Looking Into the Past

Clifton, just outside Cape Town, South Africa ca 1992

Last night, when I was supposed to be wrapping up and going to bed, I happened across a folder on my computer that contained a bunch of my writing and stories from close to 20 years ago.

Many of the Clarisworks (olde skewl!) files had mysteriously converted to terminal files somehow but not all of them. I opened as many of them as I could and am going to re-save them in, hopefully, more future-proof formats.

Among the things I realized even from just reading the file names of files that were no longer openable is that I used to write. I used to write a lot. I used to write stories regularly on a wide variety of subjects. Some are interesting and some are not. Most of the writing isn't especially great but there are passages here and there that actually make me remember where I was and how I felt when writing them. And that's a power that I'd forgotten words had.

Michelle above Clifton, Cape Town, South Africa ca 1992

A few lines into a story about riding my motorcycle along the waterfront road between Cape Town and Seapoint where I lived and I could close my eyes and be there again. And I feel the rush of memories cascading down upon me from my time there so many years ago. There's my rat trap Suzuki Katana with the dash of red on the seat parked outside of my Kings Rd. flat I shared with an attractive though barmy accountant. The even more rattrappy Honda CB500 "Bushman" I had before it that hated rain and would strand me in the lightest sprinkle. There were the weekend trips to beach houses with friends. There were late night bike rides along the coast road until my calves locked up completely and I'd have to limp home. Working downtown at the Health & Racquet and all the shenanigans that went on there. Michelle. Ronnie. Adrian. Renzo. Sebastian. Rory. Storm. Keith. Dozens and hundreds of others. All these names that came and went and people that came and went. I wonder where they are today. The two motorcycle accidents I was in, the night of agony after the second one and not being able to sleep even on the meds because it was Guy Fawkes Day and fireworks were going off non-stop. The winding down of aparthied and rising up of the ANC, the taxi wars, the random totally hammered hill dude wandering down my street lazily pissing this way and that. Calling trucks Bakkies, stoplights are robots, sneakers are takkies. And those amazing South African accents. The fruit hawker I'd walk by often shouting "Hannepoot-ah, one rand!" (Grapes for a rand). The beggar I saw once who was so scrawny he was pretending to play his emaciated leg like a flute because it was so skinny. The pack of young kids wandering around completely high on modelling glue and incoherent. The drunk guy on the taxi talking about killing white folks until the rest of the taxi pulled him and beat him up. The trip down the Fish River Canyon in Namibia with some loony South Africans. Drinking in bars with Aussie and Kiwi nutters. So many scenes and memories and probably hundreds that have already slipped away forever.

I left Cape Town more than 20 years ago and much of my time there is still vivid.

I'll sift through the writing to see if there's anything worth reposting here or whether the files just get shuffled into a new format to keep getting carried along to the next computer and the next.

But it was a nice little trip down memory lane.

More Linkage

I'm waiting for a server to come back up so I've got a few minutes to post some stuff up here again. I know, twice in a month? What is this? 2003?

First up is this rather amazingly awesome Shipping container orphanage in South Africa. Twenty eight "worthless" shipping containers transformed into a very cool home for orphans!

The photo to the right is from the most recent edition of the Adventure Sports Journal and includes not one but two of my photos from last year's Santa Cruz Mountain Bike Festival! This year's festival is going to be on the 14th and 15th of April and should build on the ever more epic festivals from year's past.





This graphic passed through my G+ stream and blew it up! I reshared it but so did 33 others from the original post.

Look, I don't hate religion but I definitely hate it when people use their religious beliefs to act like assholes towards anyone.

And you think the Pope stepped down for anything other than a massive criminal scandal? Guess what? Pope Palpatine is probably going to get charged with sex crimes. Man of God indeed.

I don't hate religion but I do hate the assholes who lead virtually all religious groups as if they are some pious mouthpieces for God, they are not, they are crooked liars fleecing the gullible and stupid.

On to other news: We are entering the longest day off free zone in the school calendar. We have, as of right now, 29 days of school in a row without a break aside from the weekends. It will be a slog. Oh wait, I'm going to be taking a couple of days off in March so, uhhh, nevermind or something.

I've been adding new words to my Fictionarium if you're so inclined to read them.
And there's usually something going on over on my Walmart is Pure Evil blog too. But maybe don't visit if you're offended by the gratuitous use of the word FUCK in graphics, there's a powerful graphic posted right now that doesn't pull punches about what it means to actually shop at Walmart (hint, it ain't good). And I call Walmart, China Direct in my head now too.
And I still post to my What Not To Do blog as well if you're into reading cautionary tales about the idiotic ways that other people get arrested or killed.

And that ought to do it for now. We'll see what the week brings, it's all raining and cold and nasty today and I'm working a double so there's that. But at least everyone in my house is healthy again, no fun with everyone on antibiotics and feeling like total dookie!

Media Dump!

Haven't posted up here in a little while and thought I'd go through my G+ albums and repost images I've posted over there.

This first is a neat app on my iPhone called Photo Flow that lets you take a static image and "flow-isize" it. The term for these images is called a floto or flowto.

It works exceedingly quickly and well when used for water, fire, smoke or other similar movements.

Here's another made from a recent trip out to the beach.

The neat thing is the app makes it very, very easy to mobilize pixels. Just drag your finger and the movement starts, it is even keyed to how quickly you move your finger so you can make a really fast river if you so choose.

And how's about some ninja style dodgeball gif action too? Not mine but too awesome not to share.

More? You wish for more of this awesomeness?

I'll see what I can do. Because I'm a giver.

Capitola beach divided by river runoff.

Here's another shot from the beach trip a few weeks ago. I enjoyed watching nearly every person try to cross that log across the river and fall in. Except Graydon who walked back and forth again and again and did not fall in once.

Pilon Universe.

And, last addition to the post. How not to enter a parking garage with your bike on the roof of your car.

And that's all for now, folks. I could be encouraged to post here more often if there were some comments.