Dreary

Well, old chaps, I'm going to commence my British Blogging in a decidedly, well, English way: by moaning about the weather. It seems that every person I've ever met in my life, who's been to England, was 100% right: the weather really is s$%# here. And no, that garbled 4-letter sequence does not translate to "spantabulous"; guess again. Today's weather in London is about as English as any weather I could imagine: cold, overcast, drizzly, and unbelievably gloomy. I guess that's why the Chili Peppers sing about London in the summer time; because now that it's Autumn, there's nothing to sing about at all. Nevertheless, it's still good to be here.

Rio de Janeiro. City of surf, sand, and sensuality. The sun always shines in Rio, right? Right?! This evening, when my bus pulled into the city of Rio, I arrived to find that it was pouring with rain. What's going on — how can there be bad weather in Rio?! The world's gone mad, I say. Anyway, everyone's saying it'll clear up soon — and it better. "When my baby, when my baby spits on me it rains in Rio, de Janeiro, and the thunder bellows..." :P.

My first day of not snowboarding alone: yay! Today, I caught the bus up to the mountain with Ed (who managed to rise from bed this morning) — we also met up on the bus again with Paul, and his Brazilian friend — and together, we all went up the slopes on our funky snowboards. Sadly, the weather was once again pretty shoddy today: snowing / raining all day, and the mountain was a white-out / blizzard by the afternoon. Nevertheless, we had plenty of fun, and we didn't get too soaked in the process.

Went back to Catedral today, after yesterday's debut, for my second ever day of snowboarding. Sadly, the weather was not very good today: it was raining in the village and on the snow all day, and I got soaked through by the freezing-cold precipitation; so much so, that I had to return to Bariloche at the early hour of 3pm, in order to get myself warm and dry, and to avoid catching pneumonia or something. But anyway, I managed to get myself another lesson, and I got in a fair bit more snowboarding practice. So it was a wet day, but a day of progress nonetheless.

After the party night last night, today was positively dead. I said farewell to Patrick this morning: he's going to Tena ahead of me, as he has less time than me. As it was raining all day, and as I was tired and bored (just like everyone else in town), today was a good day to catch up on ye 'ol blogging, to read a book, and to sleep. Not the most exciting day of my trip; but after the non-stop adventuring and partying of the past week, I did kinda need a break. And there's no day like Sunday for resting.

Wasn't feeling too good today. Crap in my throat, could barely talk, and quite tired. Must have been the oversupply of meeting and greeting and drinking, and the shortage of sleep, that I experienced over the past two days at DrupalCon. The weather was also rather unspectacular today. So I just took it easy at the Green Tortoise here in SF, drank lots of tea, and spent most of the day using the free Wi-Fi here to update this blog.

It's pretty cold and pretty rainy here in San Francisco today. And that feels really weird to me. I got so spoilt in Mexico! After a month of almost constant sun and warmth, I've virtually forgotten what it's like to feel cold. But now I remember how it feels: crap. Anyway, I'm going to have to get used to it, because almost everywhere else I'm going on my trip is probably going to be fairly cold. Including my next stop, Vancouver.

This afternoon was a rainy, dreary affair. Instead of hanging out at my new beach retreat in the cold and the wet, I returned (as a "trespasser", for the first of many times) to The Weary Traveler, and hung out with Chris, Erica, Laura, and Emily (another Aussie, from Dubbo). Laura taught us all a crazy card game called Irish snap, which kept us drunk and occupied for quite some time.