Killing Batteries

Some of you may have noticed that yet another window has appeared in the left margin over the past week. The addition of the “Best of KB” window has made the margin well over two feet long now, but I believe it’s necessary for the benefit of the tens of thousands of new readers I’m expecting to get from the Travvies election process.

I’ve been meaning to do a best of thingie for a while. It’s simple bloginomics: What are the two things you want to see right away when you visit a new blog? What the blog is about and some of the blog’s top-shelf material, right? This is the internet after all, we want this information in the first 10 seconds, with about another 10 seconds to sort out whether or not we’re gonna like the blog. As such, so my legions of new fans can be instantly immersed in full-blown entertainment rather than sifting through two years of babbling, 2,000-word posts about the never-ending series of personal injustices I endure for my art, I’ve saintfully created said Best of KB window.

No doubt you’ve noticed that the list is pretty short. This is not because after two years of almost-award-winning blogging about travel and travel writing that I’m only proud of a few posts. The problem is that there are so damn many posts to sort through. I probably love to read my blog more than anyone on Earth, but even I can’t be bothered to spend more than 20 minutes or so clicking through the archives, looking for my best stuff before work/wine/women/swelled bladder lure me away. I mean, in the past two weeks alone, I’ve toured two jungle islands in Micronesia, traveled half way around the planet, consumed about 13 bottles of wine, closed on my bitchin’ new condo, moved into my bitchin’ new condo and I’m still assembling bitchin’ new IKEA furniture for my bitchin’ new condo (I’ve got Screwdriver Hand like you don’t even wanna know – my intern has to brush my teeth for me).

In short, I’m distracted. But I don’t want potential new groupies to suffer because of this, so now I need a little help from you, my tens of regular monthly readers.

Apart from my limited reading/typing time, I’ve learned repeatedly that what I consider to be my favorite blog posts are not usually the favorite blog posts of people that are not me. Since the not-mes are in the majority in this case, I’ll acquiesce. So, I’m asking those who feel they’re qualified to suggest a post or two that you found particularly hilarious. Again, no need to root through the archives, but if one should just pop into your head, please leave a comment. If you don’t remember the title, just describe it a little. Maybe quote the part that brought coffee forth through your nose and short-circuited yet another keyboard. I’ll figure it out from there.

For those that are too new to have a favorite or are just discovering this blog for whatever irresponsible reason, you can get started with the posts to the left and hopefully my countless lurkers will be kind enough to drop a comment, if only to let us know they’re out there and read past the second paragraph on occasion.

I apologize in advance for the length, but not really. I vblog like I write – it’s either 2,000 words or nothing at all.

[Cross-posted at This is Why I Love Minneapolis]

It’s been a while since I compiled a lengthy list of my opinions and pet peeves and given them an authoritative title so as to pass them off as travel gospel that panicky newspaper researchers can quote in last second filler stories. (Goddamn I love the internet!)

Plus, I just flew from Minneapolis to San Francisco and I’m always on edge for days after I fly through US airports, so I’d like to do a little healthy venting here instead of demolishing a pay phone with my bare hands. After all, changing the world for the better isn’t going to happen by itself, so here’s my contribution:

• Just because you have eight hours before your flight leaves, doesn’t mean that I have eight hours before my flight leaves so get the f*ck out of my way. And I’m truly sorry if age/disability has resulted in you not being able to walk very fast, but I’m not sorry enough about it to miss my plane, so please move to the right.

• The ’stand’ and ‘walk’ lanes painted onto the moving walkways weren’t put there for yucks. For those of you who never caught on to that reading fad, you’re supposed to stand in the ’stand’ lane and don’t stand in the ‘walk’ lane. I’m all for breaking the rules sometimes - except for this one.

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My day of ‘ultimate fly fishing’ had finally arrived. I initially took this term to be a mirthful oxymoron, but that was before I was rocketing past volcanoes and cruising mere tens of feet over forest canopy at a breathtaking 130 MPH in a Bell 407 helicopter to engage in said recreation.

OK, fine. It was pretty ultimate. Point taken.

After hovering next to a large waterfall and swooping past yet another sea lion colony, the helicopter deposited us on a small lake beach and minutes later we were in the boats, lines out. Though fly fishers usually go out in pairs, I was alone in a boat with my guide Ricardo, which was probably for the best as I had a lengthy casting learning curve ahead of me and the fewer people around to get hooked in the lip the better.

Being of the inaccessible by land or sea variety, our lake was deserted and perfectly still, with a stunning backdrop of impenetrable virgin temperate rainforest and snow-capped mountains further distant, shedding little puffs of clouds. During a conversation the previous evening with the lead guide, when I confessed that this would be my first attempt at fly fishing, he noted that the fish were so abundant where we were going that “you’ll catch four by accident”. In fact I caught 10, including a massive brown trout, snagged a mere seven minutes after leaving the beach while we trolled to our first site. It was that easy.
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F*cking Italy!!!

OK, OK… Let’s just calm down and try to discuss this like rational, levelheaded F*CKING ITALY!!!!!

Here’s Italy’s latest piss me off endeavor:

Last April, I rented a car from a so-called “car rental agency” in Florence through a broker web site called Nova Car Hire, to use for my Lonely Planet research trip (I’m omitting the name of the car rental company until the situation has been resolved). The car rental office is located in the historic center of Florence.

For those of you who have not had firsthand, piss me off, Italy driving experience, most cities have restricted areas in the historic center where only approved vehicles can go. This is so the tiny streets aren’t constantly grid-locked, thereby making more room for the double-wide butted tourists to stagger blindly down the street, get in my way and piss me off.

The Italians enforce access to this restricted area by setting up little cameras and shooting photos of license plates as cars enter the area. At the end of the day the newest/dumbest guy at the police station is supposed to sort through these photos and check them against a list of approved cars. Anyone audacious enough to drive into the historic center without permission gets a ticket sent to their home in the mail, but only after deviously waiting seven months so you have no hope of contesting the violation – que piss me off, no?

In the case of my rental car agency in Florence, I was clearly informed that all of their cars had universal approval to drive in the historic center, because if they didn’t no one could ever return their cars. Sounds pretty reasonable and straightforward, doesn’t it? Ah ha! That is where you are wrong idiota! This is Italy! Making sense is no permesso qua! Pissing people off, however, is a national sport!
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I’ve been inspired by last week’s list to make another list. Normally, I’m not a list guy. I just don’t do it. I can barely get it together to make a grocery list (e.g. yesterday I forgot mayo and contact lens solution), much less an authoritative, trustworthy list for public consumption. It wasn’t immediately apparent to me why this was, so I decided to give it some thought and make a list of why I don’t usually make lists:

1. Too much organization and work

That was it. Is it technically a ‘list’ if there’s just one item or do I have to downgrade it down to an ‘excuse’?

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I’m back in my Village of Solitude on the coast of western Sardinia - the place that timely bus service forgot - still shell-shocked and woozy from my trip to Umbria.

As I reported previously, my Umbria research trip was gearing up to be an exhausting week of racing after public buses, sleeping on a friend’s couch and shyly studying menus to report on restaurants that I could not afford to dine in. However, three days before departure, it transformed quite suddenly into a week of chauffeured cars, junior suites, lavish dinners, tours, meetings with a cornucopia of very important people and being force fed expensive wine anywhere from two to five times a day. As of now, the article’s working title is “The 144 Hour Hangover”.

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I don’t often get the opportunity to pair up two people so deserving of each other’s company, so when I had the pleasure of matching up two social deviants on the last heinous night of my recent spirit-crushing research trip, I was so full of pride afterward, that I still think fondly of it almost daily.

I was at a dead stop at a three way intersection in the middle of the northern Romanian countryside at 11:00PM puzzling over conflicting road signs when a guy more or less let himself into the passenger seat of my car.  I had seen him hitchhiking a few hundred metres up the road and seeing as how I was racing home to Iasi in pitch-black night, near-sleepless, in bad driving conditions in a car with headlights dimmer than most keychain lights, I figured I had a full plate without adding a weird hitchhiker into the mix.

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- My ride

For the purposes of my research, I have acquired a 1990 Dacia 1310.  Romanian-made, with all the power and reliably that you would expect from a car manufactured in the second poorest country in Europe.  This car is the ultimate disposable car.  It’s built to die young.  But Romanians can’t afford to buy a new car every 18 months, so everyone that owns a Dacia is forced to become an accomplished mechanic.  The good news is that, unlike virtually all other modern cars, Dacias are simple and built so that any idiot with a screwdriver and no fear of grease can get to any part of the engine and fix it.  There’s no micro-processors, no motherboards and no digital anything.  It’s only equipped with the bare minimum of parts to make it go and that’s it. 

Why did I buy this piece of shit?  For several reasons.  First and foremost, it looks exactly like the 20 million other Dacias in Romania.  These cars are cheap and low-profile, meaning that not even the most desperate thief would consider wasting their time breaking into the thing to steal my backpack, the combined contents of which are more valuable than four 1990 Dacia 1310s. Also, as I mentioned, any dough-head can fix it.  Not necessarily me mind you, but everyone else.  Moreover, the parts and labor will be a pittance.  Finally, being the most popular car in Romania will work in my favor when it comes time to sell it.  There won’t be any need to put an ad in the paper or list it on the Internet.  All I need to do is drive it around town with a ‘for sale’ sign in the window for a few hours and I’ll have plenty of offers. Sorted.

That said, this car needs more care and attention than a newborn baby.  I have to pop the hood and fiddle with the engine virtually every single day.  There’s always a thingy to clean, or a loose wire to wiggle or a smell to investigate. There’s no just starting it and zipping to the store real quick. Every trip requires anywhere from 10-20 minutes prep time.  To start, you have to give it a good once over before something as intense as starting it up can happen.  You begin by walking a slow, full circle around the thing to see what fell off during the night, or what is leaking from where, or which wheel deflated, and so forth. Once you’ve completed this loop, making all due repairs, then you can get in the car.  Particularly in the winter, there is a complex ritual for starting a Dacia.  If it is particularly cold or you haven’t started the car for a few days, your first step is not to put the key in the ignition, but, yes, pop the hood and lean way in there to finger-pump the primer.  Three pumps is recommended.  Then you get back in the car, pull the choke out all the way - that’s right, I said “choke” – stab the key into the ignition, make sure it’s in neutral, pump the gas pedal three times, say the Lord’s prayer and turn the key. 

If you’re lucky the car will make a quiet, pathetic noise (“uuuuuhhhhggg”), at which point you stomp on the gas and it will roar to life.  You must keep you foot on the gas for 10 minutes or so for it to warm up enough so that it will keep running when you lift your foot off the gas, burning a litre of fuel in the process.  After that you’re off.  There are a dozen “unlucky” scenarios, but I’ll spare you those details.  Suffice to say that it’s just best to expect the unexpected.

- The (Lack of) Rules of the Road

I’ve done a decent amount of driving in Romania now and I’d like to impart some valuable lessons to you. Until recently, it wasn’t uncommon for drivers in Romania to acquire their license with a small bribe, a bottle of cognac and a wink, rather than training and testing.  Seeing their driving skills, I often wonder if anyone was trained. There isn’t a single driver in Romania who has any sense of their own mortality.  All driving is done at a frenetic, almost maniacal pace, even just to go to church.  Though the speed limit on the motorways is 100-110KPH, anyone going slower than 130 draws the ire of all but the horse-drawn carts and the older, ailing Dacias (like mine).  Even a few seconds behind a slower car is enough to drive a Romanian driver into a frothing rage.  With the horn blaring, high-beams flashing and middle finger at high salute, they will execute violent, high-risk passes on blind curves in bad weather, coming within inches of clipping other cars, horse carts and people (Romanians have this strange compulsion to walk in the road, even in the city where sidewalks are plentiful) in order to get past you and your sorry excuse for a car.  Essentially, the mentality of the Romanian driver is this:  If you’re not the fastest vehicle on the road, you’re not really trying. According to my own Lonely Planet, driving regulations are officially this:  “In Romania, there is a 0% blood-alcohol tolerance limit, seat belts are compulsory in the front and back seats (if fitted), and children under 12 are forbidden to sit in the front seat. Speed limits are indicated, but are usually 90km/h on major roads, 100-110km/h on motorways, and 50km/h inside cities. Having a standard first-aid kit is also compulsory. Honking unnecessarily is prohibited, and headlights need not be turned on in the daytime.”

Unofficially, there is no law.  I am the only person that I’ve ever seen wear a seat belt, and indeed, if you strap yourself in while in someone else’s car, the driver will be deeply offended, even if you pathetically try to explain that if you are involved in a car accident and you are not wearing your seatbelt, your insurance will not cover you by evacuating you to a reputable hospital in Germany.  Speed limits and stop lights are ritually ignored and those who try to adhere to basic road conventions are considered a menace. The average Romanian driver uses the horn more than the brakes, whether it’s to signal that you are in his way or the red light is taking too long for his liking or your shoe is untied or he has arrived outside your apartment block at 2:30AM and that you should come out to speak with him. Drunk driving is a matter of course on the weekends in the city and all winter long in the countryside.

In recent years, as nicer cars have made their way into Romania due to the advent of personal bank loans and television teaching Romanians to live beyond their means, an ugly, unwritten road hierarchy has developed.  That being, the person with the nicer car has the right-of-way.  This applies to stop sign intersections, passing slow trucks, snatching parking spots and line-jumping at the car wash.  Example, if there is a slow truck, followed by three Dacias and then a BMW, the BMW driver will take the first opportunity to pass the entire parade in one swoop (or weave in and out of the line to avoid oncoming cars, wholly expecting the Dacias to slow and make space for him) and if one of the leading Dacias should attempt to pass the truck during this interval, there’ll be hell to pay. A warning to all Romanian drivers visiting America: If you exhibit this behavior while driving anywhere in the US, particularly Los Angeles or Texas, you will involved in gun-play within the hour of your arrival.

I’ve heard a bit of hearsay about police targeting expensive cars and, in particular, cars with non-Romanian license plates for bribe shakedowns.  Whether or not this is true, I imagine this type of thing will become more and more rare as anti-corruption pressure bears down and more locals start driving Mercedes.  As is more and more common, once an individual has sunk his life savings into the expensive car, there’s literally no money left to appease opportunist cops (or even to eat a reasonable meal), and the authorities have already figured this out. Whatever the case, as a foreigner, being on your best driving behavior is advised, even if it means being the goat to every other vehicle on the road.

By the way, if an oncoming car flashes its high-beams at you, there’s a cop up ahead and you should immediately move to the far right of the road and slow to an appropriate groveling crawl, so as not to give him any excuse to pull you over and torment you for arbitrary offences (“Your car is too dirty”).

- Winter Driving

Take the white-knuckle, lawless nature described above, quadruple it and that’s driving in Romania in the winter.  While there is small fleet of plows with a passing dedication for clearing the roads, there is no countermeasure in place for dealing with ice.  No sand or salt and certainly no adjustment on the part of Romanian drivers to account for the conditions.  Accidents are frequent.  And it’s not just the maniacs taking high speed, blind turns on black ice.  Within four days of acquiring my car, I was involved in two minor, yet alarming super-slow, ice related accidents.  Once drifting into a bank of ice and snow during a U-turn, shattering my front-right turn signal (repaired in six minutes for US$3) and once downhill and backwards, with foot and parking brakes applied, into a parked earthmover.  Whether it be a dangerously steep street or a busy national road, ice is left to sit and cause havoc until it melts in the spring.

While Romania’s roads are normally a heart-quickening moonscape of potholes and ruptures, requiring total vigilance at all times, winter adds to the excitement with snow camouflaging these impediments.  You don’t know they’re there until the car bottoms out in a hole the size of a cow, which you’re helpless to avoid anyway as a quick evasive swerve would send you spinning off into a corn field.  It’s because of these conditions/accidents that I have suspended the bulk of my driving-related research until March.