Steve arrives at 9am sharp on departure morning dressed like this and immediately pours himself a tumbler of McCallan in an effort to psych me out. I (not pictured) am still in my underwear.
Our two heros captured in a candid moment. Steve continues to sip his scotch. I drink a protein shake to prepare for what's about to happen. The orange seen near my left elbow is a nerf gun.
I pour myself a glass of Kinclaith 1969. In the black-topped bottle in front of me is a preserved octopus that Steve placed on the table without explanation.
Steve pours his own glass of scotch. According to our agreement the first person to cross every degree of longitude, return to Los Angeles, and finish his glass of scotch, will win the Ridiculous Race.
Naturally, I wanted to give myself an advantage at the beginning of the race. My plan was to handcuff Steve, place two “PEDOPHILE” stickers on his body, then waltz out the door before Steve could figure out what hit him. This did not happen. I got one cuff on before Steve began violently resisting. In this photo I struggle to get the second cuff on Steve.
After about five minutes of hungover wrestling a crazy smile crosses my face, then I pin Steve to the ground and get the second cuff on. Now, Steve should concede that I did an awesome thing and we should should part ways as gentlemen.
Instead Steve starts choking me with the handcuff chain. It's hard to tell from this photo, but he was really mad and people can be very strong when they're really mad. Here, Steve is screaming at me to uncuff him.
Steve was so angry he forgot about the "PEDOPHILE" sticker I put on his back. Later, I saw Steve walking back to his apartment with it still on.
These are the handcuffs I used on Steve. Getting “Keeping our Children Chaste” engraved onto them aroused zero questions from the sales-woman.
Steve did not stop chocking me until I threw the handcuff keys across the street into some bushes. Then realizing that there was nothing more I could do, Steve shakes my hand and we parted ways - Steve going West and I East.
Actually, I only sort of went east. The first leg of my trip had me going south-east to Mexico in this red Chevy Impala. The guy at Hertz seemed alarmed that I (1) smelled like scotch, (2) was wearing a crumpled up suit, (3) was demanding their most comprehensive Mexican auto insurance, and (4) asked several questions about how well the car could handle jumps.
Since I don't know Spanish I hired Maria, a sassy Columbian who responded to an extremely vague Craigslist ad requesting “Spanish speakers who won't murder me.” Here Maria reacts to the thought of being in a car with me for about 6 days.
I drove 12-16hrs a day while in Mexico, but still made time to explore Mexico's biggest city, Guadalahara. I think this is Taco Bell headquarters.
Not long into the trip, Maria and I developed a husband and wife style relationship. This photo captures that dynamic nicely; here she is telling me not to take the photograph, but I ignore her and do it anyways.
Maria uses my satellite phone to complain to her parents in Columbia about my constant accusations that she is trying to poison my food.
This was the reason I drove to Mexico: to buy a jetpack from the Tecnologia Aeroespacial Mexicana company, located just south of Mexico City.
TAM has one employee, Juan Lorenzo. Juan saw a NASA demonstration of jetpacks in the 1960s and in that moment decided that he would dedicate his life to single-man aviation.
To date, Juan has built four jetpacks. Each jetpack sells for $250,000 (2.5 million pesos). Juan claims that a buyer can perform at concerts and shows with the jetpack at the rate of $25,000 per performance, thus making the investment profitable after only eleven performances.
In order to fund his rocket research, Juan sells this machine (that he invented) that makes fuel grade hydrogen peroxide. The machines are mostly purchased by other rocket enthusiasts and people who want to do serious damage to the faces of ex-lovers. (Juan didn't explicity say the last part, but I can read between the lines.)
Unofrtunately the jetpack was not in working condition, so I was unable to test it. Juan estimataed that it would be three months before a jetpack custom fitted to my body would be ready. Not having that kind of time in this race, I left Mexico City with my $250,000 and no jetpack.
Tacos potosinos, the local specialty of San Luis Potosi, Mexico. It's a taco filled with potatoes, carrots, peas, and lettuce then covered with white cheese and red sauce. Apparently, at this restaurtant, a taco referrs to a rolled up tortilla hidden in the middle of the stuffing.
I think these guys were protesting the direction in which English letters are printed.
A church in San Luis Potosi. Notice how everything is this photograph leans to the left. I think that's because the earth was collapsing in that direction.
I've changed my mind: I no longer wish I was a Mexican pig.
Bottles of pickled pigs' snouts and pigs' ears that I bought at a Mexico City Wal-Mart. These were confiscated by the US border guards.
I drove for six days through Mexico. I was pulled over three times, had my car thoroughly searched by one military checkpoint, and was given two breathalizer tests (at a DUI checkpoint. I hadn't had a drink.) Despite all this, I was given zero tickets and only had to bribe one Mexican cop.
I re-entered the US in Texas and soon found myself a deliciously greasy beef brisquet sandwich. The highway adjacent restaurant where I ate this also offered showers for $3. When I asked the waitress if I could buy two showers for $5, she thought for a moment then brought over the restaurant manager. The answer to my question was “no.”
Maria dancing in front of the sign advertising $3 showers. This was unpromted.
Hey! The rebuilt New Orleans!
....except for places where black people live. The 9th Ward also had signal lights that were still not working 20 months after Hurricane Katrina hit.
I went to a voodoo priest to try and put a hex on Steve. Instead the priest insisted on giving me the “first test” of my journey. He then ran out of the room and returned with this albino python named Jolie Vert. This photo does not capture how terrified I was in this moment or the latter moment during which Jolie Vert flicked my face several times with her tongue.
A soft-shell crab po boy with shrimp gumbo. The name po boy makes a lot more sense once you know that, in New Orleans, low-income males are referred to as “sandwiches.”
Nashville was even more fun than I had hoped for. From this honkey-tonk I could see a full scale reproduction of the Parthenon that Nashville erected in 1897 in an effort to live up to it's now-defunct nickname, “The Athens of the South.”
I did my best to abide by the no airplane rule; I tried to buy a jetpack so I could fly over the oceans using that instead of an airplane. (The rules said nothing about jetpacks.) That didn't work out...
...so I took an American Airlines flight from Atlanta to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
I stayed in a beautiful home the Favoretto family in the Santa Theresa neighborhood of Rio. I ate a delicious breakfast of fresh fruit, fresh juice, and coffee in the family courtyard every morning.
This state semi-final match between Botafogo and Coritiba was an excellent place to learn Portugese swear words.
I think this is a banner protesting Brazillian bikini waxing.
I don't remember what kind of fish this was. Maybe giant squid? Anyways, I ate this in Rio.
Oh, just a statue of a dude reading some poetry while holding a skull.
This library, the Real Gabinete Portugues de Leitura, is the coolest library I've ever seen. Everthing you see here is either a book, deeply dark wood, or gilded wood. The floor, which you cannot see, is made of molten lava.
The cathedral in the center of Rio looks like a huge radio transmitter to god.
Rocinha, Rio's largest favella (shanty town) houses 200,000 of Rio's poor.
The 20% of Rio citizens who live in the favellas don't pay taxes and many of them sneakily steal electricity. Can you spot a rogue wire?
The favellas have a surprising amount of infrastructure. Here a bunch of kids at a school play a spirited game of strip soccer.
The favellas even have bars and electronics stores that sell TVs and stuff. Additionally they have drug dealers walking around with machine guns. One use of these machine guns is pointing them at idiots taking photos of them, before demanding that said photo is deleted.
A wall tagged with A.D.A for Amigos Dos Amigos (Friends of Friends) - the drug gang that controlls the Rocinha favella.
During my favella tour this kid (center) told me I looked like Brazilian comic Helio De La Penha. Later, an old guy sitting at a favella cafe pointed at me and said the same thing.
Helio De La Pena
A kid gloating, moments after beating me up.
The drug gangs both protect and endanger the favella's poor; the government is unable to raze the slums because of the drug dealers' control, but at the same time, the crime created by the gangs puts favella citizens within range of random violence.
Gais, a member of a Brazillian graffiti gang I met at a bar in Rio.
The room where Gais and his friends plan out their pieces and experiment with styles.
After Rio, I continued cheating and flew to London. Legend has it that this bridge, “the Mathematical bridge”, at Queens College in Cambridge was designed by Sir Issac Newton and does not use any screws or nails. Every part of this impressive legend turns out to be false. None of the nearby students are impressed with my plan for a real Mathematical Bridge that won't require any screws or nails - a long board that can be laid across the river. They are probably too stupid to get it.
Mothers: lock up your daughters.
In Paris I did my best to blend in with the locals.
My friend Leila came to Paris primarily to meet Colin Field, the bartender at Bar Hemingway in the Ritz Paris, and convince him to invent a new cocktail for her. She succeeded. I think the Ridiculous Race will come out before Colin's next cocktail book, so I'll probably publish the recipe first and call the drink the “Vicious Vali.”
This cognac from 1830 was consumed at the end of the night at Bar Hemingway. I really wish I ordered and tasted this before I was insanely drunk or, alternatively, that I did not order it at all. I probably thought it was pretty tasty.
This is what I actually saw while drinking the cognac.
A terrified couple from Wisconsin who made the mistake of sitting down next to me at Bar Hemingway.
This is what the women of Paris were subjected to for one week. *
There are so many restaurants in Paris I can't understand how they all stay open. Either Parisians eat six meals a day or the restaurants are all really drug fronts.
Nobody could tell me what kind of trees these were.
One of the earliest plastic surgeon advertisements.
A minature replica of the Pantheon INSIDE the actual Pantheon, just in case people forget what the outside of the building looks like while passing through.
A very slow moving game of “Simon Says.”
In the bathroom of this restaurant, F. Scott Fitzgerald once showed Earnest Hemmingway his penis and asked if it was too small to ever properly please a woman. To this day, men commemorate that event in bathrooms around the globe by pulling out their penises.
Poltergeist arm.
Why does anyone ever bother scuplting anything that isn't an awesome lion? To waste my time?
Seconds after this photo was taken, these pigeons broke the serenity when they pulled out two machine guns and laid the place to waste.
An excellent deskotop wallpapaer image - a must have for any serious Vali fan.
École Militaire where Napoleon graduated in one year instead of the usual two........asdfaksfdhaskdjf sorry, I fell asleep while writing that.
A statue commemorating the time Thomas Jefferson fell into a vat of dark chocolate.
Me holding a sin sign on the Seine.
A man trying to force a Minotaur to blow him. (He eventually succeeded.)
You heard it here first: the French know how to cook.
This dragon, made entirely out of recylced cans, is the result of hideous nerds and dirty hippies uniting against the yuppie douchebags.
The catacombs underneath Paris. These are the remains of a bunch of cheerleaders who died mid-performance.
Despite the cardboard boxes, the three card monte scam seems classier in Paris.
Sarko or Sego? 85% of eligible voters came out to the polls to help decide. That's 25% higher than the turnout for the Kerry vs. Bush presidential election and 85% higher than the turnout for the Vali vs. Bishop Ratzinger pope election.
As pre-announced, the election results were given promptly at 8pm. It was more like new years eve than any other election I've witnessed. There were crowds in the streets, bands, a countdown, and everything. Sarkozy ended up winning big.
After the results were announced. There were police everywhere, even the subways, to prevent rioting. There were also rioters everywhere, to start rioting. The rioters had a slight edge, but things didn't get too bad anywhere.
After Paris, I took the train to Berlin. I felt like this for pretty much the entire duration of the race. Thankfully there was so much interesting stuff to do, I rarely noticed.
