W
NE WAY RIDE
This one's for Ruben
here I've been, I hope you never go. A lot of
tragedy, the way it worked. People die, people
love, people fight, people travel, people hurt.
I've got a few in me. This RTW thing is always
about going for the sake of going. It's not a
question of now, who, what, or when. It's been now, always.
The road is every day.
We made it to Auckland, the first stop on the trip. We got
there at
t7 AM, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, Stranger and I. I
guess we're the only ones left. Spittle met us at the airport
and we went skating. It wasn't any different than it always is.
You look at things differently when you're on the road and in
a foreign country, at things and people and how they might
relate
to your life. You can't do it any other way, I guess. Once
again, all our hook-ups were in the air; we have a given in
Spain, and we have some
come cold weather waiting for us in
Marseille. This bus is going to keep moving. They say that
laughter is the best medicine; when you're really sick, nothing
beats laughing your troubles away. I've been on a a bad run; the
last five or six months have been, I'd say, the most devastat-
ing I've ever had in my life. Calamity, death, reality, drugs,
whatever. It's all been there. When I want to laugh, I know.
three e people who can make me laugh. One of them just hap-
pens to be Lee Ralph. We were talking about Steve Caballero
being the best skater of all time, better than Christian, or Alan
Gelfand at Sensation Basin, or Eric Grisham. We can talk all
night, and believe me, we did. We screamed, howled at the
moon; it was beautiful. Skated all the parks. We hit it and then
quit it. Right now I'm on my way to Bangkok. Someone says
it's supposed to be good. Then from there I'm going to go to
stinky Manila. Willy Santos gave me some numbers and I
think I'm going to pull it off. Until then, I don't really know
what exactly I'm doing. Are we there yet?
One night in Bangkok, huh? This fucking place is like a strip
bar the middle of nowhere. Everybody's peeling you off and
peeling you out. Shit stinks and it's about thousand fucking
degrees. What a nightmare. To top it off, they're saying
mandatory strip search in the Philippines because of all the
drugs and whatnot. "Death to Drug Traffickers" is what is
says on the fucking customs card. We're on our way. Next
stop, Santos-land.
I'll be the first to say I did something. Not the first, I
guess, but this is something I've wanted to do for a long
time just to see if I can pull it off. Strange but
true. We're in the Philippines, I guess, or wher-
ever the fuck this place is. It looks like a broken
toilet to me. If someone tells you the world's
fucked, yeah, the world's fucked. Trash,
garbage, it smells like hell on earth. It's
Wall ride
I'm not here
Four dog night
Jeepneys
Spittle 5-0, Hamilton, NC
Sunday in the park
ELCOME
KEEP OUR BARANGAY
CLEAN AND BEAUTIFUL
Dream on
Down the line
SPIT
Germiston, South Africa
Smoke?
Body overflow
closes mortuary
By PAUL EKSTEEN
The 89-year-old Old Fort mortuary
in Hillbrow can't cope with the
daily influx of corpses, and stopped
taking in bodies on Thursday.
Police spokesperson Superinten-
dent Chris Wilken said administra-
tion would still be done at the mor-
tuary, but corpses would be stored
at other mortuaries like Diepkloof,
outside Soweto, and Germiston.
Wilken said the Department of
Labour had decided to close down
the mortuary, stating "it was not in
a condition to be worked in".
People who phoned the Saturday
Star said the place had "become
dangerous to human health".
While officers at the mortuary
remain tight-lipped, a well-placed
source confirmed that the mortuary
had struggled to cope with the large
number of bodies arriving.
With between "five and six people
being shot every night" in central
Johannesburg, the mortuary sim-
ply could not handle the number of
bodies.
Hungry?
The world is fuck-o
Thirsty?
Swamp love