Dave’s Travel Blog

I need to thank Niña at the wonderful JustWandering Philippines Travel Blog site for inspiring me to post an update here at Dave’s. I must admit to being motivated by self-interest — but then, aren’t all blogs pretty much built around self-absorbtion? — since Niña is running a travel photo contest featuring really groovy prizes!

Anyway, I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in the famous La Tomatina, the world’s largest tomato fight, in Buñol, Spain, in August of 2006. Along with 40,000 other people, I… well, I spent an hour throwing tomatos at 40,000 people whom I’d never met before and whom I will probably never see again… except in the photos I took.

And oh, do I have a story about those photos! Being, as I am, an ace photographer , and having spent a LOT of money to travel to the other side of the globe for one hour — one hour — of t-fight madness, of course I was jazzed about catching all that front-line action on camera. So jazzed, that I snapped hundreds of photos during the hour-long melee. Hundreds of dramatic, humorous, action-packed photos . . .

. . . ON AN ALREADY FILLED MEMORY CARD!!!

No, I am not making this up.

As the battle wound down, I finally checked my pictures, and realized I ONLY HAD A HANDFUL OF SHOTS FROM THE TOMATO FIGHT!!!

I had two options. The one which I immediately favored, of course, was to pound my head against the cobblestone pavement until my brains oozed out into the already bloody red gutter. Instead, however, I elected to quickly delete a number of lame pictures of old buildings, set the camera to 640X480, and snap as many photos as I could during the aftermath and clean-up, as 40,000 weary revelers recovered from the carnage and made their way up the meandering streets to the showers and the train station.

Along the way I captured this moment, which well represents the sensations of exhaustion and catharsis which follow the intense hour of tomato madness.

La Tomatina was an incredible experience. My numero uno travel goal is to return to Buñol and La Tomatina in the near future.

Thanks again, Niña at JustWandering, for providing the impetus to post this photo and to revisit, in imagination if not in fact, La Tomatina!

I’ll be posting another entry inspired by Niña, devoted to travel luggage, uh… someday. Maybe even soon!

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My sportswear purchases, as previously detailed, are pretty much limited to cheap denim jeans and sneakers at Wal-Mart. Rather than actually step outside and, y’know, do something or gosomewhere, I’ll refer you to Niña’s hike up Mt. Daguldol in The Philippines in her trendy new Columbia Sportswear outdoor gear.

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I ran across this photo spread in Outside Magazine today: Winter’s Best Jeans. If Outside Magazine can cover designer denims, is there any reason I can’t stretch the definition of “travel blog” to address the same topic? Other than that I can’t actually afford to buy designer denim jeans, I mean?

I’ve long been a fan of regular Levi’s 501 jeans, but nowadays they cost in excess of $40. Still, that’s a bargain compared to the $80 to $200 for the denims pictured in the Outside article, and I’ve been planning to shop for a new pair… for traumatic reasons which I may detail in a separate post.

A few days ago I spent a couple of hours browsing in Wal-Mart while waiting to have an oil change done on the car. Yeah, I know, “real men” change their own oil. But I didn’t want to risk staining my “pre-weathered” two-hundred dollar Levi’s Capital E Eco Hesher Regular Straight Leg Jeans, seeing as how they already look ratty enough straight off the shelf.

I’m kidding. I can’t afford two-hundred dollar trousers. And if I could, they’d better be something so sharp they’d put James Bond to shame in the swank department.

No, instead, I’m browsing around Wal-Mart and as I wander through the menswear department I notice “Faded Glory” blue denim jeans for $9.95 a pair. There’s another brand, “Rustlers,” for $10.95 a pair. I paused to check them out. Hmmm… not all that different from Levis. I tried on a few sizes and styles.

Here’s my take on those d@mned “relaxed fit” or “comfort cut” or whatever euphemism they use for “fat boy” pants. Or “phat boy” pants, I suppose, since they’re so popular with gangstas and hoodlums and guys who like to wear baggy pants down around their knees to show off their Underoos. Which, if they were wearing Underoos, might be cool, but usually they’re just wearing plain old boxer shorts. Whatever you call ‘em, and no matter how bad-@ss you think they make you, or your @ss, look, those wide-bottoms (as opposed to bell bottoms) leave you looking like that guy whose picture used to be in the Guinness Book of World Records. You don’t even have to click on the link, ‘cuz you know the guy I mean. (However, the wonders of the internet have made accessible, to my utter amazement, actual moving picture footage of that Guinness Book guy! )

But I digress. My question is: what is the difference between the ten-dollar “Faded Glory” jeans or the eleven-dollar “Rustler” jeans at Wal-Mart and the coupla-hundred dollar jeans promoted in Outside Magazine? I mean, is there a ten- to twenty-fold difference in quality? In fit? In style?

I must admit, I had to pass on the less expensive “Faded Glory” brand, because all they had in stock were the Guinnes Book of Records guy style, and go with four pair of the pricier eleven-dollar “Rustlers” regular-cut jeans. I mean, four pairs of jeans for the price of one pair of Levi’s 501s! Deal, huh?

I suppose buying eleven dollar jeans pretty much relegates me to the “trailer trash” heap for the remainder of my days, don’t it?

Seriously, I want to know: is there a valid reason to buy two-hunnert dollar “overalls”? Are there people out there who can tell the difference? If there are, are they people to whom I should be concerned about making the right impression?

I mean, okay, I examined these clothes fairly closely. Even I noticed a few differences. The smoothness of the zipper on the cheap jeans doesn’t quite measure up to that in Levi’s 501s, for example. But, there’s hardly thirty dollars worth of difference. Perhaps it’s small-minded on my part, but I can’t conceive of a zipper improvement that would warrant a one-hundred fifty dollar difference in price.

Maybe people pay the extra money because they want their clothes to look “worn out” without having to wear them out. If that makes sense. Which it doesn’t. I wore my new cheap jeans the next couple of days when I went power-tripping around town with Trippy, including a hot, sweaty, dusty off-trail scrabble through the brush and cacti to reach an abandoned machine-gun emplacement on a ridge above the Makapu’u lighthouse trail. The knees and the backside held up, so the quality’s there. The zipper didn’t come undone. Actually, the red dirt brushed right off, so they still don’t look “fashionably filthy.” Maybe that’s the problem with cheap jeans, they don’t get grungy fast enough. I shoulda worn them when I oiled up my bicycle chain this afternoon.

I guess I truly am “trailer trash.” Poor trailer trash, because even if somebody can clarify why I should be buying buck and a q denims, I can’t really afford to do that. Not without dipping into my beer money, anyway.

I did buy some genuine Converse All-Stars recently. Forty-two bucks for sneakers. I don’t know how “genuine” they really are, seeing as how they’re made in Vietnam. That would be the country in which we lost the war previous to the one we’re losing now. Where the Commies took over. In response to which we said, “okay, you win, so now, pretty please, may we move the production of the All American Chuck Taylor Converse All-Stars basketball shoes to your country?” Anyway, I don’t yet have a good photo of myself wearing my new All-Stars, but guess who else liked Converse sneakers? Yup, the Guinness Book guy! He even left ‘em untied, just like the cool kids today! That cat was “phat” before his time!

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