My first thanksgiving...

I was at my friend's place for my first Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. She cooked a mighty feast, including 40 deviled eggs, of which I think I ate 30. The highlight has to be when her aunt arrived, put her teeth in, and then demanded 'are you going to roll two fat joints or what?'. Wasn't expecting that. Classic. All completely legal here seen as every man and his dog has a medical card. I was quite happy with my bottle of Rioja though, each to his own! I left full as an egg (full of eggs) with a loaf of bread and a load of leftover meat in my pockets.

I got a few funny looks sat in a meeting today eating the leftover ham from Thanksgiving out of a plastic bag and eating my 'bread' like a candy bar. The bread was real sweet stuff, like tea loaf. I've noticed that they sometimes call cake 'bread' -that way you don't feel like a fatty boo for eating a whole loaf...

Sweet bread, the best kind of bread!

My next thanksgiving feast will be on wednesday night with none other that Markus Schulz supplying the audio candy, at the aptly named Trancegiving. Praise the lord!!

H1N1

Damn flu. Been feeling rough as a porcupine's scrote this week. Pretty sure it's swine flu based on the symptoms, but feels just like normal flu. On the positive side, I found this picture on the US H1N1 Health Advisory website.

It appears hugging a teddy and smoking a fat one is the best way to cure H1N1. Shame I don't smoke, but I certainly am a teddy-hugger.

A pain in the arse...

In the previous post I mentioned something about falling out of a tree. Well, three weeks later I had a lump on the side of my arse and it wasn't going away. When I touched it I got a really sharp deep pain. Great, cancer, I thought. I'm going to die of arse cancer.

Anyway, a few days later, after coming to terms with my impending, untimely demise, a thought came to me: why don't I give it one last big squeeze? I did and as I winced, blood squirted out and I heard something go 'Ping!'. I looked around and found what can only be described as a thorn the size of a redwood trunk at the side of the sink. This piece of timbre must have made home inside my leg during the tree incident, and safely nestled in there for several weeks.

At least three foot long!

I guess the moral of the story is: don't automatically assume you have cancer when you find a lump, because it could just be a thorn. Or maybe: don't fall out of trees. Take your pick.

Presenting DJ Jim Beam...

I met up with some guys that DJ in the next town on. Well, hang on, i'll go back a bit...

A local DJ had commented on my mixes online and said we should meet up. We spoke and he lived in the town next to Fort Collins so I said I'd cycle down that afternoon. Before he could say 'cycle??!!' I'd hung up and set off. It turns out that I misjudged the distance and it's 16 miles each way - not quite the same as popping up to Headlingley from Burley Park.

It was also not that flat, and the road I was heading down was closed off with a two mile detour. The scenery was nice, but thankfully someone in a truck realised that I wasn't cycling for the sheer joy of it and offered me a lift after 8 miles.

Pretty for two miles maybe, not but 16.

So, I met up with these guys and we had a bit of a mix in their basement. They were DJing at a house party in Denver that evening so I went along with them. I played for a bit before realising that I'd nailed a good half-litre of my old friend Jimmy B and that it would probably hit me pretty soon. The rest is a bit of a blur, other than chatting to lots of people whilst touring the house and saying bye to three friendly police as we loaded the gear into Vanessa's car (Dylan had lost the keys to the car we came in) and disappeared off at 4am.

I awoke on Dylan's sofa as his dog attempted to make love to me. At this point I realised I was missing my jacket, my phone, my camera (hence the lack of my pictures in the recent posts, boo!), and in pain in several places. We had to go back to Denver to get Dylan's car, and luckily I found my phone and my jacket. On returning I was greeted by lots of happy people that I vaguely remembered. We carried on drinking at the house (I had to move on to beer because someone had finished the 1.5ltr bottle of Jimbo last night - hopefully not me) and everyone filled me in on the blanks, which included being on the roof and falling out of a tree. This explained the scratches all over me and the pain in my arse.

I really appreciated the comfort of my $400 mattress on Sunday night. I lay half-asleep laughing to myself about the bits I remembered whilst getting calls from Chelsea's irate mum asking me where she was (Chelsea had been at the party). I've no idea how or why she got my number, but I assured her that she was fine when I left, and that I really needed to sleep. For 14 sweet hours.

Sack your promotional teams...

Who the hell do DJs pay to do their promotional photography? I mean, at what point do they say: "I know! Ferry, it'd look really cool and sell loads of tickets if you pretended to flap like a bird!"?

Or "Everyone is looking far too airbrushed these days, Lets just go for a crappy red tint so you look like Satan's cousin, or you've been on the sesh for 84hrs".

But, possibly the worst I've seen is this one of Armin. Is he smelling a rose? Are we looking at a picture of him snapped while asleep? Or is he getting some trouser-love from someone who wants that DJ job just a little too much?

Sort it out!

Good times at Hodi's...

So, I was out the other night to the regular bar and befriended some more random people. In the process of cycling to the bar I'd almost been run over. A woman had just decided to do a U-turn as I passed her and nearly broadsided me. Luckily she stopped in time and I didn't poo my pants, so we continued on our merry way.

One of the guys in the bar assured me I'd be run over soon if I cycle a lot - he's been run over three times. Good to know. Although I gave his legs a tap and they definitely weren't made out of wood, so it cant have been that bad.

I also met the first person who knew that Ibiza existed. We were doing shots of Jager at the bar and she was telling about how and where she wanted to travel and dance - the White Isle being high up on her list. Needless to say we bored the rest of the group into playing pool while we discussed the benefits of life on a party island.

What more could you ask for? - except maybe some snow importing from the Alps during winter. The sweet pad above will set you back a cool 1.5 meeeeellion euros.

Now to get writing my ransom letter to Richard Branson...

Harroooo, I'm baaaack!...

I've been a busy little bee of late, hence the severe lack of posts. There've been too many goings-on to put on the blog, but I'll start with adding some music...

I thought I'd stick my mix on here for anyone that's not got hold of it yet. The first of the Stateside mixes, should be plenty more to come :)

Darzh Liebek - 100 Degrees West

You can play direct with this player, or click on the little arrow on the right to download the mix to put on your Pods.

Sneaky Tax...

I got some temporary speakers for my setup. I was drawn in like a magpie to the shiny metal interior and lights, but they sound pretty decent too thankfully. I squeezed a 5% discount out of the guys in the store only to be reminded that tax is added ON TOP of the price displayed. ''Quality speakers for $180 dollars", I'll take em! "That'll be $200 please." EH???? Bastards.

Lies.

Still, it's heaven to finally be able to bang out some tunes - my neighbours will obviously share my delight.

K-Lab USA in all its glory

Praise the Nord...

After waiting in all day I finally received one of the grandest packages ever (drumroll)... a Clavia Nord Wave synthesizer!!

Ok, so that probably means nothing to 99% of you, but it is the centre piece of my new studio ('centre' keeps being underlined in red as though I've spelled it wrong grr!). And that means I can resume my conquest for world fame and fortune, just like Eric Prydz...

I love how it looks like I'm the DJ and Mr Prydz is showing me the respect. Soon, Mr Prydz, soon.

If only I had some cables then I could get started making tunes. I bought some off Ebay last week but they've only just dispatched them, and with an estimated delivery date of one to three weeks!!!??! Are they being delivered by a Mexican immigrant on foot??? I might just fashion some out of a car tyre and a copper kettle in the meantime...

I love scotch, scotchie scotchie scotch...

Did you know that here you have to go to a "Liquor Store" to buy anything other than light beer? Not really a problem seen as there's a liquor store on the corner of every block. Definitely found a new love for Jim Beam out here. Starting to turn down the Coke as it 'ruins the delightful flavour'.

Disclaimer: this bottle was opened before I arrived.

Something good and something bad...

I was watching some snowboarding the other morning and quite liked one of the tracks by West Indian Girl so I went and bought their album. Here's a track for you to check out...

West Indian Girl-Northern Sky

And before you say anything - this is nothing to do with being converted to a Yank! I still have more love for techno in my little alien toe than the total population of Fort Collins does :P

Almost forgot, here is something from the opposite end of the spectrum....

Wrong in so many ways.

Branston Pickle...

...absent. Ham and turkey sandwiches are resigned to tasting gash during my time here.

Ride 'em cowboy!....

Went to a rodeo the other night. It was a display by the Professional Bull Riders (PBR). These guys were not quite good enough to be on the sports channel edition of bull riding. However, they were equally as crazy as the televised riders. Being willing to straddle a bull with a rope chaffing its happy sack, and attempting to stick spurs in it while it tries its hardest to throw you off requires a lot of cojones and little cerebral matter.


Second most dangerous sport in the world they say - if you fall too close to the bull and it happens to stamp on you then it's game over. You've got to stay on for 8 seconds then the horn goes to tell you to stop, but it's not quite the same as turning your car engine off and getting out - how do you dismount from a bull that thinks you're trying to castrate him? "With great difficulty" is the answer.


Some even wear helmets instead of cowboy hats. Big nancys.

Bigger isn't always better...

Everything is bigger in America. The cars, the roads, and the damn insects that plow into me while I’m cycling along. Something hit me this morning and almost knocked me off my bike. Think I’m going to have to start wearing a helmet.

Kamikaze bugs: you cant see them, but I know they're there.

DJing with the lava goddess...

Headed out to meet a DJ whose number I got from a guy in the gym. Was just going to stay for one beer but saw a guy that was at the Infected Mushroom gig on Friday night. I recognised him because he had a long beard and was limbering up at the side of the dancefloor before stripping down to his shorts and dancing like he was summoning a demon. Turns out he is some kung fu master and spent two years in the Hawaiian jungle 'making peace with the Lava goddess'. What a legend. Obviously we’re now mates. One of the girls checking IDs on the door introduced me to a dancer that knows all the promoters in Denver – I’d told her I was looking for DJ work earlier. The dancer gave me his number and seemed pretty sure he could get my mixes heard by the promoters. Now this, if it works out, was worth me stumbling home at 2am on a Tuesday night!

Completely unrelated, and completely useless for getting anywhere fast.

Rambling...

Went for a hike on Monday to take advantage of my laptop’s 6hr battery and write some emails while overlooking the mountains and the plains. I started worrying about snakes in the long grass half way up. I turned off my headphones so that I’d be able to hear the rattle if any approached – although I’m not entirely sure what I would have done if one did. How do you defend yourself against a snake without a flame thrower? Still, they must have all been sleeping because the worst I had to contend with was a swarm of midges.


After a couple of contemplative hours I descended. The sun was setting and I didn’t want to have to navigate down in the dark, that would have made me easy pickings for a stealthy mountain lion. Come to think of it, I’ve still not seen any snakes or lions – I wonder if that’s just what they tell all the foreigners…

Pretty pretty eh?

Tour De Fat....

I arrived just in time for the annual bike ride 'Tour de Fat' in which over 8000 bikes and fancy-dressed folk cycle around the city before heading to a field to get drunk. The whole thing is organised by the local brewery so drinking is obligatory.


Obviously I went as Cow Man, one of the greater superheroes.


Other outfits included 80s girls, tweety bird clown man, a Monte, and a brazilian pimp.


It was pretty busy so it took about 2hrs to go a mile, by which time 4 out of 5 of us had a flat tire


Some energetic people welded a sofa to their bikes. Although I didnt see them leaving the start line, so maybe they were camouflaged spectators.


Dog face boy. Obviously. Bet he's loving wearing that t-shirt in a 3"x2" cage and the 30degC heat.

Infected Mushroom...

Went to see a live psy trance band on fri night in Fort Collins. I was just excited to hear something other than Bon Jovi. The place was pretty busy - and at $25 a ticket I definitely started seeing green queens for when I get a night sorted myself! The warm-up DJ played some pretty cool electro that people were loving. Then the main act came on and played what can only be described as Hard Trance/Heavy Metal. Not my cup of tea but good clean fun all the same.

It was like being transported back in time though, with glowsticks and swinging LEDs aplenty. All those people that miss the raves of the 90's should just book a flight here. However, the music might not quite be the same. And all the people drinking bottles of water are doing so because they're not old enough to drink, not for any other reason...

Parlez-vous l'Anglais?...

I’ve just been discussing the finer points of the English language with my housemate. I commented that I was ‘cream crackered’ as I came back from the gym. This was met with a blank expression and lead to an explanation that it is rhyming slang for ‘nakkered’. And then I had to explain that ‘nakkered’ meant tired, but that it can also mean broken. Then Ryan tried by saying ‘yeah man, I’m totally nakkers’. To which I had to point out that ‘nakkers’ means testicles.

Good to know my dedication to GSCE English wasn’t all for nought.


Ice-cube maker. Well cool miate.

Sunsheeeiiiiiiine....

It’s so weird waking up each day and it being sunny without fail. I mean, it does mean that if I get caught out without suncream I’ll be a cheese toastie, but it’s a small price to pay. It would be fine if it wasn’t for the fact that I actually have to do stuff, like cycle and gym and shop and work. All of which results in me being the sweatiest geek on earth. Still, I think I’m acclimatizing – down to about 20 bottles of water a day now.


Scorchio!

Business idea #1

Import Tupperware with lids that actually stay on when being transported. Sell for 50% more than the pointless crap stocked in the supermarkets here.

Sleepytime...

Got myself a bed! From Lynn who is decended from a British sailor and a Hawaiian woman (she told me all the other generations in between but I cant remember). The sales people here are really good, they memorize your name and details and make you think like they’re your best friend then next thing you know your handing then $650. Still, it’s a plush bad boy that will keep me warm on the cold winter nights. The only problem is that currently its summer, and the nights are far from cold. So I generally just writhe around kicking the covers off. Oh well, give it a few months and I’ll be reaping the benefits!


On my way back from the shop there was a storm brewing with muchos lightning. Despite taking about 200 photos on fast shutter I didnt catch a single one. So you're just going to have to take my word for it.

The cycling man!

Work is a good four miles from my apartment, which means I’m currently cycling eight miles a day, plus maybe four more on general daily business. Oh how I miss the quarter-mile hill of Woodsley Road. What’s worse is when I cycle to Safeway thinking I can pick up some stuff to make a mean chicken and rice stir-fry (yeah, I like variety) but find that they don’t really sell Chinese stir in sauces, and what they do have costs over £3 for a little jar. Mother of god, if I’d have known that I’d have filled a suitcase full of Sharwood’s finest and made my millions. Mexican it is then!


Some loon has decided to combine cycling with rowing on this imaginitively titled 'rowbike'. Why? God only knows.

A place called home...

So, I found a place. The first place I looked at actually. In with a Canadian guy that seems cool, and there’s a well nice kitchen. The highlight of which is the machine that churns out ice cubes, crushed ice and chilled water on demand. The bedroom is a bit small, but seen as I have brought only the bare essentials (and definitely no where near enough of my beloved cables) there’s not much for me to put in it. Not even a bed. Will be sleeping sans mattress until I figure out how and where to source a bed…


Check out the grizzly-bearskin rug in the living room slash kitchen! We are men, we hunt, and we kill. grrr!

Exploring the Fort...

The joys of jet-lag. Awake at 4.30am but I manage to doze until 6am. Time to wander. I find a Safeway and buy myself some ham, cheese bagels and a green slurry that’s meant to be good for me. The cheese bagels would have been nice if it wasn’t for the fact I couldn’t taste the cheese because of the overwhelming amount of sugar in the bread. No wonder there’s so many fatty boos over here! Actually, there are considerably fewer in Fort Collins than everywhere else I’ve passed through, unless they’re just so fat here that they cant get out of their houses.



I’ve wandered about two miles and cant seem to find the gym I’m looking for. I’m in some ghettoish retail park when I see a fitness class place with possibly the best sign in the world on the window…


I thought that this only existed in the Mighty Boosh to appease Howard’s jazz fetish. But no, it is apparently a legitimate form of exercise here. Priceless. I resist calling the number and head next door into a Brazilian Ju Jitsu dojo. People grappling and sweating, that’s more like it. Fancying my chances in the UFC ring in case climate science doesn’t work out for me, I sign up for a taster session.

The gym turns out to be round the back of the jazzercise place and I head round to find a big room full of racks of weights and machines, without a cardio machine in sight, sweet. I chat to the guy behind the counter and secure a free 3-day pass after explaining that I’m English, not Australian. Sitting on planes, eating crap and generally doing naff all for days is getting me agitated, I’ll be heading back here later to get my sweat on - after a bit of house hunting.

The American Pie movie set...

I arrived in Fort Collins in the evening and set up camp in my hotel room. After watching more adverts in 5 minutes than in an entire week at home I turned the TV off and headed out. Wandering around the town I couldn’t help feeling like I was in the movie set of some US teen flick. Groups of college kids, bars playing cheese, wide wide roads, sprawling suburbia - very different from my beloved Leeds. Some weird signs as well. Like a diner called Good Times proclaiming to serve the best ‘burgers and frozen custard’. Excuse me? Not a combination I would have put together, but whatever takes your cowboy fancy.


They’re pretty cycle and pedestrian friendly compared to most other places in the US – except that you cant cycle down the most useful, 5 mile long road in the town that has the majority of the shops on it, nice one. It’s been a 24hr day so I decide to leave the exploring until tomorrow. The alarm clock next to my bed has the feature of playing different ambient noise while you sleep. The sounds range from annoying crickets to trickling water. After nearly wetting the bed I decided to switch to ocean waves, which drowned out the sound of the buzzing refrigerator nicely.

This is a journey…This is a journey…This is a journey…

Considering the blubbering mess I’ve been for the past few weeks I was pretty chilled leaving the tarmac on Manchester airport. When I looked out of the window as we were climbing through the fine rain I saw a full rainbow for the first time, echalente. The guy next to me was from Dallas and had just been buying tractor engines in Huddersfield for Bell Helicopters. I know we’re in a recession but I don’t know how happy I am about helicopters being fitted with some Emley Moor farmer’s old tractor engine. After a brief chat (accompanied with photos) about his pepper garden back in Dallas we buried our heads in our books – mine full of pearls of wisdom from the Sir Richard Smug Branson, and his, The Chilli Monthly, full of interesting things to do with chilli peppers.

A rather uneventful transfer and flight from Chicago later, I touched down into Denver. I was greeted by blue skies, 25 degree sunshine and the rocky mountains in the hazy distance. So far so good. I was a bit early for my bus so I started chatting to one of the shuttle bus drivers. Turned out he was from Iraq and thought I was from Australia – I think the northern English accent doesn’t quite fit with the Bond/Hugh Grant stereotype. He was telling me about his studies and asking what I did. He seemed concerned that I may have been working too hard and not getting enough ‘boom boom’ as he put it. I assured him I played hard too, but he’s probably right – note to self: work less, play harder. He welcomed me to America and sped off. It’s a bit random being welcomed into the US by an Iraqi.

It begins...

Ok, so I’ve finally got around to pasting my rants to my blog. Just thought I’d jot down bits of my life over here to fill the time when you’ve run out of emails to check, facebook posts to read and things to google. The dates are all messed up but its all in roughly the right order... It starts a bit heavy but I guess it will thin out as I get busier!