Bicycle

I have just been told by my friend, Josh, that he received a ticket today for running a red light on Commonwealth Ave. up in Boston. He says there were no cars in sight, but of course we all know that you still are supposed to stop... Here is the kicker, though - he was on his bicycle. The ticket will cost him U$S 150 and will have an adverse effect on his insurance.

I'm studying for a test, so I won't take the time to look into what the current law applicable in Boston, Massachusetts actually says about this. Nor will I get into the policy arguments about whether a bicycle should constitute a "vehicle" - or other relevant terminology - while on the roads and/or sidewalks of an urban community. But you should feel free to debate:

Should driving laws and regulations should be equally applicable to cyclists?
What are the arguments?
Maybe for the sake of synergy between all the operators on the roads?
Maybe to help ensure the safety of community members?
Should cyclists be required to apply for a license to operate their bike or unicycle?
Should cyclists pay for a license plate to put on their bikes?
If so - should the license plates be full-sized like we put on cars - or maybe the little key-chain sized license plates? Maybe something in between...?

Actually, I take it back - don't feel free to debate this here. I'll just end this post by saying that this is one more reason I am enjoying being out of Boston and in Latin America for the semester :-)



UPDATE: Well, the law students decided to debate anyway. Hehe... Therefore, the floor is open again to comments and arguments for anyone who has something to say about this.

Weekend Report - 04.25.2010

This past weekend was a lot of fun. I already told you about Reggaeton Night on Friday. Well, on Saturday I spent most of the afternoon studying, but that evening I went with some buddies to a birthday party. The girl hosting the party was from Italy, and pretty much everyone there was from Europe or different parts of Latin America. I enjoyed this crowd a good bit more than the last ex-pat party I attended several weeks ago. That last ex-pay party was part of the inspiration for my very first blog post - see "Gringo".

Anyway, on Saturday I started out the evening with my friends, Felix and Sebastian. That is Felix on the left in the picture. He is a buddy from my Maritime Law class at the UBA. Felix is a great guy and lots of fun to hang out with; however, I do not think he will be be helping me out a whole lot in preparing for exams because he doesn't show up at class half the time. I've also seen his handwriting, which is complete sh*t. I'll be much better off studying with a nice girl - a strategy I have discussed in a previous post.

Sebastian is the guy squeezed in between me and the skeptical-looking girl with big hair in the picture above. Sebastian is one of Felix's best friends, and we hit it off pretty well when we all went out together a couple weeks ago. Sebastian is one of those guys who seems to know everybody. For example, in Buenos Aires the stores stop selling alcohol at 11:00 p.m., but Sebastian always seems to be on a first-name basis with the owner of the Kiosks. He generally walks in and exchanges some jokes and banter with whomever is working, and then they go ahead and sell us

Belinda

This is a picture with Belinda Peregin. She is a 20-year-old popular singer from Mexico, and pretty good looking in my opinion. I saw her at Reggaeton Night where she was interviewing people for MTV. Actually, I didn't know who she was. My friend Consuelo told me I take a picture with the MTV girl, so I did. Then when I got home I realized that I have some of her music on my computer.



Anyway, this picture doesn't do her justice - so check out one of Belinda's music videos:

Reggaeton Night

On Friday, I went to Reggaeton Night here in Buenos Aires. Reggaeton is a music genre that has developed as sort of a mix of reggae, cumbia, hip-hop and rap. Most of it is in Spanish, although there will occasionally be some English thrown in there.

Reggaeton has developed in countries through Central America and the Caribbean, and it has actually gotten pretty popular in the U.S. Many people consider it a "guilty pleasure". This is because reggaeton isn't always exactly "good" music - the lyrics are often cheesy (with some exceptions - see Calle 13), the rhythms and melodies repetitive, and the singer is usually decked out in platinum chains and other over-the-top bling.

But it is feel good music, and it is great for dance clubs. I guess people start considering it a guilty pleasure when they leave the dance club and start listening to reggaeton on their iPods.

Well, I listened to a whole lot of it when I lived in Panama. As a matter of fact, I still listen to a lot of reggaeton. I listen to it on my iPod in Boston, and I don't feel the least bit guilty about it. Anyway, I need to get back to telling you about what happened at the show.

The 3 singers on Friday night all came from Panama - Eddy Lover, La Factoria, and Makano. None of these guys

Getting Stuck - A Series

I have several friends who are stuck in different parts of western Europe right now because of the volcano eruption in Iceland. Basically, each of them was on vacation somewhere, and now they cannot get back to their families, jobs, and lives because all flights have been canceled and delayed. Huge pain - it has even lead a girl I know to move "volcanos" down to almost last place on her list of favorite natural disasters.

Anyway, the Facebook Community has been responding to this unfortunate predicament by saying things like, "Well, you have a few more days in [INSERT BEAUTIFUL EUROPEAN CITY] - could be worse!" Being stuck on Europe vacation is a huge inconvenience and probably quite costly for these folks, but I guess the Facebook Community does have a point. There are worse places to be stuck. At about 6:00 a.m. this morning, this got me thinking about some of the times I have gotten stuck (or almost gotten stuck) in crappy places and situations. I'll tell these stories in the next three posts below this one. Here are links to those posts:

Part 1 - Stuck in a Cave

Part 2 - Stuck in the Darien Gap

Part 3 - Stuck in Panama City at 4:00 a.m. with no Wallet, Money or Identification

This is sort of "filler" material, because I am studying for another exam on Thursday. These stories happened a little while back when I was in Panama, so I have had them filed away in my head. When I am studying like this, I can still find the time to hammer out a quick blog post, but studying keeps me from going out and doing the weird stuff that I like to come back home and write about. So I just don't have as much new material to report. Don't worry though, I'll be out there making questionable decisions again in no time.

Part 1 - Stuck in a Cave

This is a story from about 4 years ago when when 3 friends and I spent a month in Panama and Colombia after graduating from college. The only other piece of background info you need to know is that we were on an island off the coast of Panama, and found a local Guaymi indian who said that he and his brother could takes us into a cave there on the island. Of course, this sounded like a great thing to do.

Well, we were able to come up with 3 hard-hats and a few flashlights. Of course there were 6 of us (4 gringos + 2 guides), and the flashlights were not water-proof (this is an example of "foreshadowing"). Feeling semi-prepared, we sat off on our adventure. We took a short boat ride through a small creek into the jungle, walked about 20 minutes to the entrance of the cave, and walked in.

The roof of the cave was covered in bats, and the floor of the cave was covered in water and bat droppings. During our first 10 minutes in the cave, we came across a caiman. I'm no animal expert, so I'll just say that these are like smaller versions of the alligators we see in Mississippi and Louisiana. Anyway, my friend Drew decided that he wanted to grab the caiman's tail.

Part 2 - Stuck in the Darien Gap

This is another story from 2006 when 3 friends and I spent a month in Panama and Colombia after college graduation. We decided to rent a car and go hiking into the Darien Gap. For those who don't know, the Darien Gap is the 30+ miles of dense jungle that separates Panama and Colombia. It is the one and only reason that it is not feasible to drive a car all the way down to South America. The Darien Gap is inhabited by the Embera indians, a few VERY small little villages, and roaming FARC guerrilas and other Colombian rebel militias.



Our plan was to hike into the Darien Gap to a ranger station called Rancho Frio. We would spend the night there and spend the next morning seeing animals, taking cool pictures and exploring the jungle. Then we'd hike back to our car and return to Panama City.

So we rent the car and set off down the Pan-American Highway. Well, the Highway eventually turns into more of a road, then a dirt road, then just dirt. Finally, you are bumping along a pitted dirt path that cuts through the jungle. We went through no less than 3 different police checkpoints before we finally arrived to a small little village called Yaviza. This is where the Pan-American Highway stops. We asked some local police if we could leave our rented car at their camouflage-covered police station, and they obliged. Then we found a store to stock up on some "supplies".

Most guidebooks recommend that you do NOT go to the Darien Gap. The guidebooks then give you helpful advice in case you decide to go anyway. I think our guidebook recommended that we take plenty of food, water, a First-Aid kit, satellite phone, camping equipment, etc. Well, here is what we took into the Darien Gap: a bag of rice, a can of mixed vegetables, 4 cans of tuna, some bottled water.

Not the least bit prepared for our hike, the 4 of us set off on a 1-and-a-half hour canoe ride