Ephemerica 2.0

Since we’ve had some downtime here, we’ve taken the opportunity to get caught up and make some improvements (we think) to the blog:

You may have noticed we’ve changed the theme of our blog. We both really liked the previous one, but we found out that a coding conflict was preventing us from reinstating the map [...]

Who is an American?

Following the example of other countries and continents, an American should be a person from the American continents. Peruvians, Canadians, Mexicans and Argentinians should all be considered Americans as well those from the US. (Just as Spaniards, Germans and Italians are considered European.) It’s not something people from the US think about too much, since [...]

Our daily routine

We thought while we had a moment in La Paz, we’d write a little post giving you an idea of what our days are like. We’ve kind of gotten into a routine on our biking days that seems to be working for us so far. As you might imagine, when we’re on the bike, most [...]

Some light Christmas reading…

Latin America: The End of an Era
This is a long article, but gives an interesting perspective on recent political and financial developments in Latin America. I found the article linked from this post by the same author at The Huffington Post about the possibility of Ecuador defaulting on its foreign debt, a la Argentina (which [...]

Music to launch fireworks by

I watched the movie Bottle Rocket last night, the first movie by Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson, who also co-wrote Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums (Anderson also co-wrote The Life Aquatic, with someone other than Wilson). I’ve always thought Anderson’s other works have paled in comparison to Rushmore, and Bottle Rocket was consistent with that. [...]

Chavez Re-elected

By a comfortable margin. Interesting that he’s going to try to change Presidential term limits before his next election (apparently in Venezuela, Presidential terms are for 6 years). I’ve been wondering about our own term limits in this country recently…there is so much inertia in our bureaucracy that 4 or 8 years seems hardly enough [...]

Our Ambassadors to Argentina

The Bush Twins, staying the course in Buenos Aires. I only hope they are forgotten by the time we get there.

Political upheaval

For those of you reading who are perhaps as ignorant of world politics as we are, there have been a couple of big political events recently that may impact our travels:
Battle of Oaxaca—We have learned about this some from our roommates, who are part of a Oaxacan group in Seattle. Just tonight, their group held [...]

Bogota, Colombia: transportation model?

I first heard about Bogota, Colombia’s revolutionary transportation system from Ride for Climate. When faced with growing traffic congestion, the city switched entire roads to bike and pedestrian only, eliminated parking downtown and developed a Rapid Bus Transit system. Today on KUOW, I heard an interview with Dr. Enrique Penalosa, the former Mayor of Bogota, [...]

Helmets bad?!?

Here is a press release from a researcher in England who is a “traffic psychologist”, who did a study on whether wearing a helmet (or not) affected how close cars and trucks came to his bicycle as he rode the streets of Salisbury and Bristol. He found that drivers were likely to come closer to [...]