Track Pete

If you're thinking about donating to Operation Smile , here's a little encouragement (pic): All donors will get The Consolation Prize , an individually personalized thank you photo of me doing something zany or interesting (except the real thank-yous will be done somewhere deep in South America rather than my boring office). Read about all the other awesome incentives on my donation page here: http://www.justgiving.com/petemototaxi/ P.S. One arm hand stands are actually quite hard to hold for a few seconds, you don't want to know how much of my lunch hour I wasted trying to get this right with my cell phone camera... here are some other attempts!

Today is the first day on my countdown calendar for my trip! I X'd it off midday on principle. (pic)

So, one of the important points of my trip in South America is that I won’t have internet access all the time, but hopefully in a lot of places I’ll still have power to run my laptop. I’m hoping to pre-stage my blog posts / etc. so that I can just upload them when appropriate. In the process of looking for good easy to use utilities for panorama shots I stumbled across Microsoft Live Writer, which lets you write blog posts in a format compatible with your blog and prep them with all the same formatting, text, picture inserts, etc. How cool is that? Using this I can write my blog posts when I get a chance, then just one-click publish them when I have data connectivity. So, this is the first test of that. To also test Microsoft Image Composite Editor, I stood up on my table and took a few pictures of all the gear that I have laid out so far for the trip (I never use the dining room table unless I have people over, so it’s perfect for staging my gear). Check it out, this is a com...

International driving permit has been obtained!

Free the gas monster

All these crazy people roaming the streets near my place with signs that make no sense make me sad.

(pic) A fridge stocked with beer is a wonderful thing! Thanks for the awesome weekend Sarah, Sanil and Diana!

in Philly grabbin cheese steaks before the ride home!

Welcome to philidelphia for the weekend!

(pic) The insane seafood platter appetizer plate at BLT courtesy of Oracle.

(pic) My Dell mini10 is up and rocking! Yay for new toys. Um I now have four personal laptops and two work ones wtf bloat!

Beware of lime disease!

Double fisting coffee up on seven to start the day, yeah its one of those!

Today I have officially begun planning for the 2009 Mototaxi Junket . This has been going on behind the scenes for a bit, but I'm finally starting to commit to dates and at least pre/post rally routes. The Basic Plan Oct 21: Leave Dulles mid-day, arrive in Lima at 8PM. Oct 22: Explore the Centro Historico de Lima, break the rust off my Spanish. Oct 23: Take the crazy train from Lima (7AM) to Huancayo (7PM). I am expecting to meet up with some other crazy rally people en-route as I believe at least some others will be taking the same train. Oct 24: Mototaxi familiarization day in Huancayo and initial route planning. Launch party that night at which I will try to avoid getting trashed. Oct 25: Any last minute preparation, official send-off at noon! ... many days of adventure ... Nov 7*: Arrive in Asuncion, Paraguay. Return moto taxi and attend finish celebration party. Nov 8*: Hang out in Asuncion for the day, then leave for the long long trip home. From Asuncion to Sao Paulo to...

sara's birthday party is kinda fun, pretty cool spot out here

I have been in my condo for over seven months and I finally got my mail key!

More craziness at Rachel and Jacky's

How to make a woman in less than an hour? hrm

Playing with silk ropes before training at Primal

I am totally riding Cat's scooter through Dupont