Birthday of the Prophet, part II: sheep guts and moroccan cocaine

And what a god damn sleep it was. We ate a bunch of unnamed gypsy-candy in beige, brown and green flavors, and the only identifiable ingredient besides nuts was sugar. And the park benches didn’t help. But in the end what did us in were the curious ones who walked around uncomfortably close.

In the end, Chase felt that these people were putting his money-heavy camera in a precarious position, so we booked it from the park around 6 in the A.M.

We headed over to the mosque of interest. It doubled as the burial site for a person somebody more responsible with information would have remembered. But it was someone important. And that’s all that really counts. Later on, one of my more English savvy Moroccan friends would call it a basilica.

Mainly older women and children were lined up outside, and to set the scene before going any further, everything was sandy-colored.

Because of hearsay and hype, I saw the women’s feet covered in blood, but it turned out they were just henna-ed up for the occasion.

There were cops. Oh boy, were there cops. But they were gun-less and loosely uniformed. In fact, they looked pretty Rastafarian compared to the G-20 Po-lice. They had billy-clubs, but were mostly just eager to try out any English they knew on us. The main message was something we had already heard and something we would hear for the rest of the day: Don’t Wear Red, and Don’t Wear Black. That went for Chase’s big ol’ expensive black camera. But that’s neither here nor now.

So we waited for the craziness.

But it was slow to come. We had little sleep and no food but some milwi from the night before.

Standing in one spot for so long got old, so Soul Brother Matt and I set out around 7:30 to find oranges, water and bread which, incidentally, are the only things you need to sustain the life-force of your earthly bones.

Oranges was easy. Water too. But the bread was nowheres in plain sight so we started walking down the retainer wall holding back the graves in the cemetery.

There was no action then, but damned if there wasn’t anticipation. The wall was lined with people and as we rounded the curve we came to the apartments on the edge of the Medina. The roofs were decked out in folks. The trees were getting to be bleachers and the tombstones were filling out so there was standing room only.

Bread was still a concern, but flickering out as the drums and reeds screamed louder around the bend.

When we hit the toughest concentration of bodies, we found what we were looking for since before we left the big glass café the night before.

It wasn’t a shot of madness. First it was a wide smear of blood on the pavement. Then it was maniacal chanting with no visible origins. Then we saw them dancing. But visibility was bad, so we bumped up into a spot on the cemetery wall. It was packed, but some guys gave us a hand up. And that’s when me and Compadre Matt knew we found it. Rudimentary body-bob-based dancing and banging drums. They were all wearing white robes with bright yellow and green sashes: men and women: centrally located, breaking off occasionally to chase down any spectators too close and always ending the chase right before the catch.

The dancers weren’t anything too wild for the most part. They all bobbed with different levels of enthusiasm. Some looked like rather-be-sleeping-in candy throwers at a Labor Day parade, while some had eyes rolled back so just whites and g-nashing teeth were present.

After getting a-top the wall, a bored looking cop came over and shooed a pack of wild children out of a tree opposite our spot. Then he went down the line, and we thought, “what an opportunity, a spot up in a tree like that,” and jumped down and walked around, skirting the dancing white-robed crazies, to hit up our new vantage point.

Both world-class tree-climbers, we went up the tree, taking advantage of the highest sturdy limbs, looking down. On the way up, we took on more warnings concerning the color-code. No mutually understood language was talked, but the gist was that Brother Matt’s sweatpants were a navy-blue dark enough to look black in the unapologetic, simplifying noon-ish sunlight, and that the crazies might notice.

But, we thought, we’re in a tree and by all rights shouldn’t give a god damn, so we didn’t and became trend-setters for it. With the grumpy cop out of the picture, packs of kids swarmed back up the tree because, as tourist custom dictates, we were white=invincible, which by some kind of transitive property I never properly studied in algebra, makes everybody in the same tree=invincible too.

It got crowded quick, and gave Brother Matt a chance to put his Sophomore-Spanish to the test. At least one of the kids in the tree spoke Spanish, so he woulda beena translator had Matt actually spoken something recognizable. But he didn’t, so the would-be translator resigned to whipping out a dropper-tube of kif-snuff and passing it around the tree.

Now, kif is about the mildest form of hashish I know. When smoked, the effects are: a feeling of being kicked in the throat with a boot, followed by a first-thing-in-the-morning-cigarette-on-an-empty-stomache buzz for about 5 minutes, followed by a caffeine-kinda high. Not too crazy, but these guys were around 13, and sucked that stuff up their nostrils like an insert generic movie coke fiend here.

They offered some over to us about the same time that the dancing crazies decided Brother Matt’s pants were close enough to black to be attackable.

The spectators that had been watching the dancers, leaning up against our stump split like they got hit by an opposing magnetic kick, and then an especially pale-faced woman was barking up our tree.

Some people grabbed her outstretched arms, pulled her back, and splashed some water on her face. Not able to claw the tree anymore, she turned her free hand on herself, clawing at her face and tearing at her eyes. And she wasn’t the last to charge. Then it was a lanky, darker-skinned man with incredible bug-eyes, and then a toothless Frank Zappa, gums working like his family’s food supply depended on it.

As Matt’s pants attracted more attention, the kif-snorting kids from the block started climbing upward to escape the crazies’ up-reaching hands. As the tree got filled to capacity, branches started to crack.

First it was twigs and flowers falling down onto the agitated folk below. Then the main veins started to give, and me and Matt were sinking. We fought our way down the trunk, keeping a safe distance from unfriendly hands. Then a fresh wave of donkeys came across the street with new dancers, drummers, and double reed-screamers. We swung out on a crunching limb, dropping to the ground behind this confusion and cycling back into the spectators.

Once we hit the ground we were out of the center of attention, and free to follow. The more we followed the weirder it got.

The women of the new and expanded tribe of crazies dropped to their knees and waved their arms down like they were praying to the East. But instead of Mecca, it was the toothless Zappa and a cript-keeper looking motherfucker sprinting at them in fake assault. They came a-swinging, and split off to the side at the last second, with their women hissing and growling at their feet.

There was air-fighting, and more of the tearing-of–the-eyes. Later I heard about them holding burning coles and smashing bottles on their heads, but I saw just the basic Fanatic 101 stuff here.

But one thing was for sure: as they danced closer to the “basilica,” they intensified.

They chased more. They lashed out more. Young people, to spite a decidedly phony custom, flashed their black and red shirts at the frenzied dancers. More and more Brother Matt and I found ourselves moving not so much voluntarily, but helplessly down a river of crowd, all shooting us “where the hell did your white ass come from?” looks.

Then a great spectacle of crowd dynamics twisted everything. It was like a rock hitting a pond: first water was sucked down towards the point where the rock hit the water. Then it was all pushed away in rippling waves.

The rock was a suspected fallen bystander. The water was an assuming crowd, rushing in to make sure the tactless victim, maybe a poor bastard wearing red or black, wouldn’t be killed by the crazies.

Then, Surprise! The crazies weren’t swarming a spectator, but a mutilated, half-a-goat carcass, now thirty feet up in the air, and the masses go from sucking in to rippling out, trying to escape the splash damage radius, me and Matt fighting to keep our heads above the crowd.

And then there’s a clash of realities:

1.) when your drowning, you grab hold of the tallest sturdy object above water

2.) Moroccans aren’t tall

So, as me and Matt made our way away from the soaring goat carcass, we found ourselves more and more encumbered in Moroccan girls and children.

They clung to our legs, our arms, and around our waists. And all the while yellow intestines were spouting.

I caught a spurt in the face before the full reality of the situation hit me.

The crypt-keeper looking motherfucker had the half-a-carcass by its two left legs before I realized the gravity of what was happening.

Then, again, the half-a-goat was far up in the air. That’s when the ripples froze to look up, and the fur and guts plummeted.

In the end, all were spared. The goat’s hips got caught on the creased edge of a roof-top, spine right angled, with minimum guts coming down on the innocent crowd.

The crazies continued, mad but goatless, and the day of elebration-cey continued too.

[The next part includes an urban flash flood and small children locked in cages. So read it if you want. Or be a heartless bastard.]

Birthday of the prophet part 1

There’s a time in most people’s life when they wake up shivering in an African cemetery under the full moon, on a bed of wet grass and thorns, trash bags, and a previously undetected pile of sheep dung, when

Nah, I can’t start like that.

I have fallen into an extremely rare opportunity. The kind that only presents itself in one tiny place on the globe for a few to see.

According to the lunar calendar, the celebration of the Birth of the Prophet was to fall on a Tuesday and a Wednesday. These would be the days of ceremony, when people from all over would come to Meknes’s old city (called the Medina Qadeema, or the Medina for short) to observe the holiday.

Many Mekesis are slow to talk about it with foreigners, but if they do, they explain the proceedings of the holiday at a distance.

Meknes is the Ber Ber capital of Morocco, the Ber Bers being the indigenous people of Morocco.
The Ber Bers, or Amazir, hold a very special position in world history. In a world where every last native Tasmanian has been massacred and the few remaining Native Americans are stored, doped up and drunk, in government-sponsored trailer-parks; the Amazir have successfully played out the game, getting themselves some of the local religion, and ultimately surviving the Roman, French, and Arab conquistadors, to become the accomplished ethnic majority of Morocco (although not always recognized as such by the Moroccan government).

Stick with me.

They are generally recognized, as being better Muslims that many Arabs. Though they do still they have their quirks, and these quirks sometimes include self-mutilation and eating animals alive. And if there is one day when these quirks are fully realized, it’s the big guy’s birthday.
On the holiday, country folk from all over the north of Morocco converge on Meknes to celebrate the holiday in their own way.

Here is an example of one of the Meknes traditions I heard from my art and culture professor, Dr. Nachit:
Because the Amazir come from all over, many tribes are represented. These are tribes that have been coexisting (more or less) for centuries. So, they go back a-ways. The delegations (so to speak) from each tribe, year after year, always remember to bring two things to Meknes for the celebration:

1. A poet.

Each tribe accompanies their poet to L’Hidim* and circles around him to listen to his improvisations. Each poet begins in the morning, expounding on his tribe’s past triumphs and glories. As the day goes on, he elaborates, poeticizing about his tribe’s triumphs and glories over rival tribes. By the end of the day, the epic improvs grow louder and courser, until they devolve to pure trash-talk, directed toward the tribes that make up the circles nearest to them. This brings us to …

2. Lots of hefty sticks.

Once the poetry/taunting is loud enough to be heard by the neighboring circles, each circle is obligated to defend the pride and reputation of their tribe.
What this means is, by sundown, dozens on dozens of men, ages 14 to 75, are wailing on each other with big pieces of wood.

As the day approached our expectations soared.

So, on the day before, we sat in a café near our apartment, expecting.

The glass panels. The parking lot. The personal packs of cigarettes. Nothing says affluence in Morocco like this sort of neon tubing. The nice clothes and the pretty girls were all just icing. Hell, that girls were there says something.

Most cafes are dirty brick, with a curb-side spot for mopeds at best. Why have a parking-lot if no one owns cars to park?

As for the personal packs, most Moroccans prefer/can afford to live just one cigarette at a time, dealing with the same old gray man who frequents every café at the same time, hoisting his flattened Winston-carton flag above his table to signify his fare.

Our conversation went from this café’s clientele to the other half. The beggars and the bums and the occasional fro-ed rag-man who walks in circles and foaming at the mouth.

We decided we wanted to try to empathize. Instead of going back to the apartment, we would take off to the medina direct from the cafe and go homeless for the two nights of the celebration.
This would also ensure that we wouldn’t miss a thing.

As we sat outside the café, a big Moroccan materialized and slapped Bobby on the back.

“Hey, Imad.”

“Are you guys ready to go?”

So we paid for our coffee and left.

On the walk, Imad educated us a little more on what to expect once we arrived at the medina. “Look out for the country people,” he said. He warned us about their moral questionability and there affinity for stealing. Meanwhile, Sufian, his friend, taught us all the Moroccan curses we ever wanted to know.

Down the highway, over the bridge, through the threshold and into what’s technically considered the Medina, the white-washed boxy buildings of the Ville Nouvelle were replaced by the stalls and allies of the Medina Qadeema. Cafes overflowed into the streets and the snack-shops and the patisseries, and the music shops blared Moroccan pop into the streets. The street was choked with giant diesel Mercedes in a turf war with hundreds of entitled pedestrians, bikes, and a truck stacked with a story and a half of mattresses. A man stood on top of the mattresses, tightening their ropes as it wove down the street.

The six of us made our way over the hump to L’Hadim. It was crowded, and as we made our way to the café in the back corner, several snack stand hosts ambushed us with menus and assumptions about how hungry we must be.

At the café, (cafes-Morocco, Morocco-cafes, everywhere, all the time) we sat on the high terrace, overlooking Baab Monsour, the royal palace, the Kasbah, and the north side of the Medina Qadeema, and the main street swarmed with grand taxis and the relatively tiny blue petit taxis.
It was just after dark. Tea and shit-talking ensued.

Afterward we decided to get the classic Moroccan moveable meal: Milwee (flat pastry-type bread, Ber Ber bread.) with cheese and honey. Then we sat on the step of Baab Monsour, eating, smoking terrible cigarillos, and sharing a coke between the ten of us. In Meknes, being with people ensures that you will soon be with more people. It’s a small city, with lots of friends. These new guys were friends of Imad’s, one of them purportedly the best joint-roller in Meknes. The sixth one I’ve been introduced to, to date.

After they left us, we set about trying to find a reasonable place to spend the night. The Big Pool maybe. It used to be 14 meters deep, used for training soldiers to swim in the days of the sultanate. It lies just on the other side of the palace.
Around 11:00 we took off, through Baab Monsour, winding through the Kasbah walls, skirting the royal golf course.

In a country where the power is regularly cut off at night in many neighborhoods, you can be sure the Kasbah and palace avenues are always lit. This makes for good late night soccer. We passed three games on our way. The players all took regular breaks to reinflate their balls, which were constantly being kicked flat. They all had decent crowds of spectators.
We passed the booths with guards pacing, carbines in hand. They said, “no one’s sacking the king’s golf course. Not tonight. Not on my watch.”

We passed the rural oasis, right in the middle of the city, an overgrown depression where city people raise crops and livestock.

We arrived at the pool, a perfect rectangle about half a mile in perimeter, surrounded by ancient walls and aqueducts on two sides that supported a gardens worth of green in the parts where they had crumbled.

We killed some time there. But the night was too new to think about sleeping. So after harassing some Akon-reciting park bench surfers (via Bobby’s own yodeling rendition) and finishing our milwee, we made back for the souk, or market, back behind l’Hadim.

This time we took another route: residential, where tourists don’t go, so that during the day being white earns you more stares than usual. No one to stare then though.

There are always plenty of shadow lurkers at night, no matter where you go. But they’re no trouble (for guys at any rate) and are just hanging out. Most of them said hi. Or, in one case: “HEEEELLLLLLLOOOOOOO! Hello elloello! Hellllo lo lo. Hello a-lo a-lo!”

We stopped on a ridge next to a mosque. Next to the mosque was a parking lot where all the hard-working vehicles of the city were kept. Taxis, carriages, cherry-pickers, trucks… all crammed in.

From the ridge we could see the Ville Nouvelle, in all its generic modern beauty, the low dome of the cultural center, the river that splits the city, and then the bulk of the old city, chipped and curvy. Both sides of the city were taped together by the rooftop theme of satellite dishes on satellite dishes on satellite dishes.

Then the time came to move, since we still weren’t ready to sleep. We decided to seek out the country Ber Ber encampment.

It was around 2 or 3 when we made it back to l’Hadim. Some people were still around. We stopped at a snack tent for a drink. We sat in the back, behind a few men who were watching an Arab sitcom. The guy there couldn’t find the keys to his refrigerator so he disappeared into the dark, and came back ten minutes later, drinks procured from the all-providing souk.
From there we left to cross the dead souk (market place). Some men in blue jumpsuits sweeping the streets with giant palm branches asked us if we were lost.

Out the other side of the souk, we came to the mosque which held the tomb of a saint that was the icon for the Esawa brotherhood, the hosts of the proceedings to come. We figured we were close, picked a street we had never been down before, and started descending. At the bottom of the street we encountered the most horrific mixture of smells I have ever experienced. Meat-packing experience included.

We were focused on the smell, and by the time we had recovered we found ourselves on the edge of a massive quilt-work of tents that were collected into a makeshift town. The visitors had brought everything from the countryside: cafes, butcher-shops, restaurants, sweet shops, and homes, all in tent form, jamming it into an empty lot on the edge of the Medina. We walked around the perimeter.

For a minute we considered sleeping in an abandoned building on the edge of the lot, but we walked on. All the tents were bustling. Four o’clock was approaching. Meat was grilling, tea was boiling, kids were running around. In every tent lamps were burning.

As we came to the end of our loop around the camp, we were stopped by a “Hello?”
We turned around, but no one was there. That’s because we were looking too high. A boy of about ten was walking behind us, holding a carton of cigarettes.

“Hello Monsieurs. Gharro?” He extended the carton.
No thanks we said. Matt said “suppe! suppe!” which is what waiters say to shoo cats from under the feet of patrons in a restaurant. The kid laughed and took up a spot walking beside us.

He walked with us for a while, talking about where he had learned the English words he knew. He didn’t go to school, just worked. He split from us at his tent of residence.

Soon we came to a park with benches, and decided to spend the night. We chewed on some sort of nut taffy, in brown, neon green and pink varieties, that we had picked up, and watched people passing through. Traffic was high in the park, but we were tired, so we each grabbed a bench, pulled our jackets over our faces, and tried to sleep.

*L’Hidim is the main square of the Medina that lies at the foot of Baab Monsour. Baab Monsour is recognized as the biggest most beautiful city gate in North Africa. “L’Hidim” is a derivation from the Arabic word for destruction. This is because when the sultan at the time built the gate, he recognized the absolute need to have a good area from which to view such a beautiful piece of architecture. So, without delay, he had all the homes and businesses of the neighborhood directly in front of the gate razed to the ground and buried under cobblestones. Problem solved. Today tourists from all over the world view Baab Monsour from this handy square.

Finally another one. I know, I know. Gimme another chance.

Sunday, March 08, 2009

So, the amount of time that has passed since my last post has been pretty inexcusable. Part of it was lack of motivation, and part of it was not knowing where to start. After today though, I think I have a decent jumping off point to introduce Morocco and the everything in it. I therefore hope to keep pretty regular posts, henceforth.

I slept late today, and woke up at around 11:30 to screaming and war drums.
My room is on the 6th floor of a building in the Ville Noveulle. The Ville Noveulle (The New City) is the part of town built by French colonists in the early 1900's, and, as a result, is far less fascinating than the rest of the city.

My room, however, does have a balcony, which overlooks Hamria (downtown) one way and the train tracks and a soccer field another.

The FCM Football field is a battleground for Meknes football clubs of all ages. Since today was the first nice day in a week, and the older clubs were playing, I decided to go join the rest of the crowd, who seemed to follow that same line of reasoning.

The stands of the stadium look like one solid piece of concrete. They are built right into the prison style 14-foot walls that surround the place. When the sun shines like it did today, the broken glass bottles that line the walls give the place a thin green halo. If I hadn’t seen it from my balcony, I might have thought it really was a prison.

The field itself was as bi-polar as the crowd. It was dry and dusty and grassless, save for the low points which had become swampy ball-traps.

When I got there, two older men were leading cheers on a jembe and what looked like a combination between a snare drum and a tambourine.

I picked a spot in the stands, just down the bench from a man who was selling cigarettes, some sort of seed, and lolli-pops, out of a big wicker basket. The stands were completely littered with the remains of his stock: seed shells, butts, and the neon green straws from the pops. As soon as I sat down, a thin tall man walked by and, without really stopping, or even looking at me, gave me a huge welcoming pat/slam on the back.

Packs of boys of all ages hovered around the back when the game lulled, and ran to the fence, crowding and screaming when they sensed an impending goal. The older men sat in the shade, unmoving but always yelling critiques and insults.

My recognition of their cheers was a testament to my grasp of the Arabic language: apart from names that ranged from the estatic: “Driss! Driss!” to the furious: “Hassan! Hassan!” I picked out a couple phrasing containing

“Yel’la!” (“go!”)
and the ever popular “Q’lahwee!” (“ my balls!”)

When one team scored, the anger of the fans of the suffering team vastly outweighed the cheers of the victorious. This anger was completely negated, however, by the losers’ tendency to spike there lollipops on the stands at their feet. Nothing says you’re pissed of like the shattering of hard candy.

An old man in a beat baby-blue Adidas jogging suit and a hood was keeping the crowd roaring with what we in America call “talking smack.” Every time a ref would come by, all the young boys were in stitches.

I actually thought that he was a little kid, by the shape of his body, until the leaned back to reveal the most wrinkled yellow-taloned feet I’d ever seen. His own personal pattern of tooth-loss had left him with a pair of tusks that stuck out the sides of his mouth.

The first game ended with a fight. When a high punt came rocketing down and smacked a red player with a serious depth perception deficiency in the face, naturally, he blamed it on the blue player closest to him. One ref was violently separating them when the end-whistle blew. The ref immediately walked away, and the two players collapsed into an embrace, and walked off the field arm in arm.

As the teams of the second game warmed up, the crowds changed. One group, despite the ample room in the stadium, crammed in next to me, on both sides. I wasn’t even there: their full attention was on the game, and if I were to guess, I had just taken their regular seats. They were relatively well dressed and increasingly angry as the red team began to lose, and pretty soon it was a bit uncomfortable sitting shoulder to shoulder with them as they cursed and jumped up and down.

After a long break, the drummers picked up again, much to the dismay of the tusked baby-blue Adidas who was fast losing fans’ attention. He redirected his trash-talk to the drummers. One of them, a grey-bearded, small but solid looking man, put down his Jembe and addressed the crowd directly regarding Baby-Blue’s bad attitude. They all laughed (except for my well-dressed discontents)

Baby Blue was furious, and started yelling and advancing, but, as is the Moroccan custom, was lead off to the side to cool off by the two men nearest to him.

The drums stopped again. I thought it was because of the complaints, but as Baby Blue was standing off to the side, cursing, Jembe snuck around the stands, in accords to street-fighting stratagem.

He rushed him, and soon old wrinkly fists were flying. Jembe literally picked Baby Blue up by the back of his jogging suit and threw him to the ground, giving him a few kicks to the ribs for good measure.

The two men who had been working to prevent the fight before, counted their duties fulfilled and stood back to watch.

Jembe walked back up into the stands, made a comment that was met with more laughter, and sat back down to his instrument. The game had slowed down significantly during the fight, but now players were directing their attention again to the ball and field.

With some help, Baby Blue climbed to his feet. He put on his own show for fifteen minutes, limping back and forth, flailing his arms for balance, and glaring at the Jembe player.

He looked and me, and realizing I was the only one giving him any attention, he stumbled over, cursed his adversary one last time, and in one fluid motion, picked up a nearby bike, jumped onto it, and sped out the stadium gate.

Behind him the game was ending. Green was winning to the degree that their enormous goalie had run out to half field and started blatantly chasing the ball, barreling over anyone in his way. One red player went down, and waved to the ref in agony, but the game was almost over, and he was ignored. The whistle blew, and he jumped to his feet to hug some green players as they all filed off the field.

The crowds changed. The next game began. Morocco!

Moroccan insult of the day: “Q’lahwee fii Ainik!” (“fi Ainik” means “in your eyes”)

Something I remembered today: A long time ago, when my brother was real little, 6 or something, he used to always fall asleep for long car rides by sucking his thumb with one hand, and holding my ear with the other. Even with watching TV or doing something else semi-stationary, if sucking his thumb was his cigarette, holding my ear was his coffee. We asked him once why he liked holding my ear so much, and he said, “because it talks to me.” Now that still makes me smile.

Getting there.

This is something I want people to read regularly out of actual interest. having said that i promise to not make posts ridiculously long, and to do my best to only publish whats interesting.

That having been said, I'll outline my travels to Granada in list format to save space.

Getting to Granada:

Stops: Heathrow
Madrid
Granada

fellow Morocco program members met in transit: Mona, Chase, Jesse

Estevezes/Sheens sighted: Emilio, Martin

Estevez/Sheen to dark sunglasses and popped collar ratio: 1:1

additional notes:

Emilio and Martin are the kind of people who stand still on the moving floor in the airport so everyone has to walk around them.

Our program director's name is Daniel. He insist that Emilio is a nice guy, although Christopher Loyd is kinda uptight. But Daniel says maybe thats because he insisted on calling him Doc when they were at Danny Devito's house in Malibu for the Forth of July.

After landing in Granada, we jumped on a bus to get to our hostel. Much to my disapointment here's a list of the first things I saw:

Warehouse-bar-Ford dealership-Renault dealership-Izuzu dealership-warehouse-apartment complex-bar-Opel dealership-warehouse-Ford dealership-Renault dealership-some trees-Coca Cola factory-12 equidistant hookers.

Alright, so the 12 hookers weren't really a disappointment as much as a fascination. especially the ones wearing a thong and a tank top at 50 degrees F.

Then we got there.



Ok folks. let me now if this was too long.