Dave Ford Does Earth

Posted by Dave Ford

Hello people, I am very pleased to announce to the world that I have switched to a new website and am extremely proud and excited about it. If you are reading this via email subscription or reader and have a spare moment or two please check out the brand spanking new site at www.daveforddoesearth.com. Any feedback you might have will be greatly appreciated. I feel like its much cleaner and easier to navigate then the old one. Anyway, many thanks to my college fraternity brother and new business partner Bob Carter. We are still working out a few bugs in the new format and appreciate your patience. For example, a post from October got shot out from cyber space to my subscriber list yesterday and I have no idea why. I am sure it is because of some extremely technical computer problems that I do not have the mental capacity to understand. Over the past two months I have learned about metatags, html code, and more blog crap than you can shake a stick at. But, I am still a huge computer dummy by conventional standards.

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So, there are about 10 important life lessons that I have learned since my return to the USA that I thought I would share. These are in no particular order.

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1. I discovered through my new friend Phil (age 55) that one should never stop following their dreams. Phil had band practice today for the first time in a very, very, very long time. He used to be in a big band 30 years ago and has not stopped talking about singing in a band again since the day we met him back in August. He has been practicing his songs every single night waiting for the opportunity to sing again. I will keep everyone posted on his new musical endeavor. The boys (Ben and Dave) and I gave him a framed picture of the four of us tonight as a going away present. A gentle tear came to the edge of my eye and glistened at the thought of the members of the Garaj Mahal crew hanging out together on our last night in Baltimore.

Sidenote: Did I really just write that last sentence? Gentle tear?

2. I learned that I am truly blessed to have such a wonderfully supportive circle of family and friends, many of whom took incredible care of my friends and I during our two months in town. Muchas Gracias.

Note to friends: I am thinking that I might have another “Garaj Mahal” party in January before I head off to Egypt.

3. I learned that anybody can have a TV show. The cross country crew and I are kicking off a new project in the next few days called “Cross Country TV”. Its basically a few of us doing a video report in every city we run through on the trip “local news style”. Think low budget “Anchorman” on the roads of America. Benny “BV show” Vears is our Australian weatherman. Dave Binck is our “man on the streets”, and I am your charming afro headed host. We have been shooting episode one (Halloween in Baltimore) and hope to have a few excerpts on snoop bloggy blog before set sail.

4. I figured out that I need to live in a place with windows. The Garaj Mahal, with all of its illustrious benefits, has never seen a single solitary beam of natural light. Its a deep, dark, cavern. You wake up at 10:30am and think its 5:45am and vice versa. Weird! On the other hand, it does have two refrigerators, parking for 8, and at least 10 stuffed dead animals including Winston the Fox.

Sidenote: Its very sad but Winston the fox was hit by a car the other day. Avid hunter and owner of Garaj Mahal Wayne McPartland took Winston’s remains to his taxidermist to preserve his immortality. Its sad I know. But, we all must move on.

5. I re-discovered that the United States is a great place to live. Reacclimation was tough. I rocketed straight out of the Colombian rain forest to the world where I had worn a suit and tie everyday to work for the last 6 years of my life. In my opinion and experience, re-entry shock is a much tougher phenomenon to cope with than culture shock. At first I was a bit negative on the US and it came out in my writing. I am not entirely sure why. I was writing from the gut at the time. However, since then I feel like my feelings have come full circle. Although I still severely disapprove of this government (as most Americans do), I did reconnect with my country since my return. Our crew sets off tomorrow to travel across the enormous, expansive land mass between Maryland and California and I cannot wait to discover all the new people and places.

6. I learned how many other people out there have very similar projects to mine. I connected with some very interesting, like minded people over the internet and now am lucky to have new friends in San Francisco, New York, and Sydney. You can check their blogs out in the new right hand column “blog roll”.

7. I discovered that when you bring two good friends (BV Show and Dave) together into a very unique living situations (ie: sharing a room in a Garage), lifelong friendships can be created. These two are inseparable and I am pretty happy that they were able to meet because they both knew me.

Sidenote: Sorry that that last statement was so incredibly gay.

8. I learned that Apple is one of the best companies on earth. In the last month I took 6 movie classes at the Apple store and get as many as 46 more for classes this year. I went from having zero idea of how to get movies onto the internet to the point where I am producing a web tv show chronicalling 5 idiots traveling across the US of A.

9. I learned that my tennis skills are a bit suspect.

10. I learned that Mini Vans are sweet! I have been driving around “the beagle” since I have been back in Baltimore. Dave named his 1993 royal blue mini van after the famous Charles Darwins Vessel that saled the high seas in the 1830s or 1850s. hmm, I think his voyage was in 1832 but I could be extremely wrong. Nonetheless, for two straight months the Beagle has purred like a kitten. She is a fantastic specimen of American engineering and I love her more than most soccer moms.

NEXT POST: Preparing to set sail across a Huge Ginormous Country on a 4 week roadtrip in a Mini Van and a Volvo Stationwagon with 4 of my bestest friends.

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