"Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did." --Mark TwainWelcome, friends, stragglers, and information highway hitchhikers...
Please allow me to introduce myself in this introductory entry (I hate the term 'blog', sounds like a rude emission of sorts), thus beginning my forays into publicly accessible writing for the following and other purposes:
a) to bring you the places, people, and cultures I've been fortunate enough to visit;
b) to set myself up for possible opportunities in publishing my travel/culture posts, and
c) to get things off my chest, thereby making me a more balanced individual ( just in case the anger management wears thin.)
As a bass player for 20 years, I've traveled across the continental US and Europe several times, even some parts of Scandinavia. I've spent many a mile in cramped vans stale with mildew and secondhand smoke of various sorts, slept on floors and dingy couches of punk rock bars, clubs, halls, or seedy motels in the crack-and-gunfire friendly parts of various cities. The bands I performed in opened for some of the greats and not-so-greats of the genre, and the audiences varied from none to sell-out.
I've seen hurricanes, tornado spawning storms, and watched lightning strike the desert sand alongside Highway 10--a few feet from our overloaded minivan--in the middle of a dark New Mexican night. When we got to our first destination, Atlanta, GA., the band we were touring with, Falling Sickness, said, "You guys are called Damnation and almost got hit by lightning...and you kept going??!"
I've swished down the Rockies into Denver during what became the largest and earliest snow storm in decades, biting my nails in a van prone to expensive breakdowns with no chains or useful wipers.
I've been to the top of the Empire State Building, played the Lower East Side, and enjoyed the night life, above ground cemeteries, and the river walk in New Orleans before it was doomed by faulty levees and faultier politicos. I've played Berlin, Boston, London, Belfast, Lucerne, Glasgow, and the Reading and Leeds festivals, to name just a few.
As an aspiring anthropologist and graduate student, I traveled across the nation of Guatemala, hiked the rain forest to view Maya holy places and ancient ruins like Cancuen, boated across Lago de Atitlan to find the santo named Maximon, and delved deep into Xibalba, the Maya underworld of caverns believed to be the origin of Maya religious belief.
I've watched the Devil burn in Santa Maria de Cahabón.
I've come pants-pissingly close to arrest at a dusty Honduran/Guatemalan border post in the middle of what can best be described as near nowhere--this after spending two days hiking among and under the majestic ancient city of Copan and its neighboring Las Sepulturas.
I've traveled to Bolivia, followed the Cordillera Real of the western Andes to the Sacred Valley of the Inca, boated across Lake Titicaca to reach the Island of the Sun, where the Inca creator god, Viracocha, was born. I walked on the reed islands made by the Uros people, who chose to live atop the surface of the lake rather than be subjected to the imperialism of the Inca.
I was targeted, followed, and pick-pocketed by a gang of elderly and diminutive Aymara natives on a crowded sidewalk in La Paz, Bolivia.
I've flown above the Nasca Lines immediately after a long, rainy, and insanely frightening nighttime bus ride down the Andes, with handfuls of coca leaves, beer, and a couple of Soma to help numb my fears.
With my diatribes and vague recollections as your guide I hope you will enjoy my photo galleries of some of these experiences.
Mark Twain once said, "Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did."
I couldn't agree more.
My advice to everyone: see and appreciate all you can while living a painfully short time on this chunk of dirt, metal, and mostly undrinkable water we call home.
Take it from DEVO: It's a beautiful world we live in...
Bien viajes,
photo by Tod Imperato
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