Getting lost and watching cars

Yesterday was interesting. I went out for a short stroll, just wanting to do some shopping, and ended up going for about a four mile walk. How, you might ask? Well, I’ll tell you. Even if it ends up being a humbling story (nothing wrong with being humbled, right?).

Remember when I first got here, took a wrong turn, and ended up walking halfway to France? Well, I did it again yesterday. As in, the exact same walk. All of the stores were closed when I set out (accidentally leaving in the middle of siesta), so I decided to just walk in a different direction than I’d gone last week and explore another part of the neighborhood. I walked around long enough for siesta to end, and did some shopping in a newly-reopened grocery store. When I came out of the store I was completely disoriented, and usually in those situations I just set out walking confidently, so I appear to the outside world that I know what I’m doing. In the end, I probably added a good two miles to my walk, and ended up in the exact same place I got lost last week. Good times. But really, I enjoy long walks and this certainly qualified. That’s what I keep telling myself at least. It’s really quite funny, getting lost in the exact same place twice, even though I started from two locations roughly 1.5 miles from each other.

Today was interesting, too. I planned to go explore a huge park on the northern edge of town, one from which you can see the whole city spread out before you, but when I woke up, Oisin (new roommate/landlord) informed me that we had plans. He had acquired some tickets to the Formula 1 racetrack outside town, and invited me for an afternoon of watching cars drive in circles. Turns out it’s a two day affair: today was the warm-up, and tomorrow is the actual race (series of races actually). I’m not going to go tomorrow, but today was actually a lot of fun and a completely new experience. We drove out to the track and walked around to different vantage points over the course of the afternoon, watching four different races of consistently more impressive cars.

It started with the kind of racing cars that you wouldn’t notice on the street (except for all the decals of course). Just souped-up street cars. Then, it was souped-up street cars, only with spoilers and blowers. Finally, we saw the things-de-resistance; Formula 2000 (one step down from Formula 1, I learned today) cars. The ones that look like rockets. God almighty. If you’ve ever watched these things on tv (I rarely have), you always hear the announcers talking about how loud it is, how they can’t hear the questions of the studio hosts, etc. Well lemme tell you. Dem mofos is LOUD. Ell-Oh-You-Dee god damned loud. And fast. Wow. They seriously fly. I’m not the kind of person who gets geeked out by cars, by any stretch of the imagination. But seeing these things in person, I have to admit feeling a weird gut-excitement, like going to the circus when I was a little kid. It was a lot of fun.

So now it’s Saturday night, and I was thinking of going out but I just had an enormous dinner (fried potatoes with chicken and vegetables) and several glasses of wine. And I really did walk around a lot today. So I’m tired, content, and have plans to go check out that park tomorrow anyways, so...I’m just going to stay in tonight, rewatch "The 40 Year Old Virgin" on the laptop, and get up early-ish tomorrow so I can study for a few hours before heading out to the park. As I’ve said many times before, one of the best things about living in, rather than just traveling through, a foreign city is the lack of urgency. I know I can relax tonight and be content with what I’ve done today, rather than thinking I need to fit in as much as I possibly can in every spare hour. Much more my speed.

In closing: I have an exciting new game for everyone. It's called "drink half a bottle of wine and then hang your newly-laundered clothing on clothlines suspended over a 30 foot drop." Seriously, it's a lot of fun. It's like an old atari video game. Burgermaster or something.