It was a tougher game that I expected – in fact it was a bit of a nail biter. But we won and Bryan Habana has been named player of the year by the Rugby Board.

It was cool hanging out with other South Africans at St Andrews pub in Green Lake watching the game (The Kiwi and Kangaroo was full) but I was bummed when someone told me Lucky Dube has been killed in a car jacking. One day someone’s going to fix crime in South Africa. Lets just hope that day comes soon.

…or is it just me? Seems to have gone down for a few minutes at a time around 11pm to midnight for the last few evenings. It’s not tied to browser or workstation, but may be tied to our public IP address. All other websites work including news.google.com and blogsearch.google.com – just www.google.com seems to be having probs.

Interesting video I ran across this evening looking for interviews with John Nash:

I was scrambling through a deep canyon on Sunday on Snoqualmie’s South Fork and ended up at this beautiful quiet pool that looked very deep and had a very nice brookie that grabbed my thin mint streamer after a few casts.

I was reminded of an Afrikaans expression:

“Stille waters, diepe grond, onder draai die duiwel rond.”

It’s the Afrikaans equivalent of “Still waters run deep” but it doesn’t really translate that well. Literally it translates as: “Still waters, deep ground, beneath the devil goes round and round” – but it loses its punchiness in translation.

Afrikaans is a language with a rough history and I think because of this it’s rich with idiomatic expressions, some of which would make a sailor blush. [so I won't share those with you].

Another one: “Hy kan nie ‘n bokkom braai nie.”

Translates as: “He can’t barbecue a dried and salted mullet” – doesn’t translate either because you have to have lived on the west coast of South Africa and seen what a bokkom looks like and experienced the sheer genius of west coast braais (bbq’s) to understand what an insult this really is.

I paid my $30 bucks for pay per view and watched SA teach Argentina a lesson in Rugby respect yesterday beating them 37-13. Bryan Habana you are a God!! If anyone knows a good place to watch SA kick England’s arses next weekend let me know. [Preferably somewhere with more South African fans than English]

Monday mornings are our busiest in terms of traffic. We also get a ton of new user signups over the weekend which means that our numbers get a huge bump every Monday. So I reeeeally look forward to Mondays.

My Texan cousin-in-law and I were partying in SoCal recently and we got chatting about favorite songs. He mentioned Locomotive Breath by Jethro Tull was his favorite. I just heard it for the first time, and, um, wow! If you’re into hard charging gritty 70′s tube amp rock then you want to check this out. I love the constantly driving bass guitar in the background.

There’s something about Southern California that is totally awesome. I dunno what it is. No, I’m not moving here, I love Seattle. But California rocks too in it’s own special way!

Kerry and I left last Wednesday morning at 6am and drove to Wells, Nevada and spent the night in a Super8 Motel, the only one in the area that would take our traveling buddies (ziggy the fat orange cat and joey the aussie cattle dog).

The town was a dive. I know this because the receptionist at the Super8 asked what the heck we planned to do there for 2 days. But the next day we drove up to a little piece of heaven in the mountains called Angel Lake. We got there at around 5pm and the only other person there was busy leaving.

Trout were jumping everywhere. I tied a 22 PMD onto my 5 weight fly rod and in a few seconds had a beautiful 11 inch rainbow on the end of my line. I landed (and released) 1 rainbow and 4 brookies. I lost my only 22 size fly on a bush and tied on an 18 PMD and the fish were a lot shyer (is that a word?).

Then I tied on a woolly bugger  streamer and hooked a big one, but I jerked a little too hard and my 6x flourocarbon tippet snapped right off. Hopefully he spat it out a few minutes later.

Kerry posted more photos and the map location on Geojoey.

There are a few more entries on Geojoey around Wells – OK it’s not that bad. Just the town – the one horse died of boredom a long time ago.

We decided to only spend one night in Wells, then we drove to Ely, NV and did some gambling at the very very quaint Hotel Nevada.  I chatted to a lass who’s worked there for a while and apparently it’s changed hands between owners and their wives and ex-wives a couple of times. But the memorabilia is un-f’ing-believable. There’s a restored 1940′s Indian Chief motorcycle on the wall, right above 4 giant stuffed rattlesnakes. There’s a coin collection in the back of the diner that’s been turned into a relief of a bull – and some of the coins are from the 1800′s.

Next we drove to Vegas and saw Cirque de Soleil’s Ka. There’s a Brazilian capoeira dancer in the show that really blew me away. I’ve been to Salvador, the birthplace of Capoeira and spent a few weeks there. I’ve seen it done on the beaches there in a drum circle and it’s the most incredible dance and martial art. I wish I knew who the dancer was – they had a guy called Berto, but I don’t think it was him in the show. Here’s some background on Berto.

After spending the rest of the night drinking Caipirinha’s in the MGM, we drove to California the next morning. Leaving Vegas on the I15 on the way to SoCal is like being shot from the barrel of a .50 caliber. Everyone’s doing 95, sometimes we hit 100 in a 65 zone. No one cares because they’ve been gambling all night anyway, so what the hell! And then there was this old lady in her little Hybrid that parked in the fast lane alongside a trailer in the slow lane with her spedometer firmly stuck on 65 and the whole of vegas backed up behind her with me as the gimp directly behind her expected to either ram her or honk and flash. I didn’t have the heart to do either and I couldn’t pull over, so I got boxed in by a couple of Ford F150′s making the point for me. Jesus California drivers are insane!!

We arrived in Orange County (The OC Yo!) just in time for a friends wedding reception which was amazing. The afterparty in the hotel room at the doubletree was even better until security kicked us out and then the after-after party on the patio outside the bar with a boom box hooked up to a laptop was even better. Eventually security gave up on us and we wound things up at around 3am. Kerry and I were so blasted we checked into the hotel.

Oh, and lest I forget, we crashed another wedding at the DoubleTree (Kerry’s cousin Kay and Marcus get credit for that idea – you crazy nut cases!!) and as if that wasn’t enough we crashed a 30 year highschool reunion too. And my crazy wife dragged me onto the dance floor in the front of the room at the reunion – we were the only people under 50 – and made me slow dance with her. When these Texans get together they are truly insane!!

So it’s been a fun week and it’s Monday again and I’m back on my laptop working on something new and beautiful and all I can think about is the trout waiting for me later this week up at Bear Lake.

I think free speech is the greatest thing about the USA. It’s what makes this country a true democracy and it’s the benchmark of any country claiming that they are a democracy. Holding free and fair elections is only part of being a democracy. The other part is free speech and freedom of information.

So it’s really cool to see Ahmadinejad speaking at Columbia University – and it’s even cooler to see Columbia’s president, Lee Bollinger, exercising his own right to free speech by telling Dinny exactly what he thinks of him.

The WSJ got it very wrong today when they said “Columbia is a selective institution in its choice of students as well as speakers; its choices confer distinction on those whom it selects.”. Columbia is conferring distinction on the principle of free speech and freedom of information. Dinny is just a tool they’re using to demonstrate that even in extreme cases, freedom of speech does more good than harm.