Obrigado very much!

I don’t really know what else to say about my 4 days in Portugal…

the water was blue,

Dave and the boys were on top of their game,

and at lease two of the three monkeys managed to stay out of trouble…

(I'll give you one guess which little monkey was allegedly run over by a motor vehicle while crossing the road - such a rumor is of course unsubstantiated)

In a word- perfect!

Sometimes they get the best of you and sometimes you the best of them...

Yah, so I visited all of the famous mosques, toured the palace, bartered in the grand bizarre, and took a boat across the Bosporus to Asia, but I don't think anybody wants to hear the play-by-play of my weekend. So what I will tell you about is the top two highlights on my two-day turbo tour of Istanbul.

1. Sometimes they get the best of you...

It's true that you don't have to work very hard to get ripped off in Turkey. But I like to think of myself as somewhat of a wise, seasoned traveller who's paid his dues and learned a lesson or two- I mean, shit, I've got a whole drawer full of broken Rolax watches and Ray Brand sunglasses. So, I was walking along the Golden Horn (Istanbul's harbour) minding my own business and rocking out to a little crazy poker when the shoe-shine man walking in front of me drops his shoe-shoe brush. Being a good lad, I picked it up and jogged up to him with a little, "here you go my friend." (everybody is "my friend" in Turkey). To show his sincere gratitude, the man offers to shine my worn-out, soon-to-be-trash New Balance sneakers. While he went to town with his little toothbrush he asked if I had kids. "Not that I'm aware of" I responded (he didn't think that was funny). He did however proceed to tell me of this wife, step-mother, and eighteen blind children. How could I possibly accept a free shoe-shine after hearing that... ahh there's the rub! I offered him all of the change I had pocket- about 10 lira or 6 bucks. "No, paper he insisted." The man was looking for bills. Keep in mind he could have bought Kebabs for his wife, step-mother, and seven of his eighteen blind children for 10 lira. I quickly realised that while accepting my "free shoe-shine" I had been surrounded by 4 other members of the shoe-shine mafia and my New Balance sneakers were quickly about to double in value...

2. Sometimes you get the best of them...

On a wise man's recommendation, I spent an afternoon at Cemberlitas Hamam. With no idea what to expect- I stripped down, threw on my loin cloth, and joined the 30 other sweaty naked dudes in the 400 year old steam chamber. Let me stress that I had no idea what to do, so I followed the lead from a few other guys and laid out on the massive marble slab in the middle of the room. As I was about to fall asleep, a gigantic hairy man grabbed my ankle and pulled me over to edge of the platform where he proceeded to scrub my skin off with soap and steal-woolish pad. Ten minutes later- after having 3 layers of skin removed (head to toe) and feeling exfoliated as hell- I used a bucket to rinse the soap off and followed my new friend in the adjacent chamber... Had it not been for the constant pain, I might have felt slightly awkward about the semi-erotic beat-down I received there. When it was over I returned to my private dressing chamber to decompress and reflect... I left the bath house a new man and feeling like a million lira.

Such are the Turks... honest folk trying to make a living (some more honest than others). A would-have-been travel companion declined the opportunity to accompany me on this weekend adventure believing that Turkey is too dangerous- I found this to be ridiculous before and even more so after. I found the people to be delightfully friendly and I left Istanbul with a affirmed love of the Turks and a acute case of Cholera.

I have a dream...

... that one day I will ride in a bad-ass moped gang.

And last weekend I got one step closer towards realising that dream on the island of Sardinia with Ryan, Willie, and my hog Trigger.


To be continued...

Winner [win-er]
1. A person who wins; victor.

"In life, there are winners and losers." Well that's what I've always heard and so believed. Although this weekend I learned that's not always true. Life- maybe, but in Football- No!After 90+ minutes of what can only be described as a stalemate, the Fulham/Blackburn football match ended in a draw. Lame. Yet, on the way out the underdog Blackburn fans cheered and sang as though it had been a victory.

Winner [whin-erz]
1. A man who picks up a French speaking Senegalese woman in a pub by asking, "are you looking for the guy selling nachos?"; A man who yells on a crowded street without provocation, "French chicks are hot if they're not fat!"