A note concerning tangents (redux) I

Current Location: Lagos, Portugal (~pop. 19,000)

(37°06′N 8°40′W)

Day 1

Expedition Outlook: Expectant

Number of Attractive Female Truckers Spotted: 0

Ah, Readers Fair, hello again! It is a pleasure to be broadcasting to you once more from another expedition. We’ve got a little something different from our last go around for you this time. An intriguing new cast, exciting new locations, and a myriad of brand new objectives, both hidden and not. Hannibal, Corona, Eloise, you will be missed. Edison, well, I am despairing, for in your absence I lack a suitable partner for our “Please be kind to my retarded brother” grift. Ah well, I will find a way to press on.

Rejoining the ranks for the latest ride on the merry-go-round are Jameson and Tachikoma. So far from home Tachikoa will be operating in a much diminished capacity, but there’s not much to be done about that. Filling Eloise’s space as navigator is the equally nefarious Kat. I’ve traded in Edison for two different human companions, Pop and the Lady. Though not as well trained, nor possessing such an impressive natural talent, in the ways of being awful, I think they’ll still provide adequate character to the Expedition with their wisdom, experience and beauty. Hannibal has been replaced by my dear Brother. I hope he can provide just as much excitement while perhaps being slightly more responsible and tractable.

Now for all of my dedicated fans who have not yet fallen asleep reading my eyeball numbing rambles, let’s get on with the adventure!

We departed Newark, NJ and took flight, soaring through the evening skies and arriving, uneventfully, in Lisbon, Portugal. While my companion for the flight was not an attractive young lady, she was also a sour smelling fat guy, so I’ll call that a TKO and move on. We were greeted by some of our delightful family and enjoyed a pleasant breakfast before the expedition acquired its temporary steed and proceed south to the town of Lagos in the Algarve. Expect to hear more of the delightful family in future broadcasts. Regarding this new steed, well, he is no Corona, but has thus far performed adequately. We’ll see how things go as time progresses and he reveals more of his character to me.

After getting settled, we embarked on our very first excursion: explore town, find dinner. Exciting, I know, but best to start with rudimentary objectives. The town is, simply put, beautiful in a way that I’ve yet to experience in the States. Not better, just… different. The main area of activity is actually in the city’s historic district. The streets are narrow, the walks cobbled and mosaic’d, and there is a feeling of age without oldness. I imagine the latter is common throughout Europe.

We explored briefly, established waypoints, and noted possible destinations for future excursions. We also had some amazing fracking dinner. Best steak I’ve had in a while and crepe suzettes that’d cause a bodhisattva to forsake the quest for enlightenment.

We also had our first escapade of the Expedition. (Well technically the second. Trying to park our Steed in the Marina garage was a bit of a fiasco. Imagine a tiny underground space with rows of concrete cubicles, just big enough to fit a car, facing each other from opposite walls. Now imagine that the only way to access these cubicles is a narrow path maybe two and a half car widths wide. You might be asking yourselves, “Well how would you maneuver your car to park it given those circumstances?” Pure luck and a person standing outside to let you know that you have two millimeters of clearance on that front quarter panel, so just go for it or the car is never going to fit.” I’ll endeavor to grab a photo later. It’s quite insane.)

At any rate, the expedition temporarily split up, and during the course of this split your lovable narrator met some young ladies who worked as hawkers for a local bar. They were cute and sociable (good traits for a hawker) so I figured what the heck, I buy a drink (which turned out to be pretty mediocre, no wonder the bar needs hawkers) they get a commission, some enjoyable empty flirting occurs, everybody wins. Well, turns out somebody forgot to give the script to Lady and Pops. The Lady mistook the hawkers as nefarious (perhaps Batlabian? I could see why she might be paranoid about them after the broadcasts from the last Expedition) evil-doers out to prey upon the innocent. “What brand of evil doer?” you might be asking yourself. Well let me tell you: evil nefarious organ stealing prostitutes. So the two of them hatched a complicated CIA style operation to find my location and rescue me. I was busy nursing my sub-par gin & tonic and chatting with the bartender, so I missed the antics myself, but I understand they were quite the spectacle to behold. Pops did locate me and provided an extremely convenient excuse to avoid purchasing another drink, so off we went. Once I filled the Lady in on the script we all had a good laugh and wrapped up the evening.

And that’s all she wrote, at least for now. Pops is feeling a bit under the weather, but other than that, Expedition spirits are high. Check back a little later today for the post about day 2 and some photographs. For now though, thank you for reading and welcome back! This is the Nickness, signing off.