“The 4 stages of addiction: Experimentation, Regular Use, Problem Use, Addiction / Dependency”
My name’s Ralph. I write the urbancrows blog and I’m an addict. I’m years in to my addiction and I now embrace it. It’s an integral part of me, so I’ve stopped looking for help. I’m way past that.
Now that I’m older and a little more affluent, I can pay dealers to satisfy my cravings. Sure, it costs me more than before to scratch the itch, but my suppliers are reliable and I can get the best quality stuff so I don’t have to hit as often as I used to.
Yes, I collect mineral samples.(PS: the mineral photos are at the end)
The Self-Isolation-Round-The-World-In-14-Days Tour
I flew in from Santiago a week ago with a plane load of worried Canadians heading home from their business trips, or cancelled cruises or their we-had-a-bit-too-much-adventure holidays.
The road in Chile goes on and on and on and on
The handy leaflet I was given at Toronto airport that passes for Canadian government COVID-19 screening tells me that I have to self isolate for 14 days, so now I’m effectively stuck in the house until March 30th.
Well, screw that. I’m an experienced world traveller with the constitution of an ox on steroids, and I’m simply not prepared to sit around, thumb up my bum, while the wonders of the world pass me by. So, the Urbancrows blog has embarked on an all expenses paid (funding source to be determined) virtual world tour to take in some of the sights I’ve always wanted to see. Madagascar, Mongolia, Chad – I’ve crossed them all off my bucket list already.
Regular readers will be pleased to hear (I hope) that I’ve been keeping an illustrated travel diary to while away the time spent on my virtual plane, sipping virtual bubbly in my virtual fully-reclinable First Class seat. I’ll be updating the diary everyday, so let’s dive in and see where I’ve been…
Day 9: The Lord Of The Rings
Today I visited the set of the Lord of The Rings in New Zealand -I read the book over and over as a kid & it’s one of my favourite films. I went dressed as Bilbo & they let me climb Sauron’s tower, which was only 12 ft high and wobbled alarmingly; something of a let down! A pathetic looking rubber “Smaug” flew over on the end of fishing line & grilled one of the extras but that’s why they call them extras I guess! Gandalf was smoking his wand (wtf?) & a bit out of it. His tobacco smelled funny.
The endless Chilean desert has claimed me this week. Five days tooling around the Atacama with 2 fellow geologists is a great way to avoid the zombie-market-COVID-19-toilet-paper apocalypse.
Indeed there is after last week’s meltdown.
The three of us have been self isolating in a Toyota 4×4, well stocked with pringles, sun screen, rancid boots and single-use water bottles. We’ve been looking at 2 silver mining projects between the Chilean towns of Taltal in the south, and Iquique in the north. The projects are roughly 400km apart as a hugely overworked crow flies, with nothing but desert and dust between them.
Isn’t Toronto lovely this time of year? Parks, the lake, pretty girls in outdoor cafes…the early spring sun breaking through. A sense of rebirth lurking just around the corner. Just lovely. And total horseshit, as anyone unlucky enough to be in downtown TO last Friday can testify. True, it was warmish yesterday and raining; a fairly typical Vancouver type day, a tad better than the weekend. But if you ask me, Toronto is still a frigid fucking concrete wasteland populated by thinsulate-clad half frozen people running for the PATH tunnels. And I bloody hate it. Give me Skegness. Give me Milton Keynes. Fuck give me Red Deer; anywhere but downtown TO in the cold.
