Yellow Badge of Courage

I was going to write this earlier, but due to many and sundry reasons I did not feel much like writing. Now, for many and sundry reasons, I feel very much like writing.

I considered calling this entry Strenuous Physical Activity, but decided finnally on the Yellow Badge of Courage because I do not think I will ever ever get the chance to title something that again, but many things can be titled Strenuous Physical activity. Also, I was going to have pictures, but the computer where we are staying at, in Brno (look it up!), does not work with my camera.

On Sunday, I went paintballing with my new Austrian friends. I have had a lot of fulfilling experiences during my trip, a lot of memorable ones, a lot of enlightening ones. There have been plenty of fun ones too. But if I were forced by the confines of some stupid game, or maybe by some sort of demon, to describe my trip in one word the word I would choose would not be Fun. I am not here for Fun. I can have fun playing Odin Sphere at home, or hanging out with my friends and doing nerd stuff.

That said, paintballing on Sunday was probably the funnest thing that I have done, despite the fact that paintballing makes me vicious, and I am now very very sore. I was only shot out twice, and had to go out once for being out of paintballs. There was even a time when I was scared that I would not get hit at all, making it impossible to join the club of laughing, high fiving Austrians who were comparing their wounds. So I charged a bunker and got well and good blasted, and earned a big, fat, yellow paintball splat right over my heart (as well as several bruises that don't hurt now. Why don't they hurt?) My yellow badge of courage.

The soreness is the worst pain though. I am hobbling up and down stairs. I am now terrified of becoming old, because this must be what it is like, only I can hope to repair myself in a few days (I'm almost healed now), but when your old it just gets worse. Regardless of the creeping fear of my own mortality, paintballing was tough. We have been traveling for two months, and, as you might guess, travelling is not the most strenuous thing you can do. I have never felt so out of shape in my entire life. We get on a train, or a bus, and sit for 2 to 12 hours, and then we get off the bus and take another bus to the hostel to dump our packs, then walk around the old town for 4 hours, stopping every fifteen minutes to eat or stare. Sometimes we drink. That is not excersise unless you drink like Finns.

So paintballing, coupled with the short bike trip I took on Tuesday, has left me sore as a... a... immensly sore thing. It has seriously been the most strenuous 4 days I have had on the trip. I loved it.

We caught a short train out of Brno to a little town called... uh, well I can't remember. The rented bikes at the train station, so we got three. Three, making two for Spence and I, and one for Mira, our guide. We met Mira in Sarajevo. She is from Chicago, but is studying in Brno, and speaks fluent Czech. It was a good thing we had Mira along, because Brno wins the award, so far, for town with least English speakers. I don't know why this is. Mira suspects it is the poor quality of czech english teachers, as even the young people, who are the ones we rely on, speak poor english at best. They spoke better in Albania...

Anyway, the farmland and small town we biked through were very beautiful. I have a bike route in Bellingham that takes me through farmland, and I find agricultural one of the most fulfilling of vistas. It is the happy median, I think, between nature and man made. But most awesome of all was the small jewish graveyard we found, easily the most dilapidated, but, for all the majestic graveyards I've seen, probably one of my favorites. I have pictures that I will upload once I find a better computer. Those will explain it.

But even beyond that, it was nice to get on a bike again. Spencer and I have both lamented that, of all the things we ought to miss the most about home, Our Bikes are on the top of the list. I miss my bike so much. I dream about riding down Dayton under the caress of a gentle breeze, a dicks hamburger in one hand, a bowl of Pho in another, an xbox controller in another, my own music playing in my ears, and the street lined with girls in bathing suits and skirts cheering my triumphant return. Also all my enemies would be staggering behind me under the weight of the traditional, Welcome Home to Seattle Orca Whale I recieved in Seatac airport. Giant robots would whip them when they got tired.

But, uh, its mostly my bike. My mind's eye pans over it, sweeping to a fro, stopping and then speeding up, like one of the fancified car-porn commerials where a man with a reasonable, masculine voice decrees 'Its the Soul of the Road.'

It was good to have Mira in Brno also because she is a friend that I met almost a whole month ago. I met Tobias two months ago, and then met him again. I will have met my Finns two months before I started living with them too. I am happy when I meet people and then, after a long period of time passes, remeet them. It suggests that perhaps I will continue to know some of them after I come home and that, maybe, if I am diligent at emailing and so are they, I might someday hope to visit my many european friends again, or my have one of them show up at my doorstep. After staying with BG's family for two weeks, I now dream of giving one of my european friends, any of them, hospitality in the States. I plan our adventures. I imagine them.

We are headed off to Prague, Praha, whatever, where Mira tells us there are more tourists than residents (we have heard this before), and where the pickpockets coalesce. They hold conventions in Prague. Pockcon 2007 was a resounding success. I feel safe, as I have recently sprayed my money belt with that deadly poison that works on contact with human skin. That, with the knife trap and the bodyguard I hired ought to be enough to keep me safe.

I recently read a book called the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. Has anyone read it?