The Daily Rice is Back: 13 Curious Days and 13 Different Ways of Transportation

In the Operating Room during a field training exercise in California...

The traveling has worn me thin, and too many cities and far too many miles will make you feel like an absolute ghost. My mind is in much the state of Alice’s after the hatter’s tea-party.

Well I’ve finally made it back from Dublin. And no, not the Ireland Dublin, home of the three dollar Guiness, but the California Dublin, home of the three dollar gallon of gas. The last two weeks have been a disjointed journey to the West Coast, a couple of brief sojourns in Colorado by way of massive layovers, and finally back to Texas. In a couple hours I’m off once more, New Orleans bound so that I can watch my brothers turn seven.

If I’m not mistaken, I’ve taken nearly every form of transportation the 21st century has to offer over the course of the last 14 days. It’s been something of a post-modern voyage, proving there is no set point from A-B, and instead any number of methods really, and the intellectuals love it.

Expect lots of pictures and stories over the next couple days, including a short novella entitled Bonnieology, a character study of a 33 year old who I would have pretty much married, if not for the small, oh-so-important fact that she literally just got married. To someone else. But two weeks as a psuedo-husband-surrogate inspired an ill-advised tale about the whole ordeal.

In short, the Daily Rice is about to get a whole lot more Daily. Once again.

1) Miles driven in a car that does not belong to me: 800

2) Migraine inducing plane flights: 4

3) Trains: 2

4) Bus rides: 4

5) Rides spent hanging off a trolley, racing down hills that would make the Coney Island Cyclone tame by comparison: 2

6) Journeys across the Golden Gate Bridge, through Sausalito, and the greater Bay area via bicycle: 1 very, very long ride

7) Times I drove a 5-Ton truck: 1

8) Tiems I turned in a miserable showing on the Humvee obstacle course, during which I turned verticle cones into fluorescent pancakes: 1 (unless you count being asked to “try again” and “generally try a bit harder” as a second)

9) Taxi-rides from an unlicensed, possibly schizophrenic Indian driver who wouldnot stop hitting on me: 6

10) Over priced Blue and Gold Boat ride across the San Francisco Bay: 1

11) Journyes up Lombard Street, the crookedest and steepest street in the Northern Hemishpehere: 1

12) Hills climbed in the land navigation course from hell: 10+

13) Blisters accumulated from aforementioned land navigation course from hell: 2, which is to say, 2 too many.