1/Many

This was the room where I stayed on the first night of running back from California.
Scottsdale, Arizona. In a gated community called
"Sandy Retreat" or something.
It belongs to an Italian family
the father is a scientist and the mother stays home.
They have a 5,000 year old cactus in their backyard
and the biggest neighborhood concern is coyotes jumping
over the fences and eating the small dogs.

(click on the pictures to enlarge)

on the road again!




See ya!

a few more from guizhou

mao

Mao Zedong's calligraphy. He's known for being a great calligpher, among other things. This was on one of the walls in town, still unmarred after more than 30 years.

dinner in Guizhou

In Guizhou I met these guys on the street and they invited me into their storefront for dinner. They were eating out of a hot pot behind the counter, and drinking fermented tea wine that had been aging on one of the shelves for 7 years, which they had just opened. We ate tiny whole fish that one of them had caught in the river that day, and drank basically until they couldn't stand anymore, at which point they tried to buy me a room at the hotel across the street. The food was delicious and these guys were a riot for sure. Especially smiley with the thumbs up. Thumbs up guys!

Door Gods

These posters were on doors across every town and city I went to in China. They are picutres of the gods who protect the entrance of ones house or business from evil spirits. Also, they are awesome.

We were in this town






And I saw all of this







Yaaaaaaaay China.

AI

Hey so sorry I haven't done anything fancy on here in a while, but my computer decided it wanted to become a "real boy," so I had to abandon it in the woods. That'll teach it. Don't worry though, I'll get down to business when I get home in literally days from now. Seriously. Board meetings, ties, phone calls on speaker phone, coffee breaks, tussled hair, panic attacks, downsizing, upgrading, you name it. I'm going fortune 500 this year, I swear.
Love,
Management

and then there's this guy

man, how do I get registered?

Guizhou 1

We went to Guizhou, a southwestern province for a week. We spent almost every night in a new town, rolling through most of Guizhou and seeing a whole new side of China. Many early mornings on the bus watching the country emerge from the mist. Beautiful nature everywhere. We went to a small village populated by the Mao minority people, who now are in the business of bringing tourists to their town, feeding them enormous amounts of local liquor out of horns, and then doing a traditional dance routine. After the show was over I was hanging out with a village elder, and he apologized for the dancing, saying that it was subpar. Apparently he didn't realize that being in his traditional village in China, watching village elders play 8 foot tall instruments while there was a dance party in front of us was enough for me, no matter how good the dancing was. If anyone wants to go, they rent a guesthouse in the village for 1 yuan a night, or roughly 15 cents.