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Life

ah, what the heck…. I’ll post a bit about the house

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I got an email minutes after posting the last post so I guess I’ll post a little about the new house.
Konrad GorskiI’m living with Konrad (a long time pal who is in Charleston playing with an awesome band called Crowfield)

Allyson

Then there’s Allyson who is just living in Charleston for the summer and working on Seabrooke Island.  Please take note of

me and AustinFinally, there is Austin.  I lived with him at Clemson and we’ve been buddies for a long time too.

So, the house is about 5,000 sq ft.  It is located in a gated country club where we have access to a pretty nice course, training facilities, a pool (5 minute walk from the house ), stables, a polo field, lots of jogging trails, etc.

Downstairs we have a game room, kitchen, huge pantry/catering quarters, a sun room, a giant living room, a bedroom, my office, the master bedroom which has 2 huge walk-in closets and a jacuzzi (which I love).

Upstairs, we have Konrad’s room, Austin’s room and a pretty sweet entertainment setup.  Both the upstairs and downstairs have xbox 360s with surround sound and 47″ tvs.

spanish mossNow for the outside, there is a 3 car detached garage which is going to be perfect for the RX7 and my new carbon fiber experiments 🙂 Also on the side of the garage is a place to park the RV and RV hookups (how perfect right?) The landscaping is just too much for us with all of the palms so we’re paying a company to do it.  The back yard is full of old growth oaks with spanish moss draping to the ground.  The property also butts up against the 14th hole of the golf course. Apparently a pretty major Revolutionary war battle was also fought on the historic property.

At the other end of the back yard the marsh starts and we have a nice covered dock.  This is where we seem to spend all our time.  Catching crab, shrimp and fish is crazy easy out there so if you ever want some blue crab let me know and I’ll have some cooked up in a couple hours.

It really is an amazing house and I’m lucky to have found such awesome people to live with. I’m excited about CR but also really excited to come back for the 4th of July.  We’re going out on the boat to wakeboard and tube and roasting a pig.  So… pictures speak louder than words.  \/ Check it FOOL! \/

n728377101_8229.jpgAllyson
Costa Rica 2009, Life, Travel

Two days before the big trip!

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Only two days left until I’m off to Costa Rica with Lauren to backpack for 2 weeks. Things are starting to shape up a bit better.

ol laurenThere has however been a slight change. Lauren will be going to Costa Rica on the 16th and I won’t be arriving until the 17th. She’s staying about 5 minutes from the airport in San Jose. I’m guessing she’s just going to hang out and stay relatively close to the airport. I really wish I was going but travelocity is AWFUL. This is definitely the first and last time I will use them for ANYTHING. Good luck getting someone who isn’t an Indian named Tom. I spent 4 hours navigating their maze of automated phone lines and worthless customer support. I may have found a way to get a credit back but a lot of good that does us NOW.

Anyhow, some of you might be wondering how illstreet is going to run while I’m trekking around the hillsides and remote beaches of Costa Rica. Well fortunately, most of Costa Rica has relatively decent TDMA cell service. You can’t do a pay as you go plan or get a temporary phone number in Costa Rica because their systems are overloaded. GSM lines won’t have any space for new numbers for three years!

So as a result I’ve had to rent a TDMA phone from cellphonescr.com. So far they’ve been relatively slow with communication and they haven’t been particularly accommodating but you can get unlimited minutes for about $13 a day. Additionally, they deliver the phone to the airport. I’m a little concerned about the delivery process but hopefully it will be smooth. Additionally, I purchased a phone matrix system and 1-800 number for illstreet that will forward to my cell phone for $.23 a minute in CR. This purchase was probably WELL overdue and I’m pretty psyched to see how it works.

So now you’re probably like well yeah, you can talk to people but how are you going to find your away smart guy? Ha! I’ve got that covered too. We have a 4 wheel drive SUV reserved (with rental insurance of course) so we will be driving the long distances between regions and then we will explore on foot for a couple days. Costa Rica is only a few hundred miles long and a couple hundred wide. For offroad, I downloaded an awesome and FREE TOPO map for my Garmin from http://rwsmaps.griffel.se. Thanks to that dude!

For routing and getting out of San Jose, I bought a map from NAVSAT off ebay. They’re the only company authorized by Garmin for mapping CR. I did however find this and there is a torrent seeded on piratebay as well.

Hopefully tomorrow I can post a little something about all the gear I bought. I have tons to write about still so keep up with the blog! We’re going to see volcanoes, sea turtles, monkeys, rain forests, cloud forests, beaches, awesome surf breaks, awesome wind surfing/kiteboarding areas, etc. Also, I haven’t even written about everything that has changed in the states for me! I just moved into an absolutely massive house on the marsh with a three car garage and awesome dock (plenty of room for a nice home office and my cars). I’m right on the 14th hole of the club’s golf course so I’ll be taking up golf I spose. I also bought a ski boat 🙂 Anyhow, stay tuned for details!