Surveying the multitude of diverse and bizarre weblogs out there, a wise man once posited that they could all be categorized into three possible topics: Knowledge, Adventure and Bacon.  Knowledge blogs clearly would cover the quest for and divvying out of knowledge in any way, from professorial theses on the most esoteric of subjects to awkward, trenchcoat-wearing adolescents documenting their experiments with household cleaning supplies to find which work best to “blow shit up.”

Adventure blogs cover ballsy and/or stupid people documenting their off-the-beaten path experiences with activities normal people avoid because they actual have some basic degree of common sense.  The girl that motorcycled through Chernobyl would’ve been a perfect example of an Adventure blog, had the story not turned out to be entirely porcine.

That of coure leaves us with Bacon, an umbrella category for nearly every other tale of daily personal trial and tribulation.  As in “I got up this morning and had bacon for breakfast.”  Or “I got up this morning and had the best bacon ever for breakfast!”  That’s not to say that bacon journals are uninteresting, but their scope is limited to readers that either A) care enough about the blogger to spend time reading about his or her intimate experiences with bacon, B) care enough about bacon to read about its intimate experience with the blogger or C) find the blogger so innately compelling that even bacon literature can be uplifted to the level of high prose.

Nearly everything I’ve pushed out onto the Internet in the past has fallen squarely into the bacon genre (and please, for those observant Jews in the audience, note that “bacon” here is a metaphor.  A succulent, non-kosher metaphor, but a metaphor nonetheless).  As I’m currently looking at close to a year abroad (assuming I suffer from neither critical injuries nor critical boredom), I have for once in my risk-averse (read: kind of pussy) life the opportunity to write something from the riveting Adventure angle. 

Don’t hold out on Knowledge from me any time soon, though.

Why you shouldn't urinate into the Amazon

My biggest fear with keeping this blog, even if it won’t likely ever be seen by anyone outside of family and friends, is that I’ll eat up a year of my life and a sizable chunk of my bank account with little to say or show for it.  Actually, that’s a lie; my biggest fear is the Amazonian candiru fish that has a penchant for urine and is known for swimming up into urethras and getting lodged into that tight, delicate spot with their spiky outerbody.  Yeah, actually, writing a crappy blog doesn’t even compare to that fear.  Let’s be honest.

Miami’s got me for a solid 24 hours until my next flight which takes me into Quito.  It’s a good breaking-in to what will likely be the format of my life for the next year; it’s my first hostel experience, most of the people here speak Spanish and I’m already sweaty and dirty.  Check-in isn’t until three, but they were kind enough to draw up a map for me of South Beach, and I walked around for an hour or two with my backpack left in the hostel’s storage room.  There were plenty of other people’s belongings in there, but as literally all of my worldly possessions are in that bag, I’m a little skeptical to just leave it laying around.  When I reach South America, I’m sure my suspicious nature will kick into overdrive. 

Walking along South Beach, I was able to deduce that toplessness is apparently legal here, though limited to women either over 50 (years of age) or over 300 (pounds of weight).  Meanwhile, within feet of said offenders were many of the most perfect sets of sunbathing breasts I have ever quickly glanced at while pretending I had seen something interesting in nearby sand.  All were cruelly locked away as though the local constable never informed them that they had the same rights and privileges as their more expansive and/or ripened sisters.  It was a veritable apartheid, and for the first time in my life I felt an urge to become more socially conscious to the injustices of the world.

Ocean Drive in South Beach is a long stretch of pastel-colored, art-deco inspired hotels with ritzy names to match their 50s-movie-theatre image, like “The Majestic,” ”The Avalon” and, uh, “The Leslie.”  Locals (immediately recognized as such, since no tourist can take on such scruffy, carefree appearances in the amount of time the typical vacation lasts) ambled down the streets without a visible sense of urgency, and I envied them.  I have a hard time going anywhere slowly, even if I have nowhere in particular to be.  Traffic and long lines (hardly fun for anyone) kill me.  Despite this, I am generally always late, regardless of destination.  Hopefully with a year of having nowhere in particular to go, I’ll be able to adapt the sense of calmness employed s effortlessly by the homeless and developmentally disabled.  Wait…

The homeless, while not exactly in large numbers, seemed to congregate outside pizza joints asking for change, and while I wouldn’t even oblige them under normal circumstances, these days I’m rejecting the requests with extreme prejudice.  Financially speaking, I had a lucky streak that makes a trip like this theoretically possible.  But whether I choose to call it “unemployment” or “temporary retirement,” it doesn’t change the fact that no new checks will be coming in for a while and I need to make every cent go as far as possible.

That means I need to break from my classic vacation philosophy of “This is vacation.  Make every second as awesome as possible, regardless of cost!”  There are a lot of seconds in a year, and if I’m going to hang out with penguins in Antarctica and hangglide by Jesus in Rio de Janeiro, it means cutting back on nearly all day-to-day costs.  Cheap foods, uncomfortable means of transportation and very little alcohol — Love the stuff, and it definitely makes meeting strangers a bit easier.  But even if it gives me horrible, explosive diahhrea, water’s still cheaper.

However, they’ve got an incredible happy hour special about to begin here so, as with most things involving sobriety, that’ll have to wait ’til tomorrow…

Hopefully I’ll have something adventurous and interesting to write about shortly.  Until then, enjoy the bacon!

Sweet blog.