Sunday, July 13, 2008
Last Post
To my fans that are still checking this (I think this includes my uncle and my mom): this is my last post! But you are getting my last post from my new HP laptop, so feel good about that.
My travels are done. And so are my videos. Here is the last part of "A Lot of America".
The file is too big to upload, so this will take you to my Youtube link of the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uz81NJbnadc
Enjoy and thanks for reading.
AJ
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
A Lot of America - Part 3
In this part: Grand Canyon, Arizona, New Mexico, El Paso.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
A Lot of America - Parts 1 and 2
Part 2 - Las Vegas and Hoover Dam
Filmed and edited by A.J. Cabrera and Daniel Thomson
An A Games Productions Film
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Road Trip: What Actually Happened

Tempurature in Utah, April 27th: 50s.
Tempurature the next day in Nevada: high 60s
Tempurarute in Phoenix, the day after that: high 90s!! And like -10% humidity!
Best meal: Atlanta, fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, sweet corn, corn bread, fried steak, and Coke, but not imported Coke because Coke is made in Atlanta, so it tastes better there (or so I convinced myself).
Longest drive: El Paso to Houston....12 freakin hours. I'd say 10 of those hours are through NOTHING.
NOTE: To Texans: stop boasting how big your state is if there is nothing even as interesting as a tumbleweed in 65% of it.
ANOTHER NOTE: We did see and in fact run into several tumbleweeds along the way. But that happened in Arizona and New Mexico, where there were cacti and dust storms, two things way more interesting than western Texas.
A FINAL NOTE: Don't make fun of Connecticut.
Longest road: we were on I-10 East for the longest time EVER. From Tuscon, Arizona alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll the way to Mobile, Alabama. Thank you, Interstate 10 East. Dan and I miss you dearly, but at the same time, we dislike you a lot. We've had too much of you.
Interesting things we saw:
Salt Lake Mormon Temple
Rocky Mountains
The desert! (first time for me...well, not true. Spain has deserts, but these are a little different)
Las Vegas Strip
Hoover Dam
Grand Canyon (best part...every human on Earth should see this thing)
Mexico border at El Paso
Astors game
NASA
9th Ward in New Orleans
French Quarter in New Orleans
beautiful beach and Atlantic Ocean in North Carolina

First for me: eating crawfish in New Orleans. It was not that bad, but I prefer the fried shrimp poboys.
Places stayed at, in this order: Provo, UT; Las Vegas, NV; Phoenix, AZ; El Paso, TX; Houston, TX; New Orleans, LA; Mobile, AL; Atlanta, GA; Willmington, NC; Williamsburg, VA; Greenwich, CT
Some rules followed:
1. No junk food in the car (it's so easy to mindlessly snack while driving, but you feel so rotten afterwards).
2. No fast food. If there were no local eateries we could check out, we usually resorted to a low calorie, low budget snack: baby carrots, Wheat Thins, peanut butter (for the record, the peanut butter we bought in Phoenix is still in Dan's car...and still edible), and Gatorade...lots and lots of Gatorade. The elixer of life, as I like to call it.
3. No AC. Saves gas. There were a lot of sweaty backs in the southern states (gross).
4. I'm sure there were some other rules, especially ones we made up along the way, but I cannot remember them now.

A Fun Game to Play on Road Trips:
The Vanity Licsence Plate Game
We taped a blank page onto the dashboard to mark Dan's and my scores. Every time we saw a car with a vanity liscence plate (like "HEY BUD" or "FLYGRL" or "LIZZZZZ") you would have to a) shout it out first and b) shout it out correctly to get the point. This game got VICIOUS. So competitive. Dan kicked my butt.
Motto of the trip: "Victory or Death"
We adopted that somewhere in South Carolina. Dan and I listened to 1776 on CD. Awesome story. We both really got into the whole battle of Trenton, Washington crossing the Delaware (we now both refer to him as His Excellency, as he was referred to back then), and one of the passwords of the night was "victory or death." So that's obviously what we're going to use now.
Other things we did to pass the time:
1) Memorize all of the state capitals. We did it, but we memorized two incorrectly. On our map, it looked like Philadelphia and Lexington were the capitals of Pennsilvannia and Kentucky, respectively. But they are obviously Harrisburg and Frankfort!! Duh!!
2) Try to rank all 50 states in order of square miles!! It's really hard to do. Hint: start with the smaller states. The biggest 4 are simple, and so are the smallest 10. But everything in between gets a little tricky. Dan and I actually did very well. Yay spacial reasoning.
3) The Power Cabinet. This was the most popular thing we did. This easily took up several hours to think about. Essentially, we want to create a Presidential Administration that is comprised entirelly of fictional characters from film and TV. We have to fill out the top positions in our government with people like Han Solo or the Terminator. The character cannot have already held that position, or else Jed Bartlett from the West Wing would obviously be our president.
Here is a taste of what we came up with:
President - Don Vito Corleone, from The Godfather
Vice President - Professor Xavier from X-Men
Sec. Defense - Optimus Prime from Transformers
Sec. Tansportation - Dr. Emmit Brown from Back to the Future
Chief Justice - Jack McCoy from Law and Order
Head of EPA - Captain Planet
Sec. State - Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings
and so on.
NOTE: We have asked almost every person we stayed with, including many liberal-minded females, and there has not been ONE good idea for a female character, especially for the position of First Lady. Society's fault, not ours.

Ultimately, this trip felt great for me. It's a fitting way to end my "transition year", my year of coming back home to the states. Just two weeks with my buddy, no worries, and a chance to finally see most of this country that I need to now start calling my home. For any of you who have lived abroad for so long, you will feel me when I say it's easy to call another country your new home.
After living back on this "main island" for almost a whole year at this point, and after feasting my eyes on the beauitful Rocky's, sprawling deserts, the Grand Canyon, and the great people in this country, I think I'm ready to feel more settled into America.
Don't miss out on my videos about my road trip, coming soon!
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Road Trip
Two weeks ago he and I left for our road trip across the country, back home to Greenwich, CT. Dan and I have planned this trip for over a year now.
I have tons of pictures that will be posted soon. I am also making a movie of our trip. But for now, enjoy a small teaser trailer:
Monday, April 21, 2008
East Coast Party
