’s what I consumed: 1 lemonade, 1 footlong BMT sub from Subway, 3 Redbulls, 1 slimjim, and 1 twinkie. I was aiming for healthy

.: Adam

ps. Artists that rock while riding: Billy Idol, Dethklok, and White Zombie.