It's already December

I have been slacking on paying down my debt it seems.. I thought I would be further along by now. It makes me second guess the whole concept... Ex-Pat living abroad gets more and more tempting every day.. But in the meantime I am still chipping away.. I'm going to go on a bit of a record selling hiatus until after New Years sometime. I feel like the holiday times are just a bad time to be ebaying collectable records.. And I am hoping/planning to do a cheap style motorcycle ride down to the Florida Keys over x-mas/new years.. That can always cost more than I think it will but I will try to stay with family/friends or camp the whole trip.. We shall see though.. Those sorts of intentions are easily bested by things like cold/rain/snow/friends..

so on that note.... current debt = $22,399.92

long ways to go..

I did go for a ride today after a bit of snow recently.. Lots of mud and some snow and ice on the trails. That's what the photo above is from and the video below...

Just a little riding this last weekend up above there. It's getting late in the season to be out there but it's also one of the nicest times of the year when you get a nice day. Leaves and mud can be a little tricky though here in southern New England as you can see from these cell phone photos of last weekends ride below....

debt status

$23,642.72 (originally $26303.44)

That's my current debt. I didn't bring it down much the past month or two with a short trip I went on and paying off some other normal bills plus having to buy new tires for my car, etc.. I've been getting back on track to paying things down though and right now I have about a little buffer in my bank account so I don't get into the red to easily. That has been one of my problems in the past. I still have a lot of ebaying to do but I'm realizing it won't be $23,000 worth of ebaying.. looking at options again....

Irony of trying to get out of debt while giving out micro-loans

I've been back at the ebay selling for a few weeks now and it's been picking up pretty well. I'm back on track to paying down my massive credit card debt... As long as I keep putting in hours at work as well as all this ebay crap. Selling up to 100 items a week on ebay can be a full time job on it's own.. Working my regular job on top of that takes a lot out of me.. But I'm also just lazy....

I did decide to give out a little micro-loan today though. Sure, it's maybe not the best way to get myself out of debt, but it's only $25 and it's $25 I should be getting back eventually. Although I'll probably just re-lend it.



Click the link above to check it out.. I did a little research and it seems to be a totally legitimate non-profit. There's plenty of info on them around the internet. The website and loan system is designed in a way that makes it easy and rewarding to get involved. With virtually no effort and little out of pocket expense you can hopefully make a difference. I'm the biggest cynic in the world so I half assume that someone somewhere is getting rich off this but even if that's the case I think it's still doing good. If you're less of a cynic them I am, and you most likely are, you should find no issues with it at all.. I've just seen or heard of too many NGOs in small countries where the employees pay/expenses/etc are burning up 75% of the funding that's supposed to be helping people. I tend to be skeptical of non-profits in general. But this one swayed me...

Trans Labrador Highway and Newfoundland on my bike

I survived my ride up through Quebec, Labrador, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Bunswick, and then back into the states. It was a good time. Labrador is a beautiful empty space still. There was around 1,000 miles of gravel road all in all. Mostly straight road too. It's like going from my house in CT to Chicago or Georgia.. That's a long stretch of gravel road. And in the middle you have to take a 14 hour ferry ride since the two sections of road that are built don't meet in the middle yet.

You can see the general route in the map on the previous post below. This post will just be a few photos and description. When you get onto the Trans Labrador highway the road is paved for a while but it turns to gravel at this massive hydro electric damn called Manic 5. It's big...

The road itself is well maintained in the gravel sections but for a bike the maintenance ends up being the most dangerous part. They re-surface the gravel with large grading machines and it leaves big areas of loose gravel that can cause you to lose control really easily if you're not careful, and sometimes even if you are. I think everyone that I talked too who road the TLH on a bike had at least one close call.



The majority of the Trans Labrador is just straight gravel road with some hills, some wide turns and lots of scenery. Lakes and black spruce make up most of what you see. Although there can be long periods where you don't see much since it's either raining and foggy or it's dry and dusty behind a big transport truck. I had a few wet days but overall it was pretty nice. I was also riding solo most of the time so I wasn't following another rider kicking up dust when it was dry.


The first section of gravel road is not technically the Trans Labrador Highway since it's not actually Labrador until you reach this sign. It was a wet day that day but the sun came out to light up the bike and sign nicely for this photo.. From there on out it's the TLH and a short ride to the capital, Labrador City.. It was a weird place to ride into, complete with a Walmart and Tim Hortons amongst other conveniences just dropped in the middle of this huge wilderness. It's 150 miles either direction on gravel road to the next nearest town and there's a walmart there. A little surreal.

The road continued west through the pines to the twin towns of Happy Valley and Goose Bay where you can catch the ferry that bring out to the mouth of the bay and the town of Cartwright. Here the TLH continues as a gravel road to the south end of Labrador eventually winding along the coast. It was a windy and often rainy time. The remnants of a hurricane came through and caused nearly two days of ferry cancellations. I had some time to go explore the area with some other riders and it was some beautiful coastline.

At the end of the TLH you have to take a ferry over to Newfoundland (or a long series of ferries back towards Quebec on the mainland) and it's more pavement but some beautiful areas as well. I forget now if that fishing village photo was on Newfoundland or Labrador but it was a lovely spot. A little climb up a mini-mountain and you get that view looking back towards the village or a full panoramic view out to the sea.

Once on Newfoundland a few of us went to Gros Morne which was beautiful although rainy when we were there. We then headed west and took a side trip up to Twillingate, a little coastal village on the north coast of the island, and then back to the south east to St Johns. Here I went to the easternmost point of North America. Cape Spear, Newfoundland.

Coming back east from St Johns I rode the main highway across Newfoundland for a long time and then branched off on a poorly mapped road that cuts across the island including about 60+ miles of gravel road again. It was one of the nicest parts of the ride. I was solo, on a poorly marked road, just winging it. It followed the side of a large lake and then along the banks of the river that fed the lake coming down through the mountains. Just great.



From there it was another ferry (four total) over to Nova Scotia where a few of us rode the Cabot Trail around the tip of Cape Breton before splitting up the next day and heading back to our respective homes. It was about two and a half weeks of riding for me. A good time

more photos here http://picasaweb.google.com/alcontrast/Labrador#

paying down debt + travelling for a few weeks seems counterproductive

I do realize this. But I also must keep my sanity. I'm going up into Labrador and Newfoundland in Canada on my motorcycle for a two to three week loop. I'll be camping as much as possible, cooking my own food, etc. I'm honestly going to try to do this as cheap as I can. The ferry's will be the expensive part and that's not really that bad, especially since I recently realized the prices were in Canadian dollars!

My ebay sales have been going depressingly well though. I've been posting a lot of auctions each week and they have mostly been getting good prices. It's only depressing because it's stuff I love and I will undoubtedly regret selling in the future. Oh well. the price of my stupidity. I could have paid off more of my debt right now but with the trip coming up I wanted to have a little bit of a buffer zone in case of some emergency. I'll probably pay down another $1K to $2K before I leave on the 12th of August.

As for the trip here is the basic idea. This map and a single ferry reservation is really about all the planning I have done and probably all I will do before I leave. I prefer to figure stuff out on the go.

Part 1:

The first part should look something like that map there. Riding up through New Hampshire and Maine and then up through Quebec following the huge bay that probably has some French name I don't recognize. At Baie-Comeau I cut North and that's where it starts to get interesting. The towns fade away and the road turns to gravel at some point. There's something like 500 kilometers of gravel road between there and Goose Bay. Plus there's that crazy looking ancient impact crater that makes a very circular lake on the map. Pretty cool.


Part 2:

From Happy Valley - Goose Bay the road ends and I have to take a Ferry overnight out to Cartwright where I can head south, sort of along the coast, and then catch another ferry over the Newfoundland. A couple of days riding around Newfoundland and then another ferry to Nov Scotia. There I'll be riding the Cabot Trail and then heading back into the states in western Maine.

I'm planning to be out for a couple of weeks for the ride. I will undoubtedly be out of contact for a while since even satellite phones tend to lose service way up north, but I will try to drop an update or two on here when I get a chance during the trip.

Yeah so I screwed up

I got into some serious credit card debt over the last several years. I guess 9 years to be exact. It was sort of gradual. I would mainly use the cards when I came back from traveling and was broke or I was just broke for some reason and I needed (wanted) to make a big purchase.. Like so many others I always told myself I would just pay it back next month. I never did. Eventually the debt got sizable but I didn't really care so much. I couldn't be bothered with it, so I just kept making the minimum payments with the intention of working my debt back down in the "near future".. then I would get itchy feet and go traveling or something again and come home broke and repeat the cycle.

Now it's gotten to the point where it's unmanageable. For a long time it was not too bad. With the economy going to hell the credit card companies have found any excuse to raise their interest rates and now all my my debt has huge interest rates. I think the lowest is 18.99% apr. The highest is 29.99%. Sometimes rates went up for reasons I was guilty of, such as being a couple of days late on ONE payment. Other times it was for no reason at all. That 18.99% rate was $12.99% a month ago. I didn't directly do anything to get that one raised. I just got a notice in the mail saying it was happening. Great.

I was really tempted to just stop paying but I'm goign to take the responsible route and pay it all off. To do this I am liquidating my life. I'm selling a lot of things that mean a lot to me, 20+ years of punk/hardcore record collecting and related items, amongst other things. I'll be spending WAY less, and just minimizing my life. I am keeping the bike I talk about below since when I do get out of debt I'd like to live on that bike for a long while travelling around. Then probably sell that too and travel somewhere else. That's all just dreams at this point though. First order of business is to get out from under. I'll be having a nice yard sale soon it seems but in the mean time I'll be unloading stuff on ebay. My goal is 40 items a week. That should keep me busy for about a year. By the end of that I want to be debt free and with money in the bank.. we shall see....

the bike

here's what the bike looks like now. It looks like I'll be doing a little three day ride up to VT this weekend, mostly dirt roads through MA and VT, camping at night. should be good. An Alaska trip is out since I don't have the time or money but a Labrador trip is on for August.

I bought a new bike

I bought a new motorcycle last week. This one will be set up over the coming months to be a bit of a go anywhere touring bike. Lots of off road and highway riding. I hope to do a trip to Alaska or somewhere interesting like that next summer. Plenty of time to figure that out. Right now I'm still breaking it in.

I also plan to ride it a LOT, and as much of the year as I can handle. I work an hour and 20 minutes from home sometimes and this bike gets a solid 60 plus miles per gallon so that will be nice. I also want to set up my gear so I will be comfortable(ish) during cold weather riding around the temps where water freezes. For future travel plans I will most likely end up in some colder climates so it would be nice to be well prepared.

Also tonight I made some vegan soyboy raviolis with pesto. Good stuff, accompanied by some olive oil and rosemary bread and a bottle of Ting! The jamaican grapefruit soda was an odd pairing but refreshing nonetheless!

Maine can ruin you

This past weekend I took a quick trip up to Maine to try to get some hiking in. I was going from Andover Maine southbound on the Appalachian Trail to Gorham NH. I believe it was just under 42 miles I hiked in three days. It beat the shit out of me!

The first day out it was raining a good deal and at some point my right knee got a bit sore. This happens time to time when I am hiking. Usually I just compensate for it with no real ill effects. The first and second day this was fine. The third day I did 22 miles of relatively rough and rugged trail from 6 am till 7 pm with a number of short breaks along the way. Early on that third day my right ankle started hurting too. By the end of the day I was still moving right along but it was pretty damn painful when pressure was exerted in a certain direction. I eventually made it down to the road and met up with Casey (from my Nepal Trip) who works up there and he gave me a ride back to my car. I hung out for a while and then drove home to CT. I arrived home around 2am, exhausted, sore, and tired. I showered and went to sleep.



Today I woke up and realized just how sore I was and then realized that my ankle was quite swollen, from a little blow the ankle to as far as about 5 or 6 inches up above my ankle. That's the photo on the side here. I picked up an ankle brace today and will be wearing some high top shoes for a while. I have a feeling the red area will turn to bruising in a day or two. I'll update photos if it does. In this one you get the size by side of good ankle versus bad ankle..

The other photos here are from the hike. There are a few sections of trail here that are simply brutal. Steep climbs or drops, sometimes hike in, on and around boulders . There were many times I had to use my hands to climb up or down things and even times when I had to take off my pack to maneuver in or around things. One section called Mahoosuc Notch is a tight notch between two mountains were long ago the sides of the notch caved in leaving the bottom of the notch strewn with massive boulders piled on top of each other. It's a cold wet area where throughout the year you can find packed snow lingering in the voids between and under rocks. The trail goes straight through the bottom of this notch either over, under, or around these boulders. It's terribly fun but it does punish your body as I found out. The photo to the right is of the notch and the white arrow painted on the rock is the trail.

Overall it was a great hike, however painful. Maine is my favorite state along the Appalachian Trail. Stunning scenery, lots of Moose as seen in the bottom photo here. Tons of lakes and ponds a little further North of where I was. Even in southern Maine there are a lot of good swimming holes along the trail. If you stumbled on this site from some interested in the Appalachian Trail I highly suggest you hike the AT. If you can't get the time or money to thru hike it, then hike Maine.. Nuff Said.

Photography and Weddings

This past weekend an old friend from back in the day got married. I used to go skate his ramp in his parents backyard back in 1990 and two weeks ago at his bachelor party we were out skating a ramp behind his house till well after dark. It's funny how some things never change. The wedding was yesterday and it was a good time. Justin and his new wife make a great couple. Hell, any woman who would be willing to put up with any one of us is worth locking down! Here's a photo from Karim that bachelor party night. It's a scary thing skating a ramp well after dark and having a flash going off in your eyes at the most critical moment!

A week without plastic? a month?

I was taking out the garbage today and it always bums me out to see how much trash we in the developed world tend to create. With our extensive consumerism so much of the stuff we purchase is covered in multiple layers of packaging, mostly in plastic form. Most of this is not recyclable plastic and will just be taking up space for a few thousand years. Weak. In an attempt to get a real idea of how much plastic has worked it's way into our lives I'm going to go for at least a weak without purchasing anything that is packaged in plastic (that is not absolutely necessary). Should be interesting. Give it a shot. I bet you will find, as I am expecting, that it will be rather difficult to do.

In the works

I finally decided to consolidate all my random website bullshit into one place. This is it. It will be a work in progress for quite some time I am sure. Ideally it will always be growing and evolving. I had a few different websites for things I was involved in or interested in. These varied from my record store to long distance backpacking trips and numerous things in between. The end goal of this site is to simplify my life. That's it. Hopefully you'll get something out of this as well.

There's going to be a TON of stuff up here when all is said and done. Some things are up now, more are in the works. Some may take quite a while to get added. This will include the Contrast Records (record label) website. The Old School Hardcore archive style website. Photos and blogs from some adventures of mine in the US and abroad. And much more.

Check back for updates...

al barkley