I'm sitting in the Purple House Hostel in David, Panama checking my email for the first time in days.  And yes it's literally purple; purple walls, purple dishes, purple rocks, right down to purple ashtrays...  I'm sitting around with a few other American folks watching Barak Obama's face flash across the TV screen to what seems to be a cruel slanderous accusation that he worked for an illegal extreme radical group in Chicago.  And it's on Fox News!  I'm quite surprised that such a major news station would promote such an extreme winged view.

  B.  S.    But I'm not going to go anymore into the American troubles.

  "Let's drink to the pursuit of the new American dream --getting the fuck out of America."  (Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?, by Thomas Kohnstamm).

  This post might be a bit scrambled since I haven't posted in awhile and, according to my photo cache, I have a lot to catch up on.  Two weeks ago I was skipping through the Chugach mountains, embracing the first snowfall of autumn.  Watery flakes caught in my eyelashes for the first time in over a year.  It felt great, but the quick seasonal changes reminded me that I needed make my move soon. 

  First stop, SLC, Utah to visit some family and to get a colorful understanding of southern autumn.  It puzzled me that Utah trees were still changing colors even when the temperatures hovered around the 80's.

  Next stop, Austin, Texas to visit my sister and to jump in on the Austin City Limits music festival.  I didn't know what to expect of the music festival, considering that it was in Texas I figured that it would be mostly honky tonk country music amongst crowds of rednecked republicans.  After I strapped on my one-of-a-kind wristband, I was pleasantly surprised to find that there was a diverse plethora of music, ranging from hard rock to mellow indie.  We swayed, sunbathed, and staggered from stage to stage across the Zilker venue for three long days.  When our eardrums were well pounded and our shoulders well burnt, the festival came to an end and my journey continued on.

  This time I was getting outside of the U.S., heading to Central America for the first time.  I landed in the large bustling, International hub of Panama City late at night.  Confused and tired I asked a taxi driver to drop me off at a plaza by a backpacker hostel that I found online.  Quickly after the taxi took off, I realized that this plaza was no backpacker's stop, but instead was bustling with late-night locals making corner deals.  I hailed another taxi who took me around to the nearest hotels in the area, either $25 a night of pay-per hour.  I managed through the night, and hopped on a bus out of there asap.

  I headed straight to the coast and spent a few days in a tucked-away little town called Santa Catalina, known to host one of the best surf breaks in the country.  I rented a cheap board one morning and tried my hand at it, but the board was much too short and dinged up for me to catch any waves.  Nonetheless it was nice being on the water for a few hours, watching others carve the smooth wave faces, and chatting with locals.

  My sleeping arrangements were a little cabaña room all to myself in front of the beach front.  My neighbors, an Israeli/Argentinean couple, had been traveling up from South America.  Evidently, when they passed through Montañita, Ecuador, they also ended up working for the infamous Hola Olas restaurant (where I worked for about two months last year).

  The little town of Santa Catalina was relaxing and "tranquilo", as the locals say.  But turns out there wasn't much to do there, so I caught the early bus out this morning.  Five separate buses and nine hours later I finally arrived in the country's second largest city, David.  I dropped my bags at the Purple House right before the daily sudden rainstorm switched on.

   Anyways, I've been on-&-off writing for a couple hours now with stupid American movies playing behind my computer screen.  Technology overload.  So now it's time for me to cut loose and say ciao for now!