The Sharpest Cheese in the Bunch: The
Yow, looks like I'm already late with this week's questions and answers but that's alright, its always worthwhile to look to the others for inspiration. To that end, I would recommend surfing through Rambling Rhodes, Snooze Button Dreams and Gudy Two Shoes to get more -stacy!

And now.................on with the show!

1. How do you relax after a difficult day?
It'll depend on the severity of the difficulty. Minor irritation can be alleviated pretty easily by a little working in the garden, getting dirty has some kind of crazy cathartic effect and its hard to stay wound up. Tougher days will call for some more extreme measures, like getting out on the trails and sweating out the stress by thrashing one of my mountain bikes up and down some hills for an hour or two. But it also works to make a rather large and rather strong cocktail and sink into the over sized beanbag to watch some sports or waste a few hundred cops in Vice City by going on a half hour long rampage of destruction.

2. What's your favorite form of transportation?
Shorter trips it would have to be motorcycles, something really fun about having instant on power when you want it. About being able to smoke just about any other vehicle on the road and get up to ridiculous speeds faster than most cars can get to 60 mph.

Longer trips, gotta be trains. I took a 25 hour train ride from CapeTown to Johannesburg when I was leaving the country and it remains one of my favorite travel experiences. Gentle rocking motion, sleeper cars, lots of drinking, camaraderie of traveling and big fat South African spliffs add up to good fun!

3. What is your worst travel experience?
It started out the worst but got much better. Picture this, I'd gotten down to Boston to head to Africa for the first time (first time to head anywhere really) with my mountain bike packed and ready and two bags, one was a huge (and by huge I mean I could stuff a person in it if I had to) duffel bag and a smaller one. Upon check in they informed me that the big bag was over the weight limit by a good 40 pounds. Luckily the smaller one was under by 40 pounds so if I could just relocate the heaviest items into the smaller bag I'd be set. And I was able to get it worked out BUT as I was zipping the big bag back up, the zipper broke off in my hand. And then the other zipper broke off in my hand because the bag was stuffed. So I was stuck in Logan Airport in Boston, alone, with a bag that effectively had no zipper.
It could have gotten bad but I happened to have some gear to jerry rig it back together (I think I used a suture kit from my first aid kit to sew the bag closed on one end). In the end, I made the flight, they plastic wrapped the entire duffel and all ended well but there were a few minutes when I was certain that there was no way in hell I was making my flight and I very nearly freaked out.

There was another one that involved a drive from CapeTown into Namibia with a guy who had gotten insurance to drive the car only for himself, so he had to drive the whole way. It became comical after a little while but it also was ridiculous on the way back, we'd drive for a while and then pull over for a half hour nap so he could recharge. But the trip was well worth it.

4. When did you know you were an adult? I.e. what event made you stop and recognize that you were no longer a member of "those damned kids"?
The easiest way to know is when you are the receiver of the "shoulder tap" instead of the giver. The shoulder tap is when someone asks you to buy them some alcohol as you go into the liquor store.

The harder way is that I'm now that bastard that'll call the cops on you if you're being a pain in the ass in the middle of the night by making noise or playing basketball. I had this pointed out to me by my brother after telling him the story of dropping a dime on someone for making far too much noise in the middle of the night. But hey, if you've gotta work then you've gotta get your sleep, right?

And two more from Jim.
5. Why do you blog?
See here for this one. Quick summary? Ok, I blog because I like to write, I like the soapbox, I like the interaction and I like sharing thoughts, sites and other aspects of my life with other folks. Offline life is often to busy to keep up with everyone and this blog provides me with a forum to keep my family and friends in the loop on what's happening in my life. Plus, I'm a horrible egoist and live to watch the hits on the site accumulate.

6. How does your real life persona compare to your blogger one?
I'm more or less the same, I think. Hard to say, what's my online persona like? Flippant, prone to violent outbursts, prone to violent fits of humor, introspective, sensationalistic, droll, mundane, low brow, one step above toilet humor and sometimes one step below. Yep, that's me in real life but I think I'm more serious in real life alot of the time, at least lately with all the stress and hassles.