Late Aquatics

So. Since I have epicly dropped the ball on Epic Blog this summer, I figure the least I can do is pick it back up again for the last few weeks that I'm here. While things have definitely been winding down, I would like to assure you all that there are still plenty of adventures to be experienced and fun to be had. With that being said, I hope to be able to wrangle some more readers in with these new posts in the form of all of my fellow Camp Adventure Compatriots that have had the poor judgment to leave Japan prematurely. That means that I will be shifting focus a bit more to the what daily life is like for someone experiencing late aquatics, BUT AGAIN, REST ASSURED LOYAL READERS, for the aquatics lifestyle is not for the squeamish or weak of heart, as my fellow former staff members already know.

Tuesday morning came along just like any other morning in Yokosuka. As a lot of you might already know, Tuesday morning means in-service at Green Beach pool. For those of you that don't know, Tuesday morning means in-service at green beach pool. Surprisingly enough, this in-service wasn't as lame as I would have expected. It might have had something to do with the fact that there were so many sweet MWR staff there, or maybe just the fact that Yoshi was talking and laughing at a volume level that would most likely be inappropriate at a rowdy dinner party, let alone an in-service. I'm pretty sure AJ has just given up entirely at reprimanding Yoshi for anything at this point in the summer, so she just went ahead and started her schpeal regardless. After the same ole thing we've heard fifty times this summer, we went out and had some fun by practicing jumping off of the different guard stands. This was sweet, espesh when it was time for the “scary stand” as dubbed by Georgia. Most of us had a blast jumping off the alleged “scary stand” (which is a perch sitting about six feet off the pool deck for those unfamiliar), but there were a few exceptions. Tomoko for one, had to be gingerly coaxed off the stand by the encouraging words of myself and the others. This was about a seven minute process, and consisted of cheers raising in volume and intensity when it looked as though Tomoko was about to jump, only to transform into the squalor of suppressed disappointment when she had second thoughts and retreated away from the edge of the stand. This series of accumulated courage and shattered resolve continued for about three cycles before Tomoko just let loose with a jump very much not at all resembling the proper form necessitated when entering the water from such a height. Because of this, AJ made Tomoko repeat her jump for a second time. The second time around was much better. Gotta give that Tomoko credit, she's a heckuva fast learner. Also she's really great at drawing cartoon cats.

Skipping ahead in the day, we find myself at Ikego pool with Brian, Stacey, Thomas and Toru-san. If there's one thing that I can say about Ikego pool, it would be that I absolutely love it. There are only two stands, some sweet slides, and awesome people to work with. Maybe one day, if I am lacking interesting things to talk about, I can explain the intricacies of the slides here at Ikego. Believe me, these slides are worth talking about in painful detail. I have even affectionately named them all based on their individual slide characteristics, and those names are Turbo Spin, Breaky Smashy, and Regular. I think my next update will be a good one for me to talk about the slides some more.

Anyway, work was pretty sweet. Tuesday was my second day working at Ikego, and I already had the whole system back engineered into my own personal intricate science.

From 1000-1030 I sit in a car.

From 1100-1300 I don't really do a whole lot.

From 1300-1500 I marvel at how relaxed the work day is.

From 1500-1800 I become bored and irritable.

From 1800-1830 I sit in a car.

But not really. Obviously I guard and stuff, but the moral of the story is that work is really relaxed and fun. We even had a squeegee and brush party on the pool deck for like ninety hours until the deck was clean enough to eat off of, but not really. Another cool part about working at Ikego is the bodacious mini NEX that's right next door. This place has everything from candy, to diapers, to Japanese confections, to frozen burritos, to small yet deceptively aggressive Japanese ladies that yell at me for coming inside wearing a dripping swimsuit.

Fast forwarding to after work, I find myself meeting up with the entire late aquatics staff (as well as a couple daisies) to head out for some wholesome, good ole fashion Japanese Karaoke. Our good friends Masa and Misaki offered to take us out for the night. Somehow, they were able to fandangle us a sweet Karaoke deal and we received an hour of Karaoke in a huge room all to ourselves with free drinks and ice cream for HALF THE NORMAL PRICE!!!!! I have no idea how they managed to do this with so many people. My friend Paddy told me though that it was some weird Japanese thing having to do with cell phones or something, so that's pretty cool.

Anyway, when I walked into the room, I proceeded to bust my only remaining nut that has until now been left mercifully unbusted by the nut busting greatness of Japan. Our room was massive, with plush leather couches bordering three walls, complete with a bountiful cache of tambourines just waiting to be exploited by my eager right hip. I think we started off the night with some Lady Gaga or something, then followed with some Garth Brooks, Beatles, and a multitude of other Karaoke favourites. Eventually, Masa and Misaki pleasured our eardrums with their illustrious Japanese vocals, and then Misaki and myself sang the infamous Alladin carpet ride duet thing. It was a great time. The JaSoda and JaSoft-serve flowed freely, and I even splurged a little and had some sushi hand delivered to me in our room, which I have presently (and affectionately) named The Fortress of Singatude. It was awesome. Though the best part was hands down the sweet videos that played in the background on the karaoke screens. No matter what song we were singing, the screen consistently showed us montages of Japanese people partakin in very mundane activities. People laughing at parties, Japanese women walking their dogs in the park, and even a young couple sailboating not far off the coast of Micronesia. Hilarious. My favourite little montage was when we were singing 'Genie in a Bottle' and the visuals depicted an intense soccer match between young Japanese schoolchildren. It was a good night.

If you want to see pictures from karaoke night, please look at my album on Facebook entitled 'Please Look At This Album If You Want To See Pictures From Karaoke Night' that I will be uploading shortly.

Workin Man

Needless to say, I have become a very busy man these days (as indicated by the above picture). This is regrettable obviously, one reason being that I have been unable to fill my loyal readers' hearts with the joy that only my joyous blogs of joy are able to provide. Another reason is because my torrential onslaught of a work schedule hardly seems to provide me with adequate time for other life necessities such as achieving a desirable REM cycle, intaking required nutrients, and breaking down adenosine triphosphate into its less useful components. But really, gross exaggerations aside, I have been pretty busy, and that's not entirely a bad thing. While I definitely am bummed that I have gotten away from blogging, I have been having a great time with work and teaching swim lessons. To celebrate my homecoming back to my blog, I'm going to go ahead and share with you all exactly what I've been up to every single day that I've been away! Don't get too excited though, it wont really be very difficult, seeing as every single day is exactly the same as the previous one. To compensate for the lack of diversity in my life however, I still have plenty of adventures and pictures of me with friendly strangers from my weekend travels that I will be sharing in the next few postings. But now, without any further ado, is my wondrous and magical work schedule!

Average work day:

0900: Wake up, shower, other morning stuff

0915: Make my breakfast for the day. My breakfasts ALWAYS consists of the butter of peanuts, grape jelly, and bread. Woo.

0930: Go to the pool. Swim some stupid amount. Almost die. Recover from my near death experience.

1030: Start work at the Greenbeach Pool. This entails sitting and reading for half an hour slash swimming some more slash skyping with my good friend Kevin, and then guarding for half an hour. This process repeats itself until my lunch break at 1300.

1300: Lunch break. I leave Greenbeach, go back to my room, play four rounds of Brawl on my Wii with my friends, then eat my lunch. My lunch ALWAYS consists of rye bread, liberal miracle whip, semi liberal dijon mustard, two slices roast beef, one slice turkey, once slice cotto salami. Woo.

1415: Leave the TPU (place where I live) for the BOQ (swim lesson pool).

1425 (sharp): Arrive at BOQ. Lessons start at 1500, but we have to be half an hour early (don't ask me why). We have to be there half an hour early, but Camp Adventure policy states that we have to arrive at any appointment five minutes earlier than the designated arrival time (don't ask me why), hence the '1425 SHARP' doubly amended arrival time. Anyways, I digress.

1500: LESSONS BEGIN

1900: LESSONS END (We have a total of four lesson sessions every day, one every hour. I teach two lessons a day, and when I'm not teaching, I aid other Camp Adventure instructors)

1910 Arrive at the TPU. Donesies for the day.

1910-1930: Lay on my bed in a semi-vegetative state while my brain recovers from the amount of sun and childrens' screams that it endured over the past ten hours.

1930: DINNER TIME. Dinner is unique in its endless variance, relative to my other meals. I have three different meals that I eat for dinner here. Meal A.) consists of the exact same thing that I had for lunch earlier that day. Meal B.) consists of three to five packages of a 69 cent beef chow mein meal that I was fortunately able to purchase from the local grocery in a denomination that would likely feed a small country for three to five years, coincidentally. Meal C.) consists of rice, vienna sausage, and patis (fish sauce).

2000-2300: This is the weird time of the night that just seems to pass by in the blink of the eye. Usually we have some time of meeting or gathering of all the aquatics staff, or otherwise I am busied with things like laundry or homework. Yes. We have to do homework here.

2300: BED TIME

This is my schedule during the day. Woo. But now that I have plowed through 90% of what I have done in my time in Japan in one measly blog posting, we can look forward to some more postings about my weekend travels. Next blog I'll talk about my visit to Yokohama and Zushi beach! Well I think that wraps it up for today. Thanks for reading, and I hope you are all having your own respective summer adventures. Tune in next time!

This is what I do at work. Usually.

Korean BBQ

This Saturday was the official one week mark for me being in Japan. And I am easily having the best time of my life here. A testament to this fact is how I haven't had the chance to blog for some time now. So many exciting and fun things have happened since I last was able to blog, so I will do my best to jam all of the important stuff into this one megalithic SUPER BLOG. So buckle up your seat belts and pop a liberal dose of anti-nausea medications, because this ones gonna be a doozie. If I'm not able to get up to date with this blog however, I might have to split it up into two parts, so stick with me! I promise all the adventures I've been having lately are definitely well worth the read.

Every day here is so much fun that it doesn't even feel like work. A lot of this has to do with the people that I work with. Obviously the Camp Adventure folks here are amazing, but I was pleasantly surprised when I met the MWR folks that we would be working with this summer (MWR stands for Morale Welfare and Recreation, these are the people that contract us out for the summer). My first real interaction with the folks from MWR was at the “ropes course” that was planned for us on Wednesday. This wasn't so much a ropes course though as it was just a session of really fun team builders led by a strange man that claimed he could talk to a small rubber fish named Puffy. Aside from fish-man's strangeness, the team builders were an absolute blast. I met two of the local lifeguards Kou-san and Toru-san, as well as some English speaking lifeguards along with the head lifeguard that I'll be working with this summer. Although it was very nice to meet the people I would be working with this summer, Kou and Toru were definitely my favorite. They were both very keen about helping me with my Japanese skills, and they also did a great job of keeping us all entertained with their wily Japanese antics, most notably the Obligatory Japanese Realization Sound. If you are unfamiliar with this sound, it goes a little something like this:

“OooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

If you can't tell by my capitalization elements, the variation in pitch seen in the common 'Obligatory Japanese Realization Sound' can be described as a common bell curve plotted on a graph with the y-axis representing vocal pitch and the x-axis representing time.

On a more serious note though, in addition to the entertainment factor that Toru-san and Kou-san provided, spending time with them and and other MWR staff during a day of team builders and fun really made me appreciate and understand how lucky I am to have been given this experience. I'm realizing that not only is it a huge privilege to be a part of Camp Adventure, but I'm also very lucky to have ended up in THIS country, on THIS particular base. I haven't gone too in depth about the privileges that we are given as students on this navy base, but there are A LOT. To name just a few, we are given FREE movies ALL SUMMER LONG at the two movie theaters on base, FREE BOWLING ALL SUMMER LONG, and access to the general mess, which is essentially a really decent, really inexpensive place to eat that even our MWR counterparts don't have access to. SORRY ABOUT THE INTERMITANT CAPITALIZATIONS, I AM JUST SO IMRPESSED ABOUT THE THINGS WE GET AND WANT TO EMPHASIZE THIS ACCORDINGLY. They people on this navy base really appreciate and respect the Camp Adventure kids. This makes me really happy, especially when random, important looking navy personnel stop us on the street to tell us personally how much they appreciate and respect the Camp Adventure kids. But what's that you say? Enough about the boring self-flattery stuff? You just want to hear more about my exciting and borderline inappropriate interactions with the wonderful Japanese economy? Well great! Because that's what I was about to dive right in to!

I realize that this is a duplicate picture... Blogspot is just sucking hard right now and doing weird things like duplicating my pictures and not letting me delete them. Woo.

One of my latest excursions into the cultural hearth of Japan involved the pinnacle of my fine cuisine experiences to date. After wandering around the Daiei mall with the low rumble of my travelmates' frustrations in my leading abilities fresh in my ear, I recognized a restaurant that I knew at once would be a big hit. When I peeked inside the windows of said restaurant, I immediately saw the jovial emotions and outbursts of Japanese restaurant-goers that could only have been the direct responses of a “cook-your-raw-meal-yourself-at-your-own-table-slash-open-grill-apparatus” type of restaurant. Having never been let down by my unconventional skill of extrapolating the quality of a restaurant by the visible behavior of its Japanese patrons, I quickly led my travel group inside. I'm going to go ahead and say right now that my travel group will never be doubting my judgment again regarding meal venues.

When we got inside, a nice waiter led us to a small corner table while being sure to speak plenty of Japanese that we didn't understand. After we were seated, we were happy to find that they had English menus for the exact occasion that a bunch of wily English speaking college students might somehow stumble inside. After we were situated, the Japanese human waiter guy gave a little Japanese schpeel, turned on our table slash open grill apparatus, and then left us to paruse the menu and accidentally burn ourselves a number of times. When we received our food, the real fun began. Essentially it was just like one of those restaurants where you get your food cooked on the big circular open grill thing, except in this case you have the privilege of cooking the food to your own liking, with the fun bonus of a 3^rd degree burn if you're really lucky.

Obviously, it's one of my goals to take a picture with someone from every restaurant I eat at.

Anyway, I'm gonna stop here for now, and then when I pick up next time I'll be able to devote an entire post to my weekend adventures. This last weekend I traveled to Yokohoma, the 2^nd largest city in Japan on Saturday, and then Zushi Beach on Sunday, so I have some sweet pictures and stories for you all. It seems like every time I log on there are more followers for my blog, and it makes me super happy to see that so many people are interested in reading my stuff. Thanks again to everyone! Its nice to have a support network when I'm traveling so far away from home. BE SURE TO TUNE IN FOR THE NEXT EXCITING INSTALLMENT OF ARISTON IN JAPAN!

Business Time

So all of the unbridled fun and excitement that took place yesterday was only an infinitesimally small quantum particle vibrating in the theoretical strings of a greater dimension when compared to the anti-fun and unexitement that took place today. As you might have remembered from my previous posting, my day today started out nice and early at 06:30 with a refreshing, brisk, and (in my case) potentially life threatening 600m in the pool. After this wonderful experience followed about ten hours of lecture based learning in a shiny, 70's themed disco type room, followed then by our first actual staff meeting with the Yukosuka Aquatics staff.

I'm kind of stretching the truth just a bit though. The day wasn't complete devoid of fun, I'm just more or less a little bitter because it was just a very, very long day. It was great to hangout with my staff and get to know them a little bit more, and then afterward I made a quick trip into the city with two of my most trusted allies. Since I am quite tired, this blog will be pretty short, and I apologize for that. I'm just gonna post some cool pictures from tonight and maybe provide some witty repartee. Also, I wanted to say thanks for everyone that is following my adventures. I have really enjoyed taking the time out of my day to sit down and blog, knowing that my close family and friends will be reading and enjoying my posts "state side.

The pet store lady's dog attacked me, and to recompense she allowed me to take this picture. The dogs name was 'Chako.' Not quite sure if that means anything.

This arcade was awesome. It was four stories, and very hard to leave. I will be returning here to spend the entire 24 hours of one of my days off. Japan has the freaking hardcorest gamers in the world I think.

For the game, you actually went INSIDE THE COMPUTER to play it. It's so simple...

HardXcore gamers. So fun to watch

Kinky pachinko, or what I have affectionately dubbed "pakinko."

This place was even better than the arcade.

JUST LOOK AT ALL THE MANGAS.

Bought this book for 400 yens. The cool thing is that even though its in Japanese, the pictures alone make it worthwhile and and enjoyable and relatively easy to follow the storyline.

First official "sushi go round" that I have frequented in Japan. Very good stuff. If you're unfamiliar with a place like this there's basically a sushi conveyor belt that moves right in front of your face, of which you are free to take small plates of sushi from at your discretion. Turns out, my discretion was not very discreet tonight. I probably spent more money than I should have.

It was good food though, so I'm not going to spend much time worrying about petty mortal concerns such as "yens." Life's too short ya know? A kind of funny story about this place though, when I asked the chef, "Sumi masen, wasabi kudosai?" {excuse me, wasabi please?}, he gave me a contemptuous look, and literally scooped up a glob of wasabi with his bare hands and threw it down onto my plate. I'm not sure if that's normally how it's done here, but it seemed a little bit excessive to me. Could be that I accidentally said something that I didn't actually mean to, but I guess we'll never know.

Well that's all for today folks. Sorry the post was short-ish, and not full of a lot of my normal humour. Like I said earlier, I am quite tired. Look forward to the next exciting installment of Ariston in Japan!

Let Jagg

Today was easily one of the most exciting days of my life. I think that my body slash mind knew what an amazing, fun, Japan filled adventure the day would turn out to be, and therefore allowed me to get up at 7:00AM feeling well rested and exuberant. Or it might have been because waking up at 7AM in Japan means really waking up at 4PM in "The States" as we like to call it here. Either way, when I got up this morning I was ready for whatever the day was to bring. Little did I know however that the day would bring me such things as awkward interactions with pachinko attendants and stimulating conversation in Japanese with a middle aged ramen bar waitress.

The day started off with some pretty trivial things like a tour of the base and a brief presentation about some Camp Adventure and other military procedures and regulations. But after walking around the military base in a large, cumbersome group and talking about why it's bad to rob stores in the bar district after drinking excessively was when the real fun began. First on my list of to-dos was to explore the NEX and Commissary on the base. The NEX is essentially a Target, Best Buy, and Dillards all rolled into one superstore with really reasonable prices. I was impressed actually. Additionally, there are some really buff, intimidating guards that line the perimeter and check your passport to make sure that you have 'clearance' to enter the superstore. And when I say buff intimidating guards, I really mean tiny Japanese girls that sit at a desk and don't speak any English. Anyway, I went to the NEX, was thoroughly impressed by their selection of what seemed to everything on the Earth that has existed, ever, and then bought a case for my ipod. After the NEX party, I checked out the Commissary, which is apparently Japanese for GROCERCY STORE. Here I bought a bunch of things in bulk like white rice, frozen boneless chicken wings, and frozen sausage patties in an attempt to save some money. I figure if I don't spend a lot of money on my solid food intake, I will have much more money for the important things like climbing Mt. Fuji, futuristic robot vending machines, and the infamous "Love Hotels" scattered all throughout this wondrous country. (That was a joke, Erin.)

I found out today as well that the military likes to come up with all sorts of fun, interesting, and also useless names for things that already have existing names. Oftentimes the new names involve very hard to remember acronyms or made up words that have nothing to do with the actual function of the thing has has been named, kind of like COMMISSARY. I also made the realization today that if Japan weren't such an alluring place, I could very much be perfectly content spending the next three months on this base and still have plenty of things to do and places to eat at. Seriously, this place is huge. Theres a bus line even (granted there are only two buses, one labeled 'clockwise' and one labelled 'counterclockwise'). Fortunately for you and me however, Japan is nuts, so I won't need to spend much time on my base aside from the required job doing and sleeping that I should probably do.

Dinnertime was the first real chance that I had to explore the homeland of my heart. I gathered some of my most trusted allies, packed up my exploration gear (camera, trident layers gum, Japanese phrasebook) and penetrated the glorious city of Yokosuka, hard. My first mistake made itself known almost instantly. In a fit of foreign explorative passion I easiy broke away from my group of friends, finding myself very much alone as well as breaking Camp Adventure's cardinal buddy rule. Quickly I realized that I should have chosen some allies with either a faster average walking speed, or a higher general level of foreign explorative passion. I amended this

situation very level-headedly using an unnecessarily loud voice coupled with words such as: hurry, the, friggin, balls, and up. Needless to say, there were no more issues with the group sticking together after this.

Our objective for this mission was to acquire edibles, but since I was in such a frenzied state I quickly exchanged this objective with one that involved the shiniest, loudest, and flashingest thing that was within view at that particular time. I imagine that this behavior annoyed my travel group, only because my travel group made a point to vocalize their annoyance with my behavior. There was even a point where I led my group up into a seven story pachinko parlor, thinking for some reason that there would be food on one of the higher levels. If you are unfamiliar with Pachinko, it is pretty much the Japanese equivalent of slot machines, except that when you're done, you bring a basket full of the small metal ball bearings that you have steadily been collecting to the desk to be weighed and cashed out. It was very, VERY loud in this building, and before we reached the fourth floor (which was closed) we were caught by a Pachinko attendant and ushered out in an extremely polite yet forceful way. On our way out, I participated in what would barely pass for a conversation with another attendant, this time female, and asked her where I could find food by repeating the only food words that I know in Japanese, such as 'oranju jisu' and 'sushi'. She said some Japanese words which I have never heard before, pointed in about nine different directions (one of which was straight up, I'm not kidding), and then we were off.

A couple minutes after our Pachinko adventure I ended up leading my gang of hungry, somewhat hateful travelers to a very decent looking ramen bar. The ramen bar ended up being a really solid find, and the good food helped everyone forget how incredibly incompetent of a travel leader I was. I would love to describe our dinner experience in a much more vividly hilarious fashion, but it's getting late and I have just been informed that I will be swimming 600 meters tomorrow morning to prove to my supervisors that I actually do know how to swim (HA IF ONLY THEY KNEW THAT I'M ONLY A MEDIOCRE SWIMMER AT BEST. I HAVE NO IDEA WHY I WAS USHERED SO STRONGLY TO BE IN THE AQUATICS PROGRAM).

Well folks, sorry to cut this blog short. Maybe tomorrow I'll continue talking about my adventures, because surprisingly, I didn't spend a lot of time talking about the actual events that happened today, but rather the useless logistical in between parts of all those events. Anyway, here are some pictures in the meantime.

This amazing woman was our server for the night. Our friendship started when she asked me what I wanted, and I responded with "What would you recommend for me?" in quite possible the worst Japanese that has ever been spoken my a 21 year old Filipino man. Our undying bond was only strengthened when I asked her to pose in a picture with me. Just take a moment to appreciate that look of pure, unadultered enjoyment upon her face in this picture.

Bucket List

I have never been so excited for a Thursday in my entire life. In just a measly 3 Earth days, I will find myself on a life changing journey to The Land of The Rising Sun, also known as Japan, which in turn is also known as Japan (pronounced with a "soft J," phonetically spelled as "Hapan"). There are many reasons why I am so excited for this trip. Primarily, it's because I will have the unique experience of living on a military base teaching swim lessons to the children of service families. The other and probably more conventional reason that I'm excited is that I will undoubtedly be involved in the type of extraordinary adventures that only a true, Japanese-like environment will be able to provide.

As if it weren't enough to simply be journeying back to my place of Imperial Samurai Origin, I will also have the the uncanny luck to be accompanied by my partner in crime, Spencer Noble-san. Spencer is a great guy that I have met through the camp adventure program. We have both been progressively more and more excited as our departure date nears, and in order to ensure that our trip is as exciting, ridiculous, and action packed as it absolutely can be, we have compiled the following Bucket List for our travels.

But before I expound on our glorious list, you must be thinking to yourself, "Wait a minute, isn't a bucket list a list of things that you hope to accomplish before you die?" If that is your line of thinking, then you are absolutely correct. I have not misspoken. This is not your average To-Do List. Here is the disclaimer to my readers saying that should you have the need to reproduce this list in any capacity, you might not make it out alive. Consider yourself warned. And without any further ado, I present to you, my unfathomably worshiping readers, our Japan Bucket List.

Japan Bucket List

In order of increasing unlikelytude.

--Go to a baseball game

--Go to a sumo wrestling exhibition

--Climb Mt. Fuji

--Go canyoning

--Run around Tokyo in a ninja suit (without being apprehended by the authorities)

--Climb Mt. Fuji (Again. This time should be faster.)

--Participate in a Japanese gameshow (a televised one is heavily preferred)

--Run around Tokyo in a ninja suit (allow apprehension this time, but put up a pretty convincing fight)

--Make international news somehow (possibly by costumed harassment of the public or evading arrest)

--Battle an actual samurai, in the mist covered mountains of Yokohama (If neither samurai or mountains are presently available, start a fight in a bar owned by a Yakuza crime-boss)

--almost die somehow (this one should be relatively easy)

There you have it folks. If you ask me, it should definitely be an interesting time. I'm always looking for irresponsibly adventurous tasks to take on, so if you have any good ideas for the list, please feel free to let me know.

We Need Healthcare Reform Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle

I feel like there must be a point in every young upstart bloggers life when they come to the stark realization that said life is undoubtedly worth blogging about. For me, that moment was earlier this morning. More specifically, it was the exact instant where I found myself on my shiny celeste bicycle, clad in full University of Oregon Cycling regalia, carrying the beta fish which my girlfriend and I are currently enjoying the joint custody of. Now, at this point, if you have any working knowledge about my personality or lifestyle, this situation might not sound too out of the ordinary. However, I assure you that when I woke up this morning, I had no intention of taking Jimmy Rodriquez Aldente III from the safe confines of the top of Erin's dresser and out into the harsh, unforgiving world for a potentially life threatening bike ride.

Like I mentioned earlier, this morning started off just like any other. Except for the fact that it's spring break, the entire building is empty, and I had to wake up to the annoying sound of my roommate's alarm clock that I had stolen the night before. The reason for this malfeasance is none other than the fact that my cell phone alarm was out of commission due me having left the charger at Erin's apartment. As I bashed the unfamiliar alarm with an apathetic fist and crawled out of bed, I realized that it was a beautiful day outside, so I decided I would put on my cycling gear and go for a nice long bike ride. It had been quite some time since I last was able to get a good ride in, so needless to say I was in a good mood and excited to get some fresh air slash exercise. Before I set out, I made the wise decision to make a quick stop at Erin's place first, so I could simultaneously rescue my forgotten phone charger and complete my only bi-daily chore of the week, which is feeding our newly acquired pet fish. So I put on my nifty cycling shoes, filled my nifty cycling pockets with keys and a dead cell phone, and set off to what I thought would be a nice bike ride.

Approximately seven minutes later I found myself outside the door of Erin's apartment, fumbling awkwardly with the two keys she had left me on her key chain. Upon closer examination, one key was almost certainly a mailbox key, so I instinctively selected the other for the use of door unlocking. The key slid into the keyhole easily enough, but the real trouble manifested during the 'unlocking' segment of the process. I don't claim to be a key expert or anything of the sort, but I am generally of the thinking that if the key doesn't turn, then you've got yourself a problem. Initially, I was optimistic that the issue wasn't necessarily my key repertoire, but rather some type of user error on my part. So next followed a period of time I have affectionately named "Key Time," due to its obvious association. Key Time consisted mainly of about ten to fifteen minutes of myself experimenting with different methods of key use, several angles of attack involving either of the keys left to me, and even a couple complex procedures utilizing both keys in intricate unison. It's very safe to say that I made absolutely no progress during Key Time. Additionally, my previous hypothesis of user error was nulled into bloody submission by around the time the appropriately raced lawn mower guy made his third lap or so, eying me suspiciously.

At this point my determination was well spent. I was being forced to slowly accept the fact that I would have to go on living a destitute life, unconnected from society through Sprint's acclaimed largest mobile network in the world, all because I couldn't unlock my girlfriend's apartment and her roommates were no longer there to let me in. Oh, and the fish. I was worried about the fish too. Because, you know, I wouldn't be able to feed him and stuff.

I slowly and sullenly mounted my bicycle and peeked back behind me, as if my slow sullenness was somehow the answer to this riddle, half expecting to see the the door suddenly swing wide open. What I saw instead was a green door, piercing my soul with its gaze, mocking me with its ever vigilant doortitude. I gave a shrug and released a small sigh of defeat, and set off for the dorms, no longer wanting to continue on my bike ride.

I had only reached the first stoplight before my usual guile and resourcefulness returned to me after being unexpectedly shattered by the evil green door. I urged myself to remember that I was indeed a problem solver, and that I shouldn't just give up so easily. So then I turned my spandex mantled little toosh around and rode off at a hugely unnecessary speed toward the apartment complex office.

When I arrived, I gingerly dismounted, parked my bike (again gingerly) against the window, and proceeded to enter the building with a stride boasting the confidence that comes with a full spandex body suit. Upon my arrival, the three humans inside looked up at me and all made their own interpretations of the face that you might see someone make when they open up the oven after many hours of preparation, only to find a result that is very much not the one expected. This might have been because I was wearing a full spandex body suit. It also might have been because I was wearing a full spandex body suit and also offering to them all my best guess at how Zorro would vehemently smile, after having just kicked down a bedroom door to reveal The Don about to have his way with Zorro's lover against her will. Whatever the case, I had everyone in the room's undying attention.

"Um, can I help you out with somethin?" stammered the first human. Before I responded, I quickly took in my surroundings, and assessed the situation in order to deem what approach would be best. I ended up going with the 'Beloved Hero In Need" approach. Needless to say it worked fervently. After the small task of explaining the situation to the apartment people and winning over their hearts with my boundless charm and charisma, they eventually decided that I probably wasn't some criminal mastermind interested in robbing apartment D43 blind. They told me that they could let me into the apartment with Erin's permission and proceeded to call her cell. At last! I had finally come to a point throughout this long tedious process when victory was almost within my grasp! However, Erin being the naturally free spirit that I have grown to love, naturally, failed to pick up the phone at this moment of intense plot culmination.

At this point I was finally at a loss of what to do. They had left Erin a message, so not much was left to do seeing as I was an individual without a working cell phone, AKA a useless and pathetic waste of carbon structuring. I was getting ready to take permanent residence in the office lobby, when the genius idea struck me to have them call Megan, my girlfriend's roommate. She was undoubtedly with Erin, since she had only 16 hours previously embarked on a journey to visit her in CA. Alas, contact is made, and I am finally allowed into the apartment. I rejoice like it's 1999. Unfortunately though, they can't give me a key or anything, so I am left with no choice but to take the beloved fishy with me back to my dorm, despite the unknown dangers that could potentially manifest while transporting a fishbowl via bicycle.

And so now we find ourselves at the beginning of this narrative. Surprisingly enough, I am thrilled to find that I am actually quite adept at riding a bicycle while carrying a large, awkward bowl of water. Not only that, but I can actually wave and smile cordially at those passerby that are bemused by the sight of a grown man riding a road bike while carrying a fish in a bowl. And also interestingly enough, I received a decent number of smiles by said passerby as well.

The real kicker to this entire ridiculous story however is what took place when I reached the safety of my dorm room after this whole ordeal. I end up talking to Erin on the phone for a bit, and we are generally confused and amazed at how I ended up minus one apartment key, as it was firmly snug on its ring when she gave it to me. A little befuddled, I hangup the phone and promptly tear apart my room looking for this friggin key. Eventually, I find the key in question packed tightly into one of the many secret pockets of my extravagant hikers pack, which I employ for day to day use. Obviously, this was a very interesting discovery. Not only did this key escape from it's ring somehow, but it also managed to hide itself in a place where I could very well have never found it again had I not been prompted by an intense need to search. This leads me to two different possibilities. Possibility A proposes that I have somehow offended magical backpack pixies, and they have enacted a vendetta for revenge by filling my days of spring break with immeasurable nuisance. Possibility B proposes that I have somehow, unknown to my active consciousness, tampered with the key in order to impose this misfortune upon myself for some profound reason. This might actually be the more plausible proposition, provided the fact that I indeed have a history of doing really weird things while sleepwalking.

So, now that you are aware of the extremely interesting course of events that somehow manged to find me today, please feel free to offer any sort of explanation that might make sense to you, seeing as I have been able to find none. Additionally, I wanted to thank any readers that managed to somehow find this first blog post of what I hope to be many. I also hope that they will continue to be as interesting and uselessly entertaining as this one has been.