The Guatemalan Chronicles - Rest of the trip in pictures

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I'm taking the lazy way out: the rest of my Guatemala trip will be displayed in the pictures below. I figure I've stretched this out for long enough.

I'll say it again, though: it was an awesome trip, from start to finish (minus the whole baggage kerfuffle at MEX).

Anyone who wants to do the sailfishing-in-Guatemala thing should definitely contact Captain Tom Boice (@panamaxsailfish) at Panamax Sailfishing.

And you couldn't have asked for a better crew to fish with than Jon from iFished.com and Salty from SoCal Salty, so if they organize another trip, just go!

Note that I took all of my pics on the trip with the Instagram app on my iPod. A few of my faves that have already been posted are included in this batch, too.

Captain Tom & the Que Vela! at sunrise

Jon at the helm

Volcanoes remain "cool" to me

Jon's sailfish...after it bit him

Damage from the sailfish "bite"

My rig, locked & loaded. Spent 1.5 hours at the ready on 1st day of fishing

Sailfish on Instagram = awesome

Salty drawing a crowd

Salty with another satisfied street merchant

Salty must have oozed "rich Yanqui" while out & about :P

Volcano & Lake Atitlan, Panajachel

Local fisherman on Lake Atitlan 

The previously mentioned 'Best Goddamned Coffee Shop Anywhere"

Mural on outside wall of Crossroads Cafe, Panajachel

The best friggin' hairstyle in Guatemala, bar none...

World-famous Latin American chicken buses...

...all pimped out

Salty is a fan of the harp, apparently

'da boyz, loitering in the central square in Antigua

Street musicians in Antigua

Antigua, Guatemala

and again...

Sinatra on tour? Nope, just Salty, lovin' life! (Jealous of that hat, btw)

A persistent seller of 'fine' handcrafted (&slightly used) flutes 

Pic of the dorado, via Salty's camera, which looked Instagram-y

And that's it, folks. Hopefully there will be another awesome adventure to drag out over three weeks of blog posts coming again soon!

Keep it real.

Mat

Hurry up & wait...

Time/Date: 0105 CST, 05-June-11
Location: Saskatchewan...still...

I'm making the transition to night shifts for my last few days onsite here. The new drill hole is taking some time to get started due to technical difficulties. I say technical difficulties as I don't want to dive into any more details than that for fear of losing my readers to boredom.

So there's a whole bunch of hurry up & wait going on in my life. All I want is to hurry up & get home, but that's coming soon enough.

Of course, there are a couple pluses to this: time at the tying vise as well as playing around with new apps for my iPod.

First new addition is DropBox. It's kinda cool, if you're interested in that whole 'cloud computing' thing. I have it installed on both my laptop and iPod. A free account nets you 2GB of online storage, with paid subscriptions available for many more gigabytes if you need them.

You should check it out, and, if you use this link to sign up, both you & I will receive an extra 256mb of storage for free as part of their referral program. Lifehacker has a few more methods to increase free storage amounts here.

Next up is Instagram, which is a photo sharing app. It shoots pics, modifies them with different finishing effects, and posts them to various social media accounts a person might have. I shot a couple pics this evening & I like what I see of the app so far.

Here's a screenshot of what it looks like when someone clicks the link:

Here are the two pics I snapped using Instagram (conveniently transferred from my iPod to my laptop via DropBox):

As for fly tying, the top pic is a black & white Clouser, aka a "Bow River Cop Car Clouser." Nothing fancy, but apparently it works. It brings the official count of Clousers tied here to 15.

The monstrosity below it is a chartreuse & white yak hair streamer, with striping on the chartreuse hair artistically done up with a black sharpie. It will (hopefully) feed a muskie on an upcoming adventure...if I can cast the bastard.

This will be my first time muskie fishing, and I'm fairly certain there aren't a lot of guys in New Brunswick chasing them with a fly rod. The muskie fishery in New Brunswick is relatively new, but it's catching on quick. I know I'm looking forward to giving it a shot!

This will also be my first time fishing with my new Redington CPX 10-weight, though I hope to get some casting practice in beforehand.

(If you have noticed an increase in mentions of Redington (Twitter: @RedingtonGear) lately, well, it's because I received their guide deal through my association with Fredericton Outfitters. And also because they make awesome stuff. Hence me choosing Redington over any other brand carried at FOA.)

Here's some music:

(I have really been pushing the Canadian content lately, huh?)

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Ipod Photos + Plastic Bullet app

Time/Date: 1900, 11-Oct-10
Location: F'ton

Here are a few pics from the Decentralized Dance Party on Saturday night taken with my ipod. This event appeared to go over extremely well, with no major incidents reported. Awesome that something new/different happened in Fredericton for the kids to enjoy (& there isn't even a shitty comment on the Gleaner's website about it...yet).

Also, I've been playing with the Plastic Bullet photo app for the ipod (get the app here); a few pics are below (original at top). It's fun but I have to master taking pics with the ipod to get the full benefit of it, me thinks...but it's worth the $1.99.

And now for some music. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

How my new ipod simplifies things a bit

Time/Date: Too late or too early, 7-Oct-10
Location: F'ton

I love my ipod(s). I'm not one of those dance by myself-types in the commercials, but there are truly deep feelings.

My first was a 20GB gen-1 purchased in Ought-Five. It got a lot of use. The second was in '08, a 16GB touch after gen-1 started freezing (note: resetting an ipod while driving: bad).

I would have kept Ipod the Second around for a long time, had it not run off with a burglar (along with a can of bear spray).

So last week Ipod the Third has entered my life; a 64GB, fourth-generation ipod touch.

"How does buying a new ipod fit into simplifying & minimalism?"

Well, after 5 days, I can tell you this:

1. 64GB holds my entire music library. Savings: time; no need to manage the library to fit 16GB
2. It shoots HD video. Savings: $$ & space; won't require a video recorder for fishing exploits
3. It takes decent pictures. Savings: $$ & space; I sold my point & shoot camera and gave its now-surplus pelican case to my roommate
4. I downloaded the free Kindle app. Savings: time, $$ & space; I read e-books, thus reducing need for trips to bookstore (gas & time) and storage for books. Plus e-book titles are cheaper, and hundreds of classic titles are available free.

Plus wifi reduces how much I carry my laptop & the calculator is great. And Flick Fishing is fun, too.

I'll be test-driving some of the cool photo apps available like Plastic Bullet (see pic below) & writing reviews in future posts.

First ipod photo; edited with Plastic Bullet.
Starring Prince the Cat