Taint wrote:

No problem. I've got plenty of porn and, then, big plans for later tonight.

I thought the big plans for tonight WAS the porn?

You need the proper attire.

Careful now, Taint - make sure you wear a CDC-approved female condom. Spaniards are as dirty as plague rats and at least as likely to sport a communicable disease.

Bigcat wrote:

Ok, thanks for the "heads up". I am going to eat some mushrooms and go camping.

I just spent a week in the Stein Valley (Nlaka'pamux Heritage Park). It's a long, hot, narrow valley, very lonely, never logged, with climax stands of ponderosa pine, transitioning to a mix of lodgepole pine, douglas fir, hemlock, and finally a few magical climax stands of cedar. Beautiful, cold, fast river, blue-green to glaucous, full of rainbow trout - just barely warm enough in August for a cautious swim. And on occasion - rain that sheets down off the mountain sides in grainy, visible layers, awakening the verdancy of the surroundings to a numinous transcendency. River to one hand, rock to the other, ancient pictographs on every thousandth rock, evening begins at 4:00 when the sun slips below the edges of the gorge. And there is no-one to hear you when you break your leg, no-one to see your emergency flare, nothing to carry your neurotic attempts to facebook, tweet, or call. Days (and many vertical feet) from the trailhead, days from a road, days from a car or a bar or a television. It was more than difficult to leave. I'm not entirely sure that I managed it. I've been back for the better part of a week, and I still feel distant, remote...and possibly receding. Fuck Vancouver. Fuck Barcelona (Oh wait, never mind - Taint's already doing that.) Fuck everything that isn't beautiful and wild. I guess, fuck you, then. And me.

Notice the breakwater left, in the middle ground? Army Corp of Engineers built that to the entrance of the Cape Cod Canal after the '38 hurricane, having learned lesson or two after the '28 flood of New Orleans. A dozen or so no-account friends and I sailed a small navy of borrowed boats out there in the dead of night 40 ago and had us a two day party. It's as remote now as it was then. We could repeat that feat.

Beautiful. I'll join you in my Zodiac.

I just got back in from wandering Gracia, the neighborhood in Barcelona where I've lived for the past couple of months. August is over and all 300 million Europeans have reappeared magically. I have no idea where they went, but there were days over the month of August when I seriously wondered just what had happened to everyone. Whole streets were emptied of any activity whatsoever. I would wander into my local market, normally filled with a few dozen merchants selling everything from fish, olives, and sausage to snails, wine, and produce to find only four, maybe five, kiosks open at all. Streets were utterly devoid of any activity whatsoever. So many storefronts were shut for so long I couldn't remember whether they had been open the previous month.

Tonight, however, the plazas were filled with people. People were waiting for tables at outdoor cafes. Kids were setting off fireworks in a plaza not far from my apartment while diners craned their heads to watch the Roman candles as they erupted in front of St. Joan's church. Motorcycles and scooters, weaving in and out of even more cars, buzzed down the narrow streets while pedestrians dodged the traffic or made their way down the even more narrow sidewalks.

I finally ended up back at a cafe near my apartment where I had lasagna and a vino tinto, and then finished it off with some lemon sorbet while reading Giles Tremlett's "Ghosts of Spain."

That's what I've been doing tonight.

Taint wrote:

I have no idea where they went, but there were days over the month of August when I seriously wondered just what had happened to everyone. Whole streets were emptied of any activity whatsoever.

They're home hunting elsewhere.

NYTimes: Money and People Flee Spain As Economic Gloom Deepens