2012? Move to Imlil.

did anyone see the end-of-the-world flick 2012? i don't know about you, but it opened my eyes to millions of new ways to die that i need to be terrified about that i hadn't even thought of yet! forget firey airline crashes and mini meets lorry on the A-14, now i have exploding mountains, lava-filled crevasses, tidal waves, imploding supermarkets...totally depressing.

but like many apocalyptic films, it got me to thinking about what i would do if there was some sort of epic society-destroying event: i would die. probably of starvation or exposure.


but i know who probably wouldn't die: the Berbers. high in the Atlas mountains of Morocco, there lives a group of people who still don't have electricity in many of their village homes. and the public spaces have only had it since 2003. they grow their food, weave their carpets, build houses with sticks and stones, carry their goats around, and teach their children to do the same. they are, literally, living with one foot in the past.


they do have schools, a "modern" hospital, some access to telephones and satellite t.v., and a few motor vehicles between them, so it isn't the stone age. the children looked happy and chubby, like children should, shooting marbles or playing football. everyone was working at something, instead of sitting on their asses. i even saw a one-legged 20-something guy hiking up the mountain on a crutch behind his cement-carrying mule as part of a construction crew. these folks are hard-core.


i am sure that i'm noble savaging a little bit about the Berbers, but regardless of their relative quality of life to the modernities of Western Europe, they definitely would have a much higher survival prospect than i would on Independence Day. they inspire a person to learn to plant and harvest. gather and preserve. hew and mortar. weave and sew. unfortunately, that "person" isn't me.


sure, i try to keep an herb garden alive and i can reattach a button, but i don't envision heading out the the prairie Laura Ingalls' style any time soon. so my plan is to keep visiting these cultures around the world, with appreciation and respect for their knowledge, skill, and relative odds against mine while embracing the reality that although myself or my people may not survive in the long run, i sure have it good in the short one.

flattered, annoyed

somebody stole my kickass jack o' lantern. and they didn't even have the decency to smash it to pieces in some gory, messy way in my front yard. so much for tricks.

22:14

3.1 miles in 22:14 at 29 years 9 months.
i've only gained 22 seconds per mile in 12 years.
not bad, H, not bad.

complete at-home guide to reparing a british mini

page 1: jiggle the wires. any wires. just jiggle them. again. maybe you're jiggling the wrong wires. look for other wires. jiggle them.

page 2: hmm. well, let it sit overnight. then go through the steps on page 1.

page 3: talk nice to the mini. then see page 1 and page 2.

page 4: curse at the mini. then see pages 1-3.

page 5: call your mechanic.

this process has worked really well for me during the past 29 months of mini ownership. granted, it is an old car and it is to be expected that things wear out. we have done more than our fair share of real, legitimate, routine classic-car maintenance (fan belt, alignment, brakes, suspension), but when crazy stuff happens, i follow (carefully) the steps above.

for example, the fuel gauge stopped working. come to find out, page 2 is the answer. most of the time when the weather changes, it gets damp and cold and the gauges will stick for a few days (or overnight). just park it somewhere dry and wait a bit and they'll work suddenly.

or a few months ago the windshield wipers wouldn't work. page 1 TOTALLY solved the entire problem. jiggle, jiggle, voila! i can see!

i also got some auxiliary headlamps put on the front and they didn't work one day. page 1, page 2, page 3, then page 1 again and i was back in business.

but recently i had to resort to page 5. for some reason the mini has become more Herbie-like than i am comfortable with. i pulled into the garage and switched off the ignition, and the radio stayed on. then it went off. then it came back on. i turned the car back on, off again, pulled the key out and 10 seconds later the radio came on again. then, the heater, too. i jiggled, cursed, talked nice, waited, tried again. nothing. i guess the car has decided that it is in charge of its own electrical system from now on. maybe it was tired of all the jiggling.

so, i decided that the mini is officially possessed. i just hope it doesn't figure out how to drive itself; i don't want to end up at the top of the Golden Gate.

heightened security

so i have two passports. like a super-secret international spy, except not that cool. anyway, one of my passports houses my UK visa documents and the other is for personal travel. i have to carry both of them because i "personally travel" out of the UK on trips and "officially re-enter" the UK with my visa.

so the other day, i travelled with dan and his parents over the channel to france. i was juggling all of our passports as we exited the ferry port and went through french border security. in my haste, i inadvertently handed the nice french girl sherry's passport, steve's passport, holly's passport, and holly's other passport. she glanced through the passports quickly as a long line of cars queued up behind us. suddenly she runs off, yells something in french to another french person, he hands her what turns out to be the entrance stamp, she stamps the four passports, gives us a funny look, and passes them back to me through the window. au voir! merci!

as i was shuffling through the documents to put them back in the appropriate wallets, i noticed my mistake. holy crap, i have entered france twice and dan hasn't entered france at all.

there was no way to rectify our mistake as i didn't want to explain my super-spy status to someone in a foreign language that i don't speak (especially since half of the english border agents don't understand why i have two passports, and we share a language), we couldn't turn around on the four-lane, one-way street leaving the ferry port, and i didn't want to be sent to french prison. so we kept on.

as we were leaving france a few days later, no one seemed to give a crap that dan hadn't ever entered france.

so much for increased security measures.