Vershun’s Brain Dump

It had been a long day.  Long, LONG day.  When Laura and I got back to her apartment we decided to call it a night since we both were exhausted.  “I should have a cig before we crash out,” I had said.  Stupid.

So Laura and I are joking around, as per the usual, and she said something particularly funny which gave me a bit of a kneejerk reaction.  I wish I could remember the joke but I was busy putting my right foot down onto air.

The fences around Brooklyn are ornate and beautiful.  They’re also hard.  And sharp.  If you happen to be laughing at your friend’s joke and fall onto one of them, it hurts.

Fences and gravity in cahoots against my giggles.

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Now, it just felt like I got the wind knocked out of me, so when Laura yelled “OH MY GOD ARE YOU ALRIGHT?” I laughed and said I was fine.

“No you’re not… you’re bleeding.”

The feeling you get when you look down and see blood spreading through your shirt could probably be best described as “unnerving.”  I applied pressure for a few seconds until I realized that it wasn’t too bad of a wound.  My breathing was fine, heart was intact, and I didn’t have an iron rod through my body.

Holla at a sternum.

So Laura was about to get an ambulance but we decided we’d just cruise instead; no point in spending money for an ambulance and it was such a nice night.

I made her take a picture with me before we set off.  If she looks uncomfortable it’s because she is.

We go to the first hospital that my GPS finds, which is a mile away and was some random Brooklyn hospital.  When we get there we fill out a computer touch screen asking me my name, age, and the problem, which Laura awesomely put “Hole in chest bleeding.”

I was 2nd in line.  Oh well.

Everyone called my doctor “Dr. Spikes” in the acute ward because of his spikey hair.  I thought it was ironic.

Worst.  Hospital.  Ever.  Took them about an hour to even see me once I got the stretcher thing.  Threw a bandage on it and IV’d me up.  The Jamacan nurse was awesome and kept calling me the “luckiest guy alive.”  When I left we hugged; I was her favorite patient of the night.  She was my favorite Jamacan ever (much nicer than experience with one waiting for the Chicago L who made a slicing-your-neck motion).

Dr. Spikes wanted a CAT scan of me, “just to be sure.”  So I drank a shitton of disgusting liquid and then got to wait around another 2 hours while they “prepped” (drank, I assume).

The CAT scan was pretty sweet.  When they put the activator liquid in they said, “You might feel some warmth in your arm and have a metallic taste in your mouth.  That’s normal.”  By no means was that “normal” to me but it certainly is kickass.  They should have continued on though and said, “the warmth will spread throughout your body and eventually hit your pelvic region.  This will make you feel like you just shit and pissed yourself and you’ll have to lay awkwardly for another 2 minutes until you can get up and survey the damage.”

I didn’t shit myself.  Win.

So the scan results were suppost to take “30 minutes.”  I was finally released 2 hours later.  It wasn’t so bad though because Dr. Spikes let me go outside to smoke, which I was a little weirded out about since the CAT scan was supposed to be looking for if I was bleeding into my lungs, but whatever… he’s a doctor.

Laura was hilarious the entire time and God bless her little heart she stayed with me in the hospital throughout the entire 5 hour ordeal.  She didn’t even want to come outside for that initial smoke in the first place.

Snapped when we got back:

And that was my night.  Missed my flight to San Francisco in the morning for my cousin’s wedding.  Suck.

Were pretty awesome imho.

That is all.

I left Mishawaka a few days early.  Traveling up past Cleveland at around 1 AM a guy hung out the passenger side window on the freeway and drunkenly screamed “HEY I’M FROM COLORADO TOO!!!”  Not knowing how to respond, I thumbed (thamb?) up him.

My friend Lauri called and I repeatedly tried to impress her with my hotel-haggling abilities but to no avail; even the most atrocious of places were all taken up.  Eventually I found a terrifying little hotel way in the middle of nowhere where I settled down for the night and watched “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter is Dead,” which is less about a dead babysitter and more about Christina Applegate looking hot.  Deal.

I stopped at a McDonalds the next morning to grab some deliciousness and use their free WiFi (combining my two favorite things on Earth, you wonderful company) to conduct some b.nis and check out things to do in Buffalo.  On the front page of Buffalo Times was the Blues Fest (tribute to Muddy Waters specifically, who I awkwardly love) going on in Niagara Falls.  Plus one more good karma point to McDonalds.

I’m walking to the festival when I see this:

I'm a huge sucker for silly signs

The Blues Fest was just getting set up so I wonder over to the only thing decent looking on the American side, a big rainbow-pretty Casino.  $10 dollars, 3 hours, and a pack later I was out.  Not a bad $10 spent, and while I’m a bit sore of losing the $80 payout what would you expect at a casino?

The band was just getting started (The Filter Kings, they were great), so I hung around a bit and then it started to rain.  Instead of finding shelter, I decided while I’m on the American side I might as well check out the American Falls a couple miles away (see it again I suppose; Lauri was with me the first time I went to Niagara Falls where I have fond memories of cheesy couples videos and arguing over exchange rates).

It’s lucky for me that I’m so ridiculously manly or else the freezing cold rain weighing down my sweater might have bugged me.

Please note the sweater my mother bought me and my crippling addiction to harmful chemicals as attributes of my testosterone.

Here’s a picture of the falls.  More importantly here’s a picture of all the wusses with all their life-saving waterproofing.

Pshka

As I stood there, marveling at the incredible beauty nature has taken thousands of years to create, only one thing went through my mind, “The Canadian side looks so much fucking cooler.”

Oh Canada! Teasin' those without passports.

Now.  Even sweeter than the falls were the rapids above them.  If you’re in the area, go see them.  It’s a quarter mile walk you punk, stop complaining.

This is where you throw unwanted children

I got back to the Blues Fest and watched a few more bands before I decided to head over to the hostel on the Canadian side.

As tacky as it is, I bought a shirt there (mainly because Lindsey did unspeakable things to the shirt I was currently wearing that I would not readily describe sober).

I'd wear Muddy himself

I didn’t think there was anything to do in Niagara Falls but the guy I met at the hostel told me differently.  There’s tons and tons of sweet stuff to do.  Unfortunately, I was only there for a couple days so I only got to do a jetboat tour ( http://www.whirlpooljet.com/ ) which was FANTASTIC.  10,000 gallons of water all up in your business going down class 5 rapids.  I thought I was really clever wearing really dirty clothes and going through a “free wash cycle,” but that water isn’t clean.  Fair warning.

What’s even more unfortunate than my fleeting stay is that I cut all the pictures from my memcard to my lappy which got a filesystem corruption a few days later (couldn’t even fdisk and mount -f from a LiveCD), so I lost ALL my pictures during this time.  For shame.  What I really miss are the pics of Kristy-Lee pwning up Area 51 and our sweet winnings.

I’ll give credit where credit is due, the hostel I stayed at in Niagara Falls was AMAZING and here’s a link to their site:  http://www.hostelniagara.com/ (enjoy the PR -3 backlink guys).

It was a cool day in Toronto on September 5th and I was working diligently in a coffee shop on Queen street.  I anxiously checked my e-mail every 5 minutes, waiting for the lady I had met the day prior to give me my moving in information for the next day.  I was particularly looking forward to showering since for the past 2 nights of hostel sleeping I didn’t remove more clothing than my shoes.  I was, in a word, smellygross.  Due to the Toronto Film Festival I couldn’t find either a hostel nor a hotel for under $200 a night within the city for the weekend.  I figured one night on a park bench wouldn’t kill me (the night wouldn’t, people might), and I would be rewarded to my own place for the next week when I woke up.

Well.

It started to rain a bit, and regardless of my million and a half calls she would not pick up.  I assumed that I didn’t have a place to stay then, so I was bitching to Lindsey and decided that I’d roll back down to Indiana for a day or two.  Got there at 3-4 AM or so and we hung out for a few hours before I left and passed out in a church parking lot (thanks for the free bed… God).

Later that day I received an e-mail from Toronto lady saying she had filled the room.  Thanks lady, I hate your fucking face.

So I spent a little less than a week in Mishawaka, generally staying at the Bates Motel (nicknamed by Lindsey for the motel in Psycho) by night, working at Panera Bread during the day (see post about umbrella below), and hanging out with Lindsey, her 3 year old son Dom, and her mother in the evenings.

If you have never seen pics of Lindsey (Magik), first off, welcome to the internet.  Secondly, she’s cute.

Good moments:

Lindsey completely missing the bar stool and falling on her ass right after sassing the hell out of me.  Then spilling her drink all over herself that I discretely told the bartender to “put as little alcohol as you can in there.”  That whole night was awesome actually.

Dom making me painfully aware of the amount I smoke when I legitimately lost a “catch me” game outside.

Lindsey’s Mom’s ex husband and bar stories.

Hunger cravings.

Accidental cash donations to drugs stores.

A few days in Dom gave up the pretense of asking what’s in my pockets and just started reaching in there.  Awkward.

(Probably will be arrested for that pic).

However, he did get his hands on my camera and clumbsily took a few pictures that turned out pretty decent.

Dom’s tiny photo gallery:

I would like to thank Dom, Linds, and her mom for letting me hang out and letting a filthy, disgusting vagrant into your home (not me, I let him in when yall were sleeping in exchange for some crack).

Whelp, homeless again and out (oot) on the road.

I took a little bit of a detour and hung out in Mishawaka (pronounce wishy-washa-wacka).  The first night I’m pretty sure I’ve never had so much fun watching Animal Planet ever (this is a big deal since Animal Planet is the shit).

Pretty much the entire night.  Although nice falling asleep during A Scanner Darkly… asshole (you know who you are).

Notable moments:

“Zylophone”
Dinosaur eating moats.
Chapstick made of sulfuric acid.
The drunken Jamaican who turned into British person as he sobered up.
Veggie pickup lines.
Water buffalo (very good call).
Evidently goats aren’t male sheep.
One-way mirrors.
Gay grizzly guy.
Ladybugs.

Second night was awesome as well.  FINALLY I got to interact with someone who’s on my intellectual level:

Sorry for the quality but this is the stillest Dom was the entire evening.  He loved the game “Catch me, guy!” which made me realize how out of shape I was when the next morning I felt like I went to the gym.

<3 Linds imho.

But time moves forward and so do I, so NEXT!

I created a slapdash Scrubs theater during traffic in Detroit.  Luckily, I opted to go around downtown because last I remember the only good thing about going that way is Windsor, which I had no real reason to check out.

So I got to Toronto and stayed at Rob’s place (DG).  Drank at a cool bar and listened to a lady go completely insane about not knowing French.

Is there anything cooler than Rob’s vinyard/natural gazebo?  No, no there’s not.

Oh Canada, how I love thee.  Thanks to social health care their cigarette packs come which horrifying pictures on them.  Gotta catch ‘em all.

The coolest shit happened to me today.  A guy I’ve known online on-and-off for about 10-11 years lives in Canada.  He was the one who first introduced me to FreeBSD back when I was 13 or so; I pretty much owe him everything as far as my system administration start is concerned.  So I was hanging out at my hostel this morning and jumped on his IRC server to tell him I was in his country and it turned out he was working 4 blocks from me.  So we met up and checked out a potential place I might stay in for a while and nerded it out somethin’ fierce.

That was a really, really boring story.

Actually, this is a really, really boring post.  For my own awful-memory benefit I suppose (hey at least it’s better than all the retarded emo posts).

Point is I fucking love Toronto, love the people I’ve met, and love the trip so far.  Leaving CO to bum around was the best decision I’ve made I think.

Seems like all the hostels are full tomorrow.  Might have to actually truly bum out a night for the first time since I left.  Canadians don’t murder people… eh?

Bored.

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(Girl not included).

Twas a fun weekend.

The Cincinnati suburbs are shrouded is awesomly thick foliage which hides almost everything but the metropolitan area.  This is both aesthetically awesome and also great for hiding and snatching up passerbys.

The racial tension is intense.  There’s a pretty clear division between the east side (white) and the west side (black).  It probably stems from the racist, redneck mentality of the east which leads to an aggressive disposition in the west that keeps perpetuating itself as a  circular, retarded, self-fulfilling prophecy.  That being said, if you go on the west side at night you’ll probably be shot.

As you go into the city there’s billboard after billboard for vacationing elsewhere.

Ohioans are the most self-deprecating group of people I’ve ever met.  Every time I tell someone I recently moved to the city they apologize.  Even more confidence inspiring than the billboards.

My place’s deck sits across from the “Riddle Road Market and Deli,” which specializes in random foodstuffs (some chips must be years past their expiration date as I haven’t seen some of the designs on them since I was a child), soda (or “pop” if you suck), but most importantly it has a wide variety of boozes and cigarettes.  This brings an eclectic mix of crackheads from the west and ridiculously attractive U of C girls from the east together.  It’s better than TV.

My favorite place outside of Cincinnati is the P.F. Changs off of I-75.  Not because of the food, but because the entrance is a revolving door in which clingy couples that try to both fit in the same slice get awkwardly stuck in it all the time.  The longer the wait for our table the better.

The air is so humid it’s impossible to feel clean for a period longer than 4 hours.  I’ve regressed back into my early college days when I’d only take a shower every few days.  No use in fighting it.

The fireflies are ridiculously kickass.